A Fallen Xian (2024)

An average drama with a seriously annoying male lead

I do love a drama about gods and demons and so on. At first glance this appeared to tick the boxes, but then it fell into the predictable cliches TVB employs.

I usually find Brian Tse pretty bland to watch, almost like wallpaper paste or window dressing that is just a white veil. Nothing offensive but nothing outstanding, he is just there. However, this is a perfect match for his role as an immortal because the expected mannerisms of Lu Dong Bin just somehow compliments his acting method tremendously well. I found myself quite enjoying him in this role and I never thought I would say that. Predictably, the moment he was introduced with all his magical powers, TVB had to take them away so that the drama could last 20 episodes instead of being sorted in a single one, but the way he loses his powers was by his beard getting set on fire. That made no sense, why would his magical powers be tied to his beard? That’s like working out and getting all these muscles but one day losing your physique because somebody shaved your pubic hair.

Erica Chan is okay. So far - 7 episodes in - I do not have any lasting impression of her. The actress can be pretty good as she was one of the standout female characters of that TCM drama, but here she is just… there. I don’t hate her character but I feel like she lack the main female lead charisma needed to carry the show.

And then we have the most annoying character in the show played by Danny Hung. Man, he is a swindler here but he spends most of it constantly acting like a brash childish idiot screaming at Brian Tse the entire time. Brian has amazing patience as he accepts being shouted at but I just found myself hating Danny the more I watched the drama. It is not really Danny’s acting since he was great in the TCM drama, it was just that his role was so poorly written. He has two modes so far: throwing himself into a jealous outburst whenever anybody even comes close to Erica, or acting all high and noble as everybody thinks his is an immortal. His character was also written so stupidly, because he backstory was that he really believed in Lu Dong Bin as a child, but one day people came over to his house demanding his grandfather paid his debt due to his grandfather’s gambling habit. He prayed to Lu Dong Bin for help but Lu never came, and so he doesn’t believe in the gods and uses it to swindle people. Like his grandfather brought it on himself, how could he blame it on the gods? He should have blamed his grandfather for gambling with no abandon.

In any case, let’s see how this progresses. I never thought Brian Tse would be this dramas’ saving grace but there you go.

Update: yet another filler drama from TVB that just disappoints. We get the demon as I was hoping for but unfortunately it was introduced too late to really matter. So a “hidden treasure map” is introduced mid-way into the drama, leading to Danny discovering the map to it and finding a magical hairpin. Yes, of all things, it is a magical hairpin stuck inside a rock face. Danny removes it and discovers he can do magical feats with it, but at the cost of his health every time he uses it. It turns out that Brian’s godly Lu Dong Bin fought a demonic Pangolin that had 1000 years of magical training so was highly formidable so was unable to beat it. To help him, Erica - who was then a fairy - stole the Queen Mother of the West’s hairpin in order to give it to Brian and aid him in his fight against the Pangolin. The Queen Mother discovers this and was very upset about this not because she stole the hairpin, but because Erica fell in love with Brian (oh no) so she is punished to suffer 10 cycles of life to let go of her love. Meanwhile, Brian managed to defeat the Pangolin with the hairpin because of all the moisturiser that rubbed off on it from the Queen Mother’s head, but not enough to kill it completely but only seal him within the mountain as long as the L’Oreal hairpin stayed in there.

Danny was an annoying anus all the way until the end. He does something really heroic at the end despite learning it would likely kill him and he ends up in heaven facing the King of Heaven, but he spends the entire time disrespecting someone this important, but the King Of Heaven is really easygoing. The King of Heaven later offers Danny the chance to study and train to become a god, but Danny declines it (wtf?) The final episodes forces Danny and Erica together and I feel that it was undeserved because for 19 episodes Erica was pining after Brian, who as a god could not reciprocate her feelings. Then, out of the blue, Erica suddenly cares about Danny and then boom, they get together. No. It was totally unearned.

Again, Brian is the only redeeming feature of this drama. I liked his acting here but it is not enough for me to rewatch this in the future. Just Danny’s character in this was enough for me to never touch this again.

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