The Fatal Letter (2023)

Till Death Do Us Part

This drama caught me by surprise. The twist and turns of how everything unfolds is interesting to say the least. It holds your attention and makes you think did Ran Shu need to go as far as she did with escaping her marriage. Was the ending what she expected.

When we first meet Ran Shu (Lu Yan Qi) she is in the bathroom cutting her hair, hiding a facial bruise that she has received once again from her husband. As she is staring at her reflection, she begins to think about the reoccurring dream that she is having more frequently. It is about her and her husband Zhang Zeyi (Chu Peng Xu), a glamorous photographer who she realizes is totally different in the dream than in reality.

In reality he is a violent, gloomy, cruel, horrific and an abusive husband. Ran Shu is feeling that this dream is starting to become real. In the dream, Zhang Zeyi wants them both to die on his 30th birthday by preparing a poisonous rose for her. The purpose for this is he wants to freeze love with death so that it will never wither. To complete this final photo, he grabs the poisonous flower as well and dies along with her, this is his last photograph--Ran Shu and Zhang Zeyi dying together side by side. Death will witness their eternal love.

This dream sets the stage for why Ran Shu decides to fight back against the life she was living.

You see Ran Shu grew up in an orphanage with her sister Gu Ru Ye (Wang Xing Chen). There was no love lost between these two sisters due to what Gu Ru Ye had done to her in the orphanage. Ran Shu was originally going to be adopted by a rich woman. Gu Ru Ye was bitter that her sister was going to leave her after she swore, they would be together forever. She disabled her sister and locked her up the day the rich woman came hence Gu Rue Ye was chosen. Leaving Ran Shu alone in the orphanage until she was of age to leave.

Meanwhile, Gu Ru Ye had become a big celebrity. You would think she was happy, but she still wanted to wreck and disassemble the life of Ran Shu. And that meant, taking her husband Zhang Zeyi whom she eventually seduces.

To escape this premonition of impending death, Ran Shu started a counterattack by enlisting the help of the famous writer Gu Yi Bai (Jin Jia Yu) by having an interview with him to discuss his upcoming book. During their first interview at Gu Yi Bai's house Ran Shu ask him if Gu Ru Ye, the famous movie star was his sister. He says she is. This is Ran Shu's sister unbeknownst to Gu Yi Bai.

She continues her plan by allowing Gu Ru Ye to seduce Zhang Zeyi, using Gu Yi Bai by showing faded bruises, leaving her purse in his car so that he had to return it and see the domestic abuse firsthand by her husband. Yes, her plan went along swimmingly. So, much so until Zhang Zeyi got the divorce he wanted, and Gu Ru Ye married him.

Ran Su was excited and finally happy to live her life. But we still had the impending 30th birthday of Zhang Zeyi at the exhibit. Now, that Ran Su was no longer his wife this was not going to stop him fulfilling his last photo. The stage was set just as Ran Su had envisioned in her dream. She came and confessed everything to Zhang Zeyi as Gu Ru Ye was already dead. She told him that the letter that he had in his pocket was not from Gu Ru Ye but from her. Zhang Zeyi begins to realize that Ran Su set everything up.

We also have Gu Yi Bai who on the eve of the exhibit sees a lady janitor with a box of letters which contained all the letters to Zhang Zeyi from Gu Ru Ye. He begins to investigate what this is all about. Meetings, interviews, domestic violence were these all lies? He begins to question if everything was indeed a lie by Ran Su.

Ran Su would not have done what she did to Gu Ru Ye if she would not have been constantly pressuring her along with the abusive treatment from Zhang Zeyi. She began stalking her sisters, so she already knew that Gu Yi Bai was her brother. She deliberately shook hands with Gu Yi Bai when Zhang Zeyi arrived at their interview to create tension. She placed the love letter written by her in Gu Ru Ye’s style into the coat pocket of Zhang Zeyi. Infidelity, affair. She dragged them all down into the abyss she created.

Just as she thought everything was going her way, Gu Yi Bai was not done. He knew what Ran Su had done and he began his own investigation. He found out that Ran Su was Gu Ru Ye's sister and was actually supposed to be adopted but his mother. But due to being injured she was not adopted. Looking back, each time they met, he was cooperating with her. Whether it was intentionally letting Zhang Zeyi misunderstand them, deliberately leaving her purse in his car, leaving her shoes out so that he could find her or the letter that she deliberately left. He began to contemplate and wonder if he had not met her that day, how would the outcome be. At last, he finally came to the conclusion that she set everything up.

He meets Ran Su and tells her the ending of his new book, “Everyone is a villain. Controlling people in the name of love. Severing the new life with dreams.” Ran Su stares at Gu Yi Bai and knows he knows what she did. But he tells her that is not the ending he is giving her. He tells her to turn herself in to the police.

Gu Yi Bai does meet with Zhang Zeyi who is in prison. He asked Gu Yi Bai what else does he want to know because he does not feel that he has done anything wrong. The reason why is that he felt his marriage with Ran Su was perfect. The domestic violence and abuse he saw it as him being protective. At a young age, Zhang Zeyi saw his father murder his mother. He was having an affair with another woman and told him that he would always take care of him as he left him to go to the other woman. Leaving Zhang Zeyi to call the police and stay with his dead mother. This led to him never knowing if he was really loved by anyone. He thought Ran Su was the woman that truly loved him even though he married Gu Ru Ye. He just wanted eternal love. If only her heart wouldn’t have changed.

Zhang Zeyi got 20 years in prison. Ran Su turned herself in accompanied by Gu Yi Bai.

So much went on in this drama but there is no romance at all and if that what you are expecting, think again. This is totally based off a woman trying to get out of a marriage as well as serve her sister for being cruel to her and giving them both what she felt they deserved.

As Gu Yi Bai said in the end of his book, "Everyone is a villain." The End!

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Decent Trashy Car Crash Romance

I can't believe I went out of that thinking it was decent

The story is about a woman who was able to predict the future through her dreams and she dreamt about her husband killing her in the future. So now, she has to figure out how to change the course of fate, and that's not the only thing, more things will get revealed as you watch more of the drama. I don't wanna spoil much, the drama is 5-10 minutes long per episode so just give it a watch if you're interested, you can easily finish it in 1-2 hours. For me, it was pretty interesting, but I just could not stand the domestic violence at times, for any woman out there you might not like this. Again, the story is pretty interesting for how did it, though they just went overboard with the violence (or maybe it's just me) and there are some disappointments as well for how they resolved things in the end.

**SPOILER**
What disappointed me, is that when FL got out of the relationship, she didn't like revenge on his ex-husband or anything, she just mindbroken him, like... for all the things that he did to you, that's your counterattack? I wish they just went above and beyond for FL's revenge because this man deserved to be beaten more, not just mentally, That's why I probably find the story pretty interesting because they tried to be grounded and used the law instead of violence against violence, not like in any revenge dramas. And then after that's finished, the story still continued because they still went through the trouble of explaining some more confusing stuff and kept bringing up more plot twists like "Oh... this character actually got played by this character since the beginning. NO! This character actually got doubled played this character and then this character went in between and controlled everything behind the scenes", like okay..??? you didn't have to do that, the show was decent, but you just set it ablaze in the end.

For the characters. FL really amazed me, because she knew what's gonna happen in the future, she just hung on for her dear life and just took all the beating every time like "Girrllll you are so strong" and when I thought she was such a good person, all the revelations in the later episodes made her a bad person, but I was still on her side because she had to do it or else she will die. ML really got it coming for him, he was such a possessive and abusive husband, but they tried to redeem his character by showing a back story of his childhood revealing that he was just a victim of his past, like pffft! I get it, if I were to see that as a child I would be traumatized too, but you know what I would do? I would do the opposite and try to be a good person, and learn from the mistakes of my parents. Ruyue, I'm kinda clouded with a bias towards your actress Wang Xing Chen because I mainly watched this because of her, she had it coming as well for ruining FL's life and it was satisfying, I know she was a victim of the past as well, but that doesn't say she's a good character because we didn't have much character exploration with her side. Yibai, they didn't really show much of his side in the drama, which is why he didn't really stand out to me, not until in the end because of the plot twist.

So yeah, overall it's pretty decent, could've been better in my opinion, but I'll take it.

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