Completed
final_flash
2 people found this review helpful
Jan 3, 2025
20 of 20 episodes seen
Completed 2
Overall 4.0
Story 5.0
Acting/Cast 4.0
Music 4.0
Rewatch Value 3.5
This review may contain spoilers

We’re kicking 2025 off with this? Oh boy…

First 5 episodes: What on earth were TVB thinking? I mean I get it, it is the New Year in 2025 so we want to start the year with a comedy but come on! A comedy with the main male lead is an adulterous swine? Why? The only thing worse than this would be the Lunar New Year having a drama with a lot of death and destruction.

I could not enjoy this drama because the set up is so stupid. Edwin Siu used to date Winki Lai, but they broke up - or as Winki puts it - on a break. That evening, heart broken, Edwin somehow ends up in bed with Jinny Ng and gets her pregnant. Since Edwin was an up and coming actor, he had to marry Jinny to maintain a positive image. And, coincidentally, Jinny managed to bag a commercial acting gig from Winki because of her innocent look, making Winki this incredibly lucky girl. I should remind you all that we are told all of this and never shown.

There were some funny moments but ultimately I hated most of the characters. Edwin Siu started an adulterous relationship with Winki during Covid while his wife and kids were stuck in Canada, so they have been secretly been together for 3 years. To maintain his image, he and Winki pretend to hate each other in public. Suddenly, his wife decides pay him a surprise visit to bring him some joy, and that is when all the “craziness” occurs. It is very predictable, and so far it is going as expected. I have no doubt in my mind Jinny is gonna end up with Brian Chu because they make it so obvious.

My biggest issue with the drama is why is Edwin being such an asshole? His wife played by Jinny is amazing and attentive and beautiful and is such a pleaser so why would Eddie go “no, I will cheat on her with Winki.” Why? And Edwin clearly overacts when he compliments her in public, could Jinny not tell he was not being truthful after being married to him for 15 years?

I also hate how Winki is happy to be the third party, like what? She doesn’t even mind it after 3 years, 3 long years of pretending in public and secretly sleeping with Edwin.

So far, the most annoying character is Anthony Ho. Goddamn, his character is so self-centered and selfish and he is such a piece of s**t that I imagined him with all his legs falling off every time he was onscreen and being an anus. I sure hopes he gets punished onscreen later.

Brian Chu is the only likeable character so far. He works for Edwin and helps him with many projects and solving difficult issues that go Edwin’s way.

Is the show gonna get better? My bet is hell no.

Episodes 6-10: man it keeps getting worse. Brian Chu is still my favorite character and the flashbacks to previous TVB dramas he was in and mixing that into this drama was quite funny, but everything else so far has still been a wtf for me.

So, Edwin’s wife leaves Hong Kong and return to Canada after a terrible advert she made got her kids bullied, so she decided to quit acting and return to Canada to solve that issue. She is a main character, so obviously TVB will make her return somehow, and that somehow was a competition to hire a new video editor by someone submitting edited video clips and getting the most votes on social media. The two best submissions obviously came from Jinny so she won easily and immediately returned to the office following the announcement, despite intense disapproval from Edwin. That timing made it as if Jinny was a fortune teller, because she bought tickets and flew 14-15 hours straight from Canada to arrive in Hong Kong and then catch a cab to the office at the right time the announcement was made, confident she would win. Like pardon?

And I’m confused. A video editor just edits videos so stays at the office, but we see Jinny basically acting as a Production Assistant doing PA work. Did they mess up the job role?

Winki also had me shaking my head constantly. She spends way too much time using this AI chat bot sharing her concerns and asking it questions that the AI bot replies in this robotic fashion. Does Winki not have any friends at all? Nobody she trusts like a sister? The dependence in AI makes her look even sadder than usual third parties as she has no human to talk to and just this cold robot thing throwing out responses based on a learning model. I understand AI is a hot term right now and TVB are trying to embrace it but every time it is used it just cheapens the experience for me, I don’t know why, like during the Miss Hong Kong 2023 pageant the hosts used AI generated questions and using AI to fuse past champions together to create the ultimate contestant like wtf? Stop it!

Talking of AI, oh man I forgot to mention how bad the deepfakes of younger Edwin, Jinny and Winki looked. Like you can immediately tell they were deepfakes and they look so creepy. Goddamn, why do they not just do the classic TVB use different actors to portray younger versions of the main cast? Why this abomination?

Edwin… what can I say about his character? A huge coward and pushes responsibility to other people. Watching him squirm just made me cringe immensely.

And Anthony Ho is still a huge unlikely lump. I hate the character here. I have nothing against Anthony as he can be great fun to watch, but his character here is just a huge douche and so I gotta give him credit, he does the douche role very well.

Episode 10 ends with Winki being rushed by paparazzi because she was ousted as a third party mistress. We all know it won’t be Edwin as the supposed man she is cheating with as it is only episode 10, but we will see for sure next week.

Episodes 11-15: as expected, the supposed man Winki was cheating on was not Edwin and she was framed by somebody else. This is quickly rectified and nothing of consequence really occurs.

And finally we see Winki expecting more out of the relationship with Edwin because of course this will always happen. People who just say “oh I’m happy being the third-party” will always want more, and it has taken 3 years for her to finally realise that. So she spends most of these episodes trying to indirectly force Edwin to admit to his wife that he had been cheating on her so he would finally and officially be with Winki. I find some things so stupid with her scenes, like she goes out drinking with Eric Tang while she was chatting to her AI thing, and she left the laptop fully open, powered up and unlocked. I mean, who does that? People would normally close their laptops to let it sleep, and it wasn’t like she was in a hurry either. Eric takes her home when she is drunk af and sees the laptop screen with the AI chat so finds out about the whole affair.

Edwin, as usual, is being a massive coward that is just makes me cringe to see him squirm in this drama. He tries to avoid responsibility by making others make decisions for him and does his annoying begging on Brian to get his help.

Brian is still the best character. He finds out about the whole thing and understandably is upset. I can understand his position, as a friend and employee to his boas should he help keep this secret or should he let the wife know.

Episode 15 ends with Jinny bringing brought to a location with Brian and seeing Edwin hugging Winki, so the cat is now outta the bag. The last 5 episodes are gonna get messy.

Episode 16-20: oh my gosh, that was a terrible ending, but we’ll talk about it later. The issues have with the final 5 episodes are more than just the ending. So Jinny decided to divorce Edwin and is cold towardshim. Edwin did his best to convince her that he would leave Winki and be faithful to Jinny but she says hell no. Meanwhile, Winki wins the main role of the wife in a movie where all three of them are in so Winki goes over to rub it into Jinny with a smug look on her face. The only good part that happened here was Jinny dropping an entire waste basket over Winki’s head in retaliation, and that felt good to watch.

Then we got scenes where Winki is such a child, such as trying to force Edwin to accept her instead of his family and even gaslighting herself when Edwin tells her he will break it off with her. She went on this rant about how she could give up everything to be with Edwin, like come on girl calm down! When Edwin and Jinny’s daughter tried to pretend she was locked in a box and tries pin the blame on Winki, this was quickly discovered and Winki used it as leverage to force Edwin into announcing publicly about his divorce. Man, how childish.

Edwin, as always, is such a terrible person that even when he actrdall upset and regretful I still had no sympathy for him. In real life he is dedicated to his actual wife and a great husband, so he did a great job here making me hate him. However, the worst husband is not Edwin, it is the character played by English Tang. He had more than 1 mistress and ended up strangling his wife with one hand when he was confronted. What the actual f***? He later tried to apologize for that but if it was me I would also tell him to go f*** himself and the divorce was 100% happening. Once that line is crossed and there is abuse, it is easy to cross it again no matter what promises are made.

Although quite a minor thing, I feel like I should bring this up. There was a scene where there was a power cut when the Edwin family were trying to have dinner, and Jinny decided to bring out many candles and said proudly “Luckily I brought all these candles from Canada.” What nonsense, she is seen with only one suitcase every time she is travelling and there were enough candles to fill half of that suitcase, so you’re telling me she carried half her suitcase full of candles and not get stopped by security for possible smuggling? And also, these were large candles, do you know how heavy they are? There was no way she would have taken those many candles when she would have carried more important items like outfits, curly tongs, hairdryer and so on.

The ending had Edwin confess to everybody about his adultery during a press conference for their new movie, but he took the blame for everything and even going as far as saying he tried wooing Winki but Winki rejected him. As everybody started going nuts, he mumbles something inaudible before we fast forward 1 year into the future and see he had decided to become a monk. Man, what era is this? Did he think he was some Jin Yong martial arts epic master where he could absolved his sins by becoming a monk? I found this ending to be so stupid, like there were plenty of ways to make amends so why a monk? I was half expecting him to carve buddhist statues out of wood and learn 九陽神功 or something.

Brian predictably ended up with Jinny, and that was nice to see, and Brian is still the best character in the drama, right up until the end. Overall a terrible drama and I didn’t really care about anybody except for Brian. I am never rewatching this in future because it is so stupid.

Oh yeah, Anthony Ho sucked the entire drama. I hate his character throughout and that never changed. He never gets his just desserts for being such an annoying anus. Unforgivable.

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Details

  • Drama: Battle of Marriage
  • Country: Hong Kong
  • Episodes: 20
  • Aired: Dec 30, 2024 - Jan 24, 2025
  • Aired On: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
  • Original Network: TVB Jade
  • Duration: 45 min.
  • Content Rating: Not Yet Rated

Statistics

  • Score: 6.9 (scored by 19 users)
  • Ranked: #33197
  • Popularity: #99999
  • Watchers: 51

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