Disliked or Dropped Chinese Dramas

This one was unwatchable to the core!!! I can never get this drama's popularity and high rating here. It is rightfully very low rated on douban (in fact could have been lower). The show starts out illogically, and there was only so much suspension of disbelief I could do. FL was supposed to be a smart woman, but she is a dumbass. Her stupidity is masked as smartness by the makers. She doesn't even understand the stuff she talks about. She tells her brother that one's parent would never think or do bad to their child, even after experiencing the sh*t her father put her through. There are many such stupid moments by her. 

On top of the illogical plot, the production quality is one of the worst I have seen for a period Cdrama. And ofc, it is not to be attributed to the time it came out because just go and have a look at period cdramas released even before this one. The filter used here made everyone look like ghosts, you can barely make out a person's face at times. The skin smoothing and skin coloring is just yucky. I actually vomited while watching this! For a supposedly high budget show, this was 1000 times worst than low budget shows. Both in terms of plot and production quality.

I am usually accepting of the differing opinions, but I cannot understand for the life of me that why will anyone sit through this vomit inducing garbage (because I really could not keep it in after having to look at that abomination of production quality). The plot is garbage too, but if the cinematography, sets, costumes, lighting, yada yada were great, I could have better understood the tolerance for this, but that is so not the case here.

Were people high or something when they rated this so high and made this the most popular cdrama? (until Hidden Love it was the most popular cdrama) This show was so badly produced, it surprised me to know who directed this. The show was so boring from the start itself, I used fast forward and 2x speed since episode 2!

The acting here was just so bad and there was no chemistry whatsoever. The show advertises itself to be a healthy romance but it is anything but that. There is no healthy balance at all between them, the ML is referred to as 'master' again and again by her and everyone else, and they treat him like a god or something. The way she thinks and talks about him makes it feel like she is his maid. Also, side characters are all annoying.

The FL was supposed to be smart, but that is what I call a dumbass FL. She is just like Lan Yan Zhi of Rookie Agent Rouge, smart because the script says so and actually is just dumb with everyone else being dumber. Another case where the FL is said to be the top woman gamer, but she is still not on par with the ML. They advertised it to sound feminist, but it is actually sexist gaslighting people to believe it is the opposite. Also, all the other women apart from her are either dumb good or dumb evil. That is another misogynic element.

This show is just not worth it, was not back then is not now. Do yourself a favor and don't torture yourself by watching this. Countless other better modern cdramas exist, even more so now. It's not that it did not age well, it's that it actually was rotten from the very start.

How the heck is this garbage an 8.2 here? It's just bad, vertical drama level bad. I cannot understand how anyone gets any pleasure out of this so called 'guilty pleasure' show. It's all guilt of wasting your time on nothing and 0 pleasure. I cannot see any chemistry between these two in this show. High rating for garbages like these and low for shows like She and Her Girls, Minning Town and Born To Be Alive just shows the garbage tastes of international audience, and makes me go to douban more and more for a true rating.

Amongst the trilogy of this, PYHOMS & ALSB, this is the worst made. It has a lot of annoying tropes of dated idol cdramas that I am glad are left behind now. Leads had no chemistry on top of everything. I truly felt put off from idol cdramas back when I finished this and it took a few months for me to come back as this was back when all I knew about cdramas was from MDL and had no idea of the existence of all the great ones.

This was my first pre Minguo era period drama, aka my first costume drama and at that time, I found it good at first but draggy later. It took me ages to finish. However, it did not malign my views on period dramas nor did it push me away from starting another for some reason, and later when I watched Long Ballad I truly started to love all sorts of period dramas. But as time passed by, I realized that I just wasted my time with this one. If it were now, this show would have not even been on my list. Back then I wanted to watch all 7.5 and above dramas and I had to learn my lesson the hard way with Playful Kiss, which was finally when I learnt that not everything is meant to be watched and not everything E.Asian was a gem.

A woman wrote this? I have seen such great shows about women, female perspective, and even just treating women as equal and respectable beings in dramas written by men (Sakamoto Yuji, Bakarhythm, Wang Xiong Cheng, etc). No wonder she had such a trash thing to say when Kris Wu rape allegations came to light. This writer herself is a sexist, misogynist, and scumbag of a female. People like her should be banned from writing and expressing their views.

ZLS must have been forced to do this or something for sure, even my love for her cannot make me tolerate a minute of this.

I went into this due to the hype around the chemistry and how it had 3 f_ing seasons, but I honestly could not see any chemistry here. Nor did I found it funny. I was aware that this was low budget, but did not know that it was that bad! The production quality was horrendous, but if the drama was funny, I'd have not minded it. But no, it had nothing to offer. On top of that, this actor, he is one of the worst. He sits in my blacklist now. Neither can he act, nor does he go beyond the old cliche trope of playing a cold handsome ceo role. Only here was his role supposed to be different, but was it really? He was still a prince, he was powerful and despite not being that cold, his face was stiff. It was bad really and China has way better romcom period shows for one to waste their time on this garbage.

Please tell me you guys were trolling when you were praising this one. You guys tricked me into believing this would be a well produced and well written drama with one of the strongest FL ever. It wasn't anything like that! I tried to drag my feet through this for the sake of ZLY & LQ, but I couldn't take this seriously. The writing is terrible: logic holes everywhere and things follow the 'because the writer says so' rule. The FL carries a huge and very visible as a weapon hairpin in her hair into an area where weapons aren't allowed. She finds out the top secret base very easily, opens the noisemaking heavy doors, and as she walks in, loud footsteps of hers are heard. Yet, the people inside had no clue and they casually talk loudly to their guards that I did this this this due to this reason. The guards already know it all beforehand as they executed that plan. All of it is heard by FL who came in VERY loudly in that small room. A character is showered with multiple arrows, kicks and falls, yet survives. That too without any medical help. In a prison.

The FL is not as powerful or smart as advertised. Instead, you get a godly ML. He is smarter than everyone, more powerful than anyone and the coldest. All of what I expected the FL to be, the ML was. How was this any different from the tons of cold ML dramas out there? She keeps falling in traps, and could barely fight the powerful lords. She even lost to another woman spy, who should have been the real FL.

The production quality is horrendous. Light comes from everywhere, and it certainly did not come from the candles and lamps lit. Saturation and brightness was so high, my eyes hurt while watching. The styling was so bad, even short trash dramas do better. The set was so poorly made, I laughed. The pool within the pleasure pavilion had color changing lights within them. How could I take that scene with maids seriously? It seems like they used 90% money to pay the cast, and 10% for everything else. 

It was too juvenile and low quality production for my taste. 2D characters, 2D plot. Wan Peng was the only good part of this show, as she acted better than 98% Korean actresses when portraying a teen girl. 

Before I talk about the flaws, I just want to highlight the sole reason why you should at least give it a chance: the character of Shen Li Ge aka the FL

I really really really wanted to love this because I loved the character of Li Qin here. This is the first time when a character is so good that I keep considering to continue watching for her sake every now and then. Maybe I'd finish this someday as I skip watch her scenes and other crucial scenes. She is magnificent and very very very strong physically, outdoing everyone including the ML. Female characters like her are what pulls me towards Chinese dramas so much. She is worth it if you can tolerate all the negative things I'd say.

Things I found not so bad yet nothing special are it's cinematography and production design. Although it is unrealistic to the era it is set in, the set was grandiose. However, I cannot praise much because a) it is not realistic to Liu Song period, and b) because I have seen better cinematography from other cdramas. Also, the romantic and family chemistry is just lovable. Actors that don't play villains have done quite a good job.

Now the bad part. The plot keeps going in circles. The minister plots, they fight, the minister is about to be gone for good, something saves him, repeat. I have heard that even when he goes out of picture, same stuff happens with other villains. The adopted sister has a lot of plot armour. For someone of her status, she sure is able to pull off a lot of schemes without being implicated for them. The plot is not complex enough for an political drama. Villains are laughable. I value plot over everything, and cannot stand below average plots, which is why I had to give up. This is the most I could do solely for a good character, so I absolutely love LQ now. She is phenomenal. 

I wish this was my first period drama (non-Minguo) instead of that lackluster and downright bad Legend of Yunxi. I would have loved this one as my first period drama for sure! 

I was charmed by Zhou Yu Tong's portrayal of Fan Ning. She was amazing, dressed well and carried her character like a queen. But this was it. I cannot like Gong Jun's character even though I love nice MLs more than anything. The writing was also subpar. I disliked what was to come in the 2nd half, and how they reduced FL's power in the 2nd half. I also disliked the secondary couple a lot. They both followed the typical rich man/poor woman & cold man/warm woman trope which I dislike the most. The other characters were nothing special too.

Also, for a drama depicting a woman in power, I hated that they tried to imply that she cannot become the CEO because she is not married + didn't have kids yet. Another woman who had a lot of power as the most important member of boards of director declined the idea of her becoming a CEO because she cannot understand the brand properly because she is not married and has no kids. Somehow just because she was a woman, she was declined by another woman because she was refusing to accept the 'feminine' and 'motherly' way of life. I was enraged, especially because she was a positively depicted character. And this was what led FL to want to marry and give birth. I wanted to rip all hairs out of the creators because of this. 

If you are looking forward to watch a feminist show as a feminist yourself, I advice you to back up fast rn. There are tons of better feminist shows from China, even ZYT's other shows do better as feminist shows.

I might pick this back again. I dropped it back when I had a different taste, so who knows if I end up liking it.