Details

  • Last Online: 7 days ago
  • Location:
  • Contribution Points: 1 LV1
  • Roles:
  • Join Date: March 14, 2020
The Ideal City chinese drama review
Ongoing 40/40
The Ideal City
16 people found this review helpful
by MoonRabbit
Aug 27, 2021
40 of 40 episodes seen
Ongoing
Overall 9.0
Story 9.0
Acting/Cast 10.0
Music 7.0
Rewatch Value 9.0
This review may contain spoilers

Can Ideal and Reality align?

I watch this drama because of curiosity. It received quite a well received review. And I always like SunLi and Mark Chao.
To be honest, I have dropped episode 1 twice, but after I finished the 2nd episode, I binge it during the weekend 12 episodes straight.

The drama follow story of SuXiao, a young cost engineer, that was put as a scapegoat by her line manager. At the same time, she caught her boyfriend cheat on her. So she lost her job, she lost her boyfriend. Coming from ordinary family, alone in a big city, but yet she want to keep her ideal and morality. She later entangled with many office politics. Many people telling her to be 'flexible', to compromise with her ideal, learn to play along and understand human's heart. Desire to exchange her belief to makes thing better is strong, but can her perseverance be stronger?

I somehow relate with her character. Coming out from university, people will start corporate ladder. You met many people along the way, some can be friend, some passerby in your life. Eventually, how good, how bad, these become a learning experience. Life itself is a war and workplace is another kind of war. How much you want to win the war, exchanging your soul for that one purpose. How people flocking at the side of power. Nobody is forever friend and nobody is forever enemy.

At the end of the day, the show is a very good show compared to most workplace drama. It doesn't mean that all workplace will be like that, but if you are attentive, you should be able to see one or two things happened in your workplace.

I will close it with few idioms, the higher you climb, the harder the fall. The higher you get up the mountain, the stronger the wind blows. And it is lonely at the top.

-- added after watching the full series --

There are bits that I enjoyed about the drama. The office politic feels real. The intense, the suspense, the acting. Yea, the acting is the best part. There are moments that you will just hold your breath. There are moments where there is not even a BGM. Pure acting. And you can feel it, the emotion, it feels real.

However, towards the end, it do feel rushed. They are adding major conflict while trying to close the lose ends. It is all in the last 3 4 episodes of the drama. Some of the incident can't be justified with the timeline. It is showing conflict but do not really show the resolution. Some things are implied but not properly elaborated, this cause difference in perception of some resolution. Some big words mentioned (like merger, IPO, liquidation, etc), but not balanced with the normal professional process. I understand that they can't suddenly introduce external auditor, external lawyers, internal legal team, bankers, administrator, liquidator, validator, consultant etc during the last 3 4 episodes, while they are squeezing 10 episodes in (I heard it supposed to be 50 episodes). Let alone, divorce process, selling house/cancellation of purchase, or even asset division.. I am not even sure if these whole things happened in days or months.

Overall, it is still enjoyable. It tried it best to portray real work environment. Common corporate conflict. Those that expecting love line, it may feel bit rush and have an open ending /interpretation. It is still a solid 9 for me.

Thank you.



Was this review helpful to you?