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Royal intrigues and shoulder pads
Overall I liked this drama for it's story line and character consistency (well, most characters were consistent). The overall plot was the ''lost princess'' trope, but there were many side quests interspersed into the story and they were concluded within 3-4 episodes each, which was kind of new for my watching experience.Acting was OK. As oring as I found the side character relationships to begin with, in the end the FL and ML best friends provided a more moving relationship arc than the leads. Lots of shoulder pads, they did a lot of male acting.
The camera work was pretty but editing was questionable, especially the slow motion moments, that often didn't make sense for the tone of the moment and were too many in total. Music was not memorable, except for a few darker tunes when the antagonists appeared on screen, which made me chuckle.
Plot was easy to follow and guess. By ep 4 I knew who was the big bad and that whole plot line was very dissapointing. It didn't help that they threw in more antagonists as the series progressed, because they were all so easy to deal with that they posed no real threat. Overall, the protagonists had a way too easy of a time dealing with their controversies, although the FL was dealt a ridiculous amount of attacks against her. Story wise it just looked like something to make everyone like her, because there was no character growth through these ordeals as she had already gone through hell as a child, which solidified her personality as a head strong, scrappy, street-smart, quick witted lier who would do anything to get out of a sticky situation and stand up for the ones she loves. How quickly she became a loyal subject who would do everything according to the law was also a leap, but that at least was within the confines of logical character development.
The ending made no sense and did a huge disservice to the series. Normally I expect the series to run up to 40 episodes, so 32 is a bit short, and this story just felt like it was cut off as quickly as possible after the FL made nonsensical choices. In my opinion it made no logical sense for the character to all of a sudden be willing to leave everything behind for a nation she only recently remembered to be a part of. Yes, she's a champion for the under dog, her family was slaughtered and survivors were being tortured and imprisoned, but the 180 she did looked to be more for the sake of drama than a logical story and character development, which was very dissapointing.
The closer to the end the series drew, the more rushed everything felt, starting from a one night martial arts learning to apparent double and tripple crosses with no clues how or when they were planned, especially taking into account the shear size of some of the plots. Ah, we have a problem, what's the ieasiest and fastest way to deal with it - let's just jump to that.
The whole court drama was a let down, they tried to make it more than it was, but it never amounted to more than Emperor and Ministers yelling at each other and then FL getting smacked, slapped, attacked or thrown into dungeon for it. For all its female empowerment, the series sure didn't hold back on violence against women. No relationship on the show felt genuienly real and I hate to say it, because at least here there was shown some good female relationships. But that was mostly because the hole premise was built on emancipation, girl bossing and womens power. I just wish it had more nuance than ''men are always evil'' and ''women are jelous snakes''. But OK, I'm being very picky, it was still miles better than other plots.
The ending, on one hand, was unusual, as the FL and ML didn't become a couple, but it also felt very rushed. Maybe there will be season 2, I wouldn't mind watching that.
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I might actually rewatch this some day
My thougts in no particular order, written down while watching the episodes.Music was actually memorable, in a good way.
Finally, the FL (who has a naturally perfect RBF) is emoting. Hurray! Really good acting on her part, equally on drama and comedy relief. Everyone embodied their characters really well. Nthing much to say about ML, he was good at acting and portrayed the character's struggle in great detail. Oh, yeah, every time he came on screan next to other people, all I could think about was ''he's so tall''.
I love historic dramas, but by gods I hate what they do with the horses. It is fucking painful to watch.
This is the wildest ''I can change him'' trope I've seen so far. My bigest tripe with the overall balanced and interesting plot, is the amount of personal growth FL needs to put up with from the ML. Even if sophisticatedly written and human, abuse should never be excused, which is what happens here. ML behavior is always excused by something, and yes, he changes, and yes, he comes to love her, but in no way this is a healthy relationship to begin with, so not glorifying that.
The humor is natural, good natured and doesn't feel forced. Comedy is well written, easily played out in between drama and shows the complexity of characters.
Plot is easy, excellently written and slow paced. This is not a fast romance, but a very slow building of human relationships. All twists are easy to follow, it's always clear who the bad guys are. Good guys are super loyalists.
The two leads are such dorks when it comes to each other.
Second lead relationship is meh, but each character by itself is interesting, general Liang Wei being the main comic relief and the actor is great at physical comedy. Xiaotao is the only character I found murky because it was never clear what her deal was (or I missed it). She's still a well flashed out and consistent character. Also not sure abut Mr Wei, the way he was acted out was... odd at times. I got the idea that was behind him, but the physical acting sometimes was weird.
Good camera work, scene setups and sets. Finally no unecessary slow motions.
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Supporting characters steal the show
I liked it, overall. Good acting, good, sometimes even clever, plot, couple of nice twists, lots of dying and betreyal.The best thing in this drama was Fan Shuai Qi playing Bu Shu Lin. The best woman-pretending-to-be-man acting I've ever seen. The maleness was convincing, the aspect of knowing she's pretending was convincing, her playing a female character was convincing. Just across the board phenomenal acting.
One other thing that really made an impression was the absolute insanity of the levels of gas lighting of the 5th Prince Xiao Chang Qing. Obviously, he was meant to be the bad guy, albeit a complicated one, but the pure torture he was subjegated to from the FL as to weather she was or wasn't his deceased wife, was on another level.
I knew that Queen grandmother was the main culprit early on, because out of all of them she seemed the nicest one and that's just never true. But I liked the overall character set up and presentation where it was never trully black and white with any of them, it made the series more interesting.
Again, I'm not super happy with FL's no expression acting. Maybe I'm the problem, I don't know, but this is a trend among female actors that emoting is either extremely reserved or not present. Unless it's ugly crying and then some do it very well, but a lot of times it's just like watching dolls on a screen. There are micro expressions, sure, and the overall vibe of the actress, but it just feels flat. Especially next to Fan Shuai and He Yu.
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Cultivate and don't love anyone is what I take from this story
This drama was actually delivering on the comedy part, I laughed out loud and the jokes were well written and executed. Meanwhile, the drama of it all was lackluster.Plot conclusion - love suuuucks. Every bad thing happens because someone loves someone. Ofc, I'm exagerating to make a point, but many people are loving others to the point of unhealthy obsession. Story line was beautiful but either the translation wasn't that good or some plot points simply made no sense. Basically, love concurs all (but it also sucks).
Random slow motions in weird places for no reason.
Acting was good from the ML. The FL was so so with dramatic acting.
Visuals were really pretty, the sets were amazing, but camera work felt two dimensional (and there was this one 3 sec cut in in the one before last episode, from a high up angle, that was make from a different camera or something, worse quality and very weird that it was left in because it made no difference to the story) and not working to the full potential of the vibrant sets that the actors worked in.
Music was OK.
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