CdramaMaven4762

That crowd is just loud. I'm not saying Madam Zhao didn't have reasons to be unhappy with the situation, but she was very self-centred about the way she handled things. To be fair she may have been "postpartum", which can create challenges, but she was so consumed by the injustice being done her that she couldn't be rational about her interaction with the man who now, by society's lights, owns her. If she'd been a different person, she'd have realized that a less decent and considerate man would have consummated the marriage, blood and all, in order to "stake his claim".
I suspect that her denying him sex with that story made him suspicious, and I'm pretty sure he had someone dig up her dirt before he left. IMO his dislike for her started because she was a serious injury to his young male pride, intensified because he viewed her as her father's tool designed to manipulate him [which he obviously hated] and was brought to a head by her behaviour in and treatment of his household.
The bottom line is that she was deeply unhappy and willful. The male lead's antipathy towards her is justified. And all the people mad at him because he's not a 2020s male need to get over it.

I saw a video about it on YT somewhere ... I'll post the link if I can find it....

I figured there had to be some ML bashing going on for the the ratings to slip so badly here ... KML
I swear Cnetizens take the wild and crazy to the next level with this kind of thing ... lol

I think putting it earlier would have shifted our focus away from the FL, who imo the director wanted us to stay focused on... and bringing it in now, when the ML is already doing some rather harsh things, lets us understand his rationale, even if we don't sympathize much with him.

Anything is possible with him. I also think he had an idea they should be in the area; remember Jiu Gao...

This is a kind of fallacious either-or thinking.
It's absolutely possible for a character to be both a victim and a villain, and even as far back as Shakespeare, with the Merchant of Venice, writers recognize that the ability to portray villains as having some qualities of a victim make them more human and therefore the entire story more compelling.
It's a lot easier to portray a one-sided, evil only villain, but the story is more interesting with the little positive notes. Part of what's making this drama interesting so far is that nobody's all good or all bad.

I don't think she'd actually met him in person, which IMO goes a long way to making her less emotional. Also, I think in her mind his marriage severed whatever prior connection they may have had, and she's also had several years to move past it. It doesn't hurt that given her status, sobbing alone is a really difficult achievement....

He actually seemed mentally confused here ... makes me wonder if the ML was able to get to him with more than just gossip....

Maybe someone can DM you

I think her whole family's attitude towards education was pretty disparaging ... based on the way her father and brother treated the library in ep 8 and the fact that she and her lover were able to use it for trysts for an extended period.
By the time she got married, being able to read was just the way things were for her. She was more focused on schemes to get her out of her marital situation, and as long as she had someone who could handle the reading for her, she didn't have to change the status quo.

I suspect he found out about her situation not very long after they were married, and it may actually have been what sold him on the military career. A young man with his pride already dragged in the dirt wasn't going to take kindly to being green-atted before he even entered the bedchamber ... smh

Some people read the book and now hate the ML from the book without even seeing the drama's interpretation of the character.
Some people hate the actor and are downgrading the entire drama just because he's in it.
Neither of these things make sense to me, but ....

But why? I've never quite understood what LXY did to ppl ...

One of my pet peeves about rating sites like Douban is that people who have watched 1 episode can get on there, trash the show, and rate it a 1. I think they actually developed systems to correct for people voting 5 for their crush or 1 for the actors they hate ...

Very true. She was already off kilter because of:
- sudden attacks from her previously indifferent mother in law
- conflict tensions with her recently returned husband
- the sudden loss of her confidante, followed by her power in the Lin household
- the threatened loss of face because her husband didn't accompany her to her mother's birthday celebration
- the sudden return of her lover to the scene of their previous trysts...
This is all orchestrated by her husband, of course.

They spent almost a year building and growing out the set ....

Hmm... forgot about that!

Calm down. This is excellent work. I know you love Ming Lan, but you have to accept that this is 2026.... maybe try some therapy around the stages of grief???

There are people who hate the lead actors and take it out on the drama ... hoping it won't be too successful. I'm expecting a lot of fluctuation in that number of the next few days ... lol

Haters... kml