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The Rational Life chinese drama review
Completed
The Rational Life
0 people found this review helpful
by Esha
Sep 4, 2021
35 of 35 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 9.0
Story 9.0
Acting/Cast 10.0
Music 9.0
Rewatch Value 7.0
This review may contain spoilers

A Good Slow-Burn Slice of Life Drama which Shows the Outdated Mindset if the Society

This drama is a great series. I know that a lot of people found the romance to be too slow, which is understandable, but it's still realisitc, given their age gap in which the woman is much much older than the man. This drama is a lot about life: the hardships women face, struggles to look for a job, marital problems which include casual chauvinism and negligence, pressure to have kids and most importantly, the pressure of a single thirty-something woman to get married (what the female protagonist faces in the drama) and prejudices surfacing a May-December romance.

I binged it and finished it in 4-5 days ever since it released on Netflix. This drama is an interesting and mature outlook on the regressive mindset of the society. This is the first ever drama that I binged, as it kept me hooked. I may not relate to it now as I'm a teen, but I may, if I get older. It's still worth a watch. It has some funny moments too, but most of it is for flavour.

I find this drama very refreshing, seeing a strong, intelligent and older female lead, and a sweet, extremely supportive, mature, understanding but smart male lead. All of the actors performed very well here. I want to praise Qin Lan jiejie for of course, giving a great performance as Shen Ruoxin, who shined on her own and didn't need a man to help her, and also being a great mentor to Dylan Wang. And also, I want to praise Dylan for nailing this role, keeping in mind that Qi Xiao is very different from his actual personality, and that he had not training in acting and has 4 years of experience. It's very refreshing to see him shed his bad-boy image which was created in his Meteor Garden days, and I didn't even see a trace of Daoming Si in it! His acting is very natural here, and this is his best character so far. He was a delight to watch. Okay! Enough fangirling! Moving on further:

Despite the 19-year age gap, the leads had great chemistry, even before their characters were in a relationship, as they also made a great team when he was her assistant. I love that Shen Ruoxin and Qi Xiao had a mature relationship in which there was a great understanding between them. Qi Xiao was always there as emotional support for Shen Ruoxin whenever she was in trouble, and was also caring and protective of her, while also focussing on his own goals. I actually find this refreshing from the usual completely self-sacrificing characters he played (I've explained this in my feed), while also seeing an intelligent, strong, mature and ambitious female lead, quite contrary to the usual, dumb and childish FLs in CDramas. Apart from being ambitious, she was also calm and composed (another very refreshing thing about her). The romance developed slowly, and both the characters were well written: both of them had a mature as well as a childish side to them, and were always there for each other. That is important. And yes, Shen Ruoxin shined on her own ;)

My second favourite is the married couple: Song Ziyan and Zou Cheng. Their arc was also very interesting, because of their initial conflicts as their respective egos take place, to how they work on mending their relationship in which both of them compromised. This shows that marriage means being inclusive and considerate to each other's feelings, and also about self-respect. Great job Bao Wenjing and Kang Kang! *clap*

And apart from those two arcs, my favourite is the friendship shared by both Shen Ruoxin and Qi Xiao's mothers. Both of them are of opposite personalities: Mother Shen is a domineering and traditional woman (because of what she's experienced) who mostly takes control of her daughter's life and pressurises her to get married, while Mother Qi is a very sweet, caring, kind and a liberal woman who never interfered in her son's life. Unlike many comments here, I'm not hating Mother Shen, as she's also a good person, but her experiences made her like that. It's because of Qi Xiao's mom that Ruoxin's mom changes her outlook on life and her daughter.

I like that there was no typical love triangle and unnecessary scenes of the main leads trying to convince their parents about how serious they are (as said in one of the comments here)! And that Xu Mingjie never became a "villain" here (it would've been very disappointing otherwise)! These are also the refreshing things about this drama.

Props to the writers for making each and every scene realistic, and also writing all of the characters as humans and not making fairytale-like characters, and unnecessarily complicated plots which would have been an extremely cliched idol drama, while also making women the hero of their own lives, as all the women were portrayed strong, smart and capable. This is a great feminist drama. I recommend you to watch it if you want dramas that are not so frustratingly cliched. This is definitely a great watch.
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