Knavery

There were opportunities to explore things as others have suggested below. And it seems that other mediums like for example the anime did explore these topics.

When there was an opportunity to explore or dive into a topic it felt like the show swerved away in favor of political melodrama and hamfisted twists to the plot. It's a decent show but to me it feels like squandered potential.

It reminds me of Terra Nova on a low budget. An American show about climate disaster and finding a time-slip so people could travel back and 'restart' civilization in a parallel universe. That show could have also explored so many different angles but instead chose a relatively simple plot dynamic with hamfisted twists. Visually stunning but not impressive beyond that.

And don't get me wrong, I liked both shows and I'm not trashing either one. But the first thing that comes to mind when I think of either show is - squandered potential. Super interesting premise but poor execution leading to mediocre watchable TV.

To me this feels like it's going off the rails in the last few episodes.

I'll never understand playing serious games on your phone. That being said the writers did a good job on getting terminology and stuff right. A lot of times writers write a bunch of nonsense that might fool people who know nothing about the subject like hacking or medicine but in this case the things they said were all pretty believable and accurate.

Show kind of drags in the middle. It's cute but not amazing. Strong start. Weak middle. Okay ending. The leads really help with this drama. Both have expressive faces.

Yeah it's certainly less distracting or noticeable in modern shows. He's in another 2022 iQiyi platform drama set in present day and with a normal haircut it's much less distracting. I dropped that one but not because of him.

Maybe it's just period/costume dramas that make him look distracting in a not-good way at least in my eyes.

The male lead looks like the living embodiment of plastic surgery and it's difficult for me to get past that. I guess I've made it through a few dramas where the female lead looked like plastic surgery even though it was a bit of a struggle. Thankfully at 15 episodes this might be easier. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong and his look is natural but it looks so not-natural to me.

I think this is a tough one for me because his face is not expressive (just like the female leads I've seen with that plastic look) and Chinese TV everything is dubbed. I feel like you need an expressive face and/or an amazing voice actor who can bring life to the lines. I'm not seeing either after 2 episodes

It's a majorly flawed drama in terms of plot but it's constantly twisting and moving so I guess a flawed plot is better than a slow one or an uninteresting one. Preview doesn't look particularly inspiring on plot front. Seems the bigger play is to get the leads back together in scenes like they had earlier on in the show and hope the chemistry can carry it.

It wasn't that good but at the same time a nice quick short story without getting too heavy. Given that I liked My Heroic Husband the tv show, this was decent enough.

I kind of feel bad for the male lead like they should have given him a bit more success but overall pretty well done and funny.

This is bad and I'd recommend most people skip it unless you really like someone in the cast or you don't mind a drama where everything seems detached and slow moving. I gave up after finishing episode 10.

There's two major components to this drama: a mystery component and a romance component. Simple formula, sounds like it could be good. But it's not. It's painfully slow to start to the point where I believe most will drop it like I did.

The first lets say one third to one half (I dropped at episode 10 of 28)... not much is revealed about the mystery while our leads enjoy riveting moments of staring at the floor looking dejected next to each other. Other intense moments including staring off into space, stating the obvious to each other in short monologues as they look sad about their situation and sometimes there's a rare moment where one looks at the other as they both look shy(?) I guess which is better than staring at nothing.

Sure, I'm slightly exaggerating. There is more to this show than the romance of the two leads but the main focus is on the leads and the mystery and both are done very poorly for the first 10 episodes. And as a result I dropped it.

It's worth giving a go if you like the idea of parallel universes with do-overs. Personally my favorite of the genre is still Running Man out of Taiwan.

I could have lived with the fake-out at the ending and the doctor storyline.

I thought the leads were good and comedy was pretty strong for most of it.

It's a comedy so they ham things up a lot. This was my first short drama out of China and it was enjoyable. The leads were good.

The actress playing the female lead is amazing.

The female lead devolves as the show goes on. The person playing her is a good actress and I hope she gets on something with a better script.

Damn. It's missing from iQiyi's coming soon list but still on their website at least.

A few seem like interesting premises to me, hopefully they get subbed.

I dropped it at episode 9. Yu Da is an annoying caricature and forced on the viewers. I didn't want it. I didn't need it. He's a side character so the question is why is he even necessary? There's no value added and he's a big part of why I'm dropping it. I don't want to watch ~5-10 minutes per episode of an over-animated over-acted character with no depth.

Aside from him the drama itself is pretty weak at moving the story forward. Despite this the female lead is pretty good at her role - the typical innocent female lead who's plucky and optimistic. Male lead of course is some super human that has to be shown off, he played that part well. Kind of lame but I guess I'm numb to this familiar duo whereas I'm not numb to characters like Yu Da.

While the leads have cute moments I'm not sure how they drag this on for 41 episodes.

For me this show was one of those good idea, bad execution shows. I liked most of the cast, the premise was interesting but the execution over 40 episodes left a lot to be desired.

Yeah I'll agree with others that it went off the rails in the last ~5 episodes or whatever it was. Up until that point it was okay. The ending felt like a wild change of pace for the whole show when things could have been better spent addressing the various issues the leads face, particularly the male lead.

Also I've watched a few of these dramas - Chinese dramas need to stay in China and leave it at that. They do a terrible job at portraying other countries and getting the actors to make it convincing. This wasn't the worst I've seen by any means but it's still a weak part of a drama that already struggles with pacing (and those last 5 episodes).

Problem is two fold: the leads are just not good at acting, their faces are almost made of stone and the script is bad in terms of developing the leads and their romance. The plot isn't particularly good either.

I did finish this but basically I watched for side characters who were portrayed by better actors with more expressive faces and had stories that were written somewhat better than the romance of the leads and the plot more generally.

It's not though. I've worked at large companies with multiple offices and if you went against what the CEO did like the branch with the "bad guy" executives, you'd be fired or pushed out. You couldn't get away with all this sabotage.

Or how about the female lead not reporting her former fiancé to save her own ass? Like I said it's silly in a bad way. Yes there can be office politics and unhelpful people but not like this.