From the very first notes of the intro song, and the little clips, mostly of longing looks and laughter, this looked like a light-hearted romantic comedy romp, complete with disguises and derring do and abductions mostly for romantic reasons.

I loved all the characters. Ariel Lin's variety of expressions, her insouciance, her strength, her emotional highs and lows were pitch perfect. Zhang Bin Bin played the romantic lead with subtlety and verve, a great match for our little beggar girl.

But the story absolutely came alive when Austin Lin came on the scene, at first in one guise as the miracle doctor (no mask!) then gradually he revealed himself. The actor played the role brilliantly I thought--his smile, so sudden, could be both sinister and sweet, which is difficult to pull off. He had the greatest character arc of them all, going from a smug, heartless manipulator--the way he'd been raised--to a deeply conflicted man reaching for a moral center while grappling with love for the first time.

All the characters were obsessed in one way or another, making the title fit, but it seemed to me that it fit Dongfang She the most.

The best episodes, for me, were the ones in which he and Hua Bu Qi bantered back and forth, she giving as good as she got--which surprised, and then intrigued him. Each crisis, when he could have been cruel to her, he backed off as his emotions went from casual interest to attraction to something far deeper, and more dangerous, considering the game of kings he and his grandfather were playing.

Bin Bin as Cheng Yu had a slightly less exhilarating arc, I thought. For one thing, he was often missing. Also, he fell in love first, and though he remained nobly steady, his noble character both did not change, and even became annoying when he bent over backwards to cut Lin Qingwu slack in spite of her viciousness and lies. I began to dread their scenes, because they were the same frustrating emotional note over and over--she petty and demanding, he feeling sorry for her.

I loved the secondary characters and their romances, and really wanted to see them work. I adored the crusty old grandfather, and Mo Rufei! What a terrific character! What a revelation when at last he became she!

And . . . then we come to that ending. Everybody betrays everybody else, out of character, behaving with willful stupidity in order to come to bloody ends, leaving that creep of an emperor standing. YUCK! Who thought that a good idea?

It is very difficult to write a long story arc, as authors as well as filmmakers get tired. (See Legend of Fu Yao for an example of everybody looking exhausted by the end). I've found endings dissatisfactory, but nothing like the total shipwreck of this one.

To sum up, I will totally rewatch this one, but stop before that stupid ending, which I am going to pretend doesn't exist. I saw somewhere the book ending is far better. Good. When it gets translated, I'll read that, and keep the images so I can forget the total mess here.