greenteaberry
Started strong, disappointing final few episodes
If you want historical/cultural/logical accuracy, you can skip this drama. The history fanatics complained about the costumes and some character settings being inconsistent with the time it was set in and stuff. If you're in for witty leads and cute lead chemistry, read on.
What I really love about this drama is even though it's about the stereotypical ancient Chinese drama "battle of the wives," each arc is relatively quickly resolved and to our leads' favor. For once we had a husband who wasn't stupid!!! We don't really have detestable second leads who can outsmart our lead characters here either (that's what I hate most about typical drama tropes)... so it's just arcs and arcs of how the female lead wittily overcomes problems, sometimes with the male lead's help. Cute interactions.
However, the last 3 episodes definitely made me angry in how random the conflict was... as if it was just there to drag the show longer. The way they depicted the characters in this arc was inconsistent with how they were depicted previously (personality / choices wise) so I definitely wanted to throw things at the scriptwriter. The writers also settled for the tropiest trope of a grand finale, with the typical time skip (wtf was wrong with those fake moustaches omg ew) and the "everyone gathers together in harmony and chants some uplifting adage in unison" scene (rolls eyes -- I didn't know those still existed, I thought those were stopped like 20 years ago). That final final scene also reminds me of Under the Power, if you watched that too... but at least in Under the Power that banter was witty and funny... here it was just very cheesy and sappy :(
The story had so much promise given it's amazing cast and the lead chemistry (though there isn't as much chemistry here as there was in Under the Power... sorry that previous Seven Tan drama set my bar real high). However, the writers really just gave up and didn't keep the delivery consistent, so the drama lost some points there. One difference with Under the Power is at least Seven Tan uses her original voice, so anti-dubbers may appreciate this one more (though Wallace Chung is dubbed because he speaks Mandarin with an accent...)
The songs are amazing though! All 5 of them. Zhou Shen is ultimate period drama OST king <3 And we got Seven Tan and Wallace Chung each singing a track... and Yisa Yu is a very established singer who contributes amazing drama OSTs... and I don't know the singer of the insert ballad but the song is good too!
Rewatch value wise... no scene really stood out as "classic scenes" to be rewatched over and over again, unlike Under the Power (omg I still love rewatching certain romantic scenes from that one).
What I really love about this drama is even though it's about the stereotypical ancient Chinese drama "battle of the wives," each arc is relatively quickly resolved and to our leads' favor. For once we had a husband who wasn't stupid!!! We don't really have detestable second leads who can outsmart our lead characters here either (that's what I hate most about typical drama tropes)... so it's just arcs and arcs of how the female lead wittily overcomes problems, sometimes with the male lead's help. Cute interactions.
However, the last 3 episodes definitely made me angry in how random the conflict was... as if it was just there to drag the show longer. The way they depicted the characters in this arc was inconsistent with how they were depicted previously (personality / choices wise) so I definitely wanted to throw things at the scriptwriter. The writers also settled for the tropiest trope of a grand finale, with the typical time skip (wtf was wrong with those fake moustaches omg ew) and the "everyone gathers together in harmony and chants some uplifting adage in unison" scene (rolls eyes -- I didn't know those still existed, I thought those were stopped like 20 years ago). That final final scene also reminds me of Under the Power, if you watched that too... but at least in Under the Power that banter was witty and funny... here it was just very cheesy and sappy :(
The story had so much promise given it's amazing cast and the lead chemistry (though there isn't as much chemistry here as there was in Under the Power... sorry that previous Seven Tan drama set my bar real high). However, the writers really just gave up and didn't keep the delivery consistent, so the drama lost some points there. One difference with Under the Power is at least Seven Tan uses her original voice, so anti-dubbers may appreciate this one more (though Wallace Chung is dubbed because he speaks Mandarin with an accent...)
The songs are amazing though! All 5 of them. Zhou Shen is ultimate period drama OST king <3 And we got Seven Tan and Wallace Chung each singing a track... and Yisa Yu is a very established singer who contributes amazing drama OSTs... and I don't know the singer of the insert ballad but the song is good too!
Rewatch value wise... no scene really stood out as "classic scenes" to be rewatched over and over again, unlike Under the Power (omg I still love rewatching certain romantic scenes from that one).
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