Hime

Zheng Shuang playing a robot? This might be the drama that will give her the award for best actress. She fits this role perfectly. Sorry, I am being kinda rude.

But I have only watched 2 dramas where she was the female lead and she decreased the value of both dramas to the point I almost dropped them. She is just so expressionless that you cannot feel any connection to her characters. Like she is simply memorising her lines and saying them out loud without actually acting them.

Since then I have stayed away from any drama where she is the lead even if the drama looks interesting. As soon as I see her in the cast (as a main character ofc) I give up on that drama right away.

The 2 dramas I mentioned above, actually now that I think...I watched 3 dramas with her as the female lead: The Cage of Love, Love Through a Millennium and Love O2O.

I almost dropped each and every of them at some point because of her. I have nothing against the actress as a person, I don’t know her. But my honest opinion is that her acting lacks so much in expressions and feelings that it is hard to watch.

Same. But I actually remember having it in my PTW list pretty much since I joined MDL 2 years ago. I am just not sure why I added it in the first place but looking at the trailer and summary this looks just like one of those chinese dramas with too many episodes and too many characters taking screen time with the main leads nowhere to be seen for a while. No, thanks. I guessed I added it since at the time there was no trailer, maybe not even a summary and I had not gone yet through the frustrating experience of watching a draggy chinese drama. Moved from PTW to NI.

Are you sure? I have not watched this larkorn but the trailer makes it look like the nightclub is not the only place where he is taking off his clothes. Unless the woman that is shown in the trailer is like his crazy ex-girlfriend that wants him back or something but it did not look like it.

It seems this is 28 episodes long? And so far, at least where I looked, there are 11 episodes subbed.

It could have been better. The female lead’s back and forth between the male leads and her indecisiveness made me unable to like her. I did not hate her, but I could not connect to her either since I would not make the same thoughtless decisions she made on several occasions.

And the script itself was not that interesting. There were a lot of skippable scenes.

Good. Not amazing but better than a lot of chinese dramas out there that give way too much screen time to supporting characters leaving the main leads to the side. It does still have a lot of skippable scenes but it is not as draggy as the average chinese drama. Although there is no mistake that this is a romance drama, it is more about how the main lead goes from an unemployed "disaster" to a person who gets lucky and enter the company by mistake but is able to keep his spot because although he lacks in background and experience, he is a talented person that is able to find solutions to problems that other deem impossible or too hard to solve. If it being so business focused is a pro or a con it depends on your personal preference.

Like I said, it was good but not amazing so I probably won’t re-watch it, at least not anytime soon.

Unfortunately there are not many female leads that fit into your and my personal preferences and the few I have seen were from dramas I have watched some time ago. Haven’t seen many female leads like that recently, Ming Lan being an exception. But if I do remember any I will let you know. What kind of dramas do you watch?

I have already watched Dong Yi a few years ago but thank you for recommending it. It was a pretty good drama. I like it when the female lead is not the typical type. I like strong, smart, calm female leads since they are so rare. Ming Lan is all this but that does not make her boring. In fact she is one of the best female leads I have seen. Her character is really interesting. Wish we got more female leads like her in other dramas.

Which trailer, cause the one here on MDL only shows his wife.

This could have been quite a nice drama if it was not for the clichés and annoying/frustrating plot devices of the second half of the drama. And as usual supporting characters getting more screen time than they should, together with the bad subs on youtube that are not properly synchronized and are missing in some parts....I was not able to enjoy it as much as I could have. The premise and first half were pretty good so it is a shame that yet again a drama is ruined in the second half. And let’s not even talk about the ending. They used one of the most annoying and most common clichés in dramas with romance. Sigh - . -

Like BikiLee said it comes down to personal preferences. True, I felt bored most of the time while watching it. True, I think it is overrated if you think about all the aspects of it. I honestly could not give it a high rating like most people because I did not enjoy it enough for that. That does not mean the drama is not good tho. And of course the main leads chosen and the fact that they got married and this is their first drama together as main leads might influence the ratings but I believe some people might have honestly enjoyed it despite the slow pace because of the female lead.

She is completely different from most female leads out there. When a female lead is kind she tends to be naive and even dumb, a crybaby sometimes and gets everyone in trouble. When a female lead is smart or strong she tends to lack in human relationships being quite rude and sometimes even insensible or just not knowing how to interact with other people. Ming Lan is neither of those.

She is kind but not dumb, she is smart but not indifferent to other people’s situations. She does not cause problems to others, yell like a crazy person or cry all the time. She is composed, always planing things carefully and doing things in benefit of her and people around her. She does not let people step all over her and knows how to stand up for herself and make them get their punishment, but she is not ruthless or vindictive about it. That makes her one of the easiest to like female leads out there.

You mentioned Nirvana in Fire. A lot of people say good things about it. But when I tried to watch it I ended up dropping it. Does that mean it is not a good drama? No. I recognize all their strategy and planing was quite smart but it was just not what I was looking for at the time. Maybe someday I will try to watch it again and think WOW, this is so good, but for now it is still a drama that I was not able to finish because I was not in the mood to watch that kind of drama.

So I guess this was either not your kind of drama or you were just not in the mood to watch it. Also, I don’t know if you watched it until the end or not but the first 20 episodes or so are the slowest and most boring, so if you dropped it before reaching the better part I would understand why you feel that way about this drama.

Like I said, I was bored most of the time and did not have much enjoyment from watching it but that does not mean the drama is not good. Is it overrated? Maybe. But I never trusted MDL’s ratings anyway. Some of the dramas I liked were rated below 7 and there were several rated 9 and above that I dropped without giving it a second thought.

Which FB group? If you are talking about the one Vietgal505 mentioned, it is revealed in his spoiler comment.

Which FB group? If you are talking about the one Vietgal505 mentioned, it is revealed in his spoiler comment.

Although the story is different, yes. The fact that they go there together but her friend gets stuck there while she is able to go back and forth, the fact that they meet again later but to her friend it has been a long time, ... These things all remind me of Fushigi Yugi, one of my all time favourite animes. Have re-watched it countless times. Of course this story is nowhere as good as the one in Fushigi Yugi and these details are the only things they have in common.

Yeah, I know. At first it was supposed to be 76, then 79 and then it ended up being even less with 73. I only watched when I checked MDL and saw it had updated to 73 so I knew the episodes on Viki were all there and that there would not be new episodes so I could watch it anytime.

Yeah. I have also noticed that your experience in watching dramas and your mood can also influence the way you feel about a drama. For example, when I first started watching dramas I liked some dramas that I now think are extremely cringy. That was because then everything was new, I had not experienced clichés yet and no story seemed slow paced. Also, the mood is important. Sometimes I am in the mood for historical so I end up only watching historical dramas for a while. Sometimes I am in the mood for family dramas, other times in the mood for rom-coms, action and crime investigation, and so on.

I started watching Ming Lan when I was in the mood for a historical but mainly in the mood for romance. And although there is no doubt this has romance, it is not the main focus. The main leads took a long time as adults to properly meet and talk and even longer to fall in love. I was also expecting them to marry way earlier than they did, it took more than half of the drama (about 40 episodes) for them to finally marry. And before that there were not that many romantic scenes with them. That might have been one of the reasons I did not enjoy it as much as I should have. :(

So, about half of the drama (the first half) was nice and all. We had our two main couples: Yun Ye and the Princess and the Crown Prince with Xinyue (I think that’s her name, I will just call her X).

Except suddenly X is in a situation of near execution and the only way both male lead’s can think of saving her from death is for Yun Ye to ask the Emperor for her hand in marriage. Just a few days before he had asked the Princess to marry him so when she heard he had come to the Palace to ask for a marriage, she thought he came to ask the Emperor to give him the Princess. Imagine how hurt she felt when she found out he was actually marrying her brother’s (the Crown Prince) lover.

Until the last moment I was hopping something would happen to stop that marriage, like the Crown Prince kidnapping her and eloping with her or something. But no, the marriage happened, making 4 people that were initially happy with their love interests now feel all miserable.

To make matters worse, the Crown Prince gets drunk on the night of Yun Ye and X’s wedding and gets caught in a trap and ends up sleeping with the daughter of a man that will later bring even more trouble because he thought it was X. (alcohol is not the solution, just another way to bring yourself even more problems)

Later on he ends up marrying another woman that he had never even met, because you know, he is the Crown Prince. Meanwhile we find out that the lady he slept with by mistake is pregnant.

Anyway, as you can see, things started going down before it even reached half of the drama. Yun Ye and the Princess kinda get together later but it cannot even be revealed to others since he is a married man, also the Princess was never able to marry him because of this. All this trouble to save a woman than in the last episode kills herself so they cant trade her for the Crown Prince.

If that was not enough, Yun Ye, the main lead, dies and wakes up in the tomb we see in the first episode before he travels to Tang Dynasty. He finds out that the tomb was originally his (something we all had already guessed in the first few episodes). The end shows him getting locked in his tomb and in the past we see the Princess is now part of his family.

So, I am not sure if there will be a second season or not (probably not). But even if there was one, they would only be able to fix the mess of him being locked in his tomb. They could start the second season by having people finding him and getting him out of there, since there should be people looking for him. But even that would not erase the bitter-sweet feeling of having both of the main couples that we were forced to watch being all lovey dovey in the beginning ending up miserably with the Princess and Crown Prince being alive but their lovers dead. And in the present day, if the main lead gets rescued, then he is alive, but the Princess has long been dead.

Conclusion: Everything took a turn for the worse before it even reached half way and I am sure the ending was not what we all wanted. So be prepared for some heartache. Also, I felt the story itself had a lot of potential but they did not use it to the fullest. So in ended up being an ok drama, but nothing special. If memorable, it might be for the way it ended (and it is not for a good a reason).

Like someone already said, it was smart of the channel to air all 36 episodes in the same week. People would probably be very angry had they waited several weeks to get this ending. I will explain the rest in the spoiler below.

True. I thought so too at the time. And surprisingly the 4 episodes that focus on Ming Lan’s childhood were some of the ones I enjoyed the most.

True. That is why I said this was my view. I can see from the comments and reviews that a lot of people really liked it. I really like historical dramas too and have watched some that focused a lot in the family and politics that I liked. I think what made me feel more conflicted was the pace really, especially those 20 episodes or so after their childhood. I also had some high expectations and imagined the drama would be very different from what it actually was because of the previous summary. For sure, and I want to make this clear, this is a great drama. But I cannot ignore the fact I did not get as much enjoyment from it as I did from other dramas I have watched in the past. One thing I will remember is Ming Lan. She was one of the most interesting female leads I have seen. She was nowhere near the typical naive female lead but was still kind and used her intelligence not only for her own advantage but for others too and that made her easy to like.