luckz

The villain barely does villaining in the present, and ultimately doesn't exist as a character in the show or "perceived history" until pulled out of a hat when needed.

Classic case of the "episode 1 hook" where all kinds of special fancy stuff is forgotten after the very start. :<

There's a show that coincidentally shares a good lot of the cast where the ML has a whole freaking dragon, I mean house-sized snake, for an episode.

I'm baffled by how many "fancy" actors they got for all these roles.

This ML was "super smart" though.

(Agree with your sentiment. Knew this would be a very average drama and got a very average drama.)

I thought the last episode was super awful in that it is totally disconnected from the rest of the show like any quick rushed wrap-up

I dunno why they had these two "proper-ish" kissing scenes given it wasn't helpful for the show and their romantic chemistry was so sub-par.

The last ep probably was rushed and had no time to wrap up any of those things, so this scene exists to at least give "some" conclusion.

I'd say I'm 85% confident there won't be a Season 2 to this.

It has a huge lot of deaths and, --spoiler--, suicides.
The romance is very optional.

He only found out when he touched the finger blade.

Best opening in a long time.

Story weak, actor depth +++, acting/directing -, wrap-up poor/rushed.

IDK how the cast can be so deep (so many tiny side characters played by people who I've seen doing well in much bigger roles elsewhere) and yet most of them seem somewhat miscast or misdirected.

Having seen them numerous times, the actors are far more imposing & memorable in some of their other roles.
They're not bad ("pretty") actors.

The fight scenes earlier were better than the weirder ones in the last like 20%.
Some even got confused as to what genre they were filming.
And with the action scenes, it's a bit too obvious where it's Bai Lu and where it's not. Somehow less of a problem with the various (substantially) older men.

They don't really have romantic chemistry, so don't watch it for that.
The second couple is a bit better, but again, very few scenes that could as well have been cut out of the plot.

This isn't a romance drama. Cutting out the kisses wouldn't make it worse.

MDL picture changes always are the opposite of improvement :(

Seems to be free on Viki? https://www.viki.com/tv/39099c-when-i-see-your-face

What stood out to me was how the impoverished families commonly only had meat once in a million years, but once a guest was to be impressed, suddenly five different meats appeared.

And yes, I dunno about CN politics but I'd assume being substantially critical of Chairman Meow's wonderland is still not really en vogue?

Due to how manipulative and scheming she was, I kinda found Ling Yi worse than Feng Lin.

However, what really stood out was that only females got this sort of karma punishment in this show. Basically the opposite of how Glory or The Glory only go after male villains.

Lin Song in particular is all sorts of evil and horrible, and he gets some oh-but-now-he-is-less-hateful "redemption arc".

How come only episode 5 has a special bonus scene after the episode ends, pre-credits?