strawgal

When I give a review score I always look at the whole production, and take in to account my bias. I watched this with my husband, so there are things that I found lacking but as a male viewer he was more interested in the doing, I am perhaps more interested in motivation.

The production, and acting were excellent, but the plot was simplistic, but most action movies have simple plots, what makes them engaging is often a character you find or you can see some glimmer of humanity or is just likeable.For my taste it didn't have it, but it, but that didn't completely out weigh it;s merits.
Saying just because I didn't like something has no value or of poor quality is like
saying because you do not like chocolate cake the whole cake is terrible, when someone else likes chocolate.
As for giving marks, everyone has there own system, because I used to dressage competition score that is always in my mind, and use a full range. Basically in drama terms you get marks that IMO for things that you have completed. If I am undecided perhaps plus or minus .5
FEI
For each movement, the respective marking scale looks something like this:
0 = not performed
1 = very bad
2 = bad
3 = fairly bad
4 = insufficient
5 = sufficient
6 = satisfactory
7 = quite good
8 = good
9 = very good
10 = excellent
Basically for just turning up and completing the task you get a 5, but you are aiming for 8's plus.

Again something that started off really well, was funny, characters that you could understand, and then it literally lost the plot.
It was about 4 eps too long so to fill time the script wandered and strung it out to fill time. The actors were all great, the basic idea was interesting and yet by over explaining, elaborating to squeeze at much time out of it as possible they managed to remove any excitement which was in the first episodes had from the last 5 eps.

Not read the source, but it feels like they made it bland for regular consumption and didn't replace what they took out with anything else, so it ended up beige. The only funny bit I found was Kaji Akihiro mental gymnastics over wanting some who looks like a dork.

Liked it, and the ideas that were behind it, it was all just a bit maudlin, and self centred. In the scale of life's woes they would be lucky if the got a 6/10 but like a man with man flu they were intent on making the most of it, not terrible people but stuck like Pigpen in Charlie Brown under permanent cloud of grey from their own inertia.

I wanted to rate this so much higher because I can see the effort that went in to it but the script and direction were just too clunky for me. I would see something that worked and then it just didn't again.
The last episode ended you are a bit of a tourist travelogue, literally pedestrian. I also think when you have a fantasy drama, if you explain too much and try and explain something as if it has a basis in fact critical thinking takes over and completely destroys what ever suspension of disbelief you have.
I think cutting and editing 2 eps out would have made it much less wandery. As usaul the actors did their best with what they were given.

Its a bit of a comfort watch for me, nothing to extreme although the ex, the friend and the mother should be shut in a room and let them shout at each other, so they can vent their spleen and no one else has to listen.
Its shot like a cheap soap, the sets look generic , the balcony you expect someone to walk past, and the camera work mainly many flat. I think the actors are getting the most out of the script and doing a good job. It reminds me of Perfect Marriage Revenge in that if it is a basically solid script with good actors it will find an audience.

Great actor, often not very good at picking scripts or perhaps he has a bad agent.

I was having trouble with this until I accepted this has no real plot,
Its like a stream in real time of a relationship where you see just about every bit of nonsense that people do to each other at the start of a relationship that makes no sense at all to anyone else because they are living in their own eco system and anything or one outside of that bubble is back round noise.

I often complain that writers seem to think that love is like crossing a sofa, that you way up your options, will this person fit in to your life, this is the first time I have actually seen writing and direction that tries to show the complete obsession that you have at the start of a relationship. That everything about the person consumes you, the bickering and making up are a part of development that can make a couple last, until you know how the person breathes, and the air around them tells you what they are thinking. From the outside it looks like a mess or at least improbable it will work, but often does.

I liked for once that we had a FL who had different sides to her character, but why does the women always have to be seen as smarty groomed , and almost emotionless all the time to be seen as competent or worthy of respect.
For a women to appear competent it doesn't mean all the male characters have to be bad, silly or shades of grey. They stripped every vestige of masculinity from the ML, the excuse he was trained by three sister and his mother, which in an Asian household is probably unlikely but added the trope that women are loud, over bearing, and interfering.
In the end the ML was like a blank page, where arguments about temperature seemed his main opinion. Usually if you work in the same company as your partner you are transferred to another branch especially if it has anything to do with money.
I was just disappointed because of lot of it was good actors wasted, with what was the basis of a good idea.
Competent, but forgettable.

Just so normally funny. You can almost see the cogs turning going through as they go through emotions, and eventually say something, grudgingly, like laying down a hand in poker.
Stuck in an emotional age of about fourteen and trying not to be the first to give way or admit to anything serious.

This is far interesting than I thought it would be. I only but is, why do make female characters just boring beige filler or the suggest that being the local spiteful b!tch is normal.

The fight could have had more impact, the ex is obviously a bully, he wasn't going to up to someone who would not be cowed. It could have been funny, the big man wasn't so big. or a trigger for some other reaction, if was just lost.

I think that this has a really good idea, its just the execution that is a bit lacking pacing and direction wise.
They are not actually flirting, its more probing than that but that level of dialogue without contrast is just monotonous, and who has hours of conversation like that. ever. They go on a trip, and everyone gets sucked in to the non direct lack of communication, instead have making it have some sort of dramatic intention. No one really asks any hard questions, its an information black hole.
It's perhaps an emotionally and verbally clever script, one know what he doesn't want and and what really does the other want, so there should be tension, someone that is all one tone, so far, doesn't give you dramatic contrast.

I wish they would depict the dangers of fire properly, if you have ever seen dry wood burn it can go through a building in minutes and the heat burns your lungs., no time for wandering around .Obviously no smoke alarms.

I have was emersed at the start as the idea had some basis in reality, history is littered with marriages where old no money marries new lots of money, who marries up for status. The US had the 'fishing fleet', of heiresses.
For once I think it was shorter than it should have been, the relationship between father and daughter and the dynamic of the whole family was a bit of a puzzle with most of the pieces missing, so the characters appear extreme.
The last two episodes looked like they had run out of budget so let's finish this quick so it was a bit of the soap opera.
The script just didn't give the actors space to give rounded characters, and the actors were directed to act in mannered way, so I think they did their best with what they were given.

I just watch the last two eps because I just find the humour really loud and forced, which is a shame because it is a great concept.

Finished, and I am still digesting it like a heavy meal, thinking perhaps was it worth it?

I watch clips of old Chinese dramas and some are pretty toxic, with downtrodden wife, cheating husband and the MIL from hell, but somehow they feel less toxic than this.
If this how Chinese society has moved on no wonder they have a marriage and birth rate problem.
In this every character is either only thinking of their own wishes, or trying to manipulate someone to their own ends. It may dressed up as ambition or caring , perhaps even love but really every relationship seems to be based on some self interested transaction, and if they do not get what they want, the way they want it in the relationship,, what there was of it becomes a battlefield.

If you are thinking of watching it I suggest you start with the voice over at the end, it is repeated at the end of every episode. I suppose it is a self love story, that self love/needs are greater than any connection with another person, be parent, child or lover. Not sure I would want to live in a world like this.

Its very well produced, looks realistic, the hotel room a real character in the plot because it show how you can be passed over an leave nothing behind, where are the office is full of the messy races of ideas and work that can be passed on and used.
All the performances are good, the leads are exceptional, but I found it pretty depressing.

Ah that it explains a lot. What looks good on paper often needs cutting and framing for the screen.

It looks lovely, but it's has little dramatic tension in the narrative, like reading a text book. I have seen the FL character represented so often before, its a yawn. Perhaps its is the way it is directed, like you are watching a play.

I can never understand why people like this, it is so detached from the reality of MH treatment, I have worked in long stay mental health care in the past, and makes MH problems an excuse for violent manipulative behaviour. The 'treatment' in the long stay unit was laughable.
The character of the female lead is like someone I have met in real life, but not as bad and honestly I wouldn't wish them on anyone. If the FL character swapped traits with the ML's I am not sure people would be so forgiving.