tigerwaterlily

That's a difficult question, as everyone has different tastes. I would personally say an emphatic NO. I gave it a 5.5, and I feel like I was generous. This show was way too frustrating for me with too little payoff. If you like watching an entire relationship based on the miscommunication trope with little or no relief, then you'd enjoy this.

Thanks for this review, you managed to summarize a lot of my thoughts more eloquently than I could! I haven't read the novel, but your commentary on it made me realize what the show was missing. The narrator did provide some of the internal thoughts, but not enough. Not being able to understand the character's motivations made it frustrating to watch, and one of my favorite things is to psycoanalyze characters.

I could understand Fan Xiao to an extent, piecing together his behavior from his family experience and how he'd been victimized, but Bei Lvqing was quite difficult to figure out a lot of the time. Since you can't hear any internal monologing, they had to sell it with behavior and expressions instead. This is where it failed for Lvqing. Sure, he liked eating the soup everyday. Sure, he defended Fan Xiao when he was bullied. But where were the small affectionate motions? I think the most he did was pet Fan Xiao's head or stroke the back of his neck. He had maybe 3 facial expressions. He waffled between cold indifference and full on desire, with no in-between.

I am under the impression that Fan Xiao didn't truly love Bei Lvqing in the traditional sense, but rather thought he loved him because Lvqing gave him a purpose and showed some affection, which the narrator of the show had said something about in the earlier episodes. Fan Xiao had such low self esteem/ self worth that when he finally has someone who shows some appreciation, he dedicates himself to him.

Also the miscommunication trope can only last for so long before becoming tiring and frustrating. I was halfway through this series and was wondering how they could stretch it to 12 episodes. The payoff wasn’t worth it at all, and the characters hardly had any character development. Fan Xiao started diminutive and submissive and pretty much ended the same, except smarter. Bei Lvqing started cold and commanding and remained that way until the last 10 minutes of the final episode. How was I supposed to root for them?

You've perfectly summed up my thoughts with your comment! I managed to get to ep 10 before I dropped, which I will usually just push through when I'm that far along. The story just became incredibly stupid towards the end, and I unfortunately thought Dunk was a massive miss for me as well, it pained me to watch his performance most of the time. It's interesting, I usually try to at least get through 3 episodes before I drop, but these days I either drop after the first episode if it doesn't interest me, or right after the halfway point. A lot of Thai bls have a really great beginning to middle, but drop off or rush the ending.

I just got through ep 2 and I almost fell asleep. 😴
I like faster paced dramas, not the ones where the director decides the actors need to stare at each other for 5 minutes at least 3 times per episode. I'll probably wait for the whole thing to be out so I can binge all at once, maybe at 1.5x speed if it continues like this. It's sad because I do really like the suspenseful moments, but it seems like there's a lot of time between them that's simply boring. Or it could just be me and my attention span.

"Didn't look like he would rather be scrubbing a toilet than kissing his co-star" I just died 😂😂😂😂Made me think back to all the bls (not just kbls) I've watched where this was the case, and realized how accurate this was 😆

Not just you for the subs, they were TERRIBLE on IQIYI. Especially in Ep 8 where Sun has his internal monologue trying to figure out why he can't feel anything. Had to rewind that section at least twice to piece it together. At that point I was wondering if he was just trying to be poetic, or if the subs were that bad. It's a crime for that section to be so badly translated when I find it rather important to understanding the character 😠

I noticed that too! Funnily enough, I was thinking "I have to go back and rewatch Reset" while I was watching this for some reason 😆

At least you managed to make it to episode 2, I fought to make it through the first. Not sure if it's because I had just finished To My Shore where it moved along at a decent pace, but this felt far too slow for me. The scene of Po going to check in at the hotel, where he stands at the reception desk for what feels like forever, then the guy comes to get him, again, incredibly long pause for no reason. It was like watching paint dry. Who was in charge of editing this, did they even watch it before they released it? It's like the director watched Zootopia and decided the actors needed to behave like the sloth. 🦥