Reviews

Bring Audiences Across the Different Era of China & Shenzhen development

I typically like romance and inspiring shows. Contemplated whether to watch it as I know that the romance but in this drama maybe limited. Also it is not a typical kind of show that I would like (older period storyline).

Decided to proceed as I understand it’s Seven’s second drama with her BFF, Dong Qin and also learnt that Seven recommended her to the director as Dong Qin fits the character very well. Interestingly, I would say Yes!

All the characters acted really well in the drama, love the female lead’s foster father and mother. The upbringing and values that is so warm and welcoming. The storyline has show case to the world how females are being despised and also given away since birth (true story). The emotional expressions and actions by the female lead is very commendable - leaving the foster dad after an argument (not able to self explain and gotten hurt very deeply by the dad, also unable to face or address his dad). While some viewers, may have harshly said she is heartless… I can understand how devastated she has been, after her pillar (the foster mother) passed on and she has caused trouble to her dad. She just want to leave and not to be found anymore so that she will not burden his dad anymore and live on her own means. This show is well balanced with a lot of good actings for all - the two “sisters” in the show acted really well and carried the characters to life! Impressively that Hao Qian Qian the actress real person character it totally degree different from character!
Lots of touching moments for self reflection for me too to cherish your friends and elderly when they are still around. Was hoping that the foster father can have more time with the female lead… and not passed away. Also salute the male lead who has been supporting the female lead quietly till the end, my own interpretation is they are keeping each other as companions (even though there is no “official marriage involve) and they are happy with this kind of relationship without officially married.

At the end of most Seven Tan’s drama there is always some take aways and learnings which I enjoyed the most - relatable to cherish time with parents and love ones, inspiring for one to fight and lead a better life.

200% worth watching, if you have given up halfway, try to rewatch it again!

Read More

A very gorgeous FAIL.

There is blame to be assigned for the various huge problems this drama has. I don't know how to assign that blame, so I won't even try this time.

I started this, and finished this for He Yu. And as far as his contribution to this drama, he did not disappoint! He looks so hottttt ---> as usual! He has never let me down. I love his vibe and his acting and his devastating mischievous stare.

Yes the 2ML and 2FL were utterly PHENOMENAL, and if the story had been about them - and written well - this drama would have been a total blockbuster.

Costumes are incredible. Production value is high. All these things, yes they were good, it's true. BUT....

Now that that's been said, it's time to rip this drama a new a**hole like it deserves.

1) Let's talk about the first thing you'll notice when you start this drama, which is that He Yu's voice isn't actually He Yu's voice. It's a dark, dramatic, and wholly DISTRACTING voice that's basically the voice actor trying to steal the show from He Yu. In fact is ANYBODY'S voice their real voice?

Maybe you can pull this sh*t with lesser known actors. But this is HE YU, we all know his voice. We're used to it by now. This is current year, you can't just bag out on the dubbing anymore, this isn't the 90's, this isn't some lo-budget-whatever.

So I had to watch the entire thing on MUTE to even stomach watching it at all. If I had to watch with sound on, I wouldn't have made it 5 minutes before dropping.

2) It's like it was written by a college educated child. The vocaublary is there, the comprehension is there, but despite this, the writing is SO CRINGE especially during confessions. I feel nothing I'm supposed to feel. I just feel cringe at the terrible dialogue. It's like... soulless, Hallmark-ey, explicit without any poetry or nuance, artless. Honestly it sounds like AI had a hand in it, but really idk.

3) Plot holes like swiss cheese, jerky strange ways of doing plot twists that are distinctly anticlimactic.

4) FL as written is insurmountably difficult to empathize with. In fact I don't empathize with her at all, even after completing the entirety of the drama. She's cold, doesn't have a past we understand and know, and is - frankly - an ingrate.

5) The FL as acted was-- yknow I want to like this actress. I really tried. But this is the last straw for me with her. She has no microexpression game. She pastes this wide-eyed look on her face, and it's weird lookin, it just is. Her emotions are not convincing. She refuses to do a proper kiss scene, she in fact straight up RUINS kiss scenes, and I was disappointed but not surprised that she ruined every kiss scene in this show, AS USUAL. She can't cry right, she can't look in love, she can't look surprised, she can't convey genuine warmth, fear, confusion, none of it. Will legit never watch anything she stars in again, there's nothing raw or vulnerable or real about her acting at all.

6) The story is BORING. There are very few actual moving parts to the plot, and many middle episodes are like "the city flooded and now the refugees need food", episodic and resolved quickly, not moving forward the main plot at all, but only diverting from it. Getting to the end was such a slog, I lost all true enthusiasm for this show by about the one third mark and everything after that was just me hoping against hope that it would redeem itself. Which it didn't.

Do not let it's pretty packaging fool you. This drama was very pretty yes... and it was soulless. The only people I'd recc this to are He Yu fans, who want to watch "literally everything he's ever been in". I don't see anyone else actually enjoying this extremely gorgeous piece of crap.

Read More

A Frustrating Drag Until the End

The biggest problem with this drama is how repetitive the characters' obsessions become. The second male lead is constantly obsessed with blaming the male lead for everything, no matter what happens. The female lead's trust issues are dragged out far longer than necessary, and the emperor remains fixated on believing his own son is guilty. These three repetitive conflicts make up almost 70–80% of the story.

It becomes incredibly frustrating . The first 3–5 episodes were enjoyable, with some fun comedy and a promising start, but after that, the drama turns into an exhausting cycle of misunderstandings and dragged-out conflicts. It became so frustrating that I ended up watching the rest at a faster speed just to finish it.

I couldn't see any chemistry between the main couple, no matter how hard I tried. The male lead's love for the female lead was evident, but that alone wasn't enough to create convincing chemistry. A romantic relationship needs mutual emotional connection, and I just didn't feel it between them.

Throughout the entire drama, the female lead kept saying, "This is the script, this is the script," over and over again. It became so repetitive that it was incredibly annoying.

ep 37 If someone says, "We'll live together, we'll die together," the literal meaning is that they'll stand by you and fight alongside you, even if it costs their life. It doesn't mean they'll just stand there watching like the audience. If they aren't helping at all, those words become meaningless and completely illogical.

FL character is so frustrating

Read More

The drama said ‘trust me,’ and I absolutely did not

I went into this drama mostly out of curiosity, and honestly, by the end I felt like the writer must have been smoking something potent because the plot doesn’t just go off the rails—it launches itself into orbit. The entertainment value is undeniable, but the logic? Absolutely feral. The show asks you to accept that a doctor who has been mentally ill for years can just stroll back into medical practice like it’s a casual hobby, and we’re supposed to trust him with scalpels and human lives. Meanwhile, the four villains commit crimes so outrageous they should require a multi‑episode legal arc, yet the story conveniently sweeps everything under the rug as if accountability is optional in this universe. It’s fiction, sure, but even fiction usually pretends to care about consequences.

And yet, despite all that chaos, I kept watching. Not because it made sense—because I wanted to see how much crazier it could get. There’s a strange charm in witnessing a drama fully surrender to its own absurdity. The pacing lurches, the emotional logic collapses, and the plot twists feel like they were generated by a malfunctioning slot machine, but the sheer audacity of it becomes its own kind of entertainment. I finished it with the same energy you have when you watch a storm from the window: fascinated, confused, mildly concerned, but unable to look away. It’s chaotic, it’s messy, it’s unbelievable—but I can’t deny it was entertaining.

Read More

Career First Love Second

Took me awhile to pick this up to watch in yr2026. Have seen the clips on youtube but not sure why the male lead just doesn’t attract me to. Another reason is for modern shows, 40 episodes to me it’s abit too lengthy.
From Seven Tan’s fan point of view, decided to proceed. Similar to some of the reviewers, it is hard not to put As Beautiful As You (ABAY) and Master Of My Own (MOMO) as comparison as they are career woman centric + romance from their “superior”. Fell in love from MOMO and Go ahead from Seven Tan’s acting actually. I would feel that MOMO story line and plot has more affirmation and convincing. However, can’t deny the CP from both in ABAY, gradually able to accept the male lead towards the middle of the show. Love how the female lead presents proves herself and her gusto into solving every obstacles that come her way. An entrepreneurial spirit that has been presented very well. Romance was sweet and very natural and the small details in having the game cards given some light touches to the romance in the drama.
Hope all has caught the special edition to this drama too and not missed out the final ended after the last episode - it is a complete wrap up with sweet endings though the male lead in the end passed away due to old age.

At the end of most Seven Tan’s drama there is always some take aways and learnings which I enjoyed the most

Read More

The Stony Devil Strikes Again

Only the first two episodes are out so far, so it's obviously hard to tell how the show will evolve later on. So far, though, it's just like all the other time-travel Thai period pieces, including the very dramatic opening scene set in the past where someone also very dramatically falls into the water after being shot by someone we don't know yet.

Then we travel to the present day, where we meet one of our protagonists, Dr. Great (lol), who is – surprise, surprise – a doctor. But we're definitely not going to talk about the medical accuracy in this show because it simply does not exist. Seriously, anyone with even basic medical knowledge should just cover their eyes and plug their ears during these scenes or suffer the consequences of the stroke that is sure to occur.

Dr. Not-So-Great loses a patient, to which there is only one completely logical response for a young doctor at the start of his career: quit immediately. Yes, of course. Silly me – what other options are there?

Thankfully, his boss refuses to accept his resignation, so Dr. Mediocre decides to drown his sorrows in a tall glass of... coffee (?) at a bar (The Stony Devil, lols again, which also happens to be an anagram of Love Destiny – gasp) he frequents. There, he saves a fortune teller from being beaten up by thugs, so obviously the fortune teller offers to tell his fortune. (You will never guess the first card.)

I do want to point out here that the fight choreography, while obviously not Bruce Lee-level, is actually pretty decent for a show like this, so that was a pleasant surprise.

Then let's rewind to the past, where we meet Dr. Great again, except here his name is Gaew and he is a total prick. He starts out as a cute, wet-eyed little orphan who is adopted into the household of another lord, jumping into the river with his adopted brothers/cousins with childlike glee, only to emerge from the water alone and as a full-blown gigantic a-hole. (Honestly, the transition scene was pretty good cinematography-wise. It was an unexpected moment of creativity from the director.)

Anyway, for reasons yet undetermined, Gaew grows up to be an arrogant and vile young man who hates Dech, one of his adopted brothers, to the point of trying to sink his boat (not personally, obviously; he has a servant for that) to get revenge for putting Gaew back in his place after some literal cockfighting fiasco. I, personally, really did not appreciate having to learn that, no, I really do not enjoy watching two cocks having a go at each other in this context. Is there no PETA in Thailand?

Anyway, it turns out that it wasn't Dech on the deck (har-har), but his mother, who falls into the river along with the servants. One of them is impaled through the leg by a log, another disappears and is presumed dead, so obviously everyone is very mad at Gaew for being so evil. So obviously they beat up... his servant.

And then the mother is still furious with Gaew, so yet again there is only one logical solution to this problem: perform a ritual that will kill Gaew if he is indeed guilty. And Gaew is very much guilty, so the ritual causes him immense pain, which he handles like the little bee he is.

And this is where I make a detour to the acting.

Oh boy, here we go again.

The acting is... happening. Sometimes. As long as there are no big feelings involved. As long as the scene doesn't require any emotional outbursts or any of the more complicated emotions like, I don't know, mild discomfort, the main leads are doing fine. But anything that requires any more skill than that (for example, dying in excruciating pain from the Thai equivalent of Avada Kedavra), the actors... well, bleed out.
Especially Jumpa, the mother, who only seems capable of delivering every single line with the exact same bitchy expression and tone, regardless of what she's actually saying.

Right, so back to the plot.

After having his fortune told, Dr. Great drives his obligatory generic expensive Asian car from point A to point B when storm clouds suddenly darken the sky above, and he gets struck by some very high-quality and completely believable CGI lightning that absolutely had every reason to be there. (Meanwhile, Gaew is being Avada Kedavra-ed in the past, so I guess there might be a connection.)

Right, sorry. I didn't take my ADHD meds today.

So Dr. Awesome wakes up in the past in Gaew's body. Everyone thinks he has gone completely insane, and they also want to drag him to the police station to answer for Gaew's crimes when news arrives that the servant who was previously impaled through the leg is doing terribly.

If only they had a doctor...

Dr. Gaew rushes over to help him, determines that he has an arterial bleed, and promptly saves this critically injured man by changing the dressing on his wound and elevating his leg.

Yup.

Because we all know that's all you need when your artery has been torn apart.

Afterwards, he no longer has to go to the police station. Dr. Gaew takes a beauty nap, wakes up hoping it was all just a bad dream, and then quickly realizes that nope, he's still in the past.

This realization causes him such distress that he almost sh!ts himself.

And yay! Yet another Thai BL that couldn't make it through a single episode without a poop joke! Isn't this awesome? Nothing smells "romance" more than a diarrhea gag that's made even better by a period-accurate loo! This is exactly what I want in my BL shows: not just any poop joke, but a whole series of poop jokes dragged out way too long.

Ha-ha, they didn't have modern toilets back then! He-he, no toilet paper either! And wouldn't it just be hilarious if this were the exact moment Dech walked in? Ooooh, it's so smelly!

(Please kill me now.)

Right. Sorry.

If you couldn't tell, I don't really find poop jokes all that funny.

To be fair, though, there are some genuinely funny gags in there as well.

Getting back on track, this is mostly what has happened so far. A few other things happen with Dr. Gaew in the past, which eventually lead to him publicly apologizing to the family for his behaviour and promising to become a better person. Since he is a doctor, he starts handing out mosquito nets and other supplies to the household servants, as well as giving them health advice and all that. But obviously Evil Stepmother cannot stand this, so she and her servant start coming up with evil schemes to teach him a lesson.

And that's where we are for now.

All in all, it's not all bad. The production seems high-budget, the locations look great, and the costumes are pretty too. (I have absolutely no idea how historically accurate they actually are, but I like them.) The fight choreography is decent as well. The main leads do a perfectly serviceable job as long as nobody expects Oscar-worthy performances from them. I'm just very easily annoyed by exaggerated facial expressions.

So... yeah.

I'm curious to see how—or if—it improves over the next few episodes.

Read More

A drama that argues with reality and wins by sheer confidence.

This is one of those dramas where emotional logic keeps tripping over narrative convenience, but somehow the momentum carries you anyway. Jeong Jian is written like a walking contradiction—terrified kid in one scene, suddenly operating with adult-level tactical clarity in the next. It’s not her acting; it’s the script flipping her intelligence switch whenever the plot needs her to survive. And the whole “everyone wants to kill the clueless niece” setup? That’s where the frustration kicks in. If Jinman truly wanted to protect his family, maybe don’t acknowledge them so openly in a world where anonymity is survival. He practically painted a target on them, and the show knows it because it has him spiraling in guilt after their deaths. Fiction can bend reality, but this one bends it until it squeaks.

The character dynamics don’t help either. Jeongmin sets off alarm bells the moment he appears with his soft smile and suspicious eagerness to help a grieving girl he barely knows. The instant he volunteered to clean the room where her uncle died, the ulterior motive practically announced itself. And then there’s Babylon—the underground mercenary organization contracted for dangerous missions—protecting Bale, a psychopath who kills for sport, while treating Jinman like a liability for having a conscience. It’s maddening, not because it’s unrealistic, but because the show frames it as normal organizational logic.

What is undeniably tight is the production. The cinematography is sharp, the action sequences are clean, and yes, the dead bodies pile up like set decorations, but the visual execution never falters. And Lee Dong Wook’s face card plus his performance do a lot of heavy lifting—he grounds the chaos, gives Jinman emotional weight, and makes the entire premise feel less absurd than it actually is. Even with an untrained girl surviving multiple assassination attempts and logic occasionally stepping out for fresh air, the drama stays entertaining. Messy, chaotic, sometimes ridiculous, but entertaining. Good enough that a season two feels not just welcome, but inevitable.

Read More

Assault, abuse, and sexual violence cosplaying as romance

The drama starts out with an attempted forced abortion, flashes back to FL's drugged sexual encounter, and proceeds to domestic violence, workplace sexual harassment, violent assault (choking), and kidnapping a woman's children to force her compliance - and I'm not yet at the halfway point in this "romantic" drama. There's even a scene where the daughter admonishes ML for bullying her mother, but son "boysplains" to his sister that ML choking and assaulting FL is just 'kissing'. I've seen comments online where people are normalizing this and calling it "cute" and "romantic". That mindset is genuinely appalling and makes me fear for the safety of every woman and girl in China if this is the norm. The female lead should be grabbing her kids and running for their lives. Preferably to a different country.

If I could have rated it less than 1.0, I would have. That this drama got written and produced and has a 7+ rating on MDL says something truly horrifying about the cultural normalization of violence against women.

Read More

Refreshing Story

Have watch a lot of pilot shows in the past. This show makes me want to go travel and take more planes. Front bit of the drama is abit draggy wish that the plot could have more time for the couple relationship development and romances after both get together. Or maybe 40 episodes are abit too long (if without the draggy bit in front). Love both male and female leads, their professionalism in carry out their characters and their love for their job. Seven delivers every time without fail and also ends off every drama with her own singing of OST as a remembrance of the drama she acted through the song. Finds her an interesting actress who works hard, have fun at set and have some kind of natural attraction and positive synergy towards the cast and audiences.

Read More

Masterpiece deserved to be watched

Blossom of Power deserves a spot at the top of your watchlist.

From the very first episode, the story pulls you into a world filled with secrets, ambition, and unexpected twists. Every episode leaves you wanting more, making it almost impossible to stop watching. The plot is well-paced, with enough suspense to keep you guessing while allowing the emotional moments to truly shine.

What makes this drama stand out is its incredible character development. The leads aren’t perfect—they grow, struggle, and fight for what they believe in. Their chemistry feels natural and heartfelt, making every interaction meaningful. Whether it’s romance, friendship, or loyalty, every relationship adds depth to the story.

Visually, Blossom of Power is stunning. The costumes, cinematography, and soundtrack create a rich atmosphere that brings every scene to life. It’s a drama that looks as beautiful as it feels.

I give it 9.5/10 .

Read More

Not worth it

This drama is so over-dramatized. So many sequences don't make any sense at all, just a bunch of high budget added scenes to glorify the the story. Every five minutes there is flash back trying to create moments and chemistry between the leads when there is non at all. Music is ear-drum crushing and unnecessarily loud and mismatched to so many scenes.
The female lead is just so plain and blank of emotions based on quite a selfish character while Linghe's acting is very repetitive from facial nuances to body language. His previous acting jobs were so natural but here he just seems to be acting. Overall a very performance by the director because there is no flow or connectivity to make it a pleasing watch. Its a total stress wreck.

Read More