*** SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER RIDDLED***

You will ONLY relate to the following IF you have JUST watched the SHOW .. OR remember the SHOW.








Honestly, this Drama evoked many different thoughts and feelings.
I'll first get the UGLY and the BAD out of the way.

# Shu Yin Jin #
------------------

The CASTING of the FL (Yang Zi Shan) Su Yun Jin (SYJ) didn't sit well with me.
The show started off SO well and she came across as an interesting character ... Not ditzy or given to unnecessary facial expressions as many actresses are.

Her calm demeanour in Ep 1, when the Xu-Wife (now we know she was an ex-wife probably) threw coffee at her and yet she kept her composure and wrapped up her scheduled office meeting unfazed.. She shot up my respect AND curiosity scale.
She had me on her side, at get go, wondering what happened and what preceded this?

Then Drama went pretty much wholesale into flashback mode and hooked me in for almost 12 episodes.
I LOVED the young Su Yin Jin (Landy Li) actress. She played SYJ young to the T.
Beautiful, grave, reserved, mature, sensitive; she KNEW how to say NO firmly.

(IDEALLY Landy Li should have played the ADULT also.
I mean it was JUST a few years later that they were in college .. right?
They took the College entrance exams and morphed? New set of Actors???)

And then came the college dorm years .. and SYJ was already on a slide for me. I had NO view into her inner self.
The script - director - actress steadily ERODED any sense of empathy and connect I had at the beginning for the character.
Her face and demeanour began to chafe and irk AND AGE.
Her naso-labial crease became SO prominent that she looked not like a young college kid in her twenties but someone who could be cast as a mid-forties, mother of a teenager.
A "cold FL role" need not also be CAST using an actress whose visuals are ALSO stiff / dour / dismal with a perpetual surly expression.
Her pinched, thin lips (she adds to it by constantly sucking it in making it thinner) are more suited to "the witch" who curses the baby princess when not invited by the king to the christening party.

The "cold" needs to be enacted .. not 'looked' like. (Landy Li does the COLD also but we FEEL her)

A 'cold' role needs to be condignly presented to the audience; requires a view into her true, vulnerable heart, her lack of self confidence around moneyed people from the upper classes, around high achievers; her weakness, her despair and her bottled up suffering (Landy Li does it SO effectively).

NOT once is she shown harbouring ANY warmth for the ML. (except when LAndy Li acts. Her ONE HUG speaks VOLUMES .. while grown up SYJ's hugs leave the audience feeling a freeze.
By the time ML Cheng Zheng (Elvis Han) and her have gotten together (beyond the midway point of Drama) the viewer cannot care less or be bothered with the couple.

In fact; was SO SHOCKED at my OWN response to DRAMA's OTP romance.
For the FIRST TIME in the 250 plus Drama viewings, did I FFWD ALL the hug and kiss and intimate scenes of the OTP.
It was pissing me off to see her puckering up - not only I FELT NO CHEMISTRY AT ALL, I ACTUALLY HIT the FFD HARD to not have to see her.
Elvis Han was DOING ALL the work!!! And that was SUCH TORTURE!!
She was made to play 'little Miss Prissy' - a FRIGID woman almost .. a adult woman who would NOT 'sleep with her guy' and made 'disgusted' expressions when CZ got passionate. Viewer would imagine 'she was faking' herself into a couple relationship. One HAD to agree and NOD vigorously when CZ laid it out to her; that she is a FRIGID "Beyotch" who had NO real emotions for him .. Her palm actually "DID NOT sweat" (MHY's explanation of what 'sparks' felt like) and she never showed ANY sparky reaction to him. Robot was not a wrong description of her by CZ.

The directors had JUST let SYJ devolve into a 'hated' character by the time she was 'supposed' to have achieved her 'changed' feelings and persona. There had been NO arc. The viewer FELT NO connect .. the opposite .. they managed make her a "DISLIKED" character.
She was made to go from morose-gruff to "smiling" in one leap. (smiling in quotes because it was bereft of any warmth).

Nothing softened her face, joy did not reach her eyes - inspite of the blurry lighting and camera.
She even had these HARD lines like double brackets next to her lips (visible in some lighting shots). So when drama kept having other characters repeatedly calling her 'pretty' / 'good looking' viewer was left even more aghast!!
Cummon!!! Zhang Hue was stunningly BEAUTIFUL .. Mo Yu Hua (MYH) glowed, so lovely to look at (and she played the "plain" looker??!!! REALLY??)
At that point I was HAVING serious doubts about the CASTING director being the same person because some of the characters FIT so well.

Thus SYJ's visual further emphasised her "HARD" heart. Her spartan adherence to principles began to sound SO PREACHY!! Gaunt-drawn faced, Nun-like Matron at a Girl's Boarding School.
She seemed to be 'working at loving him' .. Not exactly what drama intended for the story outcome for sure!!

Yet in the last episodes we are expected (via her SPEECH) to BUY that SHE always had 'feelings' for him.
YEAH .. sure .. it came across as double FAKE; similar to the other ML character's wide smiley expressions - Shen Ju An - played by the excellent Toby Lee.

Now Toby pulls of the complex character of grey tones so convincingly .. one could have easily 'HATED' him in the role .. but one never stopped feeling deeply sorry for him and his frailty .. even understood and worried about him as he foolishly pursued his misguided notions of how to be "successful"; as he got more and more lost, one grew anxious for him losing everything, especially his compass.
Drama could have cast a less 'pleasant face' for him, to take the easy way out and make him a detestable character rather than the dubious sorry figure he was whose final redemption therefore is well earned and something we can root for and support. In the last few scenes his earlier "hyper-smiles" had dropped .. he didn't need them any more. He had found his grounding core.

# Second LEAD Romance - Relationship - Friendship #
-------------------------------------------------------------------

The development towards the relationship endgame of Dr Mo Yu Hua (MYH) and Footballer Zhou Zi Yi (ZZY) was dropped like a hot brick!!
Until close to the end it was a finely balanced, growing house of cards, delicately put together, which we couldn't take our eyes off.
It was Tan Jian Ci's stellar portrayal, so convincingly played. An easy, carefree, external silliness, an extrovert self that hid a LOST soul, an anger and pain. Coming from a broken home, he had nurtured a deep, complex parental resentment.
He is the classic Attachment-Avoidant (AA) Personality TYPE.
(google description)
"You value your independence and freedom to the point where you can feel uncomfortable with, even stifled by, intimacy and closeness in a romantic relationship."

This description accurately pins his attitude towards MYH (who he is of course drawn to).

Suddenly the rug was pulled from under us, that arc collapsed .. the House of Cards crashed.
No, worse!! VANISHED without trace, loped off.

ALL the time that was INVESTED on working on the complex dependancy on MYH (as well as on his childhood buddy CZ) - his blindness - his denial; careful build up of arc of MYH, actress's (Su Qing) beautifully and soulfully captured suffering, enduring loyalty and patience, was discarded.

Suddenly at the FINAL PARTY we are told that "they were together" - like WHEN DID THAT golf ball fall into the hole???

I felt CHEATED out of the RELEASE and CLOSURE; A PASSIONATE KISS (CUMMON) for THAT couple ..
Waited for it way more than the OTP's closure.
By the time I was deeply into the Drama, ZZY-MYH were FAR more engrossing to follow than any other thread.

(Caveat : Tian Ci Jian is on my list to check out in other dramas - he's excellent in the range he can cover .. from comic goofball to tortured and deep)

*** REST of REVIEW on DISCUSSION THREAD of this DRAMA has a 10000 character Limit :-(