“How to Get Sidetracked: A Comprehensive Manual,” the Drama

Disclaimer: I read a few recaps and skimmed past episode 41.

I was watching this when it first aired. I watched around ~25 episodes before life got distracting. Years later, I was idly scrolling through my dropped dramas and decided that if I was still curious about Chu Qiao’s fate after all this time, I might as well give it another go.
I’m not curious anymore. The entire reason I came back—to watch Chu Qiao rediscover her identity and realize her true potential—is so irrelevant it can hardly be called a side plot. They spend so much time ignoring what makes these characters interesting in favor of convoluted politics and half-baked romances and cheap conflicts. I didn’t even technically finish all 58 episodes and I still couldn’t tell you what happened in the episodes I DID watch.

The entire first half of the drama serves next to no purpose. Assuming you hadn’t read the novel, you’d never guess the trajectory of the story from the first ~30 episodes. Is it about Chu Qiao’s past? No. Is it about her toppling the system that turned her and so many others into slaves? Nope. Is it about her revenge, after that system takes the lives of her adopted family? Uh-uh. Is it about her finding a middle ground with her master/mentor/love-interest, and them teaming up to root out the corruption within the empire? Hardly.

It’s about the second-lead, Yan Xun—who you’d think is the love interest based on the sheer amount of screentime he spends with Chu Qiao—and how his soul is blackened by the assassination of his family after the Emperor’s betrayal. Which doesn’t sound half-bad, conceptually. Except it takes another 10 or so episodes (3+ years drama-time) before he can do anything interesting about it, and there’s no payoff because he brutalizes innocent people, betrays his allies, and loses Chu Qiao’s trust to make it happen. The rest of the drama, as far as I can tell, is about:
1. Everyone being in love with Chu Qiao and saving her at the critical moment
2. Yan Xun being hellbent on destroying the capital of the Empire, even if he has to forsake his homeland to do it
3. Princess Chun’er, who was formerly in love with Yan Xun, going insane and seeking vengeance against Chu Qiao because she considers Chu Qiao the catalyst to the series of events that destroyed her life, love, and virtue.
4. Chu Qiao feeling used and conflicted about where to place her loyalties
5. A montage of generally unimportant characters doing generally unimportant crap, just to stir up trouble and remind us that they exist.
And then everyone dies.
I’m kidding. A lot of people die, including (maybe), the main love interest. Chu Qiao ~almost~ dies and potentially remembers who she is, but we’ll never know, because that’s it, folks. Nothing has been resolved. We’re just left hanging alongside a landslide of loose ends, because that’s what happens when you dive into a dozen different plot lines and can’t keep track of them.

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I could weep… with relief that this is finally over

(Spoiler warning. Again. If you’re going to be put out to know how this drama ends, skip this review)

This was painful to finish. Given that Qian Qian created this world, I expected her to navigate it more cleverly. On the contrary—she’s a complete ditz. Watching her make a fool of herself nonstop and without fail was bad enough, but her total lack of consideration for how her actions affected those around her was what really got under my skin. Sure, let’s actively contribute to a conflict between two cities that, best case scenario, ends in countless dead and half the total population branded as property.
Why? Because once the story comes to its predetermined end, Qian Qian will return to our world.
How do we know that? We don’t. She just assumed that would work. Just like how she assumed every character she killed off in her script was still destined to die, despite her own continued survival proving that theory false.

If you hear a distant thumping sound, it’s totally NOT me banging my head against a brick wall.

Chu Chu is given a villain arc. I assume I’m supposed to hate her. If anything, I’m impressed she made it as long as she did without wanting to kill Qian Qian.
Han Shuo is supposed to be the hero. He’s actually kinda rape-y and doesn’t seem to learn ANYTHING from his experiences as “the inferior sex.” There’s very little takeaway on that subject until the last 3 episodes, which is when the drama finally develops any real substance. Suddenly Qian Qian becomes a pacifistic strategist, Han Shuo becomes a feminist, and Chu Chu becomes a convincing tyrant, complete with the evil-pointy-eyebrows. Yay for last-minute plot development (and random Mulan cameos??? I mean… ig).
Qian Qian and Han Shuo’s forced chemistry is so cringey, I was cackling when QQ fake-died and HS legit-died.

I wish I had counted how many times I thought to myself, “Kill me now. It would be less painful.”
Run while you can.

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Someone needs to revoke Mnet’s survival show privileges

There are two things that a good competition show must avoid at all costs:
1. Being too predictable
2. Being totally ~unpredictable~
An obvious outcome lacks stakes and amounts to nothing more than a waste of time, while an obscure outcome leaves the viewer feeling unrepresented and unsatisfied. After all, a well-executed competition doesn’t just pit contestant against contestant, but also viewer against viewer, and viewers against themselves. That “I KNEW IT” feeling you get when you correctly guess the winner, or when the rankings reflect your personal assessment closely enough for them to make sense?
That’s no accident. That’s by design.
And Mnet threw it all out the window.

Stray Kids were always going to win. That was evident from round 1, when it became clear that fanbase size was the biggest determinant of success. To their credit, they did give performances ~worthy~ of winning, but due to popularity privilege, we’ll never know if they rightfully ~should~ have.

As for the rest of the competitors—despite being on more equal footing in terms of popularity, their rankings still lack significance due to their placements being primarily decided by voters who aren’t representative of the general public.
I don’t know about you all, but I am neither a K-pop idol nor an industry expert. It should come as a surprise to no one that the performances I enjoy will likely differ from those preferred by individuals who possess a trained eye. I can’t see what they see unless they explain it to me, which Mnet apparently can’t be bothered to make the time for in their nearly 2hr long episodes, so instead of feeling validated by the rankings, I’m just left feeling excluded and confused.
Which is to be expected, yes. I’ve come to anticipate that much every now and then. We can’t all be right ~all~ of the time… but I’m not used to feeling so blindsided all the time, either.

And don’t even get me started on the selection criteria for the contestants. In what dimension is it fair to require one competitor to earn their spot while all the others get to join with zero barriers to entry?

Ugh. Just throw the whole tv station into the trash.

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Yiwei <3

I don’t usually write reviews for dramas. I don’t often have much to say, anyway. I’m not writing a review this time because this blew me away or incensed me with its mediocrity. All things considered, this is a rather run of the mill drama. If not for its queer pulling power, I probably wouldn’t have given it the time of day. The story is fine. The acting is ok. The pacing lags in the middle. I stopped watching it for nearly 4 months.

You’d think I didn’t like it. You’d be neither right nor wrong, but I did like one aspect in particular: You Yi. At first glance, she’s a very typical Cdrama FL: She’s bright, cheerful, optimistic, and sweet. She came from humble beginnings but hasn’t let that get her down. She’s quick to trust and a little naive… or so she seems.

To say You Yi impressed me would be an understatement. I absolutely adore quietly strong female characters because they’re so often overlooked and neglected. You Yi is one such character. Her strength comes from her loyalty to her loved ones and her respect for herself. She refuses to be manipulated, used, or bullied and she does so without making a spectacle of herself (the Zhang Wan debacle notwithstanding) or having to adopt traditionally masculine characteristics to assert her dominance. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate FL’s with masculine energy. I’m queer, how can I not? But seeing women be strong and independent without having to compromise their femininity… something about that is just so empowering to me.

For that, I have to applaud this drama… AFTER I sue the production team bc wtf was that last episode??? How dare they do that to Yiwei?? And with no confirmation of a season two?????? Y’all sadists or sumn?

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