A bumpy ride for me
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This series was overall just okay. The acting was excellent in many areas. I thought Esther Yu shined the brightest when she got to play the comedy up for her character. Vin Zhang seemed to be genuinely holding back laughter in some parts. However, the storyline and themes were a bit disorganized. The set up was kind of messy and unclear, which I'm sure is in part because some things seemed to be lost in translation. It hit a bit more of a stride toward the middle, though. It was stronger when it focused more on topical issues of beauty, intelligence, and the unfair standards and assumptions people can make about others—especially women. I felt like the narrative romance between the two main characters would have been stronger if the series focused in more on those issues as they related to Yu Meiran. They should have let Vin Zhang's character be more fallible in this respect to make the overall message stronger. Basically a missed opportunity.
But I think C-Dramas tend to suffer from these binary gender assumptions/roles a lot; there's an effort to challenge it, but so many times the writing falls back on this idea that 'men are smart and strong. women are dumb and weak'. Seriously, if I had a dollar for every time I heard a character say 'women are this way and men are this way'.... And even if you do have a 'smart and strong' female character, they become 'maiden-ized' to give the male lead opportunity to play his role as the chivalrous romantic partner. That's when I think they take an interesting premise and interesting characters and make it boring and lose the plot.
This series was overall just okay. The acting was excellent in many areas. I thought Esther Yu shined the brightest when she got to play the comedy up for her character. Vin Zhang seemed to be genuinely holding back laughter in some parts. However, the storyline and themes were a bit disorganized. The set up was kind of messy and unclear, which I'm sure is in part because some things seemed to be lost in translation. It hit a bit more of a stride toward the middle, though. It was stronger when it focused more on topical issues of beauty, intelligence, and the unfair standards and assumptions people can make about others—especially women. I felt like the narrative romance between the two main characters would have been stronger if the series focused in more on those issues as they related to Yu Meiran. They should have let Vin Zhang's character be more fallible in this respect to make the overall message stronger. Basically a missed opportunity.
But I think C-Dramas tend to suffer from these binary gender assumptions/roles a lot; there's an effort to challenge it, but so many times the writing falls back on this idea that 'men are smart and strong. women are dumb and weak'. Seriously, if I had a dollar for every time I heard a character say 'women are this way and men are this way'.... And even if you do have a 'smart and strong' female character, they become 'maiden-ized' to give the male lead opportunity to play his role as the chivalrous romantic partner. That's when I think they take an interesting premise and interesting characters and make it boring and lose the plot.
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