1
burhaa aadmi
Hic Sunt Dracones
From AWESOME to AWFUL
Zàijiàn to C-Dramas?
This was a painful review to write. For the first nine episodes of this drama, it just kept getting better and better. It was really outstanding and promised to be a truly exceptional C drama. There was only one little niggle - the unfettered childish selfishness of the male lead. He was literally a 24-year-old child, who believed that the female lead was his because he wanted her. For that first third of the drama, this was not a problem because the female lead was independent and self assured, and so is irritating and annoying as the male leads whiny self-centred possessiveness was, it was not the dominant feature of those episodes. Sadly, this state did not last.
Partway through episode 14, the male lead's manager gives him a lecture about his immature childish behaviour. He calls him a selfish brat and tells him that if hehates being treated like a kid, he should behave like an adult. Alas, that's as far as it goes. That very episode ends with the female lead deciding to be with him in a romantic sense despite the male lead having grown not at all. And he never does. Right to the end he remains a childish, immature, selfish and unlikeable brat.
One of the advantages of watching a subtitle drama that isn't streamed is that it is possible to watch on very rapid fast forward and follow the story. This is how I got through the last half of this drama. I was looking for some signs of growth in the male lead, and I was also very interested in how the stories of the supporting characters turned out. Their stories were an antidote to the seething rage I felt every time I had to look at that smug grin from the overgrown boy child who thought everything was a huge joke and that everything he did was always right. You know something's not right when a romcom makes you wish EXTREME violence on one half the lead romantic pair.
The reason for the title of this review is that the astonishing and tragic collapse of this once promising drama is making me reassess whether I should waste any more time watching ANY C dramas.
This Drama COULD have shown the ML growing into a mature adult who valued and supported the FL, and respected her right to be her own person, without resorting to lying to her and manipulating her, it could have confronted the challenges posed by cultural resistance to the significant age gap in a meaningful way, like the OUTSTANDING "My Queen" did from Taiwan, but in the end, it did none of those things. The moral of this drama ended up being the same as the moral of almost every single romantic C drama I have attempted to watch: That the male lead is always right BECAUSE he's male, the female lead always NEEDS the male lead, (in this Drama, the FL says “he’s the one taking care of me”, etc, more often that I cared to count) a woman's place is always behind a man, and that when a man decides he owns and controls a woman, that is the definition of romantic.
The overwhelming majority of romantic C dramas I have started to watch were easy to drop because they manifested this patronising, chauvinist and misogynist philosophy from the opening episodes. The fact that a drama which started so promisingly by heading in a very different direction eventually kowtowed to that deeply ingrained regressive "man rules yeah!" philosophy suggests that for whatever reason it is inescapable in C dramas built around a romantic arc.
There were many things to like about this drama. The first 9 or 10 episodes were truly exceptional, refreshing and promising. Some of the supporting characters were really interesting, especially Han Yue's role and performance as the older sister of the sasaeng University classmate of the male lead, and the FL’s divorced single parent BF. Following their arcs kept me from dropping the Drama even after it turned into a turd of epic proportions.
I don't know whether it was simply a failure of courage on the part of the writer, or whether it was simply compliance with the sort of external directives that are inescapable in the tightly controlled Chinese state, but whatever the reason the result was that a drama full of promise ended up being one of the bitterest disappointments of my drama viewing life. T
It IS possible for Dramas to be sappily romantic without the male lead having any sense of "ownership" of the female lead, but very few C Dramas have managed it , and this Drama was not one of them. I thought it would be an 8/10, in the end I felt generous giving it 3.5. That saddens me.
This was a painful review to write. For the first nine episodes of this drama, it just kept getting better and better. It was really outstanding and promised to be a truly exceptional C drama. There was only one little niggle - the unfettered childish selfishness of the male lead. He was literally a 24-year-old child, who believed that the female lead was his because he wanted her. For that first third of the drama, this was not a problem because the female lead was independent and self assured, and so is irritating and annoying as the male leads whiny self-centred possessiveness was, it was not the dominant feature of those episodes. Sadly, this state did not last.
Partway through episode 14, the male lead's manager gives him a lecture about his immature childish behaviour. He calls him a selfish brat and tells him that if hehates being treated like a kid, he should behave like an adult. Alas, that's as far as it goes. That very episode ends with the female lead deciding to be with him in a romantic sense despite the male lead having grown not at all. And he never does. Right to the end he remains a childish, immature, selfish and unlikeable brat.
One of the advantages of watching a subtitle drama that isn't streamed is that it is possible to watch on very rapid fast forward and follow the story. This is how I got through the last half of this drama. I was looking for some signs of growth in the male lead, and I was also very interested in how the stories of the supporting characters turned out. Their stories were an antidote to the seething rage I felt every time I had to look at that smug grin from the overgrown boy child who thought everything was a huge joke and that everything he did was always right. You know something's not right when a romcom makes you wish EXTREME violence on one half the lead romantic pair.
The reason for the title of this review is that the astonishing and tragic collapse of this once promising drama is making me reassess whether I should waste any more time watching ANY C dramas.
This Drama COULD have shown the ML growing into a mature adult who valued and supported the FL, and respected her right to be her own person, without resorting to lying to her and manipulating her, it could have confronted the challenges posed by cultural resistance to the significant age gap in a meaningful way, like the OUTSTANDING "My Queen" did from Taiwan, but in the end, it did none of those things. The moral of this drama ended up being the same as the moral of almost every single romantic C drama I have attempted to watch: That the male lead is always right BECAUSE he's male, the female lead always NEEDS the male lead, (in this Drama, the FL says “he’s the one taking care of me”, etc, more often that I cared to count) a woman's place is always behind a man, and that when a man decides he owns and controls a woman, that is the definition of romantic.
The overwhelming majority of romantic C dramas I have started to watch were easy to drop because they manifested this patronising, chauvinist and misogynist philosophy from the opening episodes. The fact that a drama which started so promisingly by heading in a very different direction eventually kowtowed to that deeply ingrained regressive "man rules yeah!" philosophy suggests that for whatever reason it is inescapable in C dramas built around a romantic arc.
There were many things to like about this drama. The first 9 or 10 episodes were truly exceptional, refreshing and promising. Some of the supporting characters were really interesting, especially Han Yue's role and performance as the older sister of the sasaeng University classmate of the male lead, and the FL’s divorced single parent BF. Following their arcs kept me from dropping the Drama even after it turned into a turd of epic proportions.
I don't know whether it was simply a failure of courage on the part of the writer, or whether it was simply compliance with the sort of external directives that are inescapable in the tightly controlled Chinese state, but whatever the reason the result was that a drama full of promise ended up being one of the bitterest disappointments of my drama viewing life. T
It IS possible for Dramas to be sappily romantic without the male lead having any sense of "ownership" of the female lead, but very few C Dramas have managed it , and this Drama was not one of them. I thought it would be an 8/10, in the end I felt generous giving it 3.5. That saddens me.
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