Twilight (2023)

The plot is very interested but I felt it was rushed at the ending!!

First off, I found this drama interesting in the way they incorporated excerpts of Shan shan's writing into the plot. And it was clever to use his writing to foreshadow the ending. I also loved the actors, especially Ren Jia Lun. As for the plot itself, it was filled with different situations and interactions between characters. But I felt like there was too much occuring at once sometimes, especially the ending. I also felt that the ending was rushed a little due to the fact that challenge that Liu Xia had to face was introduced at the last two episodes. But I can kinda reason why it was placed in the plot at that point of time. Even though there are cons of the plot, there are also pros of the plot. Through the plot, it really showed the interaction between people/characters and the different emotions people are faced with. Overall, it was a pretty good drama!!

Leggi di Più

HEALING DRAMA but not everyone’s cup of tea…..!

This story is more of a healing drama, it is about a psychology counsellor who has herself experienced childhood trauma while the ML is a skilled screenwriter. both of them heal each other over time.
It is a very slow paced drama with unnecessary fillers.

40 episodes is a bit too much. The story could have been better and could be presented in a better way.

I watched it mainly because of Ren Jia Lin, I believe he is an actor with great potential and his role did not do justice to him. The character sketch could have been better.

The background stories are also quite unnecessary as they take up too much screen time leading to no development in the story line.

According to me, the topic was a great choice as it is something that has become more important to discuss in 2023 but the story was poorly written and presented; they could do a better job.

I feel I quite learnt a few things from the story, as I survived through all 40 episodes. The drama is very slow paced so not for viewers who hate slow moving dramas. I like slow paced dramas but this one was a veryyy slow moving one. I wish this kind of topic about mental health is presented in a more constructive manner in the future with a better story line.


Not for everyone to watch it..! But you might as well decide after watching the first episode..!

Leggi di Più

40 episodes is really a lot, when more than half of the series is filler

the main story is kinda good, but 40 episodes is a lot.
I was very disappointed with the last few episodes (I wanted to see ML's friend receive a good dose of karma)
Beside that, I'm not a big fan of a series within a series, so I found these moments completely unnecessary (sometimes 2 scenes during a single episode) where I'm watching a series derived from ML's script.
But the story was good enough, more realistic than some, but the execution was a bit all over the place.
A phrase I found myself saying to a friend several times during basically all of the episodes is how a lot happens, but at the same time, nothing really happens most of the time.
And finally, the entire budget went to all of the “series” within the series and that is why there are moments with poor audio and questionable image quality, especially in the first episodes. But other people might not notice, since I'm kind of strict when it comes to production quality. For me, this series has the recording quality of a 2015 series.

Leggi di Più

Hesitate to watch this cause Angelababy not my fav actress, a few times watch her just to find her acting lack something. But on the first ep I already see Ren Jia Lun act something beyond my imagination. Of course that make me have to watch this....

This story really interesting to watch. They talk about something taboo, mental illness & make us understand that this kind of illness we can't take lightly & sometimes we really need consult or just talk to someone & that's nothing to be embarrassed about.

Ok this drama talk about Liu Xia (LX), a psychological counselor & Qi Lian Shan (LS), a screenwriter. They accidentally become roommates & friend & finally partner for each other. Really interesting how their relationship grow, it's a little slow pace but how they build the friendship & trust is real & fit. I can feel Ren Jia Lun & Angelababy have good friendship, if not earlier at least in the time they shoot the drama.

What really interesting from this drama:
+ We can sometimes see Ren Jia Lun act combustible, due to him act according to script he write. We see him jump, do little karate, everything so cute that I never expected him to do...
+ We got more story than we expected. Haha... LS is script writer and during the drama he write 3 drama, so we get to see all the story he write comes to life with familiar face from all the actor in this drama. So yeah each actor also played more than 1 characters throughout the drama.
+ We got to see the real character true face from the drama LS wrote, especially the police story.

What feel a little lack:
- I don't like the ending. It feel it still leave something hanging in the air that need to be take care of before they close the curtain.
- Due to each character play several characters in the drama, I sometimes got confuse about it. Yeah i know they quite different, but still....

Overall this quite good drama to watch

Leggi di Più

The series started out slow and was consistent with it. Both leads had mellow moods. They rarely laughed, smiled or joked around. They had meek personalities with pushed the boundary of depressed. As with any drama I expect highs and lows but the writers gave few highs up to episode 18.
Up to episode 18, the writers have done a good job making us dislike the male leads brother. They painted a a good picture of the character but it’s taking forever for karma to peek out even an ounce., the ML brother was terrible but they made the male lead out to be this naïve, gullible character. It was like watching somebody get bullied or taken advantage of. You want to see an individuals true colors however, you really don’t wants to see it for that long.

As of episode 18, I can’t recommend it. It’s like watching two sad people being taken advantage of without even defending themselves.

Leggi di Più

Story--can I give it Zero? No? How about Negative?

Usually, I try, really, really hard to figure out what the writer/director/actors are thinking and find something clever, or something to redeem it.

In this case for a scant 4 episode Ren Jialun and the brother character are the only things to hold onto, until the director mind numbingly reins it in by episode 6 and I don't know why he did that because that's the only reason I was watching this drama.

For a story to work, you need one of the following things pretty much internationally to hold it together:
1. Characters want something they usually can't have or currently attain.
2. Characters NEED something they aren't aware of, but are promised to attain.
3. There is an established tone that the story promises to work on later to develop (admittedly, more of a Japanese thing).
4. There is a theme the drama promises to develop and tease out, then maybe twist later.
5. If you have none of those, and just characters running around, then the characters should at least be interesting until you can find the central event chain.

Guess what? The director/writer (same person) manages to cut this off by Episode 6. And struggles so hard that he has to include an unnatural event chain by episode 7-8. (i.e. it drops in rather that it blooming naturally out of the characters interacting with the events/tone/theme and then they create new events which then shape the character, etc.)

And then, OK, maybe you don't care about the previous, no plot, no interesting characters, but you want some knowledge base about *something*. Slow clap to the director/writer. You're denied. Because he constantly copy-pastes the top results from the search engine to make the psychologist character work. He doesn't understand anything about how it works. In Mr. Bad, which had less episodes, and a writer who has had, count 'em 2 scripts, they managed to include more psychology in the span of 2 episodes than this drama has in 8 and validly so. The script writer for Mr. Bad applied the basic principles of research, understand, and then integrate. Here, there is none of it. Meaning that a cotton candy Romance drama with half the episode count (about) managed to do more in research than this one did.

I've watched utter trash, but this is the first time I've witnessed a drama have no genre for over 6 episodes and still feel directionless for 8 episodes. And to be clear, I'm familiar with early Chinese dramas too, where it took a long time for the pitch, but in the long time setting up the characters, the drama promised a direction, kept good camera language, such as keeping the camera on the female lead for more than three seconds, and might even set up a theme, even if the events didn't really move. Using clever camera tricks for the sake of it is sooo rookie. In romance holding the shot and letting the actors emote is much better.

This drama has an utter gift to manage to not do that. And it's not that I don't understand "high art" or lack patience. I've watched Being John Malcovich, and really artsy pieces. I've also watched utter trash, and this drama manages to mindnumbingly surpass the fail for "Watch this for B-move entertainment", watch for an actor because they are trying something new and also feel so in love with itself while failing, that I want to cry.

The music is rated lower because he uses classical pieces so he didn't have to pay for a music director, and so he could get lots of unnecessary special effects like cars flipping over.

This would be my recommendations to the director/writer:

How you go 20 years in the business and manage this hard to fail is beyond me. I'm open to artists improving and changing, but stop copy-pasting from the internet and try to grasp what the articles that contain the definitions are saying about the item. Go and experience it, or ask experts. Make the characters WANT or NEED something, and if you're advancing in the ranks, you'll choose a theme and tone. And if you're trying for romance, the meetcute should be in episode 1, not 2, or a really good promise made in episode 1 on how they will meet and how epic it will be when they do (Outlander does this, US drama). If you're trying a new genre, get a supporting writer to help you out, OR do the thing that the Hong Sisters do, which is find a work to adapt so you get what the genre expectations are. Also, it's better to not self-glorify. And stop reining in actor's improvisation. Ren Jialun acting a bit overboard was the best. Him having multiple takes included, and acting overthe top was soo good--play on that, alter the script on that, let it be the plot. Pick a direction ahead of time, and integrate it throughout, and you might find your episode count is only 24 episodes. Hiring good actors to do scripts as poor as this is a crime. I hope the actors were paid well at least...

Leggi di Più