Hui Xiang (2023)

Everybody lies.

This psychological suspense thriller featuring a female hardcore detective starts out well. Ran Dongdong investigates the death of Xia Bingqing, a young woman with secrets. To figure out what happened to her, Dongdong has to piece together who Bingqing was and why someone wanted her dead. As the list of suspects in this complicated murder case grows, it is clear that everybody lies whether they are doing it consciously or not. The way Dongdong nails down inconsistencies in the various testimonies by unreliable narrators and incisively teases out the truth is riveting.

Work and life collide for Dongdong when it is discovered that her husband Mu Dafu crossed paths with the victim and he had twice rented a hotel room at the likely scene of the crime. She explores the complexity of love, marriage, and fidelity in both the work and personal arena and the lines start to blur. She begins to interrogate him like a suspect. In fact, he gets the worst of it because there are no professional restraints at home. Not that he is a paragon of virtue, far from it!! He was always a bit of a narcissist humanities professor that openly indulges in deeply intimate, highly flirtatious but ostensibly intellectual discussions with professional peers and students. She was fine with it until inexplicably, she is not. Likely because they fell out of the idealistic love phase of their relationship or maybe because he stopped telling her about these women that fall for him.

I did not expect to see this suspense plot devolve so deeply into a dark exploration of marriage between a dislikable and messed-up toxic couple. Both Song Jia and Wang Yang deliver mesmeric performances as flawed, complex, egotistical, and ultimately selfish characters. I did not like either of them. In fact, there are no heroes in this story. Other than the poor kid, pretty much everyone is a terrible person. Even the victim is too much of an architect of their own fate and is not empathetic. Neither of the two parallel plotlines is satisfactorily resolved. The whodunit mystery ends up being a howdunit procedural with too many plotholes and a weak, trite, cop-out motive for the murderer. The way the relationship is resolved also leaves unanswered questions although there is closure in the sense that Ran Dongdong and Mu Dafu really deserve each other. May they live tortuously ever after.

I enjoyed this drama up until episode 10 after which it turns into something I had no interest in watching. I can see how it may hold some appeal to people who like difficult relationship stories. My rating of 6.5 is for the very mediocre suspense plot, which is what I came to watch.

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Thrilling all the way

If you love crime solving mysteries this would be very enjoyable. The story involves the tragic death of a beautiful girl who's life was already miserable. It will hit home with many of us who grew up under these unhealthy cultural norms. It will hit home when the victim's parents yelled out "I gave you life!" Therefore that gift of life justifies controlling the kid's every decision in life ultimately leading to her death. The toxic love that prior generation can't see as an issue until it's too late.

As the story continues it also focuses on the FL cop marriage struggles. Her inability to separate her job from her husband. Her mental state deteriorated as the case continued to the point of ruining her relationship with a perfect husband. Although the story ended on a high note, it was frustrating watching that relationship breakdown.

What I loved:
1. Cast. Every actor played their character well. This is the first time I've watched Song Jia (FL)'s work and she's amazing in this role.
Wang Yang - He's been one of my favorite veteran actor.
Hou Wen Yuan (supporting cop) - Hope I see him in more roles in the future
2. Overall story. Satisfying ending with many love & love to hate characters
3. Pacing of the story was very good. I like that the case had few twist and turns but not excessive.
4. Dialogue - Mature, insightful, relatable

Only dislike:
1. FL went overboard IMO by ep 12

It would be cool to see future dramas based off on this FL.

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Boring, annoying, messed up.

This started off strong. Then it devolved into a mentally torturous and exhausting watch. I've not seen such a terrible crime-thriller in a while. I lost interest by the 5th episode, but seeing that the total is only 13, I decided to just finish the whole run.

The main female character, the detective in charge of the case is highly unlikable. When she initiates a convo with her husband, she speaks as if she's rattling off from a textbook. Many times she speaks as if she's a dictating a grocery list. Her husband isn't any better. She suspects her husband is having an affair, and he insists he hasn't done anything to betray her trust, yet he refuses to be entirely honest with her. He doesn't do a single thing to dispel those suspicions entirely. They're the worst people for each other and unironically, they're also the best people for each other because they're both frustrating and horrible people. I don't know what kind of person their kid will grow up to be, but it already looks like their toxicity is already starting to affect the poor young child.

The victim of the crime is a young woman who's been trying to earn higher wages in a bigger city but was killed. The series takes the watcher through the investigations and interviews of various suspects and related parties. Somehow none of these people could even give an honest testimony about her or the transpired events. None. The writers attempt to present the main female character as a highly logical person, yet her actions are anything but. She brought her emotions and the suspicions of her husband's infidelity into all her interviews with persons of interest in the case, all her questions were crafted pointedly to elicit opinions from these people, it feels as though she was trying to solve her personal marital issues through the case rather than to solve the case for the sake of the case itself.

If psychiatric analysis is of any use as an accurate indicator of mental soundness, then either we have all been misled or the psychiatrists in the drama have failed spectacularly at their jobs. Or - third option - the scriptwriting is just awful. Both husband and wife intentionally or otherwise, emotionally manipulate the other, and yet each time, the psychiatrist making the diagnosis clears the wife of mental instability. I also wonder why the husband never divulged the information to the psychiatrist that the wife had used suicide and self-harm to threaten him. I simply don't understand how that kind of action doesn't qualify as an underlying mental condition worthy of being addressed.

I don't really know how else to describe the feeling this drama gives me. The closest thing I can think of is that this was like a bunch of hair knotted together and I was supposed to find something appealing, something philosophically "true" in this gross, convoluted mess. I wish I had watched something else instead, but I ended up letting the rest of the episodes - that's 7 or 8 hours of my life run in the background through this ipad while I cleaned my house.

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Amore tossico

Ho visto questa serie quasi per caso ma gli attori principali hanno determinato la mia scelta.
La trama è avvincente e carica di suspance fin dall'inizio. Il filo conduttore della storia è la morte violenta di una giovane ma che sviluppa e approfondisce tante tematiche:
1. il bisogno estremo di giustizia che emerge nella figura della detective che dovrà destreggiargi nella ricerca della verità in ambito lavorativo e coniugale (presunto adulterio del marito)
2. L'usura causata fortuitamente da un incidente stradale a danno della famiglia natale della vittima e delle conseguenze negative sulla stessa (anni di prevaricazione e manipolazione)
3. l'accettazione dello stupro che diventa merce di scambio per una vita migliore e che trasforma la vittima, in seguito, in carnefice a scapito anche della famiglia con una giustificazia "fai da te"
4. analisi dell'emotività di amori giovanili sospesi e staticità quasi monotonia dell'amore coniugale
5. ossessione di essere performanti

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Acting was great but the story was plausible. It is better to focus on crime investigation

Echo is a crime drama, and it is another iQiyi light on series. It started with Song Jia and Wang Yang and had 13 episodes.

I finished it, and I have the following observations:
- The acting was good between the FL and ML; however, I did not like the plot.
- Half of the story was focused on the paranoia and broken relationship between Ran Dong Dong and Mu Da Fu characters. It was annoying to see that as a chief investigator of a police department, she had trust issues and was paranoid about her relationship with her husband.
- It was annoying and painful to watch both of them bickering about the same thing for 6 episodes which I don't think is relevant to the main story.
- It should focus more on crime scene investigation to solve the murder of the woman.
- I think the drama would be much better if it put the focus on crime and ended in 6-8 episodes.

As is, I did not like it very much and gave it a 6.0 rating because of the good acting between the lead actor/actress.

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