i've been looking forward to this drama since it was first announced. xz in a xianxia drama again? sign me tf up!

or so i thought.

the drama had its moments, which makes it a lot more difficult to review. if it were boring from start to end, it would be easy to write off. however, there are pockets of good acting and writing, but these are few and far between that my interest in the drama was like a coma patient that wasn't allowed to die.

the female lead is awful. i wonder how on earth the directors and producers thought that she would be able to carry this role. i place the blame on them, not her. the character comes off as shallow, that is largely the fault of the writers who gave her the internal voice of a toddler (during her teenage years) and then a simpleton (when she grows older). however, the actress bears responsibility for her acting choices. for example, in the scene where she's supposedly angry at her friend being mistreated, the way she portrays anger is to clench her fists and glance around with a slight frown. there's no depth to any of the emotions she's portraying.

another problem is the way the character faces lots of problems, but bounces back or is consoled so quickly, often within the same episode. the end result is that none of her hardships ever seem to have an effect on her, so it's hard for the viewers to care either because she'll be fine again soon enough.

but the female lead is not the worst part of the drama. i don't know what happened to xiao zhan in between oath of love and this drama, but my god i cannot believe i am watching the same actor. why is he so stiff? his expressions are so weird all of the time. he has a lovely tall and slim body, but the costuming department has buried him in shapeless gauze unlike other costume dramas.

when the two leads are on screen together, it's vomit-inducing. shi ying is supposed to be younger than 18 in the first few episodes, but he looks and feels like a 30 year old man meanwhile ren min looks 15 and behaves like she's 8.

i managed to tolerate the drama up to episode 26, but this is the end of the line for me. barely anything happens. sure, there's a bit of palace intrigue about the queen and bai xuelu, but it takes up perhaps 5% of the runtime? perhaps it's because i cannot buy the romance between the ml and fl, so the constant push and pull of him trying to get rid of her, her saving him or helping him, him deciding to keep her around because he owes her etc - how many times does it have to play out? and honestly, shi ying's attraction to her zhu yan really disgusted me given that her mental age is frozen at 8.

to be fair to the drama, some things worked really well. bai xuelu and bai xueying's dynamic was really interesting. i enjoyed their interactions with each other, shi yu and qing gang. mermaid guy was handsome and a good actor too, in fact the way he was styled made him look more like the lead than any other character. i thought chong ming would be an irritating character, but it was nice to see how he could be playful without coming across as developmentally challenged (unlike the fl).

dropping this.