Rants and Weekly Raves (RAWR) #467

Anne: Hello Drama Lovers! Hope everyone had managed to find something interesting to watch in the last two weeks or so. I spent the last week or so binge watching the Thai BL dramas from 2022. It all started with my YouTube feed, as with almost everything else that snags my attention, where one day a clip of Dangerous Romance popped up. I don't know why the English title is as is, because the actual drama was about high school/college students. It started as a BL version of Meteor Garden, with the bullying more reminiscent of the Taiwanese version. This led to me being immersed in a second This BL drama, Cutie Pie, which has a very cliche premise, an arrange marriage, between the two MLs. The drama has very positive messages. I enjoyed both quite a lot, although I did FF some melodramatic sections... 😋 At the end of this binge watching, I now am listening to the sound tracks in my car...

Ok...enough about my diversion into the non-current dramas. One reason I waited until today to post is due to the finale. Let's get into it!

The Double

I really like this outfit of his. When under house arrest, the proper Duke Su lounges around in his pajamas (I know I would. I mean I go out in pajama pants!) And his look in this scene (that lasted under 2 minutes in a 40 episode drama) is my favorite. In addition, this was also the first time, Xiao Heng calls her by her real name, Xue Fang Fei. Ok, enough of my going gaga over this character.

So...where did I leave off last time? I believe I stopped when Xue Fang Fei rescued her father and her father's people and as a group they started to go back to the capital to demand a re-open the case. Of course on the way, the enemy group used the famine to drive groups of people to prevent her from getting back safely or quickly. Despite the hazards, Jiang Li's mother's clan came to save the day. They were able to get food delivered. It was quite delayed due to her cousins avoiding the obvious traps. 

With all these people in tow, Jiang Li's real identity is pretty much getting more and more difficult to keep hidden. Up to the point that the crazy Princess Royal tried to expose her in court. With Xiao Heng's help, Fang Fei was able to escape once again. Despite no one publicly actually acknowledges that she isn't Jiang Li, most of the people who knows her not only suspects but pretty much knows. 

Jiang Ruo Yao, the 3rd miss, finally grows a backbone and no longer allow her mother to plan her life. When she decided to back up Jiang Li's story that Zhou Yan Bang was attempting to rape her that resulted in her hitting him in the head, causing him to be in a "vegetative" state. This was a whole side plot that continued Yan Bang's stupid quest in trying to get Jiang Li to "marry" him.

The next surprise we find out is Ji Shu Ran's (Jiang Li's step mom) back story. Her ex-boyfriend prior to her being married to Jiang Li's father (how this marriage happened is ANOTHER side plot). This ex-boyfriend is now a famous exorcist, who believed that the "child" that Jiang Li "killed" in utero was his child. (I hope everyone got this explanation.) Thus, he is provoked to kill Jiang Li. Of course this back fires big time, leading to Jiang Lis' father finding out the real cause of his first wife's death, the death of his eldest daughter, and how Shu Ran pretty much poisoned her daughter, Ruo Yao, in order to stage the plot to kill Jiang Li. Poor Tong Er died as a result. 

Now, in the midst of these crazy men, we must not forget Xue Fang Fei's ex-husband, Shen Yu Rong, who upon confronting her with her real identity, tries to get a little too intimate. Ye Shi Jie comes to the rescue, but because of Shen Yu Rong's standing, she convinces him to let her be the one who knocked him out (yes, our FL has another man knocked unconscious due to being too handsy). And it was due to this case that led to us finding out the crazy princess have kept Xue Fang Fei's younger brother alive this ENTIRE time (after he was supposedly killed by bandits on the way to the capital to help his sister). The princess used her brother to get her to retract her accusation against Shen Yu Rong. And then this crazy princess decides to follow Shen Yu Rong's plan to get Jiang Li to be married to him so he can "keep" an eye on her. The best part is when Xiao Heng went to pick her up when she was released from prison for falsely accusing Shen Yu Rong of attempted sexual assault.

Xiao Heng held her hand so tight that her fingers were going numb. This was probably the first time the ML demonstrated an unquestionable action that he has become a love-sick puppy. 💕

Shen Yu Rong's marriage plan didn't happen. In turn, our crazy princess gets tricked into marrying Li Jin. This is probably the BEST example of these two people getting what they deserved. It was very satisfying to watch for a couple episodes.

In the last 5 episodes, we finally meet Xiao Heng's grandfather, and come to understand the reason for the deep divide between them. We also learn why Xiao Heng loves watching shows and growing exotic flowers. Then we find out the back story of the crazy princess and her elder brother, the Prince who was behind all these plots in an effort to take the throne away from their younger half brother. I get that we want to give everyone a reason for what they do, but seriously, I don't really want to feel bad for the bad guys. And the crazy princess...is probably the most tragic character of this entire drama. And Shen Yu Rong became the most villainous, because we realize at the end, everything was an act (maybe with the exception of his love for his ex-wife, but even then it could just be possession). 

Anyway, the coup didn't end up the way the bad guys wanted. And our leads eventually married.

But was the following battle/war bloodshed really ALL necessary? Did we really need to kill off Wen Ji and Lu Ji, our hero's comic sidekicks? I LOVE these two. The ending is a happy one, even though the writers tried REALLY hard to hint otherwise. The extras are their lives after their marriage, and the little scenes are cute.

One of things that bothers me, and this is not something I usually notice, because cinematography is not something that I pay attention to or even examine. But this one is so in-your-face, that even someone like me who would have never noticed, noticed. The entire theme that threaded through the drama about the "audience" and the "actors". So as part of this theme, in order to bring the audience into the "play", there are a LOT of full face shots where the audience is "brought" into the scene. It was really distracting to me. Some of the shots were really pretty, but it just wasn't my style. 

So...in conclusion...I really enjoyed it. And it kept a really good pace throughout.

Follow Your Heart

I was super excited when this aired. Obviously because it stars Luo Yun Xi. I haven't gotten very far due to finishing the on above and me being distracted by a lot of YouTube videos. First thing I think everyone should be prepared for is to treat this drama like a fantasy. Let me explain. When I read the synopsis that Yan Nan Xing (the FL) changes appearance, I thought we were talking along the lines of what normally happens, like face masks, as in Word of Honor. But this is so NOT what this drama is talking about here.

Did anyone else while watching this scene thought this..."Hm... I guess it's a Chinese historical Shrek."? 

Yes, we're not talking about changing "appearance" like just her face or something. It's a FULL BODY CHANGE. This issue apparently was a result of someone poisoning her, making her change into a completely different person every month at the onset of her period. 

Why can NO ONE else hear this whistle (excpet the ML)? Seems a bit odd, when the "other" people are RIGHT next to the FL or her mother.

This is probably not the most absurd... So...our ML, Jiang Xin Bai, who is suffering from face blindness apparently cannot tell that this is a man... and calls her "miss" (this is due to the fact that "he" is wearing the clothes and hair style of a woman).

I really want to ask the writers...why did they think that "face blindness" means that they can't tell a girl from a guy by looking at their face? It's not that they don't "see" a face, I thought it was just that they don't remember. So that they will never remember that they have "met" a particular person, ever, not even their family. However, if they don't look at the person, they can still identify people by voice. 

So...take caution, if you watch this, make sure you throw all logic out the window and just let the story take you on a ride.

And I am perfectly fine with that. (I mean my favorite genre is Xianxia, so I don't usually need logic in my dramas 😄). Really looking forward to see where this crazy plot will go.

And this is all for this week. Let me know if anyone has watched anything interesting!