#ashley watches cdramas | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hyacinthetic · 6 years

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qserasera replied to your photoset “i just have a lot of qu xiaoxiao appreciation feelings every day.”

/whispers what cdrama is this and it is fun to watchhh

i’m sorry that you asked. you’re going to get the informative reply, but for everyone’s sakes i’ll leave the short answer above the “keep reading” line.

it’s called “ode to joy”! reviewers have been driving me insane by calling it “china’s sex in the city”, which is true in that it is about five women working in a city who have love lives and personal problems at the same time and advise each other frankly about the two. apparently no other show has ever done that thing. it’s entertaining, but it’s not, like, a straight-up comedy, and it does hit some weird territory that’s not necessarily comfortable to watch. so if you’re in the mood for light hijinks + unwinding to watch after work, this may not be the right show.

ex: the most independent / big-sisterly of the cast is also the poorest because she’s sending all her savings from her office job home to her parents in the countryside. they just keep demanding that she borrow more money, that she work harder, that she not live in a “”fancy city apartment”” and just move into her company’s hostel so that she can save more money to send them. all while her layabout brother has no job because he has no skills. this has escalated to the point where her salary paid off half the mortgage on her brother’s house. it’s purposely a commentary on china’s sons > daughters regard, which persists today. while it isn’t excused, her parents are never outright villanised and i found it deeply squirmy as a viewer.

also, like. it’s a series produced in china that deals with the topic of sexism. so.

moving on! stuff the show IS good for: found families formed by dysfunctional characters who still have to go to work in the morning; real talk about adulthood; female characters who never fuck each other over to get a man (though one does act shitty to get the man kicked out from all their lives, see last paragraph); nihuang apparently reincarnated as a high-powered business exec with a gift for math and being blunt; addressing the balance between independence + opening up to the people who love you; being a show about a bunch of complete weirdoes who love each other VERY MUCH.

(stuff the show isn’t good for: giving nihuang a love interest i don’t want to punch repeatedly.)

as you may have noticed, wang kai is a love interest for one of the characters! he isn’t deeply fleshed out, but my horrible tiny favorite* falls in love with him at first sight and spends thirty episodes chasing him relentlessly, which made it like a++ for me. you get an unfortunate scarlett o’hara/ashley wilkes vibe off of them, though, which is also awful to watch! mental incompatibility isn’t really the kind of thing you can fix in an episode, and yet you have to root for them: he makes her want to be a better person! she’s the one who drags him out from his homebody lifestyle to have FUN the way he feels a doctor no longer should! but there’s a definite tension between their respective intellectual levels and i haven’t watched far enough to see how it’s resolved.

(* qu xiaoxiao: rich man’s money-loving daughter, former gangster who stopped because she got bored, viciously perceptive and shameless, the kind of girl who flirts with a friend’s new boyfriend and gives him her phone number to (i) expose the guy as scum and (ii) have someone to use and move office furniture for her.)

basically: i am enjoying it immensely, but it’s a smidge more serious than the romantic-dramedies for which i usually reblog gifs so YMMV. you can probably get a sense from the first episode.

#qserasera #wait THAT'S how you answer replies to your post?#GO TO HELL TUMBLR

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