Your Highness, The Class Monitor (2019)

Excellent drama qui retrace le parcours d d'une classe d'université dans une section technologique, ce qui est rarement évoqué. Il traite aussi des discriminations fille-garçon dans les filières masculines. Les acteurs sont géniaux et donnent vie à cette histoire assez bien ficelée.

Plusieurs romances dans ce drama :
- le CL (fils riche et très smart + fille dégourdie avec traumas d'un chauffeur de taxi) est très mignon. Les malentendus ne durent pas trop longtemps malgré les 2 "great villains" (la belle-mère et la meilleure amie jalouse).
- Plusieurs romances secondaires attachantes, particulièrement le caïd et la fille-garçon manqué.

Il y a quelques longueurs par moments, mais aussi de l'humour, du rythme, des émotions,...

Les valeurs mises en avant sont toujours les mêmes dans les dramas chinois : persévérance, dur labeur, famille, sens filial, respect des aînés, volonté de réussir à tous prix, etc.

Bref, regardez-le, vous passerez un très agréable moment.

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WARNING: This review does NOT actually contain spoilers, however, if you truly want to watch this show, you shouldn't read this because I took my kid-gloves off while writing it.

So here's my dilemma ...

Usually I live by the standard "If you don't have anything nice to say, it's better to just shut up," but in this case not saying anything will drive me crazy. Do you know the feeling when you look forward to something only to be deeply disappointed by it? Sadly that's exactly what happened for me with this show. However, trying to live up to my own moral code, I do have one nice thing to say about this show though, and in good rhetorical fashion I will put it at the end of my review, where the most persuasive point should be, so please bear with me ...

First of all, I think the actors did a decent job at trying to bring the characters to life, however, their efforts were butchered by the senseless writing most of the time. Characters are established as one thing only to react and behave completely opposite to what you would expect – not in a good "wow,-that's-a-cool-twist!"-way but in a "WTF-just-happened?!"-way.

What's also strange is that most of the main characters are spoiled rotten but are still praised as mature and kind by everyone else. Even their parents rarely say anything about their horrible behaviour which is just unrealistic (and/or bad parenting). For instance, the female lead is portrayed as this mature but still innocent little angel (or as I like to call it "The only kind of Asian heroine"), but some of the things she says to her hard-working father are just downright disrespectful ... and he NEVER reprimands her! It's so bad that I honestly can't tell if he's the best dad ever or just bad at educating his daughter.

Before this gets completely out of hand and turns into a ranting of epic proportions, here are my top 3 reasons why I do NOT recommend this show:
3. The borderline unprofessional editing. Seriously, it's so bad that it actually obstructs the plot and messes up the timeline.
2. Speaking of timeline: There are some major plot holes in this thing. Just think about how the two lead characters supposedly met each other the very first time ... (WARNING: The gaping plot hole you will find might drive you mad.)
and last but sadly not least ...
1. The plot is not driven by the characters but the other way around. This is a recipe for disaster. It makes everything (worst of all the drama and dialogues) terribly forced and artificial, leaving the audience wonder most of the time why certain dramatic moments are happening in the first place, when they could have been so easily dissolved. Which they eventually are ... in the most anticlimactic way possible.

Okay ... I promised to say something nice, so here we go:

I like the title song.

Although the character that's supposed to have written the song in the show is portrayed by an obviously tone-deaf actor who should have been told to never sing in a public setting.

But still, yeah, I like the title song.

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