The Emperor's Harem (2011)

This was an average drama, plotwise its about the conflict in the emperor's harem, nothing out of the ordinary chinese palace dramas. To be honest, this drama does not have an obvious main male and female lead. The drama is about various main leads and can sometimes be a little draggy. If you like watching the fight between various consorts in the harem, its worth a watch. Otherwise, if you are looking for a strong romance plot like me, this will disappoint you. I never found myself strongly shipping any two leads.

The drama had good music though. I especially loved the ending song and the music by traditional instruments in the drama as two of the female leads worked in the music department of the harem.

The cast was fairly okay, I never really felt their chemistry but I know they're great actors as I've watched their other dramas.

Give this a try if you're into the palace conflicts and drama. You might consider skipping this if you want a memorable romance, check out other stuff like princess weiyoung, legend of dugu or prince of lan ling instead.

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A Complete Waste of Time

If I could sue a drama for wasting my time, this definitely will be at the top of my list.

You'd think that with this drama which has some big names in the casts, especially as notably as Patrick Tam, you'd witness a masterpiece. However, this drama is nothing but a total waste of time and energy. I watched this drama with my mother and she was actually invested in this drama. We thought we were half-way through the story and would start to see the truths get unfolded, but instead, we were met with the ending out of nowhere.

The drama spent so many time in building suspense, establishing enmity, and constructing schemes that never got explained even until the end. So many things that viewers thought would be an important details to remember for future events ended up never being discussed or discovered at all. It was so unclear what were all those problems for if they serve no purpose at all to the story.

The way the evil characters done their schemes, it was as if the writer purposefully left holes which you'd assume will be the way those wrongdoings get leaked and how justice will be served someday. But turns out, nothing happened until the end on these evil characters, and among so many bad things they had done, not even one was revealed into the light.

It was weird how they had so many characters, explored into the lives of so many people, but only gave an ending for the main couple. The rest of the characters didn't matter all of sudden despite the fact that they spent so much time showing these characters for the entire 46 episodes. What was the purpose of all these people then? If even until the end they weren't significant and not worthy enough to have their own ending?

Especially when considering that the FL had no major role in the harem, it was so useless the way they touched into the lives of so many harem women if she would still be majorly unconnected to these harem women even until the end. Why didn't they just focus on the story of a girl who married an Eunuch General and showed a little bit of the palace drama? Instead, it was done the other way around. They focused so much on these palace harem drama and showed a little bit of the story of a girl who married an Eunuch General.

Not to mention that Yang Yong guy as ML is utterly useless. I'd believe if someone tell me the Eunuch General is the ML because of how minor that Yang Yong is for the overall story. He served no purpose at all in the story. He was supposed to be the hero that has enmity with the Eunuch General, but neither he succeeded in revealing the crime of the Eunuch General nor he actually did anything significant on his own to try to work in that case. But, the worse of all, is the fact that he is the ML! The literal ML of the story. The love interest of the FL. But neither he helped the FL during his lover's difficult times nor he contributed anything to his lover's freedom in the end. His acting is also not really good. It was very bland. Maybe because his characters lack any purpose or depth, but even when he was supposed to be expressive in pressing situations, he looked the same all the time. Like, aren't you angry? Aren't you disappointed? Aren't you sad? Aren't you stressed? Then why I don't see it?

The ending for the Eunuch General is unclear although he was a major character in the life of the FL as her former husband, especially after he ordered his soldiers to kill her lover, that Yang Yong guy, but killed his eunuch who disguised as Yang Yong instead. There is no way he or so many soldiers wouldn't know that it was his eunuch who died instead of Yang Yong. I mean, he is a general and these people are from the army, even if they didn't know at first, they would notice later. Yet, we had no clue what happened after that incident. Neither with the Eunuch General nor with the killed eunuch.

The most important is the way they spent so many time and stories building the devilish Imperial Consort, but what is she for again? I saw nothing about her significance in the ending. Why would they shoot a dialogue that the Imperial Consort knew Eunuch General faked the death of the FL if it wasn't going to get revealed publicly later? It was only one among so many other plots that became loose ends and serve no purpose at all to the story before surprisingly ending meaninglessly.

I don't know what happened but considering how abrupt and awful the ending was, I'd assume they were forced to shut down the production for some urgent reasons. Not sure if it's a budget problem or any scandal occured, but the ending was so sudden and abnormal, it didn't feel natural or logical at all for any writer to ever wrote such ending. It seems that this drama initially had a big production budget, judging from the very exquisite costumes and sets, perhaps they ran out of money midway and had to finish it unplanned. I kept trying to find some excuses for the ending because it was really bad. I'm not sure what happen because I can't find any news about this production issue.

But one thing for sure is this drama is a disaster and very disappointing that should be avoided totally.

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