The Happy Life of People's Policeman Lao Lin (2021)

The fast forward button is my friend

I will preface this review by saying I watched this series because I became a huge fan of the 3 MLs in Mysterious Lotus Casebook and wanted to check out their past work. I liked police procedures and decided to give this a try. This is a slice of life type drama revolving around members of a local police station and their family. It's not a hard watch in a sense that there’s no strong angst and nothing bad happens to anyone. With the help of the fast forward button, I managed to complete all 40 episodes pretty quickly, which is more than what I can say for some much better produced angsty xianxa dramas.

That said, I have pretty low expectations for this show to begin with, and it still manages to disappoint. A show like this is only as good as the characters, the chemistry between them and the situations they find themselves in. Unfortunately, much of the script is unbelievable and unrealistic in terms of situations and behavior. It's like the characters either have a negative EQ /IQ or are so understanding/good that's unreal; and the actors are given direction to overact as much as possible in a way that no normal person behaves.

Take Xiao Shun Yao who plays the 2nd ML as an example. He's my favorite from Mysterious Lotus Casebook and the reason I watched this show. This is the 4th show of his I tried to watch (and 2nd I finished), so I know he can act. But his character is so badly done in this show that it's like I'm watching a caricature of the typical arrogant rookie cop character whose purpose in the script is to show how good the plain (unattractive and old) first ML is in comparison. If it weren't for the scenes where his character is quiet and his thoughts/feelings were conveyed via expression alone, which were great and very believable, I couldn't have finished this show even with the fast forward button.

Then, there is the 2nd FL. No real person with an ounce of common sense, let alone a reporter who went to college to I presume study journalism, can behave like her character does. The actress did a good job at it, so much so that I need to fast forward her scenes, including her lines in scenes with the 2nd ML, lest I give into the urge to throw something at the TV.

The 1st ML is ok. At the risk of sounding shallow, he is the least attractive ML I've ever seen in a show. It's like the script overcompensated for it by making his character unbelievably nice and good at everything. The only times his character feels real is when he interacted with his daughter.

The one bright spot in the show is the 1st FL. Her character is mature, sympathetic and strong. It's great to see such a cool FL in a chinese drama, which tends to be favor the cute, sweet (naive) "princess" type FL that I really can't stand.

Overall, while I definitely will not recommend this to anyone, it wasn't a bad way to waste time till I get over my MLC obsession.

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