50FiftillidideeBrain
⚖ Grandma Knows Best ⛓ °4.5° °below avg° ep 1-30
Jie doesn't like men who don't know how to treat a lady right. Jie doesn't seem to like men at all, actually.
IP is a 2011 release that is rated 7.6 on MDL. It is 1 season consisting of 84 43-minute episodes. EIGHTY-FOUR. People really don't know when to stop.
Annie Chen (Tears on Fire, Endless Love, Love Now-3.6) is FL, Song Yi “Jie”. She's a self-described mean person. She's very unpleasant to bad people, especially men who take advantage of women. A legal assistant, she's failed the bar. More than once. More than twice. More than thrice, even. Chris Wang (The Fierce Wife-8, Love Is Science?) plays Ke “Wei” Xiang who is running the family business, so he never has time to date. Furthermore, even if he does try to date, his grandmother insists that he's engaged from before birth by a legally binding agreement. Arranged? That's understating it. They have a bona fide written & signed contract. The only problem is that they've lost the fiance. No one kept track because only Grandma took the deal seriously from the start. Wei would like to be in love. Jie is skeptical of love. She just wants to be an attorney. But every time she tries to take the bar, something goes wrong. It's like a curse. Unbeknownst to Jie, Grandma's been looking for her.
Can Chris Wang act? Absolutely ~ He's the perfect stiff in a suit. All I can say is that this is the second show in which I've seen him, and I'm not tired of watching him on screen yet - probably because I liked The Fierce Wife-8 so much. Annie Chen has lots of fans. She is certainly a cutie. I don't mind her, but I will gently point out that she's not a very good actress. In addition, the overly nasal tones in her voice are wearisome. The better looking a person is, the less talent s/he needs to be successful. For lots of viewers, looks is enough; others need an emotional or even an intellectual connection. It's like actors have stones composed of their assets (attractiveness and abilities) and viewers have buckets that must be filled in order for them to enjoy the performance. Every viewer's bucket is a different size, and some have holes that stones of a certain variety will fall right through. Therefore, every person will perceive them differently. Annie & Chris may not draw me to a feature, but they won't stop me from viewing it either.
Eh, scratch that. I wrote that too early. That is how I /want/ to feel. Honestly, this is my second Annie Chen feature, and I was underwhelmed by her in the first, but other things were so bad it took the focus off of her. In IP, I really can't stand her character. I loathe her character, and I actively dislike her performance. Annie Chen in the lead might be a non-starter for me when making future viewing decisions - at a minimum, I'll take a long pause before hitting “play”. That makes me sad. I don't want to feel that way about any actress. But d@m, Jie is annoying. As for the rest of the cast, it's a mixed bag. Kunda Hsieh (Meet Me @ 1006, You Go! Girls!) is Ke Wei Cheng, Wei's trouble-making brother. Puff Kuo (20 Years Promise, Light the Night series) plays Li Er, Wei's troublesome childhood friend. Jennifer Hung (The On1y One, Dear Mom) portrays Ke Yan Ni, Wei's oft troubling sister, & Chris Lee (Marry My Dead Body, The On1y One) plays Wang Ke Fan, her oft troubled husband. Unfortunately, the acting is largely substandard. I attribute the flat performances to the directing. The screenwriters are Lin Pei Yu of Kiseki: Dear to Me & We Best Love series, and Shao Hui Ting of HIStory.
Jie is not a pleasant character. She's bossy, overly aggressive and has anger issues. The only likable thing she does is help out a woman whose spouse is cheating. She handles that aggressively, too. Even mom and grandpa have a hands-off approach to her. She's no fun at all! Before ep10 I was aggravated with her dramatic outbursts. Her trust issues are near pathological. They show her at work and she's /scary/. They portray her cross examining their OWN clients and then denying them representation - right in front of her boss. It's not going to happen IRL. Aggressive-agressive Jie is in dire need of anger-management. She is always angry at Wei. She's rarely in the right, though. She had no right to fume at him over a promise that he made and was unable to keep: It was entirely out of his control. Everything that happened was Jie's fault, anyway. She's hacked-off all the time, at everyone, in the first part of the show. Combative, too. The word is: Termagant. Wei says he would want to marry someone like Grandma: Someone optimistic, brave, strong, and also very kind. Jie is all of those ~ once in a great while ~ She's just not kind to Wei - or any other men.
The show opens with them happening upon each other in atypical circumstances. They each read the situation wrong and draw unfavorable conclusions about the other. Yet they keep running into eachother. But wait! It gets better! Jie's land is part of a parcel that Wei's company wants to buy. Jie's family is holding out - JIE is holding out - Mom & grandpop don't care. Fate certainly dropped the net over these two. There's a chain of circumstances and run-ins that keep them colliding. But Jie is no simple girl. She's not going to give up her deceased father's house. She pranks Wei which causes him embarrassing exposure. He decides to prank her back. They think they hate eachother at this point. They can't see how they've been pulled into a vortex, spinning and slowly pulling closer.
Grandma is pushin hard for this marriage. Here's another TwDrama where the matriarch drives the plot. Of the 6 I've seen, Autumn's Concerto-7.2 has a difficult mother at its core, Love, Now-3.6 happens in part because of Grandma pushing for marriage, Love You-7 is very much a woman-centered show and has a mother who drives the plot in the last third, and The Fierce Wife-8 is all about girl power. I'm sensing a pattern… Grandma's got a way of piling on the guilt. The backstory is sufficiently compelling. Jie's grandfather saved their lives one day. They entered into the contract on the spot as a way of thanking him. Then they later lost track of them. “We wouldn't be here without them," she moans. Grandma's also got a bad wig, btw. It's a little distracting.
“Why are they so adorable?” That's what Wei asks himself after meeting Jie's mother and grandfather. And they really are adorable. The whole scene is charming. It's no spoiler that they do go through with the marriage. They could have handled the steps leading to that decision much better. As hateful as she is to him, Jie blows a stack if she thinks he's having an affair (even though he's not allowed to touch her). Wei must endure a wife who has temper tantrums, is never kind, never does anything thoughtful or nice, but rather actively tries to /harm/ him. She acts unhinged.
After marriage (they skipped love) will there come a baby in the baby carriage? That's what Grandma is expecting. In the meantime, Wei Cheng's brother is messing up and getting into his own trublems - what's worse, it's triad-trublems. Another snagger is Li Er, Wei Cheng's childhood friend. She found out the marriage is fake and she wants the groom for herself. She starts working around the edges for wedges to put between them. Some of it is embarrassingly silly and some of it works. The storyline with Wei's Sister and her friend, Jia, is draggy. Most of the wardrobe is nauseating.
I got to the point where I couldn't pay attention pretty quickly. I had it on… I tried… but I found myself ‘double-tasking’ to a level where I was only checking in on the plot. Most of this show is padding - empty fluff to fill too many episodes. Shows like that can be relaxing, but no one can relax around Jie. Or Wei's obnoxious sister. Or Grandma, for that matter. Coincidentally, I began watching Prince of Tennis at the same time and was having the same issue, only to a lesser degree. PoT is extremely relaxing to watch, and while it's a constant stream of nearly redundant tennis matches (whooda thunk?) so it feels somewhat fluffed, it's still unequivocally superior to IP. Around this time I was also watching My Sunshine-6.8, Love You-7 (or Drunken To LoveYou), Boss and Me-7, The Princess Royal, and even the arguably silly Black & White, with no problems.
These are technical criticisms. Everyone seems to have h/h own brand of guilty pleasure - we all luv us some awful entertainment when it pushes the right emotional buttons. There's nothing here to break the peace over or feel defensive about. IP had the /opposite/ effect on me, so I consider it both a technical and EQ failure.
There are praiseworthy elements. Say, that is one EPIC first date. They later go fishing and the pond is beautiful - Great filming. The soundtrack is the best of the TwDramas I've seen so far. Most of it is too-repetitive carnival style music, but they flash-out once in awhile. Shazamed: 不是你的錯 - Only the Mandarin characters came up - by Della Wu.
I wasn't able to finish this show before it left Netflix. I intend to get a Viki subscription but I'm putting that off until I watch more of what's available to me with my current options. If IP comes back to Netflix would I start watching it again? I just might. I'm a little curious as to what happens and if it gets better. I'd be up for one or two episodes a week to give it another shot. I won't be determined to watch it until the end, though. I did that with Love Now-3.6, and it was the wrong decision. On the other hand, I found The Fierce Wife-8 (same ML) highly questionable in the earlier episodes, but stuck with it, and ended up loving it. If I ever circleback, I'll report back.
Age 15+ references to bra size, adult situations
Rated TV-15
Re-📺? With the benefit of foreknowledge, I wouldn't choose to watch it for the first time.
In order of ~lite & trite~ to ~heavy & serious~ you may also like:
Taiwan🇹🇼:
Age of Rebellion-9.5,
The Fierce Wife-8,
Two Fathers-7.5
💓 -
C🇨🇳:
A Little Thing Called First Love 8.5;
Find Yourself 8.9;
The Romance of Tiger and Rose 9.8;
The Sleepless Princess 9.1;
Wait, My Youth-8.4
Romance junkies only: Accidentally in Love-6.5 ‘18 B-level scripting, acting, and directing, but still fun/strangely relaxing to watch,
Well-Intended Love-7.5 Rom-porn - extra points for the dopamine but many object to an outrageous stunt the ML pulls,
When I Fly Towards You-7.8,
You are my destiny-6.8 cute and sweet and 1/2 padding,
Meteor Garden-7.4 - 70% flowing 30% dragging and BOF is better,
Hidden Love-7.8
K🇰🇷 :
A Witch's Love 7.8;
Love To Hate You 8.9;
Touch Your Heart 8.2;
Crash Landing On You 9.1;
Oh My Ghost 10;
It's Okay Not to Be Okay 9;
Hospital Playlist 9;
My Mister 9.5;
🎎 -
C🇨🇳: Overlord 8.4,
Under the Power 8.6,
The Rebel Princess 9.1,
The Sword and the Brocade 8.6 (in ancient Chinese opera style),
The Rise of Phoenixes 9
K🇰🇷:
My Only Love Song 8.7 excellent comedy;
Mr. Queen 8.5;
My Sassy Girl 8.5;
The King's Affection 8.3;
Mr. Sunshine 9
🔮🐉-
C🇨🇳: Love Between Fairy & Devil 8.9;
Douluo Continent 9.4;
Handsome Siblings 8.7;
Ancient Love Poetry 8.6;
Love and Redemption 10
Japanese🇯🇵 lite romcoms: Maid Sama-10, Mischievous Kiss Love in Tokyo-7.8, Love, Chunibyo And Other Delusions-8.4, Toradora-8.5
IP is a 2011 release that is rated 7.6 on MDL. It is 1 season consisting of 84 43-minute episodes. EIGHTY-FOUR. People really don't know when to stop.
Annie Chen (Tears on Fire, Endless Love, Love Now-3.6) is FL, Song Yi “Jie”. She's a self-described mean person. She's very unpleasant to bad people, especially men who take advantage of women. A legal assistant, she's failed the bar. More than once. More than twice. More than thrice, even. Chris Wang (The Fierce Wife-8, Love Is Science?) plays Ke “Wei” Xiang who is running the family business, so he never has time to date. Furthermore, even if he does try to date, his grandmother insists that he's engaged from before birth by a legally binding agreement. Arranged? That's understating it. They have a bona fide written & signed contract. The only problem is that they've lost the fiance. No one kept track because only Grandma took the deal seriously from the start. Wei would like to be in love. Jie is skeptical of love. She just wants to be an attorney. But every time she tries to take the bar, something goes wrong. It's like a curse. Unbeknownst to Jie, Grandma's been looking for her.
Can Chris Wang act? Absolutely ~ He's the perfect stiff in a suit. All I can say is that this is the second show in which I've seen him, and I'm not tired of watching him on screen yet - probably because I liked The Fierce Wife-8 so much. Annie Chen has lots of fans. She is certainly a cutie. I don't mind her, but I will gently point out that she's not a very good actress. In addition, the overly nasal tones in her voice are wearisome. The better looking a person is, the less talent s/he needs to be successful. For lots of viewers, looks is enough; others need an emotional or even an intellectual connection. It's like actors have stones composed of their assets (attractiveness and abilities) and viewers have buckets that must be filled in order for them to enjoy the performance. Every viewer's bucket is a different size, and some have holes that stones of a certain variety will fall right through. Therefore, every person will perceive them differently. Annie & Chris may not draw me to a feature, but they won't stop me from viewing it either.
Eh, scratch that. I wrote that too early. That is how I /want/ to feel. Honestly, this is my second Annie Chen feature, and I was underwhelmed by her in the first, but other things were so bad it took the focus off of her. In IP, I really can't stand her character. I loathe her character, and I actively dislike her performance. Annie Chen in the lead might be a non-starter for me when making future viewing decisions - at a minimum, I'll take a long pause before hitting “play”. That makes me sad. I don't want to feel that way about any actress. But d@m, Jie is annoying. As for the rest of the cast, it's a mixed bag. Kunda Hsieh (Meet Me @ 1006, You Go! Girls!) is Ke Wei Cheng, Wei's trouble-making brother. Puff Kuo (20 Years Promise, Light the Night series) plays Li Er, Wei's troublesome childhood friend. Jennifer Hung (The On1y One, Dear Mom) portrays Ke Yan Ni, Wei's oft troubling sister, & Chris Lee (Marry My Dead Body, The On1y One) plays Wang Ke Fan, her oft troubled husband. Unfortunately, the acting is largely substandard. I attribute the flat performances to the directing. The screenwriters are Lin Pei Yu of Kiseki: Dear to Me & We Best Love series, and Shao Hui Ting of HIStory.
Jie is not a pleasant character. She's bossy, overly aggressive and has anger issues. The only likable thing she does is help out a woman whose spouse is cheating. She handles that aggressively, too. Even mom and grandpa have a hands-off approach to her. She's no fun at all! Before ep10 I was aggravated with her dramatic outbursts. Her trust issues are near pathological. They show her at work and she's /scary/. They portray her cross examining their OWN clients and then denying them representation - right in front of her boss. It's not going to happen IRL. Aggressive-agressive Jie is in dire need of anger-management. She is always angry at Wei. She's rarely in the right, though. She had no right to fume at him over a promise that he made and was unable to keep: It was entirely out of his control. Everything that happened was Jie's fault, anyway. She's hacked-off all the time, at everyone, in the first part of the show. Combative, too. The word is: Termagant. Wei says he would want to marry someone like Grandma: Someone optimistic, brave, strong, and also very kind. Jie is all of those ~ once in a great while ~ She's just not kind to Wei - or any other men.
The show opens with them happening upon each other in atypical circumstances. They each read the situation wrong and draw unfavorable conclusions about the other. Yet they keep running into eachother. But wait! It gets better! Jie's land is part of a parcel that Wei's company wants to buy. Jie's family is holding out - JIE is holding out - Mom & grandpop don't care. Fate certainly dropped the net over these two. There's a chain of circumstances and run-ins that keep them colliding. But Jie is no simple girl. She's not going to give up her deceased father's house. She pranks Wei which causes him embarrassing exposure. He decides to prank her back. They think they hate eachother at this point. They can't see how they've been pulled into a vortex, spinning and slowly pulling closer.
Grandma is pushin hard for this marriage. Here's another TwDrama where the matriarch drives the plot. Of the 6 I've seen, Autumn's Concerto-7.2 has a difficult mother at its core, Love, Now-3.6 happens in part because of Grandma pushing for marriage, Love You-7 is very much a woman-centered show and has a mother who drives the plot in the last third, and The Fierce Wife-8 is all about girl power. I'm sensing a pattern… Grandma's got a way of piling on the guilt. The backstory is sufficiently compelling. Jie's grandfather saved their lives one day. They entered into the contract on the spot as a way of thanking him. Then they later lost track of them. “We wouldn't be here without them," she moans. Grandma's also got a bad wig, btw. It's a little distracting.
“Why are they so adorable?” That's what Wei asks himself after meeting Jie's mother and grandfather. And they really are adorable. The whole scene is charming. It's no spoiler that they do go through with the marriage. They could have handled the steps leading to that decision much better. As hateful as she is to him, Jie blows a stack if she thinks he's having an affair (even though he's not allowed to touch her). Wei must endure a wife who has temper tantrums, is never kind, never does anything thoughtful or nice, but rather actively tries to /harm/ him. She acts unhinged.
After marriage (they skipped love) will there come a baby in the baby carriage? That's what Grandma is expecting. In the meantime, Wei Cheng's brother is messing up and getting into his own trublems - what's worse, it's triad-trublems. Another snagger is Li Er, Wei Cheng's childhood friend. She found out the marriage is fake and she wants the groom for herself. She starts working around the edges for wedges to put between them. Some of it is embarrassingly silly and some of it works. The storyline with Wei's Sister and her friend, Jia, is draggy. Most of the wardrobe is nauseating.
I got to the point where I couldn't pay attention pretty quickly. I had it on… I tried… but I found myself ‘double-tasking’ to a level where I was only checking in on the plot. Most of this show is padding - empty fluff to fill too many episodes. Shows like that can be relaxing, but no one can relax around Jie. Or Wei's obnoxious sister. Or Grandma, for that matter. Coincidentally, I began watching Prince of Tennis at the same time and was having the same issue, only to a lesser degree. PoT is extremely relaxing to watch, and while it's a constant stream of nearly redundant tennis matches (whooda thunk?) so it feels somewhat fluffed, it's still unequivocally superior to IP. Around this time I was also watching My Sunshine-6.8, Love You-7 (or Drunken To LoveYou), Boss and Me-7, The Princess Royal, and even the arguably silly Black & White, with no problems.
These are technical criticisms. Everyone seems to have h/h own brand of guilty pleasure - we all luv us some awful entertainment when it pushes the right emotional buttons. There's nothing here to break the peace over or feel defensive about. IP had the /opposite/ effect on me, so I consider it both a technical and EQ failure.
There are praiseworthy elements. Say, that is one EPIC first date. They later go fishing and the pond is beautiful - Great filming. The soundtrack is the best of the TwDramas I've seen so far. Most of it is too-repetitive carnival style music, but they flash-out once in awhile. Shazamed: 不是你的錯 - Only the Mandarin characters came up - by Della Wu.
I wasn't able to finish this show before it left Netflix. I intend to get a Viki subscription but I'm putting that off until I watch more of what's available to me with my current options. If IP comes back to Netflix would I start watching it again? I just might. I'm a little curious as to what happens and if it gets better. I'd be up for one or two episodes a week to give it another shot. I won't be determined to watch it until the end, though. I did that with Love Now-3.6, and it was the wrong decision. On the other hand, I found The Fierce Wife-8 (same ML) highly questionable in the earlier episodes, but stuck with it, and ended up loving it. If I ever circleback, I'll report back.
Age 15+ references to bra size, adult situations
Rated TV-15
Re-📺? With the benefit of foreknowledge, I wouldn't choose to watch it for the first time.
In order of ~lite & trite~ to ~heavy & serious~ you may also like:
Taiwan🇹🇼:
Age of Rebellion-9.5,
The Fierce Wife-8,
Two Fathers-7.5
💓 -
C🇨🇳:
A Little Thing Called First Love 8.5;
Find Yourself 8.9;
The Romance of Tiger and Rose 9.8;
The Sleepless Princess 9.1;
Wait, My Youth-8.4
Romance junkies only: Accidentally in Love-6.5 ‘18 B-level scripting, acting, and directing, but still fun/strangely relaxing to watch,
Well-Intended Love-7.5 Rom-porn - extra points for the dopamine but many object to an outrageous stunt the ML pulls,
When I Fly Towards You-7.8,
You are my destiny-6.8 cute and sweet and 1/2 padding,
Meteor Garden-7.4 - 70% flowing 30% dragging and BOF is better,
Hidden Love-7.8
K🇰🇷 :
A Witch's Love 7.8;
Love To Hate You 8.9;
Touch Your Heart 8.2;
Crash Landing On You 9.1;
Oh My Ghost 10;
It's Okay Not to Be Okay 9;
Hospital Playlist 9;
My Mister 9.5;
🎎 -
C🇨🇳: Overlord 8.4,
Under the Power 8.6,
The Rebel Princess 9.1,
The Sword and the Brocade 8.6 (in ancient Chinese opera style),
The Rise of Phoenixes 9
K🇰🇷:
My Only Love Song 8.7 excellent comedy;
Mr. Queen 8.5;
My Sassy Girl 8.5;
The King's Affection 8.3;
Mr. Sunshine 9
🔮🐉-
C🇨🇳: Love Between Fairy & Devil 8.9;
Douluo Continent 9.4;
Handsome Siblings 8.7;
Ancient Love Poetry 8.6;
Love and Redemption 10
Japanese🇯🇵 lite romcoms: Maid Sama-10, Mischievous Kiss Love in Tokyo-7.8, Love, Chunibyo And Other Delusions-8.4, Toradora-8.5
Cet avis était-il utile?
