John Hart
The Little Soap That Could!
This No-Budget Soap Opera starts in the 70s with a bunch of childhood friends who we follow thru the decades and their trials and tribulations. What grabbed my interest was how 'communist' it was compared to other C-Dramas I've watched. I really knew nothing about this time in China's history. The other interest here was, well, I was the age of these characters in the 70's in America. And so while I was listening to the Bee Gees, they were doing all sorts of different things.
If you want to know if you should watch this show with as little spoilers as possible, I'll tell you this: I've watched better shows. So if you're new to C-Dramas, this won't disappoint because you have not seen better yet. What I will tell the experienced viewer is that this is a very calm show that doesn't put you to sleep. (I enjoyed THREE BODY but man was that sleepy!) So if you're even curious like I was -- skip the rest of this review and give 3 episodes a try to see if you want to see Ep 4, okay?
Here's some thoughts in no order of importance --
1. Damn this thing was shot on a piggy bank. Pocket change. That's what I mean by a 'little' soap, like a small bar of soap in a hotel room. Despite this the show was pretty good looking. The photography wasn't inspired as much as... urm... just nice to look. The sets were crazy cheap but not as distracting as one reviewer had said. Lots of scenes were reported in on the phone as to avoid having to stage them. You don't watch this series for amazing production values. You watch it for --
2. -- this TERRIFIC cast. I came here for the male and female lead. I frankly feel they're much better here than they were in JOY OF LIFE Season One.
Li Qin ran around JOY with a leg of chicken being cute until the writers gave up on her. Here her character starts a little interesting but simply gets more and more interesting as the show progresses, especially in the 2nd half. (Be patient!) And she's particularly deep inside her character in the remarkably intense final episode.
Xiao Zhan is tackling a very difficult role of being a great guy, a dreamboat, and yet humble, and yet magnanimous, everybody's friend but sometimes someone's enemy too. Several someones. To be honest there were times where the demands of this role exceeded his abilities. The thing is he's just a little too handsome and that can be rather distracting from his character's struggles. You're like, "How can this gorgeous youthfun hunk of man be suffering?!?" Yet he did a pretty good job and I'd bet this role has made him a better actor. Give him time and he'll be the new Wallace Huo.
Liu Rui Lin and Cao Fei Ran play the most important supporting roles. As our ML's main 'brother', this Chinese Richard Gere clone has a thankless job playing Guohua... but kinda nails it. His love interest Hongling plays an even trickier role where you want to slap her sometimes but she can't help every last decision destiny has dropped on her. This actress carries a lot of the show's weight in the first half.
So you think that's it for couples in this show? HARDLY.
Zhao Xin and Cui Hang also make the experience worthwhile. Xin's 'Ye Fang' gets more and more interesting as the show progresses, and this poor actress must restrain herself the entire time. Hang's Hongjun is all over the place in a role that shouldn't work but utterly makes sense.
And get this. There's one more pair to tune in for: Zhang Ling Xin' and Lenox Lu are terrific too in an unexpected way. When Qi Tian first shows up in his truly stupid hat -- I didn't expect much from him. But his low weird gutteral way of speaking made him very different than the rest -- and like I keep saying -- his character grows on you.
There's even one more pair of actors that were eeriely like the Chinese Ralph and Alice Kramden (You Xian Chao and Gao Yuan). No, seriously. Check The Honeymooners on YouTube if you have no idea what I'm talking about.
3. The songs and incidental music in this show are lovely. A good soap opera has themes the play over and over and over and over (Twin Peaks) and this soap has them too. Mostly gentle piano pieces, and the lyrics of the songs they play translate well.
4. This show has two sets of parents that are nearly identical to Western eyes. Prying pushy Momma and Pushover Papa. This was the only casting mistake I caught in the series. Or really a writing error where on couple should have been Pushy Papa and Caring Momma.
5. I don't know what the deal is with C-Dramas but several I've seen end early. There's an episode around 27 that gave me the impression the story was minutes from being over. It feels like the producers were only allowed to produce that many episodes but when the studio saw it they said 'add 10 more'. The good news is that the additional episodes work fine, except perhaps the final one.
6. So if the production values are good, the cast great -- the only way to make this thing watchable is STORY. This is a story that relies heavily upon soap opera melodramatic tropes, which can make it feel so generic as to be generated by AI. This sounds like a knock but, hey, it's fun to watch a soapy melodrama as long as it's not stupid. And the inclusion of the military episodes in the first half is more inventive than hospital scenes, although those eventually merge.
As a Westerner and America, I was fearful this story might be propaganda. For the story starts in heavy communism but ends in vibrant capitalism. So which 'team' is this show on. What makes THE YOUTHFUL MEMORIES interesting is that it's on both teams.
(From here on I might get mildly spoilish -- so stop reading now if you want to be surprised. I won't be offended.)
The show starts with the idea that although communism isn't the most lavish of lifestyles, and that in the 70s if felt like everyone was in the military one way or another, it presented these days with the idea that everyone could have a place. All for one, one for all. Yes, there were misfits who resorted to criminal behaviors, but overall the show suggests that there was a sense of law, order, family, community, propriety, brotherhood, sisterhood, and love. Perhaps thru rose tinted glasses, but you follow me.
By the time commerce smashed into China, and times had changed, a weird thing happens. Brothers turn against brothers. Love and family may not be as compelling as getting rich quick. The unfortunate reality that capitalism generates WINNERS and LOSERS, introducing the idea of MUSICAL CHAIRS to communism. The same misfits and criminals are around societies edges, but this time capitalism is their friend instead of communism their enemy.
The show isn't as political as I'm making it sound. It's really who loves who and when and who doesn't and why, like any good soap. But I will spoil that the show ends with a happy medium politically -- if we meld the brotherhood of communism with the profits of capitalism, maybe life can improve for all in China.
Like almost every C-Drama I've watched, the show's ending was slightly fumbled. Towards the end of the penultimate episode, a new plot is introduced. And it's a biggy. It' s SUPER melodramatic. The problem is it's not what the story was leading up to, it's not named as a specific historical event that happened, and I think was thrown in for sensationalism and nothing more.
Often in American TV shows after 9/11 they threw in a 9/11 like event to rip open the wound and horror, and I believe this show did the same on a different type of tragedy. That said, the show handles this 'big' weird finish well so it's not a failure as much as a fumble.
Hope this helps someone!
If you want to know if you should watch this show with as little spoilers as possible, I'll tell you this: I've watched better shows. So if you're new to C-Dramas, this won't disappoint because you have not seen better yet. What I will tell the experienced viewer is that this is a very calm show that doesn't put you to sleep. (I enjoyed THREE BODY but man was that sleepy!) So if you're even curious like I was -- skip the rest of this review and give 3 episodes a try to see if you want to see Ep 4, okay?
Here's some thoughts in no order of importance --
1. Damn this thing was shot on a piggy bank. Pocket change. That's what I mean by a 'little' soap, like a small bar of soap in a hotel room. Despite this the show was pretty good looking. The photography wasn't inspired as much as... urm... just nice to look. The sets were crazy cheap but not as distracting as one reviewer had said. Lots of scenes were reported in on the phone as to avoid having to stage them. You don't watch this series for amazing production values. You watch it for --
2. -- this TERRIFIC cast. I came here for the male and female lead. I frankly feel they're much better here than they were in JOY OF LIFE Season One.
Li Qin ran around JOY with a leg of chicken being cute until the writers gave up on her. Here her character starts a little interesting but simply gets more and more interesting as the show progresses, especially in the 2nd half. (Be patient!) And she's particularly deep inside her character in the remarkably intense final episode.
Xiao Zhan is tackling a very difficult role of being a great guy, a dreamboat, and yet humble, and yet magnanimous, everybody's friend but sometimes someone's enemy too. Several someones. To be honest there were times where the demands of this role exceeded his abilities. The thing is he's just a little too handsome and that can be rather distracting from his character's struggles. You're like, "How can this gorgeous youthfun hunk of man be suffering?!?" Yet he did a pretty good job and I'd bet this role has made him a better actor. Give him time and he'll be the new Wallace Huo.
Liu Rui Lin and Cao Fei Ran play the most important supporting roles. As our ML's main 'brother', this Chinese Richard Gere clone has a thankless job playing Guohua... but kinda nails it. His love interest Hongling plays an even trickier role where you want to slap her sometimes but she can't help every last decision destiny has dropped on her. This actress carries a lot of the show's weight in the first half.
So you think that's it for couples in this show? HARDLY.
Zhao Xin and Cui Hang also make the experience worthwhile. Xin's 'Ye Fang' gets more and more interesting as the show progresses, and this poor actress must restrain herself the entire time. Hang's Hongjun is all over the place in a role that shouldn't work but utterly makes sense.
And get this. There's one more pair to tune in for: Zhang Ling Xin' and Lenox Lu are terrific too in an unexpected way. When Qi Tian first shows up in his truly stupid hat -- I didn't expect much from him. But his low weird gutteral way of speaking made him very different than the rest -- and like I keep saying -- his character grows on you.
There's even one more pair of actors that were eeriely like the Chinese Ralph and Alice Kramden (You Xian Chao and Gao Yuan). No, seriously. Check The Honeymooners on YouTube if you have no idea what I'm talking about.
3. The songs and incidental music in this show are lovely. A good soap opera has themes the play over and over and over and over (Twin Peaks) and this soap has them too. Mostly gentle piano pieces, and the lyrics of the songs they play translate well.
4. This show has two sets of parents that are nearly identical to Western eyes. Prying pushy Momma and Pushover Papa. This was the only casting mistake I caught in the series. Or really a writing error where on couple should have been Pushy Papa and Caring Momma.
5. I don't know what the deal is with C-Dramas but several I've seen end early. There's an episode around 27 that gave me the impression the story was minutes from being over. It feels like the producers were only allowed to produce that many episodes but when the studio saw it they said 'add 10 more'. The good news is that the additional episodes work fine, except perhaps the final one.
6. So if the production values are good, the cast great -- the only way to make this thing watchable is STORY. This is a story that relies heavily upon soap opera melodramatic tropes, which can make it feel so generic as to be generated by AI. This sounds like a knock but, hey, it's fun to watch a soapy melodrama as long as it's not stupid. And the inclusion of the military episodes in the first half is more inventive than hospital scenes, although those eventually merge.
As a Westerner and America, I was fearful this story might be propaganda. For the story starts in heavy communism but ends in vibrant capitalism. So which 'team' is this show on. What makes THE YOUTHFUL MEMORIES interesting is that it's on both teams.
(From here on I might get mildly spoilish -- so stop reading now if you want to be surprised. I won't be offended.)
The show starts with the idea that although communism isn't the most lavish of lifestyles, and that in the 70s if felt like everyone was in the military one way or another, it presented these days with the idea that everyone could have a place. All for one, one for all. Yes, there were misfits who resorted to criminal behaviors, but overall the show suggests that there was a sense of law, order, family, community, propriety, brotherhood, sisterhood, and love. Perhaps thru rose tinted glasses, but you follow me.
By the time commerce smashed into China, and times had changed, a weird thing happens. Brothers turn against brothers. Love and family may not be as compelling as getting rich quick. The unfortunate reality that capitalism generates WINNERS and LOSERS, introducing the idea of MUSICAL CHAIRS to communism. The same misfits and criminals are around societies edges, but this time capitalism is their friend instead of communism their enemy.
The show isn't as political as I'm making it sound. It's really who loves who and when and who doesn't and why, like any good soap. But I will spoil that the show ends with a happy medium politically -- if we meld the brotherhood of communism with the profits of capitalism, maybe life can improve for all in China.
Like almost every C-Drama I've watched, the show's ending was slightly fumbled. Towards the end of the penultimate episode, a new plot is introduced. And it's a biggy. It' s SUPER melodramatic. The problem is it's not what the story was leading up to, it's not named as a specific historical event that happened, and I think was thrown in for sensationalism and nothing more.
Often in American TV shows after 9/11 they threw in a 9/11 like event to rip open the wound and horror, and I believe this show did the same on a different type of tragedy. That said, the show handles this 'big' weird finish well so it's not a failure as much as a fumble.
Hope this helps someone!
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