sweet fun romance

I initially started this one on a whim since I was looking for fluffy romance dramas to indulge in and decided to give this one a try, and thank goodness I did. Dear Herbal Lord is a fun little drama (24 half hour episodes split into 2 seasons, 12 eps per season) following herb fairy Song Lan as she tries to woo the king of medicine Chu Zhimo into marrying her, fulfilling the wish of Jiang Qingyun, the host of the body that she now resides in.

Like I said before, this drama is fairly short compared to other normal dramas (25+ eps with each episode averaging an hour) so the story is very fast paced, which is a good thing since there's no room for filler and unnecessary drama. There will be scenes that are a little confusing at first but they're quickly explained afterwards. Again, it's a short drama focused on romance so I'm not too critical of the story's logic.

The crux of the drama, the romance, is tooth rottingly sweet. Song Lan has an innocent air to her (mostly because as an herb fairy, she's never interacted with humans before inhabiting Jiang Qingyun's body), so she is very blunt and bold about showing Chu Zhimo her affections. Pair the unintentionally flirty Song Lan with cold-faced Chu Zhimo who is terrible with women, this is a hilarious pair and I have squealed at (and replayed) their scenes too many times to count. Special mention to Yan Xi for showing us that a cold and standoffish male lead doesn't mean being expressionless and being angry all the time!

To move the story forward, there will be angst, just to warn anybody who only wanted the fluff. To be precise, it's more of a dash of angst, a splash of noble stupidity but a truckload of dramatic irony (the audience knows everything but the characters do not). You will want to grab your screen and scream at characters that they're making a mistake, but you can't even hate them because from their perspective... they actually have a point. It does end happily, I can guarantee you that, so just trust the process ;)

Leaving a small blurb about my favourite character, Xiao Ziming. Add him to the ever-growing list of Second Leads That Deserve Better because he is so sweet and devoted to our female lead. Even though Song Lan/Jiang Qingyun is infatuated with Chu Zhimo, he still stays by her side and cheers her up when she's sad. Where can I find my Xiao Ziming in real life??

To end this off, I definitely recommend Dear Herbal Lord if you're looking for a light and sweet romance drama. Nothing convoluted, just Fluff (also the kiss scenes called me single in 520 different languages ;_; ).

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unfortunately not worth the time

This drama started out very promising, despite my lack of expectations considering this is Zhou Jieqiong's acting debut, and as our leading lady right off the bat. The first few cases were pretty good, not amazing, but I wasn't mad at it. It kept me watching. I also appreciate that these cases were all linked to the main plot of the show. They served as plot points that moved the story forward, not cases written for the sake of episode filler. There's quite a few opinions regarding Ran Yan as a character: either you're annoyed with her or just indifferent. In my case, I leaned towards the latter for the first half. Ran Yan does cause a bit of trouble and is reckless, but she redeems herself by pulling her weight when solving cases and she's good at what she does.

The second half of the drama is where, well, Everything went downhill. I'm not sure if it was bad editing or just lazy writing, but logic flew right out the window. There were so many plot holes; some that are sloppily filled in through dialogue later on, while some we didn't even get an explanation! Frankly, I'm convinced the show was originally a 50 episode drama that was forced to be shortened to 36 episodes, or else there is no reason for the editing of later episodes to be completely different other than just plain terrible scriptwriting. Ran Yan's choices and behaviour were also very questionable to me, completely opposite and inconsistent with early episodes. Her fickle mindedness between the two male leads made me sigh so many times I honestly lost count.

Speaking of our male leads, Su Fu's whole character development is more like character regression towards the end with his equally erratic behaviour, which they do provide an explanation as to why he is the way he is but I was not convinced. Also his lack of facial expression was disappointing (I know he's a "cold-blooded assassin" but that doesn't mean he has to be emotionless, especially in front of the girl he loves. It just does not cut it for me). Xiao Song seemed the most consistent out of the three, though certain scenes did not make any sense which, once again, I blame on the editing and writing. As someone who can't stand love triangles (it's so cliché), the love triangle was something I could stomach. Both male leads loved Ran Yan and put her safety before themselves, which earns a nod of respect from me, but the romance was quite bland. There weren't any specific romance scenes that stood out for me that made my heart flutter, so I honestly didn't have a preference on who Ran Yan should end up with.

Overall, this show was below average at best, which is a shame considering the potential it had in the beginning. The story was OK, and characters were also OK. The fact that my favourite character in the show isn't any of the main characters speaks volumes (it's Bai Yi by the way and his friendship with Sang Chen carried the show for me). There's plenty of other historical suspense dramas. This one, unfortunately, isn't worth the time.

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