Pretty good drama, but suffers from having too many protagonists

Watched up to episode 22 so thought I would share my thoughts. This is one of those ICAC kinda dramas, and it has the Youku signature gritty gray dark style we’ve come to expect from their dramas these days. It is pretty good and starts with the collapse of a building during an ICAC investigation that has 5 childhood friends get caught up in a lot of trauma and injury. Fast forward to present time and they have all grown up and have their own paths that all deal back together due to the collapsed building of the past. It is all written pretty well and starts off slow, but once the bad guys start doing their stuff a few episodes in is where it starts to get really good. The only thing holding this drama back are that there are too many protagonists in it and they do not bounce off each other effectively as foils for the other characters, instead we have Vincent Wong, Bosco Wong and Ron Ng all acting very serious and all shown to have contemplative moments, but they are very samey. There isn’t an upbeat member of their crew at all, so it just gets very depressing, especially when they are onscreen at the same time with Nancy Wu and Mandy Wong. Sisley Choi is the only upbeat person in the drama but she is not part of the main crew, and it seems Sisley has been typecast into these roles so you can see it coming a mile away. The true pull of the drama comes from the bad guys played by Ben Wong, and Derek Kwok, two complete and utter bastards that would do shady things for money. If it weren’t for them, this drama would be a 5 or 6, they pull it up to a 7

Update: I just completed watching the entire series and holy moley, I have to pull the score down to a 5 because the ending was so abrupt and ridiculous it gave me whiplash 3 times. We spend most of it watching Nancy Wu’s character trying to take down Ben Wong but it all fails, so literally in one episode near the end she basically goes “f*** it” and kidnaps Ben’s wife and kid and forces him to a confrontation and admit his crimes to a secret livestream. Like all the plans failed, but a last ditch unplanned attempt in one episode out of 27 suddenly works? That is some lazy writing and it annoyed me to no end.

And to top it off, I forgot to mention in my earlier post that that many of the scenes are dubbed over, with the native cantonese speakers having to dub over their lines again. This is quite typical with many Youku productions, but the problem here is that the dub does not provide good lip syncing at all is it looks very out of place. Just get a better boom mic, please!

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Erm….

This drama started off pretty well with action and a massive PTSD situation that have our main characters have huge changes to their careers. We get glimpses of PTU and OCTB working together and it is great… but…

What makes this drama quite annoying to me is that the wonderful Rebecca Zhu is a lead investigator in the OCTB and scenes with her were great, but the drama focuses too much on the PTU that we don’t get enough scenes with her! Why? Why do this?

And boy, everything bad keeps happening to Jonathan Cheung and his family. He is not even a main character, but for reasons only the writers can understand, all the crazy stuff at the beginning of the drama all happened to him, and I found it such lazy writing, like a school accepting bribes, his kid getting kidnapped, his kid nearly dying, getting abducted and beaten up in a case of mistaken identity, his son stealing money from the family because he joined some small time triads, his mother-in-law stupidly getting conned out of her lifesavings so he has a huge debt to pay on her behalf, wife having to deal with his father hiring illegally for cheap labor, like nearly everything happens to this family. Come on, please give this family a break! I started shaking my head whenever something happened, so I know later more stuff would happen to his family because the writers are clearly sadistic.

Then we have Owen Cheung as the classic trope of someone undercover for the cops and having to carefully navigate his way around the Police and the triads. This was so predictable that I called it immediately when I saw him and it got boring real fast. He really wanted to desperately become a cop again, so I knew the drama would throw something to prevent such a thing happening and boom… he has a brain bleed that impairs his vision so he can’t be a cop anymore. And in typical TVB nonsense, he tells nobody about, not even his handler.

Talking about his handler… the handler just sucks. He sucks in this role and he sucks in every role. I can’t remember his name but what this show really needed here was Michael Miu as the handler. Jesus, I miss Michael.

Joel Chan is the other male lead and he is okay. I mean in all these action dramas his role is pretty much the same so when you see him in a public servant uniform you know pretty much how it is going to turn out. I like the guy but these roles for him are pretty safe and, if I’m honest, a little boring.

By far the most annoying person in this drama is played by Adrien Yau. I cannot stand him in this role as a rebellious moron trying to be a gangster with his 3 other young friends. I understand his back story and him trying to portray an impetuous youth but come on, you have better people for this! Even Ricco Ng would be a better choice as he has infinitely more charisma.

Surprisingly, the best roles are were with Hugo Wong and Benjamin Yuen. They are both undoubtedly villains and really hateful ones as well with no compassion at all for anything or anyone save for one or two people, but their conflict really was a great story driver. You could cut the revenge story out of this drama and make an entirely separate drama from it without an issue. But of the two of them, Benjamin edges out slightly because he was such a huge bastard and steals every scene he was in. He is unpredictable and you don’t know what he would do next, like when his underling messed up. The underling apologises and asks for some money so he can go into hiding, and Ben replies “sure. Hey, have some noodles before you go.” And as the guy sits down and gets ready to eat, Ben says “you want money? Get it from down there.” And throws the underling from the roof of the building. That’s hardcore.

The score for now is 5 out of 10 because sadly Hugo and Ben have stopped appearing in the drama, so we’ll have to see where it goes. We all knows Ben is still alive after the implied “death” and if he comes back it’s an automatic +1 point to score but for now it’s meh. So far I’m episode 17.

Episode 19: yup I called it. I said before Jonathan Cheung’s family would end up with more nonsense happening to them and boom, it happened. His wife, played by Kelly Fu, wanted to go out and work to support her husband after her idiot mother was conned and fell into all the debt her husband had to repay. She got a job at a hair salon her old friend opened and she was doing okay but suddenly young girls started chasing after her and asking for refunds. Turned out her boss said he could get Blackpink tickets easily, which are usually sold out, so Kelly thought she could make some quick cash by essentially being a scalper. Each ticket costs 1000 HKD at face value but she charged 6000 HKD, and once 20 young girls purchased them, Kelly sent all the money to her boss to get the tickets. Her boss suddenly replied “oh sorry I couldn’t get the tickets” and before she could ask for the money back, her boss flew to Japan for “business”. Suddenly, Jonathan now has an extra 6000 HKD x 20 angry girls = 120000 HKD of debt to repay thanks to his wife! Like what was his wife thinking? There was foreshadowing of the wife’s naive nature when her son didn’t want her to go out to work because she was so gullible and easy to con, but man I felt so bad for Jonathan when this occurred.

And to top it off, you would think the notion of going out to find work and helping your husband repay your own mother’s debt was noble, but after she started working there were no arrangement on who would look after the 3 kids at home. Jonathan would have to ask his own mother to help out or be at home to take care of the kids when he was not on duty as a Police Sergeant. Jonathan had to take care of everything. And when Kelly got her first pay-check the first thing she did was buy gifts for everyone. Kelly, honey, your mother has a huge debt your husband is paying off for you. Stop wasting money. Even better, stay home and look after your kids since you’re easily conned and you can’t afford a babysitter.

Episode 20: oh my God, Kelly is at it again with another job, this time as an insurance sales rep. Do you wanna bet another TVB trope of “hey you're a woman trying to sell me insurance, have sex with me and I’ll sign” will be in play? Possible attempted rape later as well. Look, after the Blackpink you would think she would stay home but nooo. Let’s see how this unfolds.

And man, Adrien Yau is still being an idiot. The cops chase after someone shoplifting a phone and coincidentally Adrien steps out of the public bathroom and is stopped by cops, and he has the same model phone on his person. This was bought legitimately like 10 minutes earlier, so all he had to do was politely suggest to the cops to go back to the shop and compare the IMEI number of his phone with the one stolen and get the purchase receipt from his girlfriend and boom no problem. Instead, he gets all upset and actually punches the cop. Ffs, when cops are involved just cooperate and you can be smug later when you’re proven right. All he did was make his life harder by attacking a police officer.

Episode 22: oh look, Kelly is again in deep doo doo. As an insurance sales agent she also dabbled in cryptocurrency so managed to make a lot of money, at least on the surface, so she started disrespecting my boy Jonathan. But then, later while she was in Singapore on a business trip, her mom runs to Jonathan and says “Oh no she might be in trouble” as it is revealed she dabbled in crypto and might have been conned. Wtf? So she now has another lump of debt for her husband to repay. Jonathan tried to call her but can’t get through. Good work Kelly, you stupid b….

And boy the worst acting in the drama was in this episode. Carmen Ngai is at hospital because her dad, a triad boss, had died and she had to identify the body, but my goodness she didn’t even shed a tear for her dad. She was making crying noises but it was so fake like come on Carmen! You graduated from TVB academy right? Wtf was that s**t? Just awful.

Best part was with Owen Cheung and Elaine Yiu as Owen now knows that Elaine found out he is an undercover cop. The conflict is predictable but after the other nonsense of the episode it was a welcome bit of drama to cleanse the palate.

Oh yeah, and Adrien’s girlfriend had both her kidney’s harvested in Thailand while she was trying to be her own boss. I should feel bad but at the same time I just thought “pfft serves you right” as she was young and naive but wanted to get rich quickly.

Completed: okay, I’ve finished the drama and I can say the ending was so unsatisfying. There was a hint of Rebecca Zhu getting back with Joel Chan, but instead Joel marries his crappy girlfriend that kept running off on her worldwide escapades with Rebecca’s younger brother. Like what a terrible couple they made and it screams divorce if there is ever a 2nd season.

And Benjamin came back! I knew he would return, but I didn’t expect the plot twist of his wife still being alive. That caught me off-guard and the explanation for how she survived was such nonsense but boy can Benjamin emote really well. He is still a hateful and disgusting person, but his devotion to his wife was very touching and I couldn’t really hate him. Instant +1 to the overall score.

We also get to see Owen Cheung become a cop again. It was touch and go with him not really wanting to return as a cop, but in the end he showed up as a constable and surprized Joel Chan by being in uniform. Owen’s complicated relationship with Elaine Yiu made for great drama and conflict, but it was all so predictable. Plus, despite everything he did, Adrien never had a good life and ended up in prison anyway, so all that effort was just a waste of time.

So Benjamin ends up dying at the end of the drama for real, and we get a post credit scene where someone in a mask and black overcoat is seen cutting something up. It turned out Benjamin’s body was stolen and his flesh was minced up and fed to dogs. Everybody I spoke to seemed to think it was Owen that did it, but I’m not convinced. I think this is setting up a season 2 and this mysterious person is the next major criminal mastermind. Overall it was okay with some great performances from some actors, but overall just average with an unsatisfying ending.

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Basically a huge advertisement for HKIA

You know… I knew this would be somewhat of a program informing viewers of how Hong Kong International Airport functions, but I was not prepared for episode 1. We get introduced to the main characters and how they worked together, but suddenly, out of the blue, JW’s Wish started to play. This was the love theme for Kenneth Ma and Natalie Tong in Big White Duel, which represented their connection despite being divorced, so why was it playing here? Because Kenneth Ma here is divorced from Sisley Choi. I found that so lazy, like the only thing that could make it lazier would be Sisley Choi divorcing him because of a miscarriage that was her fault and Kenneth not knowing about it. In any case, episode 1 ends in a spectacularly cheesy way with the main cast all staring off into the sun in the distance. Was it meant to be inspirational? Dude, it’s just an airport!

Episode 2 introduces some other supporting cast members and more BAU airport activities, but what I noticed that was not normal was how everybody - and I mean EVERYBODY - brought up Kenneth and Sisley’s divorce so casually as if it was a minor thing and even tries to get them back together. I don’t know if the writers have been around real divorced people who work together but nobody brings it up out of respect as it would make for some real awkward moments if done so. Even if they do it would be every now and then as required, here it is constant “I’m a divorcee” or “hey sis-in-law opps lol not really”… just no.

Do you know what I found really wrong? Some of the depictions of the staff and commuters at the airport. Man, the staff at the check-in desk were really patient and talked to this old gentleman as he couldn’t find his passport, and after some time he found it made some small talk with the check-in staff. Do you know what would happen in real life? He would be asked to stand aside to allow other passengers to check-in while he looked for it as the other passengers in the queue all start asking, “Yo, what’s the hold up?”

And man, the theme song sucks. It is so forgettable it is like why even bother. They could have saved the money and just do an ICAC musical thing and boom done it would have made no difference.

As this is just 10 episodes long in total, there are not many more episodes to see if things improve, but I am not holding my breath. A completely quick cash grab HKIA sponsored load of nonsense so far.

Episode 3: BAU, but Sisley Choi is really annoying in this episode as we see her and Kenneth dancing awkwardly around the fact they are divorced but still have to work together. You can tell Kenneth wants to get back with her but she’s all evasive.

Episode 4: man this episode… like what were the cameramen thinking. Rosita Kwok was wearing a really short skirt to show off her legs, but in one scene the camera was almost an upskirt shot. That had me thinking “what the he…” What made it worse was how unflattering the shot was as you could see all sorts of blemishes on her legs.

Episode 5: this episode had more things that had me call BS. As the episode starts, the airport staff started looking for somebody because they were going to miss their flight and going out of their way to look for them. It turned out the passenger was just shopping and even asked for a few more minutes when they find her. In real-life you know that airport personnel would just let her keep shopping as it isn’t their problem if she missed her flight. I also found Rosita extra annoying this episode as she had dropped her ID card and it was found by Ricco. Ricco tries to return it but she is unbelievably rude to him, even later snatching the card from his hand at lost and found. No normal person would act like this in a professional setting especially to someone they just met when Ricco did not even do anything inappropriate.

Episode 6: not bad.

Episode 7: finally something somewhat juicy is happening with Tiffany and Sisley meeting for the first time, the ex-girlfriend and ex-wife of our charismatic main Kenneth, and only Tiffany knows their status. See this is what I am talking about, but this is introduced too late so I know it is not going to escalate much.

Episode 8: another run-of-the-mill episode. Man, it ends with Rosita in a flight simulator and she’s all wide-eyed and full of wonder. The machine isn’t flying anywhere nor did it have any actuators to simulate movement. It is a stationary cockpit with computer generated imagery. This is like being amazed that the popcorn button of your microwave burns your popcorn.

Episode 9: okay this episode really annoyed me. We finally get the scene where Kenneth and Sisley discuss their divorce and I thought we would get some startling revelation about why they were divorced because they were clearly still in love. And the reason? Sisley: I forgot the reason. Kenneth: same here, must have been trivial. Like wtf, you cannot remember why you guys got divorced? You separated, you signed the papers, and you cannot remember why? I thought maybe it was something traumatic they didn’t wanna discuss and TVB would give us a flashback but no, no flashback no nothing. This show treats marriage and divorce like minor things, and us the audience as idiots if they think we would just roll with that. As this is episode 9 it is clear this will be the only time the subject is approached and the next and final episode they will get back together. Man….

Episode 10: the last episode wraps up the show and pretty much tries to wrap up all loose ends. However, Kenneth and Sisley’s getting back together really annoyed me. Kenneth finally remembered why they got divorced, but Sisley says he doesn’t have to remind her as they shouldn’t dwell of the past and only on the future. So basically we never find out why they were divorced and Sisley really doesn’t want to discuss where they went wrong in the past to improve their relationship going forward. What lesson was this trying to teach its viewers? What was that nonsense?

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A surprisingly good drama

I didn’t know what to expect watching this but I found myself really enjoying this drama. Joe Ma is the cool and suave bodyguard that we are getting used to watching but it never gets old, and pairing him up with Ali Lee was a great decision. The story was quite ridiculous but I let it off the hook because the drama was just so entertaining. The general premise is that Ali Lee’s character got married in England but her husband couldn’t have kids, so they got donated sperm from the sperm bank , which coincidentally was donated by Joe Ma after losing a bet. Somehow, Ali finds out the doner was Joe so travels to HK to find him many years later after her husband passes away. Already the setup is a huge “wtf?” in my mind, and yet somehow it works. Ricco Ng plays the 17-year-old son to the two biological parents and somehow he managed to pull it off. He really does act and sound like an immature teenager.

Although the main actors were great, the major stand out for me was Yoyo Chen. Her character was flawed for sure but the number of scenes with her were all incredibly entertaining thanks to the personality of the character she was portraying. She plays the aunt to Joe Ma who just so happened to be younger than Joe in the drama, so the interactions between them can be a little awkward but hilarious as a result. The scene where she gets proposed to put a huge smile on my face.

But despite all these great things, it suffers from the old TVB rushed ending that make things a bit weird. It is not as bad here, but the final episode where Ali kept pushing Joe away made no sense. She explained it to her best friend but even then I was scratching my head thinking “what are you talking about?” It does have a happy ending, thank goodness, but that last episode for the most part had me really confused over what the writers were thinking.

Overall, a great feel good series and worth rewatching in future!

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Lol episode 1 and already it is all so predictable

Man, I love Joe Ma but this drama from episode 1 had been predictable, and I mean every typical TVB trope was thrown in here from amnesia, lost in translation in a foreign country, suddenly causing a wedding to be cancelled, the situations that force boy and girl to embrace… everything is used in episode 1. I swear every time I called out a prediction it came true because of how lazy whomever wrote the screenplay for this was.

Man… the worst part? Joe Ma got an award near the start of the 1st episode, and when there was close up of the award it made me laugh out loud. It had the label “23rd Top Ten figthers award”, but they made a typo with the word “fighters” and wrote it “figthers”. Clearly it is wrong but they decided not to change it. That alone tells you how much budget was allocated to this drama, so who knows about the quality of the upcoming episodes. Damn I’m worried.

Episode 4: watching up to this episode and so far everything has been predictable. Even the guy that tried to hurt Mandy Wong I got it mostly right. I knew he had gone to prison and someone would get run over on the road because that’s the TVB way. I thought both his wife and kid would get hit and killed by a car but it was just the wife, so I’ll give that to TVB.

Some scenes were just plain setting a bad example for viewers. Joe Ma drove in this classic red BMW 5 series convertible to pick up Kelly Cheung. He spent the entire drive with one hand on the stick, which was on purpose so that Kelly could put her hand on his during one of their touching chats. This meant for the entire trip Joe was steering one handed, very safe (!). When we see Kelly put her hand on Joe’s, we can clearly see the car had automatic transmission and he had it on drive, so there was no reason to have his hand on it besides from the Director wanting the shot where they held hands. Lol what?

What I found hilarious was the obvious product placement of the red flower oil. Man, they zoom in so you get a good hard look at the bottle just before Kelly Cheung uses it on Joe.

Update: I’ve watched up to episode 14 and man what have I been watching? This drama is just a giant commercial and platform to advertise products. You’ll see how the actors blatantly put cup noodles, medicinal rubbing oils, paper map books and even Seahorse mattress. Jesus!

So far, some things in the drama have been so bad, like when Joe Ma grabs Mandy Wong to jump out of a boarded up window because the place was on fire. I thought it was quite high up, but they just crash through the wooden boards as if they were made of paper, then landed on the ground outside on the same level! That had me laughing out so loud because of how stupid it looked.

Another one that had me go wtf was when somehow Joe Ma worked out how some special code written in an old diary entry by Mandy was deciphered using the map book. The code was something like MB123456, and somehow from that Joe worked out MB was for “map”. How does MB mean map? And the numbers were the page number and co-ordinates on that page. Joe then randomly grabs a map book that he happened to have in a car, and coincidentally this was the right book to use to apply his theory. Joe then travelled to that location with his partner and they started randomly digging to look for whatever may be hidden. This part made me laugh even harder because Joe started digging in one spot 3 times and decides nope, not here. He walked to a second location and dug twice and bang, he hit something! He quickly dug it out and it was a small metal box the size of a tissue box. Like how lucky was that! Second attempt and somehow Joe hits that tiny tissue box! Man, why didn’t he use a metal detector to make it more believable? Joe took the box home, opened it and finds a dictation machine buried there 7 years ago. Joe turned it on and there is power! 7 years in the ground and the machine still had power to it! Joe listened to the last recording and of course it had a conversation that was incrimination to him so he deleted it.

This drama is going to get worse isn’t it?

Episode 18: omg, this episode gave us some proper laughable scenes. Check it out, Joey Law is going through 2015 street camera footage similar to Google Maps Streetview. Now, how can you get 2015 Streetview-like footage in 2023 I have no idea, but it is the same sort of browsing around the roads stuff. Joey virtually checks a road and suddenly he spots a couple in the back and in a complete blurry mess. Joey clicks to zoom in and suddenly we are shown a fully hi-res 4K crystal clear image of Joe and Kelly standing together as if it came from a DSLR. Like what technology was Joey using here? It doesn’t even blur out faces to protect identities or anything.

And the pièce de résistance, Joey Law tries to get access to Joe Ma’s safe and to do so he used a thin piece of plastic and places it over the safes’ keys. He doesn’t dust the keys or anything, just slaps the plastic on and lifts it to find black fingerprints on the keys Joe used to open the safe.

How is this drama rating higher than the drama Happily Ever after?

Episode 22: man this episode gave me some good laughs. Mandy nearly gets abducted, so she scratches the man’s right arm then falls over, hits her head and passes out. Joe Ma happened to be around, so he wrestled the same man. That man scratched Joe’s right arm as well before escaping. Mandy later sees Joe’s arm injured and suspects it was him. You know this is so stupid on so many levels because the suspect redirection was so forced, and also the cops here are not properly doing their jobs. If Mandy scratched the man who tried to kidnap her, they could remove the skin from under her nails, do a DNA test like in past TVB dramas and prove Joe was not the man. Why was it not done here? Because the Director didn’t allow it in the plot.

Final update: man I just finished the drama and I can tell you one thing… I called it! I knew Joe Ma was a good guy, it is rare that he is the bad guy in these dramas so all the red herrings being planted throughout the drama to make Joe look like the bad guy I knew were all BS. But the biggest plothole was in episode one where it ended with Joe visiting the location where his then wife Mandy fell off the cliff. How did he know to go there? That was planted with no explanation since he didn’t know where Mandy went missing.

Of course, we have the misunderstanding fully revealed with Mandy realising Joe was the good guy right at the end, and we get the typical TVB trope of a diary entry left by Joe that explained everything on one page. It’s never a daily one page entry per day, it is always one page that explains everything in the past up to that point in time. Convenient. And I also called out that Mandy would get back with Joe and somehow their situations would be reversed. And guess what? It happened. So Joe saves Mandy from falling off the cliff again, but he himself nearly falls. However, his fiancee Kelly - who happened to be the original person who pushed Mandy off the cliff (which I also called out) - saves Joe and she herself instead fell down the cliff. Joe then gets knocked unconscious by Frederick Cheng and was about to be killed when conveniently the cops arrive with Joey Law, and Joe is left in a coma for one week. At the end of the week, a lady - whose face we are not shown - goes to visit Joe in his hospital bed. This is implied to be Kelly’s spirit as it has been a week and suddenly Joe wakes up. We see Mandy now looking after Joe and his company while Joe now has amnesia.

I found Mandy really annoying because I knew everything she was doing was a misunderstanding against Joe. Later after she allegedly regained all her memories, she claimed in public that it was Joe that pushed her off the cliff. This is so dumb, because near the end when Kelly rescues her from Frederick going nuts, she finally remembers it was Kelly who pushed her off the cliff, not Joe. We get a flashback and can see Kelly dressed in BLACK in the DAYTIME attacking Mandy and chasing her to the cliff without a mask on so Mandy could clearly see her face, and it was Kelly that shoved her off. That really made me angry with Mandy, like you can remember everything but you couldn’t remember that important moment that led to you going missing? Geez!

The weird thing was that Kelly was great in this drama. Frederick Cheng also did a great job as a spoiled rich kid who needed people to help cover up his nonsense. Most of the stuff happening in the drama was a result of him being an idiot and the cover ups not being good enough to prevent others finding out.

The biggest annoying person in the drama is by far Joey Law. He had funny moment for sure so he isn’t the usual wallpaper paste as in his other dramas, but he had this unexplained bias towards Joe that made no sense. Even before they met he was looking into Joe’s past and kept saying Joe was a liar and a pretender and a bastard… anything to make Joe sound like the bad guy when he had no basis to these beliefs. Later when they meet Joey is standoff-ish, and this continued throughout the entire drama even in situations where clearly Joe did nothing wrong.

Overall, a predictable drama and it is below average. It had sparks of something great and some of the actors made their roles look good, but man it suffered from too many issues to be good. Better luck next time TVB, stop reusing so many tired tropes in one drama! There should be a trope limit given to Producers before they start producing anything.

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Great show about TCM

Man I never thought I would enjoy a drama about traditional chinese medicine. They throw so many herb names around that I have no idea what the characters were saying, and stuff about qi blockages made me go “pardon?” But it ultimately was a great show because of the characters.

It depicts how tough it is for TCM practitioners to be taken seriously as modern western medicine has more respect, but it drives home the message of how TCM has existed for hundreds of years and many people are alive today as a result of it.

I liked most of the characters of the show but for most of it I really disliked Matthew Ho as he is this really naive and oblivious idiot that constantly pisses off Sisley Choi’s character. Sisley Choi is also not in a typical happy role this time, she plays a more down-to-earth serious role and it is about time as I was worried she was being typecasted into the happy hehe roles at TVB. But the biggest stand out for me was Ricco Ng as he was just a joy to watch, and I never thought I would be saying that. His acting has come on in leaps and bounds; he really has potential in becoming a male lead in a future big drama for sure.

Overall, a great drama that is held back by a really annoying main male protagonist who only barely redeems himself near the end of the drama.

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Haha predictable but entertaining, shame the ending sucks!

Man this is another run-of-the-mill rich family with typical rich family problems of siblings fighting over inheritance with the typical plot twists that are involved. This has the same formula except that it is still a very entertaining watch. We have a star studded cast led by Charmaine Sheh as the eldest grand daughter of the Yo family (or Qiu if you’re Mando) and we watch how her younger male cousin played by none other than Him Law trying to get in her way and usurp the title of hier. If you wanted to watch a drama to really hate Him Law then this is the perfect one to watch. He is a huge massive anus of a person and I spend most of my time watching the drama imagining him on fire.

Some of the plot reveals were so predictable and came about so rapidly that I found myself laughing at it all. The 2nd eldest son played by Gallen Lo has a great business sense but got into so much mischief in the past that it affected his wives (yes that’s correct, wives) and kids. Oh man, watch it to see what I mean. Let’s just say the 2nd wife has some loose lips.

In any case, I am enjoying how ridiculous everything in this drama is. As always, Raymond Lam is the coolest guy in the drama and has the best scenes. Can’t wait for the final episodes!

Update: I completed watching this ages ago but I had to watch it again to make sure before I complete this review and yes... it is terrible. It had such a good start, but the story and characters became so ridiculous that I stopped caring.

Let's start with the worst person in the show, and no it is not the character played by Him Law. It is actually the Gallen's 2nd wife played by Betsy Cheung. We spent the start of the drama thinking she was so nice and was a victim of constant bullying from Gallen's 1st wife , but later we discovered she was the biggest piece of human trash in the drama. In the past while Gallen only had one wife played by Candice Yu, he had an affair with Betsy Cheung. Later, Candice gave birth to a daughter and realised that her husband could not become the Yo family successor due to the traditional views of her father-in-law. At the same time, Betsy became pregnant with twins, and coincidentally one of the twins was a boy (Him Law). So, Gallen and Candice made a deal with Betsy to allow her to join the Yo family, but in return Betsy would have to surrender her son to Candice and take Candice's daughter as her own, officially making Betsy twins girls while Candice had a son, all this so Gallen could lay claim as successor to the family business. How convenient they became pregnant can gave birth at the same time.

You would think Betsy, as the third-party, agreeing to giving up her son for money and status would already making her a shitty mother, but it gets worse. She was afraid her daughter from the twin birth would be treated poorly by the 1st wife, so she swapped her daughter with Candice's just in case. This led to Candice treating Betsy's daughter as if it was her own and spoiling her. So in essence, she gave up BOTH her children.

And it gets even worse. Those twins are later found out to not even be Gallen's kids. In the past, while she was having an affair with Gallen, she was also sleeping with Raymond Lam's father played by Hugo Ng, making the twins half-siblings to Raymond. When I discovered all of those things, it just showed how awful Betsy was as a person, so the show trying to show her in sympathetic light just annoyed me so much. Candice is loud and obnoxious for sure, throwing her Princess tantrums when she cannot get what she wanted, but she was at least not a scheming anus like Betsy. I hated Betsy so much and was disappointed her ending did not result in her death.

Him Law here was a textbook psychopath. Everything he ever did was driven by intense selfishness and to serve his own ego. When he later discovered he was not Gallen's son, he got over it really quickly and then did everything in his power to not let this information leak out to Gallen because he did not want to lose everything. He also purposely did not share a fire hazard report to Charmaine so that she would get into trouble and have to spend time in prison. He also kept making stupid mistakes that most rational people would not do, like return to a crime scene. When Gallen found out Him was not his son, they gotinto a struggle , which led to Him murdering his father with a glass ornament in Gallen's office. Later, Him returns to the office at night to find the ornament, but he is caught by the police. Dumbass. His ending was too good for him as he got hit by a van while trying to make a getaway and entered a coma, with the drama ending with him still comatose. Just kill him already!

One of the points that made me feel really sick was Toby Leung declaring her love for Raymond. We later discovered that she was Raymond's half-sister when she did DNA analysis, and we found her throwing up after discovering she was in love with her own brother. That really made my stomach turn when I found out, like the writers were out of their minds when they wrote that into the drama. She later ends up getting killed by Him Law when she threatened to reveal their true parentage and mess up Him's plans, so he smacked her into the water and watched her slowly drown.

I am most disappointed with the character of the eldest brother played Benz Hui. He was divorced from his first wife, Charmaine's mother, and managed to bag himself a younger wife played by Dada Chan. He mentioned many times that he did not want to take over the family business and would not fight for it, but I thought this was a ruse and he was quietly plotting behind the scenes to take over, like Benz is known to do in other dramas, but NO! He is just useless! He later discovered that his daughter was made go to prison by the machinations of Him Law, but it required Charmaine saying, "You know this and you won't sit on the board to help me fight them?", so he reluctantly became Vice-Chairman on the board. And just when I thought maybe he would stand up and protect Charmaine in his new position, his new wife ends up having a miscarriage and nearly gets herself and Candice killed, so he decided to step down as Vice-Chairman to spend time looking after his wife, leaving Charmaine to fend for herself. Father of the f'ing year here. His ending was that his wife ran away because of the guilt she felt for the miscarriage and it ended with Benz still looking for her. WTF?

And don't think Charmaine was any better. Her role in this is almost only as eye candy as she does almost nothing significant and was basically this person that got shoved around and had thing happening around her or to her with not much she could do about it. She doesn't scheme, she doesn't make plan A and plan B or contingencies to deal with stuff, all she does is "I will do this and that's it" and then when the crap hits the fan oh no, she has no plan to get out of it. Raymond had to save her a few times, but she inevitably still had to go to prison for a few weeks thanks to the fire hazard incident. She only did a few things near the end of the drama, but only because Raymond armed her with knowledge she could use to attack with. Her character was just fodder for the plot to progress, and that makes me sad because she is a great actor completely wasted.

The best character is played by Raymond Lam. He played a lawyer and former boyfriend of Charmaine. They broke up because he was caught making out with another woman in his car but lied to Charmaine about it when she caught him in the act. She could not forgive his cheating so broke up with him, but there were many opportunities they could have gotten back together but never would because of this thorn in Charmaine's mind. He still deeply cares about her and would do everything in his power to help her whenever she got into trouble. I felt so bad for him when he discovered from Hugo Ng that Him Law was his half-brother, because Raymond really despised Him especially after finding out Charmaine went to prison because Him withheld information. However, despite being my favourite character in the drama, I still believe he doesn't deserve to be with Charmaine, and this is because of Raymond Wong. Raymond Wong plays a rich guy who had helped Charmaine a lot and also had feelings for her. He did nothing but support her in the drama and was an overall great guy. At the end when the van hit Him Law that left him comatose, it should have also hit Charmaine but Wong pulled her out of the way and took the van hit in her place. He survived it and so more than deserves to be with Charmaine. Plus with all the history between Raymond Lam's family and her, this would be for the best.

As for the other characters, they were just there, just like Jeannie Chan who played Candice's actual daughter. She just existed and left no lasting impression at all. Her performance here was akin to her performance The Beauty of War, except less annoying because she was not a massive push over. Even the legendary Lau Kong never had a chance to shine as he only had a few episodes to act in before he died in the drama. The worst use of a "cameo" was with Wilson Tsui, who played a crazy homeless guy and spoke to Him Law while Him was having his bouts of depression in his Lamborghini. Wilson appeared more than once so it was not really a cameo, but he served NOOO purpose at all. Why bring him in if it served no purpose?

This drama ends with Charmaine and Raymond Wong at a church getting married when suddenly somebody opened the church doors and a silhouette of somebody - I am assuming Raymond Lam - was there to stop it. It ends there but I can tell you now we do not need a direct sequel to this drama. It was overall terrible and just average at best. Raymond Lam's star power really can pull things back from the abyss but it cannot elevate this pile of vomit above average, so much so that this is not worth a rewatch like I did as I was speechless the first time and needed to make sure I didn't hallucinate the entire thing. The first drama with Tavia Yeung and Julian Cheung was vastly superior.

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Man what a strong start

Episode 1 just dropped and I gotta say it is a strong start. Him Law and Yoyo Chen are the first couple featured in the first story and the acting here is incredible, just top class stuff. It was also masterfully written because it starts at the current situation and then the past is slowly revealed so it allows the viewer to have some sympathy for Him Law that lingers even after the reveal is made. Him Law and Yoyo Chen play a happily married couple and have a daughter together, but as the episode goes along you can quickly see that they are going through a divorce and the wife is very cold and angry. You feel bad for Him as you see how terrible his situation is, but as you think Yoyo is a hateful bitch, there is a big reveal where Him cheated on her with another woman, and even though she forgave him she found he had been writing a novel about his experience. This made her lose her calm and she goes full on angry tiger woman mode. I was firmly on Him’s side, but after that reveal I was emotionally conflicted. If the story had been told from beginning to end we would not have had that same emotional reaction as we would have known immediately Him was the asshole. Well played writer, well played.

I am now excited for the other stories and this first one is not even done yet! Most of the cast is strong but we do have the yawn inducing Joey Law in there so I am dreading his story coming up as he is awful at acting, but we’ll see how it goes. Good start so far!

Episode 3: man Chris Lai is so cool in this episode. His character here for the first story is elaborated on and we see he is actually is a great guy and really wants to help Him Law and Yoyo Chen be okay together. We see the flashbacks and how he encourages Yoyo to be more open minded to how annoying her husband is. Later, unsurprisingly, we discover Chris has feelings for Yoyo ever since they first met but was unable to act upon them because he was such a girl magnet (and rightly so, he is damn charming). They share a kiss during a time when Yoyo was really upset over her husband, but he managed to push her back to prevent it getting out of hand. This causes some tension between him and his girlfriend, especially when he finds out that it was his girlfriend’s younger sister that slept with Him Law, but he sorts it out by being honest with her sells his car where he shared the kiss with Yoyo so he can forget about it. Man, this was a good episode.

Update: man what a rollercoaster. This show brings to light how complicated and complex it is being an adult and being in love. It shows how divorce can affect the most innocent victims in a marriage: the children, and it shows how someone's love can go through changes and lead to different destinations.

Chris Lai's story is really sad but he is also my favourite character in the drama. He goes from a carefree laid-back kind of lover and matures into a more serious person and we see this emotional growth. His and Winki's story had a really sad subplot that drove a wedge between them, but I am glad in the end it all worked out.

This drama is also the only drama where I found Joey Law tolerable. His immaturity remained almost constant throughout the drama, but he finally matured - along with the former loveaholic Venus Wong - that he managed to save their failing marriage.

The only annoying factor here is Him Law. Man, his character was so darn annoying. He messed up at the beginning, messed up later when in a new relationship, then when he was semi-back with his wife and found out he had cancer in his right leg, he started to push his family away, acting nonchalant and telling his daughter he wouldn’t be around forever, especially when his daughter really needed him. His daughter put it best when she said, "Are you guys crazy?" When she called out her mum on her control freak nature and her Dad for being stupid trying to push them away when he had cancer, and they both just walked away from her. Why do TVB HK dramas always do this? A character finds out he has a terminal illness, so to "protect" his family he doesn't tell them, stays away from them to ease them into not having them around, and then decides to suffer in silence. That's so stupid, when they die their friends and family would all find out anyway and hate them for not telling anybody. Please stop this TVB, be normal for once.

Overall, a great series worth rewatching!

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A surprisingly good romantic drama

I have only seen this up to episode 9 but I feel I need to put out there how much I enjoy watching this drama. I remember seeing the ad for this with Karl Ting and Crystal Fung plastered all over it and I thought, "Oh no, this is going to suck." I mean the last few roles they had weren't particularly rememberable and they never left a lasting impression. However, this drama had them turn it all around. I can feel their chemistry on the screen and the scenes where they were together and enjoying each other's company felt very genuine. This is all bolstered by a great romantic theme song "Officially Missing You" sang by Aster Lau that is easy to listen to and enjoy time and time again.

I, also so far, have not found any character to hate. The supporting cast are all great and have their own troubles to solve, but they all work together around the main leads without taking too much of the spotlight. Even William Chak is not bad acting as this bastard who just got out of prison.

The story is still quite a mystery because Crystal Fung's character is very serious and angry at the start of the drama, but during an argument and sudden car accident with Karl Ting at the wheel, there is a flash of light with Crystal flying through the windshield and yet she is completely unharmed, with her personality taking a one-eighty degree turn. The once serious and cold Crystal is suddenly very passionate and forgiving of her boyfriend, which Karl did find weird but ultimately accepts. I can't wait to find out what is going on because there have been so many theories on this I have discussed with friends. Is she an Angel in disguise? An alien? Maybe a fox spirit taking Crystal's form to help out her last wishes? We don't know. At least not yet!

Update: boy the last 2 episodes were a massive rollercoaster ride. Karl starts getting annoyed with Crystal sticking her nose into everybody’s business and helping them face their problems. His reasoning is that she would do this behind his back and without considering the feelings of others when doing so. Crystal’s stance is that we should directly face issues and tackle them head on. I understand both arguments so I could not choose a side, I kinda agreed with both arguments so I was massively conflicted.

The disagreement leads to Karl avoiding Crystal and speaking to his grandma and friends for about the situation. All of them tell him how great they thought Krystal was and how she helped them face and resolve their issues. Then finally, in episode 14 while Karl was at an arcade to avoid Krystal at home, he suddenly had an epiphany and ran home to hug Crystal to apologise to her and say how stupid he was for acting like he did when he had such a great girlfriend. This scene was great and I thought the relationship drama was over, but no, there’s more! Karl noticed later that Crystal was trying to hide something in a wicker basket, so he decided to sneakily take a look and discovered a futuristic phone with 7G (7G!!). He saw the background wallpaper had Crystal and himself, but he had an hairstyle he had never had before. He listened to a voicemail and recognised his own voice but he did not remember leaving such a message before. Finally, he watched a video clip where Crystal was being arrested after a car accident before the camera pans over to the passenger side to reveal another version of Karl sitting there dead. This frightens our Karl as he was clearly alive.

Predictably, in episode 15, the final episode, Karl confronts Crystal about this and after pressing her repeatedly, she finally revealed that she was from another universe that found herself in ours after she crashed her car at the same time he crashed his and swapped places with his Crystal. This realisation horrifies Karl because he knew his Crystal was in her universe and was in prison for a crime she did not commit, so he begged other Crystal to bring his Crystal back. Despite the protests of other Crystal’s love for Karl, Karl couldn’t accept this and finally speaks the name of the drama, “You’re just not her.” He said the thing!!

Cue the next few hours of them just wandering around until night when other Crystal decided to kneel down and cry on the side of the freeway. Somebody suddenly drove by and stopped to check on her to make sure she was okay, but other Crystal noticed that the car was the exact same car she drove on the night she crashed. So, predictably, she stole the car and drove it to Karl, asking him to get in as she explained herself. She explained that she thought it was heaven’s way of giving her another chance because her direct approach in her universe led to her boyfriend wanting to break up with her, and in an act of anger she crashed the car, accidentally killing him, but managed to switch places with our Crystal so thought it was an opportunity to start again. Since our Karl was so adamant in getting his Crystal back, other Crystal was going to try and recreate the situation that caused them to switch places by driving the same model of car with them in the car and crashing into the same place with her seatbelt undone. We see this kinda work and other Crystal flies out of the windshield with a huge flash of light.

We finally go to the next scene where Karl wakes up in hospital and asks where Crystal was. The doctor tells him that she had suffered more serious injuries and was in a coma. We spend the last few moments of the episode watching Karl constantly visiting her and waiting for her to wake up, until one day he gets a phone call to inform him she had woken up. He arrives at the hospital and after some hesitation, enters her room to ask of she was his Crystal, where she only smiles, leaving it all ip to the viewer’s interpretation.

The ending was a lovely touch to keep it mysterious and I still really loved the drama, but there were so many things that ruined the immersion. Other Crystal’s carjacking had no consequences at all, and I know it was left out due to time, but it was sending the message that stealing cars was fine as there are no consequences for doing so. Also, during the final scene where Karl wakes up and has Crystal in a coma, none of the other characters are seen to visit them. These characters were seen to be indebted to Crystal and yet we do not see any of them visit Karl or Crystal during their time at the hospital. They didn’t have to be shown saying anything, just a montage of them standing there silent would be enough to show they cared. Also, how does dimensional travel work her? Does it require you drive a Subaru WRX Impreza STi, particularly the 2009 model with the optional sport pack for it to work? Nothing is explained! There are other plotholes as well that doesn’t allow me to give this a score above 8, but ultimately this was a great romantic drama that I hope gets a sequel. The romantic scenes between Karl and Krystal made the romance between Romeo and Juliet in TVB’s recent Romeo and His Butterfly Lover look like a joke.

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Great action movie but has a weak plot point

Man I love movies with Andy Lau and Sean Lau in them, it is guaranteed to be an exciting film and this one is surely one of those films that had a lot of action with many explosions. The premise of the story is that Andy Lau and Sean Lau are both bomb disposal experts working with the police, but during one event, Andy gets his leg blown off and so is unable to take part in active duty of bomb disposal. Refusing to settle for a desk job, he publicly protests his treatment during an award event when he was to get an ward for his bravery, and then quits his job.

Some time later he was found at a scene where there was a bomb planted, and he manages to get injured in the blast and lose his memory. Yes, it is the old amnesia plot that leads to Andy redeeming himself later in the movie. The action and acting were great but the biggest weakness was in the plot, which just stands out too much for my liking. What happened was that Andy Lau became so disillusioned with his treatment after getting his leg destroyed (people pitying him and not allowing him dispose bombs) that he decided to start a terrorist organisation to bomb key strategic locations in Hong Kong. Like what the actual f, how did “oh no my leg is blown off” escalate to “f Hong Kong Police and Hong Kong, Imma plant bombs yo!”

And boy, despite needing a prosthetic leg, Andy Lau was running and jumping and doing crazy parkour as if his leg was never lost on the first place. Like seriously, if he can do all that the Police should have kept him in active bomb disposal duty. I mean it would cost less fuel to get him to the location as he would be lighter, he wouldn’t lose that leg again if a bomb went off and he wouldn’t have started that terrorist cell in the first place.

Only the action and acting from Andy and Sean keep this movie afloat, everything else was a bit meh.

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Just what the f were the writers smoking?

Like what on earth were the writers on? I ask this because this drama just had me going “wtf?” almost constantly. Most of Bosco Wong’s stuff is not bad, even at it’s worse it’s at least a 5-6 score and average. This somehow managed to be less than average, and as I am currently 14 episodes in I am not holding out any hope of this getting better.

The drama is about Chrissie Chau playing two roles as twin sisters. The younger sister is an insurance broker whereas the elder sister is a Singaporean elite cop. These twins were separated since they were kids and have not seen each other in 20 years. The younger sister was mixed up in some shady stuff and while in Singapore she gets murdered and has her heart removed by organ traffickers. Cop sister discovers this and decides to travel to Hong Kong undercover to find who killed her sister.

Now, this is not a bad premise, except that there were some things I saw that made me go “wtf?” Cop sister takes on the identity of her sister to investigate what led to her sisters death, but while in the role we discover the younger sister was a disgusting harlot of a woman, sleeping around to get promoted, worked as a nightclub girl AKA prostitute to get money, was involved with a terrorist group called Green World, was working with a really shady man played by Derek Kwok, all of this while dating Bosco Wong’s HK police officer. As each revelation was revealed it just made me feel less and less sympathy for the younger sister because she was doing some real shady crap.

Bosco’s character is a real idiot as well because if he really was a good boyfriend he should have been able to immediately tell that the girl was not the same girl as his girlfriend as there were too many contradictions in everything she does. I kept screaming at my TV telling him to just bug her and find out what she was doing because that would have sorted out so many misunderstandings early.

Meanwhile, it seemed every single man was swooning over her, trying to hit on her or show general interest. She is pretty, no doubt, but I feel she was not THAT pretty, I found it all too unbelievable. The drama slowly became this sausagefest with her as the only taco, and I had to keep cringing at this.

What also made me start to hate Chrissie Chau’s character was how she used her Kevin Chu and Alex Fong. Alex Fong plays her boyfriend while she was in Singapore, but we do not know what their actual relationship is until many episodes later. After she goes to Hong Kong undercover she constantly asked him for his hacking services, and he becomes fed up because he was constantly waiting for her to come home, so he started dating somebody else. She finds out in a scene when he was in Hong Kong with his new girlfriend, but I couldn’t find myself blaming him. Suddenly, she shifts her attention to Kevin Chu, who was her sister’s best friend and just so happened to also be a hacker! Kevin actually worked out earlier on that Chrissie was not the younger sister, so she came clean with her cop identity and asked him to help her find the killers. She spent so many scenes just asking him to hack for her and do really dangerous reconnaissance, tasks that had him nearly get his organs harvested twice, and yet he still listens to her commands. I shook my head every time I saw a scene with them both and she asks him to hack this or be bait for that. Just stop it, please!

This drama is not complete yet so we’ll see how it fairs in the later episodes, but for now it is just a crapfest. Maybe we find out the younger sister was also a member of an assassin guild and had a secret child with one of the men? I wouldn’t be surprised.

Update:

I have finished watching this drama and the ending was so abrupt it had me going “what the f…”. So there is a huge plot twist where the younger sister was not dead but was pretending so she could plot her way to taking over her elder sister’s identity. Why? Because she wanted to escape her criminal past, and pinning all her crimes on her elder sister before killing her and taking place was her method of doing it. What this essentially means is that the whole premise of the drama has been a lie to us and a massive waste of time, because the whole reason the elder sister was in Hong Kong was to avenge her sister, and suddenly “Oh actually the sister ain’t dead, lol”.

Now there are so many plotholes that blew my mind that I had to ask how little the writers were paid. At the beginning of the drama we see the corpse of the younger sister, we see they have the same appearance and everything and even the coroner confirmed the DNA as well. So how did she fake this death? They visit a doctor and he explained how it was possible the younger sister donated bone marrow to someone so when the blood was tested for DNA it would have the sister’s DNA in there. Okay fine, but how did they explain the same appearance of the corpse as it was clearly the twin. They don’t mention this at all, no plastic surgery or anything, they simply brush it off as “oh yeah bone marrow.” They brought up the possibility of the coroner being unreliable, but if so why would they need the bone marrow transplant excuse? The coroner could just make it up, so it made noooo sense.

The drama tried to wrap up too quickly at the end. We spend the first 20 episodes slowly uncovering the nonsense plot the drama introduced, but it spends the last 4 episodes trying to quickly wrap everything up, with the final episode feeling especially rushed as they tried to cram as many resolutions in there as possible. Right at the end the sisters face off in an elevator and the younger sister forces the elder to shoot her to death. We see this reveal later when Bosco runs to the elevator and the doors open to show the younger sister dead, but we see that the elder sister doesn’t even shed a tear for her sibling and just walks out, says a few words while looking back snd then the drama ends. What?

But the biggest sin this drama threw at me was the death of Kevin Chu. I mean his acting was average but I felt bad for the idiot constantly putting his life in danger for the elder sister. He laters gets kidnapped and becomes paralyzed from the neck down, which really had me angry at the elder sister. But the last straw was when the drama has the younger sister appear to him while he was in his wheelchair and just outright murders him because he thought the elder sister was “better”. Come on give that guy a break! For that sin alone, this drama is not worth rewatching even as a joke.

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Starts great end really dumb

What is TVB's problem with Ruco Chan? This guy keeps dying at the end of his recent dramas and never gets to have his own happy ending. Yes that's right, he dies at the end and that really annoyed me. What annoys me more is the use of the old reversing time to prevent stuff happening thing as well. We watch the entire drama and how these characters have grown together, only for the ending to rewind back to the beginning to unset it all, basically meaning everything we as viewers have witnessed was a waste of time. It is almost as bad as the "oh it was all a dream" trope. This drama started out pretty good, with the people getting used to their powers and we see great character development, but there is no real scary bad guy for them to fight with their super powers, just some triad dude trying to avenge his son. If you have super powered heroes, have super powered bad guys to even the playing field, come on! To counter the lack of super powered bad guys, they introduced side effects to using the powers, which is good and all but not all users get side effects, which is a little unfair. At least two great things did come out from this: Natalie Tong doesn't play a stupidly annoying character like she usually does, she was very likeable here, and the music is great, but hot damn I do not want to rewatch this purely for the ending. So much potential wasted

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Another victim of the Ruco Chan curse

First 10 episodes:

So far this drama is good, and I know for a fact Ruco Chan is not going to die at the end of this drama because it is a comedy first and other drama is secondary.

I’ll provide a more thorough review once this drama is completed, but overall this is very funny and has some great moments in it. The one thing that seems to ruin the immersion for me is the blatant advertising of products in the show. Usually it is just Sea Horse Furniture’s mattresses that ate advertised, this is fine as it doesn’t get in the way of the plot, but here there have been so many products advertised it made me go “Why that? Why there?” For example, I never thought I would see Po Chai Pills being advertised so clearly, and yet here it is shoved in our faces. These product placements make me shake my head.

Hopefully this show has a good ending! Let’s wait and see!

Update after completing the show:

I feel like drinking Malvira wine for some reason. If you're happy, Malvira. If you're sad, Malvira. If you're horny, Malvira. Man, they really go a little nuts with this product placement in the drama that I really do not want to see another Malvira bottle of wine for as long as I live.

I swear TVB is out for Ruco's blood because they decided to give him this role where he is a massive useless idiot. I don't understand why his recent dramas all have great starts but have extremely lacklustre endings as the drama slowly deteriorates from something potentially good into something so full of s**t. I am calling this the Ruco Chan curse because all of his recent dramas, where he has been the main male lead, have been this way. Will his run of nonsense end eventually?

The story starts off with Ruco being this really lucky guy who had gotten to his current work position out of pure good luck, but due to a bad financial decision by his wife played by Jinny Ng, they lose all of their money, so they both decide to go to Beijing to start over with Ruco as a CEO for a company there. He is later joined by his siblings, played by Tony Hung and Joey Thye, but then there is a huge plot twist where it turns out he is not really the CEO of the company but a target of a elaborate revenge plot by ex-colleague played by Marco Lo, who wanted revenge against Ruco because Ruco's luck resulted in Marco losing everything in Hong Kong. Ruco is then tasked with a redevelopment project to turn an abandoned park into a 500 million RMB cash generating area within a year or there would be consequences.

This was quite a good start and the premise was full of potential, but it was completely wasted. The main characters all bounce off each other well at the beginning, and many of the jokes and antics were truly hilarious that made the first half of the drama easily 8-9 out of 10. And then - of course - the Ruco curse hit, and it hit hardcore.

We get introduced to a girl played by Jacky Cai that Ruco once met many years ago for one day, ONE DAY, where they shared the day and it made Jacky smitten with him. She asked him to return a year later to meet up again but he was unable to make it due to having stomach problems, so a lot of the drama after they meet again was basically her secretly pushing Ruco to do things that would drive a wedge between him and his wife. She clearly wants to take the wife's place; she even imagines being with Ruco, marrying him and having his son, so how more obvious can it be that she wanted to get with him? This, of course, make his wife suspicious and grow enormously jealous, but Ruco keeps hanging out with Jacky despite his wife actively showing her distaste, and do you know why? Because Ruco is useless!

After being given the task of turning the abandoned park into a 500 million RMB cash generating area within a year, Ruco was unable to find any investors at all. We watch as he hopelessly tries to get investors, so it ends up with Jacky helping him out the entire time, getting him all these investors and big brands to sign up to the project, so clearly Ruco had no choice but to keep her closeby. What I found really stupid was that right near the end when things were really bad between Ruco and his wife, we find out Jacky had been fired from her consultant job because she had been spending too much time helping Ruco out, so what did she do? She just ups and left, leaving a note saying good luck to Ruco and his wife after all the damage she had caused, and realising she would never win Ruco's heart. What the actual f?

Ruco's onscreen wife Jinny also has her own romance issues as well outside of being jealous. Due to some circumstances, she ends up meeting her pop idol played by Edmond Leung, and suddenly ends up competing in a singing competition where he is one of the judges. He becomes her mentor later as well, causing Ruco to become insanely jealous. When we think things get really bad, Jinny makes the decision to give up the competition for the sake of her husband and family, which I thought was a huge move in trying to save her marriage. This makes Ruco looks like a huge a**hole, even after he decides to tell her she can continue to compete. This doesn't mean Jinny doesn't have her bad moments, she made a couple of romance analogies that made no sense. The one that triggered me the most was her explaining how marriage was like having a song list of favourite songs and when you get married you can only listen to one song on repeat for the rest of your life. No, marriage is not like a song, that is nonsense because a song only describes one emotion at that moment in time, marriage to a person you love is full of many emotions and memories.

There were many other romance issues the other characters encounter, but Ruco and Jinny's issues pretty much takeover the 2nd half of the drama that it becomes all encompassing and it just drags the show down into the dirt. And that guy Marco Lo who wanted to get revenge, did he do anything else later in the drama to make things interesting? Maybe try to undermine Ruco to spice up the drama? No! He pretty much just scolds Ruco in a few company meetings, and right at the end of the drama - out of nowhere - decides to be nice to Ruco and help him out. That came out of nowhere and made no sense, a massive waste of potential tension between these characters.

And the final scene... oh man. Tony Hung gets the final scene as he finally admits his feelings for his friend and confesses to her, and she agrees. Yay, everybody is happy and they start hugging, then the entire family appears, the camera zooms out to see the entire family but one person is missing. Ruco and Jinny are back together, Tony Hung gets with his girl, but the sister Joey Thye was all alone despite getting with her man. Why was the guy missing? Wasn't this a full family shot to end the drama? Why was one person missing?

Please stop this TVB.

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Are TVB out of their minds?

This drama was such a disappointment it really hurt to watch it. It made me very angry at the beginning because the main character was just awful to watch, like watching a horse trying to walk like a human. The worst part was all the best stuff happens near the end, but it felt so rushed like they had to stuff 10 episodes worth of content into the final few episodes. This leaves on a cliffhanger, and I pray to all that is good that they do not make another sequel to this horror show of a drama. It’s only saving grace is the amazing Rebecca Zhu and legendary David Chiang - who both barely appear in the show. It also has a pretty good theme song. Other than that… damn

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What did I watch?

Man I’ m gonna come out and say it. I hated this drama. I don’t know how it got the score it did but I found this to be so bad it was hilarious. You have great actors in this drama from the Raymonds, Lam and Wong, as well as Hugo Ng and Lawrence Ng! And yet somehow this drama just falls flat on its face.

The first thing to call out is the terrible intro sequence. We have a great song sang by Raymond Lam, but the video editor decided to allow the voices of the actors reading their lines to periodically play over the intro. Why do that? Why ruin a good intro song?

Then we have the two main leads played by the Raymonds. Lam is with the police crime unit and Wong is with the ICAC. They were best buds growing up but a misunderstanding led to them constantly bickering and fighting each other whenever they were onscreen at the same time. You knew if they were both onscreen together, there would be an argument, and yes this occurred all the time and it got really old really fast.

Why the anger? Because when they were young they had a Kendo competition, and Wong drank some lemon tea that he thought was given to him by Lam and had a tummy ache. This tummy ache led to Wong losing to Lam in the final bout, so Wong has spent the entire time thinking Lam spiked his tea.

I’ll spoil it all for you here. The big bad is Lawrence Ng. He is Wong’s boss as head of ICAC and the Kendo master for both Wong and Lam. He comes across as a nice guy and full of wisdom and wishing for peace between both Raymonds, but we later find out it was all a ruse. He was the secret behind-the-scenes big boss making all the other people do bad things to make money, and controlling them by having dirt on their misdeeds and threatening to release the dirt if they misbehaved. So why is Lawrence so evil? This was because he said something wrong to someone and that person prevented him from progressing in his career no matter what he did. This annoyed him so much that he wanted to always be the one in control, so he started a crime syndicate in order to get dirt on people and control them. What? And if you thought that motivation was lame, guess how Wong got his tummy ache from the lemon tea? It was Lawrence who arranged it in the past. Why? Because he wanted to feel in control. What the actual f? That was so stupid!

That nonsense plus the bad cgi effects, Chrissie Chau’s terrible acting and the annoying af Oscar Leung, and you have the recipe for a bad drama that only just survives thanks to the star power of Raymond Lam. Damn.

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