This drama is a masterpiece.
It was horrible in so many ways and yet I thoroughly enjoyed watching this drama and laughing at it. Truly, I had tears in my eyes.

Now, I'm not really sure what this show was hoping to accomplish since there was no plot, no message, no greater idea to take away from this experience other than, "What did I just watch?"
The FL was Qian- no, her name is Mary Sue.
Names don't really matter in this drama because the characters are just stereotypical tropes copied from a Shoujo rom-com manga that got popular due to toxic, unhealthy relationships with rich, powerful, and emotionally stunted attractive guys.

Anyway, Mary Sue is detached from reality in the present day and suffers from melancholy though nothing in her life seems troublesome, tiring, or threatening. She lives with her mom, they have a successful business to support them and pay for the large, fancy room that Mary Sue seems to call her bedroom and Mary Sue is even engaged to an attentive, business savvy, and considerate man. What is her problem? I don't know and I don't think the writers knew either. They just needed her to quickly adjust to being transported to the past all of a sudden so they can get on to the juicy bits: the romance!

So yeah, the romance.....is bad. All of her love options are horrible and she herself isn't likable at all. Throughout the drama, many characters suffer Character Assassination and they make a complete 180 at just about any moment in the drama. Mary Sue decides to endanger a pregnant woman and her unborn child for a political move to boost her beau (at the time) the 8th Prince to the throne.

My jaw dropped.

That happened often while watching this drama and not in a good way. I have never been so shocked, so many times while watching a drama of only 35 episodes. There were moments where all I can do in reaction to what was happening on the screen was to shake my head and repeat out loud, "Wow. Wow." There were SEVERAL attempts and actual, successive assaults and r**e throughout the drama. There was se**al coercion, child endangerment, child death, mass murder, sexism, misogyny, physical/emotional/mental abuse, domestic violence, and all-around deceit. By everyone. No one was innocent in this drama - except Mary Sue's mom. Poor lady. She was just a pawn in the bigger scheme of this train wreck. It's hard to say this went off the rails because there doesn't seem to be any end goal in this drama.

Not everything was bad in this drama. There were rare moments too. The acting isn't the problem. The actors did the best they could with the flat, dry source material called the script and screenwriting. The main couple was boring to watch though they provided the most comedy in the drama and that's due to the romance aspect. I found those moments hilarious because this drama, unfortunately, reminds me of 'Boys Over Flowers' and I hate that story. No, I'm not a fan of young, impressionable, and innocent girls falling in love with their bullies who happen to be rich and handsome. No thank you. This drama is the Ancient Chinese version of that story. The similarities hurt to look at really.

The show is either tone-deaf or delusion, I can't tell. (Could be both.) One moment the ML tells the FL lead that he wants to control everything about her after he makes a public display of jealousy and drags her away 'by the wrist' - the FL responds by laughing. LAUGHING! She tells him that he's cute and he reminds her of a little boy.

.....Excuse me? Does a boy - or really an overgrown child - throwing a tantrum sound attractive to you? It doesn't to me. Why is this in a drama that came out in 2011? Why is such a toxic portrayal of 'love/romance' present in a nationally popular drama in 2011? I'm confused about how it got popular other than its visuals. Both the actors, costume, and setting. The Foribben City is gorgeous as always. This drama was definitely beautiful to look at but thats' it though.

One scene was filmed pretty well, later on in the drama and the editing is much better to follow than some Cdramas that came out this year. The writing doesn't make the show make sense, but the editing makes it easy to know the total area and space where the actors are located and there's some type of attempt to keep a measurement of time since Mary Sue arrived in the past.

Which that scene in the first episode was hilarious to watch! Nothing realistic or convincing there's since a young, beautiful girl dropping into a brothel showcase in a thin, short dress in broad daylight is nothing big! She's perfectly safe, I'm sure!

Also, Mary Sue wanted to go back but 5 or 6 episodes in, she's forgotten her prior struggles and instead falls in love so nothing else matters after that. I was waiting for the laws of the universe to guide her into completing a certain mission she was destined to do OR for the universe to correct itself and remove her - a paradox - from the past. Never happened. The story of Consort Liang and how she saved the Emperor's sister from dying according to history but instead saving her erased her history altogether - that was a great moment. Flawless moment. There were finally repercussions to these Time Travelers' presence and actions.

However, Consort Liang goes back to her original timeline and Mary Sue stays because of love. Not her poor mother who is not doing well back at home. But anyway, the show must go on since there has to be a new Emperor before the show ends. it happens, it's anti-climatic and the 8th Prince gets a free ride to the future - even though the nine planets aligning is supposed to be an event that only happens every 14 years. Apparently, that was just a suggestion and the writers were just 'being creative' so the couple needed to be together.

One thing though, Consort Liang or Sun Yan should have been the FL for this story. They actually had some character arc to them though Sun Yan deserves better. I honestly feel like if Mary Sue hadn't dropped in with her Plot Armor and inability to do anything wrong - Sun Yan would have been the perfect person for the FL role.

This drama was a hot mess and I thoroughly enjoyed looking back at something from 10 years ago and seeing something way older and outdated than it should have been. 1.5/10, I only recommend if you watch it to laugh and not to take anything seriously.