I totally got waylaid by a last-minute trip that came up so I ended up having to pause on my drama roundup for a bit but I was able to catch up on a few shows while I was gone.

The Lion’s Secret (Chinese Drama, iQIYI)

Taking over her father’s company as the CEO amidst voices of doubt and greed from those who would love to see her fail, our heroine has no interest in love or marriage but impatiently agreed when her father insisted that she should marry as a way to stabilize her position in the company. Wanting only to get her father off her back, our heroine married a complete stranger that her father has chosen. Unbeknownst to our heroine, her new husband is actually a childhood friend she has long forgotten and underneath his joking careless manner is a scarred soul of a former elite-trained soldier who only came out of his private hell because her father had asked him to protect her.

I am two episodes in on this one and really enjoyed it thus far. The heroine is very hostile to our hero at first since in her eyes our hero is simply a gold digger so it is quite fun to watch our hero play the cat and mouse game with her.

Nothing But You (Chinese Drama, iQIYI)

Having lived her whole life as the complete opposite to her twin sister who is perfect in every way, our young heroine had no choice but to pretend to be her twin when her sister, a well-known elite producer, ended up in a coma. Embarrassed yet relieved when her sister’s boss saw through her pretense right away, our heroine tells our hero the truth…completely clueless that our hero has been harboring a crush on her for years and is determined to use this chance to his advantage.

The plot is predictable but not bad if you went in expecting a fluffy romantic com. The acting is a bit uneven at times but not bad enough for me to stop watching. I did struggle quite a bit with how bumbly and ignorant the heroine’s character is though. I think in an attempt to make our heroine a stark contrast to her “perfect” twin sister, the scriptwriter went on the side of silly. It does look like the show will also give the twin sister (played by the same actress) a love line as well when she wakes up from the coma, so I might stick around to see how that storyline plays out.

Sassy Beauty (Chinese Drama, iQIYI)

I went into this one assuming it would either be a fluffy historical romance or your standard time travel but was pleasantly surprised to find the story premise much more interesting. After falling into a coma after a car accident, our heroine wakes up in an alternate reality and learns that it is a game her father had invested in with the expressed purpose of using it to help her wake up. The program is patterned after the VR game our heroine is used to playing and in order to wake up, she will have to fulfill various missions the game has set for her.

The combination of a historical romance with online game elements is a fairly common theme in Chinese novels but not so much in C-dramas. Which is why, while I wouldn’t say Sassy Beauty’s story is anything to write home about, it was still kinda fun to check out anyway.

Because of Love (Chinese Drama, Viki)

Wallace Chung’s new melo romance where he plays a cardiologist who ends up meeting his first love when she brings her young son to the hospital to be treated for his heart condition. On the surface, both of our leads have long since moved on from their poignant yet very painful relationship but it soon becomes apparent that deep down, neither of our leads can find a way to forget the other person.

Oh, my, this one depressed me…in a good way that kept me watching. This one has a solid cast all around. The pacing is not what I would call fast, but it doesn’t cause me to feel impatient either. Wallace Chung of course is always great with these types of “tortured soul” male lead roles and he is indeed great here. One thing of note is that Wallace Chung is actually using his own voice here. Wallace Chung is from Hong Kong so while his Mandarin is great, his accent is still fairly obvious at times. It does create a minor plot hole in that the show didn’t bother to create any sort of excuse for his accent. Moreover, the actor who played the younger male lead in the flashbacks does not have the same accent. Once I got used to Wallace Chung’s voice though, the accent did’t faze me…and actually, I think he must’ve consciously worked on it because his accent improved as the show went on.

By the way, don’t get scared off by my comment of the story being depressing. The heroine’s life does look pretty bleak in the beginning but I am pretty hopeful the story will have a happy ending as the show synopsis suggested.

Cupid’s Kitchen (Chinese Drama, Viki, Finished)

Ethan Juan’s new romance drama where he plays a legendary chef whose world is quickly unraveling because he has lost his sense of taste. Desperate, our hero searched high and low until he finally found our heroine who possess the rare gift of having the perfect taste. Convinced by our hero to become his apprentice, our heroine belatedly realizes that having a legendary chef for a teacher is not an easy task at all.

I marathoned through this one and while I loved the bickering relationship between our leads and the story was interesting enough to keep me watching until the end, there was one thing I really disliked about the show- namely, the show’s obsession in redeeming every bad guy there is. Now, I actually kinda like shows where they don’t have real “bad guys” and I don’t mind some tear-jerking redemptions of villains. However, it is annoying when scriptwriters go all out to make their villains commit crazy evil acts THEN turn right around to whitewash them, expecting the viewers to somehow forget everything that was so hateful about them. To make matters worse, the villains in Cupid’s Kitchen came off really cartoonish that there are literally scenes of them doing the comic evil laugh.

Still, poorly written villains and secondary stories aside, the two leads did a great job together and that alone kept me watching (with a finger on the fast forward button) until the end. By the way, it is so not fair that Ethan Juan can still look so awesome and sexy at 39.

Hello, The Sharpshooter (Chinese Drama, Viki)

As a talented sharpshooter whose world only consists of his pistol, our hero is puzzled when a girl he just met suddenly became something that could distract him during competition. Unbeknownst to our hero, the “stranger” is none other than our heroine whom he had promised back in their high school days that he would never forget.

I am only a few episodes in on this one but I am liking it thus far especially since the show teases you along with the mystery of why our hero doesn’t seem to have any memory of our heroine. Hu Yi Ting is of course quite good at playing the aloof hero mixed in with a dose of boyish innocence. The secondary love line also looks very promising…which is a big relief since I got burnt just a little bit after having to fast-forward through multiple terrible secondary love lines in Cupid’s Kitchen.

The Autumn Ballad (Chinese Drama, Youtube)

Already distraught to witness her new husband dropping dead right in front of her on their wedding, our heroine is stunned when everyone around her, including her own family, is telling her that she had somehow cursed her husband and is now expected to kill herself. Never one to let anyone or fate to dictate her life, our heroine is ready to use everything in her power to write her own destiny…even if it means she has to go head to head against our hero. Feared by everyone in the Capital, our hero is none too pleased when his best friend begins to fall in love with a girl whom he believes is just using his friend to get out of her unfortunate circumstance. Determined to protect his friend, our hero engages in a battle of wits with our spunky heroine. 

This one is a gem! It made unto a shortlist of shows I recommended to Mama Ninja to watch this weekend because I am loving it so much right now. (Mama Ninja is getting more picky in her old age and gets impatient easily if the show doesn’t have a solid story AND good looking male lead.) The show actually has a heavy dose of crime suspense and our two leads will team up right from the beginning to solve the mystery of how our heroine’s new husband died but no fear, there is still plenty of romance to spare. The show has done a wonderful job on pacing our two leads’ romance that I think should help this one avoid the mid-show drag that so many Chinese drama fall victims to. 

This one airs two episodes every Saturday to Monday so just be warned, the waiting between Tuesday and Friday is a bit torturous. 

Shining For One Thing (Chinese Drama, iQIYI, Finished)

I would recommend giving this one a try if you guys are looking for something to marathon this weekend. Despite the online good reviews, I didn’t go into this one with a high expectation since the story’s synopsis of time traveling back to our heroine’s high school days didn’t sound like a refreshing plotline at all. Fortunately, after marathoning Shining For Me in just two days, I am glad to report that I really enjoyed the show. The mystery of how and why our hero died in the original timeline was quite intriguing, and the acting was solid all around.

My only complaint was the ending….which is the sort that really leaves you wishing they would shoot a season two. For those of you who hate spoilers, I would stop reading here.

Ending Spoiler Ahead….

The ending was left open with us wondering if the hero is alive or not. After scouring through opinions online, I am more or less convinced the ending was a happy one. One very observant viewer pointed out that there were clues from the very beginning of the show where our heroine’s brother was watching a science documentary discussing time travel. In the documentary, it talked about how different worlds/timelines usually have nothing to do with one another but sometimes worlds can end up in the same sphere. In the very last time travel our heroine did, she made the observation that the rules have finally changed which also sped up certain events that should not have happened yet according to our heroine’s original timeline (ie. her mother’s operation.) In the very observant viewer’s opinion, the fact that our heroine’s mother of the alternative timeline just had surgery right before she left (high school days) and she returned to her original timeline with her mother also just finished with surgery (which would be years after high school) seem to indicate that our heroine’s original world and the last alternate world have merged. The manner the show made such a big deal about how the last timeline was different from all the previous ones seems to support this theory. Anyhow, I am just going to stop torturing myself and declare this one a happy ending. 

ps. I just saw online that after all the viewers calling for season 2 or an extra episode, our two lead actors finally popped up on their social media to say that there seem to be some discussion among the production team to do something like it. The wording sounds more like an extra episode than a second season but I would be totally happy with that!

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