美女也愁嫁 – Mei Nu Ye Chou Jia (Even Beauties have Worries about Marriage)

Cast:
陈好 Chen Hao as Chen Tian
贾一平 Jia Yi Ping as Peng Da Qiao
赵俊 Zhao Jun as Chen You
王峻毅 Wang Jing Yi as Hu Ya Lun
朱杰 Zhu Jie as Ke Ke
刘栋 Liu Dong as Ning Kai

Genre:
Romance

Plot:
Our heroine of the drama, Chen Tian Tian is a successful writer of a magazine publication. She has a warm family, a sporty car, and a very professional attitude. In many aspects she is beauty who is extremely intelligent and is the ideal marriage partner. The Drama starts out where we find Chen Tian is about to get married with her long time boyfriend Ya Lun, a struggling song writer, but he fails to show up. For Chen Tian, that is last straw and their relationship sours from that point. Chen Tian begins to reflect on her love life and begins to lose her fantasies of love and that the most cherished thing in life is marrying your first love. On a particular interview with a respectable man, she meets his son Ning Kai and he immediately falls for her.

Meanwhile, Peng Da Qiao, a photographer at the magazine company that Chen Tian works at, falls in love with a filial and interesting girl Ke Ke. She was raised by her mother but her mother is now sick and Da Qiao helps her take care of her mother while she is away at work. After a few incidents, Da Qiao and Chen Tian become good friends and develop a mutual respect.

Things become complicated. What if Chen You, Chen Tian’s younger sister was also secretly in love with Ya Lun? Is Ning Kai as honest as he seems up front? Will Chen Tian ever get married? Will Da Qiao ever reveal his true feelings? What happens when Chen Tian’s stepmother finally finds her lost child?

Review: MAY HAVE SOME SPOILER’s
I must say that the first twenty or so episodes of this drama were absolutely wonderful. Chen Tian and Da Qiao have the greatest chemistry as compared with any drama I have seen in a long time. Chen Hao is such a beautiful actress and portrays her part very nicely. The whole drama was pretty much setup from the very beginning. You can tell that with all the men that she dates, she does have good memories with them and she does have feelings with them, but her true happiness and love is really with someone else. This is probably the main point of this drama which is about how she is always striving to get married because she has an inner fear of being alone forever. For the most part, her strong willed and independent personality as well as her devotion to her job push away the people who try to marry her. In this aspect we eventually feel happy for her when we find someone who truly understands her.

The actress playing Ke Ke has great chemistry with Ning Kai and we find them to a very nice match at the end. Chen You also did a very nice job as well and I think throughout the whole drama we know that she is aware of the situation but she still goes after Ya Lun boldly.

The best actor of this drama in my opinion was Peng Da Qiao. His personality and humor was very well presented and I think he makes the whole drama come together. His generosity and responsibility makes him a very realistic character. He devotes himself to his love full heartedly and does everything he can. He is forgiving and understanding and his part was acted very well. Again, the best of him is always brought out when he interacts with Chen Tian and those were the greatest moments in the drama. Sometimes I just wanted to punch Chen Tian for being so ignorant of his feelings in the last 3-4 episodes.

This goes to my main critique of this drama. I enjoyed the first twenty episodes but the last three or four really got me antsy and struck me as extra. I really didn’t see a reason for them to introduce the old lawyer man and I hoped that he wouldn’t go after Chen Tian. You could totally tell that they were not meant to be and so in the last 4 episodes the director really lost a great number of moments for chemistry between Da Qiao and Chen Tian. Probably one of the most touching scenes was the stairway scene with both of them and that was near the end of the drama. I just felt that the ending between them was really unnecessary and that things could have been resolved differently.

All in all, I really enjoyed it.

Rating:
4.6/5.0

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道德底线 – Morality Baseline

Cast:
马苏 Ma Su as 陈秀 Chen Xiu
钱泳辰 Qian Yong Chen as 赵学鹏 Zhao Xue Peng
孙晶晶 Sun Jing Jing as 周春蕾 Zhou Chun Lei
罗 钢 Luo Gang as 王俊涛 Wang Jin Tao
潘 虹 Pan Hong as 赵 母 Zhao Mother
夏宗佑 Xia Zong You as 赵 父 Zhao Father
牛 犇 Niu Ben as 王 父 Wang Father
邓 英 Deng Ying as 叶佳佳 Jia Jia
阎 娜 Yan Na as 蓝玲玲 Lan Ling Ling
刘圆媛 Liu Yuan Yuan as 赵碧娇 Zhao Bi Jiao

(Cast is translated by myself, I’m not native Chinese speaker so I may have made some errors in the casting translations. Furthermore I’m a traditional writer, not simplified ^_^)

Genre:
Melodrama

Plot:
Ma Su plays Chen Xiu, a beautiful young school teacher with boyfriend Zhao Xue Peng. The two of them get married away from home and on their wedding night, an unspeakable accident occurs and a misunderstanding barrels out of control. Chen Xiu, drunk from partying with her friends, accidentally walks into the room next door and ends up spending the night with another drunk man, Wang Jin Tao. Xue Peng is greatly affected by the accident and things start to get worse from there.

Because of Chen Xiu’s background and family, Xue Peng’s parents never saw her as a worthy candidate for their son’s wife, however they still put up with her. Chen Xiu proves to be an extremely kind hearted and strong willed woman who tries her best to continue living with Xue Peng after the accident. Things do not end there though.

What happens when Xue Peng’s boss Zhou Chun Lei expresses her love to him? Chen Xiu becomes pregnant but who is the real father? Will Chen Xiu be able to keep her head up when her in-laws finally learn about her accident?

You may find the story a bit cliche, but the story is actually much better than I expected. The acting and cast combination is nothing trivial as well and this drama should be regarded very highly.

Review:
Once again a mainland drama amazes me to no end. Melodramas like this one are usually seen in more old-school Korean dramas, but it seemed that the Chinese audience took a great liking to this one. According to a few charts from the drama blog on Sina, it seems this drama took the number one spot for ratings for its time slot. Although I must admit the story is a bit blown out of proportion but it was very well acted. There was plenty of character development and we see a lot of change in EVERY main and sub lead character in the drama. This includes Xue Peng, Chen Xiu, Jin Tao, the Zhao family, and even Chun Lei. The supporting cast Lin Lin and her doctor friend were both great additions to the cast as well.

As always, I really love the courageous and kind-hearted Chen Xiu. The misunderstanding that sets off all the chain of events was really nobody’s fault, but Chen Xiu probably suffered the most throughout the drama. I really felt for her at many points in the drama. Ma Su is both beautiful and emotional actress I was really touched by her performance. She is righteous and thoughtful of others and she is always making sacrifices. I found that she had really great chemistry with the Zhao daughter, her baby son, and also her best friend Ling Ling. Zhou Chun Lei played a very nice antagonist role and at the end we really see her change and understand herself. Her acting was great and she really gave off that evil and scheming aura we all love in our drama enemies.

The male leads were very well played as well. Zhao Xue Peng was both childish and half crazy at the same time that I often felt pity and empathy for him. His character is one of the greatest victims in the drama but I would still say that a lot of his pain came from his own inability to grasp the bigger picture and open his mind. Jin Tao is a admirable man but sometimes just watching him and angering his wife really got me on the steam roller. The cast was truly exceptional.

This drama is pretty much serious all throughout and the mood is usually tense and quiet. The conflicts between all the characters are really well put and the emotional scenes were awesome as well, all of them with Chen Xiu.

Rating:
4.6/5.0

Extras:
HQ Banner 1
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丑女也疯狂 Chou Nu Ye Feng Kuang – Ugly Girl

Cast:
Jiang Xin as Ye Zi
Johnny Chen as He Tian Ming
Qiao Zhen Yu as Feng Zi Jian
Zhou Li as Liu Xin Ting
Zhang Jia Nan as Qin Li Juan

Genre:
Romance

Plot:
Ye Zi, played by actress Jiang Xin, is a girl who’s face is terribly marred and often called ‘Ugly Girl’ by all the neighbors and her friends. The people who know her well, however, such as her best friend Tian Ming, see past her ugly physical appearance and understand her kind heart.

Tian Ming is the rebellious son of a large advertising company’s director and aspires to be a writer and not a businessman. He is forced into a marriage with his childhood friend Li Juan.

Ye Zi and her mother actually came to the city because her mother remarried with a kind man. He also had a daughter already named Liu Xin Ting. Zi Jian is an intelligent and filial boy who was raised by his handicapped single mother. He travels to the city in search of his biological father and instead meets Liu Xin Ting and helps her solve some of her personal problems. Because of certain circumstances, Liu Xin Ting hates Ye Zi and her mother.

The story begins when Ye Zi is about to be married, but who would really marry such an ugly girl? It must be a scam.

Circumstances lead Ye Zi to receive a complete facial plastic makeover, turning her into a beautiful girl. How will this change the relationship of these five people? Will Ye Zi find anyone who will see her behind her plastic face? Will dark secrets from the past come to surface about Zi Jian’s parents? Will Tian Ming find his heart is in another place?

Review:
This drama first caught my eye when I found it was about plastic surgery. Another one of my quirks is I love ugly girls getting makeovers and becoming pretty. I couldn’t help myself but watch this drama and I have to say it was decent. I really enjoyed Ye Zi’s performance. Liu Xin Ting was just pure evil but I could totally understand how she felt. Li Juan was a good actress as well and I think a lot of the flaws in this drama came from the male cast. The actor for Tian Ming really began to annoy me. His indecision over Li Juan really got to the point where I wanted to punch him.

The story plot of the drama was really nice. I felt that Ye Zi and Zi Jian had really good chemistry and Liu Xin Ting played a very nice villain character. The main female leads that always make sacrifices never ceases to make me get all emotional and I really enjoyed the plot regarding Ye Zi.

After finishing this drama, I have to stress that there are some really annoying and boring scenes, mostly with Tian Ming and Li Juan, but other than that this was a very nice drama. One of my largest dislikes is that the ending really was to my liking. I totally did not see that coming, probably because of the poor acting on behalf of the male cast.

Rating:
4.0/5.0

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