Half-review of "To Dear Myself"
I've been meaning to write up a review for Zhu Yilong's show "To Dear Myself" (亲爱的自己) for months. I finally got around to it now! \o/
I split the review into two parts - this is the first half, the usual "is it a rec" review type thing. It does get into things that happen halfway through the drama, so it could be considered a little bit spoilery. I also answer the question about the happy ending using a spoiler cut, but I'll put my detailed thoughts about the endings in the next post.
If you want a post without any spoilers at all, look at the first post I made about the drama here.
To Dear Myself is a 45-episode contemporary romance drama focused on three women living in Shanghai, who are very good friends from childhood. And then there are three men, who are also friends.
Li Siyu, Zhang Zhizhi, and Gu Xiaoling
Chen Yiming, Lei Haowen, and Liu Yang
Is it a rec?
A tentative one, yes?
Do you like slice-of-life shows? Then yes.
Do you like shows that focus on female characters and actually let them have agency and strength? Then yes.
Do you like it when a show doesn't hit you over the head with the hyperbole/slapstick sledge hammer but lets you follow real people with real problems? Then yes.
Do you want all your characters to have a happy ending? Um... it depends on what you consider happy. Maybe not?
Do you want to see Zhu Yilong kiss the girl? More than once? Then yes.
Do you want to see Zhu Yilong cry (and then make up and kiss the girl)? Then yes.
Do you want to know how good at acting Zhu Yilong's uni friends are? Then yes.
Do you want to see Zhu Yilong look and sound supremely natural with very little makeup and (mostly) on-site recorded audio? Then yes.
Basically, you're getting a very interesting show that could have been a lot better if they'd gotten their plot properly straightened out at the end. I personally don't regret watching it. It was worth it not only for Zhu Yilong, but also for the other characters. But if you're in doubt, and want to know how it ends first, read on:
Does it have a happy ending?
I personally found all of the endings deeply unsatisfying. Nobody dies, and most of them (not all!) avoid the absolute worst choice they could have made, but that's about the best I can say about this drama in terms of how I liked the ending. *sigh*
Here are the detailed spoilers:
1) Li Siyu: Yes? Li Siyu figures out that work makes her happy, so she gets a happy ending. I am very sad that she didn't manage to reconcile with Chen Yiming, neither of them learned how to be a good partner. Otoh, I am very happy that she didn't take Xiaotang either, because uuuuugggggh.
2) Zhang Zhizhi: Yes? Zhizhi didn't take back her cheating husband. Phew. And she's shown to be happy with her other choices, although I can't believe that.
3) Gu Xiaoling: Yes? Xiaoling got together with Haowen, but whyyyyy? I would have believed it after 20 eps, but with the shit he pulled later? Omg no.
4) Chen Yiming: No? He looked depressed (i.e. expressionless) for much of the last third of the drama. He deserved so much better than to be gaslit by Wang Ziru.
Why are there three "Yes" answers now? I don't know? They're supposedly all happy in the end, but I still hated it.
My detailed review (up to about halfway through the drama without spoilers for the ending):
1) Li Siyu and Chen Yiming
Li Siyu is a great saleswoman working for a startup-turned-big-company battery producer. The company is shown to be perpetually on the brink of bankruptcy, and Li Siyu is under a lot of stress. Her boss, Yuan-jie, either hates her or really just wants to have the sales department head title for herself, so she sabotages her at every opportunity. The interesting thing about this is that you can't really fault Yuan-jie for everything. She's a single mother and has sunk a lot of her life into that company - it makes sense that she would want that job.
In fact, all the characters on this show are pretty well fleshed out. It never feels like they're just there to make a point, or are a caricature, or a textbook villain. They all have intrinsic motivations, and that alone was great to watch and speculate about.
The big boss and company founder really likes Li Siyu, but when it comes down to it, his company always comes first and he puts even more stress on Li Siyu. I found their relationship especially disappointing. cyberbrain said they kept waiting for him to sexually harass her. It was obvious he liked her a lot, but I never got that vibe. But the way he kept promising her support and then mixing it with expectations of her work performance just completely rubbed me the wrong way.
Li Siyu and Chen Yiming (Zhu Yilong's character) are a couple, and have been for seven years. (Although they don't live together. They're both workaholics.) He wants to marry her, but she wants to stay independent. The first episode already starts with him preparing a big proposal for her, and at that point I thought "omg no this show is going to be one embarrassment squick after another", but somehow they manage to make him fail without cranking up the embarrassment like most other shows would have. The problem in the relationship remains, though: he wants to provide for her, and she hates that idea.
Chen Yiming loses his job - because he is a fundamentally nice person and decent human being and refuses to fire someone from his team - and we get to see him struggle with his self-worth during that time. I liked it - although I thought it went on a little too long. That part also contains the "clothed shower scene". There's also an unclothed shower scene, btw.
They waver back and forth about what they want from their relationship for a long long time - and I actually found it very interesting. Although the longer it goes on, the clearer it gets that neither of them know how to make a relationship work - or are learning anything. Li Siyu never compromises on anything, and Chen Yiming loves her so much, he completely submits to her wishes - but without ever giving up on the idea of some day providing for her. Nevertheless, I really liked it, because those two are incredibly cute with each other. There is so much snuggling and kissing. <3
Eventually, they break up (telling each other how much they still love each other).
Chen Yiming founds his own company and then also gets a new job, and starts a new relationship.
Li Siyu also founds her own company. Those scenes were the most painful to watch in the whole drama for me, because it felt less like slice-of-life and more like caricature. One of her employees becomes her new love interest, and that also was painful to watch. Xiaotang's a lot younger than she is, and while that in itself might not have been a problem, he is constantly shown to disrespect her wishes (in an even worse way than Chen Yiming, who always came around in the end), so I lived in constant fear of Li Siyu getting together with him.
Li Siyu also goes home to her parents at one point, which is one of the best parts of the whole drama for me. It reveals so much about her past, and I loved every single scene with her and her father. (Not that her father was actually a person I can respect, but he obviously loves her very much, and his advice made me cry.) Li Siyu learns stuff about herself, too.
2) Zhang Zhizhi [here with her husband Liu Yang]
She's the most traditional of the three girlfriends, and thus I had the least interest in her at the beginning. She lives in a pretty cold marriage with her husband Liu Yang (played by Zhu Yilong's bestie, Peng Guanying) who brings home the money, and they have a four-year-old daughter for whom she only wants the best. So the first part of the drama is spent showing her humiliating herself in the company of rich moms in order to get the best preschool for her kid. Her husband - rightly - criticizes her for that a lot.
Zhizhi works in the same battery company as Li Siyu, but as an office worker, and only part-time, because of their daughter. They are constantly short of money - because she always wants the best for her child and they spend a lot on the school and language courses etc.
Then the mother-in-law comes to visit and the relationship between husband and wife further deteriorates. The mother also makes some really despicable comments about how a daughter is not worth anything and also makes some decisions behind the couple's back which are very much not within her authority. Liu Yang never really dares speak up against his mother and just lets Zhizhi deal with all the fallout. During that part of the drama, I first began to identify with Zhizhi.
Then Liu Yang get propositioned by an intern in his company, and at first I thought he wasn't going to cheat on his wife. (It wasn't like he was looking to cheat, I very much liked how that developed.) But then he does, after all, and when Zhizhi finds out, she leaves him.
Good for her! Of course, then Liu Yang loses his job and suddenly he wants Zhizhi back. I spent the rest of the drama hoping she won't take him back.
And then they both have too little money to support their daughter, so she considers getting a better-paying job. I thought it was a really low blow to China's education system how they showed the "cheap" preschool. (I wondered why the censors didn't have anything against that?) They actually let the headmaster of the preschool say the sentence: "This school costs only 2000 yuan a month, what kind of quality did you expect?". Wtf, China. /o\
And then she meets the father of her daughter's friend and now there are two men who want her. There are lots of interesting scenes where she thinks about what she wants from life. Her life definitely is the most restricted, due to her having to care for her daughter, and the stakes are highest.
I actually did get very invested in Zhizhi's story, and for a long part of the drama, her story was the one I was most interested in seeing how it turns out. She lost most of the passive/submissive vibe over time, and that also endeared her to me.
3) Gu Xiaoling [here with Lei Haowen]
Xiaoling works in an art gallery, is a fashionista and an art student, and her declared goal is to marry for money. Most of the decisions she makes revolve around how to meet the richest men and how to snag them - by pretending to be something she's not.
The third male friend of the trio, Lei Haowen (played by Li Zefeng), is interested in her from the first time they meet, and he seems to have the same modus operandi she does. He pretends to be a second-generation rich boy, always talking about how many cars he has etc. But in fact, he works at an office job (in which we only ever see him play on his phone instead of working), and doesn't have any money at all.
Of course, Xiaoling shoots him down (and clues in to his con-man ways really fast - it takes one to know one). But he doesn't give up (and not in an obnoxious way either), and soon they become friends. They obviously get along great, and he loves her exactly like she is, warts and all, and it really makes you root for them. All of their scenes are fun and cute, especially at a time where the other pairings were mores stressful to watch, so that balanced out really nicely.
He only does one thing behind her back that's really not okay, and I still don't know what to think about that. Not cool.
There is one very good scene where Xiaoling is visited by loan sharks, and the actress really shows how good she is. It definitely made me like her more - even though Xiaoling's decisions are really very stupid ones most of the time.
The three girls talk quite a bit about their life goals and Xiaoling usually is the one who gets criticized the most for her choices (and not unrightly so), although their talks feel repetitive after a while, with each of them just advancing their own ideas over and over, and nobody seeming to get influenced by the other two or learning anything from each other. I liked those girl nights a lot in the beginning, much more than the boys' basketball games or bar outings. (also: meh for traditional interests)
Zhu Yilong's other friend (Chen Weidong) only turns up very late into the drama, as another love interest for Xiaoling. Sadly, He Mu is a caricature more than a character. That really bothered me. All of Xiaoling's doubts and difficulties would have been so much more relevant if he'd been less extreme. As it was, it was very hard to empathize with him.
And to round it off, a few more pics of Zhu Yilong's beautiful face:
And last but not least, all my caps (around 2000 of them) from the first 19 episodes. 99% of them are of Zhu Yilong's character, Chen Yiming: https://www.mediafire.com/file/btdagla38m2djg2/dearmyself01-19.zip
x-posted from dw (comments:
)
I split the review into two parts - this is the first half, the usual "is it a rec" review type thing. It does get into things that happen halfway through the drama, so it could be considered a little bit spoilery. I also answer the question about the happy ending using a spoiler cut, but I'll put my detailed thoughts about the endings in the next post.
If you want a post without any spoilers at all, look at the first post I made about the drama here.
To Dear Myself is a 45-episode contemporary romance drama focused on three women living in Shanghai, who are very good friends from childhood. And then there are three men, who are also friends.
Li Siyu, Zhang Zhizhi, and Gu Xiaoling
Chen Yiming, Lei Haowen, and Liu Yang
Is it a rec?
A tentative one, yes?
Do you like slice-of-life shows? Then yes.
Do you like shows that focus on female characters and actually let them have agency and strength? Then yes.
Do you like it when a show doesn't hit you over the head with the hyperbole/slapstick sledge hammer but lets you follow real people with real problems? Then yes.
Do you want all your characters to have a happy ending? Um... it depends on what you consider happy. Maybe not?
Do you want to see Zhu Yilong kiss the girl? More than once? Then yes.
Do you want to see Zhu Yilong cry (and then make up and kiss the girl)? Then yes.
Do you want to know how good at acting Zhu Yilong's uni friends are? Then yes.
Do you want to see Zhu Yilong look and sound supremely natural with very little makeup and (mostly) on-site recorded audio? Then yes.
Basically, you're getting a very interesting show that could have been a lot better if they'd gotten their plot properly straightened out at the end. I personally don't regret watching it. It was worth it not only for Zhu Yilong, but also for the other characters. But if you're in doubt, and want to know how it ends first, read on:
Does it have a happy ending?
I personally found all of the endings deeply unsatisfying. Nobody dies, and most of them (not all!) avoid the absolute worst choice they could have made, but that's about the best I can say about this drama in terms of how I liked the ending. *sigh*
Here are the detailed spoilers:
1) Li Siyu: Yes? Li Siyu figures out that work makes her happy, so she gets a happy ending. I am very sad that she didn't manage to reconcile with Chen Yiming, neither of them learned how to be a good partner. Otoh, I am very happy that she didn't take Xiaotang either, because uuuuugggggh.
2) Zhang Zhizhi: Yes? Zhizhi didn't take back her cheating husband. Phew. And she's shown to be happy with her other choices, although I can't believe that.
3) Gu Xiaoling: Yes? Xiaoling got together with Haowen, but whyyyyy? I would have believed it after 20 eps, but with the shit he pulled later? Omg no.
4) Chen Yiming: No? He looked depressed (i.e. expressionless) for much of the last third of the drama. He deserved so much better than to be gaslit by Wang Ziru.
Why are there three "Yes" answers now? I don't know? They're supposedly all happy in the end, but I still hated it.
My detailed review (up to about halfway through the drama without spoilers for the ending):
1) Li Siyu and Chen Yiming
Li Siyu is a great saleswoman working for a startup-turned-big-company battery producer. The company is shown to be perpetually on the brink of bankruptcy, and Li Siyu is under a lot of stress. Her boss, Yuan-jie, either hates her or really just wants to have the sales department head title for herself, so she sabotages her at every opportunity. The interesting thing about this is that you can't really fault Yuan-jie for everything. She's a single mother and has sunk a lot of her life into that company - it makes sense that she would want that job.
In fact, all the characters on this show are pretty well fleshed out. It never feels like they're just there to make a point, or are a caricature, or a textbook villain. They all have intrinsic motivations, and that alone was great to watch and speculate about.
The big boss and company founder really likes Li Siyu, but when it comes down to it, his company always comes first and he puts even more stress on Li Siyu. I found their relationship especially disappointing. cyberbrain said they kept waiting for him to sexually harass her. It was obvious he liked her a lot, but I never got that vibe. But the way he kept promising her support and then mixing it with expectations of her work performance just completely rubbed me the wrong way.
Li Siyu and Chen Yiming (Zhu Yilong's character) are a couple, and have been for seven years. (Although they don't live together. They're both workaholics.) He wants to marry her, but she wants to stay independent. The first episode already starts with him preparing a big proposal for her, and at that point I thought "omg no this show is going to be one embarrassment squick after another", but somehow they manage to make him fail without cranking up the embarrassment like most other shows would have. The problem in the relationship remains, though: he wants to provide for her, and she hates that idea.
Chen Yiming loses his job - because he is a fundamentally nice person and decent human being and refuses to fire someone from his team - and we get to see him struggle with his self-worth during that time. I liked it - although I thought it went on a little too long. That part also contains the "clothed shower scene". There's also an unclothed shower scene, btw.
They waver back and forth about what they want from their relationship for a long long time - and I actually found it very interesting. Although the longer it goes on, the clearer it gets that neither of them know how to make a relationship work - or are learning anything. Li Siyu never compromises on anything, and Chen Yiming loves her so much, he completely submits to her wishes - but without ever giving up on the idea of some day providing for her. Nevertheless, I really liked it, because those two are incredibly cute with each other. There is so much snuggling and kissing. <3
Eventually, they break up (telling each other how much they still love each other).
Chen Yiming founds his own company and then also gets a new job, and starts a new relationship.
Li Siyu also founds her own company. Those scenes were the most painful to watch in the whole drama for me, because it felt less like slice-of-life and more like caricature. One of her employees becomes her new love interest, and that also was painful to watch. Xiaotang's a lot younger than she is, and while that in itself might not have been a problem, he is constantly shown to disrespect her wishes (in an even worse way than Chen Yiming, who always came around in the end), so I lived in constant fear of Li Siyu getting together with him.
Li Siyu also goes home to her parents at one point, which is one of the best parts of the whole drama for me. It reveals so much about her past, and I loved every single scene with her and her father. (Not that her father was actually a person I can respect, but he obviously loves her very much, and his advice made me cry.) Li Siyu learns stuff about herself, too.
2) Zhang Zhizhi [here with her husband Liu Yang]
She's the most traditional of the three girlfriends, and thus I had the least interest in her at the beginning. She lives in a pretty cold marriage with her husband Liu Yang (played by Zhu Yilong's bestie, Peng Guanying) who brings home the money, and they have a four-year-old daughter for whom she only wants the best. So the first part of the drama is spent showing her humiliating herself in the company of rich moms in order to get the best preschool for her kid. Her husband - rightly - criticizes her for that a lot.
Zhizhi works in the same battery company as Li Siyu, but as an office worker, and only part-time, because of their daughter. They are constantly short of money - because she always wants the best for her child and they spend a lot on the school and language courses etc.
Then the mother-in-law comes to visit and the relationship between husband and wife further deteriorates. The mother also makes some really despicable comments about how a daughter is not worth anything and also makes some decisions behind the couple's back which are very much not within her authority. Liu Yang never really dares speak up against his mother and just lets Zhizhi deal with all the fallout. During that part of the drama, I first began to identify with Zhizhi.
Then Liu Yang get propositioned by an intern in his company, and at first I thought he wasn't going to cheat on his wife. (It wasn't like he was looking to cheat, I very much liked how that developed.) But then he does, after all, and when Zhizhi finds out, she leaves him.
Good for her! Of course, then Liu Yang loses his job and suddenly he wants Zhizhi back. I spent the rest of the drama hoping she won't take him back.
And then they both have too little money to support their daughter, so she considers getting a better-paying job. I thought it was a really low blow to China's education system how they showed the "cheap" preschool. (I wondered why the censors didn't have anything against that?) They actually let the headmaster of the preschool say the sentence: "This school costs only 2000 yuan a month, what kind of quality did you expect?". Wtf, China. /o\
And then she meets the father of her daughter's friend and now there are two men who want her. There are lots of interesting scenes where she thinks about what she wants from life. Her life definitely is the most restricted, due to her having to care for her daughter, and the stakes are highest.
I actually did get very invested in Zhizhi's story, and for a long part of the drama, her story was the one I was most interested in seeing how it turns out. She lost most of the passive/submissive vibe over time, and that also endeared her to me.
3) Gu Xiaoling [here with Lei Haowen]
Xiaoling works in an art gallery, is a fashionista and an art student, and her declared goal is to marry for money. Most of the decisions she makes revolve around how to meet the richest men and how to snag them - by pretending to be something she's not.
The third male friend of the trio, Lei Haowen (played by Li Zefeng), is interested in her from the first time they meet, and he seems to have the same modus operandi she does. He pretends to be a second-generation rich boy, always talking about how many cars he has etc. But in fact, he works at an office job (in which we only ever see him play on his phone instead of working), and doesn't have any money at all.
Of course, Xiaoling shoots him down (and clues in to his con-man ways really fast - it takes one to know one). But he doesn't give up (and not in an obnoxious way either), and soon they become friends. They obviously get along great, and he loves her exactly like she is, warts and all, and it really makes you root for them. All of their scenes are fun and cute, especially at a time where the other pairings were mores stressful to watch, so that balanced out really nicely.
He only does one thing behind her back that's really not okay, and I still don't know what to think about that. Not cool.
There is one very good scene where Xiaoling is visited by loan sharks, and the actress really shows how good she is. It definitely made me like her more - even though Xiaoling's decisions are really very stupid ones most of the time.
The three girls talk quite a bit about their life goals and Xiaoling usually is the one who gets criticized the most for her choices (and not unrightly so), although their talks feel repetitive after a while, with each of them just advancing their own ideas over and over, and nobody seeming to get influenced by the other two or learning anything from each other. I liked those girl nights a lot in the beginning, much more than the boys' basketball games or bar outings. (also: meh for traditional interests)
Zhu Yilong's other friend (Chen Weidong) only turns up very late into the drama, as another love interest for Xiaoling. Sadly, He Mu is a caricature more than a character. That really bothered me. All of Xiaoling's doubts and difficulties would have been so much more relevant if he'd been less extreme. As it was, it was very hard to empathize with him.
And to round it off, a few more pics of Zhu Yilong's beautiful face:
And last but not least, all my caps (around 2000 of them) from the first 19 episodes. 99% of them are of Zhu Yilong's character, Chen Yiming: https://www.mediafire.com/file/btdagla38m2djg2/dearmyself01-19.zip
x-posted from dw (comments:
)