These actors do a great job of bring that story to you
as if that part is completely written by a different person
and it kind of just dropped out of nowhere
multiple personality problem of this drama.
Hi, you're watching AvenueX
where a junkie on good storytelling shares her thoughts,
knowledge and occasional weird ideas on stories and how they're told.
Wo Men de Hun Yin, Modern Marriage is a, 40 episode drama
that's being aired on the platform Tencent.
It is directed by Shen Yan and Liu haibo, written by You Lili
led by Bai Baihe, Tong Dawei, Jiang Xin, Shi An,
Gao Ye, Wang Xiao, Cao Xiwen
If you're a very seasoned chinese contemporary drama watcher
all these names will be very very familiar to you.
The drama started shooting last year,
June and wrapped in August
and the story is set in Shanghai,
as the title suggests,
it is about marriage different types of marriages
of our core couples who happen to all live in a
very high-end apartment compound,
which is the very typical way of living in a big metropolis.
Like Shanghai in china,
this drama has aired past its halfway point
and i'vewatched pretty much right up to that point, 21 episodes.
This is like a halfway / first impression review of this drama.
I would read this drama between gold mine slash land mine and one gold mine.
So it's still on the positive end.
And if i'm being very generous,
it can be a one gold mine drama.
Because I think still parts of it is pretty interesting and well presented,
but then it's not perfect,
it has a lot of problems.
So that's where I would roughly put this drama.
This type of drama really there isn't significant spoiler.
It's more like a daily life of multiple couples,
all kinds of challenges they run into in their life.
The core couple is made up by.
The roles played by Bai Baihe and Tong Dawei
they lead us into the story as a couple who's got a 6 year old child
who just moved to this Xiao Qu (小区）
high end appointment compound.
Tong Dawei's character works in a venture capital company
as the higher management
and very good at investing
the wife character played by Bai Baihe
gave up her professional life for her child,
she also graduated from a very good university
and majored in the same thing, finance.
As her husband did.
They met pretty much at the end of university and fell in love.
And then very soon she found she's pregnant,
so she gave priority to the child and bring up the child completely by herself.
So she never got employment out of university straight into motherhood.
Now the kid is about to go to primary school
and she thinks she should go back to work.
That's how the story starts.
She wants to go back to the professional field,
but then because she never actually had an experience working.
and She's already being detached from this business for 6 years.
She runs into a lot of challenges
that brings us into meeting other
couples living in the same place and actually still have connections
with our main characters in their professional field.
You come across Jiang Xin's character who is also a very
successful higher management of a venture capital company
that is kind of in competition with Tong Dawei's character.
She has the reverse family situation where she is,
the person earning the bread and husband
stays at home taking care of the child.
So the house husband and then you run into Cao Xiwen's character
who is a woman completely given up her own career.
Full-on housewife, taking care of her child
has a really rich husband.
Lot of money,
but always out there doing businesses always on
business trips and has a lot of
mistress problem.
And then you also come across Gao Ye's character who works at.
Also Jiang Xin's venture capital company as her colleague.
She is the total independent woman
who doesn't care about relationship and men.
So you come across all these characters,
and then the story pretty much is about their life.
All the conflicts, the dramas that happens in their marriage.
Now let's talk about what is good about this drama first.
Number one,
another very qualified production quality wise contemporary drama and because
all the leads are very professional actors
all original sound recording.
Thank heavens.
They don't need dubbing these actors you know like i've mentioned,
none of them need dubbing,
they're all proper actors and it's just so easy
to get into the story because it's them talking
point number two.
The main cast, if you like to watch this type of very
contemporary in time.Now story about people in their 30s
that come across all kinds of archetypical problems in balancing
their private life and their job
how to take care of the kids while you have a full time job,
how do you breakdown the responsibility between husband and wife
and all types of dramas that can happen in this thing
This drama has every possible scenario played out by
different couples representing different types of family.
These actors do a great job of bringing that story to you.
Then.
Let's talk about things that are not so ideal that makes
me at times really wanna watches drama and then at times
don't really wanna continue watching this drama.
Thing that makes me most uncomfortable about this drama is
it feels like the writer or the creator of the story
doesn't quite know where they stand.
Usually for a story you can feel,
even though it's not explicit where the writer of this story stand,
they have a position.
And if you've watched enough episodes of a drama,
you can feel that it's not hard to tell.
you know It's like doing english literature or
whatever language literature in your place class,
where after you read a novel,
you know the teacher asks you,
what is the author's perspective?
And where does he or she stands ?
whereas this drama kind of jumps,
and it doesn't quite know where it stands.
So you come across one particular scene where you feel the writer definitely
stands on the side of it's important for women to have their independence,
particularly money, right?
And also their career aspiration,
their contribution to the society that's outside of the family realm.
It's important for them to have that.
And when they have that, they have more bargaining chip in relationships,
you can feel that that is their angle.
But then in other scenes
and during other relationships and how it gets played out,
it almost is like emphasizing on the other side
of all women still need that romantic partner,
that relationship,
and no matter how strong they are
there's that undercurrent, it's like yeah
a good guy is still a really good thing and secretly they want that
And you feel this perspective being moving around and you're
not quite sure throughout at least the first 20 episodes.
I don't quite know where the spirit of the story really is standing,
not really accurate,
but it's like a multiple personality problem of this drama.
Second negative thing is one specific plot in this drama.
I'm not gonna spoil it for you.
It's about a kidnap.
That's all i'm gonna say.
I'm not gonna tell you anything else.
But when it happens,
it takes a couple of episodes,
chunk of the storytelling focusing solely on this whole kidnap process.
and the crisis it causes during those episodes.
It feels like a mystery crime drama where suddenly the focus
of the narrative shifts to the kidnap case completely.
Then it ends,
it shifts back as if that part is completely written by a different person,
and it can't just dropped out of nowhere and get jammed
into this marriage story
when the kidnapping thing gets continuously depicted on screen
scene after scene after scene
the progress of all the details of how it played out,
how the characters reacted, what is the result
Every tiny step
You start to like, well wait,
what is, what is this drama?
What am I watching?
I've already watched like what 7/8 episodes
up to this point is all about the marriage,
dramas and conflicts and suddenly i'm in a crime drama
and i'm like ??????
Didn't tell me like you're gonna do this
and is it gonna be like this from now on?
Or is this the focus of the drama because it's so off track
and then it goes back and you feel like you watched a
different alternative universe,
parallel line of this story.
For that section,
very weird experience.
I don't think it happens to any drama recently that i've
watched that has just suddenly a part of that doesn't
belong to the story story showed up and then disappeared.
The final thing about this drama that I think is no ideal is
I don't think I have the patience to watch through 40 episodes of
all the conflicts between the
3 to 4 major couples in this drama,
because they're constantly tearing at each other.
This episode,
this side wins a bit,
that episode that side wins a bit
and they're just doing this overall.
All the time, in different versions,
different scenarios by different characters,
but it's constantly this struggle.
Power play between husband and wife,
plus there's a career line of the venture capital
thing that also blends into their family story,
competitions and all types of things.
It just repeats all the time.
And it's not terribly written,
but then it's not so well written that you feel
a sense of progression
where we're a stage one, stage two, stage three.
Now we're finally getting somewhere.
It's just like the they're in this rink,
and they're chasing after each other,
and it just keeps going keeps going like a hamster in a wheel
And you never see where is the ending?
you know Is there a light at the end of the tunnel?
you don't feel the signal
It just keeps going like that.
If that runs like that till then end of the whole thing,
i'm like i'm gonna run out patience
I have other better ways of
raising my blood pressure.
It wears me out basically that repetition and just constant
different versions of playing on the same argument.
So that should conclude my first impression / halfway review on the drama.
Wo Men de Hun Yin, Modern Marriage,
my suggestion would be,
if you like any particular actors, okay?
this is watchable
if you like to watch people in the 30s,
setting a big contemporary city in china,
couples arguing about above things in their life.
and In the particular business of venture capital,
where a lot of money runs in a lot of money runs out,
they are still living the high end life of contemporary life.
But under extreme pressures okay that type of life,
if you're interested in these things,
this drama is definitely watchable.
But if these things do not really interest you,
then you probably have better choices out there.
That should be the end of this video.
Thank you for watching AvenueX
i'll see you in my next video.
Meanwhile, live long and happy drama watching.