Hello, you're watching AvenueX and today.
Let's talk about the drama.
Ai de Er Ba Ding Lv, She and Her Perfect Husband
this is a 40 episodes web contemporary drama that has started
airing on November the 14th on the platform Tencent.
It is directed by Lin Yan
written by Ju Li, and led by Yang Mi and Xu Kai
The drama was mostly filmed in the city Shanghai
back in 2021 from february to june.
So far the drama has aired ten episode based on those episodes.
I'll give it a 1.5 rating (goldmine)
Let me quickly introduce you to the story first.
And then we're gonna talk about why I give it such a rating
the good and bad and a couple of other things
that's actually not that directly related to the drama,
but I observe and i'm not feeling very happy about.
First thing,
quick introduction to the story, as it is
set in metropolis contemporary Shanghai,
it features our two main characters
female lead played by Yang Mi, Qin Shi
she is a lawyer in a very big law firm
trying to get to the partner's position.
and she is short listed, but she has many competitors
in this particular law firm as a story sets it up.
They have this weird rule about if you are a female lawyer kinda in your 30s,
you have to be married.
If you are single,
there's no hope for your promotion
then our male lead played by Xu Kai
Yang Hua, graduated from marketing finance that
kind of school and he's very good with numbers.
He's is a trading sort of genius,
but he had a big failure working many years ago, doing trading.
And so he quit the job and became a very locked down
in his room and in his home person
reducing his living cost and needs to the minimum
and living in the parents' house,
doing stock market trading on his own
to get actually a good income every year,
but kind of completely cut himself off.
With any social communication,
our female lead is not married,
she wants her promotion.
So she told a lie to everybody at her firm
saying she's already married,
she's even got a 2 year old kid
and then she randomly grabbed somebody,
she thinks looks good on internet and photoshopped him
which happens to be Xu Kai's role into the photo,
put it on her desk in her law firm and just tells everybody
that this is my husband
and what's gonna happen?
They're gonna meet in real life.
And this whole lie that the female lead has been
telling people is on the brink of breaking.
And that would also bring in our romantic story
where these two people actually ended up together.
That's the outline of how the whole thing is set up and is likely to go.
Now. Let's get down to the details.
First, on the positive end,
number one, contemporary drama all original voice.
And this is the first time in my memory of
the male lead actor Xu Kai using his own voice in any drama
he has been in many dramas,
mostly period dramas, fantasy dramas,
even Min Guo setting dramas
every role he's done before has been dubbed by somebody else.
Is he a good line deliver?
No, his mandarin is very heavily accented,
but it's so much better that he used his own voice.
One thing being, this is a contemporary drama.
If you hear everybody using their own voice,
but only he gets dubbed
he would not fit bit into the whole story,
because I previously never heard him speaking with his own voice
This time I did.
It actually works so much better.
It makes me feel like he's a real person on screen.
it's like I have to hear somebody's voice
coming out of their actual vocal cord
to be able to have this impression
to recognize them as a living person.
Otherwise they are just as flat as characters on paper
written, two dimensional.
I could never quite feel them.
If this is a period drama,
it wouldn't work, because his line delivery is ~~~
not good enough.
Ok, it's the Wang Heidi type of situation.
If he uses his own voice as DFQC, it wouldn't have worked,
but thankfully this is a contemporary drama.
It's not so problematic and it actually really fits his character
the way the lazy and relaxed way of him speaking with that accent.
Number two, this is actually really really funny drama.
I'm gonna talk about the negative things in the second part.
But if we put that aside for now,
just to say, go with the setting,
go with the characters,
go with what the story tells you they are
and how their relationship develops.
It's really funny.
It has many kind of in your expectation,
but you can't quite see how it's gonna play out.
And when it plays out, it's filled with details,
interesting engagement of people sitting in the same space
in a way coerce each other into you know doing what they want them to do.
All those little details that goes on in this drama
are very engaging and funny to watch.
And when you see an epic shit moment is coming,
you're actually excited as an audience
oh ~~~you know like how these characters are gonna resolve
this epically dramatic situation.
And it just happens to depict a couple of
scenes that i've actually seen in real life.
Happening to people I know
I was stomping on the ground when that showed up
there is a close girlfriend of our female character
who is also her sister in law.
So this lady is her good friend,
but also married her.
One of her two brothers
that actress had this one scene when she got drunk
and start to basically break down and crying.
I happened to know somebody in my life
many years ago who did exactly that
she vomited so much that she projectile vomited behind my back
I still remember what it smells like
and then she got so breaking down crying for over an hour and a half.
and I secretly filmed her solid continues none breaking 20 minutes
of her going crazy crying.
It's still on my phone.
I'm gonna keep it forever.
And it's exactly the same
when I saw that happening on screen.
it's like my life got realized on screen,
so these things just make me really happy watching the drama.
I didn't expect there's gonna be that much laughter that much
entertainment. basically
the third thing I like about it is,
I know as the female lead actress Yang Mi in this drama,
she is in many ways and most of the time
playing her self or this character has a lot of
quality that's actually very similar to Yang Mi herself in life.
So that if you watch a lot of her variety show programs previously
you almost see like a 70 to 80% of herself in the character,
you can say in a way that is a lazy way for an actor actress to
play because they wouldn't need to really work that much on it.
They kind of just let the natural self come out
for most of the time it's enough.
But actually I also enjoyed it quite a lot.
She is very, very relaxed when she plays a contemporary role.
We've recently just seen a doctor drama
this role is even closer to what Yang Mi really is like.
There's a lot of little details of her acting in this drama
much much more again compared to her fantasy
goddess roles that doesn't link to any believability.
In this drama. She's actually believable
given that you don't think about the logic of some
of the settings of the drama
that's totally on the writing side of the story.
So overall, this is not the greatest contemporary drama.
It's definitely not gonna get any awards that I can think of.
and It probably wouldn't have a very high rating either,
but I have to admit while it was airing,
it was the most anticipated drama for me
every day to click it open.
The other one is the New Life Begins, right
What I was watching like five dramas at the same time,
these two are the once I pick first for the day,
I just wanna see how much more drama you're gonna throw up me and
how many more ridiculous scenarios the characters are heading into.
So these are the positive things.
Now what is not good about this drama
mostly is because it's a super floating,
completely disconnected to reality setting drama.
I would call this as a metropolis fairy tale story
from second one when you see how they depict the law firm,
the people who work there, their dress code,
the interior design
and then you see how all the lawyers what they're doing.
Day in and day out
doesn't look like a law firm at all.
The lady lawyers dress so over the toply
like rich business man's super rich wives.
You never really see them doing much of a lawyer's work,
which usually involves a lot of desk work.
a lot of paperwork, stuck in front of a computer
going through piles and piles of files. over time,
you know,not going home at night.
You almost don't see any of that.
You see them going to yoga classes,
you see them going to banquet, multiple banquets,
going to all kinds of events and just
looking perfect.
The hair, the makeup, the lipstick,
the gowns
I believe actual lawyers work like that in china.
So it's super disconnected,
even interior design of the law firm.
It looks more like a vintage fashion brand or
makeup company instead of you know like a law firm
If you don't buy into it.
It's a ridiculous drama to you.
So built upon this ridiculous premise,
you have a female lead doing that whole
lying to everybody that this is my husband, honestly,
that's never gonna work in reality
and you've worked in this firm for years
and still people haven't really suspected
like they've never seen your husband.
It's only a photo.
So these are the good and bad.
I've told you, you decide whether this is your type of drama
or you wanna venture into it.
Now. The third part of this video,
so this drama literally has only been on air for 4 days
already you see a lot of reviewers on china's, mostly and Bilibili,
but they would put their videos out on other platforms as well,
have started talking about this drama
They are all very negative.
That's one thing.
The second thing is I found,
although they have their different ways of doing it,
they all have same points.
It's like the bulletin points they're gonna mention in their video
ranting about this drama are all the same.
It just moves around in different orders,
and it's too similar that I cannot believe it's spontaneously happening.
From individuals.
I've seen multiple,
bigger accounts of chinese reviewers who would use this
specific term of comparing Yang Mi's role in this drama as the
female version of Zhang Han's role in (Gentalmen of Eastern 8)
which just got pulled down from china's internet and had
a huge ranting sort of episode in chinese dramaland.
It's not just one person who mentions it.
okay.It's multiple people.
They all pick this very specific thing
that just like make my
antenna go up,
and it just doesn't feel right.
It feels like there's a very clear plotted out angle and plan of attack
that's been coordinated by one person or one organization.
and they are totally doing it just to target Yang Mi
I mean they would rant a little bit about Xuan Kai's
acting being boring and his line delivery being bad.
I mean everybody can see that.
And that's not so essential,
cause since day one of his acting in dramaland
these are a couple of things people rent about him.
The other thing is he cannot control his body weight,
just basically single her out,
and then using the same kind of way to say that
it's too specific.
Also, there are other people who would criticize her
for because this drama has very little filter.
They're using very controlled way of skin smoothing
and making people look super young.
And there's also this attack on her saying that she's sagging.
Her skin condition is not good enough and she's greasy
Her character is despicable,
and then that gets like pulled on to her,
basically saying her as a person is you know this and that.
And it's basically calling you're an ugly bitch,
but not in such a you know like direct way.
Now, if you don't know in dramaland
she is right now cutting the ties
she had with the company that she founded with other people for
the last how many years
and you know that company
that has produced all those dramas before.
And she's now looking for the next one,
either she does it herself or she would have to find a big agency to take her.
So she is right now in her career limbo,
I wouldn't be surprised if there would be
people who would take this opportunity
To I mean this is dramaland and its entertainment business.
And this type of ~~ doing it on somebody~~ is not day one.
It's not news.
It's going on all the time in dramaland.
And if you're a big player and you've climbed to the top of this industry,
you definitely have experienced episodes
of this type of thing happening to you.
And it's not saying that you haven't done it to other people,either.
It's like the whole messy sort of business and nobody is
morally superior to others and probably it's all muddled up.
But still I really hate this type of thing going on.
I remember earlier June when Tencent was airing dream of splendour
that huge wave of hate of this drama,
picking out a couple of things they think it's behind time.
And I would agree some of the ideas that you
can see it in the drama is questionable,
but I would blame that mostly on the scriptwriter
and scriptwriter happens to be somebody who is~~~~
Yeah, but if you look at public opinion,
there are so many people in that game who are basically
adding fuel to the fire and directing it to target the
leading actress
hardly anyone else , like not the guy and all the other girls
just concentrate all the fire and shoot all the bullets at her.
It's basically repeating that, right?
But this time is on Yang Mi and on a different drama.
And and I mean they can always find angles and they
usually go and find angles that's to do with morality,
whether it's Liu Yifei' role, being the, in those people's opinion,
she is a gold digger.
She only loves the guy because the guy has that high official status.
and she even like gives up her father's sort of this whole.
My father died because of your father's situation
and she totally doesn't care, she just wants to marry this guy
who has that status because she can elevate herself.
So the whole angle of attacking her character in that way and
then putting that on the actress and saying everybody who
likes the drama or likes the actress because of her role,
it is morally as corrupted as this character is.
That's the angle that we see in June.
When people goes crazy.
Basically on China's internet,
I get private messages even till today
with people telling me oh how dare you like a dream of splendour
that kind of backward thinking drama,
they're like morality police of internet,
they will feel so superior to you that they would send you private messages
before they block you.
My life is very very 精彩
so this time it's on a contemporary drama, it's led by Yang Mi
but you see the totally same way of doing it.
First. question the morality of that role which has nothing to
do with the freaking actress
if you wanna blame, blame the production company
blame the people who write it, right?
But they don't care.
They would all just direct the bullets at the actress
and then start to bring up every.
Previous memes people have made up for her.
Personally. I'm not a fan of either Liu Yifei or Yang Mi
I don't think they're the greatest actress out there.
I don't speak for them.
They don't pay me,
but I just don't like the thing that people do
to whoever individual that is out there
for whatever game they can get out of this whole thing,
whether they're paid with money,
whether they are promised with others of benefits,
from other directions,
or whether they're just doing it,
because they know doing it this way would get them.
Most traffic
stirs up the negative emotions of people will give you more traffic.
Everything is peaceful and rainbow and happy.
You're never gonna get any followings and likes.
But if you say something that's outrageous,
or you're gonna get a lot of clicks,
some of those big accounts in China that I follow,
I followed them for a long time,
and a lot of them started their ranting or their drama review
business after I did like they were later commers of the game,
but they got really successful on China's platform.
There are a couple of accounts.
I literally saw them starting with a couple of thousand followers
and now growing too close to million or even over a million,
you'd hope that they can still be authentic to themselves.
But when you see this type of coordinated thing happene
sometimes you feel at which point along the way over
the last couple of years when they are doing this,
did that voice of their channel still talking is the same,
but the person behind it has changed
or they have been
incorporated.
In a way I want to naively believe these people are still individuals,
but I do know some of those accounts are too big to be individual anymore.
They hire other people, they have a company,
they have people to feed,
they need to think about money.
I am like saddened in multiple ways.
One is I don't like seeing this type of things
being played out in entertainment.
It's a fucked up industry already and it's messy already.
We don't need more drama,
but people keep doing that for whatever benefit.
The other thing is yeah you see a lot of reviewers get involved in this.
It happens all the time.
It's just sometimes you notice it, sometimes you don't.
But when it happens, when you notice,
it's just like bad taste.
This is an unusual drama in this sense that when I was watching it myself
without knowing any background stories
without actually looking at anybody's stuff
I just day one the drama airs
I jumped into it and finished all the I think first 6 episodes
it released on that day and really had fun
It's like my logical brain is like yeah this is so not realistic set up
but this is so fun.
Let's see what's gonna happen.
I never felt the need to hold up the morality flag and get
super alert at all the movements of the characters in a drama.
oh She did this, she's a bad person.
And and this is horrendous.
How dare anybody write that?
yeah you know The whole committing fraud and grabbing a
stranger and kissed them in their mouth in public when
they don't even know you
is that sexual harassment?
yeah, Sure.
But I am not the mother of the character.
I am not responsible for their questionable deeds and then also
no one is perfect
if they've done something questionable as a character.
well It's a drama
you're watching for it.
If you're trying to get everybody being perfect,
to be qualified as the lead,
well, it's gonna be a very boring drama.
I don't think it's such a problematic drama definitely
is not as bad as a lot of reviewers make it out to be.
And I definitely see this intentional ~~~
on the drama that I just don't like seeing.
And then for the rest of the drama,
I think the plot is gonna go to the point where our female lead
couldn't stand her company and she's gonna quit and she's gonna start
her own company with her previous enemy within the company
who is competitor against her.
But they kind of came together together and form their own company,
own law firm to fight against their previous bosses
and all the ridiculous stuff.
So could be quite funny.
Later in this drama we shall see,
I had a lot of fun, so I'm gonna keep having it and
I shared quite a lot of observation i've had.
That is actually beyond the drama itself
is going on in the chattering of things around it.
Often stuff outside dramas are more exciting than dramas themselves.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
fortunate or unfortunate?
That should be the end of the first impression
from AvenueX talking about the drama,
AI de Er Ba Ding Lv, she and her perfect husband.
and Let Youtube decide by its own algorithm
what it wants to suggest to you.
Thank you for watching AvenueX,
I'll see you in my next video.
Meanwhile, live long and happy drama watching.