Unusual, unique.
Don't have a second drama that's in any way like this one.
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.
Dui Shou
Enemy, is a 37 episode drama that has finished airing
end of 2021,
too many things going on at the same time and
I only got to talk about this drama now.
I did watch the entirety of the 37 episodes.
This drama is done by iqiyi, directed by Lu Lunchang
led by Guo Jingfei, Tan Zhuo, Yan Bingyan, Ning Li
It is written by a script writer named Wang Xiaoqiang
who is mostly known for writing novels, previously
the drama started shooting 2 years ago.
Now if you count the year number,
october 2020
and it aired on iqiyi and cctv middle of December last year
a couple of days after it started airing
because of how well it was performing.
CCTV china central television gave the slot.
It originally intended for Snow Sword Stride
to Enemy
It's a very cruel and practical world we live in.
It is a contemporary espionage drama that
just doesn't look like an espionage drama.
At all.
It talks about the group of central characters who are all middle age people
living very normal life,
but they all have secret identities,
which is they are spies
across the channel living in mainland china,
although it has never been super, super,
super explicit about who are the other side.
But, hey,
if you know anything about china
you know where it's pointing at,
it's been very obvious but not explicit
from what I can read on internet
about the creation of this story coming from the scriptwriter,
which is a real case that did happen and got publicized in 2018 in china.
That is about a spy case that broke a ring
of over a hundred spies which is pretty crazy.
And he said what surprised him was first how many people
it involved and how normal these people look like
and then how little they got paid for doing their spy work.
So that inspired him to write a script that took
him 3 years to complete
and then we get this drama.
Dui Shou
Unfortunately, I will have to tell you,
I don't have a rating for this drama
parts of it is good.
So good that it deserves three gold mines
and then some aspects of this story.
is just so confusingly bad.
I can't just simply arrive at the middle point and say
because it has really good parts and really bad parts.
Therefore, it's an average like
it doesn't really tell you
at all about this drama
on the positive end.
First it's a very high quality production.
iqiyi's standard is rather high.
You really can take this drama and compare it with any chinese dramas, good ones,
really good ones,
and it wouldn't shy in any aspects
integration of music,
designing of shots, camera work, pacing, editing, acting.
It's all very good.
Second,
the most important thing and I think everybody who's
watched this drama and said good things about it would agree
Great acting casting choices
wow
for Guo Jingfei, Tan Zhuo, Yan Bingyan, Ning Li
as the four main middle age characters in the drama.
They really are the strongest middle age cast of 2021
if you're playing a game.
And then you think of those four characters as 4 roles you can pick to play
and they would have all those ability drawn out as a graph,
average out all their abilities.
They probably create the strongest middle age ensemble cast of last year.
Each of them is award winning,
good ace class.
best of the best of their age range,
and when they come together is like such a great show.
Guo Jingfei very familiar to a lot of people.
He's been in Zheng Wu Yang Guang productions,
he's been in films.
He has done so many varieties of roles and his definitely
the type of not relying on the good looks actors,
but purely on how good an actor he is.
He plays this middle aged man married to a wife who's also a spy.
He is a spy
drives a taxi has a super rebellious daughter,
just doesn't want to listen to the parents at all
struggling to survive.
At the same time has to do spy works,
a life that makes him lose his shape.
When he was younger, he was much you know more toned and strong.
Now he's still very capable,
but he realizes he doesn't have money,
he's getting fatter and it's like a Yu Huan Shui
lesser painful YHS
lesser black comedy, YHS
but then having all the rather terrible middle life problems.
As YHS does,
and he just was so accurate in his performance of that character.
Tan Zhuo plays the wife of his also a spy
who is a middle school teacher,
and she used to be the super,
pretty sassy woman,
powerful lady and spy.
When she was younger, I mean now she's in middle age,
but she's still sexy and pretty.
Yet she is slipping into this complaining whining woman
because as a teacher,
she couldn't just sort out her own child,
then she doesn't have money,
she cannot afford buying things she wants to like the luxury brands.
She worries constantly about how to make
the financial status of the family better.
And she's running into like thyroid problem,
which i've had if you being my long term audiences,
you knowand
she feels like,
I can't control my emotion.
My life is a shit.
I don't have enough money.
I have to face my daughter who doesn't want to listen to me,
everything is crackling in my life
and then I have to do spy work.
and I don't get paid, I constantly go and ask for money,
but I don't get sponsored at all.
Then you have Yan Bingyan
who is national security, who is a team leader,
who is a very good anti spy,
chinese national security agent,
but her private life is also breaking down in pieces.
She has probably the best husband you can hope for who really
loves her who is doing all the traditionally woman's job at home
taking care of the child they have because she's so busy,
she never is at home
10 days,
she goes home for one night that type of life
and he's on the brink of.
I have to divorce you.
I cannot continue living like this,
but I still love you so much that every time we come together.
I just give up on divorcing you
and this couple and their son
also it's just so well played out and written too.
And then you have Ning Li
who is kind of the leader of the spies
who has known the Guo Jingfei and Tan Zhuo characters.
Since they were very young,
he is the more on the side just doing in a spy job
and you don't know much about his personal life.
He doesn't have a family, doesn't have other things.
he jus tHe just is the the single man,
but who is a leader
And who is very cunning,
very clever
master of all the espinage techniques.
and probably the worst guy among them all
they have so many highlight scenes between them,
whether it's on the daily life side of things that you can
totally watch as a domestic drama or on espionage side.
they're all just so well written and acted out.
It is their acting and certain plot that are award winning level,
both storytelling wise and acting wise,
then it does provide a couple of really good supporting roles
such as Jiao Gang who plays Huo Chuanlu
a very interesting middle age guy.
I'm gonna talk more about later and and the He Landou
the young actress who plays the rebellious daughter of
our main couple
great future for the young actress and
surprisingly stunning performance from the actor.
Then the final great thing about this drama is
it is such a rare drama.
Whenever you hear about spy drama in chinese dramaland,
immediately goes to republic of china time, right?
Because that's the time where all political
powers are trying to kill each other,
the natural breeding ground for this type of story.
If you go further back,
you go to three kingdoms, wartime,
obviously many kingdoms, many spies
and we have a drama coming up hey this year.
Probably
looking forward to that one.
Those are the type of spy drama you think of
when you think of chinese dramas immediately,
but the contemporary spy drama set in 2021
where is the other one that you can think of?
there isn't one.
Naturally,
there's a lot of red tapes you can imagine for a script like this
and for production like this to actually pass censorship and get made
the contemporary spy for most of the chinese audiences.
When they think about that,
it will probably end up like 007
the western style, the posh car,
pretty girls jumping off a bridge,
stop atomic bomb exploding that level.
Spy story.
Yet, this is a contemporary one that seems to have so many red tapes,
but is talking about such mundane spy works.
The most of the things they do is go somewhere and put a secret camera,
record somebody, tailing people, steal documents,
mostly that's like as far as they would push the spy element,
but doesn't mean it's not exciting.
Some sequences are super clever and exciting and
nice to watch with a great pacing and everything.
And then most of the other things are focused on.
Even when they are spies,
they could go out and beat people down and kill people.
And they're very skilled.
There's nothing they can do about their poor living conditions.
They're just like every other middle aged person who doesn't
have much money who has all kinds of family problems,
health problems,
financial problems.
So it has a very weird mixture of spy story,
but also domestic family life story
unusual, unique.
Don't have a second drama that's in any way like this one.
and you're constantly basically jumping between
these two and getting a blast out of it.
Then let's talk about what's not so good about
this drama and why I can't give it a rating.
The parts that has problems are just really,
really problematic.
First thing, it has clearly a group of characters and a group of characters,
the middle age range actors,
played by those actors.
I've just mentioned they're so good
in comparison,
the younger generation apart from the daughter character,
they just fall short too much.
This group of characters either didn't get really good
treatment from the script writer
didn't write them really good story lines and characters
or their acting is lacking
they're all buzz-kills for this entire drama.
Whenever you get excited about Guo Jingfein and Tan Zhuo
and then it cuts to the younger people
you're like...uh come on
double speed
it just destroys the overall pacing and engaging quality of the storytelling.
Honestly, if I were the script writer
I'll pretty much cut out all those young people's stories,
particularly Zhang Yue's line
It's just like no need to exist at all
in terms of unnecessary characters.
I'll go as far.
As to say there is a character,
I love very much.
The actor is great,
but I would have cut him out if I were the scriptwriter.
For the overall performance of the drama
played by Jiao Gang, the Huo Chuanlu character
I don't want to spoil it for you.
His character is so interesting.
He will show up very early on in the storytelling,
but his importance wouldn't really become obvious.
Until much later.
This actor has been in many dramas and he
often plays those not so good characters.
So when he first showed up and he did show up as not so good character,
I was like ah you know it's that actor who just always does this type of roles
But later I realized he has more important roles and his character
gets the development and becomes so much more interesting.
If you isolate him as a fictional creation,
he's such an interesting role and the script writer really write this row.
Very well.
And the actor is phenomenal
On many occasions.
I feel he even outshined
the main four actors,
but his plot line really should exist in an
individual story that's not in this one.
Like he deserves his own script and own drama,
but he takes too much time,
too much attention
it slows down the main plot so much
divert my attention so much.
On one hand, I love the performance,
I love this role
I was surprised and stunned by how well written
and well played and interesting middle aged man,
most interesting middle aged man character i've seen last year.
On the other hand, for Dui Shou, Enemy,
this particular drama,
he doesn't need to be there.
So this drama has a lot of unnecessary characters,
unnecessary plot that can totally get cut out.
This is a 37 episode drama.
If it's 20 episodes,
removing all those redundancy,
it's gonna be a three goldmine drama.
It's like diamonds mixed with shit
They're all together.
So like, how are you gonna rate this pool of things?
So the third thing is with that redundancy and towards the end,
a lot of the logic things starts to fall,
or I feel the script has given up
to figure out all the details,
they just rush and rush to the end.
Maybe it's also due to censorship.
A lot of things gets changed and cut.
So it doesn't link together anymore.
I can't tell what's the reason for it to end up like that.
Pretty much pass halfway point.
As you're watching this drama,
you're gonna have to double speed,
triple speed through it.
I haven't met yet a person who's gone through 37 episodes and
managed to sit through every minute and be happy about it.
It's like you watch an episode,
you feel oh it should end now
maybe in two episodes,
the story is gonna end and you check,
there's like another 15 episodes afterwards
and you're like
what?
You have that much more to say?
One of the reasons that things can end up like this is for a drama.
Like this quality costs money.
So if they don't make it long enough,
they're not gonna make even when they sell the drama.
that's one of the things that can explain why it has watered down characters,
unnecessary things, things that gets added into drag
down the pacing because they need it to be fatter,
they need it to be 40 episodes instead of 20.
Why can't we just focus on those four characters and
maybe just adding the daughter character in
that will be enough to be a super exciting story
and unique one
unique and exciting.
Now we have this odd thing that has like
a golden head attached to a straw body.
At least I did get something out of this drama that was enjoyable.
That's how I'm gonna comfort myself with the time i've spent on this drama.
Thank you for watching AvenueX
i'll see you my next video.
Meanwhile live long and happy drama watching.