THE DISCOMFORT CONTINUES

Jin Xiu and Zuo Zhen’s cheesy moments are not over. In fact, they’re magnified. I was again, pushed over the edge with the next few episodes with the overly cheesy and cliché moments of this drama. None of the male leads are growing on me at all – they all seem so… undesirable.

So the episode starts out with us meeting Yin Ming Zhu while she performs possibly the worst lip syncing that I have ever seen in TV history on stage.

Ming Zhu is Jin Xiu’s sister from another mother. Ming Zhu’s mom tried to poison Jin Xiu’s mom, so they were kicked out of that house, and since then, Ming Zhu has hated the Rong family. So obviously, Ming Zhu becomes our antagonist. Her and Ying Shao had something going on in the past too, but Ming Zhu picked Ying Shao’s brother, Xiang Shao, because Xiang Shao is much more powerful. Understandably, Ying Shao’s heart is broken and Ming Zhu is conclusively a power hungry gold digger.

Anyway, a patron at the ball decides to start a fight and Zuo Zhen steps in to kick ass since him and Xiang Shao are friends (and this ball is hosted by Xiang Shao). And since there is an ongoing theme with these episodes where there are repeated attempts to murder Zuo Zhen, Long Shao takes it as an opportunity to pick a fight with him and try to kill weaponless Zuo Zhen while being armed with two machetes. Jin Xiu hits her head on the table from the chaos and passes out.

Xiang Shao steps in before Zuo Zhen kills Long Shao in this one-on-one fight and ends it promptly.

Failed murder attempt: 1

Jin Xiu, knocked out from the chaos, is carried by Zuo Zhen in a very cliché corny OTP drama fashion. Zuo Zhen sends her to Shi Zi Lin Hotel, which is an expensive hotel that was gifted to Ying Shao.

Jin Xiu wakes up in the morning from being knocked out inside the hotel.

Ok guys I would like to add that this is very unsafe practice to let a person suffering from a head trauma to sleep because they could be suffering from a deadly concussion ok?! She could’ve never woken up. Just saying.

Alright also the producers do this incredibly annoying thing where they do a gradient wash over a lot of the scenes from red to white, or from blue to yellow. It’s actually very annoying and you can’t unnotice it after you see it the first time. I guess they tried to make it all vintage-y. And also – woah this is the same set as Lady and the Liar – no wonder Cruel Romance was pushed back so much after it aired because of its similarities.

Anyways Long Shao (like the brother in Lady and the Liar) has ties with the Japanese, and promises to work in partnership with them if Zuo Zhen is removed and he is in power.

Jin Xiu, after waking up, remembers that she saw her long lost sister at the ball and decides to go reunite with her.

Long story short, Ming Zhu pretty much tells Jin Xiu to f*ck off (no, seriously LOL) and rejects reconciliation because of how Ming Zhu and her mom lived after being kicked out. Well, I mean, your mom did try to poison Jin Xiu’s mom right? You can’t really blame your dad for kicking you out.

Anyways I don’t know why they keep mentioning that the two sisters look alike and look very pretty… because I don’t find either of them pretty at all..and they don’t look alike.

Jin Xiu finds Zuo Zhen to get back her stopwatch, and follows him into his car. Another car slams into his car, and Zuo Zhen’s literally pinned between the building and that car.

But somehow within seconds of the assassins coming to kill him, he’s out there fighting without a single scratch on his face. How did he get out? Well, maybe he jumped out before the crash. Maybe Jin Xiu’s still inside the car.

Except Jin Xiu runs out seconds after his ass-kicking and acts confused and asks him what was going on. I feel you girl, I feel the exact same way. How did she get out so fast? Did he jump out the vehicle with her? Why she is not injured one bit in a world where seat belts weren’t invented yet? So many questions.

Failed murder attempt: 2

Zuo Zhen gets uncomfortably close again to Jin Xiu again to confront her about letting a pregnant lady go. I don’t know about her but if a person was about to slit my throat I would want them to be killed too but Jin Xiu, being the Mary Sue that she is, defends the pregnant lady. Which leads to this:

Jin Xiu is kidnapped by Long Shao because the pregnant lady informed him that Jin Xiu is apparently very important to Zuo Zhen. He sends a message to Zuo Zhen that he will rape Jin Xiu (and allow his men to rape her too) if Zuo Zhen doesn’t show up alone.

Zuo Zhen shows up obviously and negotiates/chats with Long Shao for a good 5 minutes before Zuo Zhen’s men burst through the windows and ceilings. Which makes me think – why didn’t he just get these guys to burst in the first place? Why waste time chatting? This leads me to conclude that Zuo Zhen’s actions are based on his ‘cool factor’. I think I could write a thesis about this.

Anyways, Jin Xiu breaks free from Long Shao and in the chaos, Long Shao tries to shoot her but Zuo Zhen takes the bullet for her. The fight is broken up because the police commissioner is questionably informed (like seriously who told him).

Huang Xiao Ming’s face permanently looks like Batman… with the mask on.

Since Jin Xiu’s dad was a doctor, she offered to help Zuo Zhen when they could not find any doctors for his bullet wound. Yes, she volunteered to help, which is why I rolled my eyes when she started screaming “No, stop, it hurts” when Zuo Zhen forced her hand to take out the bullet. Yo seriously girl, come on, You literally offered to help.

Also I am really annoyed at the amount of times that Jin Xiu screams in this drama… she reminds me of this girl that I had in my gym class that would scream every time I would pass her a ball of any sort. Stop… screaming.

Jin Xiu, after saving Zuo Zhen’s life by healing him from her medical skills, finally gets back her stop watch. She heads to the Saint Mary Cathedral to drop it off.

At the same time, Ying Shao coincidentally is asked by a friend to accept this very stopwatch at this cathedral.

And very coincidentally the Japanese find out that the transaction date and location of this. We meet the ‘bad Japanese guy’ whom I’ve yet to find out his name. Even on mydramalist.com he’s listed as ‘Villainous Japanese Man’ LOL.

Jin Xiu hands over the stopwatch to Ying Shao in the confession booth. Upon hearing men coming in, Ying Hao runs to distract the men, while Jin Xiu waits for an opportune time to escape. Ying Shao accidentally drops the stopwatch and leaves the stopwatch behind because the Japanese were on his tail.

Meanwhile villainous Japanese man is waiting inside the cathedral, and as Jin Xiu comes out, he has flashbacks. Jin Xiu looks like his old Japanese lover.

   

Which at this point, if we compare the two screenshots, they are both literally identical. Why the villainous Japanese man is not sh*tting bricks upon seeing this is beyond me, because if I saw doubles of my dead lover I would not react the way that he did, which is slowly turn his head in the direction where she walked in.

We see a flashback of her getting killed which was questionable on many levels. She yells out “Don’t shoot” in Chinese, which made me do a “wait, what?” because… isn’t she Japanese? Why is she speaking Chinese? I mean, I get why mr. Villainous Japanese Man is speaking Chinese, because he’s in Shanghai working against China, but the overkill of cherry blossoms in the back and her kimono is a clear indication that they’re in Japan, and she’s Japanese.

As she was dying, she grabbed his face and said “I’ll be back, I will definitely come back and find you”. Which also made me do a “wait, what?”. You’re about to die… and your last words are eerily that you’ll come back to find your old lover.

Xiang Shao finds out that Ming Zhu has a sister (because he has spies on her), and asks her to be nice to Jin Xiu. This backfires because she aggressively confronts Jin Xiu the next day.

Ming Zhu suddenly summons hulk-like strength and pushes and strangles Jin Xiu with one hand against the wall. Ming Zhu threatens Jin Xiu and demands that she leaves Shanghai (purely on the basis that Ming Zhu hates her). She directs her servant, Jin Ling to ‘help’ Jin Xiu leave… which Jin Ling throws Jin Xiu’s luggage into the patio. I don’t know if you know girl, but that’s actually still her room.

Ming Zhu challenged Jin Xiu by saying that Jin Xiu couldn’t survive on her own in Shanghai, so Jin Xiu requested that Ying Shao allow her to work for her stay inside the hotel. Ying Shao also takes her out the same restaurant used in Lady and the Liar :3

Anyways, as our producers predictably find every opportunity to showcase a shirtless Huang Xiao Ming, we get a scene of Jin Xiu replacing bandages on his wound because now she’s his resident doctor now. LOL she could have walked around him with the bandaging but nope, obviously the producers would make us feel uncomfortable with the amount of closeness that they were at.

Anyways there is another failed assassination attempt on him again, where these guys break in to kill him. One of the assassins, even though he’s about to die, confesses up who he works for, aka Long Shao.

Failed murder attempt: 3

Again Jin Xiu has some serious proprioception and balance problems because she falls twice onto Zuo Zhen. Once, where she ‘falls’ into him and awkwardly kisses his chest because the producers like to push us over the edge. The second time she trips over a dead body into his arms.

She must have suffered some serious damage to her cerebellum when she got knocked out in the ball. I would get it checked out.

In this last scene, Zuo Zhen awkwardly claims Jin Xiu as ‘his’ because she saved his life three times. She, like any normal human being, reacts with a ‘WTF’ because that is possibly one of the most illogical slippery slopes in history.

So far, this drama is still damn cheesy. Anyways, I do a lot of nitpicking in this post about the cheesiness but it’s actually not a bad drama. I like how it’s predictable so far – I just hope the producers won’t throw us a curveball too soon. I think I’ll read the synopsis of the book that it’s based on to prepare my weak heart.