EVERYONE IS GOING TO DIE.

Ok that is not a spoiler because that’s not confirmed, it’s a prediction. But I think by the way that things are going and the series of unfortunate events in this drama… I think we have a good bet on everyone dying by the end of tomorrow’s episode – all the main characters.

Maybe not Shi Hao. But that’s it.

At this point, the drama is quick paced, and I know that it’s ending tomorrow, but the editing has gotten so much more choppy and I felt like that there are so many things left out or some plot points don’t make sense.

Here are some tips for the producers in the future to save some time, so they don’t have to resort to shitty editing

1) Don’t spend the first 6 minutes recapping what happened in the previous episode, especially when the previous episode was either yesterday, or literally a minute ago (since two episodes back to back) – I mean, I get it for dramas that play once a week but seriously, we don’t need to have the last scene replayed from beginning to end.

2) STOP THE FLASHBACKS. IF YOU ARE SHOWING A FLASHBACK TWICE, THEN IT’S TOO MUCH. We know what happened ok? Stop taking up 5-10 minutes every episode giving us flashbacks.

3) Unimportant plot points: Ok do I really need to watch Tang Hai mourn over Xiao Lan? Do I really need to watch him get revenge? I mean, it’s sad and all, but if we’re cutting down four episodes, that shit’s gotta go.

Ok I’m done.

Continuing on from the previous episode, Zuo Zhen commands his men to look for Long Yi because he’s convinced that Jin Xiu’s disappearance has something to do with this.

Long Yi summoned Ming Zhu to convince Jin Xiu to be with Long Yi.

Ming Zhu goes on and on yet again about how Jin Xiu owes her and how happy she is that Jin Xiu is suffering like how she did before, and how her mother died because of the Rong family, blah. I’m tired of hearing of this obsession of being on equal grounds and her fixation on getting revenge, but I guess that’s her demons.

Ming Zhu acts all self-righteous up until Jin Xiu reveals that Long Yi was the murderer of the entire Rong family. Ming Zhu is taken aback.

To confirm this, Ming Zhu looks through Long Yi’s stuff (because Jin Xiu is conveniently locked in his house), and steals a bullet out of his gun.

She compares that bullet to a shell that she found at the ruins of the Rong family house and confirms that Long Yi is the killer of her family.

She goes on and on yet again about her hate for the Rong family, and about how her life has been so miserable, and that Long Yi was the one that took her opportunity away for revenge. I mean, her life has been really sad and miserable, but I feel like what she’s saying is no different from the first episode – it’s like her character hasn’t developed and matured at all.

She shows up the next day and releases Jin Xiu out of her ropes.

Jin Xiu thinks that Ming Zhu is releasing her, but she’s not.

Ming Zhu’s plan (that she very loudly announced) was to pretend that Jin Xiu was trying to escape, and that Ming Zhu accidentally killed her in the process of trying to stop her.

Again, Ming Zhu goes through this whole monologue about Jin Xiu living an easy life, while Ming Zhu suffered… Can we please stop talking about this? I think you established that in the 568th time you said that twenty episodes back, and twenty episodes later, you’re still finding the need to make a point out of it.

Before she stabs Jin Xiu, she’s promptly stopped by an angry Long Yi who makes a crazy-eyed face and strangles her for trying to hurt Jin Xiu.

Oh look. She has cornrows. She must be tough.

At this point, Ming Zhu tells Long Yi that she convinced Jin Xiu to stay with him forever. Which is pretty fishy, considering that Ming Zhu just tried to kill her, but ok.

Ming Zhu offers him a drink while he waits for Jin Xiu to get ‘prettied’ up for their date, and poisons his drink. Ming Zhu makes the mistake of being too fixated on the drink, drawing Long Yi’s suspicion. He throws down the drink and slaps her across the face, and checks on Jin Xiu, realizing that she was gone.

He catches Jin Xiu right when she reaches the gate at Zuo Zhen’s mansion and he walks towards her at a glacial menacing pace… which was very counterproductive. Because if he actually sped things up instead of being all scary and menacing, he would’ve caught her before Shi Hao answered the door.

Jin Xiu ran in.

And Long Yi stared at Shi Hao menacingly.

I’m so curious in what happened afterwards, I mean, did they fight? Did Long Yi get back into his car and drive away? WHAT HAPPENED? Nope, no time for that, but somehow we have all this time for Tang Hai to mope and seek revenge against that Japanese lady.

#unimpressed

 

Jin Xiu goes to tell Zuo Zhen what had happened, and urged him to save Ming Zhu because Ming Zhu sacrificed herself to save Jin Xiu.

This is where I thought, “Oh great! Maybe I won’t be so confused on why Ming Zhu promptly saved Jin Xiu, sacrificing herself, even though Ming Zhu tried to kill her earlier”.

NOPE.

I still don’t get it. The editing on this was so bad that I don’t even know when this conversation could have possibly happened.

The flashback was of Ming Zhu and Jin Xiu having a sisterly conversation about Ming Zhu sacrificing herself so Jin Xiu could escape.

Did it happen before Ming Zhu release Jin Xiu, and announced loudly that she was going to kill Jin Xiu? Was that just a cover up?

Or was it after Long Yi stopped her from killing Jin Xiu, and Ming Zhu changed her mind about killing Jin Xiu, and suddenly wanted to help her?

According to my investigative skills, since in Jin Xiu’s flashback of what happened, Ming Zhu was wearing the red jacket when she was rescuing Jin Xiu, so these could be the only possible times that they had a sisterly conversation.

 

Ming Zhu was tortured for releasing Jin Xiu, and she taunted Long Yi for being a failure, and that Jin Xiu would never love him. She really reminded me of the Joker in The Dark Knight in this scene, with her cackling, and her licking her lips constantly.

Also the rope around her wrists are suspiciously loose. 

Long Yi use Ming Zhu as bait to get Xiang Han Chuan to come out.

The night before they meet, Xiang Han Chuan and Ying Dong have a brotherly conversation, where Han Chuan tells Ying Dong that he’s proud of him, and says very sappy things, because Han Chuan was going to be putting himself in danger the next day to rescue Ming Zhu.

 

Long Yi gets Xiang Han Chuan to sign a contract that transfers all of Xiang Han Chuan’s belongings – including his money, company, assets, to Long Yi, in order to save Ming Zhu’s life. This is the whole Xiang family’s wealth.

Long Yi, afraid that Xiang Han Chuan would go back on his word, forced Xiang Han Chuan to inject specialized opium into his bloodstream as well, so he would suffer the control of Long Yi.

Xiang Han Chuan injects the deadly opium without hesitation, knowing that if he stops injecting the opium, he will die. But :’) he still does so for Ming Zhu, because he loves her so much. I haven’t mentioned this before, but Xiang Han Chuan is actually pretty handsome. I’m so glad that Ming Zhu had gone with him all along.

Ming Zhu goes to Zuo Zhen to stop him from retaliating against Long Yi, because only Long Yi has the opium for Xiang Han Chuan to keep him from dying. There, Ming Zhu goes to speak with Jin Xiu.

 

They finally reconcile, which is so weird.

Ok. I learned about character development when I was in high school, ok? It seems like producers have not heard of this before. They seem to think that it’s believable to have character relationships and attitudes to switch 180 degrees. I’ve ranted enough about Jin Xiu’s character development and its sudden switches, but Ming Zhu’s was even worse.

I don’t know if it’s because of the editing or whatever, but literally 40 minutes ago (two days in drama time) she hated Jin Xiu’s guts and still blamed her for all her misfortunes and wanted to get revenge on her. I don’t know if it’s better in the uncut version, but I’m so bleh with it the drama that I’m not going to waste precious drama time just to figure out stuff from bad editing.

 

Long Yi gains access to Xiang Han Chuan’s wealth, and his safety deposit box is full of gold.

Xiang Han Chuan is not taking his opium injection, and Ming Zhu doesn’t know. It’s really sad in this scene because he’s trying to stop his hand from shaking.

He’s portrayed as such a strong minded and confident man throughout the drama, it was kind of heartbreaking when he asked Ming Zhu at this moment “If you could pick again, would you pick me, or Ying Dong”.

It really shows how insecure he is with her love towards him, but despite that, he was still willing to give up everything for her. It was a very sweet moment between them, especially when she said, “I’ve been looking for happiness all along – I didn’t realize happiness was just right next to me”, referring to Xiang Han Chuan.

It was cute, up until they started engaging in a much too intimate kiss.

No other expression for this. This drama needs to get less passionate.

 

The next day, Long Yi tries to usurp the Xiang family company. He reveals the contract where Xiang Han Chuan transferred all of the property under Xiang Han Chuan’s name, to Long Yi’s name.

Except…

Xiang Han Chuan was very prepared for this. I mean, when he held Ming Zhu hostage, other than his assets and power, there wasn’t much left of Xiang Han Chuan to negotiate with and want, so Xiang Han Chuan logically transferred all of his wealth and power to Ying Dong before going to rescue Ming Zhu that day. GG.

Except… Xiang Han Chuan or Ying Dong should have done a better job with the notifying the guy in charge of the safety deposit box, because you almost put all that gold at risk.

Xiang Han Chuan was prepared on a spaz out on Long Yi’s part, and he arranged Zuo Zhen to show up when that happened. True to Long Yi’s nature, he got his men to come in to kill the voting members of the Xiang family company, but Zuo Zhen was prepared to fight Long Yi.

We had to endure a long cheesy scene of them walking through slowly through people that were shooting bullets at each other – which logically one of those guys should have just shot at the leader in the respective opposing groups since they were walking so goddamn slow anyways.

 

It’s repeatedly shown that Xiang Han Chuan hasn’t been injecting the opium, and he looks like he’s about to faint in the other room while all this is going on. I hope this isn’t where he dies… )’:

Tang Hai fails at his assassination attempt at the Japanese woman that killed Xiao Lan. He gets stabbed repeatedly and he looks like Japanese woman is about to get away, when Shi Hao traps her in.

The scene ends with Tang Hai requesting that Shi Hao ‘blocks’ her, so that Tang Hai can kill her personally for Xiao Lan.

OK since I predicted that everyone is going to die tomorrow, let’s have a death toll tally going for the finale. We already have two guaranteed deaths already too.