Ep2 Plot - Chinese Style Divorce

[geraldc]

4 or 5 episodes a week seems ok, the episodes are only around 40 mins each.

In an effort to stay up with my "homework", I've just watched episode 2, and am now convinced we've made the right choice regarding choice of program.

I'll just give a brief synopis in an effort to get more people to join the soap club:

Lin's first love 高飞 calls up, and invites her to a class reunion. However he's changed from the poet she knew when she was young, and now he's a callous villainous businessman ( the likes of which I haven't seen since the days of Dallas or Dynasty). The entire class reunion is a set up to allow him to work his way into the affections of another old schoolmate who had a crush on him in the past, but is now in postion of influence (she married someone important). Unfortunately fate has not been kind to her in the beauty department, but 高飞 has only one thing on his mind.

'我就打算为了事业而英勇献身'

To paraphrase he plans to bravely offer his body for business...

The reunion shows Lin how little they have, they don't have a car, they don't go on foreign holidays etc, so on her return she has an argument with Song, and he accidentally slams her hand in a door.

The injured hand leads to Lin's brother 小军 into giving Song a polite warning, before he returns to his military post.

After another little argument, Lin stays round her parents for a night, leaving Song alone with 当当. However he's called away on work, so he asks 肖莉 to watch over him. When Song returns, he and 肖莉 seem to have a "moment" where he wants to say something but doesn't.

Meanwhile it turns out Lin's parents are hiding a secret from her too, her "father" wants to reveal the story about her real mother, but her "mother" won't let him. I'm putting my money on her real mother being 姑姑.

Two episodes in, and the things accelerated into a full blown soap, I urge anyone who's waivering on whether or not to join the Soap of the month club, to hesitate no more and jump in now. You'll even get to hear 当当 and 妞妞's rendition of twinkle twinkle little star.

The acting is first rate too, you can feel Lin's simmering discontent radiating from your TV...

[roddy]

Just finished episode 2, really enjoying this I have to admit. Neither of them are perfect so you can't really get behind either of them, you just have to sit and watch it unfold. Some bits are a bit overdone - like in episode 1 when Song watches the young guy and his girlfriend outside the hospital, or in this episode where Lin watches her parents practicing together, but it's not like they've gone so far as to put a big sign on the screen saying 'NB: Other people are happier than them'.

I like Lin's parents, and her mum's heart problem trick was cool. Her brother is obviously being lined up to rush back home and slap Song around a bit once he's been driven to do whatever it is he is going to do.

Roddy

[geraldc]

I actually really like the way this series is shot. It's all on location for once, I'm used the HK style of soaps/dramas being shot on sitcom type sets etc, so skies and traffic in a drama are all alien to me

There are some curious bits though, it's as if the sound recordist is a fan of the Dogme rules of film making. There's a scene where Song is helping 肖莉 set up a TV, and the noise of the TV then almost drowns out the dialogue.

In the UK there's the phenomenon of the McDonalds dad. These are divorced fathers who only get to see their kids on the weekends, and as they have no idea what to do, they just take their kids to McDonalds. In an amusing coincidence (or startling act of prescience) in this episode, when Lin goes off leaving Song looking after 当当, his first actions are to go to McDonalds. Is there a correlation between divorce rates and numbers of McDonalds in a country? If any social scientists are looking for phd thesis maybe they should look into that.

[geraldc]

The envelope of money 幸苦费 given to Song by the director, obviously no one with the exception of football managers gets paid in brown envelopes late at night. Was that payment strictly legitimate?

[roddy]

No, it was basically a bribe to allow him to take credit for Song's operation - and after he wrote up the operation he beat Song's own lackluster effort and won the place to go to the overseas conference.

Even in this the director isn't ALL bad - he explains in the minibus that the patient has requested top-ranking staff, rather than the best, but he isn't confident enough to do it himself. He does take advantage of the situation though, but then again in Episode 3 we see him come round to see Song and . . . well, won't spoil it for anyone

Roddy

[gougou]

OK, it's been a busy week, but now I finally had time to work through episode two.

Throughout the first episode, I found myself leaning towards 小枫, but she managed to lose a lot of sympathy in this episode (and if she hadn't told off her brother, I'd definitely be siding with 建平 now!)

Overall, I found that the first episode was rather harmonious while everything, rather spontaneously, seems to fall apart in this episode. The step from one small fight in the first episode to sleeping in separate beds (houses, even) seemed a bit large.

I could easily have done without another plot being introduced by means of the class reunion (assuming that this is developing to become a full-grown plot). Overall, I think 40 minutes are quite long for this kind of show, some more focus sure wouldn't hurt, I believe. Not sure whether this is due to my level of Chinese, though...

Yet, even though the above might sound negative, I still enjoy the show. I like the way it is shot, the actors are good, and the (main) plot is developing at just the right speed.

There are some curious bits though,

I also noticed a lot of continuity errors, which I normally never do. Of course, this is going to be connected to watching in far more detail than normally, but still sort of disenchanting.

One more question: is there any deeper meaning to what Jianping says at the end, replacing Chopin by Beethoven?

[roddy]

The class reunion thing doesn't feature at all, although there is another one after several more episodes. I'm quite a few episodes ahead of everyone else now I think, and we're in full-scale psychological warfare

Roddy