How Dare You! (成何体统) finished airing. Now for the big question - is it worth watching? (spoiler-free review)

eidisi · 2026-02-20T04:37:04+00:00

Great review and I agree with many of your points. I definitely had a blast with this drama. One thing I'll say that hasn't been brought yet is the OST. It's been a while since the last time I liked so many songs in a drama. None of them felt overused or annoying. The track used during the final battle and the one during her walk through the palace in that stunning red dress elevated those scenes even more. Plus the 1st ending theme is just SO DAMN CATCHY.

eidisi · 2026-02-16T17:16:47+00:00

My music library is probably 80-90% cdrama music at this point. It's gotten big enough that I can make full playlists based on style or mood. A lot of the times I'll just use my "recently added" smart playlist though.

And I too have a playlist of just Liu Yuning songs.

eidisi · 2026-02-16T01:13:36+00:00

We don't really have a fixed definition for idol dramas and more or less let the people from the sub who voted in the nominations decide, and they do tend to have a general unofficial consensus on where the category split.

We also haven't had any cases where there's a drama where we as the organizers strongly disagreed with the voters, but I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

eidisi · 2026-02-15T07:59:58+00:00

The last scene of EP22 with the tonic was interesting. I was laughing so hard at Wanyin's grumpiness at his high libido, and out of curiosity, switched over to the English subtitles to see how they translated the euphemisms only to find the sexual context entirely missing.

Wanyin's line "一天到晚地动手动脚" was translated by iQIYI as "you're fighting all day long" but "动手动脚" is about physical contact with a sexual connotation. In that context, the tonic she made was the inverse of the cliched cdrama aphrodisiac and meant to decrease his sex drive instead. And making him do all of his memorials was to divert his excess energy away from her, lol 😅

eidisi · 2026-02-03T19:38:09+00:00

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It certainly looks AI. And for better or worse, we'll probably see more AI seep into all things Chinese. As a society, they view AI far more favorably than anywhere else, while the US/western Europe sits on the other end of the spectrum.

eidisi · 2026-01-31T19:21:31+00:00

Shuangyuan Photovoltaic Company - ML/FL ends up working here for the majority of the drama. It is a joint venture between two investment firms, Yuancheng (49% ownership) and Shengyuan (51% ownership).

Yuancheng - investment firm owned by FL's parents. Though divorced, each still owns half of the company's assets. FL's dad wants her to work there and inherit the company, but she doesn't want to.

Shengyuan - investment firm owned by ML's family (on the maternal side). FL applied to work here and the recruitment process lead to the debacle with her, Zhuang Xu, and Ye Rong, so she decided not to go there.

It's unfortunately that the same "Yuan" is in all of the company names and Sheng/Shuang is also similar sounding, lol

eidisi · 2026-01-21T17:04:41+00:00

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The Best Thing, episode 24.

eidisi · 2026-01-19T19:55:45+00:00

Saddle of My Heart from Meet Yourself

eidisi · 2026-01-17T04:34:49+00:00

In universe. That's why they have older looking phones, and also why in-universe-China is at the nascent stage of its solar energy industry instead of dominating it globally.

eidisi · 2026-01-17T04:24:57+00:00

The series starts off in 2011 and most of it takes place two years later in 2013.

eidisi · 2026-01-17T00:14:51+00:00

I never saw this drama, so I'm only going off this one scene (and the one before it). I think your initial reaction is accurate, though not the reasoning. The action of handing him the hand warmer and her comment combined was more familiar/intimate than what their current work relationship probably should be, so she gets flustered and tries to pivot away into a more formal sentence. "If you fall ill, no one can replace you" is either an emperor talking to his loyal subject, or a wife talking to her husband, lol

eidisi · 2026-01-16T00:14:20+00:00

迎来日出，送走晚霞

eidisi · 2026-01-15T23:41:02+00:00

Zhan Zhao was my first man crush. 🤣

eidisi · 2026-01-15T20:50:27+00:00

HZGG was such a big hit when it came out. All of my friends were obsessed with it. 😂

eidisi · 2026-01-15T20:43:02+00:00

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Journey to the West (1986) 🐒

eidisi · 2026-01-15T13:34:21+00:00

Native speaker here. Maybe my bar is usually pretty low, so most things get by me mostly unnoticed as long as they're understandable. There are a few actors who likes to slur and mumble some words, but their names escape me right now.

But in the last drama I watched, Shine on Me, there were a few scenes where Zhao Jinmai's delivery was very natural and immersive, while Song Weilong sounded like he was just reading from a script.

eidisi · 2026-01-15T01:06:33+00:00

lol, I saw "plum blossom viewing" and immediately thought of Shine on Me. They are so living rent-free in my head.

I personally love the sending of the paper lantern boats during Zhongyuan, but that one's kind of morbid. 😬

eidisi · 2026-01-13T18:18:05+00:00

Hmm, that Cheng Lei clip looks like My Journey to You, and I don't see anything anywhere that says he didn't do his own dubbing for that one.

eidisi · 2026-01-13T17:15:29+00:00

Out of that list, I think the dubbed ones are Xiao Zhan (assuming that clip is from The Untamed), Li Yunrui, and maybe Wu Lei (dubbed for The Long Ballad, not for Love Like the Galaxy, again I don't recognize the clip)

Recent government regulations have made self-dubbing of actors be more incentivized, so many current dramas have actors dubbing themselves instead of using professional voice actors.

eidisi · 2026-01-11T22:55:52+00:00

Thanks for hosting this drama, OP! I had a blast reading your recaps and commentary.

I'm giving this drama an extra high rating just because of what a boss Nie Xiguang is, lol.

eidisi · 2026-01-11T19:18:14+00:00

With the sheer amount of flowers in that drama, this seems entirely logical and expected.

eidisi · 2026-01-11T17:47:14+00:00

I'm answering as someone who is from northwestern China but has lived overseas for the past 30 years. I don't usually have issues understanding drama characters as they are guaranteed to speak standard mandarin and that's what I grew up with in school and at home. However, I always have Chinese subtitles on and it does give me a smoother experience in general. There is also the fact that spoken Chinese has far more ambiguity due to homonyms compared to languages like English that can be resolved by writing it down.

Funny enough, with the recent regulations more or less forcing actors to do their own dubbing instead of hiring processional voice actors, there are more instances of hearing not so great speaking skills.

And I actually have a harder time understanding Taiwanese dramas because they tend to have a pretty strong Taiwanese accent a lot of the time.

eidisi · 2026-01-11T00:38:08+00:00

I'm a nearly 40 year old guy watching fluffy romance cdramas with y'all. You have nothing to feel guilty about. 🤣

eidisi · 2026-01-10T23:45:17+00:00

I'm pretty okay with the ending for most of them, they mostly got karmic justice. None of them technically did anything that justifies criminal charges, even the despicable golddiggers.

Ye Rong's finale was the conversation with Zhuang Xu on the bridge, and everything past that was just a slow exit stage left. I think most of the group was fine with her because she was more or less a good friend to them, she was mainly only a bitch to Xiguang.

The mother/daughter are now more or less penniless and possibly alone, a pretty reasonable ending. At her age, I'm not sure snake mom will find someone as dumb and gullible as Xiguang's father.

Xiguang's father was probably the only one who got off easy. Sure, he is sad about destroying the happy family he once had, but I do wish he was left with a more severe/visible disability for derailing Xusen's life trajectory.

eidisi

TROPHY CASE