2021 C-drama season is long over and the only one that I felt the urge to go back and watch now was One and Only and its immediate sequel Forever and Ever. If there is anything else good lemme know and I’ll add to my backlog. But in looking around I happened upon the dumpster fire online reviews and chatter during airing of 2021 period drama Jun Jiu Ling (君九齡) which doesn’t have an English title. Apparently it was highly anticipated as female lead Peng Xiao Ran‘s first drama since the mega hit Goodbye My Princess which catapulted her to stardom plus based on a beloved drama that is female lead centric and she’s super capable, smart, and not a damsel in distress. Sadly the drama was panned on arrival and sits at a 3.9 on Douban today.

But what makes the tea so cringe to read was that all the criticism at the outset was on male lead Jin Han, who rose through the ranks playing baddies until his male lead elevation and probably was woefully miscast here but he was eviscerated by the entirety of C-netizens for his looks, i.e. every comment was on how ugly he was and hoping that the production could AI switch his face with another actor. That’s just unfortunate and the writer had to step in and say she thought Jin Han was perfectly cast as the manly general. At least the English viewer reviews are more substantive but hits different reasons leading the same low ratings – the drama is very bad in script, directing, and low productions values. So even if Jin Han swapped faces with Yang Yang it would still not save this drama. Going back and reading all this brouhaha felt like coming to a block party gone wild too late.