A shell of a show
So, first I watched a show about the foundation of the Han dynasty, and then a show about the collapse of the Han dynasty. I figured, I should keep moving further along the chronology of Chinese history. Couldn't find a show about Sima-Jin, and then there's a period of instability and fragmentation in Chinese history. The next imperial dynasty of China was Sui, so I thought I'd pick a show about that. The two most accessible shows about its foundation turned out to be The Legend of Dugu and Queen Dugu. I decided to go with the latter, since I heard some people describe the former as having annoying one-dimensional characters and a lot of love-triangle melodrama. Now I'm confused because that turned out to be exactly the description of Queen Dugu.Watching this was a torture. I liked the sets, costumes and the soundtrack, but other than that there's literally no redeeming qualities. The show tells the story of Dugu Jialuo, who is supposed to be 13 at the time, so naturally she is played by a 40-year-old. To make matters worse, they also feature a backstory of her romance with this other dude, whom she had studied with. They even show flashbacks from her school days, at which point she was what? 11? 10? Still played by a 40-year-old. I mean, this is ridiculous, but I'd be willing to overlook such trifle matters, if the story was any good. And it's not.
In the first episode they set up a story arc involving a confrontation between some courtiers . In any normal show, this arc would take maybe 3-4 episodes, and then move onto more important stuff. Here, though, by episode 8 the arc is still unresolved. Why? Because every episode has maybe 10-15 minutes of actual plot, and the rest is just people expressing love for each other or ending up in cliched awkward situations straight from a romcom. You know, stuff like "whoops, I accidentally fell on my crush, and now I'm lying on top of him as we would do if we were having sex, so let me blush and back away like an insecure teenager" - this particular trope was employed twice within the 8 episodes that I watched. In fact, the whole show seems like it was written by a teenager. Everyone is acting immature, there's no depth to any character, they barely resemble real people. One character constantly uses the threat of suicide as a way to manipulate people, and also performs the most fake crying I have ever seen in a TV show. She's acting like a spoiled teenager. Are we supposed to find that cute? Anyway, when the show does have actual plot twists, they're straight out of a soap opera. Stuff like somebody who had died returning to life and telling an incredible story of how they survived, even though it makes no sense.
The whole show is 50 episodes long, and it spends almost 1/5 of it going nowhere. When will there be time for military campaigns, economical and political issues, insights on the medieval feudal life and the course of history? What is the point of making a historical TV show if it's just going to be a pointless melodrama?
When some of the reviewers here mentioned that they've been fast-forwarding this show, I was baffled. How can you understand the story if you skip elements of it? But after watching a few episodes, I realized that there's nothing here to watch. Skipping forward is basically the only way to power through this slog of a show.
So, is this show terrible? Not really, no, I've seen worse. But is it worth watching? I'd say no, unless you don't have anything better to watch. I am dropping it, and do not recommend anybody to watch it, except for maybe someone who's looking for mere escapism and doesn't care about the story. But then again, for mere escapist there are plenty of other options.
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