the aggravated ayi
Vancouver, Canada
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How to live in the face of death
It's been a while since I last saw Lin Yi (Put Your Head On My Shoulder) but he seems to have been quietly building an interesting portfolio of dramas with real stories. Angels Fall Sometimes looked like another interesting show. Lin Yi plays Lin Tuo, a talented young person with a promising career as a designer, suddenly facing an early death sentence with a diagnosis of ALS.
The last show with a similar theme that I watched was Love is Panacea (2023). Angels achieves what Panacea does not: it addresses the question of how to live in the face of death. In these types of dramas involving terminal illness, I tend to look for messages of hope or possibilities on an individual level. Panacea failed on several levels & for a while I thought Angels would fall short as well. Angels explored so many negative reactions, the what-not-to-do, surrounding the main characters for most of its duration. Its tone didn't change until the final episodes when all the questions that built up were finally addressed.
It's a cultural thing to cover up serious illnesses, but trying to maintain an alternate reality by lying is toxic & unsustainable. The level of denial & inability to cope is far worse than trying to face the truth in the first place. It was rather rediculous to watch, but sure enough, the friends who try to support Tuo break under the strain & his secret isn't kept for very long.
Toxic parents add to the mess, because why not? They suddenly become concerned & compassionate at the flip of a switch. If the workaholic father was essentially estranged from his sons for most of their lives, to the point of being oblivious to the younger son's near suicidal depression, why would he rush to Tuo's side at the drop of a hat & apologise for being a shit parent at first word of Tuo's illness? That didn't make much sense but at any rate they become an important part of Tuo's support network.
Keeping the illness secret from his grandfather by lying about why he's in a wheelchair is another level of incredible. Will the grandfather find out only when it's too late? The cruelest thing to the people around Tuo is to not allow for a proper good-bye.
Tuo retains intellectual capacity & the desire to work throughout his disease progression. His workplace supports his being there and eventually installs a wheelchair ramp at the front entrance. But instead of assigning an assistant to help him draw, his employment is initially maintained by making him use his wheelchair as a delivery cart to bring coffee & supplies to his office mates. From being a highly marketable designer, he becomes someone simply to be taken care of & every ounce of autonomy is taken away from the get go. Does he really accept this patronizing loss of dignity?
The acting overall was not bad. From the beginning the leads were so relaxed & easy with each other, it seemed natural & was nice to watch. But the 2nd FL character was annoyingly antagonistic & shouted most of her lines at the top of her lungs. Honestly, what is the purpose of such a character? Lin Yi did fairly well in portraying the very difficult role of Tuo, but Landy Li showed the strongest performance of all the cast as An ZhiQue, the steadfast girlfriend who takes matters into her own hands to pull Tuo through his ordeal. The actor playing Tuo's neurologist was so natural in fact, I wondered if he was an actual doctor. The show thankfully doesn't delve into romance tropes as the story is not a fairytale romance but a tale of endurance, purpose, & meaning.
I knew this drama was described as a "tear-jerker" going in, but what I was looking for was a message of hope and a show of possibilities. I'm a doer, not a cryer. Up to 20 episodes are spent highlighting the emotional impact on the people around Tuo, who behave quite badly. There's a lot of hysterical crying, shouting, & getting smashed drunk without realistic solutions to enhancing Tuo's quality of life. The despair & helplessness is somewhat unsympathetically portrayed. Then come moments of clarity, like ZhiQue's father telling Tuo to put as much effort into himself as his friends were putting into helping him (although an actual psychologist might've been more beneficial). However, by the final 5 episodes we then get Tuo finally not only facing his reality but also finding a new purpose to his remaining life. He revives his role as a designer and continues to work as I felt the character should've been supported to do so from the start of his illness. The show further explores the stories of other ALS sufferers & the various effects on them & their families, & ends with the decisions Tuo is able to make for his life as a result of the full support of all those around him. So the hope, possibilities, freedom of choice, & having a meaningul life are there & I'm glad this show was able to reach this conclusion.
The last show with a similar theme that I watched was Love is Panacea (2023). Angels achieves what Panacea does not: it addresses the question of how to live in the face of death. In these types of dramas involving terminal illness, I tend to look for messages of hope or possibilities on an individual level. Panacea failed on several levels & for a while I thought Angels would fall short as well. Angels explored so many negative reactions, the what-not-to-do, surrounding the main characters for most of its duration. Its tone didn't change until the final episodes when all the questions that built up were finally addressed.
It's a cultural thing to cover up serious illnesses, but trying to maintain an alternate reality by lying is toxic & unsustainable. The level of denial & inability to cope is far worse than trying to face the truth in the first place. It was rather rediculous to watch, but sure enough, the friends who try to support Tuo break under the strain & his secret isn't kept for very long.
Toxic parents add to the mess, because why not? They suddenly become concerned & compassionate at the flip of a switch. If the workaholic father was essentially estranged from his sons for most of their lives, to the point of being oblivious to the younger son's near suicidal depression, why would he rush to Tuo's side at the drop of a hat & apologise for being a shit parent at first word of Tuo's illness? That didn't make much sense but at any rate they become an important part of Tuo's support network.
Keeping the illness secret from his grandfather by lying about why he's in a wheelchair is another level of incredible. Will the grandfather find out only when it's too late? The cruelest thing to the people around Tuo is to not allow for a proper good-bye.
Tuo retains intellectual capacity & the desire to work throughout his disease progression. His workplace supports his being there and eventually installs a wheelchair ramp at the front entrance. But instead of assigning an assistant to help him draw, his employment is initially maintained by making him use his wheelchair as a delivery cart to bring coffee & supplies to his office mates. From being a highly marketable designer, he becomes someone simply to be taken care of & every ounce of autonomy is taken away from the get go. Does he really accept this patronizing loss of dignity?
The acting overall was not bad. From the beginning the leads were so relaxed & easy with each other, it seemed natural & was nice to watch. But the 2nd FL character was annoyingly antagonistic & shouted most of her lines at the top of her lungs. Honestly, what is the purpose of such a character? Lin Yi did fairly well in portraying the very difficult role of Tuo, but Landy Li showed the strongest performance of all the cast as An ZhiQue, the steadfast girlfriend who takes matters into her own hands to pull Tuo through his ordeal. The actor playing Tuo's neurologist was so natural in fact, I wondered if he was an actual doctor. The show thankfully doesn't delve into romance tropes as the story is not a fairytale romance but a tale of endurance, purpose, & meaning.
I knew this drama was described as a "tear-jerker" going in, but what I was looking for was a message of hope and a show of possibilities. I'm a doer, not a cryer. Up to 20 episodes are spent highlighting the emotional impact on the people around Tuo, who behave quite badly. There's a lot of hysterical crying, shouting, & getting smashed drunk without realistic solutions to enhancing Tuo's quality of life. The despair & helplessness is somewhat unsympathetically portrayed. Then come moments of clarity, like ZhiQue's father telling Tuo to put as much effort into himself as his friends were putting into helping him (although an actual psychologist might've been more beneficial). However, by the final 5 episodes we then get Tuo finally not only facing his reality but also finding a new purpose to his remaining life. He revives his role as a designer and continues to work as I felt the character should've been supported to do so from the start of his illness. The show further explores the stories of other ALS sufferers & the various effects on them & their families, & ends with the decisions Tuo is able to make for his life as a result of the full support of all those around him. So the hope, possibilities, freedom of choice, & having a meaningul life are there & I'm glad this show was able to reach this conclusion.
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