Meteor Garden

I started watching Meteor Garden on Tuesday and...I finished it last night. Yes, all twenty-seven episodes of it.

It turns out that romantic dramas can really bring the cliffhangers.

Summary: Shan Cai, a poor college student attending a rich, snobby college, declares war on the resident ominous college clique F4 after they begin bullying her. As a result, she attracts the attention of the troubled but cute Dao Ming Si, leader of F4. Thus begins a plot fueled by love dodecahedrons, big misunderstandings, and Dao Ming Si being a jerk.

I had a lot of fun with this!

Spoilers, and mention of bullying, rape, and child abuse below cut.

This is the first East Asian drama that I've completed since I was in elementary school and watching wuxia with my parents. While the plot tested my patience sometimes, I adored Shan Cai from the beginning, and the rest of the characters grew on me. The story made me laugh a lot, as well, and I can forgive a lot of a story that makes me laugh.

Most of the characters started out extremely unlikeable. F4 were bullies and dangerous; Dao Ming Si was abusive and controlling. Hua Ze Lei made me laugh (not in a good way) with his emotionlessness and his declarations of "I don't care about anyone", and his later neediness and willingness to impose upon Shan Cai didn't endear him to me. Dao Ming Si's sister's willingness to hit Dao Ming Si did not make me think kindly of her either.

And yet, those characters grew on me, with their eventual kindness, their strong bonds with each other, and the fact that they're often more thoughtless than cruel. The show is also willing to mock them and (usually) point out their flaws, though I think that as time goes on, their more negative qualities are snuck under the rug. And it doesn't hurt that they're played by delightful-looking actors, either, in case you were wondering.

The only character I kept happily hating until the end was Dao Ming Feng, Dao Ming Si's mother. She makes a magnificent, if cartoonish at times, villain.

Barbie Xu's acting is perfect, and I adore her frowns of death. Her character Shan Cai is strong, (mostly) competent, and not willing to take crap from anyone. She gets to punch multiple people, though she was way too trusting.

Dao Ming Si I have more reservations on - he's the rich "bad boy" character and impossibly overbearing for the first twenty episodes or so, though he gets better. I do wish the show had criticized him more for his violence; while he does get some backlash for it, I don't think it's enough. His character seems to mock the "bad boy" stereotype a bit - he's dense and he misuses idioms, and he recycles a witty remark all the time.

Hua Ze Lei grew on me over twenty episodes or so and became my favorite character, because I am a sap for "I want my beloved to be happy" tropes, and he and Shan Cao look so happy together - particularly during their pillow fight, which may be my favorite scene. In addition, he smiles more often as he grows more open, and Vic Zhou has a gorgeous smile. The rest of F4 was fun to watch, especially since they kept the show from taking itself too seriously, though I think the acting was a bit off during some of the more serious scenes.

This show was really angsty, and half the episodes would have been unnecessary if people just talked to each other; there was also a lot of "Shan Cai has betrayed me!!" from Dao Ming Si in the earlier episodes... despite the fact that they weren't actually dating. The angst was made bearable by the fact that F4 was always mocking and facepalming in the background.

The ending was cheesy and a letdown; I also wasn't sure that all the relationship issues were resolved, since I feel like Dao Ming Si and Shan Cao still have more of their class differences and relationship inequalities to work out.

Also, I'm entertained by the fact that despite the fact that Dao Ming Si's catchphrase is "if apologies were enough, we wouldn't need police", no police actually appeared in this drama. Despite all the kidnapping, harassment, and attempted rape going on.

On a personal note:

Watching the scenes that involved parents felt strange, because a lot of the mannerisms, expressions, and general attitudes were very close to my parents! The mix of love and exasperation between Shan Cai and her parents reminded me of my own family; there were a few scenes that could have been taken directly from my own life: when Shan Cai's mother rebukes her husband for eating their daughters fish, when Shan Cai's mother tells her not to save money by buying ramen, and one scene where Shan Cai tries to get her parents to stop arguing...which of course sets them to arguing about who was upsetting their daughter!

Even Dao Ming Si's mother's justifications reminded me of my parents sometimes: the sense that the child is young and needs discipline, and of course has to be guided back to the right path! Though, er, my parents have never kidnapped me to force me into a marriage, in case you were wondering.

I think that this is the first time when parent-child relationships in media have resonated so deeply with me. Mostly I consume media from the US, so I think cultural differences might be at play here.

It makes me wonder what would have happened if I'd watched this show when I was still in my teens and living with my parents: would I have had more sympathy for their perspective? My parents' child-rearing deviated very greatly from the Western norm and since I'd absorbed the Western child-rearing ideal, so I viewed everything through a lens of "OMG YOU ARE OPPRESSING ME AND CURBING MY RIGHTS AND TREATING ME LIKE YOUR PROPERTY HOW FEUDAL".

Maybe if I'd watched media which portrayed relationships like those in my family, we would have had an easier time. At the very least, the humorous portrayal of Shan Cai's parents would have been cathartic to watch.