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mutedenthusiasm · 28 days ago

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a very detailed and well-rounded review of luoyang! i'm in love!

Review: Luoyang

I enjoyed this one enormously. A few people told me they thought the story was too complicated and confusing and that they lost interest in it, but my experience wasn't anything like that. I found the story exciting and engaging, and I was very invested in the characters and what was happening to them. It was fun to watch the mystery unfold and to see what became of everyone.

Although I found one or two things disappointing (which I will discuss in more detail in the spoiler section), overall I loved this series. The actors really brought this story to life, and DD gave an excellent performance. Highly recommended.

[ Spoilers under the cut. ]

The Characters

In a 39 episode series there are bound to be dozens of characters. I won't go into detail on all of them, but I'll talk about some of my favorites.

Baili Hongyi

I loved this character so much, perhaps in part because he came across as autisitic-coded and had a lot of traits I can relate to. As I said in a previous post, there are many autism traits that he seemed to present:

Hates being touched

Much more interested in ideas and tasks than in people

Can get overwhelmed when faced with too much sensory or social stimulation

Focused on his specific interests (food, puzzles, engineering, systems), which he is a comprehensive expert on, and ignores everything/one else, including eating and sleeping

Fixated on justice, right/wrong

Creative and intelligent

Constantly underestimated

Blunt/honest in his speech; doesn’t understand or participate in social niceties

Fiercely independent; wants to do things according to his vision of what's appropriate, regardless of what other people think

Complete lack of interest in money, status, or social expectations

Doesn't use his face expressively in the way others do (this pays off as one ages, I can recommend! 😅)

I strongly identified with this character. His tendency to be somewhat solitary and very task-focused, to the point of completely tuning other people out. His immersion in the mystery and fixation on the goal. His lack of interest in status or money or social expectations. His tendency to accidentally offend people via his honesty and/or unconventional approaches to things. His quiet affection and steadfast care for those he loved.

His whole 'ancient gourmet' thing was so up my alley, too. Anyone who has been following me for a while knows I love watching DD eat, and it was especially funny watching everyone hold their breath waiting for his verdict. There was also something very humorous about watching ancient DD be surrounded by fans. 😅

This character is so similar to DD in many ways, it was a role that suited him well. He gave an excellent performance. I was so proud of our Bobo. His voicing of the character, his physical performance - the whole package. It was so satisfying to watch.

As we already know from CQL, DD is the master of subtlety. He really brought this character to life, but in a very calm, understated way that was so refreshing to see. The deeply emotional moments were performed with so much restraint - he stayed true to the character throughout every range of emotion and experience.

There were a couple of disappointments with the character that had nothing to do with DD, but I'll get to those later.

Gao Bingzhu

I absolutely loved this character. He was so relatable and so well-written and performed. I have to say, there were a couple of moments where I was completely blown away by Huang Xuan's acting. The graveside scene where he was grieving his friends, for example, ripped my heart out.

Through the course of the series I felt like I got to know and feel a deep connection with this character. He had an interesting, believable trajectory in terms of character development, and he felt consistent throughout the series. There was never a time where I felt confused about where they were going with him, or where I felt that he was drifting out of character (with one tiny exception I'll talk about later).

I've seen some reviews where people said they didn't feel there was any chemistry between Siyue and Bingzhu, and I can't help but wonder if we were watching a different series. I know a lot of people seek overt romantic sparks flying in order to feel sexual/romantic tension between characters, but I prefer deeper emotional moments such as the many these two shared - including that graveside scene - in order to feel a believable chemistry.

Wu Siyue

She was such a badass character, and I found her inner conflict between career and family duty convincing and compelling. I was very invested in her winning the battles she was fighting both internally and with the people around her.

I liked that she was a solid equal with Gao Bingzhu, and I liked the way their relationship unfolded; with a tone of depth, shared experience and mutual respect. I don't enjoy romances that feel superficial or power imbalanced.

There were a couple of moments in her character arc that annoyed me - times where she felt 'cutesy' and/or tragic in a very out-of-character way - and I felt in those moments that it was a foreshadowing that the writers were going to murder her. Unfortunately I was correct in my assumption. More on that later.

Yao Niang

I was captivated by this character, even if I could see her betrayal coming from a mile away. She just had so much intensity, complexity and contrast. I love characters that have a mixture of bad and good qualities, and her story was so compelling. She also had such a strong presence. Zhang Li really knocked it out of the park with this role. She brought this character to life and made every aspect of her personality engaging and believable.

The scene between her and Gao Bingzhu, where her identity was revealed, was one of my favorites of the entire series. Both actors gave incredible performances and really drew me into the emotional experience of the characters. Brilliant.

Bai Lang

I am always a sucker for a good sidekick, and Bai Lang didn't disappoint. He quickly became one of my favorite characters. He was always up for anything, and his endless adaptability and ability to be at the right place, at the right time, often saved the day. He was a good foil for Gao Bingzhu, and their relationship was so heartwarming and brotherly.

I get easily attached to these types of resourceful 'grey morality' characters. They end up carrying a HUGE part of the story and rarely get the appreciation they deserve. Jiang Long handled this task exceptionally well, giving us a good mixture of devotion, mischief and goofy humor.

Prince Chuan

I practically fell in love with this character. He was so beautiful, debaucherous, noble and long-suffering.

I was so relieved when he didn't die from getting stabbed by Peipei. When he returned to the Intelligence Services and made his little speech about no longer hiding his identity, my heart swelled for him.

Liu Duan Duan was so magnetic and pretty in this role, and really looked the part of the privileged princeling navigating court intrigue and weighty responsibilities.

Gong Yan

This character represents the 5% of bisexuality I possess. Maybe because she looks like the love child of Xue Yang and Xie Yun. I felt so drawn to her smirking, conflicted Xue Yang style of villainy, and she had so much screen presence, wow. Zhao Qian has charisma to spare.

The Empress

Even though this character was somewhat ambiguous and enigmatic throughout the series, I really enjoyed her. I think it was mostly because of the brilliant performance given by Yong Mei. She oozed so much nobility and power and gave us such an imposing presence.

Her world-weary frustration and almost boredom-level detachment were palpable. She was so convincingly powerful and yet totally helpless and dependent upon everyone around her. I could relate to her sort of smouldering irritation with having to rely on others whose competence she could never be certain of.

In the moments where she appeared before the people of Luoyang, she had such a convincing regal air, it was easy to get swept up in her star power.

An Bai Tan

This character was even more enigmatic than the Empress. There were several times throughout the series when I felt suspicious of her, but never enough to be convinced of her betrayal. She walked that thin tight rope of suspense throughout the series, and I found it very enjoyable. Zhang Zhi Lin gave such an understated, intense performance. Really loved this character. I have an appreciation for characters who stay in the background a bit, but who are indispensable to those they serve.

Yang Huan

Another background character who brought a strong, understated role. As secretary to the Empress, she gave off such an aura of competence, humility and respect. I found myself drawn to her in every scene she appeared in. Liu Menke gave a powerful, subtle performance that was surprisingly memorable considering the role she played.

Liu Ran

I started out hating her, but she really grew on me. She went from desperate, whiny, clingy girl to supportive, steadfast partner somewhere along the way, and it was a welcome change. Even when she was grating on my nerves, I felt Song Yi gave a good performance. She had that perpetually troubled look on her face that was so endearing, and I just wanted to give her a hug.

Wu Youjue

I began to suspect him as the main villain within the first few episodes. There were quite a few tells:

His sickliness. In dramas sickness is often presented as a sign of hidden moral weakness (something that's always bothered me, actually).

His placement within the court. He had so much access, and so little prestige. This is often a means of introducing bitterness and resentment into a character, or else a signal that they want to stay in the shadows.

As hinted at in the previous point, he kept too low of a profile for someone in his position and with his level of access. He seemed to have something to hide.

He was very controlling and overprotective, and the only emotions he ever showed were anger and dismay. He came across to me as villain-coded from the start. There was never any real warmth from him. We were supposed to trust him because everyone else did, but that only made me more suspicious.

He was the central repository for a lot of information, and 'coincidentally' the moves the team was making and the information they were discovering were constantly getting leaked. He seemed the most likely source of those leaks.

Having said all that, it was still fun to watch the story unfold.

Zhang Duo gave us a consistently good performance. There were a few moments where the coughing fits sounded a bit forced, but other than that, he really brought this character to life.

Although from a writing perspective I think they should have made him a bit more sympathetic. It would have made his trajectory more believable and his secret a more dramatic discovery for me. I was also a bit irritated that he seemed to be yet another queer-coded villain (his devotion to Baili Kuanren came across as very bromancey), but I doubt it was intentional.

The Story

I enjoyed the mystery and intrigue of this story, and I loved the romance between Wu Siyue and Gao Bingzhu. In terms of pure enjoyment, I found the first half of the series more entertaining than the last half. That's never a 'good thing' - a story should get more exciting and more suspenseful over time - but it was nowhere near enough of an issue to make me lose interest. I remained invested in the story throughout the series.

I think the primary problem I had wasn't even with the main plot, it was with the side plots and some of the character development issues. I'll talk about that more in a bit, but this series was a good reminder for me as a writer, about the importance of ensuring that every element of a story has its own strength as a stand-alone.

I feel like a lot of the side stories were just superficial narrative devices used to move the main story forward, rather than the rich, engaging side plots they could have been. This had a somewhat disastrous effect on the overall impact of the story as a whole.

If they changed nothing else, but they strengthened those side stories, it could have made all the difference to the series.

The mystery itself, the places the story took us to, etc. were exciting and overall pretty satisfying. It was everything around it that didn't hold up as well, and that brought the story down a bit for me. That and some of the character development issues I will discuss later.

The Soundtrack

Overall I enjoyed the music in this series. There were a few times when its use felt overbearing, but for the most part it wasn't too bad. There were a couple of songs I particularly enjoyed.

Longing of the Heart - Huang Shi Fu - I'm always a sucker for the sad love songs on soundtracks. Chinese dramas really excel at this genre, I have to say. This one is among my favorites so far. The fragility of the vocals is heartbreaking. The melody she sings is so packed full of grief and longing. She has such a beautiful, expressive voice.

The Wind Rises in Luoyang -Zhao Jingxu - I enjoy the smooth, sweet purity and clarity of the vocals. It reminded me of GG's voice (although of course I prefer GG). The song also has such an epic, dramatic atmosphere, it was well suited.

The Disappointments

Character and Story Development

There were a few things with this drama that I felt were missed opportunities. One of these disappointments was the trajectory of the overall story. It started out so exciting and so engaging and gradually seemed to run out of steam.

At the beginning of the story I felt so intrigued by the investigation, and by the way in which the three main characters approached this task. Gao Bingzhu's single-minded obsession, Baili Hongyi's focused inquisitiveness, Wu Siyue's charging forward on several fronts.

Over time as their paths converged, some of that excitement and intrigue died. As the tension between the three of them died, so too did some of the overall suspense and tension. It felt almost like the writers had difficulty communicating the distinctive qualities and motives of each character once they began working together.

This came through not just in the decline of energy and suspense, but it also came through in the gradual blurring of the characters.

Baili Hongyi started out as quite a sleuth, someone who seemed utterly absorbed in the mystery and trying to figure it out. This created a lot of interest and a lot of dramatic tension. But over time, the focus on his character shifted more onto his relationships, his constant danger and his role on the security team, and as a viewer I was left feeling less of a sense of who he was as a person, and less of that excitement of the mystery he brought with him in previous episodes.

And some of the interesting traits that were built up in the earlier episodes all but disappeared toward the end. The gourmet thing disappeared, the engineering genius was de-emphasized, the inquisitive mastermind thing took a back seat, the social friction all but vanished...

Some of that was positive character development. His subtle but steady connection with Lui Ran, for example, and his bonds of trust with Siyue and Bingzhu, but some of it felt like a loss of the essence of who he was and what made me invested in him as a character.

The same was true, but to a slightly lesser degree, with Gao Bingzhu and Wu Siyue. As their bond grew there were some romantic elements introduced in ways that felt awkward and unnatural for them as characters.

For example, the scene in the Unwelcome Well about a third of the way through Ep. 37 where they were acting flirty and romantic, it felt unnatural, and put there as a foreshadowing of Siyue's death. They were both being too cutesy, and it didn't feel in character for how they would live out a moment like that. I could tell they were setting up for a tragedy.

I had long suspected they were going to kill her off, but that scene only confirmed it for me.

Side Plots

There were a few side stories that had a lot of potential, but really fell flat for me. If they'd made a few minor modifications to these stories they could have been very fulfilling, and could have lent more depth to the series. As it stands, each of these elements ended up feeling a bit shallow - which only lent a bit of unnecessary shallowness to the overall series.

The whole Peipei side romance had so much potential, but it ended up just feeling deflated and disappointing. My main problem with it was that Lui Feng was a completely unsympathetic character from the very beginning, so it was difficult to get invested in his quest to reunite with his long lost love. He was awful.

She was also a pretty one-dimensional character. Her glamorous boat trip down the river was about the most exciting part of her story. We didn't get any truly character-building scenes with her, and yet we were meant to be invested in what happened to her. It didn't work for me.

This storyline had so much potential, and if they'd just made a few minor adjustments it could have lent a lot more excitement and depth to the story overall, but ultimately it all fell flat. Very disappointing.

I felt somewhat similarly about the Unwelcome Well. It started out as an exciting underworld full of struggling, hapless people and ended up just feeling like a plot device.

One of the biggest mistakes they made with the Unwelcome Well, is that they killed off almost every character that connected us to the Well. If they'd given us even one young resident who wanted a chance at life and a future for themself, we would have had an emotional investment in their finally being free at the end. Instead the liberation of the Well felt like a bit of an afterthought.

Huge missed opportunity.

The whole Li Beiqi situation was another example of this. We were supposed to feel invested in what happened to him, but we were never given any real meat in terms of his relationship with the Wu siblings until after he'd died. By then it was too late.

Such a shame, when all it would have taken to give us more emotional investment in his story would have been for them to give us a brief scene or two where we caught a glimpse of his experience or feelings.

I mentioned the issues with Wu Youjue earlier as well. He was a bit too one-dimensional as a character, and his side story with Baili Kaunren and the hatred he felt for the Empress wasn't robust enough for us to feel anything strong about him. If they'd just changed the way some of his scenes played out, they could have had a really powerful emotional struggle, but instead we got a bit of a cardboard character.

The 'long lost sister' saga was also disappointing. We were led, along with Gao Bingzhu, to wonder if it could be one of the clan members, but it was always just a one-sided curiosity on his part. We didn't get anything from the other side - nothing to kindle that suspense - and ultimately, no payoff.

Set Design

The set design in this series was a bit hit and miss. There were moments when it was simply breathtaking, and moments where I was left confused and a bit removed from the story.

For example, the overhead shots of the canal at night, with festival atmosphere, were stunning. However, the intelligence services area with all the message tubes and sliding gold boxes was overwrought, lacking any grounding in logic or reality, and ultimately felt very chaotic and meaningless. I just didn't get the sense of how any of it functioned within the technology of the time, and for that reason it didn't feel real.

If they'd simplified the whole thing and made it feel more rational, organized and realistic, it would have lent so much more dramatic weight to everything that happened there.

I felt the same way about what felt like an over-use of water features. For example, Baili Hongyi's space. It felt impractical. I ended up spending a lot of time pondering the mold on his papers and bedding, and wondering how many times a guest accidentally slipped on the floor or dragged their sleeve in the water while dining.

I think water features are beautiful, and I'm led to understand that there is a historical basis for water features in houses, but this felt like a bit too much. Especially given how practical Baili Hongyi was as a person. It felt a bit out of character for him to spend most of his time in such an impractical, visually cluttered space.

Outdoor spaces felt immersive, while some of the indoor ones felt distracting

Form over function has always been one of my pet peeves. Yes, there is undeniable beauty in it, but when the sets felt overwrought it ended up giving the production more of a stage/theater play atmosphere and less like something real, gritty and tangible - grounded in reality. Especially since these were locations where we spent so much time in the series.

By contrast, if you look at some of the scenes that happened outside of those locations - for example whenever they met at the street cafe for a bowl of lamb soup, or even the granary, or almost anywhere in the street - it just felt more 'real' and immersive.

I recognize I'm coming at this from the perspective of someone who is easily overwhelmed by visual clutter, chaos and complexity, so this might have been 'just me'. I'm sure there are a lot of people who were captivated by the impractical beauty of the sets. But to me, when something tries too hard to be visually stunning, it often also becomes visually distracting.

One of the important principles of set design is that they are meant to be in the background. Some of the sets were so 'up front' that they might as well have been given a few lines in the script.

Unintentional Comedy

The whole extra finger thing killed me. It was so comedic, especially the way the brother would always be holding it up like Dr Evil in Austin Powers films. I was LOLing every time the extra finger made an appearance. It was so cute, and hard to take seriously.

Separated at birth?

I couldn't help but think that all it would have taken was for his mother to do like Douzi's mother in Farewell My Concubine, and all of this unpleasantness could have been entirely avoided...

Outrage

As I already mentioned, I began to expect early on that the writers were going to murder Siyue, and I was so angry!

This happened with the Wolf as well. I feel like it's a 'thing' to kill off strong female characters in order to help develop the emotional experience of male characters, and it offends me.

I get that some people enjoy a tragic love story, but to me it just feels like pointless, gratuitous pain. Who are these people whose lives are so cheerful that they want tragedy in their escapism?

The scene where she died was so annoying, too. The deadbeat brother-in-law with a crossbow? To quote a certain cultivator, "Ridiculous." And she dies protecting her villainous brother and they keep him alive so her sacrifice 'won't have been in vain'? And then we get treated to a scene of Gao Bingzhu on the bridge, alone?

To say I hated the ending would be an understatement. I am not built for this kind of tragic romance BS. 😅

Final Thoughts

I feel like I spent a lot of time tearing things apart, here, but ultimately I did enjoy this drama a lot. As is evidenced by the fact that I finished it pretty quickly. I normally take a long time to watch a drama, because I tend to nibble away at these sorts of things. Not so with this drama. I made time to watch it because I was drawn into the story and invested in the characters.

I just felt a bit let down by a few aspects of it.

I am very proud of DD. He showed himself to be a solid actor in this series, and I think no one who watched it could fail to see he has what it takes. It stands as powerful proof of his talent and ability. 🥺

#wang yibo #luoyang #fengqi luoyang #baili hongyi #luoyang spoilers #actor dd #reviews

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