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Review: Black & White (痞子英雄) (2009)
This drama has a surprisingly complete story. It did have its fair share of tropes and sloppy writing, but overall I appreciated its efforts in weaving together a thriller. Not the best, but decent.
Spoilers.
As was in previous cases, I’m not familiar with Taiwanese pinyin, so I will use Hanyu pinyin for the names of characters.
Story
The story focused on our buddy cop duo, Wu Yingxiong, the serious one, and Chen Zaitian, the happy-go-lucky one. As they solved cases and tried to take down the local crime boss, they uncovered a large corruption plot involving the top politicians as well as an international terrorist ring with brainwashed assassins.
In the personal plotline, Wu Yingxiong and Chen Zaitian uncovered the truth of their parentage. There were also romantic subplots but thankfully they didn’t amount to too much and the focus was more on the thriller aspect of the story.
The ending was a little weird in that they tried to fit too much information to wrap up loose ends, including the fates of many of the characters who were involved but didn’t get an on screen send off. At the same time, the ending seemed to want to set up a sequel, though not in the overly egregious MCU way of the 2010s.
While the plot was exciting, there were major flaws in the writing that took me out. The biggest was the relationship between Wu Yingxiong and Chen Zaitian with the local crime ring. Especially for someone as straight edge as Wu Yingxiong, it did not make sense for him to be so willing to hang out with Chen Lin. At one point in the show, Wu Yingxiong and Chen Lin were arguing, and Wu Yingxiong was trying to placate her, saying that there was nothing wrong with the dark path. That is absolutely something Wu Yingxiong would not say. So the overall relationships with Chen Lin were all a bit iffy and that really should not have made it in to the show.
The inclusion of the terrorist unit could have been downsized a bit as I felt it complicated things. They were simply the brawns that our main characters were up against, hired muscle for the corrupt higher ups.
Overall the story was fine. Better than I would have expected. Not perfect, but good enough.
Production
The production was alright. The camerawork was creative enough for a police drama.
As a thriller, there was a good amount of action and this show did deliver, though our actors were of varying proficiencies in the combat department.
The acting also varied in quality. I believe this was Mark Chao’s first drama, and he was a bit wooden at times, but I think he got better as the show progressed. Most of the other actors did well in my opinion.
Characters
Wu Yingxiong
The straight man, the serious half of this buddy cop duo. He hated Chen Zaitian’s relaxed and unserious ways. Over the course of the drama, he came to call himself Chen Zaitian’s friend, as they sympathized with each other and helped each other.
It was revealed that Wu Yingxiong was the secret lovechild of a woman, Yingli, and the current president. Lao Tou, the local crime boss, was in love with Yingli and vowed to protect the child, pretending that the child was his. However, he did not realize that Yingli had asked another couple to adopt Wu Yingxiong and had adopted another child herself to protect Wu Yingxiong. This was only revealed when Wu Yingxiong’s adoptive mother told him the truth of his parentage with evidence, Yingli’s possessions.
At the end of the show, Wu Yingxiong was followed around by a bodyguard duo, probably due to him being the son of a politician. Of course he found this troublesome as he tried to chase thieves around the city.
Chen Zaitian
Chen Zaitian was the hack. His main interest in life was getting with pretty girls. He was apparently a genius detective, but he later revealed that he solved cases by receiving faxes with clues.
Chen Zaitian had been a vagabond. He was kidnapped and then had plastic surgery so that he had a completely new face. Then he was given an apartment and money. It was a mystery to him but since he’d gotten the better end of things, he never questioned it.
Chen Zaitian had been the vagabond child that Yingli had adopted after sending away Wu Yingxiong. She took care of him until her death, after which he resumed the vagabond life. Lao Tou was under the impression that Chen Zaitian was Yingli and the president’s son, and so that was why he gave him surgery, the apartment, and money. It was Dayan who was giving him the clues so that he’d be a stellar cop.
When Chen Zaitian was a vagabond, he had been shown kindness by He Xiaomei at a fast food restaurant. From then on, he fell in love with her, and was devastated when he thought she’d died in the explosion.
Chen Zaitian had been jerked around considerably in his life. He’d been thrown into a completely new life by Lao Tou. Then he was faced with the prospect of now having a father and a sister, when he found out the relation between Lao Tou and Yingli. Then, after Lao Tou discovered Wu Yingxiong’s parentage, he immediately dropped Chen Zaitian. So he did go through the most trauma in the show.
In the last episode, Chen Zaitian discovered that He Xiaomei was a member of the terrorist group. That was one of the open ends of this drama. Otherwise, Chen Zaitian resumed his normal personality, always flirting with girls, not taking his job too seriously even though he now had a more senior position.
Chen Lin
Chen Lin was the sole daughter of the local crime boss. She was strong-willed. But she was also kind of a Mary Sue, being on the receiving end of the affections of Wu Yingxiong, Chen Zaitian, and Xiaoma.
Chen Lin’s role in the story was to complicate things as Wu Yingxiong and Chen Zaitian tried to investigate her father. Since she was their friend and love interest, she posed as an obstacle. But she was also kind of the bridge between them when Wu Yingxiong and Chen Zaitian needed help, either from Lao Tou or Dayan.
Chen Lin knew that her father was never in love with her mother, that he loved the woman who loved lotus flowers (Yingli). She went through some weird times when she thought that Zaitian was her brother, and then Yingxiong, because there was a romantic undercurrent to both of those relationships. Though Chen Lin rejected Xiaoma outright, that was the relationship that writers seemed to be angling towards for Chen Lin.
Chen Lin’s character was kind of annoying at times in how she pressured Yingxiong and Zaitian though. When her father was in jail, she went to Yingxiong and Zaitian to ask them to break him out, which is the dumbest idea ever. She could have asked Zaitian, since at the time, he knew that he was Lao Tou’s son. But to bring it up with Yingxiong?
The writers made a lot of dumb choices when writing Chen Lin, likely because they didn’t know how to sidestep some of the obvious logical flaws in friendships between cops and robbers, and they decided to just ignore that they existed.
Lan Xiying
Xiying was the scientist at the police department, and an ally of Yingxiong and Zaitian. She functioned much the same way that most police doctors do, providing information about certain cases. Towards the end of the show, she got caught up in her fair share of troubles due to having handled evidence as well as her having been in possession of the chip with the information about the corruption.
While Yingxiong and Zaitian both flirted with her a bit, those relationships never advanced. Instead, she had more of a personal relationship with Cheng Nuo. I didn’t catch this completely but I think Cheng Nuo might have been trained by her brother. Through the time that Cheng Nuo kidnapped Xiying, she tried to appeal to the human side of him which succeeded, though she did have to hit him to escape. But later on, Cheng Nuo came back to help her.
In the last episode, the show forged a relationship between Xiying and Cheng Nuo. Unexpected but I didn’t mind it.
When I first started this show, I thought that Xiying would be paired with Yingxiong while Chen Lin would be paired with Zaitian. I liked that none of the romantic relationships really came to fruition because it gave more time to focus on the thriller. There was already a decent chunk of time dedicated to Chen Lin’s relationships, but if she’d gotten together with any guy officially, there’d be even more screen time dedicated to that in my opinion.
Huang Shikai/Ma Xiaoming
Xiaoma was an ex-assassin of the terrorist group who came to be an ally of our main characters. He first came into the story as a hotdog seller though that was a front.
Xiaoma had been born Huang Shikai. In officially records, he was dead, but in truth, he’d been taken in to the terrorist network and brainwashed. Xiaoma revealed that he’d been tasked with killing Chen Lin once, but found that he couldn’t because he sympathized with her. That was a sign that the terrorist brainwashing didn’t work on him, and so he escaped for his own humanity. He joined forces with the main characters and helped them take down the terrorist group.
At the end of the show, he went sailing around the world alone, now with his passport name as Huang Shikai.
Yi Mingguang
Yi Mingguang was the head of the southern police department, revealed to be a part of the corrupt network and one of the people blocking Zaitian and Yingxiong from doing their investigations. He was eventually arrested and put on trial.
Li Jian’guo
Lao Li was an older coworker of Yingxiong and Zaitian. We didn’t think much of him until Yi Mingguang ordered Chen Zaitian to investigate him. Zaitian found out that Lao Li was sneaking information to someone. Lao Li asked Zaitian to trust him and that eventually he’d tell him the truth, which was that Lao Li was actually sneaking information to someone who was investigating the corruption ring.
Lao Li died, but before his death he’d told Zaitian that he’d leave all of his information to Zaitian, including his old CDs, which was where Lao Li hid all of the evidence he’d collected.
Haoke
Haoke was the tech guy of the police department. Like Xiying, he had a typical role that we see in police dramas.
Haoke was one of the few people that Yingxiong, Zaitian, and Xiying trusted when they realized there was a mole in the department. Haoke had received a call from another tech department saying that there was an unusually high level of activity on a computer in his department, which ended up being Ai Lv’s computer. Ai Lv had played dumb, so Haoke had thought that she’d maybe just been hacked, though it was later revealed that she really was leaking information.
After Xiying got a hold of the secret chip, she’d sent it to Haoke for analysis. It was hard to decrypt so he went to a friend who did crack the code. After that, he gave the chip to Yingxiong (who was being commanded by Lei Musha) and then was shot. His status as of the end of the show was that he was getting better.
Ai Lv
Xiaolv was presented as the good vibes character of the department, someone who was chill and fun-loving. She only got involved in the bigger plot when Haoke found out that her company was suspicious. And only Yi Mingguang confirmed that Xiaolv had been leaking information for him, stealing evidence and such. She had disappeared at the end of the drama.
Lao Tou
Lao Tou was the local crime boss, Chen Lin’s dad. We don’t really know what crime he dealt with other than arms. Wu Yingxiong and Chen Zaitian were often at odds with him, naturally because of the nature of their occupations.
Chen Zaitian was very disturbed by how Lao Tou had manipulated his life without telling him much. But when Chen Zaitian found out that Lao Tou was his father (which was a lie), that changed his view. Chen Zaitian had been so starved for familial love that he would take it even if it came from a crime boss, and he prioritized protecting Lao Tou over his job as a cop. But when Lao Tou found out that Wu Yingxiong was Yingli’s true son, he dropped Zaitian completely which showed how cold he was of a man, no matter how loving he wanted to appear as. Chen Lin even said that when she was young, her father was too busy and her mom always had to bring her around to his work for her to even catch a glimpse of him.
Like with Chen Lin, there was questionable writing with Lao Tou because the writers wanted to turn him into a character we were root for, while ignoring the fact that he was literally a crime lord.
Du Wenyan
Dayan was Lao Tou’s right hand man, a tough guy. He was the guy that Yingxiong and Zaitian had more contact with when they first interacted with the crime ring. He did sometimes help Yingxiong and Zaitian, but only if Chen Lin and/or Lao Tou ordered him to.
At the end of the drama, Dayan told Che Jin, the next in command after Dayan, that he knew Che Jin was the inside man who put Lao Tou in danger.
Lei Musha
Lei Musha was an old friend of Yingxiong’s. They’d met in New York at some kind of training, and they had feelings for one another. Lei Musha joined their police department as something of a consultant.
It was revealed that Lei Musha was involved in the corruption ring as an assassin. She threatened Yingxiong’s mom to get the chip. However, after Yingxiong made her realize that she still had feelings, she shot herself and destroyed the original copy of the chip with her. (There was a copy of the chip on the computer of Haoke’s friend, which was what was eventually taken to the authorities.)
Lei Musha was raised to be an assassin, and her attendance at the training in New York was simply so that she would have a record as a human. At times in the drama she seemed to show true affection for Yingxiong, but she was raised an assassin and she would die an assassin.
He Xiaomei
Zaitian had once threatened someone at a fast food restaurant because he was hungry and poor. He Xiaomei had shown him kindness and given him food. After that, Zaitian had been kidnapped but he always considered He Xiaomei his big love. He found her working at a different fast food restaurant and they went on dates. But soon after He Xiaomei “died” in the explosion, which left Zaitian absolutely distraught. Zaitian learned to overcome the grief.
However, the story reopened the He Xiaomei story line as she appeared as an assassin who shot Boss to death, likely so that he wouldn’t reveal any information. Xiaoma revealed that He Xiaomei was also an assassin in the terrorist group. The final scene of the drama showed her continuing to kill. It felt like a set up for a sequel.
Themes
I don’t think this was a thematically heavy show. However, I think the power of family and friends was the closest thing to a theme.
Through the course of the show, Yingxiong, Zaitian, and Chen Lin explored their relationships with each other as they fluctuated between friends, family, and romantic partners. Yingxiong and Zaitian found out they were brothers of a sort, Yingxiong’s biological mother having been Zaitian’s adoptive mother. Chen Lin had thought that Yingxiong and Zaitian were her brothers at one point and she had to grapple with her romantic feelings for them, but through that she discovered that love can just be love. Zaitian went through a whirlwind of emotions when he found out he had a father and then lost him soon after.
Xiaoma discovered he still had his humanity when he realized he didn’t want to kill Chen Lin. And it made him happy to have allies he could support.
Overall
Decent watch. As you can see, there are some big flaws in the show on account of the writers trying to portray a close relation between cops and members of a crime ring. But otherwise I appreciate the way they tied everything together for an exciting close.
Spoilers.
As was in previous cases, I’m not familiar with Taiwanese pinyin, so I will use Hanyu pinyin for the names of characters.
Story
The story focused on our buddy cop duo, Wu Yingxiong, the serious one, and Chen Zaitian, the happy-go-lucky one. As they solved cases and tried to take down the local crime boss, they uncovered a large corruption plot involving the top politicians as well as an international terrorist ring with brainwashed assassins.
In the personal plotline, Wu Yingxiong and Chen Zaitian uncovered the truth of their parentage. There were also romantic subplots but thankfully they didn’t amount to too much and the focus was more on the thriller aspect of the story.
The ending was a little weird in that they tried to fit too much information to wrap up loose ends, including the fates of many of the characters who were involved but didn’t get an on screen send off. At the same time, the ending seemed to want to set up a sequel, though not in the overly egregious MCU way of the 2010s.
While the plot was exciting, there were major flaws in the writing that took me out. The biggest was the relationship between Wu Yingxiong and Chen Zaitian with the local crime ring. Especially for someone as straight edge as Wu Yingxiong, it did not make sense for him to be so willing to hang out with Chen Lin. At one point in the show, Wu Yingxiong and Chen Lin were arguing, and Wu Yingxiong was trying to placate her, saying that there was nothing wrong with the dark path. That is absolutely something Wu Yingxiong would not say. So the overall relationships with Chen Lin were all a bit iffy and that really should not have made it in to the show.
The inclusion of the terrorist unit could have been downsized a bit as I felt it complicated things. They were simply the brawns that our main characters were up against, hired muscle for the corrupt higher ups.
Overall the story was fine. Better than I would have expected. Not perfect, but good enough.
Production
The production was alright. The camerawork was creative enough for a police drama.
As a thriller, there was a good amount of action and this show did deliver, though our actors were of varying proficiencies in the combat department.
The acting also varied in quality. I believe this was Mark Chao’s first drama, and he was a bit wooden at times, but I think he got better as the show progressed. Most of the other actors did well in my opinion.
Characters
Wu Yingxiong
The straight man, the serious half of this buddy cop duo. He hated Chen Zaitian’s relaxed and unserious ways. Over the course of the drama, he came to call himself Chen Zaitian’s friend, as they sympathized with each other and helped each other.
It was revealed that Wu Yingxiong was the secret lovechild of a woman, Yingli, and the current president. Lao Tou, the local crime boss, was in love with Yingli and vowed to protect the child, pretending that the child was his. However, he did not realize that Yingli had asked another couple to adopt Wu Yingxiong and had adopted another child herself to protect Wu Yingxiong. This was only revealed when Wu Yingxiong’s adoptive mother told him the truth of his parentage with evidence, Yingli’s possessions.
At the end of the show, Wu Yingxiong was followed around by a bodyguard duo, probably due to him being the son of a politician. Of course he found this troublesome as he tried to chase thieves around the city.
Chen Zaitian
Chen Zaitian was the hack. His main interest in life was getting with pretty girls. He was apparently a genius detective, but he later revealed that he solved cases by receiving faxes with clues.
Chen Zaitian had been a vagabond. He was kidnapped and then had plastic surgery so that he had a completely new face. Then he was given an apartment and money. It was a mystery to him but since he’d gotten the better end of things, he never questioned it.
Chen Zaitian had been the vagabond child that Yingli had adopted after sending away Wu Yingxiong. She took care of him until her death, after which he resumed the vagabond life. Lao Tou was under the impression that Chen Zaitian was Yingli and the president’s son, and so that was why he gave him surgery, the apartment, and money. It was Dayan who was giving him the clues so that he’d be a stellar cop.
When Chen Zaitian was a vagabond, he had been shown kindness by He Xiaomei at a fast food restaurant. From then on, he fell in love with her, and was devastated when he thought she’d died in the explosion.
Chen Zaitian had been jerked around considerably in his life. He’d been thrown into a completely new life by Lao Tou. Then he was faced with the prospect of now having a father and a sister, when he found out the relation between Lao Tou and Yingli. Then, after Lao Tou discovered Wu Yingxiong’s parentage, he immediately dropped Chen Zaitian. So he did go through the most trauma in the show.
In the last episode, Chen Zaitian discovered that He Xiaomei was a member of the terrorist group. That was one of the open ends of this drama. Otherwise, Chen Zaitian resumed his normal personality, always flirting with girls, not taking his job too seriously even though he now had a more senior position.
Chen Lin
Chen Lin was the sole daughter of the local crime boss. She was strong-willed. But she was also kind of a Mary Sue, being on the receiving end of the affections of Wu Yingxiong, Chen Zaitian, and Xiaoma.
Chen Lin’s role in the story was to complicate things as Wu Yingxiong and Chen Zaitian tried to investigate her father. Since she was their friend and love interest, she posed as an obstacle. But she was also kind of the bridge between them when Wu Yingxiong and Chen Zaitian needed help, either from Lao Tou or Dayan.
Chen Lin knew that her father was never in love with her mother, that he loved the woman who loved lotus flowers (Yingli). She went through some weird times when she thought that Zaitian was her brother, and then Yingxiong, because there was a romantic undercurrent to both of those relationships. Though Chen Lin rejected Xiaoma outright, that was the relationship that writers seemed to be angling towards for Chen Lin.
Chen Lin’s character was kind of annoying at times in how she pressured Yingxiong and Zaitian though. When her father was in jail, she went to Yingxiong and Zaitian to ask them to break him out, which is the dumbest idea ever. She could have asked Zaitian, since at the time, he knew that he was Lao Tou’s son. But to bring it up with Yingxiong?
The writers made a lot of dumb choices when writing Chen Lin, likely because they didn’t know how to sidestep some of the obvious logical flaws in friendships between cops and robbers, and they decided to just ignore that they existed.
Lan Xiying
Xiying was the scientist at the police department, and an ally of Yingxiong and Zaitian. She functioned much the same way that most police doctors do, providing information about certain cases. Towards the end of the show, she got caught up in her fair share of troubles due to having handled evidence as well as her having been in possession of the chip with the information about the corruption.
While Yingxiong and Zaitian both flirted with her a bit, those relationships never advanced. Instead, she had more of a personal relationship with Cheng Nuo. I didn’t catch this completely but I think Cheng Nuo might have been trained by her brother. Through the time that Cheng Nuo kidnapped Xiying, she tried to appeal to the human side of him which succeeded, though she did have to hit him to escape. But later on, Cheng Nuo came back to help her.
In the last episode, the show forged a relationship between Xiying and Cheng Nuo. Unexpected but I didn’t mind it.
When I first started this show, I thought that Xiying would be paired with Yingxiong while Chen Lin would be paired with Zaitian. I liked that none of the romantic relationships really came to fruition because it gave more time to focus on the thriller. There was already a decent chunk of time dedicated to Chen Lin’s relationships, but if she’d gotten together with any guy officially, there’d be even more screen time dedicated to that in my opinion.
Huang Shikai/Ma Xiaoming
Xiaoma was an ex-assassin of the terrorist group who came to be an ally of our main characters. He first came into the story as a hotdog seller though that was a front.
Xiaoma had been born Huang Shikai. In officially records, he was dead, but in truth, he’d been taken in to the terrorist network and brainwashed. Xiaoma revealed that he’d been tasked with killing Chen Lin once, but found that he couldn’t because he sympathized with her. That was a sign that the terrorist brainwashing didn’t work on him, and so he escaped for his own humanity. He joined forces with the main characters and helped them take down the terrorist group.
At the end of the show, he went sailing around the world alone, now with his passport name as Huang Shikai.
Yi Mingguang
Yi Mingguang was the head of the southern police department, revealed to be a part of the corrupt network and one of the people blocking Zaitian and Yingxiong from doing their investigations. He was eventually arrested and put on trial.
Li Jian’guo
Lao Li was an older coworker of Yingxiong and Zaitian. We didn’t think much of him until Yi Mingguang ordered Chen Zaitian to investigate him. Zaitian found out that Lao Li was sneaking information to someone. Lao Li asked Zaitian to trust him and that eventually he’d tell him the truth, which was that Lao Li was actually sneaking information to someone who was investigating the corruption ring.
Lao Li died, but before his death he’d told Zaitian that he’d leave all of his information to Zaitian, including his old CDs, which was where Lao Li hid all of the evidence he’d collected.
Haoke
Haoke was the tech guy of the police department. Like Xiying, he had a typical role that we see in police dramas.
Haoke was one of the few people that Yingxiong, Zaitian, and Xiying trusted when they realized there was a mole in the department. Haoke had received a call from another tech department saying that there was an unusually high level of activity on a computer in his department, which ended up being Ai Lv’s computer. Ai Lv had played dumb, so Haoke had thought that she’d maybe just been hacked, though it was later revealed that she really was leaking information.
After Xiying got a hold of the secret chip, she’d sent it to Haoke for analysis. It was hard to decrypt so he went to a friend who did crack the code. After that, he gave the chip to Yingxiong (who was being commanded by Lei Musha) and then was shot. His status as of the end of the show was that he was getting better.
Ai Lv
Xiaolv was presented as the good vibes character of the department, someone who was chill and fun-loving. She only got involved in the bigger plot when Haoke found out that her company was suspicious. And only Yi Mingguang confirmed that Xiaolv had been leaking information for him, stealing evidence and such. She had disappeared at the end of the drama.
Lao Tou
Lao Tou was the local crime boss, Chen Lin’s dad. We don’t really know what crime he dealt with other than arms. Wu Yingxiong and Chen Zaitian were often at odds with him, naturally because of the nature of their occupations.
Chen Zaitian was very disturbed by how Lao Tou had manipulated his life without telling him much. But when Chen Zaitian found out that Lao Tou was his father (which was a lie), that changed his view. Chen Zaitian had been so starved for familial love that he would take it even if it came from a crime boss, and he prioritized protecting Lao Tou over his job as a cop. But when Lao Tou found out that Wu Yingxiong was Yingli’s true son, he dropped Zaitian completely which showed how cold he was of a man, no matter how loving he wanted to appear as. Chen Lin even said that when she was young, her father was too busy and her mom always had to bring her around to his work for her to even catch a glimpse of him.
Like with Chen Lin, there was questionable writing with Lao Tou because the writers wanted to turn him into a character we were root for, while ignoring the fact that he was literally a crime lord.
Du Wenyan
Dayan was Lao Tou’s right hand man, a tough guy. He was the guy that Yingxiong and Zaitian had more contact with when they first interacted with the crime ring. He did sometimes help Yingxiong and Zaitian, but only if Chen Lin and/or Lao Tou ordered him to.
At the end of the drama, Dayan told Che Jin, the next in command after Dayan, that he knew Che Jin was the inside man who put Lao Tou in danger.
Lei Musha
Lei Musha was an old friend of Yingxiong’s. They’d met in New York at some kind of training, and they had feelings for one another. Lei Musha joined their police department as something of a consultant.
It was revealed that Lei Musha was involved in the corruption ring as an assassin. She threatened Yingxiong’s mom to get the chip. However, after Yingxiong made her realize that she still had feelings, she shot herself and destroyed the original copy of the chip with her. (There was a copy of the chip on the computer of Haoke’s friend, which was what was eventually taken to the authorities.)
Lei Musha was raised to be an assassin, and her attendance at the training in New York was simply so that she would have a record as a human. At times in the drama she seemed to show true affection for Yingxiong, but she was raised an assassin and she would die an assassin.
He Xiaomei
Zaitian had once threatened someone at a fast food restaurant because he was hungry and poor. He Xiaomei had shown him kindness and given him food. After that, Zaitian had been kidnapped but he always considered He Xiaomei his big love. He found her working at a different fast food restaurant and they went on dates. But soon after He Xiaomei “died” in the explosion, which left Zaitian absolutely distraught. Zaitian learned to overcome the grief.
However, the story reopened the He Xiaomei story line as she appeared as an assassin who shot Boss to death, likely so that he wouldn’t reveal any information. Xiaoma revealed that He Xiaomei was also an assassin in the terrorist group. The final scene of the drama showed her continuing to kill. It felt like a set up for a sequel.
Themes
I don’t think this was a thematically heavy show. However, I think the power of family and friends was the closest thing to a theme.
Through the course of the show, Yingxiong, Zaitian, and Chen Lin explored their relationships with each other as they fluctuated between friends, family, and romantic partners. Yingxiong and Zaitian found out they were brothers of a sort, Yingxiong’s biological mother having been Zaitian’s adoptive mother. Chen Lin had thought that Yingxiong and Zaitian were her brothers at one point and she had to grapple with her romantic feelings for them, but through that she discovered that love can just be love. Zaitian went through a whirlwind of emotions when he found out he had a father and then lost him soon after.
Xiaoma discovered he still had his humanity when he realized he didn’t want to kill Chen Lin. And it made him happy to have allies he could support.
Overall
Decent watch. As you can see, there are some big flaws in the show on account of the writers trying to portray a close relation between cops and members of a crime ring. But otherwise I appreciate the way they tied everything together for an exciting close.