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Dropped: In the Name of the People (人民的名義) (2017)
I'll be honest, this normally isn't kind of my show. I gave it a chance because of its high score on Douban and because of its stacked cast. But ultimately, I think this show is a bit too outdated for me to enjoy in 2021. The style that this drama was made was just too old-fashioned, and the writing offers nothing out of the ordinary.
I watched up until episode 6, so this write up will include spoilers up until then, though truthfully, not much happens.
Story
I don't normally like shows that are about hard modern politics. I'd watched a couple of seasons of House of Cards, but ultimately it didn't interest me enough because it was just kind of...boring.
There were a few problems with the story. I guess one main one was the lack of true political intrigue in this political show. I think because this is a contemporary political show, the writers couldn't be too morally gray about how they portrayed certain political figures. The events that took place in this show were very obviously morally good or morally bad. I think the writers tried too hard to make us feel good or feel bad about things that were happening. For example, when the police and authorities went to help Chen Lao and protesters at the factory, we got this extremely emotional music to encourage us to think that this was a warmhearted moment. It just felt very manipulative.
Another problem with the writing was how the story was all over the place and dragged out. The story introduced a lot of new characters in a short period of time. I felt that the story would've done better to stagger their introductions because there were so many of them, and some of them who were introduced did not actually have that big of a role. If they didn't have that much to do, I think it would've been to the drama's benefit to stagger the introductions. All these characters made it hard for me to get engaged in the story.
The story was also poorly paced. The first main event in the show was about capturing Ding Yizhen, but he ended up escaping, so that story line ended in an unsatisfactory manner. I guess we are supposed to stay tuned as Ding Yizhen will be captured later on, but it would've made sense for the writers to organize it a bit better with some dividers in the narration. The second main event was the protests at the factory. I felt like this story line took way too long for how it got solved.
Along the way, we got to peek into the personal lives of some of the people in the show, including Hou Liangping and Chen Hai. I guess I don't have a huge problem with that, as Hou Liangping was the main characer of the Ding Yizhen story line, and Li Dakang was the main character of the factory story line. But even then, we got to see so much of Hou Liangping's personal life that I kept expecting something to happen and it jsut kept being really mundane things that didn't add much.
Production
I think the production was the most distracting thing here.
Right off the bat, the way this drama looked was not very good. Granted, I had just come off from watching Kidnapping Game which is one of the more recent higher budget Cdramas, but you should still expect a high production value if you're going to hire a stacked cast.
The settings looked very unnatural. I don't know if this makes sense, but sometimes in Cdramas (especially modern Cdramas) sometimes some buildings just look unreal. Maybe it's the lighting, or just the choice of locations, but a lot of the settings looked like prop sets, and it was really hard for me to be convinced that I was in those certain locations, whether it was an office, or a rich guy's house.
The acting was also a bit disappointing given the cast. One reason for it was probably the lack of an interesting dialogue. Most of what the characters were saying were heavily related to their work in politics, or their political views, or related to current events, and it was very hard to take them seriously as people because all they ever talked about was politics and current events.
But in addition to that, just the acting was not very good. I remember in a few of the scenes with Zhang Fengyi, I couldn't believe how expressionless and unnatural he looked and sounded.
If the story was boring, maybe I could've toughed it out until it got better (I've seen someone say that it gets really good in like episode 37). But the lack of a good production value made it really hard to keep watching, especially when what you're watching for doesn't deliver.
Characters
There were a lot of characters introduced in a very short period of time. Granted, we were given all of their job descriptions, but it doesn't really mean that much. What's important is seeing their relationship to the other characters in the show.
I also felt it would've been better for the introduction of characters to be staggered. Not all characters need to be introduced at the beginning, especially if all they were going to be doing was to hang out. It was especially hard to keep track because there were so many characters that were male and like, vaguely in the same age range and in the same occupations. You couldn't even recognize the guys buy their clothes because a lot of them would just be wearing a generic suit or something.
Themes
Anti-corruption was really the only theme in this show, which isn't bad. But there's really not much depth to how they explored it. I doubt this drama was ever going to argue what was right and what was wrong. So instead, they could focus on the relationships that make politics work. But all of the characters were presented in such a shallow matter that I couldn't help but not care about these supposed working relationships that the characters had with each other.
I don't doubt that we'd see the relationships be explored in deeper contexts as the show progressed, but I can't sit through 50 episodes hoping that it'll get better without seeing the potential.
Overall
It's not really a surprise to me that I didn't enjoy this. As I mentioned, modern politics shows aren't usually my thing, especially since I know that Cdramas aren't going to explore this in a deep and interesting way.
But the lack of production value was what made it extremely disappointing. I didn't expect this at all because of the high ratings. From a drama featuring Lu Yi, Zhang Fengyi, and Wu Gang among many other good actors, I wouldn't have expected it to look so cheap.
I watched up until episode 6, so this write up will include spoilers up until then, though truthfully, not much happens.
Story
I don't normally like shows that are about hard modern politics. I'd watched a couple of seasons of House of Cards, but ultimately it didn't interest me enough because it was just kind of...boring.
There were a few problems with the story. I guess one main one was the lack of true political intrigue in this political show. I think because this is a contemporary political show, the writers couldn't be too morally gray about how they portrayed certain political figures. The events that took place in this show were very obviously morally good or morally bad. I think the writers tried too hard to make us feel good or feel bad about things that were happening. For example, when the police and authorities went to help Chen Lao and protesters at the factory, we got this extremely emotional music to encourage us to think that this was a warmhearted moment. It just felt very manipulative.
Another problem with the writing was how the story was all over the place and dragged out. The story introduced a lot of new characters in a short period of time. I felt that the story would've done better to stagger their introductions because there were so many of them, and some of them who were introduced did not actually have that big of a role. If they didn't have that much to do, I think it would've been to the drama's benefit to stagger the introductions. All these characters made it hard for me to get engaged in the story.
The story was also poorly paced. The first main event in the show was about capturing Ding Yizhen, but he ended up escaping, so that story line ended in an unsatisfactory manner. I guess we are supposed to stay tuned as Ding Yizhen will be captured later on, but it would've made sense for the writers to organize it a bit better with some dividers in the narration. The second main event was the protests at the factory. I felt like this story line took way too long for how it got solved.
Along the way, we got to peek into the personal lives of some of the people in the show, including Hou Liangping and Chen Hai. I guess I don't have a huge problem with that, as Hou Liangping was the main characer of the Ding Yizhen story line, and Li Dakang was the main character of the factory story line. But even then, we got to see so much of Hou Liangping's personal life that I kept expecting something to happen and it jsut kept being really mundane things that didn't add much.
Production
I think the production was the most distracting thing here.
Right off the bat, the way this drama looked was not very good. Granted, I had just come off from watching Kidnapping Game which is one of the more recent higher budget Cdramas, but you should still expect a high production value if you're going to hire a stacked cast.
The settings looked very unnatural. I don't know if this makes sense, but sometimes in Cdramas (especially modern Cdramas) sometimes some buildings just look unreal. Maybe it's the lighting, or just the choice of locations, but a lot of the settings looked like prop sets, and it was really hard for me to be convinced that I was in those certain locations, whether it was an office, or a rich guy's house.
The acting was also a bit disappointing given the cast. One reason for it was probably the lack of an interesting dialogue. Most of what the characters were saying were heavily related to their work in politics, or their political views, or related to current events, and it was very hard to take them seriously as people because all they ever talked about was politics and current events.
But in addition to that, just the acting was not very good. I remember in a few of the scenes with Zhang Fengyi, I couldn't believe how expressionless and unnatural he looked and sounded.
If the story was boring, maybe I could've toughed it out until it got better (I've seen someone say that it gets really good in like episode 37). But the lack of a good production value made it really hard to keep watching, especially when what you're watching for doesn't deliver.
Characters
There were a lot of characters introduced in a very short period of time. Granted, we were given all of their job descriptions, but it doesn't really mean that much. What's important is seeing their relationship to the other characters in the show.
I also felt it would've been better for the introduction of characters to be staggered. Not all characters need to be introduced at the beginning, especially if all they were going to be doing was to hang out. It was especially hard to keep track because there were so many characters that were male and like, vaguely in the same age range and in the same occupations. You couldn't even recognize the guys buy their clothes because a lot of them would just be wearing a generic suit or something.
Themes
Anti-corruption was really the only theme in this show, which isn't bad. But there's really not much depth to how they explored it. I doubt this drama was ever going to argue what was right and what was wrong. So instead, they could focus on the relationships that make politics work. But all of the characters were presented in such a shallow matter that I couldn't help but not care about these supposed working relationships that the characters had with each other.
I don't doubt that we'd see the relationships be explored in deeper contexts as the show progressed, but I can't sit through 50 episodes hoping that it'll get better without seeing the potential.
Overall
It's not really a surprise to me that I didn't enjoy this. As I mentioned, modern politics shows aren't usually my thing, especially since I know that Cdramas aren't going to explore this in a deep and interesting way.
But the lack of production value was what made it extremely disappointing. I didn't expect this at all because of the high ratings. From a drama featuring Lu Yi, Zhang Fengyi, and Wu Gang among many other good actors, I wouldn't have expected it to look so cheap.