Review: The World Between Us (我們與惡的距離) (2019)

[phanero]

I am only slightly kidding when I say this may be the best Asian drama I have ever watched. Of course, it’s impossible to compare this 10 episode contemporary drama to, say, a 60 episode historical romance drama. But The World Between Us is a drama where I can find little to no fault in every aspect. The acting and production quality are good, and the story and writing are SPECTACULAR.

I would highly recommend this drama to everybody, but just be warned that I was crying nearly every episode for the first half of this drama, because the conflicts are heart-wrenching. This is a drama about a terrorist attack, but the focus is not on the act of terrorism, but the people who are left in the aftermath. The story is handled with lots of care, and I would recommend people only to watch it when they are in the mood to watch something serious.

As I was watching this drama, I had made commentary posts for each episode. I have linked them here (Ep 1) (Ep 2) (Ep 3) (Ep 4) (Ep 5) (Ep 6) (Ep 7) (Ep 8) (Ep 9) (Ep 10)

Super messy write up ahead! And spoilers!



Story

The drama followed several story lines, and I will attempt to outline as many of them as possible here.

Pinwei News: This story line centered around Song Qiao’an’s professional life as the head of a news channel. Initially, the way she ran the news channel was for the clicks. I believe it was her who said to assume that their audiences only had the intelligence of 7 year olds. Over the course of the drama, we see how she’s learned the harm that sensationalist news channels like Pinwei can do. This story line explored themes of how the media was responsible for exacerbating crimes.

Song Qiao’an’s Family Life: Qiao’an’s personal life was focused on her journey to recovery. At the beginning of the drama, she was still grieving, but she still did not have the courage to face what had happened. Her marriage was in shambles, and her relationship with her daughter was terrible. Step by step, we saw how she started changing her outlook on life. It started with facing her grief for her son, then going to couples therapy with her husband. And after her marriage started to heal, her daughter warmed up to her as well, because the house was no longer a hostile environment. Qiao’an was also handling her negative feelings towards the family of Li Xiaoming better. Her story line was just a very comprehensive look at how grief can pervade and shatter a family if not handled healthily.

Li Dazhi: Li Dazhi was the younger sister of the terrorist Li Xiaoming. Her mother had gotten her to change her name and then forced her to sever ties with the family. For the first part of the drama, she tried to shroud her past as much as possible, especially since her devil boss was the family of a victim. But later in the drama, she realized that she couldn’t live happily when her parents were suffering, hiding. As the drama progressed, Li Dazhi took ownership of her identity. Yes, she was the sister of Li Xiaoming, and if the family of the victims were angry with her, she would accept it, as they had every right to be angry. But at the very least, she could live in the light as herself. The themes explored in her story included living in the light (like I mentioned), and learning not to hide from challenges. Yes, it was unfair that as an innocent, she was subject to abuse, but she accepted that this was her price if she wanted to live as herself. She can not hide from challenges her entire life. She would learn how to take these challenges as they came.

Wang She’s Career: Wang She was constantly taking on cases of high profile murderers and criminals, those labelled “crazy” or “insane” by the general public. At first, it just seemed that he wanted to get down to the truth behind these crimes. But later on, when Wang She’s personal history was revealed, his motivations became much more clear. Wang She had grown up in a bad environment, and he was close with people who were in high stress situations that would push them to commit crimes. Wang She wasn’t excusing these criminals from their crimes. He agreed that these people were deserving of the death penalty. He saw his job as one to protect the rights of these people who had a tough life. That included ensuring that they were treated equally to other criminals (e.g. Li Xiaoming being pushed to the front of the queue for execution made no sense, except to appease the general public), as well as trying to help their family members find peace or make amends. Wang She was a fascinating character in this drama. His story line covered themes of justice and class differences. He knew that he alone could not bridge the gap for those living in high stress situations. He could only use his job as a lawyer to ensure that they at least were subject to their proper rights.

Wang She’s Family Life: Wang She’s wife clearly came from an upper class family. She held prejudices against the people that Wang She defended, as did her father. During the drama, there was a push-and-pull between Wang She and Ding Meimei, as they learned to compromise with each other. This mostly involved Meimei re-examining her prejudices against criminals and those who were mentally ill, and Wang She learning to provide a safer home for his wife and child. This story line was about prejudices towards criminals and those who are mentally ill.

Ying Family: The Ying family’s story line revolved around Ying Sicong’s mental illness. He had gotten into an argument with his father and moved in with his sister Ying Siyue, and later on, he had tried to get some kids to act in his movie, which was characterized as a hostage situation by the media. He was given help and medication, and it seemed that the medication did balance his brain chemicals and make him more agreeable, which helped their family relationships. However, the family later dealt with much prejudice over having a family member with mental illness, including Siyue breaking up with her fiance over his prejudices. This story line focused on the struggles that face those who are mentally ill as well as their families.

Song Qiaoping & Lin Yijun: Qiaoping and Yijun were initially the perfect couple, but later on in the drama, they did have conflicts of their own. One was related to their conflicting views on the amount of involvement they should have with their patients personal lives. Qiaoping tended to be very involved in her patients’ lives, to the point that it would stress her out outside of work. However, we later saw in the drama that sometimes Yijun’s detachment to his patients would hurt them and infringe on their rights. The other conflict in their relationship had related to Qiaoping’s pregnancy, as they had not planned on having kids. We learned that Qiao’an and Qiaoping’s parents had died early on, so Qiaoping was wary about having kids herself. Their story line explored the issue of how healthcare workers and other figures of authority have the power to help those who are in need, whether it’s by advising them with their medical issues, or fighting for their rights as a person of authority.

The writing in this show was terrific, and the pacing was excellent. There was zero drag in this show. Every scene, something happened, and it either developed a character, or advanced a plot, each scene always said something. I have never watched a show that was as tightly written as this one.

Technically it was very convenient that all of these characters were working closely with one another, but it didn’t bother me that much, precisely because every character and every relationship was explored so thoroughly. We understood what their work lives were like as well as what their home lives were like, and it allowed us to understand their conflicts very well.

Production

The acting was terrific. Everybody suited their roles very well, from the demon boss Song Qiao’an to the altruistic Wang She to the meek Li Dazhi.

The production quality was also pretty good. This was not the most high budget drama ever, but everything at least looked polished. Good lighting makes everything look better, and that was the case in this drama. In particular, all of the settings just looked super real, from the various workplaces of our characters, to the characters’ rooms. The settings looked very realistic and appropriate. I did not feel like I was at a movie set, which is sometimes the feeling I get when I watch Cdramas or Kdramas.

Characters

Song Qiao’an

Song Qiao’an was the head of the Pinwei news channel, as well as the mother of a victim of a terrorist attack carried by Li Xiaoming.

At the beginning of the drama, Qiao’an was totally in denial of her grief. She never confronted it, only choosing to sink herself in her work, and pushing away her husband and daughter. According to her employee Xiao-A, she was not always this cold of a boss. It was clear that it was the trauma that influenced her to be so apathetic. In a conversation with Niushi, Niushi had asked her how she was going to keep her employees if she was going to be such an asshole. Her response was that she couldn’t even keep her son, so she did not care to keep her employees. So that gave us an idea of what her mindset was like at the beginning.

During the first few episodes of the drama, her relationship with her family became worse. The first change happened when Zhaoguo started cleaning out Tianyan’s room. Qiao’an was forced to confront her grief and her guilt. Her talk with Zhaoguo was the first sign of her opening her mind and her heart a bit.

The next change, however, was a negative one. It was when she discovered that Li Dazhi was actually Li Xiaoming’s sister. Though she had started to accept her feelings about her son, the victim, she had yet to confront her feelings about the murderer. She still bore hate against him, for good reason, and Li Dazhi left Pinwei over this.

Later on, Qiao’an only started changing her views on both media coverage and crime when she saw the video made by the woman whose son was being bullied for being a Li Xiaoming copycat. It was easy for her to disregard Li Dazhi’s feelings when she stuck a camera in her face, but I think it was easier for Qiao’an to sympathize with the mother of this boy, especially because the boy had done nothing criminal. Towards the end of the show, she had progressed in her career, and at the very end, she ended up at a news company, the same one that Li Dazhi happened to be working at.

Off screen, we saw that Qiao’an’s family life started to mend again after she started attending therapy with her husband. After the time skip, we saw that Qiao’an was encouraging to her daughter when she said that she was going to the library with her new boyfriend. Of course, her daughter was supposed to be three years older, but it shows that they communicated, and now Qiao’an knows that she was being overly hard on her daughter.

Song Qiao’an was not exactly a new character archetype, but she was still very well written and very well acted.

Liu Zhaoguo

Liu Zhaoguo was a journalist, the father of a victim of a terrorist attack, and the husband of Song Qiao’an. At the beginning, he seemed like the more hinged half of the couple, and I could not understand why Qiao’an would not just admit that he was sometimes right. It turns out that he did have skeletons in his closet, which was his infidelity. Because of his cheating, Qiao’an could not trust him about anything.

That being said, Zhaoguo was always more open to reconciliation and communication. When Tianqing had temporarily moved to her aunt’s, Zhaoguo was finally able to talk to Qiao’an like adults, asking her the hard hitting questions, such as her feelings about Tianyan.

Afterwards, the couple agreed to go to therapy. It started off a bit tough, because Qiao’an got the jitters, and also because of course their initial therapy sessions would end in arguments. But we saw that over time, this forced communication drew them closer together. Zhaoguo and Qiao’an even ended up being the peaceful couple to advise Yijun and Qiaoping.

Liu Tianqing

Liu Tianqing was Qiao’an and Zhaoguo’s daughter. At the beginning of the drama, she had a bad relationship with her mother, and a better relationship with her father.

Things took a turn when Tianqing’s crush on another boy was revealed by a teacher. Tianqing felt it unfair that she was not allowed to pursue love, and felt that her parents were just gatekeeping her because they couldn’t get it together. This development pushed Tianqing further away from both of her parents.

During an argument between Tianqing and Qiao’an, Tianqing expressed that her mom had always showed favouritism to Tianyan, and in a fit of rage, she’d told her mother than she wished she had died with Tianyan. From this conversation we learned that Qiao’an had praised Tianyan for confessing to a girl when he was in grade 5, and meanwhile, she was not allowed to pursue a relationship even though she seemed to be around the same age.

The home situation got so bad that Tianqing moved to her aunt’s place to live for a week.

Towards the beginning of the drama, I did think that it was strange that Tianqing had moved on from Tianyan’s death when her mother was still barely over it, and I think the favouritism was part of it. She didn’t totally hate Tianyan, she just hated that her mother appeared to show favouritism for her son. In a scene where Qiaoping was talking with Tianqing, we saw that though Tianqing was jealous of Tianyan getting all of their mom’s attention, she did still miss Tianyan in her own way.

Most of the reconciliation in the family was shown off screen, but it was easy to see that once Qiao’an and Zhaoguo were on good terms, it was easier to coax their daughter to come back to live with them, it was easier to show them that they did actually love and care for her, and they could work towards being a happy family all the while acknowledging the hole in their family left by Tianyan.

Song Qiaoping

Song Qiaoping worked with those who had intellectual disabilities/mental illnesses, and was Qiao’an’s sister. Overall, she was super chill. Because she dealt more with patients’ mental health and well-being, she was always very understanding.

She got into an argument with her husband over work things. It probably is a conflict of interest for them to be working on the same patients, but again, I could excuse this because it gave us really fleshed out characters. Anyway, Qiaoping always felt that they had to do as much as they could to protect their patients’ rights, whereas Yijun was adamant about clocking out.

In the last episode, Sicong had come to the hospital and Qiaoping had to calm him down. She insisted that it was just run of the mill stuff for her lol. But it also showed how good she was at reading and understanding other people.

During the drama, Qiaoping also had a surprise pregnancy. She had never intended to have a baby. Apparently her and Qiao’an’s parents had died when they were young, so Qiaoping had worries about not being there for her own kids as well. But by the end of the drama, Qiaoping and Yijun had agreed to have the baby.

Lin Yijun

Lin Yijun was a doctor, and also Song Qiaoping’s husband. He was also pretty chill.

Yijun had met Wang She on a TV debate show, talking about mental illnesses, and he’d been beaten to the ground by the lawyer. But they’d ended up being drinking buddies, which was fun. They were in different professional fields, and so I think they saw each other as intellectual peers.

As a doctor, I think Yijun was portrayed as overly professional, in that he was reluctant to do things for patients when he was off the clock, and it caused problems with his wife, who felt that he should do more. By the end of the drama, he’d seen how Sicong had devolved. I’d like to think that he was influenced by the ordeal to reevaluate how he handled his patients.

Liao Niushi

Liao Niushi was a long time worker at Pinwei news channel. He basically acted as a mentor figure in the office, especially for Dazhi. His nickname was News-ge (because of the pronunciation of his name).

Niushi was generally the most level-headed person in the office, especially when related to tension between Qiao’an and Dazhi, but it was because he was able to be because he was completely uninvolved in the incident. He is watching like we are, as people who can only observe. However, because of his good sense and his relative seniority, he was able to step in sometimes to help the employees.

For example, Qiao’an would confide in him when she would not confide in anyone else, both about her approach to work, and her attitudes towards her family. He also encouraged her to take more of an active role in confronting her trauma, and was very pleased to know when she was taking steps to make progress.

In addition, Niushi was very kindly towards Dazhi. He went to her job at the cafe to apologize to her for filming her when she went to receive her brother’s corpse. Later on, when her parents came to the office to ask for her address, of course Qiao’an wanted nothing to do with them, but Niushi gave them the address that they had on file, knowing that they were just two parents who were worried for their remaining child.

Li Dazhi

Li Dazhi was the younger sister of the mass murderer Li Xiaoming. At the beginning of the drama, she was very meek, never speaking up. That was because she was living undercover. When she was promoted, I think Dazhi started to gain more agency in her life. She started to understand that she was able to make her own decisions, though she was perhaps still a bit scared of her boss and what she might do to her if she found out her true identity.

Li Dazhi realized that she couldn’t be happy if she knew her parents were suffering by themselves. She would rather suffer with them than be the only one being able to live her life. She had an outburst, which was rare for her because she’s usually so quiet, but it was important because it was a wakeup call to her parents.

When Qiao’an found out about Dazhi’s identity, they had a huge fight. What was frustrating was that Qiao’an wasn’t wrong in her anger, she wasn’t wrong in her words, so Dazhi couldn’t really say anything to refute her. All she could say was that the media and mob mentality were responsible for her brother’s death, that the media was just using their own way to murder people.

Dazhi started working at Siyue’s cafe, and it was during this time, when she helped Siyue with her troubles, that Dazhi started to gain more confidence to face challenges. I guess it helped when it wasn’t her own. But she realized that facing her challenges and not hiding from them was how she could truly go out and live her life. So even though she would be hated for Li Xiaoming’s sister, she accepted the consequences, because you can only live life if you accept the good with the bad. And though she did not kill anybody, she did still feel a bit guilty for not checking on Xiaoming that much, and perhaps this was her own way of repentance.

At the end, Dazhi ended up working for another news outlet, where she eventually bumped into Qiao’an again.

Li Xiaoming

Li Xiaoming was a terrorist who killed nine people in a movie theatre. He was actually on screen for very little time, and actually, what he had done was not even touched upon until episode 4, because it is frankly not the main point of discussion here. The specifics of what he did was not as important as the fact that he’d harmed many people, including his own family.

Regardless of how terrible his crime was, it was clear that his family still cared for him. After all, he was one of them, and that would never change. It’s the idea that when you love someone, you love them while acknowledging the flaws. The Li family does not love Xiaoming because of his crimes. They in no way excuse his crimes, and they acknowledge that even though they did not commit the crimes, they will atone on Li Xiaoming’s behalf since he no longer can. Love is a complicated thing, especially familial love, and the way it’s portrayed in this drama is so complicated and yet so true. Many of us probably have a family member that has done questionable stuff but we still care for them while knowing this.

Li Mama

Li Mama was the mother of Li Xiaoming and Li Xiaowen, now Li Dazhi. In the aftermath of the attack, Li Mama was out of ideas on how to protect her family. Her attempt to protect Xiaowen involved having her change her name and pushing her away from the family. Then she would toil away everyday selling zongzi from a food cart.

Though she was thinking with her heart, she did still hurt Dazhi by always pushing her away. And it was only when Dazhi had her outburst that Li Mama understood that she was not helping Dazhi this way, that the way to get better is by helping each other.

At the end of the drama, Li Mama and Li Baba had proposed a therapy group for the victims, which I think was helpful to both the victims’ families as well as the Li family. In addition, we saw that the Li couple were bonding with one of the victims who had lost the use of his legs and was confined to a wheelchair. They would accompany him to his wheelchair basketball games. That was their attempt to atone for the sins of their son and it was nice.

Li Baba

Li Baba was the father of Li Xiaoming and Li Xiaowen, now Li Dazhi. In the immediate aftermath of the terror attack, he had attempted to atone, and it took a heavy toll on him. He was just so astounded by all the lives his son had taken. In the years afterwards, he’d descended into alcoholism, and we saw how demanding he was of his wife.

But again, Li Dazhi’s outburst was a wakeup call that they can all get better as long as they help one another. Li Baba and Li Mama worked with Wang She to put together the therapy group, and they’d also gone on TV to publicly show that they’re repentant and are trying to atone. And by the end, the couple were doing their best to help out the victims and the victim’s families.

Wang She

Wang She was a lawyer who often took on high profile cases. He was the lawyer for Li Xiaoming, as well as the lawyer for Chen Chang and Ying Sicong.

Wang She came from poverty. He was an orphan. He said that of his two closest geges at the orphanage, one was dead, and the other was serving a life sentence. He even admitted to his wife that he was so close to turning to a life of crime. So he wanted to help those in high profile cases because he saw himself in them. They were labelled as crazy and beyond help by the media, but he understood that they were perhaps in situations of high stress. Maybe their families struggled to make ends meet. Maybe they were from an abusive family.

What’s important was that Wang She did not think these people were innocent. He acknowledged that these criminals had done terrible things and deserved their sentences, even if they were the life sentence. His only goal was to ensure that their rights were protected.

A long time ago, I read a Reddit thread asking questions to lawyers who represented people they knew were guilty. One answer that spoke to me was from a lawyer who said that in those cases, they felt that their responsibility was to ensure that the correct procedure was taken to prove the defendant’s guilt. And I see Wang She as someone like this lawyer. He knew his clients were guilty, he just needed to make sure they were treated equally to other people/criminals who might have committed the same crimes.

Of course, Wang She also wanted to uncover the truth behind these criminals and bring them to light so that they could be prevented in the future. He kept trying to get Li Xiaoming to agree to a psychological assessment in order to understand and prevent people in a similar situation from getting to a point where they would commit such an act of terror.

Wang She’s wife and in-laws were from a different background, one where they had never worried for their safety. And so his wife, Meimei, had struggled to understand why Wang She was always defending the people she deemed evil.

Later on, Meimei had become paranoid about all of the threats the family was getting, and had gotten hurt. She was pregnant at the time, and the baby had not made it. Ding Baba also had a talk with Wang She about being responsible and protecting his family.

Wang She tried to protect his family by taking on fewer high profile cases, hoping that it would ease his wife’s heart, and he started doing work for a criminal organization. But in doing so, Meimei saw that he was no longer happy, nor did she feel any safer being around thugs.

By the end of the drama, we saw that Wang She and Yijun were walking side by side. I wonder if Yijun was acting as a witness for Wang She, since Wang She was in his lawyer robes. But in any case, it seemed he was happy with his job.

Wang She, also a great character. Well written, well acted.

Ding Meimei

Ding Meimei was Wang She’s wife. She came from a bit of a sheltered background.

Meimei and Wang She had gotten into arguments about him taking high profile cases, because she didn’t like Wang She defending those evil folks. After Wang She explained to her why he did what he did, she started to do some deep thinking, and we saw her change in attitude. She stopped calling the criminals “bad people,” and instead simply called them “people who had committed crimes,” because she started to understand that people who committed crimes did not always do them out of malice, sometimes they were ill or were backed into a corner where they felt they didn’t have anyone to turn to.

She also stopped checking social media so much because she was getting so many threats from people who opposed what her husband was doing. She used to be obsessed with social media, but this was an adjustment she made, because she wanted to support her husband.

However, she did still retain some prejudices towards those with intellectual disabilities, like when she passed by Ying Sicong on the street. She had been so afraid of him that when she’d flinched from him, she’d fallen to the ground and possibly hurt herself and the baby.

After losing her baby, Meimei did some more deep thinking about her life. She started a job, because she realized she’d gotten lonely. And as Wang She changed his career path, working for the criminal organization, she understood that her husband had let go of his passion in order to protect them. Though she appreciated the gesture, she wanted him to be passionate and work for what she believed in, and they reconciled. Their reconciliation was very beautiful, I Have to admit.

Meimei was definitely a very interesting character, because we saw how over time, she started to adjust her viewpoints from her sheltered point of view.

Ding Mama

Ding Mama was Meimei’s mother, Wang She’s mother-in-law. Throughout the drama, she was surprisingly supportive of Wang She, compared to her husband who was always disapproving. She was very gentle, and she read the room well.

When Meimei was fighting with Wang She, she recognized that Meimei still cared for her, and she would talk to her about him. When Meimei expressed her concerns with Wang She’s job, Ding Mama basically told her that Wang She was just doing his job as a lawyer. I think Ding Mama recognizes that Wang She is a good man, just trying to help people in bad situations.

Ding Baba

Ding Baba was Meimei’s father, Wang She’s father-in-law. He was pretty stern, and he was always worried that Wang She was not good enough for their daughter. When we first met Ding Baba, we often saw that he was on a different wavelength from Wang She. He thought that Wang She wasn’t doing enough to protect his daughter, and he didn’t like that he was defending these criminals. They had a huge fight the night when Li Xiaoming had been executed, because Wang She had arrived drunk.

Later on, after Meimei and Wang She lost their baby, Ding Baba had a talk with Wang She about doing more to protect the family, and I think that was what pushed Wang She to stop taking high profile cases and work for the criminal organization.

Though we don’t see him again, I would expect Ding Baba to be disappointed with Wang She taking on high profile cases again, but with Meimei at Wang She’s side, I think she could convince him that she’s happy to support him in his passion.

Ying Siyue

Ying Siyue was Li Dazhi’s roommate. She ran a cafe, and was the eldest daughter of the Ying family. As a victim of eldest daughter syndrome, she was basically the glue that held the family together. She was the only person who could assuage Sicong when he was still living with their father, and she had offered to house him.

As things with Sicong got more serious, we saw how his mental illness affected her, from her taking the time to care for him, to how others perceived her, including her own fiance. She tried her best to care for her family, and to keep them together through thick and thin. And when her fiance showed that he did not care for them and simply wished to be distanced from them, Siyue knew she could not marry a man like that.

Siyue was also just a very supportive friend. Even before she knew anything about Dazhi, Siyue was always caring for Dazhi and trying to cheer her up. Her attitude towards Dazhi never changed even after she knew she was Li Xiaoming’s sister, probably because she had known Dazhi for so long and knew that she was a nice girl. Siyue and Dazhi had such a wonderful friendship. They helped each other so much through thick and thin. There are good people in this world T_T

Ying Sicong

Ying Sicong was a filmmaker, and the second child of the Ying family. At the beginning of the drama, when he’d moved into Siyue’s home, he had had hallucinations, and they were taking over his mind and making him irritable. He had also been a promising filmmaker, but presumably his mental condition had taken a toll on him and paused his career.

It was his filmmaking dreams and hallucinations combined that had led him to try to film some kids at a primary school. The public took it as a hostage situation, but he truly thought he was just filming a movie. He was given medical attention for his mental illness.

When his family first visited Sicong, he had taken medication, but according to the nurse, his body had not yet caught up, so that was why he was a little stiff in his motor controls. But he had told his dad that he wanted to go home, and that he would not pick fights anymore, which showed the family that deep down inside, there was a Sicong who missed them and loved them. It was a very touching scene.

Sicong had been improving steadily within the hospital and he had been released to Siyue’s care. He had taken on a job on a production set with his friend Laoxie. Since his motor controls hadn’t caught up he was still a little stiff and slow. He’d stopped taking his medication and so he became more irritable again. He was having hallucinations and scaring and hurting Siyue Dazhi. Eventually, Sicong made his way to the hospital, where Qiaoping had to calm him down, by walking him through why he was upset. Among the reasons he was struggling mentally was because his mother had abandoned him, saying that she could not take him with her, and another reason was that his girlfriend had committed suicide when he was serving in the military.

At the end of the drama, we saw that he’d been healing steadily in the hospital again. People were visiting him often, including Dazhi, with whom he became good friends. This time, when he left, he was in much better condition. Siyue, A-yi, and Side all came to pick him up, and his father was waiting at home. It was a very optimistic scene.

Ying Taisheng

Ying Taisheng was the father of the Ying family. At the beginning of the drama, he was always getting into fights with his son, presumably because his son was irritable due to his mental illness. After finding out his son had mental illnesses, his prejudices showed. He said that Siyue and Sicong’s mother had a relative with mental health issues, and that relative was locked up, never to be seen by anybody. He’d admitted that if he’d known his first wife had history of mental health in her family, he would not have married her, which was a pretty hurtful thing to say considering Siyue was now part of this family with a history of mental health issues.

However, his attitudes started to change after he visited Sicong. He’d had some medicine and so his bodily functions weren’t moving so well, but it seemed his brain chemicals were a little more balanced, seeing as how he was more agreeable, telling his dad that he wanted to go home and would not pick fights anymore. I don’t know how any dad could not be moved by that.

He was so moved that he insisted on taking care of Sicong, which caused some conflicts with his wife. He upset her by saying he would divorce her, but he later acknowledged that he had been too harsh and was not appreciative of her efforts to take care of the family. This conflict was not really settled because soon after, Taisheng had his heart attack and he needed surgery, which was very worrying. The entire family kind of bonded after his recovery. Sicong and Taisheng said they would get better together, and it was a new beginning for their whole family.

I like to think that Taisheng’s views on mental health had changed. He no longer saw mental illness as something to be locked away, but simply just an illness that would be healed with care and attention.

A-yi

A-yi was Ying Taisheng’s second wife, the mother of Ying Side, and the stepmother to Ying Siyue and Ying Sicong. At first, she didn’t get along with Sicong, presumably because Sicong was always picking fights. We saw that he was hostile towards her because she wasn’t his mother (and we later saw that he did have some trauma relating to being abandoned by his mother). My guess was that A-yi was hostile as a defense mechanism to Sicong’s initial hostility.

A-yi and Taisheng got into a fight when Taisheng insisted on bringing Sicong home and A-yi refused. A-yi got really upset when Taisheng said he would divorce her over this matter, because A-yi had stayed with him despite his infidelity. So their marriage was far from squeaky clean before this.

I think A-yi’s reconciliations happened off screen, because after Taisheng was recovering from his surgery, the entire family got along, including both A-yi and Sicong. Perhaps Siyue taking care of Sicong relieved some of the tension, but since Sicong was also no longer hostile, I think A-yi was happy with extending an olive branch.

Jin Dingkai

Jin Dingkai was Ying Siyue’s long distance fiance. He often went by Kaizi or Xiaokai. I’ll refer to him as Kaizi since that’s what Siyue called him.

When Sicong was arrested and diagnosed with a mental disorder, Ying Baba went on his rant about how he never would have married Siyue and Sicong’s mother if he’d known there was mental illness in her family. That prompted Siyue to tell her fiance Kaizi about her brother’s mental illness, in case he wanted to break it off. It was very comforting to her when he’d said that he would treat Sicong like his own brother, and that they would face their challenges together.

His actions when he arrived in Taiwan were a whole different story. When his mother asked for Siyue to get a full body checkup, all Kaizi did was shrug. Even Sicong was offended on his sister’s behalf. Kaizi tried to make it up to her in superficial ways, buying her flowers and such, which already sent me warning bells because that did not solve the problem.

From then on, every time Siyue got into a sticky situation, Kaizi would try to distance himself. One time was when Sicong had gotten drunk and thrown up. Kaizi had been more worried for the car than for Sicong. That angered Siyue so much that she went home with Sicong’s friend Laoxie instead. And when Siyue and Dazhi were being ambushed by the media outside of her cafe, Kaizi refused to help.

After doing some thinking, Siyue realized that Kaizi was not the kind of person she wanted to marry. He was not there for her in her time of need, like he said he would.

When Siyue broke up with Kaizi, his true colours showed. The first thing he said was how there were tons of girls in Guangzhou who were always trying to get with him, and the fact that he hadn’t cheated on her was a huge favour to her, which is an extremely shitty thing to say, and it shows that he didn’t love her for her.

Dazhi had apologized to Siyue for the incident with the media, saying that it had cost her engagement, but Siyue explained that she didn’t want to marry that kind of man anyway.

Jin Mama

Jin Mama was Kaizi’s mother. The first time we saw her, she had gone dress shopping with Siyue and Ying Mama. Jin Mama was very snobby and scoffed at the place where they were dress shopping, implying the styles were ugly. The second time we saw her was when she’d visited Ying Taisheng in hospital, and had requested that Siyue have a full body checkup before she married Kaizi.

Despite her seeming class, we see that Jin Mama was extremely prejudiced. I recall her having praised Siyue for being independent, but it seemed that she (and Kaizi) had intended for Siyue to take care of Kaizi’s grandmother after marriage, like a maid. So I do have reason to believe that she looked down on Siyue and patronized her all these years, thinking her running her cafe was just a cute little project.

As well, her prejudice towards Sicong was very offensive. Asking somebody for a full body checkup before marriage is quite offensive. Kaizi was supposed to marry Siyue because he liked her as a person, not because she was an incubator for their future children. And even then, Sicong was right there, showing that he was getting better, and all the while Jin Mama, was expressing that she felt that anybody related to him was less than perfect. So she was of the old camp, that people who had mental illnesses were a burden. Yes, they require a bit more care, but is that supposed to be worth more than love? Anyway, yucky woman.

Chen Chang

Chen Chang was a criminal who murdered two children. He was strangely cooperative with the authorities. It was revealed that he had wanted a death sentence. I stated this in my episode commentaries, but my guess was that Chen Chang lived a life that didn’t make sense. His mother was a woman from humble means, and perhaps he grew up being oppressed by the system that was supposed to provide equal rights for all. After he murdered two kids, he should have gotten the death penalty, right? However, he didn’t get even that, which was initially thought to be a sure thing. He eventually committed suicide, presumably giving himself the sentence that he felt he deserved. This was my conjecture though. We didn’t get to see a whole lot about Chen Chang overall.

Themes

Media coverage of crime

A main theme of the drama was how media coverage heavily influenced the general public’s views of crime, and how the people depicted in the media can suffer from that, especially in the age of social media. Every episode would begin with a different montage of mean social media posts about various criminals or happenings, showing us how vile and horrendous people could be.

Qiao’an, one of the main characters, was the head of a news channel. She always emphasized that the viewers of the channel only had the intelligence of a 7 year old, so the point was to be as simple and sensationalist as possible. Of course, that led to a lot of grief, such as when Qiao’an ordered film crews to follow Dazhi to collect her brother’s corpse. She wanted to get the views, and at this point in time, she did not have empathy for Li Dazhi because Li Xiaoming killed her son.

Qiao’an only started adjusting her viewpoint after she saw the news story of the mom whose child was bullied for looking up to Li Xiaoming. She watched the interview over and over again. The other news stations were cutting out the most sensationalist parts of the mom’s interview, but Qiao’an couldn’t help but think that the entire interview was important for context. It was then that she really started to understand the harm that the media could bring to entirely innocent people.

In the case of this child, what he did was edgelord behaviour, but it was not illegal, and he was a child.

For Li Xiaoming, I think it was suspected or suggested that his execution was pushed up in order to appease the general public, which does not make sense. The court of public opinion is not the court of justice, but that is what social media and media are. They are a court.

When Sicong had been taken away by the police, Siyue was very upset that the media was portraying him in a negative light, when in her eyes, Sicong was just someone who’d made a mistake.

This drama showed us how media coverage affected these people, criminals and those who had made bad mistakes.

Family

The reason why this drama made me cry so much was because it covered the themes of family so thoroughly. Each family was fleshed out very much, and we were given a very comprehensive look at the various family dynamics. We saw how the crimes affected every member of the families differently.

The Li family was obviously crushed by Li Xiaoming’s crime. In the immediate aftermath, Li Mama and Li Baba tried so hard to apologize and atone, but what could they do? Nothing they could do would bring the nine lives back (plus those who were injured). They sold their house and used that money to compensate the victims, and they moved back to Li Baba’s mother’s home. Meanwhile, Li Mama had Li Dazhi change her name (from Li Xiaowen) and pushed her to distance herself as much as possible. This approach encouraged all of them to hide from the crime because it hurt them so much to be associated with it, no matter how much they tried to atone. I related to Li Dazhi. Not that I have a brother who committed a grave crime, but when there was drama related to my sibling, my parents would try to keep me away from it as much as possible. It’s difficult because I can act like a bystander all I want, but at the end of the day, I am a part of this family.

The Li family only started recovering when Li Dazhi had a tantrum, telling her parents to get it together. Her father had descended into alcoholism, and her mother was always pushing her away. Li Dazhi could not live her life knowing that her family was suffering this way. Instead, she encouraged them to be strong for each other. They would face the backlash from her brother’s crime together. Li Dazhi would face the hate that she received in the city, while her parents would continue to do community work and try to atone for their son’s crimes. They had the courage to do this knowing they had each other.

For the Liu family, we saw how grief could break up a family if not dealt with in a healthy way. After Tianyan died, Qiao’an and Zhaoguo got into arguments, and Zhaoguo had blamed Qiao’an for leaving Tianyan in the movie theatre alone. Those were words spoken in a fit of rage, because in hindsight, Zhaoguo admitted that what Qiao’an did was not negligent. But the arguments had pushed them away from each other. Zhaoguo had started sleeping at his workplace, where he cheated on his wife with a coworker. And Tianqing, sensing the tension between her parents, hated being at home.

The first step to the mending of the family was when Qiao’an confronted her grief over Tianyan. She’d sunken herself into her work, and did not have the time to organize her feelings. She would not let Zhaoguo clean out Tianyan’s room and yet she could not even enter it. But she took the first step, just to clean out Tianyan’s things, and that eventually opened her mind to reaching out to the rest of the family too.

The Wang family was in danger because of the dangerous nature of Wang She’s work. Because he was the lawyer for universally hated criminals, people assumed that he and his family were bad people as well. Through Ding Meimei, we saw that the family was getting threats, and Meimei grew very paranoid. After seeing how scared his wife and in-laws were, Wang She opted to take fewer high profile criminal cases and instead worked for what I presumed was a gang boss. In this way, Wang She was still living with crime, but this time, he was being controlled by it, instead of trying to fight for it. But as we know, Meimei saw that Wang She had lost his passion by doing such work, and so she encouraged him to fight for what he thought was right again.

For the Ying family, Sicong’s crime was more of an alert. Only after Sicong was arrested did he get the proper medical help. I’m not sure if it was because they weren’t able to get the help before, or whether they didn’t know that he needed it until he’d done something of this magnitude.

Reasons for crime

According to Wang She, he felt that class differences were a huge reason for crime. He grew up in a bad background, and he had worked hard to become a lawyer. But he told his wife that he’d almost fallen into crime. He realized how easy it was to turn to a life of crime for those who were in high stress situations, and that was why he worked so hard for them.

These people struggle to find reason or logic in their lives that sometimes they have to do extreme things in order to understand or to provoke a reaction.

After Wang She’s talk with his wife, she started to think about her own prejudices. And we saw her adjust her mindset little by little. She used to call criminals 壞人 “bad people,” but after her talk with Wang She, she started calling them 罪人 “those who have committed crimes.” She started to understand that people who committed crimes were not necessarily evil to the core, but were in a bad place where they ended up making bad decisions.

Mental health

Mental health was a huge topic covered in this drama.

We saw that people with mental health were heavily discriminated against. The media was partially responsible for this, sensationalizing “crazy” criminals as unfathomable enigmas, when really, they were just people. Meimei was a prime example of these prejudices. She’d walked by Sicong on the street and she was extremely afraid of him, even when he was just trying to help her up. Even Ying Taisheng had prejudiced views of the mentally ill at the beginning of the drama, believing that they should be locked up and that they were good for nothing.

However, this show demonstrated to us that the mentally ill were just people. We saw that Sicong was a person with a family and people who loved him, he’d just been through some tough times. In one of his arguments with his sister, Sicong said that he just wanted to be treated like a human and not some monster or even a child (he felt infantalized because his sister was always telling him to take his medicine). The mother of the bullied child was characterized as mentally ill, but Qiao’an admitted that even if she was mentally ill, that didn’t mean she couldn’t be right in what she said. So those who are mentally ill are not given common courtesy.

In the drama, we saw that people in positions of authority had the power to help these people and enforce their rights. This was a point of conflict between Lin Yijun, a doctor, and his wife Song Qiaoping, who worked with those who were mentally ill. There was a situation in which a patient wanted to leave the hospital and go home, but his brother wanted to keep him in the hospital. The brother was creating a huge ruckus, and Yijun gave in, saying that perhaps they would move the patient to a long-term care ward, but Qiaoping was upset, because she felt that she was in a position to fight for the patient’s rights.

Justice system

This was a very broad topic that was explored in different ways. Law is supposed to reflect the morality of society, but it is not perfect. And that is how you get situations where people are not happy with the sentence that a criminal has received.

At the beginning of the drama, there was a criminal who was convicted of sexually assaulting a child, and was let off with a relatively light sentence. The general public was most angry at the judge for their sentence, believing it too light. This was one such example of the general public disagreeing with the justice system. But should the law listen to the general public? Who sets the laws?

It was this mismatch between morality and the law that Wang She wanted to explain to his wife. He wanted to explain to her that someone like him, who seemed upright, could have very easily fallen into a life of crime. You can draw the line between a criminal and a non-criminal, but where do you draw the line between a good and a bad person? It’s just a very messy situation. But at the very least, everybody under the sun is subject to equal rights.

Like I said, law is supposed to reflect the morality of society, but what if the general public is being led astray? Especially in the days of social media the general public will exhibit mob mentality, often fueled by sensationalist media. So it’s hard to say who is right and who is wrong. All the law can do is try to sentence criminals with as neutral of a lens as possible.

Li Xiaoming’s situation was implied to be a product of the law listening to the general public. He was sentenced to death, but his death was pushed to the front of the queue. For what? Why was he treated differently from any other death row prisoner? If they were all sentenced to death, why was he not made to wait his turn? That was what Wang She was getting at when he said that even criminals deserved equal rights. He acknowledged that all of the criminals were worthy of the death sentence. He was not disputing that. But as long as they were alive, they had rights, which included equal treatment among their equals.

What is the goal of the justice system? Most people hoped for the death penalty for the worst criminals, because they didn’t want their tax dollars going towards their well-being. However, Wang She was staunchly in favour of rehabilitation. Killing these criminals does not prevent future similar situations from happening. In this drama, the general public did not care to understand those on death row, only hoping for their swift execution. But Wang She insisted that only if the general public understood these criminals would their society as a whole have a chance at preventing future incidents from happening. Only if people recognized the signs would they be able to get the people the help they needed before they did something hurtful.

Career

There were some characters in this show who let their careers take over their lives. The two I want to talk about are Song Qiao’an and Wang She.

For Song Qiao’an, she didn’t want to face her family and the grief that had torn them apart, so she would bury herself in her work.

As for Wang She, it was the opposite. He was so passionate about his job that he did not care enough for his family. While he did provide for them financially, his wife had expressed that she was lonely.

This was a mini theme, but I just thought it was interesting that we had two workaholics in this drama and I wanted to compare them a bit.

Raising children

Every parent in this show was hurt.

Li Mama and Li Baba had no idea where they went wrong. Li Mama kept blaming her working habits, thinking that if she’d spent more time at home with Xiaoming and Xiaowen, that Xiaoming wouldn’t have turned to terrorism. She wondered that if they hadn’t pushed Xiaoming to study business and had allowed him to study mechanics, that maybe he would have been happy and less angry with the world. I thought it was fascinating that we found out very little about Xiaoming’s motivations, but I think it’s realistic because Li Mama and Li Baba are probably never going to know for sure. All they can do is try to atone for the sins of their child.

Qiao’an blamed herself for not protecting her child. She blamed herself for taking a work call and having a coffee while Tianyan sat alone in the movie theatre. Zhaoguo had blamed her in a fit of rage, and Qiao’an had even said that if she’d made it in time to Tianyan, maybe they could have died together, so that her relationship with her husband and daughter wouldn’t have devolved to where it was now. Of course, what she did was not criminally negligent. It is very reasonable to think that nothing would happen to your tween/teen son in a movie theatre. But it took her a while to come to terms that it was not her fault.

Ying Taisheng initially had very defeatist attitudes about raising a child with mental illness. He thought that Sicong’s life was over, which was a very old fashioned way of viewing things. He’d even told Siyue that if he’d known that her mother had an aunt with mental illness, he would not have married her for fear of what was to come for their children. But we saw that he adjusted his views after seeing Sicong. After taking his medication, Sicong said that he wanted to come home, and wouldn’t start fights anymore. I think he saw that somewhere inside Sicong, there was a son that wanted to be with his family. Afterwards he became very adamant that he would take care of Sicong, to the point that he got into a fight with his wife about it. It ended up not working out because Taisheng had a heart attack and had to stay in hospital. But basically, I think it took seeing Sicong getting medical help for Taisheng to understand that people with mental health issues were still people and still worthy of experiencing life.

Ding Meimei grew up like a princess. She was the only child of middle to upper class parents, so she wasn’t very in the know about how dangerous the world really was. She started becoming paranoid about the hate their family was getting for Wang She’s job, but she was even more paranoid because she had a child to take care of, and another child on the way. If she was just on her own, I could see her being a little more brave, seeing as how after her conversation with Wang She, she did start to understand his point of view. But because she had kids to worry about, that was why she butted heads with Wang She.

Living in the light

This theme was mostly covered by the Li Dazhi story line. In order to cope with the aftermath of her brother’s act of terrorism, the entire family went covert. Her parents went to live in her grandmother’s home, and she changed her name. Her mom even told her to say that her entire family was dead.

But it weighed heavily on Li Dazhi because she was constantly having to hide who she was. Not that she was proud of being the sister of a terrorist, but it was tiring telling people that her family was dead, it was tiring pretending that her parents didn’t exist and didn’t care for her. So she preferred for the family to face challenges together, because at least they could live as themselves, and they could try to do something about the guilt by atoning the best that they could.

For the child who was bullied, his mom had to pull him out of school, and after she’d recorded a video, she and her son had disappeared, only to have been found dead. Because she and her son were not able to go out without being harassed, nobody could keep an eye on them and make sure they were taken care of.

Life ruined

Does illness ruin a life? Should we lock up people who are mentally ill like what they did to Siyue’s relative? Of course not. That’s a sentiment from an older time, when people didn’t know how to treat mental illnesses. This is the same for people with physical disabilities as well. Just because someone is not able-bodied doesn’t mean their life is wasted. It just means they need some help to get back on their feet before they can do the things that they want to do, like how Sicong wants to finish his movie.

A similar discussion could be had about people who’ve committed crimes. Where do you draw the line between someone who is beyond help and someone who can be rehabilitated to be a better person and not to be a repeat offender? Is anybody beyond rehabilitation? I can’t answer that here, but that is a question that pervades this drama because of how many high profile crimes are portrayed in different ways.

Relationships

Every romantic relationship in this show went through challenges.

Li Mama and Li Baba’s relationship deteriorated after Li Xiaoming’s crime. We saw that Li Baba descended into alcoholism, and he’d turned into a demanding husband who did nothing while his wife toiled every day. Only after Dazhi made a ruckus did the parents see how they’d each been contributing to the fragmentation of their family. Afterwards, Li Mama and Li Baba acted more as a united front, whether it was when they were taking care of Dazhi, or when they were facing the media.

Before the terrorism attack happened, Dazhi was going to go out with the class president of her class, but after the crime had happened, he had ghosted her. Years later, Dazhi did not blame him. I think she did not blame him because she understood how messy the situation would have been. However, what the class president did later on, going on a date with her to get intel on her family was very shitty, and we know that he did not do that out of good intentions for Dazhi but instead for his own professional career.

Qiao’an and Zhaoguo of course had a lot of baggage to get through. Tianyan’s death already caused much strain between them, because they both blamed Qiao’an. Later on, Zhaoguo had cheated on Qiao’an with a coworker. I believe it was the infidelity that made Zhaoguo lose all credibility with Qiao’an. It didn’t matter how good he was with their daughter, Qiao’an would never listen to him because he was not to be trusted. And later on, Tianqing wanted to live at her aunt’s place because the relationship was so frigid between the couple. WIthout Tianqing, there was no barrier through which Qiao’an could hide, and she had to confront her feelings of grief for her son, with her husband there to pick up the pieces.

For most of the drama, Qiaoping and Yijun had been the sweet easygoing couple, and I was low key wanting to see what conflicts they would encounter, not for the drama, but because this drama is so good at writing meaningful and relevant conflict. Qiaoping and Yijun’s conflicts were both of a professional and personal nature. They actually worked at the same hospital in different capacities, so they could challenge each other on a professional level, and their conflict was interesting because they were both right. There are times when your work can introduce too much stress into your life and encourage overreliance by the patients, but there are also times when healthcare workers such as Qiaoping and Yijun are in the perfect place to protect their patients that are discriminated against. As for the pregnancy, the discussion over that was related to their disputes over their professional lives, because of course Qiaoping would not want to have the baby with someone she was fighting with. They did end up reconciling and having the baby.

Ying Taisheng and his wife had arguments over whether they could take care of Sicong. Taisheng wanted to take Sicong no matter what. However, A-yi worried that they would not have enough money to take care of another person under their roof, and Taisheng was retired precisely because he had workplace injuries. Things were put on hold when Taisheng had a heart attack, and Siyue ended up taking care of Sicong anyway. But we saw that A-yi was kindly towards Sicong after he’d agreed to get better together with his dad. So I think towards the end, the question was mostly a financial one.

Siyue and Kaizi’s relationship went through a huge unearthings during the drama. They were in a long distance relationship, to be married, and Siyue would move to Mainland China with Kaizi. When the news about Sicong’s mental health came out, Kaizi said they would face the challenges together, and Siyue was so happy about it. But when Kaizi and his mother came to Taiwan, that was when things began to unravel. Jin Mama showed prejudices against people who had history of mental illness in the family, and required Siyue to do a full body checkup before marrying Kaizi. Kaizi tried to make it up to Siyue but only through superficial means, such as giving her flowers, and insisting that his mother only wanted the best for them. Later, Kaizi’s actions showed that he had no intention of getting involved in messy situations. When Sicong threw up by his uncle’s car, he worried more for the car than for Sicong. And when Siyue and Dazhi were being ambushed by the media at her cafe, Kaizi did not want to come and help her. We later saw that some other underlying problems in their relationship come to light when Siyue decided to break up with him. Apparently after she married into the family, she would be expected to take care of Kaizi’s grandmother, which is ironic because I believe Jin Mama had praised Siyue for being so independent. In addition, Siyue just felt that Kaizi did not care at all for her family. And as Siyue explained to Dazhi, nobody forced them to break up. The situation with Sicong and Dazhi only revealed to Siyue that Kaizi was an unreliable and unsympathetic man.

Overall

Great drama. Might seriously be the best I’ve ever watched. The story was well written and well paced, and I think it really approached the subject matter with care. The acting was great, the production was great. It was excellent!