Xue Tong's father died a hero as she was preparing to enter college. "I found a new burden being added onto my shoulders," she explains. "I must score well in exams because I'm the hero's daughter. I have to be considerate all the time because I'm the hero's daughter. I can't afford to make any mistakes because I'm the hero's daughter. I can't bring shame to my heroic dad... I realized that this burden has become a part of my personality. For the past few years I've been a timid coward. Today, I decided to put down that burden to become a brave yet ordinary person. Only by doing so can my dad's bravery bring light into my life." She's crafted an extraordinary manifesto.
Xue Tong was framed. All she did was pick up a piece of paper. But the exacting exam monitor, Mu Cheng He, accused her of cheating. XT's Professor knows she's not the type to cheat, so he does not render a verdict, but rather takes time to look into the issue. Ep1 is about how she goes on a quest to clear her name & find the true culprits, but even moreso, it sets up a clash between her & Mu. She "doan" like him. Notta bit.
Li Ting Ting from Unique Lady plays FL, XT. Without a sense of style, she's no fashionista. More Sporty-Spice than any other, she walks, talks, & quacks like a jock, but they didn't put her on any team, other than the infamous dorm room 323. She is smart, down-to-earth, & she's girl-nextdoor cute. Protect yourself & hit the mute button when she sings. She & her two beasties, Bai Lin (Baby-Spice) & Song Qi Qi (Surprise-Spice) remind me of the 3 friends in the amazing 💘anime Maid Sama(10). The FL is a tough, smart overachiever, then there's the studious, bespectacled QiQi, & finally the ponytailed fan-girlie, Bai Lin, who always seems to make trouble. Unlike the rule-enforcing Misa from MS, XT is not a great rule follower. She's downright disruptive sometimes.
At some point they get Scary-Spice as a roomie. She's a model, she looks like Joan Jett, & she's as cool as her too. They are in their 3rd year. 21 year old XT is really popular this year. All kinds of guys are approaching her - to pass messages & gifts to her new super-hot rommie, Zhao Xiao Tang. As it turns out, the guy XT is interested in only sees her as a buddy. Tang is his kinda tangy, he thinks. But, YO! Tang is totally Tangsta.
XT's thing is languages. She's an English major, but she's also learning Russian. When she shows up to her first Russian class of the semester, guess who's filling in for the professor who is out of town? The show teaches us about the alveolar "al 'vee lar" trill, or rolling of the r's. Those w/ ankyloglossia (tongue-tied) aren't able to do it, but ethnicity is not a risk factor for that condition. Asians simply aren't used to making that sound. (How many of us in the USA can reproduce most of their consonants? According to Google translate I'm hopeless). Anyway, XT's alveolar weakness is exposed promptly. Extra homework. Mu will be keeping a close eye on her. She ends up as the class representative. She'll be in his office daily...
Zhang Chao is ML, Mu. He looks like Michael Crawford's Cornelius Hackl from Hello Dolly. He's not a bad guy, he's just a physics major. They're precise & rely on what they see. He's been skipping grades since he was young, So he's always been surrounded by people older than him. Nobody played w/ him when he was little. "I didn't care. I don't need others to play w/ me. Because I knew in my heart that physics was the most interesting topic," he insists. When he wants to speak romantically it might be something like this: "Time is irreversible in general relativity. The only ruler of time is the transfer of heat. But when the heat begins to pass, What happened can no longer be erased." Just fan yourselves, ladies, before you pass out! Left-brained folk aren't known for their touchie-feeliness. As a physics PhD student & teacher, Mu is in a position of authority at school. He & XT end up clashing many times. He even has to pick her up at the police station. So when he needs to break into the lab, who's he gonna call?
SOWK is tagged as a romance, but it's more a college drama about XT & her roomies. The romance is low-sizzle. This isn't where you get your dopamine fix. (For that I recommend Well-Intended Love-7.5, which is rom-porn. Just be warned that the ML pulls a very offensive stunt. The two best modern-day Cromances I've seen are, A Little Thing Called First Love-8.5 & Find Yourself-9.2) The show sort of acts like a scientist in that we observe these characters more than identify w/ them; our emotions are not fully pulled in. The viewer might get irritated w/ Bai Lin, but our feelings are not subjected to intense wind resistance. This isn't hot love, it's cool fusion.
While XT remains oblivious, the viewer sees Mu start to smirk at her. Next, his gaze lingers on her. She's been helping him as a way to apologize & say "thank-you" in the aftermath of their various run-ins. He invites her to the planetarium. She's in bummy pants & a t-shirt w/ an oversized plaid button shirt hanging like a moo-moo over the ensemble. She skips & scampers from one exhibit to another. When she sees all the tweens making a model she wants to do it, too. She just had her heart bruised by being placed in friend-zone by another dude, yet here she is doing it to Mu. Or is she? Soon it's obvious that they are each attracted to the other & they are self-aware. They aren't people that talk about feelings though. They keep it lowkey.
For a nerd, he does a nice confession. Once they are dating, XT gets frustrated because he's slower than the sea turtles they observed while diving. Not only is he a scientist, but he's 10 yrs her senior. Who can blame him for moving slowly? Her youth & inexperience make her look like a bomb to him. Does she really love him? Will another guy catch her eye? Is she going to stay? That coupled w/ his old-fashioned tendencies & the deference he shows to her don't pave the way for anything hot-&-heavy. In fact, when they go on their trip, the couple next-door to them asks for a condom & he claims he doesn't have any. Is he even attracted to her? Little does she know, they are one good scare away from getting much closer, until... "He can't accept anyone in his world." When his experiment runs into problems, He becomes obsessed. He abandons XT on Mars.
Thematically, there's no central message here; to the extent that there is a central theme, it's growing pains. "Your life belongs to you. People like your parents, best friends or even your partners can't be held responsible for your life." QiQi may have the hardest time w/ that concept. For a girl w/ her nose always in a book, she perhaps has the strongest emotions & the toughest time sorting through them.
XT is upset at one point because she & one of her close friends will have to compete for a scholarship. Her friend's been going through hardship & XT almost prefers to lose. The pragmatic Tang breaks it down: "You are not showing kindness by avoiding the problem. That's hypocrisy. If I was your competitor, the way you were behaving now would only make me think that you were looking down on me." In the USA, individualistic nature makes us think that we have more importance & influence in situations & we actually do. We have a drive to fix things. Before we act we should look at our intentions from all sides.
There's lightly sprinkled quality tidbits. In ep15 he says they can brave the rain together. He's talking about the weather, but it feels portentous... They go on a trip to Malaysia & it's gorgeous. They even take out a transparent kayak. Mu Hai (Li Jiu Xiao) proves that hair does make the man. Bai Lin is disappointed by yet another guy. She's on a school outing so she climbs up the mountain. It's an overcast morning. One of her classmates calls out to her & she raises her head. "Look, the clouds have parted! " Maybe the one who won't disappoint her is right behind her. Or is something else going on? It's a nice little scene. The music is well above avg but I couldn't find any of it by way of Shazam or spotify.
Here's a quote From the show: "Scriptwriters these days aren't reliable at all." Just as Voyager 1 will soon run out of battery & transmissions to earth will cease, SOWK ends up doing the same thing. SOWK isn't deeply flawed, but these characters don't draw the viewer in sufficiently to make up for what it lacks. We don't dislike them, but are they likable enough? There was a promise of more. I'm writing this as ep20 closes. 20 hours in & I'm starting to feel disappointed. The show hasn't given me enough to compensate me for my time. Instead of floating higher, it's gotten water-logged. Now I'm looking at 4 episodes to go, & I'm already done.
Update: At ep23's close I started to actively dislike SOWK. XT is hard to read - does she care at all? It's impossible to tell. At times I think she's horrible. She goes too toxic on one character without sufficient reason. I'm starting to find her distasteful. Bai Lin is frustrating. The urge to slap her is making me frustrated. (To be fair, she does mature before the credits roll). QiQi is a big disappointment. SOWK has a low degree-of-difficulty. There's no buildup or foreshadowing or meaning to it. It doesn't make for high quality entertainment. Many viewers love it - for more than half the show I thought I did, but it slipped out of my orbit long before its allotted time.
QUOTES📢
There are many kinds of love but there is only one kind of breakup.
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause & reflect." -Mark Twain. (Amen).
〰🖍 IMHO
📣5.8 📝4.8 🎭7.5 💓4 🦋3 🎨5 🎵/🔊7.5 🔚 ▪ 🌞4.5 ⚡3.3 😅3 😭5 😱3.5 😯2.5 😖1 🤔4 💤3.5
Age 14+ Violence, sad/adult situations Language: he!!×2, b@$+@rd+1 pr!ck×1 d!(khe@d×1 F💣×1
Re-📺? 👎🏼
👷
Xue Tong was framed. All she did was pick up a piece of paper. But the exacting exam monitor, Mu Cheng He, accused her of cheating. XT's Professor knows she's not the type to cheat, so he does not render a verdict, but rather takes time to look into the issue. Ep1 is about how she goes on a quest to clear her name & find the true culprits, but even moreso, it sets up a clash between her & Mu. She "doan" like him. Notta bit.
Li Ting Ting from Unique Lady plays FL, XT. Without a sense of style, she's no fashionista. More Sporty-Spice than any other, she walks, talks, & quacks like a jock, but they didn't put her on any team, other than the infamous dorm room 323. She is smart, down-to-earth, & she's girl-nextdoor cute. Protect yourself & hit the mute button when she sings. She & her two beasties, Bai Lin (Baby-Spice) & Song Qi Qi (Surprise-Spice) remind me of the 3 friends in the amazing 💘anime Maid Sama(10). The FL is a tough, smart overachiever, then there's the studious, bespectacled QiQi, & finally the ponytailed fan-girlie, Bai Lin, who always seems to make trouble. Unlike the rule-enforcing Misa from MS, XT is not a great rule follower. She's downright disruptive sometimes.
At some point they get Scary-Spice as a roomie. She's a model, she looks like Joan Jett, & she's as cool as her too. They are in their 3rd year. 21 year old XT is really popular this year. All kinds of guys are approaching her - to pass messages & gifts to her new super-hot rommie, Zhao Xiao Tang. As it turns out, the guy XT is interested in only sees her as a buddy. Tang is his kinda tangy, he thinks. But, YO! Tang is totally Tangsta.
XT's thing is languages. She's an English major, but she's also learning Russian. When she shows up to her first Russian class of the semester, guess who's filling in for the professor who is out of town? The show teaches us about the alveolar "al 'vee lar" trill, or rolling of the r's. Those w/ ankyloglossia (tongue-tied) aren't able to do it, but ethnicity is not a risk factor for that condition. Asians simply aren't used to making that sound. (How many of us in the USA can reproduce most of their consonants? According to Google translate I'm hopeless). Anyway, XT's alveolar weakness is exposed promptly. Extra homework. Mu will be keeping a close eye on her. She ends up as the class representative. She'll be in his office daily...
Zhang Chao is ML, Mu. He looks like Michael Crawford's Cornelius Hackl from Hello Dolly. He's not a bad guy, he's just a physics major. They're precise & rely on what they see. He's been skipping grades since he was young, So he's always been surrounded by people older than him. Nobody played w/ him when he was little. "I didn't care. I don't need others to play w/ me. Because I knew in my heart that physics was the most interesting topic," he insists. When he wants to speak romantically it might be something like this: "Time is irreversible in general relativity. The only ruler of time is the transfer of heat. But when the heat begins to pass, What happened can no longer be erased." Just fan yourselves, ladies, before you pass out! Left-brained folk aren't known for their touchie-feeliness. As a physics PhD student & teacher, Mu is in a position of authority at school. He & XT end up clashing many times. He even has to pick her up at the police station. So when he needs to break into the lab, who's he gonna call?
SOWK is tagged as a romance, but it's more a college drama about XT & her roomies. The romance is low-sizzle. This isn't where you get your dopamine fix. (For that I recommend Well-Intended Love-7.5, which is rom-porn. Just be warned that the ML pulls a very offensive stunt. The two best modern-day Cromances I've seen are, A Little Thing Called First Love-8.5 & Find Yourself-9.2) The show sort of acts like a scientist in that we observe these characters more than identify w/ them; our emotions are not fully pulled in. The viewer might get irritated w/ Bai Lin, but our feelings are not subjected to intense wind resistance. This isn't hot love, it's cool fusion.
While XT remains oblivious, the viewer sees Mu start to smirk at her. Next, his gaze lingers on her. She's been helping him as a way to apologize & say "thank-you" in the aftermath of their various run-ins. He invites her to the planetarium. She's in bummy pants & a t-shirt w/ an oversized plaid button shirt hanging like a moo-moo over the ensemble. She skips & scampers from one exhibit to another. When she sees all the tweens making a model she wants to do it, too. She just had her heart bruised by being placed in friend-zone by another dude, yet here she is doing it to Mu. Or is she? Soon it's obvious that they are each attracted to the other & they are self-aware. They aren't people that talk about feelings though. They keep it lowkey.
For a nerd, he does a nice confession. Once they are dating, XT gets frustrated because he's slower than the sea turtles they observed while diving. Not only is he a scientist, but he's 10 yrs her senior. Who can blame him for moving slowly? Her youth & inexperience make her look like a bomb to him. Does she really love him? Will another guy catch her eye? Is she going to stay? That coupled w/ his old-fashioned tendencies & the deference he shows to her don't pave the way for anything hot-&-heavy. In fact, when they go on their trip, the couple next-door to them asks for a condom & he claims he doesn't have any. Is he even attracted to her? Little does she know, they are one good scare away from getting much closer, until... "He can't accept anyone in his world." When his experiment runs into problems, He becomes obsessed. He abandons XT on Mars.
Thematically, there's no central message here; to the extent that there is a central theme, it's growing pains. "Your life belongs to you. People like your parents, best friends or even your partners can't be held responsible for your life." QiQi may have the hardest time w/ that concept. For a girl w/ her nose always in a book, she perhaps has the strongest emotions & the toughest time sorting through them.
XT is upset at one point because she & one of her close friends will have to compete for a scholarship. Her friend's been going through hardship & XT almost prefers to lose. The pragmatic Tang breaks it down: "You are not showing kindness by avoiding the problem. That's hypocrisy. If I was your competitor, the way you were behaving now would only make me think that you were looking down on me." In the USA, individualistic nature makes us think that we have more importance & influence in situations & we actually do. We have a drive to fix things. Before we act we should look at our intentions from all sides.
There's lightly sprinkled quality tidbits. In ep15 he says they can brave the rain together. He's talking about the weather, but it feels portentous... They go on a trip to Malaysia & it's gorgeous. They even take out a transparent kayak. Mu Hai (Li Jiu Xiao) proves that hair does make the man. Bai Lin is disappointed by yet another guy. She's on a school outing so she climbs up the mountain. It's an overcast morning. One of her classmates calls out to her & she raises her head. "Look, the clouds have parted! " Maybe the one who won't disappoint her is right behind her. Or is something else going on? It's a nice little scene. The music is well above avg but I couldn't find any of it by way of Shazam or spotify.
Here's a quote From the show: "Scriptwriters these days aren't reliable at all." Just as Voyager 1 will soon run out of battery & transmissions to earth will cease, SOWK ends up doing the same thing. SOWK isn't deeply flawed, but these characters don't draw the viewer in sufficiently to make up for what it lacks. We don't dislike them, but are they likable enough? There was a promise of more. I'm writing this as ep20 closes. 20 hours in & I'm starting to feel disappointed. The show hasn't given me enough to compensate me for my time. Instead of floating higher, it's gotten water-logged. Now I'm looking at 4 episodes to go, & I'm already done.
Update: At ep23's close I started to actively dislike SOWK. XT is hard to read - does she care at all? It's impossible to tell. At times I think she's horrible. She goes too toxic on one character without sufficient reason. I'm starting to find her distasteful. Bai Lin is frustrating. The urge to slap her is making me frustrated. (To be fair, she does mature before the credits roll). QiQi is a big disappointment. SOWK has a low degree-of-difficulty. There's no buildup or foreshadowing or meaning to it. It doesn't make for high quality entertainment. Many viewers love it - for more than half the show I thought I did, but it slipped out of my orbit long before its allotted time.
QUOTES📢
There are many kinds of love but there is only one kind of breakup.
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause & reflect." -Mark Twain. (Amen).
〰🖍 IMHO
📣5.8 📝4.8 🎭7.5 💓4 🦋3 🎨5 🎵/🔊7.5 🔚 ▪ 🌞4.5 ⚡3.3 😅3 😭5 😱3.5 😯2.5 😖1 🤔4 💤3.5
Age 14+ Violence, sad/adult situations Language: he!!×2, b@$+@rd+1 pr!ck×1 d!(khe@d×1 F💣×1
Re-📺? 👎🏼
👷