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michyeosseo · 2 years

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欢乐颂 ode to joy 3 first impressions

the reboot makes me feel old-old but at least we still have the balloons?

yes, we all miss the quintet that were shengmei, andy, xiaoxiao, yingying & guanguan but first, here’s a brief intro before my thoughts on the new tenants of the 22nd floor:

2201 again with the aloof mystery lady with an english name - lucy fang zhiheng

2202 has the three flatmates setup (a jiejie and two ducklings) as before - zhu zhe, nickname jiji; he minhong; and yu chuhui, nickname a'chu

2203 still houses the fuerdai of the bunch - ye zhenzhen

(watched the five fully subbed episodes on viki and as of last night, 18 out of 33 have already aired so halfway mark now)

jiji is as sensible as hotel managers go. she may not leave you with a strong sense of who she is at the start but she's been working the longest among these ladies and her breadwinner energy shows. the smol ones ought to let jiejie enjoy her drama fix before bed in peace.

naïve + nosy is how i'd describe minhong... guess that comes with her being a green writer. initially shown as someone who wants to impart her morals (chided by her supervisor right away for aspiring such) in the magazine column, she's bound to learn from conflicts she'll cause.

a'chu has the signature turbulent family woes. that said, grew up well and is striving to strike balance between escaping poverty and being true to herself – developing engineer patents even though neither her nor her peers get credit while teaching kids ballet on the side.

zhenzhen acted as the welcome wagon to the trio. yes, she's a scientist-to-be (biochemistry field if we're being exact) living one good deed a day. outside the lab's spent bonding with the other ladies of 22nd floor - treating them to expensive ice cream and just chilling around.

she and zhenzhen moved in the same time but rarely do we glimpse the two beauties mingling. by design since lucy's miss i-got-my-hands-full: keeping up her luxury appearances and keeping a semblance of normal when she should probably get therapy. she longs for their warm friendship from afar.

chemistry between the five is still wanting in organic interactions department, which is given. much has changed in the shanghai residential complex since the original series was on. years passed. 22nd floor corridor itself is laid different. our original 22nd floor jiejies may have moved on to hopefully better lives yet women in the workforce continue to struggle, maybe even more so with how reductive society has turned into. this otj reboot feels dated, though. at least, daylight entertainment's approach in these early episodes i have seen. the mansplainer of a narrator is gone, lemme just say that's a relief personally.

but y'know what bugs me? how they've opted to tackle sexual harassment.

raising the discussion via media in itself is fine. such abuse of power imbalance shouldn't be swept under the rug, considering countless women on a daily basis are coerced into silence because of the indifference. too few real-life jiji/a'chu/zhenzhen who believes immediately. but one of the guys in the main cast, lucy's suitor, is very attached to this so-called theme exploration. spoiler alert: he's the son of the company superior who assaulted lucy. gonna spare y'all the grim details but, of course, she alone knows of the connection. left to process such trauma by herself while fending off his dogged pursuits - at the office, at the mma gym and later on, even at her hls apartment. what kind of plot?! from the closing credits, he's not bound to leave anytime soon.

my main worry is the narrative will prove her reluctance wrong, that he's a Good Guy, tied neat bow and all that jazz when that does absolutely NOTHING to address the shitty lot that would have been avoided if he wasn't related to this godforsaken dog bloodedness to begin with. if it's only an afterthought to the writer, i just wanna voice that when you've penned a franchise jumpstarting the trend of female-centric modern set cdramas and then you want to continue that brand today? maybe you should update your sensibilities first.

we embrace women's wrongs in this house, not when women are wronged.

quips won't make the cut with the audiences that easily anymore.

#cdrama #ode to joy #ode to joy 3 #欢乐颂 #did a thread on twitter but just in case mutuals here might wanna talk here as well #where's viv hahahuhu #(i hope she's acing law school)#my friend say weibo reception is lukewarm so that's proof brand ain't the easy score it might have been before #there's barely any promo floating around ugh #i am rooting for the new girlies to be treated well #dear god they better be they signed up for otj 4 and 5 as well

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