Mountains and Ocean (2019)

Started nice… but went downhill by becoming VERY frustrating ; a potential wrongfully exploited

Was nice… but the writing has some BIG flaws that make it not so great
The drama started off as a light romcom in a campus setup
But on the last 4 episodes, it suddenly turned very tragic and melodramatic.
I don’t have a problem with melodramatic. What I have a problem with is the sudden change of tone : if they wanted something melodramatic, they should have done it during the whole drama. Not first start as a nice romantic comedy and then with just one episode, turn it to tragedy with melodrama, deaths and angst. Us viewers were not prepared at all and that felt disagreeable
Another big flaw : this drama causes A LOT of frustration to the viewer, mostly due to the injustices that the female lead suffers. To summarize : the female lead is rich, beautiful, cheerful and beloved. But by her side, there’s a jealous character ready to ruin her happiness. Ruining, the female lead, who grew up with everything one could wish for, including a sparkling, attractive personality, grew up with Shen Zhen by her side. Shen Zhen is beautiful, smart and seemingly polite : but she’s the maid’s daughter, everything she owns has been paid by Ruining’s parents, the house where she lives is theirs and she has always been overshadowed by Ruining’s bright personality and popularity. So, obviously she strongly dislikes Ruining. Many viewers can understand that. What makes her eventually annoying is how far her jealousy and her inferiority complex go : at first, it starts off as her being so insecure in front of Ruining that she’s certain Ruining always does everything to bully her. No master how Ruining apologizes, explains or tries to make it up when she accidentally wrongs Shen Zhen, Shen Zhen won’t listen or believe and will only conclude Ruining deliberately bullied her. When Ruining tries to be nice or befriend her, Shen Zhen rudely rejects by always bringing up their « master-servant relationship » as if she’s somehow blaming Ruining. What makes her even more annoying is that she’s actually not so pitiful, she even has plenty of good things : her mom’s employers gave her mom not only a work but gave them a place to live, food and clothes but even paid for her studies, and all of that without asking anything in return : in short, if it weren’t for them, she’d know what is real poverty and would probably have to do part-time jobs. They also treat kindly, love her like a relative and have plenty of attentions for her. Their daughter tries to be friend with her, plenty of people actually admire her and want to befriend. So we don’t know why she’s so certain her life is a deep tragedy : she obviously thinks as some Cinderella, a female lead from some idol drama and thinks Ruining is the villain who steals everything from her. Eventually, her and Ruining’s rivalry takes a whole new turn when they fall for the same boy : although he first befriends Shen Zhen, he loves Ruining, which finally drives her to madness and darkness after having lost again to Ruining. Her actions not only lead her to harm to Ruining : this leads her to harm and threaten Ruining’s family, despite everything she owes to them. And her jealousy and bitterness turned her so dark that she doesn’t see how wrong this is or that this is totally uncalled for, unlike what she claims. Eventually, she also takes a part in destroying not only Ruining but her whole family, again without remorse, despite the fact that this family had done so much for her.
Shen Zhen is an amazing character, with an amazing actress : she exerts some fascination for me, a mix of hatred and love, because she’s not only a very realistic villain, but also someone who doesn’t look like a villain. She first appears as a pitiful Cinderella who just misunderstands the female lead. However, what makes me REALLY hate her is that the show often seems to present as someone who’s not so bad, who shouldn’t have been a villain, but who has a pitiful past and was led astray by heartbreak and jealousy : what comforted me in that particularly is the ending.
THAT F*** ENDING !!! The most freaking frustrating point of the story, especially on Shen Zhen’s side, and the thing that made me dislike this drama the most : basically, Shen Zhen and another character did terrible things, even committing crimes, which destroyed Ruining, but they get away. Let’s just say that after her most terrible sin was revealed, Shen Zhen was about to commit another : but in an unrealistic twist, that doesn’t correspond at all to the character, she retracts because she just heard the male lead say « I love you » to the female lead when saving her. And with just that, she just quietly leaves, with no punishment for her actions, even having a beautiful monologue, like she’s actually a tragic character not the worst kind of person.. Her accomplice is also no as punished as one should for one’s actions. She just spent 24 episodes trying to ruin the female lead, going as far as complicity of murder and attempt of murder… but suddenly stops when she’s about to lose everything ?! With the character’s personality, that’s not believable at all, and it is even less believable that what would bring her back to her senses is hearing the man she loves profess his love to her rival, when we know how jealous it made her in the past. And we don’t know what the lead couple become, if they even end up together, although it seems to imply they don’t.
What annoyed me most about this ending is that it’s not at all the novel’s but it also doesn’t make sense : yep, I’ve read the novel. A novel which gives an extremely different ending, an ending very satisfying, for every character. But it seemed like the screenwriter here was Shen Zhen’s diehard fan and would rather let her ruin lives and get away than punish her and give her an ending that makes sense
The ending isn’t the only frustrating point of the story ; like i said, there’s a lot. For example, i was kinda annoyed that Ruining’s mother never got to know or realize what kind of person Shen Zhen was. Basically, it became obvious Shen Zhen was very hostile towards her daughter and was bullying her : unfairly accusing her of an offense, slapping her in public, causing her suspension, being about to slap her in her own house, calling her « a heinous person » in front of them… even with all of that, Ruining’s mom kept believing that the Shen Zhen she watched grow up was a polite and kind kid and only had a few misunderstandings with Ruining (URGH). That was a bit annoying. This eventually turned VERY annoying in that scene when she found Ruining and Shen Zhen fighting (basically, after Shen Zhen had used a common past between Ruining’s and the male lead’s parents to blackmail and had even insulted her mom) : but Ruining is the one she slapped, and Shen Zhen is the one she hugged and trusted when Shen Zhen, without a bit of shame, played the grateful and polite girl in front of the woman she had just called a « whore ». Shen Zhen had obviously caused harm to her daughter in the past and her, when she found them fighting, it didn’t occur to her that maybe Ruining had been pushed and bullied too much but chose to believe Ruining was the unreasonable one. What felt most annoying is that Ruining’s mom never got to know about Shen Zhen’s actions, real nature, and personal feelings : until the end, she was left in the dark and us viewers would have liked her to know and realize how stupid she had been, that she owed her daughter an apology and that she had been feeding a snake all along.
it was also annoying that the male lead, of anyone else, never got to know all of the things that she did : after all, she had even used his family to threaten Ruining, even though she claimed to love him, had somehow also caused the ruin of his family but he never knew about it. I just wondered how he would have reacted if he knew how she blackmailed Ruining with both of their families.
The male lead was also a big frustration and deception at the end : he obviously still loved the female lead, but for some reasons, he chose to blame her, or to pretend to blame her, for what happened between both of their families. Many viewers kept rooting for him but I didn’t : i thought this made him immature, and dishonest about his own feelings. It was okay if he couldn’t love her but to pretend to hate and blame her… i just found him pathetic and unfair
Also, i wished we would have known what happened to his dad who was a big responsible for their misfortunes.
It would also have been nice if they had somehow used Shen Zhen’s mom for her karma : Shen Zhen’s mom, unlike her daughter, was extremely grateful to her employers, had a lot of respect for them and the female lead, and tried to teach these to Shen Zhen, but obtained the opposite. At some point of the story, she doesn’t hesitate to point out to Shen Zhen that she shouldn’t go after Ruining. I just think that with her gratefulness to the female lead’s family, it could have been a great turn to the story if she had learnt how her daughter had actually destroyed without remorse their benefactors.
But these last points are actually minor. Like I said, the biggest flaw of the drama is the ending that changed compared to the novel : they not only completely changed it but rushed it (there are a lot of other elements in the novel, including another suitor for the male lead), and made it the worst kind of open ending where the leads aren’t happily together and the villains get away, despite having done the worst kind of things. Moreover, the ending being « open », it doesn’t conclude anything, leaving the viewer frustrated, whether it is because the villains are spared or because we don’t even know if the leads end up together.
Honestly, when I think of that drama, I now have a ball of angst rolling in my throat because it is so sad, unfair and frustrating and it could have been so much better

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