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Sorta-Kinda Glorious

Writing up my thoughts on the Chinese drama You are my Glory is going to be one of those head-scratchers; I liked it, it got annoying, I liked it anyway, it got more annoying. In the end I was left feeling like most of the last third of the series was smacking me on the nose for being a romantic and wishing, not for the first time, I was a screenwriter who could get hired to fix this script.

Anyway, okay. The premise for this series is actually pretty good: poor but brilliant aerospace engineer Yu Tu (played by the fabulously handsome Yang Yang) crosses paths with fabulously wealth but not-too-bright actress Qiao Jingjing (portrayed by the genuinely pretty Dilraba Dilmurat) who was his high school classmate. He's looking for a new job that pays better; she's in hot water due to an inappropriate product endorsement snafu, and they end up spending a lot of time together. It's a cross between Notting Hill and Apollo Thirteen, sorta kinda.

Yu Tu is in a life crisis when he runs into Jingjing, and for a while she distracts him from his problems. Jingjing still likes him, although I don't know why. When she confessed in their teens he shut her down because he wanted a girlfriend who would work hard alongside him to become successful (and now Karma bites him in the butt, because Jingjing is super popular and fabulously wealthy.) Yu Tu spends a good portion of the series being a career-focused selfish jerk, by the way, so you have been warned, but the actor makes him likeable and sympathetic despite this.

The romance arc between these two was what made me like the series. I thought it was very well done and authentic and plausible, despite the very miniscule odds of a Chinese Julia Roberts actually falling for a Chinese Carl Sagan. The characters had a remarkable affection for each other that grew from former classmates to lovers. I really liked the realism of the relationship, which got quite passionate in the end (by censored Chinese production standards, anyway.)

As for the rest of the series, well. Product endorsement was rampant, so was the government propaganda (and it was super annoying in this one.) All the problems the couple faced seemed to either fade away or never get resolved. The secondary characters were mostly window dressing, especially the two exes who showed up, made some noise and then vanished. Even the arc of the romance, which seemed great for two-thirds of the series, ended up flattened by Yu Tu's selfish jerkiness. I'm not sorry I watched it, but I think it is pretty annoying, in the sense that so much romantic potential was wasted. Anyway, available on Viki.com.

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