[Review+Links] Lucky Tianbao Wrap Up Post

Drama Lucky Tianbao is obviously not the most anticipated drama of the summer and honestly, rightfully though. All forty episodes are out for the lucky Tencent VIP members, but the episodes are also slowly being released to the general public. If you want to watch them as soon as possible, then search the internet and you should be able to find the links easily. In this wrap up post, I will talk about my thoughts about this drama as well as you give you watching links for Zhao Liying parts. ^^

I really wanted to write this post to wrap up the whole Lucky Tianbao chapter of Zhao Liying’s acting career (at least on this blog). She has three upcoming bigger projects for the rest of the summer so this one feels like a filler one until we get there. I talked with a few commenters about my experience so far with the drama and thought maybe other watchers may want a place to rant too. Or maybe you just can’t find links to have the best-skip-useless-scenes-experience as much as possible… So here we go!

My thoughts:

First of all, let me give a disclaimer. If you are new to this blog, know that I am a huge Zhao Liying fan and basically watched the whole drama for her and second male lead Zhu Zixiao of whom I am also very fond of. Hence, if you are here to see a complete review, you will be disappointed as I skip watched for their parts only, which can be estimated to about 10 episodes worth of content.

Second, in general, I do not recommend this drama. Yop, I said it and I am not taking it back. This drama was very annoying on many levels and this review will explain deeper why. I had average hopes before watching because I was ok with the cast, found the costumes very pretty and really felt like watching a no brainer drama while waiting for the big guns ones. Oh boy was this one a no brainer. Everyone in this drama is so stupid I actually feel like I lost my brain half way through… xD Let me elaborate on each character…

Zhao Liying as Yang Ruo Nang: Zhao Liying may be my favorite actress out there, and that is why I need to be critical for her projects. If I never saw her before, I would really hate this character. First of all, she has no eyes for men. Yang Ruo Nang grew up with Zhu Tianbao and Zhu Tianxiang as a rich government official’s daughter. She is spoiled to no end and don’t know how to give other people personal space. She follows Zhu Tianbao until the end of the world, even when he goes to local brothels. In her opinion, Zhu Tianbao is the smartest and best man in the world even if he is a playboy, takes nothing seriously and doesn’t care for her at all. Why girl, why you so stubborn? Later on, after Tianbao gets into an accident and disappears from her world, she is totally broken and doesn’t smile anymore. When she finally accept the wedding arrangement with Zhu Tianxiang, she finds a hint that Tianbao may not be dead and escapes to find him. Hence, she just creates a lot of trouble for everyone. She causes her father to be imprisonated, creates a new love triangle between her, Tianbao and Xiao Die and also, makes Tianxiang worried and … ready to kill. Girl, once again, why you so stubborn?

I get it that girls should fight for their love and it is not always about setting up for the easy option, but in this case, she is just making all the characters suffer more. She may not had dirtied her hands, but she was easily the cause of a few deaths. She also does not care or think for others. She knew beforehand that Tianbao does not love her and still used the opportunity that he lost his memory to lie about “their love for each other”. She also calls out for Tianbao’s name whenever she can, even in front of her husband who is crazy in love with her. She brings Xiao Die to shop with her for wedding dresses even if Xiao Die at that point was sad that Tianbao chose Ruo Nang. She easily blames other for their mistakes when she clearly doesn’t have a full picture of the situation. Here, I pretty much wanted this character to die at the end. Which did happen. Ruo Nang did a very courageous and selfless thing as she decided to take the blame over a crime Tianbao did and hence was sentenced to death. I am not a 100% displeased with this ending and it was shot beautifully. BUT I just wish she could had accepted Tianxiang’s feelings at least a little bit and understand what he had to sacrifice for her before deciding to leave this world.

I know he is the bad guy, but isn’t this picture precious? :3 I melt everytime I see his smile.

Zhu Zixiao as Zhu Tian Xiang: You crazy stupid bastard. Why you so stupid. I thought you were meant to be the smart one between the two brothers! Honestly, as I watched through, I realized that his character is not originally rotten. It is missteps after missteps that he got himself in this situation of no return. Since youth, he was less favoured by his father and never got the attention from the girl he likes. When his brother went missing, he thought things would finally go his way, but it didn’t. He realizes that he was not the real son of his father and that the girl he likes now lost her smile. He is then influenced by the emperor’s eunnuch (who is the ultimate bad guy) to do a few bad actions to get the favor of the emperor and engaged to Ruo Nang. However, at that moment, Ruo Nang went missing and only comes back months later. They get married, but he understands deep down that his wife has no love for him. Ruo Nang repeatedly stabs him emotionally by calling Tianbao’s name at every occasion. His smile for her slowly becomes a cold expression and it seems like his ultimate life goal was not to make her happy anymore, but to keep her by his side. He is honestly a weak good character went wrong because of the rocks life threw at him. At the end, because he was married to Ruo Nang “the murderer”, he losts the emperor’s favor and is send to prison. I am not sure what his ending is a 100%, but let’s just say he went insane in prison.

He did a lot of bad things and didn’t hesitate to kill others. His life mission was simple: get Yang Ruo Nang for himself. Hence, he is not afraid to do anything for her and basically, loses himself. Because he killed so many people, he does not deserve a good ending. This character reminds me a lot of Yang Kang from the condor trilogy and I dare say his character is even more sad.

The main lead couple:

A lot less to talk about since I mostly skipped their parts. At the beginning, I thought both of them are totally useless characters. Kim Kibum as Zhu Tian Bao is a fair cast and he did justice to the role. However, the character is far from your typical male lead and I honestly didn’t feel like rooting for him. He is quite stupid too. He basically falls off the cliff twice, losing and regaining his memory. :’D Are we serious with this plot line? Anyhow, he was loud and clear about not caring over Ruo Nang so I can’t blame him one bit for what happened to her later on. However, I trully wished he just never gained back his memory and lived everly after with Xiao Die in a far far village instead of coming back in town o solve “political issues”. Chen Yulin as Xiao Die is a real cutie pie, but she is the plain mary sue character we see in every drama. She is super nice and a real compatible partner to Tian Bao. As the female lead, it didn’t feel like she played any important role (at least in the parts I watched), but I am happy this couple got a happy ending and a few kids.

The ZLY Cuts:

I found the videos through her very nice Singaporean facebook fanpage 赵丽颖 – 新马粉丝 which you can follow to have up to date fast news on her ^^ They compiled all the scenes of our favorite second lead in 7 videos of about 45 minutes each. I share the link here for easy access (since I really don’t like how facebook video works in general, because they auto play the videos even if I am just scrolling through my news feed…).

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Yop, that’s it! If you also watched the drama, feel free to leave a comment and share your thoughts too. Personally, I had to go back watch The Palace Movie to clean my eyes over this drama and see my two favorite people acting as smart human beings with chemistry together… Ahhhh