Slowly working on the 2024 cdramas that I should have watched in the first half of 2024. I mean I have cdramas from a couple of year ago that I should have watched by now. At least I will always have cdramas to watch. Anyways, A lot of people loved Blossoms in Adversity when it aired early in 2024 so, I knew I wanted to check this drama out. I liked both leads and I was liking what people were saying about the drama. Was it a perfect drama? No but I can see why this drama was getting a lot of love when it was airing.
Now as per usual with any review I write, I will not be including any spoilers in the first part of this review - you will get a spoiler warning before we move into spoiler territory
A QUICK SYNOPSIS OF BLOSSOMS IN ADVERSITY - One day everything is good and the next day the Hua Family are faced with devastation and tragedy. The males of the family are forced into exile. The women and children are stripped of title and money and have to figure out a way forward in life starting from scratch with nothing to their name. They are also sort of exiled from society because of this. Hua Zhi steps up and builds her family and their lives up again after much hardship and work. She meets Gu Yan Xi along the way and together they face these obstacles together along with her family.
This Chinese drama is a SOLID cdrama. It isn't the best Chinese drama I have ever seen BUT it has a lot of good moments. There are a lot of things about Blossoms in Adversity that were good about it. There were things about Blossoms in Adversity that I wish were different. We will get into both of these things in the spoiler section. OVERALL, as I said, this is a solid cdrama. If you watch this one, you will definitely enjoy it. You might not like it for the reasons you think you will but you can find a lot of things in this drama to enjoy.
⚠️THIS IS YOUR SPOILER WARNING!!!! WE ARE ENTERING SPOILER TERRITORY BEYOND THIS POINT!! ⚠️
WHAT I LOVED ABOUT THIS DRAMA
THE FEMALE LEAD - Definitely a HIGHLIGHT of this drama for me and I am sure for a lot of other people is the female lead. Zhang Jing Yi who plays the female lead Hua Zhi is fantastic in this drama. Her character is so strong and goes through so many hardships and struggles in this drama. She perseveres and comes out on top and you as the audience member, love watching her overcome everything. Hua Zhi is smart, outspoken and cares a lot for her family. She is willing to get her hands dirty as long as her family survives. She will tell someone like it is, to give them a reality check and get it through to her family that they need to get off their high horse to survive. She is smart and a good leader/businesswoman. It was just so fun to watch her character go through this drama. I also love that she treated everyone equally. She did not treat someone less just because they were a servant. She is just a character that is easy to love.
CHANGES YOU SEE WITHIN THE WOMEN OF THE FAMILY - Another aspect of the story that I loved is the change you see. The Hua Family starts out at the beginning of the drama as a normal historical cdrama family with concubines and wives and husbands and children all living together. Then everything falls apart and the women/children have to fend for themselves. So, you have these women of all ages who have only known this life where they live together with this familial structure and hierarchy and all of that is gone. These women have to accept the place they are forced into. They have to accept that they are starting over and have to get their hands dirty. They have to get off their high horses and play their part to survive. I loved seeing the various women in the family transform from what they were like at the beginning of the drama to where they were by the end of the drama. At first at the beginning, multiple women refused to work or do anything because they had servants. Then, they didn't have servants anymore and had to make money. Some women were annoying at the very beginning and needed a HARD reality check, but everyone got that reality check, and the drama was then full of these strong women characters overcoming these obstacles together and supporting each other.
HUA FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS - I am a sucker for this type of historical cdrama. A cdrama where it centers around the inner workings of this large family. You get to see each part of the family and the characters interact between each other. They overcome obstacles together and have their own individual storylines, all within this one family/household. Similar to what I was talking about above, this drama showcased this family. You learned about the Hua Family. You learned about the hierarchy and what all the women thought about each other before everything collapsed. Then, you REALLY learned about their relationships because you saw who stepped up and supported the different characters and who had conflicts. One relationship that was front and center was Hua Zhi and her relationship with her family. She was essentially an outcast at first because of her upbringing. Then her family had to rely on her to survive. So, their relationships changed from a little envy or seeing her as inferior to admiration/love. There were little conflicts between the family members and even some servants and family members too that had to be worked out and resolved. I just loved to see that growth and progression of all of the relationships from the beginning of the drama to the end of the drama...including the husbands as well.
COMFORTABLE ROMANCE - Even though I said that the romance was not a focal point of the drama, it was still a comfortable romance. There wasn't that much conflict or angst with the romance. The two leads respected each other. One thing I loved about this couple is their communication. There was barely ever any conflict because they communicated or allowed the other to give an explanation if a conflict came up before they got mad and walked off. It showed a mature romance with mutual respect. The leads didn't have this explosive chemistry or anything, but it was a comfortable, easy-going romance.
FEMALE CENTERED/SUPPORTIVE WOMEN NO MATTER THE CLASS - I loved, mostly due to the female lead not seeing class, that because these women ended up starting over from nothing, they were on equal footing as their servants or as each other as wives versus concubines. The female lead did not see hierarchy or class due to her traveling a lot during her childhood. So, when the entire family had to start over and rely on each other, the entire family had to accept that they could not keep that same structure and survive. They had to support each other and work together even if it was a wife working with a servant to build up their business. One of my favorite parts of the drama was when the servants were given their contracts and essentially freed to go live their lives or stay and work for wages with the Hua family. That allowed the servants to choose their life. The family learned who was loyal and wanted them to succeed. It also gave us as audience members to root for more people and more storylines for these women to find happiness at the end and not just root for the official family members (wives and daughters). You got some really nice scenes and conversations between the different wives and daughters and the now freed servants because they were on equal footing.
LACK OF LOVE TRIANGLE - I HATE LOVE TRIANGLES! So, if there is a drama that does not have one, I WILL ALWAYS SUPPORT IT! At the beginning of Blossoms in Adversity, you think there was going to be one and then there wasn't. I was really happy to see how Caesar Wu's character bowed out of the picture and still support her family. It was surprising and refreshing.
THE ACTING - Overall, I thought the acting was pretty good. I thought the male lead could have acted better at times but he wasn't horrible either. I LOVED the actresses, especially during the emotional scenes. They did a fantastic job acting at those more heart wrenching scenes. I definitely tears up a little on multiple occasions and I think it was the acting with those scenes that got me to emotionally connect with them.
WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER
MAYBE 5 EPISODES TO LONG - This family kept losing everything and had to keep starting over. The drama could do away with one of these times of starting over. It could have cut out 5 episodes and still been fine.
NOT THE BEST ROMANCE EVER - If you are looking for a steamy and chemistry filled romance, this isn't for you. As I said, you still root for this couple and also this drama had multiple couples to root for, but the romance isn't the more important plot point going on in this drama. The romance is very tame, and nothing really happens except for the couple's good communication and support of each other all throughout the drama.
THE ENDING - I definitely would have changed some of the ending. FIRST OFF, the emperor seemed to be the bad guy or going to be revealed as the bad guy for most of the drama and then that didn't happen. I think he should have been the bad guy and should have been punished. The male lead supported him too much and supported his poor choices even though he did not agree with him and his policies all of the time. I wanted to see the emperor get punished because I did not like him. The emperor was the biggest change I wanted to see with the ending. I also just wanted like 1 more episode of the just the family reuniting and seeing how that played out. I wanted to see more of the men coming back to the family and fitting in. One scene I did not like is when Hua Zhi went to visit the males up north and they were all adamant that the women could not survive without them. they could not believe that the women were working and surviving. So, I wanted to see them return and see how great the women were doing and how this whole experience changed them. We sort of didn't get that. it just skimmed over all of that.
MISSING SOMETHING WITH THE SISTER? - I felt like I missed something with the sister. I don't know if I missed the whole explanation of what happened to her and why she was traumatized. I get the whole fire thing, but I thought it was more than that. I think I missed something. I also thought her ending would be different and we would see her get over that trauma. Which we got her perseverance over the fear of fire, but I thought we would get a heart-to-heart conversation about her family trauma. Maybe I just missed that. I just felt like something was missing with her and her brother's family story. Again though, this story was about the Hua Family, not theirs'.
THAT IS MY REVIEW OF BLOSSOMS IN ADVERSITY!
Blossoms in Adversity - 8.5/10 (VIKI)
Did you watch Blossoms in Adversity?
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