Thoughts On: Joy of Life S2
Can’t say I have all that much to add to what I wrote in my post for S1. I liked S2 a lot too and contrary to some viewers who found lots to nitpick with it, I don’t have anything major to winge about. The first few episodes felt a bit off, probably because most of stuff in them isn’t in the original web novel. The humour also felt somewhat forced at first but things evened out as the episodes went on.
Besides the changes they made in the script vs the novel, it’s mostly the actors that continue to make the drama. TPTB were luckily able to call back most of the old cast from S1 with two notable changes. The consensus seems to be that Wu Xin Jian is a much getter fit for the role of Yan Bing Yun but Gina Jin lacks the physical atributes of Ye Ling Er (way too thin and frail looking) and I agree. Zhang Ruo Yun is still wonderful as Fan Xian but that’s only to be expected. I doubt the role was particularly demanding and it looks like he was having fun. The veteran actors are always good and Wu Gang as Chen Ping Ping and especially Chen Dao Ming as the Emperor continue to make their intriguing characters really come to life. I also love Gue Qi Lin’s rendition of Fan Si Zhe, much more palatable than in the novel. Li Duan Duan’s Second Prince is this segment’s main antagonist but the drama version is kinda watered down and not as interesting as the Grand Princess of S1. I do miss Hai Tang Duo Duo and “uncle” Wu Zhu but they don’t feature much in this section of the story and if things go as they should, we’ll see more of them in S3. 🙂
Isn’t he just pretty with that wonderful Mane of Glory. 😄
It had been quite a while since I read the novel itself so I re-read bits and pieces to refresh my memory on what actually happened according to the novel writer. My, I’d forgotten how “wordy” it is! Good thing the scriptwriter pruned a lot of that. I guess the drama is sort of an abridged version with edits, ha. Novel Fan Xian could be quite cold, calculating and even brutal. The drama version is still very smart but they softened the edges and made him playful and less… well, ruthless. Come to think of it, all the characers feel more human and likeable, even the antagonists. So, “a spoon full of sugar makes the story go down” more easily? 😛 Not that I mind, though. I also approve that they aged the characters up. Guess they sort of had to. ZRY doesn’t look his age in this but he certainly doesn’t look nor act as an 18 yrs old, LOL. The younger generation in the novel are all in their teens (FX was just 16 when he went to the capital), which is quite typical for web novels. I do love some levity in stories like this, so I’m very glad that they kept the humorous touch of S1.
I’m guessing the more palace intrigue oriented story with fiew fight scenes/action made S2 less interesting for some. I don’t generally care much for palace politicking myself, but somehow I wasn’t bored at all with this aspect of JoL2. At best it was like watching a deadly game go/weiqi where bunch of very smart individuals are trying to outsmart one another. I wish I could understand Chinese as a lot of good stuff is in the dialogues and subtitles can unfortunately never quite convey the true meaning of the words. There’s lots that gets lost in translation. As for the fighting, weeellll you probably have to take the real ages of some of the main cast into consideration. Fight scenes are hard to do, physically demanding and accidents do happen. The last part of the story does contain quite a lot of fighting so I’m kinda wondering how they are going to go about with that.
All in all this is a pretty good continuation of the story, though it probably wasn’t quite as well constructed as the first part and didn’t live up to the high expectations of some people. I, on the other hand, am quite happy with what I got and looking forward to S3, which hopefully doesn’t take another 5 years to get to our screens.
Next – pretty pictures.
