Today I’m going to talk about a drama called Against the current. Which stars Tan Songyun and Liu Xueyi. I see people praising this drama, calling it a masterpiece. But I have different opinion about it. I wanted to make this review when I was waiting for episode 40, but I decided to finish the entire drama and cover all episodes. Because I didn’t know what was going to happen in the remaining 7 episodes. But after watching all 47 episodes, the last 7 episodes didn’t make any difference. That’s just my personal opinion but I’ll explain that part later.
Against The Current Summary
This drama is basically about a girl whose entire family was executed after being falsely accused for treason. She survives because she was saved by servants. They were a couple and they had a daughter who was the same age as the female lead. Their daughter was sick and the female lead’s mother gave them money to buy medicine. So when the Shen family was in trouble, the real Lanxiang died due to illness. Which then resulted in Mr and Mrs Xu, to swap their daughter with the female lead, as a way to save the female lead. They were returning the favour because they once gave them money to buy medicine for their daughter.
That’s how the female lead survived and became Xu Lanxiang. And they were very close, they all took care of each other. So in this review I’m just going to call her Lanxiang. She was a noble young lady but she grew up as servant in her former fiance’s house. This is where they interacted and eventually they got married. That’s a short summary of the drama. It’s mostly about Lanxiang growing up as a servant to being the head of the Lin family.
Story
The first episode was very tragic. I wasn’t prepared for what happened in the first episodes. It was very emotional and dark. The whole scene of the women of the Shen family having their last moments… it was painful to watch. But fortunately the story got better in the following episodes. You get to see Lanxiang trying to digest what happened to her family, and adjusting to this new family.
I liked the story of maids
The story kind of revolves around the theme of slaves, as they call them in the drama. It’s more like watching a behind the scene series of cdramas. Because you get to see how the servants are arranged to work in the household. You get to see how they live their lives. The focus is not only on the noble families. It was mostly on the servants, they were showing their daily lives. You can say something like a vlog but in ancient times settings. Which is great, because the whole slave thing is showing us behind the scenes of how things are done. We don’t usually have dramas that show the daily lives of slaves or maids. I didn’t even know that maids always kept hot water ready just in case the masters requested them. I always saw scenes where the characters would ask for hot water and boom, the maids quickly brought the hot water within minutes. It never occurred to me that they might have other maids who make sure the water is always boiling. They don’t put out the fire. They always have boiling water ready. And we are witnessing this because the female lead is a servant. She’s serving the Lin family, so they show her everyday life and her interaction with others.
Against the current has a unique story
Which takes me to the next point about the uniqueness of the story. Usually in this type of stories where a family is falsely charged or executed. The surviving member of the family will seek revenge, even if it’s the emperor who caused everything. Sometimes you even have moments where their real identity is revealed and everyone gets shocked. But in this drama, the female lead isn’t seeking any revenge. She is just following her mother’s last word… She just wants to live peacefully. She wants to know where her family is buried, she wants to buy the freedom of her new family. But then she got into the Lin family as a servant. That’s where she met her friends and also showed how smart she was. She knew how to read the situation. She only made a move when the situation forced her to make a move. Which made her one of the most trusted servants in the Lin household. And that’s just how the story was… it was mostly about Lanxiang. Which somehow made the story a bit less interesting. Because they had to make all characters look like they were not intelligent enough. Every situation needed Lanxiang to save the day. And you even wonder, how does she know almost everything. Some of the things that she knew and comprehended were beyond her. I get that she’s supposed to be a smart and tough female lead. But the way they wrote her character, it’s like she just had a cheat code to everything. Which didn’t help much when it comes to her character development because she has been the same way ever since she entered the Lin household.And I did like that there was never a plot about her real identity. They just let Lanxiang become Lanxiang, stay with her parents and take care of them. She played the role of Lanxiang for over 10 years. And She became Lanxiang without even noticing. Lanxiang’s birthday became her own birthday. She completely forgot her own birthday. Obviously there is other stuff about her that she also forgot. She lived the life of Lanxiang. But she never forgot about her family and how they were falsely accused.
The male lead was there but not active
As for the male lead. Jinqi was doing well until he divorced his wife. So the whole saga of his wife cheating on him in the early episodes, were a catalyst for the upcoming events. I think it was also a way of telling us that nothing happened between Jinqi and his first wife Mrs Zhao. Jinqi instantly became the enemy of the Zhao family. The Zhao family were more powerful, the head of the family was very close to the emperor. So it was easy for the Zhao family to get rid of anyone. During this time, Lanxiang also helped out. After that, he barely had a story. Most men in the Lin household didn’t have much screentime, because the story was mostly on the household side, which was controlled by women. Jinqi had decent dialogues and missions but they were very limited. Even when there was a rebellion, Jinqi was injured, which gave Lanxiang more screentime and dialogues. It’s just like in Ashes to Crown. The male lead barely had anything to do. In my own view, I don’t think the male lead had any character development, just like Lanxiang. Maybe it’s because the story was focused on Lanxiang. Jinqi was present but he didn’t have much to do.
Most of the events that happened in the drama, revolved around Lanxiang, the servants and other women around Jinqi. Just like Cuique. Cuique’s name suits her. She’s named after a flower. The flower is beautiful but it is very poisonous. She was one of the people to scheme against Lanxiang and the Lin family. I totally get her character and the purpose behind her being this bad. But then, I don’t get the point of her return 16 years later. I think they could have found a different character with a different reason to cause havoc. The timing was just off when it comes to her revenge scheme. It was going to be good if they didn’t time skip a lot. Imagine waiting 16 years to plot against someone. And during those 16 years you had multiple chances to attack them. But you return after 16 years. That’s a different kind of hate and obsession.
Mrs Zhao
Then there’s Jinqi’s first wife, Mrs Zhao. She seems to be having nice life problems, she counts money in order to calm herself. She was obsessed with money. I didn’t understand her obsession with money until her last moments. And as much as I didn’t like her, she didn’t deserve whatever happened to her. She didn’t have the chance to just live life as herself. She was made to be the way she was. Even though her last moments were tragic and sad, the dialogues between her and Lanxiang were good. They had a wonderful exchange of words. The entire scene was awesome. They really did a great job there.
Attention to detail
Another thing I liked about the drama was the attention to detail. In this drama the servants live in this compound which seemed to accommodate a large group of slaves that work for the lin family. When you look at the environment, everything in the compound and around it screams, lowlife. Which is how the slaves are viewed, they live a low life. And also the story behind the cloth on the rooftop of Xu family house. Mr Xu got it from a shop and said he’s going to use it to block rain water from pouring in the house. Because the house would leak on rainy days which affected Lanxiang. And 6 years later, you can still see that cloth on the rooftop.
I also remember the girl selling stuff on the road. She was young when she first appeared then she grew up and she is still selling the same stuff. She can easily be noticed by her birthmark. I thought she was going to play a major part in the drama. Because she was making random appearances and she even had a dialogue with Lanxiang. Then they showed her selling on the streets with her daughter. As time passed she suddenly disappeared. I guess she also grew old and passed away.
My problem with Against the current
My biggest problem with Against the current was the pacing. Some of the parts were super slow, I wouldn’t say dragging. They were just slow. It even came to a point where I had to fast forward most parts because they were slow. Sometimes they would take over one minute showing Lanxiang writing or just watching the flowers, with no dialogue or anything happening. And It gets worse when you start moving closer to the end of the drama. Because that’s when you notice they no longer have any story to tell. So you have to just watch as they keep introducing new family members and new generations to the story. This is why I said the last 7 episodes didn’t have much impact, because there was nothing to anticipate.
Against the current ending
Now I want to touch on the ending of the drama. Against the current has a happy ending. But it’s Not a happy ending where they show the leads playing with their children. This one is different. We actually see how they live their lives until they pass away. They even showed Lanxiang as an old woman. Her make up was really convincing. At the end of the story, the Shen family was cleared of the charges. I think it happened one hundred and thirty something years later. I don’t know if they are counting from the day Lanxiang passed or from the day the Shen family was charged.
Anyways that’s just some of my thoughts about Against the current. With that being said, I’m rating this drama 7 out of 10.
