A Melhor Escolha de Todos os Tempos (2024)

“Romance” should be removed as a genre

There is nothing romantic about this show, it’s purely a family drama, focused on generational differences, family struggles, values and how important those factors are in Asian culture. The overbearing mom was intolerable most of the show, but is quite accurate and relatable to our own. Cast and actors were great, I only stuck around for xu kai and yang zi but the first 28 episodes were not exciting, and didn’t really pick up till episode 30. This is one of those kind of shows you don’t have to focus on, can multitask with it in the background, and still not miss much. Some moments will pull at your heart strings, but that’s about it. Wish I could’ve rated it higher but not when I didn’t care for 2/3 of it.

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Family. A Mother and Child Bond

Honestly, 95% of the time the mother in this series got into my nerves. But, the last 5% of the whole storyline became the saving grace of this show; it is not because the mother changed drastically, but because her changes were very small yet somehow highlighted her somewhat crazy yet caring way of thinking.

The micro management of the Mom about everything and to everyone is honestly grating. She’s honestly and without a doubt the true antagonist and protagonist of this show.

But, there is something gut wrenching about how that kind of suffocating love is also and is still love. Love that some people long for. Love that some people dream about. While it is too much, we can never discount that she love her kids and her family.

In essence, I think this show was able to capture the realness of love in the family. All families are not perfect. All families have feuds from within. But at the end of the day, when all is rooted in love, there is security and peace to be with the family.

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For family-drama (with a side of romance) lovers, YES.

I'm actually quite shocked at all the people who dislike this drama, I actually loved it a lot.

In the end, they teach us that, after all, your mom was also once a little girl with passions and dreams. In the end she gave up those dreams to love you and build a life for you. The scene in previous eps where the Mom came back to her old house and cried for her mother really touched me, in her vulnerable moments she cried for her mother who was no longer with her, and whose house she left at a young young age to go to an unfamiliar scary place like shanghai. I cried a lot during the opera stage, Huan was witnessing her mother relive her childhood and unfulfilled passions, which was so so heartbreaking, bittersweet, but extremely touching. As a mother-daughter story with a side of romance, I enjoyed this drama very much.

While the mother was annoying at times, and quite nosy in her childrens' lives, I think everyone had major character development. Their mother learned to live her own life in the end, and love her children from a distance. And her children in turn learned to love their mother even more, because in reality she sacrificed the most for them. Their mother came to the big city, abandoning her dreams, and her kids eventually grew up in an environment where they were able to pursue all their passions. I think they start to realize this by the end of the drama, as they are especially grateful to their mother.

I think through this drama, I have come to terms with my own family's issues. I think my understanding for my parents has grown, especially because I see some of the sacrifices made by the parents in this drama reflected into the one's my own parents have made. I hope I can one day help my mother and father pursue their unfulfilled passions just as Huan and Ming did.

The only storyline I hated was the Zhiming father coming back plot, it was wildly unnessecary, esp if they were just gonna kill him off in the end. But I guess his father's story was important because he served as a major player in getting that evil woman arrested.

While a little more romance may have been good, I was pretty satisfied with the amount they gave us, the haters to lovers development was perfect, and we got quite a big amount of their romance in the first half, which I loved. Big kudos to ZhiMing because the whole drama he had to deal with huan's family drama, which was a whole bunch. At least we know from that that he truly loves her, because tbh idk if I could put up with all of that LMAO.

This drama for me is comparable to the kdrama Live Your Own Life, but I enjoy this cdrama a lot more because they do the family bonding genre very well, and the drama in LYOL is just way too crazy, not to mention the mother in LYOL is way worse than the mother in this drama (LIKE WAYYY WORSE), which I think is another reason I was able to tolerate the mom here. Overall, I would really recommend this drama if you enjoy family-dramas and slice of life! For haters to lovers enjoyers this is also a great watch, just the romance becomes very minimal in the last 11 eps, and more focus is on the family.

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Crazy Stupid Mother ruins the show. Great leads and storylines are otherwise great

Typical Chinese drama with the toxic mother unfortunately. The ML and FL are great actors and portrayed the characters well and draw the audience into their inner struggles. The second couple, FL's brother & her BFF, also had a heart-wrenching storyline worth watching. The parental control culture are very real and well reflected in this drama - i.e. society/parents feel they have the right to control all the life choices of a woman, cultural discrimination against the older woman with younger man, annoying relatives who thinks they have a right to your money etc. The ML's personal growth, humanity and cool is so good to watch and XuKai is funny and perfect as usual.

What ruins the show is the FL's mother character - an explosive stupid idiot with a high pitch voice. It's torture to watch her scenes. This character is an insult to women as mothers. The important parental character is the grandmother who is loving, strong and wise, the grandma we all wish we had.

The first boyfriend is a weak pathological liar, rich but retarded. Recommend skipping some episodes to eliminate this useless character and the stupid mother's over-the-top screaming scenes. 1. Fast forward to ep 12 when FL is starting over as a single girl. 2. Fast forward ep 16 to avoid the big "engagement" scene where stupid mother went insane. It's worth waiting for the slow burn of the lead's love story. Ending is a little anti-climactic for the lead's love story although a happy one.

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Great story, but the toxic mom is over the top

Xu Kai is great, and the chemistry between him and Yang Zi is better than I expected. She is sometimes a little too bubbly and naive for me, but she does well here.
The story is pretty good, but they went overboard on some of the side characters. The dad is a miserable hen-pecked man who devotes everything to his family. Yet he’s constantly degraded as worthless and useless by the mom. And he just happily goes along with it all. The mom is absolutely horrible. She claims she’s doing things for the good of her daughter, but she’s cruel, manipulative, and will happily sell her daughter off for money. She is a terrible person and no one in the show seems willing to address it. When she’s finally called on some of her behavior, she plays the victim. It’s almost enough to turn the snow off. It’s just hard to watch when they make these characters so extreme.
The female best friend is awesome. She’s intelligent, witty and sweet. The male sidekick is super funny and entertaining.
The brother is sweet, dedicated and hard working. One thing that has disappointed me is that Gala Zhang’s character is very somber. He plays it well, don’t get me wrong. But I love the way he always laughs in Love Like White Jade- it’s absolutely infectious and keeps me smiling. I’ve been hoping to see/ hear that more, but the character isn’t there yet. Hopefully it will come later. (Not all of the episodes are out yet.)
The story itself is nothing new, but it’s an easy watch and moves at a decent pace. I do hope the mom develops as a person, but I don’t see a lot of hope for it. I’ll keep watching, as the main couple and side couple are just adorable.

Edit to add: I had to go ack and lower my rating. The mom does get a bit better for a while. She starts to understand others and makes an effort. But she’s still a raging psycho who sees herself as a martyr while creating huge amounts trouble for those around her. The last few episodes were about her and I was ready to turn it off. She’s run unchecked with a bad temper and a lack of thoughtfulness yet the family continues to tolerate this and treat her as if she’s a victim. A lot of problems could have been avoided if the husband had acted like a man at any point in their marriage and stood up to her. But no, they just all continue to tread on egg shells and try to appease her. The show would be much better without that extreme awfulness.

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Less than stellar follow through

Overall story is good, one could even argue than it is almost great in the beginning. But midway through the writing seems more and more.... lazy is the best word I could think of to describe it. In the beginning, every conflict and thought process of the characters are told in detail, and so is the climax building. But then all of sudden the scenes are just fillers then they just tell us the ending, not in a novel way, more like news reports way, just informing us what happened, then The End. Other that that I think this drama is pretty good, especially the acting and chemistry between the main characters and the family

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Mixed feelings

It would have been better if this drama was not marketed as romance. To realize some episodes later that it is more of a family/life drama left me with a lesser impression by that time because the matriarch figure already annoyed me to no end by that time. I would say it is also partly my own fault; however when I started paying more attention to the credits song and understood the lyrics, it made more sense.

Honestly the “leads’” pairing kept me (barely) invested. I started watching because I wanted to see the Xu Kai/Yang Zi pairing. Jokes on me…The real leads are Yang Zi and He Sai Fei (the latter played the matriarch figure). Some episodes (many..) it felt like He Sai Fei is the only lead, especially the last few.

He Sai Fei’s character was overbearing, over-meddling, could be seen as self-centred at times but it also hit too close to home for many who could identify many traits in one of their parents. This could only turn out to be a disaster watch or some good drama.

At times, it felt like there was too much manufactured angst, especially towards the end.

If you noticed, I only mentioned Xu Kai once..this was by design, I thought the character he played felt like a prop at times, it was a real waste.

I added 1/2 star to the rating for the whiff of romance between the two “leads”.

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Unless you can endure melodramas for Xu Kai or Yang Zi, I would advise you leave...

I think this show had potential. Family dramas have the tendency to be a little bit one-dimensional and boring, but I think this could've gone a lot of different places. From insights on filial piety to motherly affection to individualism in today's society, there were so many things that could've been explored in this drama. None of these things were touched, which was disappointing. Even more so...

The part about this drama I can't stand (probably influenced by my implicit biases, but anyway) is the story. The mom by herself didn't bother me like the other viewers were bothered. The mom was an over-attentive, un-empathetic, but ultimately caring person... you know Mrs. Bennett from Pride and Prejudice? Kind of like that. That type of character, while definitely unlikable, doesn't bother me if either A) they end up developing in order to represent/symbolize some sort of message or B) they just don't appear all the much.

This drama does not check off EITHER of those boxes. The mom is the only main lead, as other reviewers have noted, in this drama. She gets more screen time I daresay than Xu Kai, and possibly even more than Yang Zi. Even worse, the drama ends on the note of 'we should all quit our jobs to help our well-intentioned mother (which is fair) because she's ultimately the best for us (untrue as evidenced throughout this drama).' I think filial piety is a common theme among mainland dramas, and one that was expressed both as a prison for the female lead and also... the happy ending? There was no growth or insight that led up to this result either. The mom stayed the mom. The daughter adapted for the mom, no matter how much she was tortured and trapped by the mom's antics. This drama doesn't teach how to be a good son/daughter more than how to get stuck in an unhealthy parent/child relationship. It bothered me... and still does to this day. The saving grace in terms of insight for this drama could be the grandma, but then you'd have to stop watching after the first few episodes.

Beyond that, there's basically no plot or direction to this drama. Many good dramas can be summarized in one overarching statement. Nirvana in Fire describes an exiled general's revenge strategy to reclaim honor for his army. Reset describes two people stranded in a time loop on an inevitably exploding bus. This? It feels like a WebToon. The plot seemed improvised as each episode went on, and ultimately, it didn't really go anywhere. I couldn't summarize it unless I told you everything that happened. And that would be unhelpful.

Finally, although this doesn't really affect my personal rating, do note that if you're a huge celeb-chaser or your idol is in this show you'd probably not see them a lot. Xu Kai doesn't really get screen time until episode 8(?) and Yang Zi gets it but portrays the same scenes over and over again. Not a whole lot of development going on here...

Oh! If you're here for the romance, go find romance dramas. This has about as much of an inkling of romance as Nirvana in Fire does. I guess there's a kiss, but anyway.

Peace out ._.

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Not my best choice ever but…

Just finished watching this today. My thoughts below.

I honestly struggled watching this drama and complete all 37 episodes. Maybe I am not the intended audience as this is more of a family-centric drama specifically a mother-daughter dynamics. I started watching it because of Xu Kai while waiting for his other drama As Beautiful As You to air and was expecting it to be romance driven as implied by the trailers. Maybe that’s my biggest disappointment because it felt like I was duped and it fell short of my expectations. Don’t get me wrong, this drama is excellent on its own to its intended audience with lots of lessons about life and family. It’s just that this is not for me.

Xu Kai is ONLY a supporting role here with minimal screen time. The brother even has more screen time than him and his love plot was more focused than the so-called main leads. I love the acting especially the mom who successfully brought out my inner rage everytime she opens her mouth at least until episode 27 or 28 when she realized her wrong ways. I was prepared for an overbearing mom character but my preparation fell short for this level of mom that I have to skip her scenes for my sanity’s sake. Great job to the actress playing MCH’s mom!!!

My overall rating is 7/10 but just because this drama’s not for me. Plotwise, I didn’t enjoy it. The OSTs are also not catching my attention. However, the actors are doing a great job with their outstanding performance portraying their characters! The cinematography is also good with picturesque scenery especially with mom’s hometown. Boticelli and Xing’lan hotels’ façade are also eye catchers. These salvaged an otherwise poorer rating from me.

Thank you BCE for a roller coaster ride! Though watching this drama will not be one of my Best Choice Ever.

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The Main Character is the Mom

If you are looking for a story about a relatable mother of grown children struggling with an empty nest, it's a great show. However because the story is theoretically not about the mom, the pacing, events, and character development feel off. Would have been better if the writer just embraced that the story they obviously wanted to write instead of pretending to be about the leading couple. The show has an ensemble cast but doesn't do a good job balancing time spent on the various relationships (familial or romantic, so it will feel like one conflict last forever and another is just glanced over or never mentioned again. Had potential, but fell flat.

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Sindrome di Stoccolma? oh yes!

Uno dei drama più brutti che abbia mai visto.
La vera protagonista di questo drama è una madre psicopatica.
Si inneggia alla pietas filiale quando è molto più una sindrome di Stoccolma.
Un'intera famiglia alla mercee delle brame di potere e ricchezza di una madre despota che ha instillato in figli e marito il sacro terrore di dispiacerle o anche solo turbarla.
Lei comanda e tutti scattano sull'attenti.
Anche quando cercano di avere una minima autonomia lo fanno sussurrando e pregandola in ginocchio di consentirglelo.
Arriva a imporle con l'inganno il matrimonio col suo ex (un debole vile) solo perché è ricco.
La protagonista finalmente si ribella un minimo, in piena cerimonia le dice il fatto suo (con pacatezza e garbo) e la madre che, nonostante si sia accorta di essere stata ingannata dalla famiglia dell'aspirante genero, che fa? La schiaffeggia e le dice che non è più sua figlia, se non lo sposa, salvo poi prendersela perché lei fa le valigie.
Le neffandezze che questa donna ha commesso nella sua vita sono indicibili.
Le sue scelte egoistiche hanno reso un inferno l'infanzia del foglio, costretto il marito a farla vivere una vita che non si potevano permettere lamentandosi costantemente di quanto fosse vile e inadeguato, reso la figlia una burattina pronta a sacrificare la sua dignità pur di renderla orgogliosa e rischiando di mandarle in malora la vita e il lavoro costantemente.
Ma tutti che fanno? La venerano come angelo del focolaio.
Un drama che è più una propaganda a valori che sarebbero sani se fossero applicati con amore invece che con regole mirate al predominio classista.
Schifo.

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Don't focus on the character actions but the meaning behind them

This is my first post in MDL, even though I've been using this site for many years. the reason is this drama deserves.

Actually, the first reason to start to watch this drama was because XuKai and Yang Zhi. But the main reason to stay was the story itself.

This was the best family drama I ever watched.

The focus here is not the romance, but how the main character got together to be a family. I loved the development of characters.

In fact, the development of the story, apart from the whole race in the workplace, which hotel is better, being president, getting a promotion and who gets Xian' Li is basically about the development of the family.

About a mother and daughter who love each other but have different views of the world and can't handle it without almost ending their relationship.

For many, her mother's abusive behavior during the drama is a reason to stop watching. And yes, I myself was angry at how Mai Cheng Huan is used by everyone at first. For the mother who dreams big but wants to use that so her daughter can have a better life and ends up passing over her. For Zhiming who uses her to achieve his ambitions at work. For the boyfriend who takes her for granted, lies to her but tells her he loves her, even though he doesn't lift a finger to defend her from his family. But through it all, as the story developed, I was able to see that her mother actually just didn't know what she was doing. Yes, she is clueless. But at the same time she only tried what was best for her family. That person who didn't get what they wanted during their life, and passes this expectation on to their children. Although I don't agree, I understand the vision. She wanted the best for her children: Happiness, but she needed to really get to know her children. She couldn't understand that there is no way to please everyone in life and there is no shortest way to live. And in all of this, she almost had to lose her family to be able to learn a little about life. She has a personality like that, but it doesn't mean she doesn't love her family. When at the end Zhiming joins the family, after both his grandmother and his father were gone I love how she in particular treats Zhiming like a son the most, worried about him, this warms my heart.
And, in the end, we can see Cheng Huan also needed to learn about her mother.

What captivated me in this drama was the reflections on family life. Zhiming, being a boy who never had the experience and love of a family, and only knew material pursuits, returning to China taught him what love is, he changes not only for Mai Cheng Huan, but also for his grandmother. That even though he doesn't know how to show it, he loves her and was looking for her love. And I feel that Cheng Huan didn't teach him how to love like in many dramas, but taught him to see that small actions are worth more than anything by showing himself what love is. At his grandmother's burial , when she says on the video that she took him to the Mai family so he could have a family, that's exactly what happens during the drama. He starts out alone, but gets a big family, full of problems, but united and noisy, that's what he needed in his monotonous life.

I also like Grandma’s teachings. She lived a lot, and learned a lot about life. She had regrets, especially when it came to family. But she lived intensely. She shows how she managed to achieve happiness by balancing her life. She doesn't always help everyone, but lend a hand to help them walk until they can walk alone. Learn to speak but listen. Be for yourself, but have others around too. She says so many things that made me think about life.

I like how each character develops and shows us important parts of the family, and that not all of them are perfect, just as a family is not made up of blood.

One of the most beautiful scenes for me was Cheng Huan's father and Zhiming talking, and he talks about how he lives with her mother. Giving up things for everyone's happiness, and cultivating their love every day.

This drama is more mature and made to think about many things in life. If you are a person who likes to analyze everything, appreciate the teachings without caring about perfection, this drama is for you. There is no right or wrong here in the story, it's about everyone making mistakes, no one being perfect, but still loving yourself and your family. And no matter what happens, a family is together through the ups and downs.

Everyone's performance was incredible, I laughed, I felt embarrassed, I cried and I was moved.

The choice of songs were also incredible, and if you pay attention to the lyrics of each one, it also has a lot to do with the scenes.

In the end, it's a simple drama, which definitely has many similarities in terms of story, but it's its simplicity that makes it so special.

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