Initially, it was hard for me to care about any of the characters or the plot. Who do you root for: communist or nationalists? There is no good choice here. Luckily, as the drama progressed, I was able to see the characters as the individuals they were, and not necessarily the institutions that were behind them. I get that at that moment in history the communists were the good guys, but knowing where the future led, it’s still weird to root for them in the show.

Starting with the characters, I feel like there was a lack of care put into them, their circumstances, goals, motivations. At times we were not able to see a few of them for a number of episodes, and when they showed up on screen, their situation completely changed, but we had no context to understand it. They just skipped through moments that could have been perfect opportunities to explain their motives or give them some development.

I feel like naming Zhu Yi Zhen as one of the main characters is some kind of a joke. For the majority of her screen time, she was just sitting being worried or looking through the window being worried. We could have seen her work hard for the Communist Party, slowly gaining more responsibilities and being one of the front-runners for the cause, but it never happened.

Lan Xin Jie was similarly underdeveloped. The story of her struggle to survive as she was dragged into the war between the different groups would be extremely interesting to watch. To see her change from a well connected person who is a confident social butterfly, to being a desperate mother who just wants to save herself and her child. But everything happened off screen.

Truth to be told, even Lin Nan Sheng was all over the place. Rather than The Rebel, he felt like a lost puppy that follows whatever authoritative figure shows up in front of him at any given moment. Also, for a show titled “The Rebel”, he rebelled a bit late.

I kind of feel like that’s how the drama rolled - a lot of things were happening behind the scenes and off-screen. This type of story telling made me not care that much about… well anything. Who wins, who loses, who dies and who survives. The Rebel feels like a well presented, but only draft of an idea.

The acting was amazing, I have zero complaints. While I still feel like Zhu Yi Long got a bit too skinny for the role (he reminded me of CGI Skinny Steve Rogers in Captain America), his performance was extremely strong. That said, the star of the drama for me was Wang Yang. Not only was his character the most interesting one, I also believe Wang Yang had to do the most job in showcasing the changes happening in his perception of the situation, morality and alliances.

Production value had almost nothing more for me to wish for. Some poorly done dubbing made me giggle here and there, but overall, the quality was truly good.

Overall, I had no idea why I had this strange need to finish this show. I was not really interested in the plot, I liked a few characters, but could deal with saying goodbye to them at any moment. Normally I would drop a drama like that, but I pushed forward and was able to see the end. Which was quite… anticlimactic.