I love how Tingyun's tactic for survival in this "no money, no prospects" phase of her life is to kneel, bow, and request. Those knees need to get insured. It's reminding me of Ning Que and how he would just drop down to his knees at the sight of any cultivator lol.
This drama, in general, is not afraid to have its characters be covered in grime and blood. I mention this because idol dramas don't do it nowadays. We get the elegantly coughing blood scenes or the scenes where FL gets kidnapped or almost dies and not one of her hair is out of place. But here, these characters get covered in their vomit, they have grime and blood on them and not in an elegant/cool way, they lose again and again, the ML actually fears and his hand trembles (that scene in ep 5 when real Jiuwenjiao shows up), the FL isn't suddenly badass all the time like she gets offered a dagger for protection and she is hesitant to take it, the ML makes sure to eat the bread crumbs not wasting even one piece.
It's obviously not prestige drama levels of real and grimy, but for an idol drama? It's been a while since we got leads fallen so down on the ladder and actually suffering from it. Of course, there's plot armour and coincidences like meeting the very-mysterious-guy-who's-totally-not-the-crown-prince in some temple, but that's fine because that comes with the genre.
A very solid show so far.
