A few thoughts after the first five eps:
1. Overdo certainly has the flavor of many a FWSC adaptation but you know what else it reminds me of? City of Streamer, which I likewise enjoyed a LOT. Tough as nails Republican era FL out for revenge, infiltrates ML’s house for same under false pretenses and in a capacity that makes her forbidden fruit (she’s hired as his governess tho he’s not a minor; I guess tutor is best word but they keep saying governess heh), ML is gun adjacent and good at traditional Republican drama masculine virtues of unhingedness and brawling but is the softer of the two, FL finds herself torn between revenge and love etc. One can only hope Overdo will have as many makeouts as CoS did tho I don’t think even with all of Overdo melo, there will ever be a moment where OTP worries they are half siblings 😹 (they are not.)
2. Watching this drama where ZLH portrays a nutcase with a suppressed soft boy earning to come out somehow but getting shoved down by the unhinged part of him that’s now in control made me realize why ZLH suits a FWSC hero and why in general he’s been cast in and is good in so many other possessive bastard flavored type of roles. He’s this era’s Hawick Lau to me and HL was a ML in two (!!) FWSC adaptations and plenty of other similar fodder like the Cage of Love and Lady and the Liar. What I mean by that is that Hawick and ZLH both work as these psycho types because underneath you somehow feel the basic sense of decency for whatever reason, even if it’s being totally contradicted by whatever is on screen and so you get yourself thinking “but maaaaybe…” and having some sort of hope for some kind of hinges and proper relationship in the future which is key (no, you don’t need this to portray a headcase ML successfully - I loved ML of GMP and we can’t say that about him; hence in part a tragic ending - but for a certain type you do.)
3. I continue to think the writing is very solid. And before anyone thinks I am insane or so blinded by ML’s looks that I’ve ceased being able to read subtitles, yes yes yes this is dogblood melo to the max but this is a genre with its own genre conventions and a type of story with its own parameters. So you have to look how well it’s done within that. You cannot blame it for not being nuanced and realistic any more than you can blame a slice of life for not having explosions and birth secrets.
And within its genre, it’s great. The characters make sense from backstory and motivations and characters as presented - both in themselves and in their relationships to other characters. And perhaps because she’s spent more years writing toxic romance than some of the cast members have been alive, FWSC avoids a number of big pitfalls in the “FL is out for revenge or some other goal and ML is hooked in her” types of stories especially with recent trends where they just have FL make a speech and call it a day.
Our FL is actually a gender swapped beloved by me archetype of crusader on a cause who ends up soft for one person and is conflicted between love and revenge. If you think about e.g., last year’s Legend of Zang Hai, the similarities in couple dynamics pop out. ZH was prestige and this is anything but but a protag who’s unhinged, dwelling in trauma, feeling the pull towards love and future but refusing it, and does some things that really hurt FL while conflicted about it, is very much the same.
And the reason this is great and works is because unlike a lot of recent nonsense where there is a supposed love story but FL, to use the famous Gloria Steinem quote, needs ML like a fish needs a bicycle while ML pines and perishes, is because it feels emotionally equal. Not just in the sense that ML has also removed his hinges right now so the barbs fly both ways, but because you are not in doubt from early on that she couldn’t move on from him any more than he could from her, that she still wants him and is enmeshed with him emotionally. They make it clear early on that she didn’t mean for him to get the horrific fallout he did from three years ago and that she’s devastated by it. She won’t stop her revenge for anyone but he’s the sole person she will take time out for - she risks exposing herself to stop his fiancee from saying awful things to him. She (in another reversal) shoves him out of the way to get blunt force trauma on his behalf. Heck, the moment she sees his tendons, she figures stuff out and is desperate to find a doctor to fix it, cries and tries to apologize.
She is not gonna stop her revenge and she’s gonna use everyone and everything she can but even in this few eps, the drama convinces me that her love for him was and is genuine and that she’s sorry she hurt him back then and is trying her best not to hurt him again. And that’s hell of a lot more than most of these set ups give us and makes the relationship feel like two headcases with issues who feel love but also dysfunction and hate, guilt, resentment, desire etc are all intermixed. It feels matched. When he grabs her by the neck or holds a knife to her or discusses about how she can get murdered if she doesn’t do XYZ, it doesn’t feel like one of those seriously BDSM minis with atrocious ML and saintly FL. But neither does this story feel like bossbabe FL for whom ML is perhaps her n348 priority and who has not demonstrated a shred of the same investment he has.
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