disgracetoscholars | Autumn Concerto Is a Bad Show and We Have Both Watched It Multiple Times. On Purpose.

rageprufrock: The first thing I need to say about Autumn Concerto is that I do not even like the show. I know this sounds like a frankly impossible claim given that as of this September, the year of our Lord 2018, I have seen this garbage show thricely, but it’s the unvarnished truth: I do not like this show, and I have seen it -- all the way through -- three fucking times. But the shock wasn’t that I had made such a terrible decision. I am, after all known as Three Continents Pru, if those three continents are in reference to the three continents in which I have made Strong Choices, Fallen Down, and Oh God That Thing Happened -- no, the shock was that when I made this confession,

hollyberries chimed in and said, “Oh God, me, too.”

hollyberries: In 2009 I experienced a brief backslide into TW dramas because the Korean version of Hanadan was so awful I quit watching kdramas altogether for three years? Until whenever Queen Inhyun’s Man came along, anyway. Under that auspicious star did all these tragic (re)watches occur.

rageprufrock: First, before we go into the rewatches -- which, oof -- let’s discuss how we came upon this show at all.

hollyberries, am I correct in assuming you took this terrible journey because of F4 reasons?

hollyberries: As possibly the only 80s chinese kid in existence who has not seen the Taiwanese version of Meteor Garden - no. I rolled into this garbage panda all on my own. I think prior to Autumn Concerto I had binged on the Jimmy Lin (how is he still so youthful) vehicle My Lucky Star, and this appeared on my suggestions because, superficially, Autumn Concerto also centres around a couple who were separated by an accident, and their cute baby is misunderstood as the proof of heartless infidelity - or something.

hollyberries: I know. It's a lot.

hollyberries: On reflection that means I truly have no excuse for watching this show a lot except my own damn self.

rageprufrock: I can definitely blame Meteor Garden, and the fact that it left such a lasting scar on my psychology that years later, though I no longer had to live this way, when Autumn Concerto came out, I spent three lost, scaldingly hot summer days watching every single terribly produced episode.

rageprufrock: Also we are addressing your lack of viewing Meteor Garden at some point. Don’t think you’re getting out of this.

rageprufrock: So as you alluded to, the plot of Autumn Concerto well trodden trash and frankly I don’t even find the kid that cute. AND YET.

hollyberries: (noooooo let me be pure and free)

hollyberries: You know how you have beautifully roasted, deep oolongs straight from the mountains and then you have a $7 litre bucket of concentrated milk and overbrewed black tea with tapioca? Autumn Concerto is definitely the latter. You know it’s terrible for you and will probably keep you up with how terrible it is, and you just keep going back to [insert your local boba shop here]. Also there is no option to reduce the sugar.

rageprufrock: We should start at the beginning: our lead character is a classic 傻白甜 lead, or Stupid, Pale and Sweet. She’s also — as a fun addition — broke af and working in the cafeteria of a bougie university while attending school there. She’s beautiful and moral and upstanding and so boring and nice it makes me want to set myself on fire.

hollyberries: The set up is very much a ‘Cinderella meets Prince Charming’ gone awry, as our egotistical male lead bumps into her and immediately concludes that her sweetness must be a front, one that he will unveil to the world? Or at least the university. His mother is the dean of the university and also on its board, so he very much treats campus as his own backyard. He has unresolved daddy issues.

rageprufrock: Eventually those daddy issues are resolved when they tell us he committed suicide, because that's basically a top three solution in any Asian drama. (Insert Hannibal Burress saying, "What? I'm right" here.)

rageprufrock: But before we can get to all that, again, because it's an Asian drama, we need to have some low key sexual violence to really spark the romance.

rageprufrock: Our male protagonist, played by Vanness Wu of F4 fame (fun fact: he's American and his dad named him after a road in California. Yep.) is named Ren Guangxi, and after meeting our female protagonist Mu Cheng where they get into it over a car (???) details elude me at this point, he decides he hates her, wants to expose her for being "manipulative," threatens to have her best friend expelled from the university based on his mother's position and his say-so, and when he overhears her playing the piano in some...unlocked cottage? fuck shack? who fucking knows? on campus, he blows up at her again because it reminds him of his father and orders her to strip naked.

rageprufrock: Mercifully, he settles for forcing her to play piano for him in the music room fuck shack every night instead. I hate this show. Why have I seen this thricely.

hollyberries: His charming manner comes from his chronic insomnia, which Mu Cheng’s piano playing helps with, I think? He eventually comes around to the fact that she isn’t a snake in the grass. (He thinks people are garbage, uhhh from his overly simplistic interpretations of his law school cases.) Unfortunately for Mu Cheng’s sense of agency, he pursues her despite her discomfort (because he’s a violent jerk) and the objections of everyone they both know. They do get together and as predicted, his mother is displeased.

rageprufrock: Again: this show is so not good. Why have we both watched this more than one time,

hollyberries, why?

hollyberries: Oh my god the pure Taiwanese countryside auntie who adopts them as her own!! I think she ran to her best friend (who is a guy and in love with her)’s village, though still not a wise choice given the lack of immediate medical care re diabetes.

rageprufrock: NUMEROUS questionable choices are undertaken.

rageprufrock: Arguably the LEAST of which is geography.

hollyberries: We have sterling decision making skills, clearly. Although, if all my terrible decision making were contained in the realm of media consumption, I’d be okay with that. It’s the other parts of my life being on fire I’m concerned with.

hollyberries: Simple country folk have no use for geography,

rageprufrock.

rageprufrock: They do, however, have use for pro bono legal representation, which is what brings Hot Douche Guangxi back into Mu Cheng and Moppet's life again. (Also, I'm not crazy, right? The kid calls her "Mu Cheng" and not mother? Why? W H Y?)

hollyberries: Ahaha I have no idea, truly some Choices were made during production. Maybe she was trying to keep it on the down low that Moppet was her out of wedlock child in a conservative village? It seems wildly improbable but so does the rest of this show. Why was the village being sued, do you remember?

hollyberries: (More importantly, do we care?)

hollyberries: In the interim, Guangxi has been a) going to law school b) dating the doctor girl c) reverting to his previous asshole convictions. Or maybe he was always an asshole, it’s unclear. Anyway, he drives up in a shiny fuck-off convertible and Tao Ye (Mu Cheng’s best guy friend) immediately goes ‘hoshit no’ and tries to keep them apart but it becomes apparent that he’s completely forgotten about her. For some reason this means it’s fine for him to stay in her house while he’s pro bono-ing for the village. Tao Ye is having about five kittens per second about this, while Mu Cheng is calmly convinced that everything will go back to normal when the case is over and nobody will come down with a case of the Feelings.

rageprufrock: (Sorry; I got distracted watching Super Vet because I'm a parody of myself, and when stressed I retreat into the comfort of Animal Bullshit Television.)

rageprufrock: I think that the villagers are embroiled in a two-front situation, whereby they're being bullied off of their land by a Major Corporation owned by the father of Guangxi's current fiancee.

rageprufrock: And that eventually it turns into a suit because it turns out that the Major Corporation has been grossly polluting the land on which they grow flowers.

rageprufrock: WHY DO I REMEMBER ALL OF THIS I NEED MY LIMITED BRAIN SPACE FOR OTHER THINGS OH MY GOD.

hollyberries: Oh right, a plot is slowly emerging from the dregs of my memory. I just remembered a lot of Guangxi bitching about Mu Cheng being an irresponsible mum; like pls step off dude, that’s not your child.

hollyberries: I mean biologically he is, but you know what I mean.

rageprufrock: It also does not help that I do not think that Vaness Wu and Ady An are good actors. In fact, I would go so far as to say that they are not good actors, and watching them attempt to live up to all this melodrama is -- a lot.

rageprufrock: Also oh my God I'm looking at this show's wikipedia page and it won for BEST MARKETING in 2010. That should be all you need to know about the quality of this show.

rageprufrock: Anyway, the point is, Guangxi rolls into town to serve his community service for an outburst in court, and while living in Mu Cheng's house, he falls in love with the Moppett, a la Jerry Maguire.

hollyberries: Granted, Moppet is a disgustingly adorable, apple-cheeked little sprite. I think the show was trying to signal that he’s not completely irredeemable bc he can still love people, or something?

rageprufrock: I'm going to unburden myself here,

hollyberries: I do not find the Moppet cute.

hollyberries: Wait, so what kept you going?? Because tiny cute Moppet was the single bright spot between his parents being terrible communicators and melodramatic.

rageprufrock: I LITERALLY DO NOT KNOW. Because the thing is, there was no mystery to this plot. Of course he's going to eventually develop feelings for Mu Cheng again. Of course he's going to fall head over heels for being a father to Moppet. Of course he's going to realize -- eventually -- that he's the Moppet's father courtesy of a USB key that is in a bracelet I shit you not this show was the most 2010 thing in the world. This show did nothing groundbreaking, nothing particularly well, and I didn't even like the kid. I have seriously watched it three times. What the hell is wrong with me. Why is this addicting?

hollyberries: You know, I was very impressed with Mu Cheng for keeping calm with her ex in the house being vaguely paternal at their biological child, but in hindsight it could very well be the bad acting.

rageprufrock: I'm reasonably confident it is the bad acting. Which you've actually endured more of since you watched that stupid Zhu Yilong drama she was in, too, right? Something about returning royalty?

hollyberries: Oh I’m trying to space out the suffering, that’s for later this year.

hollyberries: I remember the reveal slightly differently? I think Moppet gets really sick or in a car accident and needs a blood transfusion, but not from close relatives and Guangxi is increasingly angry that Mu Cheng refuses to take his blood until she’s like YOU’RE HIS DAD and immediately sandbags Tao Ye as sacrificial lamb... and for some reason Guangxi’s steel battle axe of a mother was also there?

rageprufrock: I think you're right. But I know that there's a bracelet USB involved, andI think it comes into play when he decides, in the last third of the story, he's mad about everyone keeping the child and previous relationship a secret from him during his amnesia and recovery, and forces Mu Cheng to marry him again and then treats her like garbage. LIKE YOU DO.

rageprufrock: Look, none of this addresses my central question -- what do you think is the draw of this shitty, shitty drama? I honestly think that I'm attracted to terrible trope garbage, especially if it involves a child, even though -- as discussed -- I do not find Moppet cute and don't actually like children in real life.

rageprufrock: This garbage property is still somehow like one of those experimental rats constantly hitting the pleasure button in a lizard coil of my brain that I haven't yet managed to displace with years of concentrated feminism.

hollyberries: I’ve been thinking about this for a week and like -- the honest answer is -- the lack of compelling dramas to compete with it? The two rewatches happened when I felt like asian dramas but couldn’t choose a new one that hadn’t finished airing, and didn’t necessarily want to commit emotions and time to a beloved favourite.

hollyberries: So in this situation I guess the analogy is that shitty, shitty tequila that you know gets you drunk when your drinks cabinet is running low.

rageprufrock: ...You know what, I've never seriously considered that before but I think you're right. The summer I watched it twice was during a dead zone for content -- that weird arc between what I view to be a deluge of terrible youth-oriented idol drama -- and a slight dramatic repositioning that brought on slightly less shit dramas to go along with terrible youth-oriented idol drama.

rageprufrock: And then the third time I watched it, earlier this year, I was in some sort of depressive fugue state and I wanted to feel the comforts of emotional disconnection that the show offers. Oh my God.

hollyberries: ... the first time I watched this drama I was job-hunting and it kept me going through a bag of spicy cheetos (5EVER RUINED) and endless cover letters.

rageprufrock: Holy fucking shit.

hollyberries: Why is our emotional support drama the chihuahua-pug mix of dogs.

rageprufrock: I'm looking this up right now to see what the hellscape of Asian dramas was during 2009/2010.

rageprufrock: We have no excuse: 2009 was also the year of Smile, You and Boys Before Flowers from Korea, Black and White (starring My Husband Vic Zhou) from Taiwan.

rageprufrock: We're just idiots. We could have been watching amnesiac drunk Vic Zhou being a terrible cop.

hollyberries: I’ll tell you right off the top of my head - the Chinese adaptation of Meteor Garden that was so bad fanscalled it ‘Acid Rain’.

hollyberries: To this day I cannot watch anything Zheng Shuang or Hans Zhang are in.

rageprufrock: Wait -- there was a Chinese adaptation of Meteor Garden?

rageprufrock: Isn't Meteor Garden Chinese? I mean. Taiwanese?

hollyberries: Happily I went on to watch Black and White after this shitshow.

hollyberries: I’m also going to get KILLED for saying this but Boys Before Flowers is honestly terrible? I basically jumped ship for Korean!Rui.

rageprufrock: I'm also going to get killed for this but I never even tried to watch it because what's the point since the only reason I watched Meteor Garden was for My Husband, Vic Zhou.

hollyberries: Uhhh they made a -- well the direct translation is ‘hill ruffian’ - a cut-rate version of Meteor Garden with the recycled plot points but none of the effort. Also product placement. So much product placement.

rageprufrock: ...W-H-A-T.

rageprufrock: I -- this was a cursed post. We can never speak of this, or Autumn Concerto again.

hollyberries: /bleak/ China is cursed.

THE END