Spill the DramaTea #4: The First Jasmine, Zhan Zhao Adventures and more.

The last few months have been intense, so I haven’t updated the newsletter, but here I am. I also haven’t been watching as many Chinese dramas as usual. I tried to finish Zhan Zhao Adventures (emphasis on try). The drama had everything going for it except, for some reason, tension and urgency. It’s not a terrible script, nor is anything terrible per se, but that’s the problem: it’s very mid. I expected Zhan Zhao Adventures to be a highlight drama—something amazing and memorable—but it turned out to be very ordinary. So, it’s disappointing, but it’s watchable and entertaining enough, just not memorable. (Review coming soon!) Yanng Yang in Zhan Zhao Adventures I also finished The Ingenious One, a drama I’ve wanted to watch for the longest time, and I even led some discussions on it. It’s so pleasurable to watch wuxia that is good! Watching this back-to-back with Zhan Zhao Adventures, you can really feel the difference in the writing—it is so tightly plotted and the characters are…