I am finally fully caught up on Key to the Phoenix Heart and this is what I think so far (up to ep 22).
This is a fast-moving story that manages to hold my interest even with a tissue-thin plot and characters with about as much psychological depth as a teacup.
Hou Minghao is eating up the role of a wily, unpredictable general and Ai Mi is entirely likeable as a spoiled but talented young woman forced to confront adulthood the hard way, even if she does kind of play it in a monotone way. She's a very young actress and probably doesn't have the kind of life experiences that would help her to give her character more nuance and depth.
A main theme of the show deals with women's right to self-determination and fulfillment. The good men support the independence and dignity of the women in their lives, the bad men don't. Not an unusual theme for a cdrama, but it's really prominent in this one and pretty well done, if highly unrealistic, as well.
I absolutely adore that Xiao Wuyi's three wives are best friends who only have each other's and the family's welfare at heart. I suppose that only works because Xiao Wuyi isn't interested in any of them romantically (until Xie Jiayu arrives), nor are they in him. So they're all just friends.
Which... I would still rather see a properly polygynous household, where the wives manage to be good friends and navigate petty jealousies gracefully instead of as a power struggle. But I'll take what I can get. The women characters and female friendships are, to me, the backbone of this show.
The portrayal of the northern Qin people is... even worse than most of these shows portray northern nomadic peoples, which is bad enough. I'm not qualified to go off about this, but I will say it reminds me a lot of how American Westerns depicted Native Americans until relatively recently: bloodthirsty savages constantly ravaging civilized whites. It's interesting that the entire internet is up in arms about the casting of a teenager as the romantic partner to an adult male actor, but the racism gets a pass, in English internet, anyway. I don't know what they're saying about it in Chinese. The casting of an Uyghur actor to play the vicious, uncouth northern Qin Eagle King was really a choice, imo.
For all the pearl clutching about Ai Mi, there's only been one light forehead kiss so far, and the romance is so chaste as to be almost insipid. If I didn't love watching Hou Minghao look soft and distressed, I probably would be bored. This was probably the biggest problem with the casting: the romance falls somewhere between kindly man waiting for child bride to grow up, and teenage girl in love with a teacher who is tempted, but doesn't give in. Which is to say, it's not as weird as Richard II being married to a literal 6 year old, but not even as sexy as "Don't Stand So Close to Me" by The Police. There's tenderness and affection, but no heat, no passion. Which... Yeah. It might be weird if there was anyway.
Other than the necessary lack of sexual chemistry, I think casting a teenager to play a teenager isn't a bad idea. She's doing a good job at playing an idealistic, headstrong young woman who is growing up quickly in a trial by fire.
I've probably blathered way too much in other posts about how gorgeous Hou Minghao is. And he always has such great acting chemistry with Riley Wang that their relationship is actually more interesting to me than the main couple's. Riley Wang usually seems to play sweet, loveable, funny characters so watching him turn into a villain here is fun.
In short, this is lightweight entertainment, not meant to be taken too seriously. It's easy to watch and will probably be just as easy to forget in a few months.
