Peerless-Airplane

Not him calling him back to pick up his own finger..

Naye why would he pick it up with that same hand?💀. Is it one of the rules of punishment?

I really love his eyes.

Oh?

He's in love, buddy. And he just went through a situationship break up with the man he didn't want to admit to himself he's in love with. A man who he just discovered recently is actually alive when he was grieving him. A man who he just discovered is an undercover cop. It's a lot and the 'a lot' has 'a lotlets'.

All tropes have their time and place, and that one can be fun in a lot of situations (Me and Thee for example), but this show demonstrated so well how that kind of vast inequity can also be a huge impediment to a strong relationship.

Lu Qing was enormously privileged; as Xiao Fan said, he had literally never failed in his life before. He had his wealth and his background and his connections, and all of those things led to him underestimating Xiao Fan over and over again. He adored him, yes, but he never treated him as an equal. His protectiveness was through a myopic filter, where he withheld information from Xiao Fan in service of his greater goal, while never really engaging with the real hurt it would cause Xiao Fan as a human being with feelings. All his grand plans and machinations had a purpose of them being together, yet time after time, they weren't yet enough, there was more to do, and Xiao Fan was the one who suffered the most waiting for his prince to have the perfect amount of power.

Xiao Fan's greatest strength was his humanity, his ability to empathize with anyone, from his complicated college bully turned friend to his disdainful but deeply unhappy wife. The fact that the man he loved the most was incapable of connecting with him at the most fundamental human level, and instead continuously pulled him back and forth in service of unspoken grand plans was incredibly demeaning. And he was right to refuse to continue to tolerate it any longer.

Character-wise Xiao Fan wanted Lu Qing to remember him, but story-wise Xiao Fan leveled the playing field by pulling Lu Qing off the pedestal he had been born on and giving him a taste of failure. And to Lu Qing's credit, he wasn't angry about it - because it gave him the most clear perspective that everything else didn't matter, as long as he had Xiao Fan. And he shows that the lesson took, in the end, as he works to prepare breakfast for his husband, and supports his husband's emotional desires in agreeing to go back to see his family.

but with deep in and bittersweet love there's nothing to overlook. the negatives are the tropes or the character archetypes, if you're not a fan, but if you are... then you can just trust the show. there's no qualifying it (you have to understand they had to cut this scene, here's some context from the book, it didn't work in post, there was no time to reshoot, we think risk assessment decided no marriage, yea they kinda dropped that entire plotline sorry if those were your favs)

i'm on the fence about the narration throughout most of the show. i don't think it was largely necessary, but also if we didn't have things directly spelled out at some point then some would probably never get xiaofan's motivations. and it did allow for a few satisfying lines which i assume were pulled directly from the novel. so i guess.. i'll allow it i'm just saying it's not quite my favorite

that one text screen that told us about lu tao's imprisonment and the investigation of lvqing's trading i do think was entirely unnecessary though. in some ways it is nice having the details, but seeing him cuffed implied enough of the consequences, and we already saw lvqing lose most of what he had. again, it's a tiny qualm, but this show has done so well so far in showing us through the details, and trusting the audience, it just feels a bit counter to that

THAILAND | Police in Love - Official Trailer

Both right and wrong at the same time. But also... oh, Xiao Fan just sitting there as everyone talks about him and around him and no one even looks at him.

He is the connection between these two families and he is all that matters but he is also barely there at all.

Luqing's state in this restaurant scene is similar. He could offer Lu family his help on the condition that they no longer cause any problems for Xiaofan. Instead he chose to punish them severely in the front of his beloved baby boy, who, as he knew, loves and cares for his family. He wanted to hurt them more, reminding them that 5 years ago they chose to sell their son to another family. He punishes them for their greed and baseness.