Eternal Love 三生三世十里桃花 Part 3

Eternal Love may have strove to be an epic tragic love story, yet humor still dots its landscape. It is dry and it is funny. I can’t say for other people but I found Su Su and Ye Hua’s discussion on “the proper way to care for a snake” to be hilarious. Mainly because of Su Su’s trademark seriousness. It quickly dawns on Ye Hua, while explaining to Su Su that snake ain’t like human, he is speaking to a common-sense-challenged individual who needs major hand holding to cross the street. The funniest one-liner is when Ye Hua says, “I have loads of patience for less smart people,” looking directly at Su Su. Wahaha!

And of course, I can’t forget about Feng Jiu. This girl lies through her teeth in almost every interaction with Dong Hua. Except he can spot her lies like spotting a 3 year-old kid who swears that she didn’t eat the cookie from the jar while there are still cookie crumbs on her face. Naturally, Dong Hua, being incredibly old and jaded, can’t be bothered with correcting her so he just looks at her with his unfathomable side-glance. When this happens Si Ming gives her the pity look that says, “Poor child, I feel embarrassed for you.”

Eternal Love 三生三世十里桃花 Part 2

It is very hard to identify why I’m addicted to one drama and not the other. But with Eternal Love aka. 3 Lives 3 Worlds 10 Miles of Peach Blossoms I can pinpoint exactly when both my analytical mind and my sentimental heart became one. That moment is when Ye Hua asked Tian Jun’s permission to remove Su Su’s eyes himself. It sounds morbidly grotesque and I would never list it under the “Most Romantic Moment in a Drama” category, but in that moment I thought, this man truly and deeply loves his wife.

The easiest thing for him to do is let someone else perform the terrible deed, then comfort his wife afterwards by painting himself as her savior. But Ye Hua is anything but a cowardly delusional man. If his wife must surrender her eyes to keep her life, then he will be the last person she sees. She will know that he is the one responsible for what happens to her. He will swallow his own shame to look her in the eyes and bear her anger, her confusion, her hurt, and her terror. And he will accept that she will hate him for it. And, THAT takes no small amount of courage.

Eternal Love 三生三世十里桃花 Part 1

Eternal Love (三生三世十里桃花) aka Three Lives Three Words Ten Miles of Peach Blossom aka San Sheng San Shi Shi Li Tao Hua does cliché like nobody’s business. Amnesia, missing body parts, deaths, resurrections? That’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The lovey dovey pillow talks? That’s dessert with extra whip cream on top. I love every moment of it.

To say nothing about the show’s just-the-right-level melodrama, it impressed me with how well they use the special effects, costumes and makeups to create their epic universe. Those elements successfully enhanced the show instead of crippling it as they did with many of its fantasy drama peers (I am looking at you, xxx Aspiration and xxx Flower). It’s a pity they can’t maintain movie quality level for all 58 episodes. I can clearly see where they spent the big bucks and where they skimped out. The difference is a bit jarring.

Good thing the show is so good I can overlook their inability to seamlessly merge high tech with low tech effects. This drama’s world makes sense. There is internal logic to explain the outrageous things they do (finally in a Chinese fantasy drama!) And most importantly, I am 100% invested in the main couple and their many reincarnations.

Ye Hua’s behavior toward Bai Qian reminds me of a poem by Margaret Atwood: I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.

I love Ye Hua to pieces but I blame him for most of the crapazoid things that befall on them. He is a great man. A man of few words. A man who really needs to stop sheltering his wife and keeping vital information from her. If only he had talked to her about the things that was going on around them, she wouldn’t have broken his heart the way she did.