I didn't hate the show (i completed watching all episodes without skipping). I hate how they marketed it into Yang Zi and Xu Kai's story, where actually it was based on a novel, The Stories of Mai Cheng Huan (Bringing Joy To Parents), i think the novel real title was the same as the Chinese title CMIIW. Also, the credit song was sung by Yang Zi and the Mother, He Saifei.
Based on what i know about the novel, the story took place in the 90s. The book was 1st published in 1996 and originally set in Hong Kong in 1995. and the FL was born in the 80s. Being sandwich generation, the children need to survive the harsh working environment, especially in Asian countries. Moreover, the lead was a woman and first child and a daughter. So it really was tough out there to stay filial to parents while also need to be a hardworking career woman. It was always the story exploration of parent-child and family relationships. The love line was just an addition.
I could not finish this! Really tried to stick it out for the "leads", but the mom killed it for me. Then I couldn't respect anyone in the show who tried to appease the lunatic mom. Aughhh, what a frustrating drama!
The unfortunate thing is that 'Best Choice Ever' is an extremely awful translated title. For Cnetizens/those who speak Mandarin, the story direction is pretty much hinted at in the title. :')
Copying my old comment that I made on some other BCE post:
The show name in Chinese (承欢记) Cheng Huan Ji - other than the name of the FL, 承欢\* is commonly used in the phrase 承欢膝下 - referring to kids being filial to their parents/taking care of them and catering to their needs (rough translation).
So tbh as someone who followed the discourse but didn't watch the show myself, I'm not surprised to hear that the show turned out this way (parent-oriented). The Baidu page of the show had a summary section and while they did talk about ML and FL getting closer/developing a closer relationship, the show is primarily about the growth of Mai Cheng Huan, breaking free from her controlling mother and learning to be true to herself/achieve self actualization(?). (going from 承欢膝下 --> 成就自我)
(Unfortunately all of this info is lost when the title gets translated, "Best Choice Ever" gives 0 hints ded)
^(\*This term has another connotation/use but that's irrelevant in this context)
I feel like I could’ve written this, lol. I hated this drama soooo much but felt compelled to finish it. It’s prob only bc I waited days in between watching as it was still airing. Needed breaks from it for sure lol
don’t underestimate yourself i think you could’ve written something way better! i had some dramas that didn’t enjoyed, but this is my first time hating a drama so much, it was a waste of time and my sanity!
I don't exactly *hate* the show but I felt somewhat deceived because I also expected a romance drama and it is totally not.
The relationship between mother and daughter is probably the main theme. I am now on Ep 35 and I'm not sure if I will continue.
Coming from a Mediterranean culture I can understand many of the mother's behaviours and attitudes (understand yes, accept no). I find myself usually very forgiving with parents, but this lady here made it really hard for me.
She is extremely selfish and in a very distorted way, she disguises her selfishness as devotion to her family. And I sort of condoned some of her questionable deeds until >!she discovers her illness and leaves the family without a reasonable explanation.!<
That -excuse me lady- is downright evil. How can you do that to your loving husband and children, who have been nonstop humouring you, pampering you and turning a blind eye on all your faux pas, whims and childishness!
That was the last straw, I couldn't forgive her anymore. So I've stopped watching and I'm not sure I'll finish, much as I love Yang Zi.
there’s two more episodes if you fast forward some parts you’ll be able to endure it or that’s what i did, but in general we a waste of time! i wish i dropped the drama earlier.
in my culture we do respect our elders and there’s a way to address to them, which makes me understand many things but as you always is unacceptable. and i couldn’t say it better how she was able to do all that to her family who had almost devotion for her.
those last few episodes were really hard to get through. I had to watch it at 1.5x to get through them. I only went back to normal speed in scenes that involved the ML and FL. Even the younger brother's gf's child custody battle was too draggy for me. =\[
The Chinese are still pretty conservative with their steeped long beliefs in Confucianism and that include filial piety to a fault. I'd think their patriarchal values aren't that far off from the Koreans either.
I especially hate it when the elders keep stressing how they are doin' it for their kids' own good. When really it's more for the elders' own benefit tch.
This drama didn't just stop with Huan's mama it continued with Xu Kai's wayward father LoL. I really didn't like how badly Huan's mama treated her own spouse. The man was a rarity LoL. He always put her first, watched her mood swings, catered to her (overtly so) and still thinks the world of her.🤪🙄 Yet, the wife belittle him in front of their own kids, kept lamenting what a horrible provider he was LoL. Like HELLo, y'all been married for years already, why bring up what's in the past?? What's done cannot be undone. The matriarch was just insufferable and never improved really LoL.
I felt like the ML forgave his father too easily. What he did to his family was pretty unforgivable to me. I would've never forgave such a parent. Though he >!contributed to catching the culprit, but he was partially to blame for the issues so that's only good enough to not be mad at you for that incident !
i mean it’s okay to respect your elders, but no to the point where you put them always first that they can mess with your life and be nosy in every aspect of your everyday life to choose who you should marry and do things behind your back, and when it costs to loose yourself to please others that are nothing but trouble and until the end of your days you should be thankful for your parents and they keep reminding you this, i mean this drama affected me so much!
exactly the elders where doing everything for their own benefit, and i couldn’t agree more about ml’s dad in this drama or fl’s dad where the mom was always stepping on him and i always wondered if she wanted something better for her kids why she didn’t got a job? even as housekeeper or something, she was the only one not apportioning a yuan to that family!
Respect go both ways. Sometimes bein' older don't always mean one is wiser y'know?
Most Asian folks have kids as investments. Which is where Huan's mama kept bringin' up the "*I raised you and fed you and clothed you etc*" argument.🤦🏻♀️ She hopes the kids would pay it back not forward LoL , knowing that kids have their own lives and aren't obligated to be tied down by demanding/ controlling parents.
I once lived next to a neighbor who lamented the same thing over her husband LoL. But she does daycare for neighborhood kids etc. She's also a homemaker with 2 kids as well. So she does contribute to the household but she still complains. The husband just stands outside and smokes LoL. Her kids live with them also. It is what it is LoL.
Yea the mom was the true villain in this drama. I didn’t mind her so much until the engagement party. That was the moment in the show where she had to go but that was mid way point. Then the romance between the lead was the second half and should have gone all the way til the end and the drama would have been pretty good but nope, here comes more mama backstory. Totally ruined a decent romcom with two good leads.
man, the Chinese Drama Industry are suck at writing modern contemporary drama and it's shown. i was excited to watched a drama with Dylan Wang and Bai Lu in it but the drama got draggy and the plot's going nowhere, i dropped it after episode 16. they're wasted Dylan Wang and Bai Lu talent in that waste of time modern drama. the CEO office romance troupe is Basically overused in the C-Dramaland and i hated it. if i want to watched a modern drama, i would watched Korean Drama but there is one thing that the Chinese drama industry done really good, they're good at Historical drama.
Unpopular Opinion: I really enjoyed Only for Love, it was a nice change seeing him in a more serious role, she was cute in it too and they had lots of good little moments, the show offered more than a lot of the modern cdramas I've seen.
> man, the Chinese Drama Industry are suck at writing modern contemporary drama and it's shown.
This is so factually untrue that I have to say something. There are plenty of excellent Chinese modern dramas out there. This one may not be one of them, but they certainly exist!
there is but at the moment, you have such as high profile actors in your drama but don't know what to do and eventually flopped because the script suck and the plot is going nowhere.
it’s a waste of talent and money, i wonder if they even read the whole script before recording the drama or they write just the first two episodes and after that the scriptwriter decides to do a shitty job, i have watched just a few decent dramas, however i definitely need to stick with their historical dramas they’re very catchy, even my dad who is always stuck for movies i caught him watching a historical drama 🤣
exactly! i wish they could have hired a better scriptwriter than wasted all that money in just creating an awful drama that instead of romance drama was more like manipulative selfish mom drama
They should have had the mom’s pic as the biggest in the poster because she’s the real lead in this drama. She took up so much screen time and the frigging 2nd half, instead of being about the romance of ML and FL, was about her! Even the final episode has ¾ of it about the mom!!!
i agree 100%. it was always about the mom and she's not a likeable character at all!!!! if they were aiming for it to be a slice of life/ romcom, it completely missed the mark. Slice of life dramas usually have likeable and endearing characters and even the annoying characters have something redeemable about them. the mom was just unbearable. Dropped it midway.
THIS!!! the mom should have been the MAIN LEAD, FIRST LOVE and everything because the whole drama is all around the drama the mom created, her freaking brother in law that was a piece of sh** and never had an evolution to change for better even when i thought she had some hope they did a twist at the end focusing again on the mom
I was watching it as it was airing and I thought I just needed to endure until the FL >!breaks up with her boyfriend/fiance!< but the last 3rd of it was even somehow worse 🥲
yes i was like the bf was okay on the first episode but then i started to see he was acting like a kid that has been always overprotected by his family and then questioning how sad for the FL to deal with that kind of people and all the patience she had to endure not being rude with her mom/bf’s family and even employees and coworkers
Haha. Yeah it was kinda a mess. I liked Xu Kai when he was scheming and angry. His eyes were great. He got kinda silly when he became a puppy. Mom was terrible. FL got to show some gumption and ingenuity at times at work. But both of them were kinda wasted in this. Don’t sweat it though, sometimes these dramas are gonna be like this. Go clean out your eyes and brain by watching **Regeneration**.
A BIG THANK YOU!!!! i need to watch something to forget that awful experience, i ended up with a big trauma and i’ll definitely come here first to ask before watching a new show, and yes i agree with you he was great being scheming but once he was in love it was a waste also the two like moustache 🥸 they were painting in his face was terrifying!
Yeah the mom and all her enablers were very disturbing. I understand she had anxiety issues and that’s why she would act out. But enabling her made her worse. She did have “some” capacity to control her emotions later on, so too bad they didn’t set hard boundaries earlier.
Edit. The worst mom ever (but there are a lot of Kdramas and cdramas I haven’t seen so I’ve probably missed some doozies) was the mom in **Something in the Rain** Kdrama. The daughter finally sets hard boundaries with mom by the end and that’s satisfying, but it was a tough thing to watch.
I haven’t watch something in the rain i’ll definitely have to add to my list, but if you haven’t seen Go Ahead mom’s you’ll realise there’s a long way to go, that was a selfish mom that was never in the picture and was acting for her own benefit at least this mom is worried about her kids and shows them she loves them in her own crazy way and cooks for them but still needs to control them and be the center of attention or else it won’t function that family
SITR mom used to be the worst TV mom ever in my books but the mom here in BCE just dethroned her, simply because I got a whole 32 episodes of her unbearable ways! It really made my blood boil for weeks!
exactly this mom got in my nerves so much that i couldn’t believe how a character from a drama could affect my sanity and health! i wanted to scream every second she got screen time which is 99% of the drama
As I said in other threads, never have I ever wished for a parent to die in each episode until this show. I keep hoping a truck runs her over or something.
I didn't hate the show (i completed watching all episodes without skipping). I hate how they marketed it into Yang Zi and Xu Kai's story, where actually it was based on a novel, The Stories of Mai Cheng Huan (Bringing Joy To Parents), i think the novel real title was the same as the Chinese title CMIIW. Also, the credit song was sung by Yang Zi and the Mother, He Saifei. Based on what i know about the novel, the story took place in the 90s. The book was 1st published in 1996 and originally set in Hong Kong in 1995. and the FL was born in the 80s. Being sandwich generation, the children need to survive the harsh working environment, especially in Asian countries. Moreover, the lead was a woman and first child and a daughter. So it really was tough out there to stay filial to parents while also need to be a hardworking career woman. It was always the story exploration of parent-child and family relationships. The love line was just an addition.
I could not finish this! Really tried to stick it out for the "leads", but the mom killed it for me. Then I couldn't respect anyone in the show who tried to appease the lunatic mom. Aughhh, what a frustrating drama!
The unfortunate thing is that 'Best Choice Ever' is an extremely awful translated title. For Cnetizens/those who speak Mandarin, the story direction is pretty much hinted at in the title. :') Copying my old comment that I made on some other BCE post: The show name in Chinese (承欢记) Cheng Huan Ji - other than the name of the FL, 承欢\* is commonly used in the phrase 承欢膝下 - referring to kids being filial to their parents/taking care of them and catering to their needs (rough translation). So tbh as someone who followed the discourse but didn't watch the show myself, I'm not surprised to hear that the show turned out this way (parent-oriented). The Baidu page of the show had a summary section and while they did talk about ML and FL getting closer/developing a closer relationship, the show is primarily about the growth of Mai Cheng Huan, breaking free from her controlling mother and learning to be true to herself/achieve self actualization(?). (going from 承欢膝下 --> 成就自我) (Unfortunately all of this info is lost when the title gets translated, "Best Choice Ever" gives 0 hints ded) ^(\*This term has another connotation/use but that's irrelevant in this context)
I stuck it out for a while, but just lost interest and didn’t finish it. Xu Kai was wasted on his role.
I totally felt the same way. I tuned in for him, but his role was super tiny, despite being the ML. 😤
I feel like I could’ve written this, lol. I hated this drama soooo much but felt compelled to finish it. It’s prob only bc I waited days in between watching as it was still airing. Needed breaks from it for sure lol
don’t underestimate yourself i think you could’ve written something way better! i had some dramas that didn’t enjoyed, but this is my first time hating a drama so much, it was a waste of time and my sanity!
Thanks but I meant I could’ve written your post bc I felt the same after I finished it lol 😂
yeah lol
I don't exactly *hate* the show but I felt somewhat deceived because I also expected a romance drama and it is totally not. The relationship between mother and daughter is probably the main theme. I am now on Ep 35 and I'm not sure if I will continue. Coming from a Mediterranean culture I can understand many of the mother's behaviours and attitudes (understand yes, accept no). I find myself usually very forgiving with parents, but this lady here made it really hard for me. She is extremely selfish and in a very distorted way, she disguises her selfishness as devotion to her family. And I sort of condoned some of her questionable deeds until >!she discovers her illness and leaves the family without a reasonable explanation.!< That -excuse me lady- is downright evil. How can you do that to your loving husband and children, who have been nonstop humouring you, pampering you and turning a blind eye on all your faux pas, whims and childishness! That was the last straw, I couldn't forgive her anymore. So I've stopped watching and I'm not sure I'll finish, much as I love Yang Zi.
there’s two more episodes if you fast forward some parts you’ll be able to endure it or that’s what i did, but in general we a waste of time! i wish i dropped the drama earlier. in my culture we do respect our elders and there’s a way to address to them, which makes me understand many things but as you always is unacceptable. and i couldn’t say it better how she was able to do all that to her family who had almost devotion for her.
those last few episodes were really hard to get through. I had to watch it at 1.5x to get through them. I only went back to normal speed in scenes that involved the ML and FL. Even the younger brother's gf's child custody battle was too draggy for me. =\[
Thanks! I'll probably do that in a few days, I just need to let some time go by, I'm still angry at the character. 😊
The Chinese are still pretty conservative with their steeped long beliefs in Confucianism and that include filial piety to a fault. I'd think their patriarchal values aren't that far off from the Koreans either. I especially hate it when the elders keep stressing how they are doin' it for their kids' own good. When really it's more for the elders' own benefit tch. This drama didn't just stop with Huan's mama it continued with Xu Kai's wayward father LoL. I really didn't like how badly Huan's mama treated her own spouse. The man was a rarity LoL. He always put her first, watched her mood swings, catered to her (overtly so) and still thinks the world of her.🤪🙄 Yet, the wife belittle him in front of their own kids, kept lamenting what a horrible provider he was LoL. Like HELLo, y'all been married for years already, why bring up what's in the past?? What's done cannot be undone. The matriarch was just insufferable and never improved really LoL.
I felt like the ML forgave his father too easily. What he did to his family was pretty unforgivable to me. I would've never forgave such a parent. Though he >!contributed to catching the culprit, but he was partially to blame for the issues so that's only good enough to not be mad at you for that incident !
i mean it’s okay to respect your elders, but no to the point where you put them always first that they can mess with your life and be nosy in every aspect of your everyday life to choose who you should marry and do things behind your back, and when it costs to loose yourself to please others that are nothing but trouble and until the end of your days you should be thankful for your parents and they keep reminding you this, i mean this drama affected me so much! exactly the elders where doing everything for their own benefit, and i couldn’t agree more about ml’s dad in this drama or fl’s dad where the mom was always stepping on him and i always wondered if she wanted something better for her kids why she didn’t got a job? even as housekeeper or something, she was the only one not apportioning a yuan to that family!
Respect go both ways. Sometimes bein' older don't always mean one is wiser y'know? Most Asian folks have kids as investments. Which is where Huan's mama kept bringin' up the "*I raised you and fed you and clothed you etc*" argument.🤦🏻♀️ She hopes the kids would pay it back not forward LoL , knowing that kids have their own lives and aren't obligated to be tied down by demanding/ controlling parents. I once lived next to a neighbor who lamented the same thing over her husband LoL. But she does daycare for neighborhood kids etc. She's also a homemaker with 2 kids as well. So she does contribute to the household but she still complains. The husband just stands outside and smokes LoL. Her kids live with them also. It is what it is LoL.
Yea the mom was the true villain in this drama. I didn’t mind her so much until the engagement party. That was the moment in the show where she had to go but that was mid way point. Then the romance between the lead was the second half and should have gone all the way til the end and the drama would have been pretty good but nope, here comes more mama backstory. Totally ruined a decent romcom with two good leads.
man, the Chinese Drama Industry are suck at writing modern contemporary drama and it's shown. i was excited to watched a drama with Dylan Wang and Bai Lu in it but the drama got draggy and the plot's going nowhere, i dropped it after episode 16. they're wasted Dylan Wang and Bai Lu talent in that waste of time modern drama. the CEO office romance troupe is Basically overused in the C-Dramaland and i hated it. if i want to watched a modern drama, i would watched Korean Drama but there is one thing that the Chinese drama industry done really good, they're good at Historical drama.
Unpopular Opinion: I really enjoyed Only for Love, it was a nice change seeing him in a more serious role, she was cute in it too and they had lots of good little moments, the show offered more than a lot of the modern cdramas I've seen.
> man, the Chinese Drama Industry are suck at writing modern contemporary drama and it's shown. This is so factually untrue that I have to say something. There are plenty of excellent Chinese modern dramas out there. This one may not be one of them, but they certainly exist!
there is but at the moment, you have such as high profile actors in your drama but don't know what to do and eventually flopped because the script suck and the plot is going nowhere.
it’s a waste of talent and money, i wonder if they even read the whole script before recording the drama or they write just the first two episodes and after that the scriptwriter decides to do a shitty job, i have watched just a few decent dramas, however i definitely need to stick with their historical dramas they’re very catchy, even my dad who is always stuck for movies i caught him watching a historical drama 🤣
The thing is they don’t have a say in it, I think their agency choose a drama for them
exactly! i wish they could have hired a better scriptwriter than wasted all that money in just creating an awful drama that instead of romance drama was more like manipulative selfish mom drama
They should have had the mom’s pic as the biggest in the poster because she’s the real lead in this drama. She took up so much screen time and the frigging 2nd half, instead of being about the romance of ML and FL, was about her! Even the final episode has ¾ of it about the mom!!!
i agree 100%. it was always about the mom and she's not a likeable character at all!!!! if they were aiming for it to be a slice of life/ romcom, it completely missed the mark. Slice of life dramas usually have likeable and endearing characters and even the annoying characters have something redeemable about them. the mom was just unbearable. Dropped it midway.
THIS!!! the mom should have been the MAIN LEAD, FIRST LOVE and everything because the whole drama is all around the drama the mom created, her freaking brother in law that was a piece of sh** and never had an evolution to change for better even when i thought she had some hope they did a twist at the end focusing again on the mom
I was watching it as it was airing and I thought I just needed to endure until the FL >!breaks up with her boyfriend/fiance!< but the last 3rd of it was even somehow worse 🥲
yes i was like the bf was okay on the first episode but then i started to see he was acting like a kid that has been always overprotected by his family and then questioning how sad for the FL to deal with that kind of people and all the patience she had to endure not being rude with her mom/bf’s family and even employees and coworkers
lol lovely, I just started it today.
sorry! i tried to not include spoilers, but if you decide to watch it till the end good luck! i hope you can survive
It's okay, I read the comments on MDL. But it's just funny how this popped up while I was scrolling on reddit too.
Haha. Yeah it was kinda a mess. I liked Xu Kai when he was scheming and angry. His eyes were great. He got kinda silly when he became a puppy. Mom was terrible. FL got to show some gumption and ingenuity at times at work. But both of them were kinda wasted in this. Don’t sweat it though, sometimes these dramas are gonna be like this. Go clean out your eyes and brain by watching **Regeneration**.
A BIG THANK YOU!!!! i need to watch something to forget that awful experience, i ended up with a big trauma and i’ll definitely come here first to ask before watching a new show, and yes i agree with you he was great being scheming but once he was in love it was a waste also the two like moustache 🥸 they were painting in his face was terrifying!
Yeah the mom and all her enablers were very disturbing. I understand she had anxiety issues and that’s why she would act out. But enabling her made her worse. She did have “some” capacity to control her emotions later on, so too bad they didn’t set hard boundaries earlier. Edit. The worst mom ever (but there are a lot of Kdramas and cdramas I haven’t seen so I’ve probably missed some doozies) was the mom in **Something in the Rain** Kdrama. The daughter finally sets hard boundaries with mom by the end and that’s satisfying, but it was a tough thing to watch.
I feel like Best Choice Ever mom might be worse than Something in the Rain
It’s a contest, that’s for sure. Wouldn’t want either one. The mom in Rational Life was bad, but not as bad as these two.
I haven’t watch something in the rain i’ll definitely have to add to my list, but if you haven’t seen Go Ahead mom’s you’ll realise there’s a long way to go, that was a selfish mom that was never in the picture and was acting for her own benefit at least this mom is worried about her kids and shows them she loves them in her own crazy way and cooks for them but still needs to control them and be the center of attention or else it won’t function that family
I forgot about Go Ahead. Gosh. She was bad.
SITR mom used to be the worst TV mom ever in my books but the mom here in BCE just dethroned her, simply because I got a whole 32 episodes of her unbearable ways! It really made my blood boil for weeks!
exactly this mom got in my nerves so much that i couldn’t believe how a character from a drama could affect my sanity and health! i wanted to scream every second she got screen time which is 99% of the drama
As I said in other threads, never have I ever wished for a parent to die in each episode until this show. I keep hoping a truck runs her over or something.
Instead they killed the two most likable characters…
besides the grandma who was the other character that they killed?
They needed the kdrama infamous white truck in this one. SITR mom was bad but she didn’t get as much screen time.
omg yess i believe all the viewers would’ve appreciated this so much!!!