The hottest domestic drama "Crazy" at the beginning of the year has ended last night.
How hot is it?
If you haven't watched "Crazy", it is estimated that you can no longer keep up with the rhythm of the circle of friends.
"Sun Tzu's Art of War", eating fish, plasma TV... Since the start of the show, it has created countless memes, and every time it can trigger heated discussions among netizens on social platforms.
To be honest, when I first started broadcasting, I thought this was a decent main theme drama, but after entering the pit, I found that its scale and depth flew together.
The Douban score once rose from 8+ to 9.1, and fell back to 8.9 after the finale, which is not an exaggeration to say that it is an annual phenomenal domestic drama.
Set in the fictional city of Jinghai, the series uses flashbacks and interpolations to connect the entire story with the key plots of three timelines in 2021, 2006 and 2000.
In 2021, the national anti-gang crime and evil eradication action was normalized, and the provincial special case guidance group went to the "model city" Jinghai City to investigate.
Their visit had two purposes: first, to continue to carry out anti-gang crime and evil forces and thoroughly investigate the leading enterprise Qiangsheng Group in Beijing, and second, to rectify the political and legal contingent in Jinghai City and find out the inner ghosts.
Faced with the intertwined and monolithic city of Jinghai, the guidance group that had just arrived urgently needed a local public official who understood the case and was reliable.
After several rounds, they found a gray-haired cadre of the propaganda section - An Xin.
Why should Anxin be trusted? Where will the guidance group open the breakthrough of the Jinghai criminal group?
It all started 20 years ago.
Back in 2000, An Xin had just entered the criminal investigation detachment, full of energy and enthusiasm, rushed ahead when it was dangerous, and repeatedly sneaked into the criminal den.
Over time, his upright and inflexible personality caused dissatisfaction among some colleagues, and the leaders were also worried that he would make trouble, and every important action he tried to support Anxin.
However, this did not affect the positive evaluation of him by the local people, and even the lawbreakers who had dealt with him thanked this empathetic and practical security police officer from the bottom of their hearts.
And the other protagonist, Gao Qiqiang, also has a deep relationship with An Xin.
However, Gao Qiqiang is like the opposite of the role of An Xin.
He sells fish in the market for a living, raises his younger siblings alone, and is recognized as a "good old man".
The only time he committed the crime was a fight with the local snake, and Chinese New Year's Eve was caught and taken to the Public Security Bureau.
After the detention, out of sympathy, An Xin took the initiative to release goodwill to Gao Qiqiang, hoping that he could correct his mistakes, and the two gradually became friends.
But for Gao Qiqiang, who came from the bottom level, there is still a layer of selfishness to become friends with Officer An, because it means that he has a "backer".
Before Gao Qiqiang's rise, the scene that impressed me the most was An Xin listing Gao Qiqiang's books in a noisy vegetable market.
The smug show-off in Gao Qiqiang's eyes contrasted with An Xin's concentration purity, which was the first time Gao Qiqiang enjoyed the attention of others and the pleasure of being protected.
This detail hints at the very different life paths of the two.
Along with the huge economic reform of Jinghai City in the past two decades, An Xin, an indomitable idealist, has become a frustrated person who only promises;
And Gao Qiqiang, a fishmonger who once had low eyebrows, became the chairman of the gang-related organization Qiangsheng Group.
The good brothers drifted apart, and eventually stood on the opposite side of you and me.
Different from police and bandit criminal investigation dramas such as "In the Name of the People" and "Anti-Black Action" that take decency as the absolute protagonist, "Crazy" uses the "double male protagonist" setting in reverse and spends more ink to depict the cultivation of a "wicked person".
But Gao Qiqiang is not a face-painted villain, and his deterioration is the result of conniving at the "madness" of desire again and again.
The most intriguing thing is that the starting point of his rise stems from the intersection of his fate with An Xin.
An Xin sincerely wants to help him, but gives him a glimpse of the appearance of power;
An Xin desperately denied that he had privileges because of the relationship between the two bureau chief's uncles, but Gao Qiqiang keenly saw that even unrecognized privileges can bring intangible benefits and protection.
People with privileges are likely unaware of the existence of privileges. But Gao Qiqiang, who is at the bottom, sees the rules of the game clearly.
He took advantage of An Xin's goodwill and relied on a "backer" that did not actually exist, to complete the first transformation of identity.
The irony of this plot is not that An Xin's "kindness promotes big mistakes", even if Gao Qiqiang later became an underworld boss who covered the sky with one hand, he benefited in part from An Xin, but there is nothing wrong with kindness and empathy.
What is really worth thinking about is why privilege exists. Why can a "fox fake tiger" privilege also have such a huge effect, enough to change the life of a person at the bottom?
In addition to Gao Qiqiang, the play also portrays many public officials corrupted by desire.
The reasons for their fall vary, but they all indulge the expansion of desire.
For example, Yang Jian, an anti-drug criminal policeman, has an inferiority complex in the face of his wife with a good family, and in order to make the Meng family look up to him, he chooses to join forces with the underworld forces;
For example, Zhao Lidong, the "Jinghai Cancer", holds the power of the mayor to rush people's lives and do whatever he wants, enjoying the pleasure of power lust in both black and white.
Under the background of these characters, Gao Qiqiang, the villain, has rarely been "loved" by many audiences.
In my opinion, this is not to say that his approach is recognized, but rather that the audience recognizes the way the characters are created in Crazy.
As one of the most inked protagonists, Gao Qiqiang is undoubtedly real and complex, plump and self-consistent.
The screenwriter did not skimp on portraying the charismatic side of his humanity because he was a villain.
Gao Qiqiang is an evil man who cares about people's lives, and at the same time a good brother who loves and cares for his relatives, and a good husband who is single-minded and infatuated;
When he first decided to kill, his heart was very painful, and he sat on a stool and cried silently, saying all his struggles and unwillingness.
Indeed, he was not cold-blooded to begin with. But the screenwriter let us see how he deteriorated.
Even in his most primeful phase, he walked on thin ice every day, because on a wrong path, he would not become a winner in the end.
This makes more sense than simply portraying a face-painted villain.
In addition, many characters and plots in the play are based on real cases and livelihood issues, and the scale is already quite bold, but a little understanding will reveal that reality is often more terrifying.
The reality of "selling fishmongers into underworld bosses" is not a cool bridge at all, and the hidden evil of human nature and environmental harm in it make people shudder.
The history of Liu Han, the leader of the extraordinarily large triad gang in Sichuan Province, and his brother Liu Wei basically coincides with the trajectory of Gao Qiqiang's brothers' sudden wealth, but they are more rampant and darker than Gao Qiqiang.
After the discovery, the Liu Han brothers established two underground armed forces in Guanghan City, amassed wealth by force, circulated drugs, paid bribes, and did almost all evil.
In 2009, Sichuan Guanghan shocked the whole country in the city murder case, the murderer Liu Wei, under the protection of his brother Liu Han, escaped wanted many times and was never caught.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Liu Han said that "Liu Han has always been a winner, and Liu Han never misses a hand."
Later, he was arrested by the Hubei provincial police, and he also made wild remarks, provoking the police that "Hubei Province can't handle me."
It is not difficult to imagine that the evil of an individual like Liu Han is absolutely inseparable from the contamination of the environment in which he lives, and "Crazy" explores the deep reasons why good people become evil from a cold and objective perspective.
I still remember that there was a couple in the play who were going to report Gao Qiqiang, but temporarily repented and withdrew the lawsuit because they took a house from Gao Qiqiang.
An Xin on the side did not scold the old couple, silently got up, and turned to look for other methods.
Because he knows that greater evil is hidden in the huge power system, and if the problems of corruption, abuse of power, and cover-up in the law enforcement system are not solved, then the underworld forces will have the soil to flourish.
When violence and money become the unspoken rules of society, ordinary people will be less and less likely to seek justice.
Fortunately, from the normalization of the country's anti-gang crime and anti-evil actions, to Anxin's personal efforts, they have all shone a ray of light into this gray world.
I think this is also the reason why this drama can become a hit of the year. Although the hasty conclusion of its revision is unsatisfactory, Anxin's idealistic spirit of repeated defeats is still moving.
Some people say that An Xin was lucky after all, because he waited for the arrival of the guidance group, although he waited for 20 years and lost countless people.
But don't forget that it was precisely because he persisted for 20 years that the final counterattack was possible. Although the reality is brutal, every tiny insistence has its meaning.