After chatting with my Beijing colleagues who grew up in Beijing Huangcheng Root and now live outside the fifth ring road about the TV series "Wishful Thinking", I have some thoughts to express about this drama and the life in Beijing it reflects...
Text | Zhao two knives
The TV series "Wishful Thinking" starring Zhang Li and Mao Xiaotong ended a few days ago, this drama did not attract much attention at the beginning of the broadcast, but then caused controversy and misunderstanding due to "a rumor", on the whole, the quality of this drama is good, the performance of the actors is also decent, although the plot has slots, but it is reasonable in urban dramas in recent years.
At the end of this drama, Reading Entertainment Jun also wants to talk about this urban emotional drama that reflects contemporary Beijing youth due to "misunderstanding".
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In the TV series "Wishful Thinking", sister Zhang Li told her sister Mao Xiaotong on the roof of the courtyard that she wanted to buy a house in the central business district (that is, Guomao CBD) - it was also mentioned later in the TV series that the yard where their family lived was a public rental house and had no property rights, so as a sister, Zhang Li had the idea of buying a house is actually natural, but the target area of her home is indeed one of the points of controversy.
So, the question is, where would old Beijingers want to buy a house the most?
According to the latest data, the average house prices in Beijing's main urban areas, from the highest to the bottom, are: 130,000 in Xicheng - 113,000 in Dongcheng - 100,000 in Haidian - 73,000 in Chaoyang... If you are a young person who is full of confidence in the future, where would you put your goal of buying a home? And, if you are not a Dinkist and may be more concerned about the education of your children in the future, then the Chaoyang district to which CBD belongs may not be the first choice for buying a home.
If you put the perspective on the group of stars, Chaoyang District is indeed the first choice for many stars. In addition to the Chaoqing plate represented by Baiziwan attracting many people who are full of hope for the entertainment industry, Jinmao Mansion, located in Chaoyang District, is the first choice for many well-known artists, with an average price of nearly 140,000 and a total price of 40 million, which is also a veritable mansion community, and the degree of local tyrants of "Wanliu Academy" known to the outside world because of the young master is no less.
Of course, the TV series may be for the career of her sister Sun Xin (played by Zhang Li), and so that audiences in other regions can recognize the logic of the character of her sister Sun Xin, so that the origin of the line that you want to buy a house in CBD.
It is precisely because "house prices" and "real estate" have special weight in people's hearts that "Wishful Thinking" can break the circle shortly after it starts broadcasting because of a "rumor" related to houses.
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Soon after the broadcast of "Wishful Thinking", a post circulated everywhere, which also triggered many big V retweets. The post is like this, "A new drama broadcast on CCTV Eight Sets, the heroine worked in Beijing for a few years, and bought a set of courtyards in the second ring road? ”
Indeed, the courtyard where the Sun family lives in "Wishful Thinking" is quite clean and tidy, perhaps the lens movement and overall composition of the lens, which indeed looks very similar to "independent courtyard", and inevitably causes misunderstanding among some netizens. It should be noted that if you have come to Beijing or live in Beijing, you should know that most of the courtyards where the old Beijing lives are actually miscellaneous courtyards, many live together, and most of them will build some sheds as kitchens or storage rooms - similar to the yard in the TV series, basically a separate courtyard can do such a big transformation.
Of course, TV series are derived from life but higher than life, and some adjustments can actually be made for art.
This rumor made "Wishful Thinking" out of the circle, but from the perspective of "complaining", the film side also quickly responded, this yard is not their home, but public housing, according to the subsequent plot, "The only two rooms in the yard are Sun's, part of her husband's family, isolated by Grandma's work department, without ownership or use rights, accommodation cannot be bought and sold." In the story, this public house is also facing demolition, and the Sun family living in it can only get a certain amount of demolition compensation, which is not enough to buy a normal three-ring commercial house. ”
As an old Beipiao who has lived in Beijing for nearly 20 years, I also understand the property rights structure of some old Beijing miscellaneous courtyards, which are very complex, with free property rights, small property rights, and public housing - in the past, there were indeed commercial houses by demolition, but in recent years, the so-called relocation of the miscellaneous courtyards in the inner city has been changed to "vacate and retreat", which is also a lot of controversy, but it is indeed the general trend that many old residents living in large courtyards and bungalows living in Beijing's second ring road are facing.
Screenwriter Su Peng also talked about this transformation in an interview, he mentioned that "we want to make a new Beijing theme, the first thing is to break a certain dilemma of the past, do not always indulge in the obsession with the past hutong culture and traditional human touch, like the sisters in the play, we must dare to walk out of the hutong and break the past."
At least from the screenwriter's words, I can also see his idea of doing this drama. A colleague of Yoyujun has lived in the courtyard of the Huangcheng root since childhood, and life is quite inconvenient, they are probably the first batch of vacated households who moved from public housing to the edge of the fifth ring road - indeed, from the inner city courtyard to the fifth ring road, although the living environment has changed, the huge changes in the living environment and lifestyle will also make many old Beijing's mentality change.
Perhaps, the screenwriter of "Wishful Thinking" wanted to explore this change, but surrounded by the entrepreneurial and emotional drama of the sisters, this kind of superficial discussion was not picked up by the audience.
Although, whether it is some problems that objectively exist in the series itself, or it is put on by some netizens as an ungrounded hat; However, this drama has quite a "realistic basis" in dealing with the way the two sisters change their fate - relying on self-media to get rich.
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Sun Li's sister Sun Xin, whose personality is so strong that she must achieve something in the workplace; The younger sister Sun Xiang, played by Mao Xiaotong, is lying flat in the Buddhist line, and there is no grudge about working in a café - this is the original character of the two sisters.
But if you want to change your own destiny, you must ride the tide of the times. My sister yearns for the workplace, but it is too difficult to succeed in the workplace; My sister is even more difficult to make money in the workplace, what should I do? General urban dramas may arrange a workplace or be favored by a certain big guy and so on.
Perhaps some viewers believe that the success of self-media entrepreneurship is also a minority. Indeed, not everyone can succeed in the field of self-media, but in the past 10 years, there have been too many cases of relying on self-media to achieve careers in Beijing, here are a few examples of success in Beijing relying on self-media:
Wen Yi, who began to be famous for food blogs in the era of blogs, is even more iconic KOL of women + food in the Weibo era;
Mi Meng, although the main account was blocked, but I have to say that the achievements she once achieved in the WeChat public account also allowed her to achieve wealth freedom early;
Drunken goose lady, became popular with red wine tasting videos and entered the e-commerce field, claiming to earn 350 million yuan a year...
In the field of food, the bloggers who grew up in Beijing include but are not limited to, Chef Tandian, 200 Jiye, Special Chef Sui Bian, etc., they are different from their previous professions, but they have all enjoyed the dividends of the times and have a good ability to make money.
Therefore, letting the protagonist catch the wind of self-media has reality as a reference and has considerable credibility. In addition to the career line, "Wishful Thinking" has more detailed presentation in the emotional line of the sisters and the previous workplace line. Relatively speaking, the emotional line of the sisters is a bit routine, face-painted, and there is no particularly outstanding place.
Let's talk about the roles of grandfather and grandmother, who occupy important roles, respectively, played by Sun Song and Zhang Kaili, two senior actors, who once starred in China's first generation of popular drama "Longing", perhaps young audiences do not feel this, but many middle-aged and elderly audiences should still have feelings for these two. However, compared with the relaxation of Sun Song's performance, Zhang Kaili's screen image in recent years has been somewhat similar, and the audience's favorability has also declined...
Then said that the two leading actors, director Liu Yijian expressed satisfaction with the performance of these two non-Beijing actresses in an interview, but Reading Entertainment Jun had some criticism about this, Zhang Li's performance basically did not change, and his expression was stiff; Mao Xiaotong has always continued the girlish feeling, and the performance has no sense of layering, and the changes from the Buddhist line to the public account speaker are also particularly abrupt, and some are unconvincing. However, the performance has always been a matter of opinion, as long as the audience of this drama likes it.
Of course, the rather harsh criticism of this drama actually comes from the public's counterattack to the disappearance of the "poor" of the national drama. Indeed, in the past few years, including the recently launched urban dramas, almost all of them are elites and white-collar workers, even in the name of ordinary people, they are also with "filters", and similar phenomena have caused criticism from a considerable number of viewers and netizens. The character and plot of "Wishful Thinking" are actually quite reasonable, but the courtyard at the beginning is indeed too much like a commercial boutique homestay, and it is understandable that it is questioned that it is not grounded.
Therefore, the drama "Wishful Thinking" can not only see the main creator's theme of facing reality, but also see the delicacy of the starring actors from the inside out, which may be that it is difficult for this drama to bring more resonance to the audience like the period drama "Love Man Courtyard".
At last:
According to China Audiovisual Big Data (CVB), the average rating rate of each episode of 1-30 episodes of this drama is as high as 1.541%, ranking firmly in the ratings champion of prime-time TV dramas in the same period of the whole channel; Kuyun data shows that since its broadcast, the ratings ranking of the all-channel prime-time TV series has been ranked as the top 1 for 18 consecutive days, and the peak of real-time attention of live TV has exceeded 2% for four consecutive days - so this should be regarded as a well-rated TV drama.
Reading Entertainment Jun also expects Zhang Li and Mao Xiaotong to go to a higher level in performance, and at the same time, he also expects dramas that reflect contemporary urban life to become as popular as "Crazy" and "Who Is He".