Text/Ziyi
In February 2023, a "Crazy" kicked off the drama king competition, red Zhang Songwen, red Gao Ye.
However, in mid-April, a low-discussion, high-reputation TV series "Long Season" quietly started broadcasting, and ended with a score of 9.2 on Douban, and the finale ended with an excellent score of 9.5 points, crushing the ratings of most domestic dramas in recent years.
To tell the truth, after the popularity of "Crazy", many people's dramas are in short supply, and the quality of several TV series they have followed is somewhat uneven, and there are very few quality and quantity, and those who can afford the name of a good drama can be counted with their fingers.
Especially after the broadcast of the highly anticipated "Long Moon Ember Ming", many people have lamented that its gimmick is greater than the real material, and the publicity is too good, resulting in fans' expectations being disappointed and word of mouth seriously affected.
And "The Long Season" has only 12 episodes in total, and there has only been one hot search so far "Yi Nengjing said, even he can't recognize Qin Hao", and the rest all depends on passers-by.
On Douban, 5-star praise is the majority, 210,000 people participated in the rating, and Gao Kai went crazy, which can be said to have single-handedly reversed the situation of the April TV series.
And whenever someone complains about the slow pace, they will be criticized for "being poisoned too deeply by short videos".
What exactly is the charm of this show?
Where is that?
(1) Qin Hao + Fan Wei: Unexpected lineup, creating excellent results
To be honest, "The Long Season" definitely has a hand in casting.
Just listening to the names of Fan Wei and Qin Hao, many people would not click in to take a look.
First, Fan Wei always played a slightly comic role in Feng Xiaogang's movie, and secondly, Qin Hao's play was neither funny nor hot, and two non-traffic actors lost one in terms of publicity.
However, they still conquered everyone with their self-breakthrough image and superb acting skills.
The first to bear the brunt was Qin Hao.
I thought that Qin Hao's bald appearance in "Hidden Corner" was already his bottom line, but in "Long Season", his role as Gong Biao surprised the audience even more.
If you don't look carefully, you can't tell it's him at all, and you think that he is a middle-aged actor with strength like Zhang Songwen, but he has never been out of the circle.
Gong Biao was an image of a college student with infinite scenery in the early stage, but in the later stage, he became a greasy middle-aged man who did nothing.
His before and after contrast is strong, especially in the late period, with a big belly and puffy face, which is very different from Qin Hao's own image, it can be seen that he attaches great importance to this drama and has paid a lot for it.
These can be seen from Yi Nengjing's small essay to refute rumors.
So everyone wondered suspiciously, "Does Qin Hao have any handle in Director Xin's hands?" This time I chose Fa Fu in the greasy and bald"
I couldn't help but smile gladly.
Then let's talk about Fan Wei, he played Wang Xiang, a key character, in just 12 episodes, showing the great changes around 18 years.
Wang Xiang was an active member of the Birch Steel Mill 18 years ago, and he was very attentive to all kinds of things, even if it was a corpse crushing case, he tried to cooperate with the investigation, and Wang Xiang during this period also contributed a lot of laughs to the play (this is obviously Fan Wei's strength).
On the other hand, 18 years later, Wang Xiang's eyes did not have the light they once had, and he became a taxi driver and became calm and old.
It was gray-haired and slightly tired in its eyes, making people want to explore what had happened to him.
Ma Desheng, played by Chen Minghao in the play, is a competitive and hot-tempered criminal policeman.
It is precisely because of this that he took off his police uniform in a fit of anger, and 18 years later, he became a little old man with nothing to do.
In the play, the scene where he danced the old disco made many viewers unable to take their eyes off.
Three little old men got together and wanted to catch the murderer eighteen years ago, give everyone an explanation, and put an end to the whole thing.
Although this drama is based on the story of Wang Xiang and the three, the performance of many supporting roles is very outstanding, such as Ren Suxi, Liu Lin, and Li Gengxi, etc., which adds a lot of points.
Especially Li Gengxi, who has always been ridiculed as a resource coffee, her acting skills are a little immature among the old actors, but the completion of the overall role is very high, which can be regarded as whitewashing herself and having a good role in the circle.
Compared with the suspense drama "Thirteen Years of Dust" broadcast in the same month, "The Long Season" adds some sense of life, making the audience feel more cordial to watch, and this is inseparable from the actors' acting skills.
(2) The plot is brilliant and the ending is perfect, which can be called a masterpiece
"Long Season" mainly tells the story of the small city birch forest, taxi driver Wang Xiang (played by Fan Wei) never dreamed that he would have the opportunity to meet a person he wanted to meet the most in his life, but he was most afraid of encountering.
Is it an enemy or an old man?
If you meet, you have to have an explanation, to yourself and to your son.
In the small city of birch forest, at that time, the driver Wang Xiang was full of spirit, and he could drive twenty steel behemoths, but he could not manage the small family of three, the factory was crumbling, and the crisis was pressing everywhere.
A package of unidentified broken corpses, like a stone smashed on the water surface of the birch forest, also smashed in Wang Xiang's head, this ripple is 20 years, swinging until the autumn leaves turn yellow, never stopping.
Lost father, dead lover, reunited old friend, trapped in three different eras due to an unsolved mystery, only to pursue a truth that spans the past, present, and future.
When the mystery is revealed, time and space merge into one, leaving only an elegy of fate in the long season.
Like "Who Is He", "The Long Season" also begins with the shredded corpse case, which was originally a very popular way to start suspense dramas, but as the plot continues to deepen, we can slowly find that it has its own unique taste.
The identity of the victim and the murderer of the shredded corpse case is a mystery, involving many characters, and after eighteen years, many things have happened during the period, everyone has their own obsessions and secrets, and this clue directly fills the sense of suspense.
I thought that "The Long Season" wanted to explore the years of the wave of layoffs of state-owned enterprises in the 80s/90s, including the northeast of the heavy industry era, those chaotic and criminal pasts, and set its eyes on the neglected group of low-level ants.
However, I am still narrow-minded.
It wants to do more.
On the surface, this is a chase and injustice that spans 18 years and involves many people.
But look closely, this is another reflection and remembrance of the past time and space.
From the perspective of human nature, these are 3 old people who are close to the age of flower armor, and even dying, their lives may not be satisfactory, just like ants, they are about to die, but they want to fight hard to get the last bloom in their lives.
The same case, connected together, is in everyone's heart, those life memories that are difficult to let go of and unwilling to talk about, which can be a glorious past, or an unrelenting obsession in life, but also the epitome of countless ordinary people's lives for decades.
How far will "The Long Season" be consecrated?
It is likely to be, and it will be, in recent years, the new peak in domestic TV series, especially suspense dramas, or even the highest peak.
Its best part is no longer suspense and detective, but it hits everyone's heart, those resonances.
In episode 12, with a logical, conjecture, and almost perfect ending, the whole drama was successfully sealed.
(3) The rare sense of humor and suspense makes people bitter and a little sweet
The director understands Northeast humor, always adding a little black humor to the plot that is a little sweet, and all the staff shakes the baggage anytime and anywhere. It can be said that Fan Wei undertook most of the funny scenes in "The Long Season".
The Northeast flavor Mandarin that appears from time to time in the play makes the plot more realistic and the characters fuller.
In addition, "The Season of Manga" also inadvertently brought a Northeast specialty delicacy - pot wrapped meat.
When Wang Yang took the pot bun meat made by Wang Xiang himself to work, he was intercepted by his boss halfway, and across the TV, we seemed to hear the crispy sound of the pot bun meat.
In the play, not only showed the deliciousness of pot wrapped meat, but also filmed a clip of the actor making pot wrapped meat by himself, making this Northeast specialty food successful on the Internet, and many viewers couldn't help but click on the takeaway software when watching this episode.
In addition, in order to cheer up Wang Xiang, who is a taxi driver, taxi driver masters in 9 places spontaneously organized to support by pulling banners or scrolling subtitles.
Sure enough, "The Long Season" understands the people at the bottom.
epilogue
"The Long Season" got rid of the curse of the end of the divine drama, mainly because it maintained the original intention of the suspense drama.
Suspense is the mainstay, humor is interspersed, love is only an embellishment to advance the plot, and family affection is a conciliator to maintain the relationship between characters.
When emotions are just to push the case to solve the case and solve the puzzle, it is not far from a good drama.