Ariel Lin's postpartum "current situation": sexless marriage, jealousy of love rivals, how did she live like this?
This year's Taiwanese drama dark horse is here!
Ariel Lin and Xu Weining's "We Are Not Kind Enough" rushed to the TOP3 of iQiyi International Station when it premiered, and ranked first on the station's popularity soaring list for 3 consecutive days.
is currently updated to the second episode, with a Douban score of 8.6 points.
This drama is Ariel Lin's first work after her postpartum comeback, and it is also the second collaboration with director Xu Yuting after "I May Not Love You".
Coincidentally, Ariel Lin and Xu Junmi, the "rivals in love", from a girl to middle age, are still "rivals in love" this time.
But unlike the idol drama "Mischievous Kiss", "We Are Not Kind Enough" came out of the circle with "high resonance", and many viewers praised "super realistic" and "I cried after only the second episode".
"We Are Not Kind Enough" tells a story of "siege" from the perspective of the two heroines.
One is married and has children, and the other is older and single, and they spy on each other's lives and beautify each other's lives.
But is all this real?
41-year-old Jian Qingfen (played by Ariel Lin) is a professional woman with a stable career and a happy family. The husband is considerate and cares for the family, and the son is cute and well-behaved.
The security she once longed for was now within reach, but she wasn't happy.
Her life is only left with work, housework, and taking care of her son, day after day, like a pool of stagnant water.
Jian Qingfen's life is all too familiar to us.
After work, while taking his son to learn roller skating, he frowned and dealt with work.
is obviously a 41-year-old adult, but her mother-in-law has to take the spare key to the small family, and she will come to the house at any time to point fingers at Jian Qingfen.
In a dual-income family, the family's breakfast has to be prepared by Jian Qingfen, and she does more housework.
After a busy day, I received a message from my husband that I would come home late and wanted to urge my son to go to bed early, but found that my son had already fallen asleep.
Facing the empty home, Jian Qingfen was suddenly at a loss:
"I've worked really hard to amplify those little happiness, but I know it's really just the same, day in and day out. ”
Then, she took a picture of her sleeping son and posted it on social media, with the text: I love you so much~
Life is warm and happy, and Jian Qingfen realizes that she needs to help her life day after day, find her next goal, or an imaginary enemy.
She began to wonder if Rebecca, her former "underdog", was doing better.
Jian Qingfen picked up a piece of cake and began to search for her name on social networking sites.
Rebecca, who is 2 years younger than herself, is still unmarried, has a boyfriend who is 10 years younger than herself, and has a new tattoo on her hand.
The latest developments are "Surprises Every Day" and "18 Million (NT$)".
Jian Qingfen can't help but imagine Rebecca's life: what is it like to have a deposit of 18 million (Taiwan dollars) and surprises every day?
At this moment, the husband returned, and after a few simple conversations, the husband went to the bathroom to take a shower.
Jian Qingfen uncharacteristically rushed into the bathroom, but was "kicked out" by her husband.
Yes, how can middle-aged couples have any passion?
Facing the clean and tidy bedroom, Jian Qingfen began to fantasize about the scene of Rebecca and her little boyfriend "doing sports".
Compared with her gradually hot body, Jian Qingfen is more concerned about not soiling the sheets, because "washing the sheets is really a troublesome thing." ”
She tore off the sheets and muttered to herself.
When I came to my senses, the bedroom was still tidy.
The next day, taking the bus with her mother-in-law, carrying her mother-in-law's cart loaded with vegetables, Jian Qingfen seemed to see Rebecca get off the bus:
It's still smoky makeup, with long hair in a shawl, and it still looks so chic.
Getting on the bus, Jian Qingfen asked her mother-in-law if she remembered Rebecca and talked about her current situation.
looked down on Rebecca's mother-in-law before, but now she said: She is beautiful and knows how to dress up.
At this moment, Jian Qingfen felt that life was extremely absurd.
Thinking of Rebecca, Jian Qingfen was even more disgusted with her life.
In order to make some changes in her life, Jian Qingfen set a goal for herself - Rebecca.
She asked herself:
"What's your next goal, and how much pain you have to go through in order to get there, have you calculated?"
The past came like a tide, and Jian Qingfen once set goals one after another - studying, getting promoted, and starting a family······
Then put a "check" on your life planner and start planning your next goal right away.
Jian Qingfen, who is middle-aged, realizes that the "happiness" of realizing the plan is actually accumulated with the "pain" of the process, and we yearn for happiness as well as for pain.
It's a lot like Schopenhauer said, life is like a pendulum, oscillating between lust and boredom.
This is the philosophical moment of Jian Qingfen, a middle-aged woman.
But, what does Rebecca's real life look like?
39-year-old Rebecca (played by Xu Weining), unmarried and living alone, is a successful woman in the eyes of outsiders.
She is beautiful and independent, rents a shared office to start a business, has a small assistant, buys limited edition clothes, and is free without family chores.
As the plot deepens, the assistant makes a phone call to resign, showing Rebecca's real life.
The assistant's boyfriend asked her, "Do you want to be Rebecca in the future?"
"Is it bad to be Rebecca?" Rebecca asked uneasily.
It turned out that in the eyes of outsiders, Rebecca, who was successfully independent, was not enviable.
The other side of freedom is loneliness, a loneliness that is so subtle that it goes deep into the corners of living alone.
Although he opened a studio by his own efforts, he was still busy until late at night with the desire to "retire at the age of 50", and his life seemed to be the only option left to work.
Only 40 years old, unmarried and childless, so busy with strength that he has no friends, he can only eat alone, but he was told by the waiter that he can only sit at the bar.
She couldn't help but tell the waiter about her grievances.
The "boyfriend" who was 10 years younger turned out to be just a younger brother who met in a shared office.
The photos posted on social media are to help my brother chase other women, and their relationship is just a meal pair.
Rebecca doesn't have a love life, but at 39, she has fewer and fewer people to choose from.
The boy who is younger than her has no interest in his sister, who is much older;
Most of the opposite sex of the same age have already been married.
No friends, no lovers, the requirements are lowered to just "I want to have someone next to me".
Even so, Rebecca still couldn't afford to buy a house of her own, and chose to rent instead.
It turned out that the "surprise every day" on social networks was that the girlfriend of the landlord's youngest son suddenly became pregnant, and the landlord wanted to break the contract and take back the house.
And the new flooring that has just been laid at his own expense has made a wedding dress for others.
Living alone, it seems that the difficulties faced are no less than those of married people, and the most urgent thing is how to provide for the elderly.
Rebecca's previous plan was to save NT$18 million before the age of 50, but she was reminded by her sister in the office next door:
The money for those between 50 and 80 years old is at least NT$20 million, provided that they do not get sick or travel.
After a brief conversation, he left a sentence: "Forty years old has no right to think about what you like, forty years old can only think about things to plan for a rainy day", and left.
Rebecca was left standing there blankly.
In the evening, Rebecca receives two messages, one is that the monthly rent for the office has not been paid, and the other is that the suit she ordered has arrived.
Rebecca remembered the conversation during the day and checked her account balance, which was only 620,000 Taiwan dollars.
She returned the set of clothes she had wanted for a long time.
Seeing this, anyone has to ask, is this kind of life worth living, and will the life of two people be better?
Rebecca began to imagine another life, and she clicked on Jian Qingfen's social media page.
Seeing the photo of Jian Qingfen and her son, Rebecca struggled with whether to add friends, and then quickly closed the computer.
It's like reminding yourself not to envision another path.
But she still can't help but recall the past.
Rebecca and Jian Qingfen once worked for a company, their birthdays were the same, they often wore the same clothes, and in the end they also fell in love with the same man, He Ruizhi.
Before Jian Qingfen appeared, Rebecca and He Ruizhi were office lovers, but He Ruizhi's mother didn't like Rebecca.
In the end, the latecomer Jian Qingfen became He Ruizhi's wife······
At present, the show is not over, but the first two episodes show the plight of middle-aged women very realistically, with a full sense of substitution.
In the past two years, Taiwanese dramas have been on the rise, from "The Distance Between Us and Evil" to "She and Her Her", and then to "We Are Not Good Enough", each of which has been applauded.
These dramas are not long, but they are short and concise, the plot is compact, and the lines are concise, and each of them can resonate with a high degree of resonance.
With the efforts of Taiwanese dramas in the past two years, there is a high probability that "We Are Not Kind Enough" will not end badly.
In addition to showing the plight of middle-aged women's lives, this drama throws out another question worth pondering:
If so, would it be better to live another life?
Life seems to have regrets no matter how you choose.
Two kinds of life, two kinds of regrets, what will you choose if you stand at the crossroads of life?