Final Review - General’s Lady (2020)

Final review/rating - General's Lady (2020): Cute Couple and many happily ever afters 

This is 6/10 stars ✮✮✮✮✮✮ from Pandafan🐼

Overall rating:         6 Stars Plot:                       5 Stars Acting/cast:            6 Stars Couple chemistry:   7 stars Music:                    7 Stars Re-watch value:      5 Stars Enjoyment factor:   6 Stars

General's Lady is a fairly enjoyable watch, full of well worn tropes and sweet moments between the leads as well as between almost every single other conceivable pair in the drama. It's not overly ambitious in terms of plot (and some of the middle episodes are rather draggy) but the ending is all one big happily ever after. 

SPOILERS AHEAD

There's nothing new or particularly exciting about the plot - we are firmly in trope land territory with a young lovely princess character married off to a cool, aloof general, with sparks flying right from the start.  It's a set up most viewers will be familiar and comfortable with - whether the drama turns out to be enjoyable tends to depend on how well the leads carry the drama and whether there is winning couple chemistry. 

The titular General's Lady - Shen Jin 

Tang Min as Shen Jin

Shen Jin (or Jin'er as she is affectionately called) is a bubbly, resourceful and slightly spoilt/immature daughter of the royal house. Tang Min does a good job of making Shen Jin a likeable character - she agrees to marry the "demon" General largely to protect her mother, and when the marriage procession is attacked by assassins, she shows pluck and resourcefulness in making it to the General's manor with her personal maid and good friend Ruo Ruo on their own.  Although easily (and often unreasonably jealous), Shen Jin does mature - I like that the scriptwriter created a scene in the later episodes when an unknown woman shows up claiming to be pregnant with the General's baby, and Shen Jin has sufficient trust in her General to not bat an eyelid (and even be somewhat amused). And she has such a lovely smile 😊 

General Chu Xiu Ming 

Caesar Wu as Chu Xiu Ming

Again, a classic stock character, Wu Xi Ze's General Chu Xiu Ming is the cool, aloof male lead who struggles to show emotion but falls like a ton of bricks for the female lead. He's good looking, which certainly appeals, but I found his wooden delivery somewhat lacking.  General Chu Xiu Ming has some of the most romantic lines in the drama, but I don't think he does justice to them.  In fairness, I should probably add that my standards for swoon-worthy Generals has risen of late after seeing Zheng Ye Cheng's General Xue Yao in The Sleepless Princess (see my final review for that drama here, complete with an explanation of why I loved that character so much). 

Good couple chemistry

I suspect most people (including myself) watch dramas like General's Lady to enjoy the couple chemistry of good looking leads in a familiar setting.  On this aspect, General's Lady delivers the goods.  Tang Min and Wu Xi Ze look very good together and share a playful chemistry on screen, as well as many, many, high sugar sweet moments together:  

Plot 

Cao Jun Xiang  as Chu Xiu Yuan

The plot is fairly straightforward - Shen Jin and General Chu Xiu Ming fall in love rather quickly and thereafter the script throws in some unnecessary angst because the General decides he needs to divorce his Jin'er (for the rather stupid reason that he is afraid she will get hurt if he falls in battle).  She is (understandably) irate at this and shows up, with her childhood buddy Xiao Su in tow as an Inspector of the troops from the emperor.  The General gets madly jealous and more bickering ensues before misunderstandings are cleared up (Xiao Su is actually in love with Ruo Ruo).  The drama than follows General Chu Xiu Ming as he sets out to investigate the deaths of his Aunt and her husband, the 8th Crown Prince, who are parents to his second-in-command Chu Xiu Yuan (his cousin, whom he calls his younger brother).  

There is no annoying "other man" or "other woman" after the leads' affections, so the drama gives us a lot of slice of life moments including moments of somewhat unreasonable jealousy from Shen Jin and other petty day to day misunderstandings between husband and wife, which unnecessarily drag out the middle episodes.  There are also many subplots in which basically all the other characters in the drama are paired off with their significant other.  The drama only picks up speed in the last few episodes after Shen Jin's evil half sister stupidly tells the emperor that it was actually she who was meant to marry the General, leading to the entire Shen household being imprisoned and thereafter to a prison break in from the General to rescue his Jin'er. A final showdown follows in which the villain behind the corruption and the murder of the General's Aunty (and the attempted murder of the 8th Crown Prince who survived) is revealed and put to justice.  Chu Xiu Yuan becomes emperor. And everyone (and I mean literally everyone) lives happily ever after...  

Plot twist...it's a script!

There is then a plot twist in the last minutes of the last episode - we find out that the entire drama is actually a screenplay for General's Lady written in modern times by 'Shen Jin' (played by Tang Min), who decides to name the General in the script 'Chu Xiu Ming' when a handsome young assistant to the Director with that name (played by Wu Xi Ze) walks in to shyly hurry the script along.   

Final thoughts 

🐼: If you want a light, fluffy, non-angsty romcom that you can watch without too much thinking, this one is for you.  The leads are good looking and their chemistry is cute. While General's Lady would probably have been better if it was some 5 episodes shorter, on the whole, it was an enjoyable watch.  

6/10 stars ✮✮✮✮✮✮