‘A Journey to Love’: Episode 1 Run-down — Liu Shishi is the Kind of Spy We Need

EPISODE 1 RECAP

There was a war, the world burned, people died, etc, etc. The point is, the world is kind of, sort of taking a break from war now while all the players get their crap back together. Before another big conflict, I assume. Although, that doesn’t mean these kingdoms aren’t trying to stab each other in the back.

And in a world where every guy still wants every other guy to die and where diplomacy is only an act, we have spies and assassins. Our leading girl — Ren Ruyi (Liu Shishi) — is one of those.

Currently, she is acting as part of a dance group and has infiltrated a house of nobles on a mission. Today is some kind of celebration so the girls put on a show. One guy keeps making smoochy faces at Ruyi, not knowing she’s completely out of his league.

But in the middle of the performance, in strides a man who looks like he’s trying to win the Chaotic Idiot award or something: he starts slamming tables and throwing tantrums about how the lyrics of the song being sung are disrespectful and dangerous.

If he becomes important in later episodes, I will take note of it. For now, I won’t bother you with his name.

Then, out of the blue, he declares that there are assassins among these female dancers and orders them to be dragged out and executed. Right, cause assassins usually advertise the details of their job through songs.

But anyway, he happens to be right. There are some imposters in this group of dancers, Ruyi is one of them.

The men who carry out this order are as ridiculous as their boss and it seems like they just want to kill these poor girls without proper investigation. They stab the girls and then just… like, throw the bodies into the pond nearby? I mean… aren’t you guests in this manor or something? Unnecessary savagery aside, why are you doing this to your host?

Anyway, when it looks like the situation is hopeless and no one is going to help them, Ruyi has no choice but to reveal her identity. And by that, I mean she grabs a guard from behind, chokes him with a metal chain, and moves on to knock the other guards dead. All in one brief minute. A pretty good introduction, if I’m honest here.

And the men inside must be secretly rooting for these girls to win or something because none of them get out there to help the soldiers who are pretty much being slaughtered by Ruyi despite all the shouting.

Ruyi then escapes with another girl who is also from the same spy institution as her and they plan to meet once more before saying goodbye.

Moving on to the palace. A prince/lord is pressured by the imperial court to assume the throne because the current emperor is MIA. But the emperor’s wife says no way. She is with child and that child should have the right to the throne, not some confused-looking lord. She probably means that SHE wants to be in charge in the baby’s name.

But it seems the lord is not as confused as he looks, because he challenges the empress: well how do you know it’s gonna be a boy? Good point.

The court is dismissed without a resolution that day.

We see Idiotic General again later. This time, he is scolded by his uncle who is also a court official: something to do with the missing emperor. Yeah, he was probably so useless that he lost the poor emperor to the enemy.

After the uncle is done, Idiotic General does the only thing he knows how: giving the hard work to his subordinate. Hah.

Somewhere on a battlefield, a military captain — aka male lead — decides that he’s had enough of war and orders and would like to embrace a new life from now on. I hope that doesn’t mean the end of his fighting scenes cause those were pretty cool.

COMMENTS

If you are confused by episode 1, don’t worry, you’re in the exact same place as most of the audience. But don’t get me wrong, it’s a good kind of confusing.

Journey to Love is a drama that deals with multiple kingdoms, institutions, and secretive characters with multiple motives; and for a first episode, it does fairly well to introduce all of that without overwhelming viewers.

Liu Shishi is an absolutely suitable choice to play a beautiful and seductive assassin. She has great postures, graceful movements, and her acting is low-key enjoyable. Keeping your neck and back straight at all times is very important, people, very important if you want the audience to believe that you’re a dancer who can knock someone out while dancing.

I can easily believe that she is a spy with experience on a deadly mission, much more than I could believe Esther Yu’s character in a similar drama that came out earlier this year.

I can’t say much about the male lead yet but from what is shown so far, he hasn’t done anything stupid or over-the-top, either; he also hasn’t descended from the sky to grab anyone (yet), and that’s a blessing already.

Jokes aside, I do think the lead couple have an interesting setup. There’s a lot to explore there if the characters remain consistent. There are certainly some elements about the “missions” featured that aren’t realistic and the combat sequences can be flashy at times, but I’m willing to overlook these flaws due to everything else that is good about the drama.