‘Dashing Youth’: First Impression — Slow Down, Please?

I get it, human attention span is shorter than goldfish’s nowadays — or so it has been claimed — but I don’t think speeding up your dramas and bombarding the audience with information is the answer here.

Dashing Youth has a set of potentially interesting characters; the cast consists of mostly new faces who are, all things considered, not bad. But the drama is also trying to do a lot; and in the effort to cram as much “uniqueness” into its plot, it creates more problems than uniqueness. It should be noted that these problems are not exclusive to this drama, but are seen in most Wuxia and historical romance dramas lately. Blood of Youth, Legend of Heroes, The Double, etc.

So, on the occasion of me lamenting what could have been a good first episode — let’s discuss the two glaring problems in Dashiong Youth that may or may not persist in later episodes.

CHARACTERS BEING INTRODUCED AT BREAKNECK SPEED

The story switches from one plot to the next, one character to the next, without much space in between for viewers to process what they are shown.

One minute, a man is brooding and doing a sword dance in the rain; the next, a restaurant owner is combatting unpleasant guests. Then more guests come, challenging him with one-liners that don’t mean much. Then, we’re back with the brooding man in the rain again. Behold, another man appears, teleporting, waving his umbrella around and threatening the brooding man. A fight breaks out; two CG animals battle in the sky. Should I pick a side?

The unfortunate thing is these characters genuinely seem like they have interesting backgrounds, but the narrative at this point refuses to let them have a chance to show that. Sure, not all characters need to spill out their melancholy backstory in the first episode, but at least the main character should present some appeal — something to tether the audience to the story while other characters slowly get explored — shouldn’t he? (she?)

Next, comes…

THE PROBLEM WITH DIALOGUE

Because every character must be introduced in the shortest time possible, we don’t get to see them interact with each others in a regular manner. Instead, we get conversations that try too hard to be sassy and memorable. And when every single conversation attempts to be this way, none of them are memorable.

Take the incidents at the restaurant, for example. In one day, three people barge in to pick fights with the owner. All three of them refuse to state their true intentions; all three of them refuse to leave peace alone; and all three of them spill out some convoluted comments at the end of each duel.

And the restaurant owner? He reacts to all three of them in the same manner: jokey and arrogant.

The Restaurant Owner’s assistant? Jokey and arrogant.

They don’t talk to each other like regular people do. Instead, they operate with the assumption that the audience is already one of them and understand all of their inside jokes.

In the end, even though I remember what each of them wears in these scenes, there isn’t much else that sticks. At one point, names also don’t matter much anymore because you just can’t tell one personality from another. And in their attempt to be unique and mysterious, these characters sometimes go out of their way to make a big deal out of things that aren’t mysteries to begin with.

At one point after the fight with the CG animals, Man Who Teleports pulls over Restaurant Owner and asks: what did you see?

What did I see? Well, you and your boyfriend lighted up the entire night sky, the giant holograms of your spirit animals were roaring and only short of kissing one another and now you’re asking people who were standing twenty feet away what they saw? I’m pretty sure you wanted to be seen.

Now, unless there’s a point to all this forced mysteriousness — in which case I will come back here and amend my comments — this kind of interaction lowers the stakes of the story and prevents me from taking any of these characters seriously.

BOTTOM LINE

Having seen the first few episodes, I’m still unable to decide whether this drama has potential or not. The best I can say is: the brooding man in the very beginning has some intrigue. It may turn out to be a bad drama, it may be the best one you have seen yet, but we won’t have a chance to know unless it slows down and begins some proper storytelling instead of advertising loudly that it has a story to tell.

Just slow down, drama. If people are not paying attention, you can’t make them pay attention by lowering the quality of your art and ushering them through it faster.