Eternal Love of Dream – Unhelpful Recap (1 – 5)

It just came to my attention lately that we have not made fun of Donghua enough, mainly due to the fact that he is such a cool/detached/duty-driven character in Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms, shaken only by a short arc of romance that he ultimately overcomes.

But now that Donghua and Fengjiu have their own drama, we are curious as to how long Donghua can maintain his cool, how well he does compared to the other male leads of his type: Yehua, Bai Zihua, Yuwen Yue, Jiuchen, etc, and how long Fengjiu can put up with him before he gets the boot.

Reviews about Eternal Love of Dream seems to be mixed and 58 episodes are a lot to go through, but a look back at the first few episodes told me there will be A LOT to talk about.

ABOUT THESE RECAPS

Like the title indicates, these recaps are not meant to report in detail the events in the drama, but to comment on whatever we find… erm… notable. You will likely care about these recaps more if you have seen the drama yourselves.

I will also not comment too much on the acting unless there is something out of the ordinary.

The First Impression post on this drama is here.

LET’S SKIP THE INTRODUCTIONS AND GET TO IT

Fengjiu — the young princess of the Fox clan — is lovable and extremely spoiled.

One day, for no particular reason, she is hurled into the Demon Land by a strange wind, ends up being chased by a badly CGI tiger and getting saved by the guy who we all know will make her suffer for the rest of the drama — Donghua, aka an ultimate god with white hair and black eyebrows.

Afterwards, Fengjiu flies back home and starts questioning her family friend, Zheyan, about this mysterious white-haired god.

I already said it in the First Impression post, but it will not hurt to repeat that even though Baron Chen has his own charm, the Zheyan that he gives us is overly theatrically… weird and not at all the lovable character we see in Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms.

About Donghua: He is an enlightened immortal (yes, they’re all enlightened until they meet that one special woman). In the very first scene where he appears, he happens to be patiently fishing; but inside, he’s planning the next prank on some unfortunate Celestial victim.

Well, at least the guy has SOMETHING he wants to do, and that’s progress enough already.

Entranced by her savior and probably curious about his choice of clothing color, Fengjiu asks Si-Ming, her old friend and also Donghua’s assistant, to arrange for her to be a Heavenly maid in order to find a way to repay Donghua’s kindness. Uh-huh.

Unfortunately, a princess from the Heavens already has her eyes set on Donghua. This princess is far from kind and already she is starting to feel like Fengjiu is a thorn at her side.Just a little basic information: this princess is not just evil, she is one-dimensional evil. I’m talking about being unbelievably obsessed with Donghua, spending all her time to get his favorite snack right, pushing Fengjiu down a lake and leaving her there for fun, etc.

Back to the show. There is one scene where a fellow maid smears some mud on Fengjiu’s face, which, I guess, is to make her beauty look less noticeable. Girl… you’ve got to try harder if you want to make Dilraba NOT beautiful.

Further in, we find that Donghua is a terrible cook, but he takes pleasure in making innocent people try his killer food.

Fengjiu, though, is seen to cook as a hobby; and she does it very well. So please start dating Donghua soon and keep your man in check, Fengjiu.

It is said that Donghua is set to marry a Princess Jiheng from the Demon Land, but a Demon Lord named Yan Zhiwu wants Donghua to leave her alone, so he keeps coming to the Sky Kingdom to challenge Donghua to a duel but ends up being tricked into doing servant chores by the latter.

Out of ideas, Yan Zhiwu decides to steal a valuable magic Jade to lure Donghua out to play.

As Donghua heads off to retrieve this treasure, Si-Ming thinks of a genius idea: letting Fengjiu follow Donghua so she can help him and repay her debt. And by that, they mean this:

Due to a struggle with another Demon guy, Donghua is trapped inside a Demon dome and there he meets Princess Jiheng.

At the moment, she seems… nice, and she takes a liking to the fox form of Fengjiu.

After having made everyone believe that they had no way out, Donghua simply pulls out his legendary sword and smashes his way out of the dome.

And I’m pretty sure Vengo Gao looks fine here, but costume designers — WHAT ARE YOU MAKING HIM WEAR?

Next, during a trip to gather some magic bee honey (or something like that), Donghua runs into Princess Ji Heng and her father, who has been injured while trying to save her and her friend’s life. Don’t ask me to explain the whole story.

Before he dies, Jiheng’s father asks Donghua to “take care” of Jiheng. Of course, in C-dramas, this job has a variety of meanings — be a friend to her, adopt her, marry her, etc. And male leads would usually agree to the request to “take care” of a woman without asking the guy who made that request what he really meant.

In Donghua’s case, though, he is about to marry Princess Jiheng, so it doesn’t matter, I guess.

Fengjiu, on the other hand, is still hiding in her fox form so she can be near Donghua and enjoy endless services at no charge.