TVB Ghost of Relativity Review (鬼同你OT)

Review:

Genre: Modern supernatural romance comedy. (I guess what made this series different from other comedies was the fact that this was supernatural and revolved around the idea of the inexplicable - the world of ghosts in a funny sort of way.) 

Casts: Moses Chan, Kristal Tin, Nancy Wu, Eddie Kwan, Pierre No, Vivien Yeo, Ram Chiang, Mimi Chu, Wai Lee, Celine Ma, C-Kwan, Anthony Ho, Alan Wan, Zoie Tam, Lee Yee-man, Carat Cheung and more. 

Number of episodes: 28 (This series should of stopped at episode 15 or even earlier). 

This series revolves around the character of May who first works in an architect firm as a receptionist but within a day she becomes fired for supposedly ruining the building model that collapses during a presentation pitch for an international award. May leaves after she becomes fired but then she realises that her bag and phone got mixed with Gin's. Gin eventually gets electrocuted by May's dodgy phone and she dies. One year later May collects the dodgy phone from the police station that was used as evidence and she gets the shock that Gin is an electromagnetic wave inside her phone. In a period of three months, both May and Gin work together as the administrative manager back at the architect firm to help Michael with his "a tilted building that shall never fall" project. 

What can I say about this series? It was quirky, funny and light-hearted. In many ways this series was spot on with a few of the hilariously funny gags that they had. One classic scene was when May was applying for an administrative manager position but the application form was in English. Gin grabbed May's hand and filled in the rest of the application form for her. The two workers who were observing May filling in the application form were of course aghast at how May could quickly write the application form but without looking at the form (because Gin was the one filling it in). 

First I found the name of this series to be ok, both the English and Chinese title. The Chinese title basically means, "Who the heck would work overtime with you?" and can also mean "Ghost working overtime with you" which made sense. In particular, I liked the theme song that gave a happy and enjoyable feel. 

Performances alone, there were a few that shined in this series and made it at times very enjoyable to watch. First and foremost, I would say this series is one of Kristal Tin's career-defining roles. She mastered the role of May (a.k.a Suen Suk Mui) by bringing it to life. May was cute, childish and courageous and Kristal showed all of that. She impressed me in those moments where Gin was possessing her body, and every body movement and her tone of voice mimicked Gin well, so kudos to Kristal. I suppose her weaker moments was towards the end of the series where she had to try and explain to Michael that she truly likes him and that she wasn't a traitor or anything. I have a problem with this character though, May didn't convince me that she was in love with Michael. For the majority of the series she was treating Michael as a baby and would go off her own business without caring for Michael if it wasn't for Gin nagging her to help out. Just because they kissed (Gin was the one who started the kiss), had some nice time together and overtimed together (Gin was the one who made her), I couldn't see how they would develop love for one another. It seemed much more of a friendship or sibling relationship and nothing more. I blame the script in that sense rather than Kristal.  

In the end Kristal Tin married with Michael and they had a daughter (I'll tell you about the daughter later on). I kind of cringed at this ending because May and Michael never should have been in a love relationship in the first place and five years later they are married. Why?!?

Nancy Wu as Gin (a.k.a Keung Yung) on the other hand did a nice job as well. I could connect with Gin in this series and her emotions of feeling quite helpless with the limitations of being a ghost. Keung Yung is a frustrated, sensitive and jealous type of woman and Nancy Wu did a very nice job justifying why she is what she is. I did eventually get annoyed at Gin for being too unreasonable and demanding at May at times but she was dependent on May. After all she had an innocent death (to be blamed on May, Tinman and Brian) and as an electromagnetic wave she had to rely on May for everything. Everything that she once had; being an administrative manager with $8,000HKD income per month, expensive clothes and being able to spend with her crush Michael all the time were all in the hands of May. Physically, Nancy Wu's rather petite and pale looking physique helps to make her look like a ghost/electromagnetic wave. In essence, Nancy displayed the right emotions and she excelled in those quiet moments where all she did was stare sadly.  Nancy made Gin a character that was easy for the audience to be sympathetic with.

In the end, Gin becomes May and Michael's daughter Sisi. This reminded me of the ending of another ghost series by TVB but can't remember what series it was. It would be quite weird for Gin to be Michael's daughter. Quirky ending but I'm ok with that. 

Moses Chan however had a limited role as Michael. First of all he was stiff in every sense, he muttered his words and he tried to act shy but for some reason it didn't look much convincing at all. That is maybe because Moses Chan was a miscast in the first place and his role could be replaced by anyone. For instance I would say Roger Kwok would did very well in this role as he can be funny and yet at the same time innocent looking and funny. At some times Moses very competent in the delivery of some scenes that required him to be funny and he would go high pitch but most of the time he was hardly natural.

5 years later Michael was a successful architect and he married to May. No comment.

Pierre Ngo these days always gives me the dejavu of his previous roles - such as Bit man from "Rosy Business". In here his role is different but his characterisation and mannerisms all resemble his previous roles. For me Pierre Ngo was never a versatile actor (except he can do the other extreme as an innocent boy in "No Regrets"). In this series his character as "Charlie" didn't have much impact on the series besides his so-called master plan to steal the building sketches and sell them off for a profit, though I must say he got $100 million from that so his plan did work but only for the cheque to be taken by Hugo.

Charlie, Manager Ley and Hugo all ended up in jail. For how long I don't know but seems like Manager Ley got less than 5 years because he was soon to be released. Good ending for them.

Eddie Kwan as Hugo on the other hand was ok. I mean he didn't really make me laugh but he was quirky enough for this series. In this series he acts as the head manager who is posh and values high quality, but commits acts of low quality by rushing Michael's "The tilted building that shall never fall" project. In that aspect he was stupid because why not make sure all the calculations are correct? After all even if Michael was the one responsible for the building measurements to be right he was ultimately the head manager and he was nevertheless responsible for overseeing the project. Very dumb I say.

Vivien Yeo as Lolita deserves a mention in this series. I do believe Vivien went everything for this role. She made Lolita such as an ugly, cheap and seductive lady that was intriguing. Vivien's Cantonese has yet to become fluent but her acting was decent and I do think she improved. So good job.

Michael's three assistants; Anthony Ho as (Keung Chung), C-Kwan (a Mo) and Alan Wan (Manhattan) were quite funny in this series as the fat, short and stupid. They all had comedic timing and their delivery of the gags and puns made this series very enjoyable to watch so no complaints at all.

Charlie's three angels (Charlie's angels); Zoie Tam (Annie), Lee Yee-man (Angie) and Carat Cheung (Anna) were all ok in this series, except they didn't quite have the comedic timing like Michael's three architect assistants for some reason. I guess all three of them have room for improvement.

Funnily enough, all three of them were in a relationship with the three architect assistants at the end. A rather preposterous ending because I don't see how the three angels who were all materialistic would like the three architect assistants and how the three architect assistants would fall in love with them again after being cheated on and humiliated.

Mimi Chu as Sau-yuk gu and Wai Lee as Brian were competent as veterans in this series. I found Brian to be a rather disgusting character who would want to sell off his daughter's place and forced his son to pay rent and never really taking care of the two of them before. Sau-yuk gu had more of a conscience problem where she conned people with her false methods to identify and negotiate with ghosts. In the end, Sau-yuk gu and Brian got together and I am satisfied with this ending.

The other additions to the veterans in this story were Maggie Yu as Hong Wai and Raymond Chiu as Chuk long. Sorry but Maggie Yu was hardly funny in this comedy and Raymond did an ok job as a dodgy person who appears from everywhere, as a dodgy boyfriend, taxi driver and then a security guard. In the end the two weren't together anymore. Hong Wai was a street cleaner and Chuk long landed in jail again. Nice endings for both of them.

The later additions to this series was Ram Chiang who I had long anticipated to appear in this series and he did a nice job as I.T man. Ram Chiang was convincing as geeky and clever and he made an impact to this series as one of the few characters in the series who had integrity in his work. In a limited amount of time Ram managed to bring life to this character so kudos to him.

This is what I call a quirky and funny ending. I.T man ended up being with Lolita and I.T man drove off with Lolita in a motorcycle. Made sense because Lolita has an unusual taste and I.T man is an unusual man.

Last and not the least, we have Kong Wing-fai and Celine Ma as basically the human resources managers in the series. I found them to fit in their respective roles very well and they worked well in a comedy with facial expressions that were funny and enjoyable to watch. Nice job to both of them.
In the end Manager Ley got out of jail and worked back at GSZ Architect Firm as a servant holding drinks for everyone and my thoughts are that he was with Mei-ching (Celina Ma). Nice ending for both of them. A pity about Celine Ma as I would have wanted scriptwriters to develop her character more since she seems to be a rather intriguing character.

What made this series very entertaining to watch was the ghost or electromagnetic wave aspect of the story. We as viewers could see Gin but the characters in the story couldn't. I could buy the theory about the electromagnetic waves and the fact that they tried to explain why only May could see Gin and other miracles made enough sense for me. Take out May and Gin in the story and the whole story would be empty. The gags, puns and delivery of the lines worked very well when it was appropriate.

I was also quite impressed with the CGI used. I assume it must have taken them quite a while to shot different shots for just a scene (like when we see May with Gin and then just May by herself to indicate that she is a ghost). I found it quite subtle and nice attention to detail by the producers. The special effects also were nicely used and didn't look over-the-top at all. While I praise TVB for this just wait until I see Captain of Destiny...

The problem of this series however falls on the silly and less funny backstories. One backstory was Wai Lee as Brian (or Bing-yan) and the rivalry between Sau-yuk gu (portrayed by Mimi Chu) and Hong Wai (which sounds like bra). This backstory never interested me in the first place and I find Brian's sudden desire to be with Sau-yuk gu too contrived. The other backstory of Michael's assistants being seduced by Charlie's angels (that was a pun they made in the series) also dragged on for too long and I didn't care what happened later. These backstories acted more as a filler for the length of the drama and it didn't work well. Why can't TVB just trim down the length of this comedy to a neat 15 and it would of been tight and nice. Cut the silly love relationships, the silly backstories and the unnecessary characters and this would have been an excellent short series. Too bad that's not the case. 

Another regret about this series was that the story didn't revolve around architecture at all. I am currently enrolled in a course that broadly focuses on areas like architecture and I can tell you that all those calculations were more of an engineering duty rather than an architect's duty. The only time that I really heard them discuss anything about architecture was when Michael was thinking whether to place female toilets in the middle of the shopping mall or at the two ends. I was anticipating for them to work more on the design of their project, like what colour should the building be, how many people can it fit and etc but none of that. Rather disappointed at how poorly this series being set in an architect firm but the scriptwriters didn't bother to include anything about architecture. 

Another thing that made this series quite silly was how on earth was Michael the only architect in the whole architect firm? Surely there must have been many other architects working on their own different projects at the same time. The fact that the company solely relied on Michael's project for one year and three months was hard to believe. I know at the end of the day there's no need to be too serious in a comedy but don't you think it would have been much more interesting to have Michael with rival architects in the firm who were working on all these different and cool buildings and May helps Michael to fasten the process? 

Speaking about Michael, May and Gin, their love triangle was boring and poorly developed. I was rather surprised in one scene when the doctor asked "How are you related to May" and Michael replied, "She's my girlfriend". What? How? When? What? was what I was thinking. This series tried very hard to try and clarify that Michael's feelings towards May were because she was May and that they genuinely loved each other but I beg to differ. The producers of this show just shot themselves on the head during the scene where Michael said to May that he genuinely likes her not because she is Gin's replacement but because she is May. But soon after we were shown scenes of May starting to kiss Michael, which was when May was possessed by Gin, not when May was May!

One note about this series was that it was nicely received by the Hong Kong audience. My thoughts are that it wouldn't have been that well-received if Ada Choi was May instead. Apparently Ada Choi dropped this role because her religion meant she didn't believe in the ghosts ideology or something like that? My thought was that it was stupid because you're supposed to be acting a character not you and it's not in real life so why not? As an actress you are supposed to be exploring how to portray different types of roles in this role but nevertheless I would have preferred Kristal Tin in this role anyway. So good last minute 'find someone replacement' by the producers. 

Verdict: This quirky series rocked because of the funny gags and somehow the scriptwriters wanted to include a love triangle that dragged on and on. This is one of the better series from TVB this year but I will stop short of calling it a true classic or highly entertaining series but there were just simply too many flaws that made it hard for this series to redeem itself. Even with the renewed plot of a ghost and a mighty performance by Kristal Tin and a few others, it doesn't deserve much credit with its inconsistency in the plot, ignorance in what an architect does and the inevitable love triangle on what was incoherently presented to us. I do recommend you watch this series if you are prepared for some travesty halfway down.

P.S This was my one of my favourite scenes in this series that proved the great chemistry between May and Gin. I don't care how many takes it took but their movements were very similar and both Kristal and Nancy did an excellent job in this scene! Watch it!