"I bet you that if I lose a hundred pounds in three months, you have to stand up for me."

I never expected that I would burst into tears because of such a sentence.

Beginning in 2024, "If Running Is My Life" has indeed given a "good start". This "good start" is not the explosive audio-visual feast like "Flowers", with various record-breaking playback data, but a "good start". The script has achieved an "upgrade" in the creation of realistic works. In the author's opinion, the creation method of this series may bring new possibilities and long-term impact on future realistic creations.

Screenshot of "If Running Is My Life"

Once when I was chatting with friends in the film and television industry, a director came up with a term he coined: crawling realism to refer to certain realist works on the market.

The characteristics of this type of work are: no matter what social issues they talk about, they are actually just topics and no real observations. All presentations have a superficial sense of picking up second-hand information from the Internet, a kind of rushing to Douyin clips and Weibo. Deliberate sense of hot search; life can be cruel, but a "mom's boy" and a "brother-supporting devil" are enough references, and it must not be too cruel. Anyway, the final story must be "everyone makes dumplings together" ~".

In general, under the banner of realism, we live a fake life that is expected by the audience, and self-castrate before being censored by relevant departments and "calling the police" by netizens. Realism, but if you can’t straighten your back and stand up, isn’t that just “crawling”?

I’ve watched this type of work too much, and it’s really uncomfortable. I opened “If Running Is My Life” with the intention of complaining about it, but unexpectedly, I was pleasantly surprised by this work, which has no blockbuster features.

The story tells the story of dance teacher An An, who has a smooth life, but gets into a car accident on the day of his mother's 60th birthday, losing both his legs and his cousin. In an instant, two families in this family fall into despair. An An's mother and An An have to struggle to restart their lives. My brother's family is also in a quagmire of pain. The plot mainly revolves around two pairs of mothers and daughters: Anxin and Anxin's mother Zhao Xiufang, cousin Ruohua and Ruohua's mother Zhao Xiuli.

"If running is my life" stills

Let’s talk about the line of peace of mind first. The difficulty in shaping the character of An Xin is more due to the dual changes in the external environment and inner mentality after becoming disabled. If these changes are not done well, they will lead to cruelty and sentimentality. For example, a cheating and divorced husband can easily become a labeled scumbag, and a peaceful state can easily turn him into Lu Ping in "Yilian Youmeng"... ..

However, "If Running Is My Life" presents the details of An Xin's life after becoming disabled in a very realistic and cruel way, such as the physiological nausea and vomiting when her husband changed the dressing on her legs, and the verbal insistence on leaving her but looking for other people. The reason is nothing more than married life, asking others how to get rid of the strange smell that cannot be dissipated from home... These details are chilling and even make the viewer uncomfortable, but they are a very accurate representation of An Xin's situation.

Zhong Chuxi as Cheng Anxin

What is particularly touching is the role of Zhao Xiufang. Xu Di once played Xue Zhenzhu in "The First Half of My Life". This time she plays Zhao Xiufang, and she interprets a mother who faces a sudden and severe trauma very penetratingly.

After learning that An Xin had lost her legs, Zhao Xiufang did not immediately switch to the heroic mother state of "being strong as a mother". She immediately ran away. She cried and repeatedly said "I can't do it" and "I can't hold her". That scene shocked the audience. In the face of disaster, the first reaction is fear and avoidance, and then facing it. The portrayal of this mother at this moment is very real, and she does not avoid the psychological struggle of ordinary people for the sake of the lofty greatness of motherhood. It is precisely because of the struggle and fear in the face of difficulties that Zhao Xiufang's subsequent strength is even more touching.

Xu Di as Zhao Xiufang

But the relationship between mother and daughter provides a lot of positive emotional value to the audience. Although the two bickered constantly before An Xin's car accident, their relationship was solid and they cherished each other. After the car accident, An An's brief breakdown and blaming her mother, The sentence "I thought I could take care of you in your old age" makes people burst into tears.

The mother and daughter Zhao Xiuli and Ruohua are a group of characters that are suffocating and provide space for discussion.

Zhao Xiuli is a typical mother who favors sons over daughters, but she was not so evil before her son died in a car accident. After her husband died, she regarded her son as her hope for the future and devoted all her efforts in cultivating him without slacking off for a moment, while her daughter was pampered. Even though her daughter was admitted to a good university, she basically said a few perfunctory words and had no expectations.

Her maternal love is not pure, but involves emotional investment. I said her preference for boys over girls is not so evil because her thoughts are very typical. It's not that she has no feelings for her daughter, but that she has "different expectations". Her son must strive for success, be motivated and go all out, and her daughter must be well-behaved, sensible, and marry a good man. She implements her different expectations on her two children, and it becomes A very typical "I'm here for you" mother. This "expectation" caused the two children to have different psychological dilemmas: one had suicidal thoughts under the pressure, and the other was so neglected that he wanted his mother's love no matter what.

Chen Xiaoyi as Zhao Xiuli

After the death of her son, Zhao Xiuli fell into darkness for a time. It was her daughter who woke her up with her words: "Am I not your child?" Unexpectedly, after that, Zhao Xiuli devoted all her care to her daughter, controlling and suppressing her in the name of love. The tragedy continued to develop and the conflicts continued to escalate.

This character setting and the handling of the relationship between the characters are also realistic enough: a person's personality, thoughts and behavior cannot be changed by a few words in a crying scene, that is a TV series. After hugging each other and crying, the problems between mother and daughter still exist, or even get worse. This is life.

Yang Chaoyue as Chen Ruohua

There is also the most discussed affair of An Xin’s ex-husband Qin Feng. Many topics focus on the age and appearance of the mistress. “I have never seen an old and ugly mistress” has become a hot topic. But in my opinion, this setting is also very real. In reality, when listening to other people’s gossip, you often hear comments such as “not as good as the original wife”, right?

Moreover, the focus of this plot should not be on the appearance of the mistress, but on Qin Feng's cheating mentality. The social topics and complexity of human nature that his derailment dramas can carry are higher than those in ordinary TV dramas. In the presentation of many domestic dramas, "Why are scumbag men and scumbag women scumbag?" usually does not require external reasons. He must be a scumbag because he is morally corrupt and a born bad person. The complexity and changeability of human nature have almost no room in this "narrative of scumbag men and scumbag women".

But the reality is that "scum" is a state. "Scum" and constant "scum" do not conform to the complex laws of human nature. This does not mean that the prodigal son is more likely to come back for you, but that a person's different life stages and aspects There will be different appearances for different relationships and people. The complicated thing about Qin Feng is that he is both hateful and pitiful, and there are moments when viewers occasionally need to look directly into the deepest parts of their hearts. In the same way, Ruohua's ex-boyfriend and almost-marriage partner also have complicated faces.

Song Yang plays Qin Feng

The play has recently been ridiculed as a "crazy drama". In fact, it is very real (except for Zhao Xiuli getting married for her daughter, which is really "crazy"). People think it is crazy, mostly because it points out the absurdities in life. Cruel moments, complex and ambiguous choices, the courage to tear off the fig leaf that many "realists" dare not tear off, present the truth that everyone avoids to the audience, and provide an open understanding.

For example, a small plot that impressed me deeply was An An's car accident. The dance school organized condolences and crowdfunding to buy gifts. Lin Tianyu said bluntly, "Everyone pooled 50 yuan to buy her flowers, so she could stand up? She needs you." This flower? Do you need a few words of chicken soup?" At this time, the colleague's reaction was very interesting. The colleague said, "What you said is that there are people without legs in the world, and those of us with legs shouldn't be alive?" This was not true. Wrong, but it also reflects the true mentality of colleagues: sympathy, but not much, and it is impossible for anyone to really think about what An Xin really needs at the moment and what she should do in the future. You say the kindness of your colleagues is fake and unfair, but is this kindness cheap? From a peace of mind perspective, it’s really hard to say. These details that make people feel mixed emotions, within the character relationships and storyline of "Epidemic", make people face up to certain possibilities in life.

Finally, I want to praise the performance. I really didn’t expect that after Zhong Chuxi and Yang Chaoyue each contributed a drama in 2023, the two young actors could contribute a good performance for the same age group, especially Zhong Chuxi, which is really good, peace of mind Isn't this kind of character more sophisticated and charming than Mr. Qian Jinba?

If the two young actresses are "good", then the two teachers, Chen Xiaoyi and Xu Di, really support the core of the drama, integrating all the strong settings and several pulls of the most important mother-daughter relationship between the two groups. , turns, and developments are all interpreted very believably, and every scene with them is great to watch. Going back five years, can you imagine that in the Chinese TV drama market, two middle-aged and elderly women could appear in a good life drama? The good results of this drama are really a good sign.

"If running is my life" stills

In my opinion, "If Running Is My Life" is a real "heroine", because the life of a realistic heroine is to fall down, get up again, and live an ordinary life again, rather than being beaten by a man. The princess picked her up and played another copy of the counterattack against the richest man. The heroines in this drama fell in great pain and struggled to climb up. After they stood up again, they stood firm enough, which is rare enough.