Monday, January 18, 2010

Together, we conquer


As promised, I will be posting drama reviews. However, I decided to expand it to include books, movies and other interesting stuff, so I will just categorize them under "Review Monday". Oh, and to add colour to the blog, I will be posting comic strips randomly, mostly to make my point. That's Leoj in the banner above.

I wanted to complete this review yesterday, but I did not have the time. I will now post, just in time for the last episode tonight at 9pm!

That's right. "Together" is the Channel 8 Year End Blockbuster 2009, running for 36 episodes at 9pm everyday from Monday to Friday. The story is setback to the 1967, right after the WWII ended. It mainly revolves around the lives of 6 friends who live together in a shophouse. The story reflects true events of the past, like the Robinson Fire and the shortage of rice at one point of time in history. $4 eye lash rental, 1967 Car Race etc. stuffs from the olden days that our seniors will remember. As the story progresses, the years increase rapidly and they slowly grow up, getting more involved in the world and relationships. The finale today will end in the 1900s where North Bridge Road will be demolished and they have a final reunion dinner at the shophouse.

This is not just a typical plot. There are not many times where shows are set in the olden days in recent years as usually these shows require more time to prepare and film due to the differences in the time period. Two good examples are 2008's Blockbuster "The Little Nyonya", which caused a sensation and a craze of the peranakan culture, and 2007's Blockbuster "The Golden Path", in which the first few episodes were set in 1980s. There is another one planned in 2011, where the blockbuster will be a musical ("A Song to Remember" - tentative title) and set in the 30s and 40s which 10 original soundtrack. (A chance that it might be filmed in China!) I love this genre of shows as the storyline is refreshing and the characters are interesting to watch. The actors fared well, up to expectation, since most of them are experienced. The bad guys were real bad, and the good guys were excellent. I actually liked the plot when it involved action where policemen were dragged in the scene, but they were slowly eliminated (corrupted) and the last one standing disappeared without a trace. Wrestling was also included as one of the major components of the show.

It would be better if more details were provided and explained in depth, as nearing the end of the show, there were alot of things unexplained, left for the watcher to guess and interpret. However, I have to admit that the linking of the story was amazing, and I hope that Mediacorp will produce more shows of this genre in the future.

Rating: 4.5/5

5 comments:

  1. Today is the last episode. Wonder what will happen... Yeah Leoj!

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  2. Nice debut post! Love the Review Monday. As for the show, I'm wondering whether the ending will be good or bad?

    Another thing is that you could try is to do episode by episode by reviews. Even though it might be time consuming, it will help increase viewer-ship of your blog.

    Keep up the gd work!

    Remember to look out for my post!

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  3. It was great. Happy ending. (:

    Thanks for your suggestion, although it feel that it would be boring if everyday you were to see an article of the same show over and over again. It would be great if I update after several episodes. This way, it will not be so time consuming and will be refreshing at the same time.

    Cheers!

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  4. Hey Yue Jun!

    Great blog post! I enjoyed reading through the whole post, I guess partly because of your good paragraphing and vivid and descriptive language. I agree with you that sometimes in the show, there is a lot of ambiguity, and we are left to figure out what has or is going to happen. (: The ending was nice though and although I must say I enjoyed the whole "Together" series generally, I feel that there were points of time where the show got a bit dull, probably because a single matter could be dragged for a whole episode. Whereas in other episodes, the whole story was sped up. What are your views? :D

    Mattheus

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  5. Mattheus, since you have mentioned it, you are right. 'Together' was initially planned to be aired in July-August, but was upped from a 20-episode drama to the 36-episode Year End Blockbuster. Since it is spanned over decades, from 1967-1990s, there most likely will be a jump in years. Fortunately, the drama does not just randomly jumps, but informs us through a quick newspaper scene or at the beginning of the episode with some sort of trailer.

    Do you still remember the episode jumps? xD It first jumped when Dehua killed Lucy (1968 to 1970s). Then it fast forwarded, whose scene ended that episode. The next one was at the start of the show, showing the announcement of the opening of the National Stadium (1970-1980s). The last one was when Yixin grew up and joined the anti-terrorist crew (1980-1990s). It's great that they actually made the effort to change their hairstyles to make them look older as the story advanced.

    The last episode was pretty much sped up, where slower viewers would not be able to pick up certain facts in the last 5-10 minutes. We always look at the positive side of things, so it's good that the drama ended proper, unlike so many of the other dramas.

    Cheers!

    ReplyDelete