Reel Tastes & Travels – a light dose of entertainment to wake you up

For a pair of episodes where so many key events happen, this felt curiously like filler. It opens promisingly, with Zhi and Chong finally taking a big step forward. Stuck overnight in the yurt, Chong  fully opens up to Zhi about his sister’s accident and his own complicated feelings of guilt for introducing her to the sport. Now is that guilt justified? Of course not. First of all, even if that were true, he was in no way responsible for her accident. Secondly, it sounds like his parents were semi-professionals themselves and so it seems inevitable that both of them would have been exposed to winter sports at an early age. But guilt is not subject to reason and once that seed of self-blame worms it’s way in, it is exceedingly difficult to uproot. It does provide some more context for why Chong pushed himself so hard leading to his own accident. It’s not just love for his sister but wanting to make amends for his perceived role in her loss. 

It appears that Chong has been keeping these feelings tightly coiled up inside so the very act of opening up and sharing it with Zhi might be what’s needed to help him start healing and moving forward. Of course, it also helps that he is able to follow through on his original plan and officially ask Zhi out in a super romantic spot (with attached myths of enduring love to further add to the romance). And of course Zhi says yes. So finally, after half a season of build up and flirting and almost, but not quite behaving like a couple, they are finally official. And it is the perfect culmination of the buildup between them. 

However, after that it seems like a lot of open plot lines are resolved remarkably quickly. Yiming, who has spent all the time since his introduction relentlessly pursuing Zhi gets just a few agonized expressions after realizing he’s lost out to Chong. And then he turns around almost immediately and in a heart to heart with Chong, declares that going forward he will only view Zhi as a sister. He has generally come across as a nice guy (if a bit clueless and blinkered about social cues) so it’s not too surprising that he is being supportive of Zhi. But given he’s pined after her since childhood, it seems dismissive to have him just switch off his feelings like that. 

In a similar vein, after talking to Zhi, Chong decides to go back to competitive snowboarding. It was always clear that his love for the sport had never dimmed, but I got the impression that a major part of his reason for quitting was to spare his parents additional worry. You could argue it was also the guilt from his sister’s accident but since his accident happened afterwards, that was clearly not the main driver. So it would have been nice to see some conversations with his family leading up to this. Perhaps it will still happen in future episodes but given how close they seemed, I would have guessed he would clear the air with them first before announcing his comeback to the coach. Anyhow… His one condition is that he needs a year to earn enough to get prosthetics for his sister. But here too, Yiming speedily steps in and offers his help to hasten things along. 

It all feels a bit rushed and it’s a bit hard to believe that we are only halfway through the series when most of the storylines set up in the first half are seemingly resolved or en route to a speedy resolution. 

Stray Musings

• My heart breaks (I kid!) but after my excitement at Zhi finally calling Chong by his name, she’s gone right back to calling him Master despite the change in their relationship status