EPISODE 1

Ok. first impression of this mega production and mega hit.



The English title as in TITS is really vulgar though there are a lot of women in this series. The themesong sucks.



But the interesting thing is probably this series is one of the few (actually many nowadays) where every character probably below the age of 50 has an English/Christian name.



We have Samuel for Francis Ng, Zoe for Myolie Wu, Vincent for Joe Ma, Isabelle for Flora Chan, Philip for Sek Sau and I believe we have more to come. I saw the TMO special and there is even one group who calls themselve S4 after F4! That is funny and they consists of Sammul, Bosco, Ron and one more guy I could not recognise.



Back to the story first.



It started on a lame note, showing Belle looking for a certain doll and she having contact with a mysterious Mr x I think who was Sam, but they never knew each other. In just a few minutes, I knew Sam is the serious thoughtful guy who avoids confrontation, Vincent the flirtatious and playful kind who is never serious about anything, Zoe the young girl whilst Belle the young girl at heart who believes in romance and fated love. Louisa's character is her best friend cum room mate whilst Sam and Vincent are both best of friends. Sam's mother (actress not known, but watching the TMO, I know it is Mary Hon and Ron plays his brother) ran away many years ago and Sam wants to find her. He has a very rocky relationship with the embarassingly too-young-to-be-Francis'-father Sek Sau as Phillip, the flirtatious one. Vincent has a better relationship with Phillip than Sam with Phillip.



Then we see the function of the pilot, co-pilot, that guy behind the pilot and co-pilot, the cabin crew and of course the ground crew.



Sam and Vincent are the pilots, highly succcessful, fairly good looking and seems to love to talk more than anything else. Flora as Belle represents the cabin crew flanked by Louisa So (who looks mighty pretty in here) whose character's name I have yet to know. There is the cabin crew also. There was some drama in the sense of Myolie as Zoe as one of the passenger who suddenly had this appendicitis attack, and the plane (a very big jumbo type) was going through some turbulence and Sam came out to give Zoe, a very young girl in direct contrast to the much older Sam some pep talk. Of course she felt much better. And the plane landed safely.



Once on the ground, the cabin crew headed by Belle saw a man who had been waiting for his girlfriend, played by the very beautiful but often so underused and underexposed Akina Hong who came to him and returned to his side. The crew of course rejoiced. This entire scene served only one purpose; to show how involved the cabin crew were (as in airport staff) towards their customers' welfare. In other words, pure KPCs.



Then the series shifted to Sam having several chance meeting with Belle, Sam thinking Belle was Donna and Belle thinking Sam was Vincent. Time and time again they met and they felt a strong attraction, but it was Belle who made the move whilst Sam stoob by waiting.



That was it. Tomorrow's episode we see Belle having some sexual relations with Sam and then Vincent introducing Belle as his girlfriend, creating a very ackward moment. I already knew Belle will marry Vincent by the way.



The entire first episode reminded me of Golden Faith's first episode, beautiful sceneries (in fact a great travelogue-and some people are just so rich), foreigners who can act very well and some hot romance that is really not my cup of tea. It came across as empty and souless. Perhaps just the 1st episode syndrome.



Performance wise, Francis looked every inch a pilot but his hair...his hair...hair..hair...speechless. What is going through the stylist's mind? Anyway Francis gave a credible performance but not great for a man his standard. He struggled with scenes where he had to speak English and he looked often time bored, like he was sleep walking, wasn't too into his role.



Joe Ma gave the usual performance where he is more excited about his performance than I am about his performance. He is considered the 2nd lead but this series had loads of leads so Joe Ma may be playing a secondary character. I find his performance lacking in charisma. He is tall, he is good looking, he looks good in uniform but I want to sleep when I saw him on screen.



Flora is again in a character that I could not see her in. She is the essentially optimistic and hopeless romantic. But her flirtatious scenes with Francis came across as highly impossible, very forced and not an ounce of romance. This is because Flora looks to serious and too so not lady like to play a very girly girl. Her character is similar with Myolie's character but Belle is a young girl at heart whilst Zoe is a young girl. I honestly do think Charmaine Sheh should have been Belle because Charmaine gives me an impression she will pursue love if given the chance; and she looks soft and feminine. Flora looks forced and ultimately old. I don't like her.



Myolie is probably the saving grace in this 1st episode but her scenes were few but she set up her character quickly; friendly, young and full of energy, I feel myself waking up upon seeing her.



But chemistry wise I must agree that Flora shares a good chemistry with Francis whilst Myolie too shares that chemistry but too early to tell. I really look forward to the plot about Francis and Myolie's love affair and also Michelle Ye's plot about being a pilot. That may be more exciting than Flora and Joe's plot. I also look forward to the training scenes.



My sincere condolence to Sek Sau having to play Francis' father, very very unbelievable as much as Flora being a young girl at heart with nothing much romance in her brain.



Now, I am not impressed with this 1st episode, truth be told.



When watching the TMO, TVB said this was the first pilot themed series, with big budget and sponsorship thanks to Cathay Pacific (they renamed the fictional airline as Solar Airlines) and having unprecedented access to training at Australia and access to forbidden sections of the HK Chep Lap Kok airport (I think that's the name and how you spell it). They even used computer graphics to show the flight scenes and landing scenes.



I wasn't the least impressed with the computer graphics; they looked lifeless, unreal and cheap. The airport was impressive though. The so called pilot themed series is a sham. They can show a series about golf players and still golf is secondary, love is first. I am bored with all these love stories with beautiful sceneries as backdrop. Maybe TVB should have written a better 1st episode but from the way the story goes, I have no doubt the story will slowly shift from the airport to the comfortable houses of the characters when they are done introducing the airport and the people in it.



And talking about the ground crew, they seemed to walk around with a walkie talkie in very stewardess like uniform and having friendly banters with one another and walking around some more and then stand in group feeling happy for their customers' happy ending. But are they doing real work? Nope, they are all KPCs.



But no amount of monet or technology can ever save this 1st episode from early doom thanks to the horrendous English speaking abilities of two main actors; Francis and Joe. I couldn't decided who was worst at first but within seconds I got my answer.



Francis was struggling with his English, he was speaking so called Han Yu Pin Yin English, you know what I mean, very textbook, heavy with accent but you could understand him after a while but not much. And this guy is supposed to play a highly educated pilot and his English was suffering to my ears.



The worst, the absolute worst had to be Joe Ma. My reaction when he was speaking English was ... "What did he just say?" and this sentiment was the same one uttered by my nephew like .."Ahhh what did he just sayyyyy?". If you listen carefully, he wasn't speaking English. He was speaking gibberish giving it the tone of an accent but he was saying zero. Whenever he opened his mouth I couldn't understand a single word. Very embarrasing and humiliating for this actor. So much so I had to on the Malay subtitles just to read what he just said!



With all the money in the production, the training and all, TVB should have given Joe Ma a short but effective course in pronouncing the words right. I watched Lagaan and the British actors did a far more convincing job at speaking Hindi in the entire movie than Joe speaking English in a few seconds. It was a horrible moment for me but no love lost because I didn't really like Joe anyway. I mean I like him as a person, but not as an actor. Now never a linguist in the English language.



Why wasn't Bowie offered a role? He could speak English. Even Wong He could speak decent English.



Now in this series we have "I in control", "Zo-yee, Zo-e, Zho-yi" and of course I suspect Kenix's most famous line, "KREAR!" (as in clear) can be heard in here as well.



But it was such a horrible moment that was the most memorable. The entire episode 1 was not memorable except for the sceneries and hearing Joe Ma pretending to speak English.



Do I look forward to tomorrow? Not really but for Myolie, I will stick around longer. But as first impression goes, I would think episode 1 is an expensive flop.



Pleaseeeeee...no more Joe Ma speaking English!



P/s :I will definitely miss some episodes in a week, such as Tuesday and Wednesdays so you might some of my episodic thoughts missing.