Déjà Vu (回到愛以前) Finale: Rehash, Rant, Recoil

Okay, so I really wanted to tuck this drama into the deepest, darkest recesses of my heart and just forget that I ever wasted 33 hours on this draggy-laggy 22-episode drama. At this point I am no longer disappointed or angry; I am flat-out traumatized—so, so traumatized by this piece of turd that I will probably never watch dramas again. (I’m kidding. But still.) I think this drama’s ending put me through the five stages of grief, which I will outline below.

1. Denial
“There is no way you just did that. NO FREAKING WAY.”

2. Anger
“Damn writer, just die already.”

3. Bargaining
“Or fix the ending. I’ll give you my peanut butter.”

4. Depression
“What, you don’t want my peanut butter? Okay… I’m gonna go sob in my emo corner now.”

5. Acceptance
Yeah, ain’t happenin’.

This drama is the epitome of mindflippin’ goo—that anyone can come up with this trainwreck is a feat in itself. I really wasn’t planning to write about this show anymore, but… that ending!!! I’m trying to forget this ever happened, but these search engine terms aren’t helping me any.

It’s ALL Déjà Vu!! *tears hair out* With the exception of a few others. The “you tried award” made me laugh… Someone actually got to my blog because of that? Hahahaha. Okay, I’m clearly out of it right now.

When Mandy Wei said in Episode 21’s BTS that the finale would be a shocker, I thought to myself, Well, that’s nice. I have a reason to watch the ending now, ’cause at least it’ll go out with a bang instead of a whimper.

But never did I imagine that this would happen. The world went out with a bang, indeed it did, but what kind of bang was that, you ask?

Spoilers from here on out!

Here’s the drama’s timeline of events in a nutshell:

• Xu Hailin (Mandy Wei) saves Lu Xiwei (Yao Yuanhao) from a fire. They fall in love; five years later, Xiwei proposes to the now-famous ballerina. On the way back from their trip, they get into a car accident. Xiwei dies, and Hailin loses her baby.
• Sacrificing her most important possession, Hailin travels five years back in time, during which she saves Xiwei again, except this time she leaves him lying on the ground instead of hopping into the ambulance with him. She loses her ability to dance ballet professionally—her most important possession—when a shard of glass pierces her ankle. She re-spends those five years alone, only to find out on their original engagement day that Xiwei’s engaged to her half-sister, Xu Youxi (Jenna Wang).
• After a roundabout, messy turn of events, Hailin and Xiwei are finally together again. They get into another car accident, and Hailin dies.
• In order to turn back the clock and save her life, Xiwei sacrifices his most important possession, which are Hailin’s memories of him.
• She’s wary of him because he’s a stranger, yet slowly but surely, they fall in love again.
• And that all leads to Episode 22.

Much of the finale is pretty cute, albeit straight-laced and by-the-book.

Xiwei gets into a coma after donating bone marrow to the leukemia-diagnosed Youxi.

While Xiwei is unconscious, Hailin reevaluates her decision to part with him and decides that she’ll be with him forever and ever and ever, regardless of the consequences fate will bring.

Xiwei wakes up, but not before receiving an ominous forewarning from the heavenly sage.

Then it’s all fine and dandy; Xiwei and Hailin are a sweet couple, weathering pedestrian problems like ordinary people do.

For once, Hailin wears the pants in the relationship and proposes to Xiwei like a boss, with a sparkly ring and dashing fireworks under the starry night sky.

On the day of their wedding, they sit in the backseat of a car as it cruises into a tunnel… and emerges toward the edge of a cliff.

And suddenly it’s six months later, a number of minutes before the drama ends.

Xiwei and Hailin are getting married, ‘cept… voilà!

Lu Xiwei has gray hair, and wrinkles at that.

He’s old.

Fang Qixiang (Nylon Chen) plays Exposition Fairy and narrates that this time, Lu Xiwei dealt with destiny once more by shaving twenty years off his youth to preserve his everlasting happiness with Hailin.

Three words: What. The. Cheesecake.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: The ending’s bananas. We get it. Build a bridge and get over it, aight?

Still, it’s not the ending per se that ticks me off, but what the ending says about the show as a whole. Essentially, the finale solidifies the idea that the sole purpose of this drama is to show how sh*tty of a fate our OTP has… but what’s the point of that? There is no lesson to be learned, no “moral of the story” to be imparted from such a meaningless conclusion. It’s anticlimactic because no genuine resolution is to be had, not when the show fails to properly address the issue our leads have been tackling all along.

What is it about Xiwei and Hailin that makes them so special as to be one-upped several times by the heavens and given multiple chances to reverse their destiny with individual, one-sided sacrifices? Why is it only these two people who have this ability? To have the best of workarounds, yet the worst of fates?

Surely, their adversity was short-lived? Uh, nope. This drama spans a whoppin’ 10+ years, even if the latter five years are merely the first five years, rewritten.

The show tries to convince us that our oppressed lovebirds have finally overcome fate, but I ain’t buyin’ it. Xiwei gives up twenty years of his youth merely to appease fate; it is still a loss, in spite of the so-called “gain.” Happiness isn’t a salary: Why do they need to earn their keep in the first place, when by comparison, it falls into everyone else’s lap with ease?

Is there any particular reason Xiwei and Hailin can’t have the simple and sweet romantic development that their respective sidekicks Zheng Yali (Edison Wang) and Liu Feifei (Seanna Chang) are blessed with? No, there isn’t. Not once does the drama ever manage to establish a reason for the “special treatment” our OTP receives.

But let’s tinker with a hypothetical. Let’s suppose that every person on Earth does have one opportunity to turn back time, provided he or she gives up his or her most important possession. Both Xiwei and Hailin have already used up their chances—yet at the very end, for some inexplicable reason, Xiwei is still able to bargain lavishly with the heavens.

And that highly improbable car accident? I’m at a loss for words. Pft, I’ve even lost track of the number of car accidents in this drama. Four, was it? More than moderately tolerable, that’s for sure.

I’m going to miss this drama’s BTS, because Jenna Wang is positively hilarious. After three dramas of seeing her play a b*tchy second lead, I’m grateful to have chanced upon this show’s BTS, which has allowed me to view her in an entirely new light. I’ve also gained a newfound appreciation for Mandy Wei, who deserves an award for all the buckets of tears she shed throughout this show.

Seriously, though, I am not going to miss this drama. Its nonsensical regression and atrocious ending has left me thoroughly disengaged, in that even my nicer memories of the show have been irreversibly tainted—today, I caught myself humming the opening theme song (which is truly, truly beautiful) and felt the urge to slap myself.

These things don’t even work.