Meteor Garden (2001): Looking Back to the Sensation of a Generation
BY NABIL BAKRI
You might also want to read 'Boys Over Flowers, A Retrospect'
and 'Meteor Garden (2018) Review: The Phoenix from the Ashes'
and 'Meteor Garden (2018) Review: The Phoenix from the Ashes'
(All photos belong to Comic Ritz International Production except indicated (*))
"If a simple 'SORRY' can solve all problems, why would we need the police?"-Daoming Si
“It’s rather difficult for me to talk about Meteor Garden without at least a little bit carried away by nostalgia, but even if I had no experience with the show whatsoever in the past, considering its story, cast, and music, I think, I’d probably still give my sincere appreciation to the show.”
I was browsing randomly on YouTube and stumbled upon a music video of a remix of the song Can’t Help Falling in Love by the A-Teens created exclusively for the promotional purposes of Disney’s Lilo and Stitch. It was something strange because it looks so old, but also familiar at the same time because I certainly grew up with ‘that’ kind of style. While older critics say that they grew up with Aladdin and The Lion King, I grew up with the early 2000’s movies. So obviously, Lilo and Stitch isn’t an unknown title for me. The more I searched for more info about that particular music video in that particular era, however, there’s something even more interesting. Yes, I stumbled upon yet another remix version music video of Can’t Help Falling in Love accompanying the release of Lilo and Stitch, but this one is not performed by the A-Teens (or the supposedly official international version of the music video) but a group called F4 from the famous, 2001 South-East Asian Hit, Meteor Garden to promote the movie in the Asia market. I instantly recognized the familiar faces of these boys singing that song in a studio with a fake-beach background and surfing on Lilo and Stitch surfing board.
Yes, Meteor Garden was a huge part of my childhood since I live in Indonesia. The show aired on national TV couples of times a week and the then-teenage members of my family would watch that show uninterruptedly. Frankly, I wasn’t really interested in the show, and I didn’t really understand what it’s all about. I thought it was something about friendship between these four boys and one girl and I didn’t know why they call it F4 if there are five members. But as careless as I could be, It was just impossible to avoid this Meteor Garden and F4 thing since they were in pamphlets, magazines (printed, that is, remember it was early 2000’s, that was still feels like the 90’s), posters, music shops, t-shirts, stickers, note books, school bags, lunch boxes, erasers, pencil cases, wallets, and the list goes on and on. To put it in a much simpler words, ‘it was a sensation’. So when I got the chance to revisit the show, I gave it a try. I was just thinking that I only want to watch the style and the cars of the early 2000s since such show is not really compatible with my watching-list. But anyway yeah, I gave it a try and this article is the result of my second time viewing Meteor Garden after more than a decade after its initial release (that actually felt like a first time), here are the good and the bad stuff of the Asia-wide beloved show…
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| (bringatrailer.com)* |
1. Yes, I got what I wanted: Cars from the late 90’s-early 2000s
The very first episode is so successful in bringing back my memories of my elementary school-time, especially the white BMW of the F4. But the overall show is just letting the wine of memories flows freely in to me, the music, the style, the ‘presence’, and the ‘technology’. I remember using such ‘high-tech’ cell phones with small yellowish/orange-ish screens with peculiar buttons, embracing the magnificent way of sending and receiving messages through texting, and we were using our phones to call people which is becoming less and less important and more and more peculiar in our current situation with our smartphones. The setting is also filled with old stuff that used to be so familiar with everybody; huge-heavy-boxy computer monitors (and the CPUs were so heavy), CRT TVs (and remembering the days wide-screen LCD (well, Plasma, actually) was a rich-only-privilege), boring grey-ish computer display, odd internet display, and believe me, the list is just too long. The point is, if you grew up witnessing the popularity of Meteor Garden or you happened to live in that particular moment, you’ll probably get some nostalgic feelings.
"There are two types regrets; one is loosing someone you love, and the other is to see the one you love is unhappy."-Huaze Lei
2. The Story
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| Jerry Yan as Dao Ming Si |
THE GOOD: The story is about a rich arrogant boy, Dao Ming Si, falling in love with a poor spirited girl, Shan Cai, whom he used to hate. The ‘hatred’ between the two equally-strong characters changes into love as the story goes and the whole show is basically about their evolving love throughout a lot of tests and pressures. However, there’s actually more than that. The story is also a rather complicated look of friendship. It isn’t just about the love between Dao Ming Si and Shan Cai, but also about how a group of friend, or how ‘friendship’ being put to the test. The friendship between the F4 members change drastically throughout the show as each member faces different problems against people around them and eventually against one another. It’s interesting to see how ‘old’ friends react towards ‘new’ situations, circumstances that have never happened before in their spoiled lives and witness how these circumstances change their overall personalities. It’s also interesting to see how friends react to a situation in which best friends should choose between their sacred friendship and a blossoming romantic relationship.
“When a shooting star has thousands of stars surrounding it, they are protected by the love angels. Before the star hits the ground, if it is seen by a couple, they'll have a mark of love and stay together”—Daoming Si
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| Vic Shou as Hua Ze Lei |
Meteor Garden shows the act of sacrifice through the character Hua Ze Lei in which he decides to burry all of his feelings towards the lead female, Shan Cai, in order to keep the group F4 intact since the lead male, Dao Ming Si, apparently falls in love with Shan Cai. The most interesting part of Lei’s sacrifice, I think, is the fact that he understands Dao Ming Si’s personality, a rich popular handsome (spoiled) young boy who just can’t receive any kind of rejection. Thus, even though Lei is aware that Shan Cai is actually falling for him, he decides to step back the moment Dao Ming Si ‘forces’ Shan Cai to become his lover. Lei, I think, is the most interesting character in the whole show because he has such ‘human’-quality in his character, he isn’t the most perfect character and that makes his character even more powerful in terms of stirring our emotions. There are times when he’s simply unable to hold all of his sorrow and the fact that Dao Ming Si, at the time, proclaims to (practically) the whole world that he is in a serious relationship with Shan Cai, makes Lei’s heart explodes and for the first time he doesn’t care about Dao Ming Si and all that he wants is to be with Shan Cai. But then again, Lei learns that any attempt to separate Shan Cai from Dao Ming Si is not just going to ruin the friendship he has with Dao Ming Si since childhood but also the very existence of F4 and both Shan Cai’s and Dao Ming Si’s hearts after Lei realizes that between all the fights and hatred that they constantly show, Shan Cai and Dao Ming Si are actually in love and they need each other, they just don’t see it yet. It is absolutely fascinating to see Lei’s character that’s able to read between the lines and always manages to end a conflict even though it means that he’s the one who has to make the ultimate sacrifice.
“There was once a woman who overcame by expensive jewels, becomes materialistic, proud and looks down upon others. This woman, who only seeks power, wealth and status, unwittingly loses her dignity, soul and purity. A person's worth should not be measured by just whether they could play the piano, or if she is from a wealthy background or the expensive clothing they wear”—Shan Cai
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| Barbie Hsu as Shan Cai |
Now, is the friendship theme appears only in the surrounding of the F4? Well, no. Although the focus will always be the F4 and the relationship between Dao Ming Si and Shan Cai (and Shan Cai with F4), there are interesting narratives from Shan Cai’s perspective, her ‘regular/commoner’ friends. The show serves us stories of a friend turns an enemy, an innocent friend reaches her adulthood through…well, to put it straightforward, having sex, friends with hidden agendas, and so on. The show, interestingly, shows us not only the change in Shan Cai’s personality, but also her friends’. Shan Cai’s relation with F4 affects people around her and those she love the most. Her friend’s changes in personalities do not happen instantly, but those changes have things to do with their friend being close to F4. Thus, Meteor Garden shows us a dynamic story, a progressing story in which each plot affect another dynamically and, frankly, it works.
Apart from its crucial themes of love and friendship, Meteor Garden exposes the family lives of its characters. It shows us how different each family can be and that wealth can never fill the void of a not-so-harmonious family. This story, however, is reserved for the point proceeding the good which is the bad.
“Before the sun shines, angels will go to greet the head of them, if at this time you light fireworks, you'll get their attention, and your wishes will be easily granted, haven't you heard of it?”—Huaze Lei
THE BAD: The origins of the F4 members are rather dull, a recipe that has been cooked countless times in the history of mankind, not just in the history of TV series. Meteor Garden’s stars are these handsome boys deemed to be illogically rich since birth. It might be interesting, but that idea makes the story basically another Cinderella story. F4’s current situations make them look so perfect and their lacks seem to be irrelevant. This makes them unreachable thus difficult for the audience to relate to. The situation reminds me of Indonesia’s 80’s hits, the Catatan Harian Si Boy movies in which the lead male, Boy, is this insanely rich guy and so unreachable that in the 2011 sequel with the same title takes the franchise to a completely different direction by changing the lead male to a man with flaws. An attempt to avoid similar issue is also visible in Disney’s The Princess and the Frog in which Prince Naveen is actually broke and he has to work hard to reach that happily-ever-after ending. Heck, even in real life, handsome-rich people aren’t supposed to be flawless and unreachable. It reminds me of one of Prince William’s close friends in college who then confessed (during the hype of the Royal Wedding back in 2011), that Prince William has his own problems, he’s not unreachable. He once said that William wanted a fancy motorcycle but act like he had no money to purchase the bike and his friend thought that this rich kid should be able to purchase multiple fancy motorcycles if he wants to! Fortunately, there’s Hua Ze Lei who has a more reachable and relatable background. Lei shows us that being rich isn’t something that you can enjoy for eternity without work hard and that inheritance will be gone sooner or later without a proper management. This dynamic perspective on life and character is unfortunately missing in the rest of F4 members’ characters.
“If you run away, I'll follow, no matter where you are, even to hell, no matter where you go, I'll always follow you, because i want you”—Daoming Si
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| (*) |
Well, a story might be focused on how a poor girl fall in love with a rich guy (or vice versa) just like countless other romantic stories, but Meteor Garden takes it a bit too far when it uses the characters of Shan Cai’s parents to (comically) manipulate their daughter and others so that Shan Cai could marry a rich boy and they can live wealthy for the rest of their lives. Shan Cai’s parents are not like Lady Tremaine or any other parent forcing the child to marry someone rich, but their intention reduces their values to the audience. These are parents who think that school is useless unless a daughter can date a rich guy. These are parents who don’t care about their daughter’s achievements and view academic and financial achievements as irrelevant unless the daughter marry a rich boy, no matter how the boy looks like or his attitudes. It looks like they won’t see a barbaric boy who likes to beat his wife as a problem as long as he’s rich and the parents can get the money. Dao Ming Feng, Dao Ming Si’s mother, doesn’t like Shan Cai ultimately because she does not belong to a rich family and she’s suspicious about Shan Cai’s love towards her son that she’s just want to get rid of Feng and acquire all of her family’s wealth. Well, that’s a mean accusation but that might be a CORRECT accusation towards Shan Cai’s parents. The parents do not destroy the overall plot by having such selfish intention, but it surely degrade our respect toward them and ultimately Shan Cai.
“When you are flying the kite, it feels very far away, but there will always be the string connected to it, so you do not feel to bad about it”—Shan Cai
3. The Characters
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| Dao Ming Feng |
THE GOOD: I cannot say it enough how I like the character Hua Ze Lei (and I’ve searched for quite a lot of reviews and I found that a lot of writers/critics love this character as well) because his character moves the overall story to become more complicated and dramatic. Plus, Vic Zhou portrays the boy with all of that complexity in personality quite well. Another great choice for portraying a character is Zhen Xiu as Dao Ming Feng. She’s able to bring out all of that spitefulness with cold attitudes but still maintain to look elegant and commanding, a very great attribute of a very rich-cold-powerful woman, the one and only Dao Ming Feng. It is impossible, in the beginning, to imagine a world where Shan Cai lives together with Dao Ming Se as a couple because it’s not just the fact that Shan Cai loves Lei in the first place, but the two are not exactly match. However, I think that helps the story by making us believe that such different couple can become together given the right ingredients. For the overall cast and characters, I have no gigantic complain. The style might be not-as-good as the newer Japanese and Korean versions, but then again Meteor Garden was created in a very different time. Meteor Garden, although it was released in 2001 and technically a show of the 2000s, still feels like the late 90’s (Avatar, 2012, blu-ray, i-phone, and many other highly-advanced stuff were also created in the 2000’s but they have no ‘feel’ of the 90’s anymore) and therefore judging the overall style as ‘bad’ using today’s perspective is rather injustice.
THE BAD: Although the key to the show is (Shan Cai and) F4, the only ‘active’ characters are Dao Ming Si and Hua Ze Lei. It would be more interesting if they made the other two member as ‘active’ in terms of affecting the overall plot. I also found that the characters of two rich girls who are constantly bullying Shan Cai aren’t really thought through because their existence seem very important at one point, but then less to not important in many episodes, and I found this also in the character of He Yuan Zi, a character changes her personality too fast and too often.
You might also want to read 'Boys Over Flowers, A Retrospect'
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