Dear Enemy - As Good as it Gets

 

   In my personal database of East Asian drama viewing, I've scored several dramas at higher than 10 out of 10. All of them have something a little special that makes them better than merely perfect. Four of them I have scored at 12/10. All of them left me feeling really, really good – profoundly satisfying drama viewing experiences of a very special kind. Apart from When Life Gives You Tangerines, which I wrote about here, three of the four share important similarities. All three dramas are all about the women, from beginning to end.

   The first, in 2017, was the Korean drama Avengers Social Club – about a group of women of different ages and social strata who come together and become firm friends while seeking revenge on those who wronged them. The men in that drama are either antagonists or secondary support characters. In 2018, the Korean drama Goodbye to Goodbye was all about the unlikely and incredible friendship between a pregnant woman and her hikikomori prospective mother-in-law. The men in that drama are either antagonists or secondary support characters The fourth one is this one, the Chinese drama Dear Enemy. Two of the three women are best friends since school days, being the same age and born on the same day, while the third is several years younger and is introduced to the story as potentially becoming a mistress of the husband of one of the other two. This drama tells a story of their lives and the growth of their friendship. The three women are the leads, the men in the story - whether romantic interests or antagonists, or both -  are secondary characters

   What makes Dear Enemy special for me is that many contemporary Chinese dramas are allegedly "all about the women" but in so many of them the "strong, independent" woman or women still need a man to save them or perform some critical task central to the outworking of the plot. Another noxious trope is the godlike male character who knows everything and does everything better than any woman ever could. I've started and dropped more dramas like these than I care to remember. Dear Enemy is very, very different.

   The three key characters are also very different. The two same age BFF's have led very different lives. One of them was the driven straight-A student who went on to become a screenwriter and works incessantly to earn a living and build her reputation in that industry, while the other married a man who became a successful tech entrepreneur and lives a life of luxury in a giant villa with her husband and son. The third is an aspiring actor eking out a living as an Internet content creator whose most generous supporter is that wealthy tech entrepreneur.

   What I loved about this drama was its unflinching honesty and intelligence. All the characters, including the men,  are shown as real people with strengths and weaknesses and their own agendas. Most especially, the drama never wavers from showing how incredibly hard it is for women to succeed at life in Chinese society. Once again the quality of the dialogue I read in the subtitles was so outstanding that I was left wistfully imagining  how great the actual Mandarin dialogue really is.

   For the first 18 episodes or so all of the events portrayed in the drama were so ordinary that I considered relabelling its primary genre as "slice of life". There was nothing stereotypically drama-ish about what happened. By that point I'd already settled on scoring this as a 10. All the elements of the story up to that point nicely reflected the truth of the line shown in this screenshot:

 

   Then there was a plot twist that I didn't see coming and that had me seriously worried I might have to downgrade its score. The resolution of that particular storyline reminded me very strongly of Avengers Social Club, and was the major reason I ended up scoring this drama 12. This arc lasted for about 4 to 5 episodes, and when it started I was stunned, and very concerned. I should have trusted the writers. They did not waver from the central theme of the drama, the primacy and strength of female friendship, and I'm pleased that  about halfway through that storyline I realised where they might be taking the story. Seeing my guess confirmed was profoundly satisfying.

   One slightly disorienting element of the drama is that although it was released in 2025, some of the elements of the story make it clear that it must have been shot many years earlier around the start of the Covid pandemic. When I realised that, it strengthened my appreciation for one scene early in the drama that I had especially loved

   That clip works on several levels. The role being described to Wan Peng's character is a pretty good fit for her character in this drama. It also describes the kind of character niche she has carved out for herself. Her breakout role was as the lead female's BFF in A Love So Beautiful, and since then she's had several roles in which she played a primary supporting character, including this one. Since she was the major reason I started this drama, that kind of meta was amusing and satisfying.

   As grounded in reality is this drama was, it was neither a documentary nor a feminist polemic. It was entertainment, and it delivered in spades. Just past the halfway mark, a minor female character was treated ruthlessly, prompting the screenwriter lead character to ask "why is it that every time something like this happens the one that got hurt ends up in shambles, while the victimisers walk away untouched?" That question provided the set up for this sisterhood to make sure it didn't happen to them. First, the young aspiring actor is targeted, and the three of them worked together to make sure that her victimiser is thwarted. 

   Then came the major "revenge" storyline, the one whose start left me surprised and anxious and whose successful conclusion left me ecstatic. As I said above, in that storyline in particular there is a strong Avengers Social Club vibe, as the three worked together to pull off a risky and entertaining plan to thwart a sadly realistic and plausible attempt to destroy one of them. It was theatre in the best sense, with the (very) bad men getting what they deserved, karma served up in style by three fabulous females. The kind of wish fulfilment good Dramas exist to provide 

    This drama supplied a lot of laughs, sometimes from genuinely amusing dialogue,  and sometimes when I laughed with delight at how the trio handled situations. There was also real sadness and pathos for all three of them. Along the way, it made sure to skewer several hoary old Drama tropes, including an "I've loved you long time" flashback that did NOT involve the vile kindergarten kismet. 

Like the other 12's, and especially like Avengers Social Club and Goodbye to Goodbye, this drama for me went beyond being merely flawless to being an experience to treasure. Contemporary Chinese Dramas can be awful, but when they get it just right, the results are sublime.