Bump Off Lover

Warning. This review is chock FULL o f spoilers. If you have any interest in watching this drama and you’re spoiler free I wouldn’t recommend reading anything further.
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I should have watched Bump off Lover sooner than I did. If I had continued watching it two years ago, (instead of book marking it) I probably wouldn’t have noticed how terrible it really is. Back then I didn’t know what brilliant revenge dramas were out there and what they looked like. I’ve seen a few spotty revenge dramas and I’ve seen many great ones. The bar I set in 2009 has risen since then and sadly Bump off Lover doesn’t make the cut (anymore).

Although I have a soft spot for Angela Zhang since I saw her in At Dolphin Bay, I can’t say I was thrilled with her performance here. Partly to do with the black and white writing, I had a hard time believing that her kind, weak Yi Jing had an alter ego as bold and as hateful as Ah Cat. It felt like Angela was playing triplets instead of twins. The difference between Ah Cat and Yi Jing was too striking. I couldn’t picture them as the same person, much less someone I could meet off the street. Yi Jing was too calm and collected all the time- she never showed any vulnerability or cracks beneath the surface. I couldn’t connect with her because I didn’t feel like I was watching a human being.

The poor material that Angela was given to work with certainly didn’t help my opinion on the revenge storyline. Yi Jing’s reason for hating her sister and wanting to seek revenge was shallow. It wasn’t Yi Zhen’s fault that Yi Jing didn’t reach out to her parents after being kidnapped as a child. Yes, it was Yi Zhen’s fault for luring her mother to spend time with her alone, but that alone wasn’t enough to justify Yi Jing’s revenge. Yi Zhen wouldn’t have dragged her mother away if she knew her sister was going to get kidnapped. She was just a stupid eight-year-old kid who wanted to spend some quality time alone with her mother. If Yi Jing wanted to talk about the kidnapping, she shouldn’t have acted like she forgot about the whole incident.

The whole asthma angle was weaker than the kidnapping one. I’m not even going to acknowledge that idiotic reasoning.

Overall, Yi Zhen got attention from their parents because she spoke to them when she had a problem. Yi Jing turned into a monster because she bottled it all up inside. Nothing that happened to her as a child justifies her hatred for her sister. Why she focused all her bitter feelings on Yi Zhen, I’ll never understand. I don’t get why she decided to team up Jia Wei aka the child of her kidnapper aka the man who stole her father’s designs aka the child of her dad’s other women. If anything, Yi Jing should have been using him to get revenge on his parent’s for taking away her childhood and ruining her family.

Even though it was the affair between his wife and the twin’s dad that drove Jia Wei’s dad to commit suicide, he (the dad) wasn’t exactly an innocent bystander. Nothing can excuse him kidnapping Yi Jing (and perhaps sexually molesting her- it was hinted at) for revenge and his shady dealings at the company. He had no right to kill himself and burden his family. Jia Wei knew everything about the dealings between his family and the twin’s family since he was a little kid, he had a lot of nerve showing up in front of them as a teenager. He has no right to play mind games with the twins, he had no right to play god with Yi Jing’s life. Why Yi Zhen, the supposed “bright” twin, trusted Jia Wei so easily after everything that happened in her life I don’t understand.

In general, the lack of common sense these characters had pissed me off. This drama would have wrapped up much faster if they knew how to keep their mouths shut. I wouldn’t have had an issue with the teens playing detective, if they had done it with some subtlety. The way they question suspects made me yell at my computer screen. Asking in such a straightforward manner- how foolish! Of course people are going to lie to cover up their own behinds! If this was real life and not a plot-driven drama, I can say with no hesitation that the teen’s way of questioning would fail. Real murders are much more complex than what was portrayed on here.

Speaking of murders…I guessed around episode 2 that Jia Wei was the main conspirator behind Yi Jing death- the character was too good to be true. Another fault with the writing, Jia Wei came off as cartoonish as Yi Jing. He was portrayed as the typical run of the mill horror movie villain with the evil laugh to match. Perhaps if the writer tried to pass this off as the thriller these characterizations would have worked better? The director did a great job setting the dark atmosphere with the deep colors and the haunting music. This drama had many faults, but the camera work wasn’t one of them.


Hmmm. Well. This review was much longer than I originally planned it to be. Believe it or not I didn’t give away all the twists in my review, so you can still watch the drama. Guess I should wrap it up now? Overall, I’d rate Bump off Lover 5/10. While I do think it’s a decent Taiwanese drama, it can’t measure up to other revenge dramas out there. It suffers badly from a terrible script and weak character development. If you want to see a great revenge drama about twins and secret identities, I’d highly recommend the Korean drama Resurrection. Don’t waste your time on this brainless drama.