Bai Hao Yu’s left without a team in Episode 35. After Zhu Ying discovers Bai Hao Yu’s gone and had competitiveness reports done on each of them, showing his lack of faith in them, she’s gone and resigned. Her resignation sees everyone else following her out the door, leaving only Li Hui Zhen and Lin Yi Mu to continue on with Bai Hao Yu.

This is not good as the free publicity Immortal got from a famous supermodel (which saw Immortal’s server crash from high traffic last episode) is not enough for Headquarters. Free publicity doesn’t translate to sales. Sales is what matters, and if they don’t achieve Number 1, Immortal still faces closure.

Pretty Li Hui Zhen Episode 35 Recap

Pretty Li Hui Zhen Episode 35
Pretty Li Hui Zhen Episode 35
Pretty Li Hui Zhen Episode 35
Pretty Li Hui Zhen Episode 35

With Bai Hao Yu and Li Hui Zhen having got together last episode, the two chat away well into the night after Li Hui Zhen returns home from her parents’ place. They catch up on each other’s situation after Bai Hao Yu left for the States: they talk about Bai Hao Yu living with his father and aunt before going off to university, the bankruptcy Li Hui Zhen’s family went through and a rice cake restaurant Li Hui Zhen really like eating. It makes her mention wanting the rice cake and Bai Hao Yu showing up at her door with some rice cakes.

They spend the night out in the car eating sticky rice cakes and talking about the number of bites it takes to eat can suggest the kind of person they are. They keep talking about random things before the two end up falling asleep in the car.

The morning sees Lu Hui Zhen rush out of Bai Hao Yu’s car to get ready for work. In order not to get discovered by their colleagues, they arrive to work separately, one after the after. It comes off as quite suspicious, but the team don’t seem to notice as they’re preoccupied by the magazine’s popularity: seemingly still riding off Gigi’s free publicity of the magazine, they’re taking top three positions in trending search topics.

Pretty Li Hui Zhen Episode 35

Bai Hao Yu:

“Headquarters wanted to pass on that they have only one assessment standard, and that is sales. Other than sales, nothing else will be put into consideration.”

Gigi’s free publicity which crashed Immortal’s site isn’t enough to appease Headquarters, though. Although the free publicity has brought in people into their site and purchasing clothes, Headquarters is still after that Number 1 spot in sales of their magazine. If that doesn’t happen with the next issue, Immortal will be shut down.

The reality of the situation has Ya Ling and Meili finally unable to hang on and stay with Immortal anymore. They apologise to Bai Hao Yu and take their leave. Han Xue poses the question to whether she and the rest should consider following suit, which is left unanswered. Bai Hao Yu isn’t going to stop them, though. Like he revealed before, he doesn’t want to drag them down. If they want to leave, they may leave.

Pretty Li Hui Zhen Episode 35
Pretty Li Hui Zhen Episode 35

Zhu Ying:

“You sent us for evaluation. But did you mention in this evaluation that we followed you tirelessly, without questioning the future prospects of our efforts?”

No one else leave, not at that moment anyway. A bit later into the day, the discovery that Bai Hao Yu had performed a competitiveness report on each of them when he started as Immortal’s Deputy Editor in Chief has Zhu Ying extremely upset. To her, it shows Bai Hao Yu’s lack of confidence in her and everyone else’s abilities.

This leads her to resign:

Zhu Ying:

“I thought that as long as I was willing, I can work here for another 13 years. You want to know our abilities? Then I’ll tell you. Our abilities must first be built on trust. If you don’t trust us then we are worthless. I quit.”

The few remaining follow her out, too: Lin Hu Sheng leaves and Han Xue leaves. Surprisingly, Lin Hao leaves too. If he is the heir, and this was his magazine, he’s the last person we’d expect to disapprove of Bai Hao Yu’s ways. But, he reckons Bai Hao Yu’s actions are too fierce and strict and so he, too, ends up leaving.

Pretty Li Hui Zhen Episode 35
Pretty Li Hui Zhen Episode 35

With Ya Ling, Meili gone, Lin Hu Sheng, Han Xue and Lin Hao following Zhu Ying out the door, it leaves Li Hui Zhen and Lin Yi Mu with Bai Hao Yu to try get an issue out that would top magazine sales. Li Hui Zhen doesn’t feel very optimistic about pulling this off. Lin Yi Mu, though, thinks they can do it. He reminds her how she had served 50 customers all on her own when she was running a noodle shop. Let’s not forget that Immortal still has him, a “considerably handsome, funny, elegant, unconventional, and highly experienced reporter” and Bai Hao Yu, who’s from the States and said to be quite outstanding.

Lin Yi Mu’s pep talk gets Li Hui Zhen up and working. Together, they try to do all the tasks their team of nine usually do, organising wardrobe, scheduling, answering clients and meeting clients. By the end of the working day, they’re completely spent. Lin Yi Mu decides to take his leave first, but not before telling Li Hui Zhen to go to Bai Hao Yu and comfort him. Lin Yi Mu seemingly has really settled his feelings for Li Hui Zhen and is now taking the supportive best friend role.

Pretty Li Hui Zhen Episode 35
Pretty Li Hui Zhen Episode 35

Bai Hao Yu:

“We all work this hard all because we wan to strive for a few more reasons to be chosen and be irreplaceable. Only when you are irreplaceable will you not be eliminated.”

“When I learned that I was going to take charge of the Editing Department, I told Headquarters I didn’t need them to take a competitiveness assessment because I was already well aware of everyone’s strengths.”

Going to Bai Hao Yu, Li Hui Zhen learns that Bai Hao Yu wasn’t as fierce and strict as Lin Hao thought he was. The reports weren’t something Bai Hao Yu had wanted performed on the team—at least not in the secretive way Headquarters had intended, because from the beginning, he knew what each of their strengths were and was already quite confident of their skills. However, it was how Headquarters in New York did things. So, instead of bringing in an external assessor, he did them himself (at least that’s what we think Bai Hao Yu is suggesting). He tells Li Hui Zhen that people can only survive in this kind of place by showing themselves as irreplaceable. Bai Hao Yu was subjected to such assessment, too. By passing assessment, he got the post at Immortal.

Li Hui Zhen suggests that maybe the team would understand if he had explained this to them. Bai Hao Yu’s secrecy about it all seem to be for the sake of Zhu Ying and the others: closing the magazine down and the need to fire employees following the closure aren’t things he wanted them to have to hear. He seems to be trying to shield them from the reality of the situation and hopefully achieve that goal of topping sales and avoid having them ever learn of the situation.

But, it was all discovered and now Bai Hao Yu faces a huge problem with the team down to three. When asked what he planned to do next, Bai Hao Yu genuinely has no idea.

Pretty Li Hui Zhen Episode 35

Ending the episode, Xia Qiao and Lin Yi Mu run into each other outside where Xia Qiao updates him on how she’s resigned from the hotel in an attempt to try rely on herself and become independent from her father’s help. This has Lin Yi Mu support her. The conversation leads to Xia Qiao wanting to hear about why he lives at a hotel, where his family is and where they live. She’s trying to find out his identity. Lin Yi Mu still won’t tell. Instead, he jokes about those who find out will need to die.

Pretty Li Hui Zhen Episode 35
Pretty Li Hui Zhen Episode 35

It’s still a secret who the heir is and who Diviner is, but at least we now know for sure these two identities belong to either Lin Yi Mu or Lin Hao. Han Xue learns Lin Hu Sheng’s family background and he’s not from a wealthy family. Near the beginning of this episode, Han Xue overhears Lin Hu Sheng on the phone to his dad, referring to him as a Team Leader of a dance group.

When the conversation ends and she questions Lin Hu Sheng why he referred to his dad in such a way, Lin Hu Sheng reveals that his dad goes dancing as a way to lose the weight he gained from standing at the counter all day long. The mention of the counter leads Han Xue to question why his father must tend the counter, and Lin Hu Sheng to respond with his dad being the owner of a laundry shop.

The revelation has her running to the Editor in Chief accusing her of tricking her because of what Han Xue claims the Editor in Chief said to her: 

Han Xue:

“You said that Lin Yi Mu doesn’t even have a bit of the excellent genes of the Lin family. You said he wasn’t your nephew.”

“Then doesn’t that mean that Lin Hu Sheng is the Chairman’s son?”

“Lin Yi Mu doesn’t even have a bit of the outstanding gene of the Lin family,” this means Lin Yi Mu is Diviner. There’s no doubting now. We now have to wait to see how much longer the drama will take to reveal Lin Yi Mu as Diviner and Lin Hao as the heir. Hopefully, it won’t be too much longer, because there’s really more than enough clues suggesting it.

Comments

And that’s that for Episode 35. It’s a shorter recap. With the romance part of the story all dealt with, it’s cut down on a lot of the drama which previous episodes had. Watching the episode, it felt like there was not a lot to cover and not a lot that really grabs our attention.

Strangely, much of this episode is actually very similar to the content that was in the original. The first part of the episode on Bai Hao Yu and Li Hui Zhen went exactly the way She Was Pretty does except with a hardly noticeable change to the topics they talked about when they were in the car enjoying a snack before falling asleep.

Team Leader Cha (Zhu Ying) and everyone on The Most’s Editorial Department (Immortal’s counterpart) save Kim Hye Jin and Kim Shin Hyuk left just like the way Zhu Ying and everyone left (save Li Hui Zhen and Lin Yi Mu). The difference, though, is over why they left. Team Leader Cha left because Ji Sung Joon didn’t tell her and her team they faced possible closure if the magazine didn’t reach number one in sales. She’s angry she didn’t get a chance to work even harder and prepare for such an outcome. Zhu Ying left not because she didn’t know about the possible closure, but Bai Hao Yu went and had reports done on them which showed his lack of faith in her and the team.

Kim Shin Hyuk also shares a USB drive with Ji Sung Joon containing a short film The Most’s sort-after special guest did during his school days. This is similar to a scene where Lin Yi Mu hands Bai Hao Yu a USB drive containing Taylor Yang’s musical compositions.

Only minor differences were made, yet, Pretty Li Hui Zhen’s version feels so uneventful. It just goes to show how important it is to have the main couple connect with the audience, because that opening scene between Bai Hao Yu and Li Hui Zhen felt like such a filler scene, but the one in She Was Pretty came off quite fun and sweet.

We think it helped that She Was Pretty had their episode go past the point where Pretty Li Hui Zhen left off, giving us a little more development. She Was Pretty showed Kim Hye Jin going to Ji Sung Joon and telling him to not take on such a burden all on his own and to rely on her and go through it together. This has Ji Sung Joon slowly let his burden show as tears well up behind a smile and a cry. He then falls into her embrace. The scene returns Kim Hye Jin to her past role of being his strength, protector and safe haven.

We have our doubts Li Hui Zhen will manage to come off as someone like that to Bai Hao Yu. If the drama tries to make Li Hui Zhen come off as such, it’d be a weak attempt. Our first impression of Li Hui Zhen from the first couple of episode is that Li Hui Zhen felt like a pathetic, geeky little sister of Xia Qiao’s. She didn’t have this can-do, gusto attitude which Kim Hye Jin had. As the drama progressed, she exerted this nice air about her, like she-wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly kind of air. So it’ll be hard to convince if she were made to be all those three things to Bai Hao Yu. She can be Bai Hao Yu’s strength because he likes her, but it’ll be hard for us to buy that she is also the other two.

Episode 35 also suffers from being stretched out again. Forty minutes it took Pretty Li Hui Zhen Episode 35 to cover the same parts in She Was Pretty, which took 15-20 minutes. These scenes are part of She Was Pretty Episode 13 which featured almost every scene featured in Pretty Li Hui Zhen Episode 34 (the hospital scene, the kiss between Ji Sung Joon and Kim Hye Jin, Kim Shin Hyuk’s fart prank on Kim Hye Jin, Ji Sung Joon’s apology to Min Ha Ri, the visit to Kim Hye Jin’s family home), every scene that was in Pretty Hui Zhen Episode 35 (minus the revelation of Lin Hu Sheng average working man identity) plus a picnic at the seaside and a second kiss between Ji Sung Joon and Kim Hye Jin. Lots happen in one episode of She Was Pretty, and it all happens quicker!

We’re also noticing Elleshop featuring a lot more in the last couple episodes. It’s talked about by characters, signage is more visible in shots, and its branding feature on desk calendars, too. It looks like Elleshop’s upped its promo requirements again. Elleshop was made to look like the saviour of Immortal’s struggles earlier on only to end up not saving Immortal all that much. We didn’t expect this online store to save Immortal since it is just a huge product placement, but at the same time, to see the collaboration not help the magazine reminds us how this insert was just another huge product placement.

No matter. Onto the next episode! Let’s see how it plays out. Despite the slow pacing and not having a lot of interest in the Bai Hao Yu-Li Hui Zhen parts that should be coming up, we’re still a little curious how these parts will go. And of course, we will be waiting for the reveal of Lin Yi Mu and Lin Hao. It really is all that’s keeping us carrying on being excited for the remaining episodes.

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2 comments
  1. I love Lin Yi Mu.

    At first I was mad that I wasted time watching until episode 34, only to find out she chose Bai Hao Yu.

    But I realized, Li Hui Zhen does not deserve Lin Yi Mu / Diviner. He’s too good for her. (And she thought he was a good-for-nothing joker).
    Li Hui Zhen is such a fool. I lost interest in the remaining episodes.

    1. @sand We would’ve liked that Lin Yi Mu got the girl, too. But, it’s not because we think Li Hui Zhen and Lin Yi Mu suit each other better, but because he’s just such an nice character we want him to get his happy ending. He was the best character in the drama for us. But, it’s okay. Lin Yi Mu should end up with someone else. He joked one time he’s someone who descended from above to be friends with mortals. He’s of another world, so he should probably be with someone super special as he is! : o) : o).

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