Bottled Passion and When Heaven Burns Ending Thoughts

Spoilers:
I'm not going to give an in-depth review of each of these series, but I did want to give my final thoughts on them.



I really liked Bottled Passion. It had a good story and it kept me excited to watch each episode. I also thought that there were some good performances by Raymond Wong, Elaine Yiu, Jack Wu, and Rebecca Chan. I liked the love story they were trying to set up, although I am one of the few who was rooting for Niki to end up with Jack.

When Heaven Burns had an interesting concept but I don't think it was well executed and it left me bored a lot. It's not that I thought this series was too deep- it wasn't, since I get all the concepts and the story it was trying to tell. I just thought it was too slow paced and it would work better as a movie. From a shallow standpoint, Charmaine looked great in this series from her hair to her makeup to her clothes.

The ending of one the series was really well done and touching, while the other left me cold. Suprisingly, I hated the ending for Bottled Passion and I really liked the ending for When Heaven Burns. Bottled Passion should've just ended at episode 20, and not because that would've meant that it ended on a happy note. I don't mind tragic endings, but I really hate stupid ones. Basically, a suicidal Elaine stabs Raymond, and he rushes out of the building and tells someone to go help her. Instead of waiting for help or going to the doctor, he wanders from day to night time and no one notices his blood dripping from his stomach? The only person who sees him is Jack who goes to get help, but when he returns, Raymond is gone since he walks to the pier to set himself to wander away on a boat. He basically didn't want to die in front of Niki, so instead he wants to give her false hope that he is alive and let her wait forever for his return? That is so lame, especially since he had a chance to be saved if he just went to the hospital! I've read a bunch of theories of why Raymond didn't go to the hospital such as he wanted to pull one last magic trick to disappear since he didn't want Niki to be sad, but isn't it worse to not let her mourn him? The producer obviously wanted to portray Niki waiting for Raymond like how he waited for her but there are so many better ways to do so instead of dragging out Raymond's death for a whole episode. He could've been kidnapped, had amnesia, any of those cliched endings would've been better than a stupid one.

The last episode of When Heaven Burns, on the other hand, was really well done. Some of it was a little typical with everyone getting their retribution and it was corny how Bowie died saving a kid's life who shared the name of the friend he ate, but I also thought it was a very complete ending. I really hated the sub-theme song sung by Bowie, Moses, and Kenny but then my mind completely changed when they were coming up with the song together and then they played it at the rock show with their younger selves. I also liked how Charmaine imagined a "what if" scenario if she made one different decision.



Basically, I was tearing up watching the last episode of When Heaven Burns even though I didn't even care about the series, while I was just irritated at the ending of Bottled Passions.

What are your thoughts?