Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Rational Life’ On Netflix, A Chinese Drama About A Career Woman Embroiled In A Love Triangle

Fans of romantic dramas from East Asia — mainly South Korea, China, Taiwan and Japan — are used to watching shows that go at a deliberate pace and contain gender norms that don’t match what we see in the U.S. Knowing a little bit about the culture is always helpful when watching an international series. But what if the culture shown in a series is something you can rationalize intellectually but still feel uncomfortable with emotionally? That’s what happened when we watched The Rational Life.

THE RATIONAL LIFE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: The skyline of Shanghai; a woman answers the phone while driving down a highway.

The Gist: Shen Ruoxin (Qin Lan) is in her early thirties and works as a legal consultant for an auto company. Right now, she’s dealing with a self-driving model from her company that caught fire and burned the wife of one of their more influential customers. She tries to smooth things over with her by bringing her flowers, but also asks not-so-gently if the car was flooded or something else happened before the accident.

Rouxin is in a male-dominated field, and while her boss Xu Mingjie (Calvin Li) trusts her, her male colleagues don’t treat her with the respect she deserves. She is also wondering if it’s time to break things off with her overbearing boyfriend, Cui Lixin (Tong Yue), who keeps checking in on her; they’ve worked together for years, but they’re coming up on their three month dating anniversary. To add to her stress, her mother, firmly in Lixin’s camp, keeps urging Rouxin to marry before she becomes an old maid.

As she’s shopping for a fruit basket to give to the accident victim, she literally runs into a young man named Qi Xiao (Dylan Wang); he’s chasing after his business partner, who essentially took his investment in their online store and decided to move to another city with her boyfriend. She chides him on grabbing his friend and states law statutes and what the penalties are.

To support his friend Su Yang (Chen Peng Wan Li), Xiao decides the two of them should go to a rooftop bar on the Bund. They happen to be there when Rouxin is celebrating the birthday of her friend Ziyang (Bao Wen Jing). Lixin, knowing where they are, surprises Rouxin with flowers and a ring; he feels, three months into their relationship, they should be engaged. He even put a down payment on a condo for the two of them. A drunken Xiao comes over, first to yell at Rouxin then to defend her when she expresses embarrassment at the entire situation.

When she sees the condo, she finally gives Lixin the heave-ho, feeling that he’s putting way too much pressure on her when they’ve only been dating for three months.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? In a lot of ways, The Rational Life is like That Girl, but 50 years later. Both are about a single career woman who is getting pressure to marry because of societal norms fiercely exerts that she should make her own decisions in life.

Our Take: What The Rational Life is ostensibly about is how Rouxin falls for Xiao after he becomes her assistant (he goes for the interview in episode 2), but also has feelings for her boss, Xu Mingjie. She has to decide whether to follow her heart and go with the younger guy that she supervises or go with the more “socially correct” choice of her boss. She has to balance this with her desire to be on her own, something that’s still rare for Chinese women in their thirties, who are considered “leftover women” if they get to that point without getting married.

The drama feels like it’s going to move pretty slowly — 34 episodes dropped on Netflix last week — so a number of episodes may go by before Rouxin and Xiao develop their relationship, or things start happening between her and her boss. Even if you’re a fan of how romantic dramas like this play out in other East Asian countries like Korea, you may still be lulled to sleep by the pacing of The Rational Life.

As it is, the story is a pretty simple love triangle, likely made complicated by the families of those involved. We know that Rouxin has a frosty relationship with her mother, and Xiao has a good relationship with his; he draws her complex instructions for things like her new pressure cooker. Those factors will weigh on Rouxin; she may even decide to stay single.

Your enjoyment of The Rational Life really depends on how well you can tolerate the gender issues in China that revolve mostly around the pressure career women feel to get married and start families. Yes, those pressures are felt by women in the U.S., but the culture in China — and in much of that region — still looks at women like Rouxin in a pejorative way, much more harshly than here. Like we cited when we mentioned That Girl above, it’s going to feel hopelessly old-fashioned to viewers in the West, but if they look at the show with some foreknowledge of what the culture is there in 2021, it might make for a more entertaining viewing experience.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Rouxin, feeling relief after dumping Lixin, goes home and sees photos of a nebula on her laptop, sent directly from an observatory. She adds color to them and shares them online; then she projects it on a huge screen and basks in the glow.

Sleeper Star: We enjoyed Tong Yue as Lixin, because he nailed the “goofy boyfriend destined to get dumped” role, down to his gestures and mannerisms.

Most Pilot-y Line: We’d love to know the whole story about Xiao’s online store partner taking his money, but we’re afraid that story will likely evaporate by the end of episode 2.

Our Call: SKIP IT. The Rational Life moves too slow, and its storyline is too old-fashioned, to hold the interest of viewers, even ones that enjoy Korean and other Asian romantic dramas.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream The Rational Life On Netflix