Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Adventure Of The Ring’ On HBO Max, About A Couple’s Relationship Turbulence And A Lost Engagement Ring That Changes Lives

A man loses a ring, but what happens to the people who find it? That’s the idea behind a hybrid series from Taiwan called Adventure Of The Ring. The man who lost the ring will be going through his own relationship drama, but we’ll also see what happens to the relationships that the people who find the ring are in. Read on for more.

ADVENTURE OF THE RING: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: In a dream sequence, a man in a white tux proposes to a bride. Then everyone starts laughing.

The Gist: That dream is a nightmare for Yi-Zhi (Chris Wang), who wakes up next to his girlfriend Lisa (Allison Lin), who yells “I do!” Yi-Zhi, who wanted to play baseball, wound up becoming an actuary, who has an exacting plan for everything in life, including proposing to Lisa using his mom’s old engagement ring. Lisa is more of a free spirit who goes with the flow; the two of them met five years ago at a ballgame  when a drunken Lisa turned and kissed Yi-Zhi for the stadium’s kiss cam, even though they were strangers.

But today is the day; it’s Lisa’s birthday and Yi-Zhi is going to propose. But the complicated plans he put in place are giving him nightmares, so he tells his chef buddy Si-Jeng (Huang Shang-Ho) to scale things back, but keep the cake he’s making. Lisa sees the elaborate dominoes setup Yi-Zhi left for her, and then checks that he took the ring with him. She’s elated when it’s not there.

In the meantime, Zong-Fang (Hangee Liou) is having a bad day; he has to go out the window of the apartment of his girlfriend Ya-Wen (Sun Ke-Fang) when her mother shows up. Then he gets berated by a woman on the metro. His dad insults him for carrying around his guitar. Then his boss at the convenience store fires him for giving expired food to a local homeless man. But Ya-Wen stands by him always, because he’s sweet and doesn’t want her to change. She wants him to meet her mother, but they unknowingly have already met.

Lisa goes to a flight attendant interview with a friend for job that would station her in Dubai. During the interview, she talks about her father being a pilot and how flying was a dream of hers, making her wonder if marriage isn’t quite the dream she thought it was. She runs into Alan (Denny Huang), the ex she was supposedly getting drunk about at the baseball game five years ago. He’s a pilot for the company and hopes she gets the job. She thinks he’s an arrogant schmuck.

Yi-Zhi’s day gets worse when, after telling Zong-Fang to move his guitar out of the aisle, he loses the ring on the metro. He goes to lost and found but the ring never showed up there. This is throwing his whole plan off, and he just can’t propose without the proper ring. At the birthday dinner with Lisa, he doesn’t go through with the proposal. When they get back to their flat, Lisa wonders if she’s just part of his life plan. At the same time, Zong-Fang meets Ya-Wen’s mother, who calls him a fat clown. That’s when he brings out a ring, which he happened to find on the metro earlier that day.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Adventure Of The Ring reminds us a bit of the HBO Max series Love Life, especially the second season. Both shows are about people who think about the nature of relationships and what they actually want. But Adventure adds an anthology aspect to the story that makes it unique.

Our Take: It’s that anthology aspect of Adventure Of The Ring, where the ring will pass through the hands of various people and change the nature of the relationships they’re in, that’s most intriguing about the series.

The relationship between Lisa and Yi-Zhi is interesting, but it also has a bit of a fantasy quality to it. They seem to be polar opposites to each other, and it’s hard to see right now why Lisa would want to be with the buttoned-up Yi-Zhi and why she’s so eager to get married. But the fact that the show starts with them at a low point may help us find that out, as we flash back to different parts of their relationship, starting with that kiss at the baseball game.

But as the ring goes from couple to couple, we’ll be able to get episode-length vignettes about different relationships, starting with Zong-Fang and Ya-Wen. Zong-Fang is such a sad sack that it’s almost a miracle that Ya-Wen sees the great person inside that slumpy exterior. But the story of the two of them and why she sees what she sees in him will be fun to watch, but just long enough for the ring to get lost again and show up in the hands of someone else.

So, while we see how the main relationship is going, we’ll get glimpses into other relationships. Both should hopefully play off each other well and make us invested in both the episodic stories and the ongoing story.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Zong-Fang asks Ya-Wen to marry him, using the ring Yi-Zhi lost on the metro.

Sleeper Star: Hangee Liou is so appealing as the seemingly sad Zong-Fang, especially when he gets enough backbone to show Ya-Wen how he feels.

Most Pilot-y Line: We want to know if there is really a Mandarin equivalent for the word “schmuck,” because that’s what the subtitles indicated what Lisa called Alan.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Adventure Of The Ring cuts the tension of its central relationship by showing other varied relationships, making both sides of the show have more emotional impact.

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 Adventure Of The Ring On HBO Max