HIStory 3: Make Our Days Count – Drama Review

Hao Ting and Xi Gu are both senior high school students, but their personalities couldn't be more different. Hao Ting is outgoing, lively, and known for being a rowdy troublemaker on school campus. He is the stark opposite from Xi Gu, the quiet, intelligent, and hardworking student who's acing all his classes. In fact, Xi Gu is the number one student in his grade with a promising academic future ahead of him.

Xi Gu is an orphan who lives by himself with no family or friends. After school, he has to work a part-time job to pay rent and save up on tuition costs. Sometimes, he barely has enough money to afford regular meals for himself. Fortunately, his boss Zhi Gang is a very generous man, and he tries to look after Xi Ghu by giving him extra food or money.

Recently, Hao Ting's needy girlfriend has developed an interest in Xi Gu. Although he rebuffs her advances, she insists on spending time with the ace student. Their closeness attracts the ire of Hao Ting and his friends, who grow hostile towards Xi Gu. As tensions rise, Hao Ting's clique begins to bully Xi Gu, threatening him with pranks and violence.

However, one of the pranks ends up having severe and unintended consequences. It causes Hao Ting to feel bad about the way he has been treating Xi Gu. As he is overtaken by guilt, Hao Ting starts paying more attention to Xi Gu, eventually developing feelings for the guy he used to bully. However, these feelings are not reciprocated and Xi Gu still views him as the enemy, no matter how much Hao Ting tries to improve his reputation.

Meanwhile, Hao Ting's classmate and best friend Bo Xiang is working part-time at his cousin's gym. Bo Xiang has a massive crush on one of the regulars, who just happens to be Xi Gu's boss Zhi Gang. Although Bo Xiang is smitten with Zhi Gang, there's a sizable age difference between the two of them. While Zhi Gang believes Bo Xiang is too young for him, his rejections do not seem to deter Bo Xiang, who only becomes more fixated on winning over the older man.

I struggled to enjoy the first half of HIStory 3: Make Our Days Count. Both Hao Ting and Bo Xiang were such obnoxious characters, whose scenes left me with immense second-hand embarrassment. Everything they did irritated me. When they weren't behaving like reckless idiots, they were being unpleasant bullies who harassed Xi Gu for no good reason. At some point, my annoyance turned into rage, and just seeing the two of them filled me with visceral hatred.

I wasn't convinced by Hao Ting's sudden transition from bullying Xi Gu to developing romantic feelings for him. It didn't make sense how his character could go from one extreme ("I HATE YOU! 😡") to another ("NO, I ACTUALLY LOVE YOU! 😍") so fast. He was way too over-the-top in his pursuit of Xi Gu, who clearly wanted nothing to do with his bully. Their romance was poorly written, terribly paced, and marred by unrealistic characterization.

The other romance felt as annoying as it was problematic. Bo Xiang was so self-centered, turning a schoolboy crush into an unhealthy and uncomfortable obsession. His juvenile behaviour highlighted the sizable age difference between him and Zhi Gang. One of them was a mature adult, while the other was still a high school student who behaved like a kid. These two characters were in completely different stages of their lives and they weren't a good match for each other.

The second half of this drama did feel more coherent. Not that there was a significant improvement in the writing quality, but at least the plots moved forward once the couples got together. We explored deeper into Hao Ting’s family dynamics, which opened up new storylines. Both Hao Ting and Bo Xiang also got less annoying once they settled down in their relationships, so I guess that's considered character development?

HIStory 3: Make Our Days Count has a controversial ending that made a lot of fans upset. However, I'm actually not that offended by the way it ended. Maybe it's because my expectations were already so low, and I couldn’t be disappointed any further. Overall, this wasn’t the strongest or the weakest installment in the HIStory franchise. I find the series very mediocre as a whole.