This post is written by Lynne@http://tvb-horizon.blogspot.com
Images credits to original owners

Finished watching The Confidant awhile back, I've got so much to talk about but don't know where to start so ended up splitting it into many posts :) It'll be nicer to read and won't be too long to write. Haha...

*** I was debating whether to use "An Dehai" (the name of the actual historical character) or "On Tak-Hei" (the name given to the character in The Confidant), and in the end chose to use Tak Hei. 
On Tak Hei

A Brief Summary
At a young age, On Tak Hei was sold to the palace to become a eunuch. A student of Lau Dor-sang, Tak Hei is also the best friend of Li Lianying, a eunuch serving King-yan Palace. Tak Hei risked his life to help Empress Dowagers Cixi and Cian resume their power in court, winning the trust of both empresses. Cixi appoints Tak Hei as her personal eunuch, and he also becomes her one of her closest friends and confidants. Compassionate and ambitious, Tak Hei is displeased with Chan Fuk abusing his powers as Forbidden City's Head Eunuch, and he strives to take over his position. Accused of having affair with Cixi and is beheaded. - credits wikipedia

A surprisingly interesting character to watch, On Tak Hei was no doubt one of the main driving forces of The Confidant. At first he is not necessarily the kind of guy you'd come to like because his ambitions for wealth and power gave off the indication for, "I am going turn bad in the end" kind of feeling. Always on the edge between good and bad, I did believe that assumption would come true and always wondered when Tak Hei's going to turn against his best friend, Li Lianying (Wayne Lai). In the end though, he never did. Unexpected but very well appreciated because even though he has these shades of greys to his character, Tak Hei's positive traits still lingered on until the end where he sacrificed himself out of loyalty for Cixi (Michelle Yim).  This in turn displayed a more complex and thus a better developed character compared to the rest of the cast.

Of course, the character also speaks for the actor himself too.  Raymond Cho really stole the limelight in The Confidant with On Tak Hei.  It is quite unfortunate that Raymond was not able to get the recognition that he deserves though, since it was a rare character to come by.
On Tak Hei and Siu Chai (Angel Chiang)

A Brief Summary:
Siu Chai is a prostitute that On Tak Hei happens to meet when he was searching for his lost sister.  Afterwards, she became his 'wife'.  Even though they appear to be loving on the outside, we found out later on that Siu Chai was in fact having affairs with multiple men at their mansion whenever Tak Hei was not at home.  In the end, Siu Chai was killed by Tim Shau (Edwin Siu) when she planned to elope with her 'lover'.

Despite the fact that Siu Chai was cheating on Tak Hei, I actually enjoyed their story the most compared to the rest of the couples.  Unfortunately the ending ruined it!  I shall rant this out loud...

First of all I quite like the idea of Siu Chai cheating on Tak Hei because it makes it clear that no matter what he does, Tak Hei will always be an eunuch and while Siu Chai may have loved him at first, fact is that he's still an eunuch.  That's how it is and will be until the end.  Seeing the couple being caught in this situation, it felt more realistic and therefore easier to sympathize as I see Tak Hei's desperation to salvage their relationship.

All long Tak Hei have been disregarding Siu Chai's affairs because he felt indebted to her and could not bear to loose her.  Even when he saw a man's shoe near their bed, he tried all he could to ignore it.  This was when Siu Chai confronted him, trying to make him face the fact that she's indeed cheating on him.  You can tell that it's also hurting her, having to face this especially when Tak Hei argued that he was the one who's wrong while she yelled back at him, saying that she's the one who's wrong.  Siu Chai knew that she was in the wrong and it hurt her seeing Tak Hei s cowardice.  Personally, that is the Siu Chai I liked (or should I say, "would've liked") to see because I can tell that she didn't want to hurt Tak Hei but at the same time, could not help for up she did.  Only talking about the first few lines there though, since Siu Chai's last few lines (also facial expressions) were not what I would've preferred to hear/see from her.

So from there, Siu Chai planned to run off with her lover but was killed by Tim Shau instead (as mentioned in the summary).  This is what I did not like because it turned her into an absolute slut.  (Technically she was a slut before too but this last move just killed me.)  I really wish that they could've let Siu Chai stay around to watch Tak Hei's execution because regardless of what had happened, I still believe that she cares for him (at least that's what I wanted tvb to write) and therefore would like to see her reaction towards his death.

 I personally think that if their story have been fixed a little towards the end, it would have been so much better.  Also, the fact that Tim Shau would kill is terribly dramatic and therefore made this part even more stupid.


My Favourite Scene of On Tak Hei:  the execution
To make it clear, I did not like the fact that he got executed.  On the contrary I was in tears during this scene.  No doubt that it was one of the most memorable and emotional moment because besides the fact that I love On Tak Hei (which definitely contributed to my reaction), the execution overall felt very powerful in the way it had affected the other characters (can especially feel the heart-aches during the scene where Li Lianying asked Cixi why she executed Tak Hei).  To add on to that, I felt that his death gave Li Lianying, Cixi etc the reason to believe that they've been fighting an unbeatable battle all along against the so called evils.  Who's good?  Who's bad anymore?  How can one tell when they've been betrayed by the ones so close to them?  Thus in my point of view, it was the 'highest' climax that The Confidant ever reached.

Unfortunately though, all the episodes after this one greatly disappointed me (especially about Li Lianying).  I shall talk more about that later.

As for the other characters, I'll be dedicating a single post to each in a similar format as this one.  After I finish all those posts, I'll then write the final post which will include my overall thoughts on The Confidant.  Be aware that I'm going to be ranting abit though since there are things that terribly irritated me (in terms of character transition and such).  To be honest, this may be the only post with so few rants (excluding the one I'm going to be writing for Sam Shun (Power Chan)).