Depressive screenwriter.

Chapter 78 End of the foreshadowing
In early February, the fourth episode of To the Moon premiered.

This episode follows a similar plot rhythm to the previous three episodes.

It is still Cheng Li and Shen Yi exploring Xu Han’s memories.

In this episode, the audience followed Xu Han's memory and saw the scene of his wedding with Xiaoxi.

I saw Xu Han’s mother was so emotional at the wedding, she called him "Xu Qiao" (Joey) with tears in her eyes.

I saw how Xu Han mustered up the courage to ask Xiaoxi to go to the movies when he was in middle school.

I saw how Xiaoxi, as an autistic person, is a top student, but also an idiot in interpersonal relationships.

She agreed to Xu Han's request to watch a movie together, but she was nowhere to be seen throughout the entire movie.

When Xu Han angrily asked her why she was not there, Xiaoxi replied, "I have been in the cinema the whole time, and I always knew where you were sitting. I just found the most convenient seat. I watched the movie with you in the same theater, in the same showtime!"

For Xiaoxi, who has autism, she thinks this is the fulfillment of her promise to watch a movie with Xu Han.

And during the movie, she carried the platypus with her the whole time.

From middle school until her death in old age, this platypus never left her side.

At the end of the fourth episode, when his classmates asked him why he wanted to pursue Xiaoxi, a girl who was a complete idiot in interpersonal relationships and only offended people.

Xu Han's answer was [I think she's cool! ]

Strictly speaking, the sensory experience of the fourth episode is much better than the first three episodes.

It also solved many mysteries for the fans of Going to the Moon.

"So this is why Xu Han answered when Xiao Xi, a young man, asked Xu Han why he pursued her when he was young in episode 3?"

"No wonder Xiaoxi looked so sad at that time. This was obviously not the answer she wanted!"

"Isn't it normal to think a girl is cool and approach her?"

"But this isn't normal for Xiaoxi! Although I don't know the reason, this is definitely not the answer she wants to hear."

"Why didn't she say it?"

"Because, she can't say it! The disease in the drama is not made up randomly. The incidence of this disease is one in a few hundred, and people with this disease often have high IQs, but they are terrible at interpersonal communication. Normal people will just say whatever is stuck in their hearts. But people with this disease can't say it. Their way of thinking and brain circuits are different from ordinary people."

"Let me be frank. We thought Xiaoxi was weird when we watched the show. But for a patient like Xiaoxi, she had clearly revealed the paper rabbit and the platypus, but John didn't know what it meant. She was actually the saddest. Because she felt that she had said everything she wanted to say, but Xu Han didn't understand what she was saying!"

"Xiaoxi must have felt very uncomfortable before she died. She asked Xu Han again and again what a paper rabbit was. But Xu Han had no answer at all. I have a feeling that the four elements of paper rabbit, platypus sandbag, lighthouse, and going to the moon will eventually be completely connected."

"Now it depends on how the screenwriter will reveal the mystery."

"This is the first time I've watched a drama about memory travel. It's obviously a love drama, but it adds puzzle elements. Screenwriter Su Yan is really innovative."

"It's novel, but after so many episodes, if the final answer to the Riddler isn't so interesting, that would be a big problem."

In fact, after watching the fourth episode of To the Moon, most viewers have already felt involved in the love story between Xu Han and Xiao Xi.

Everyone knows the ending of these two people, Xiaoxi died and Xu Han was on the verge of death.

Many people would find this kind of drama boring if it explores the past of two people before knowing the outcome.

But in reality, that doesn't seem to be the case at all.

Because the audience really wants to know what attitude Xiaoxi had when she died.

What do rabbits and platypuses represent to her?
After the episode was aired, it had a viewership rating of 3.46%, and To the Moon once again made it into the top eight ratings of the week.

However, the ratings of the work "Blood Magician" ranked first this week have reached 4.25%, and the second-ranked "Door" has also reached 4.19%. The ratings of "Imperfect Divorce", which was originally ranked third, have also increased for the first time to 4.01%.
Although To the Moon has not dropped in the ratings ranking, the gap between it and the previous dramas is actually widening.

Media professionals and colleagues have not stopped disparaging the moon trip.

But in fact, even though they were devaluing it, the score of Going to the Moon actually rose to 8.7 points.

Moreover, Sakura TV is quite satisfied with the current performance of the moon mission.

A B-level drama with an investment of more than 3.4 million and a viewership rate of %.

Compared with the TV station's previous dramas of the same scale of investment, the ratings can be considered upper-middle.

No matter how much Akasaka Yoshitoki hated Su Yan, he couldn't do anything at this time.

Instead, he reluctantly signed Ogide Aya's proposal to add an additional two million in investment because the ratings of Going to the Moon were slightly better than expected.

This was different from what Akasaka Yoshitoki had imagined.

He imagined that the early plot of To the Moon was too slow and the ratings and reputation would drop sharply. At that time, he would be able to make trouble for Su Yan and Shinozaki Yumi in the production department. However, until now, a month has passed in the winter season.

Although the ratings of To the Moon barely increased, they didn’t decrease either.

It's just that strong.

"Rurouni Kenshin, the fans of Ancient Love Song are so loyal?" Akasaka Yoshitoki found it difficult to understand.

However, by the fifth week of To the Moon's broadcast, the situation that Yoshitoki Akasaka hoped to see finally occurred.

No matter how patient the fans are, the plot of the fifth episode of To the Moon was indeed too obscure and affected the ratings.

Because there was a gap in the two doctors' exploration of Xu Han's memory, no matter how many times they activated the instruments, they could not enter Xu Han's childhood memories.

The two wanted to implant the seed of desire to "go to the moon" directly into Xu Han in middle school, so that Xu Han's memory world would be reconstructed with the help of the machine starting from middle school. He would generate a new life memory of himself aiming to be an astronaut since childhood, studying hard, getting into college and joining the space agency, and finally becoming an astronaut and landing on the moon.
Go to the moon in your dream, and then die happily having fulfilled your dream.

But no matter what the two did, Xu Han's life memory did not change at all.

He continued to grow up like this, met Xiaoxi, got married, and then after Xiaoxi died, he had the idea of ​​going to the moon.

Does he really want to go to the moon?
Is going to the moon really his greatest inner wish and motivation?

He had clearly done that, so why didn't his life change?
At the end of the fifth episode, the two doctors realized that it was meaningless to influence Xu Han only in middle school, so they had to study Xu Han's real medical records and found that he had taken a large amount of beta-blockers in his childhood.

However, he did not have cardiovascular disease but took these drugs, which caused his childhood memories to become confused and he forgot the past. This is why the two doctors could not explore his childhood.

After searching for a lot of information and methods, the two doctors used the smell of the rotting squirrel corpse that they had killed as a lead, and finally started the instrument again and came to Xu Han's childhood memory world.

This episode temporarily deviates from the love story of Xu Han and Xiaoxi, giving the audience a sense of disconnection: "I was watching this episode well, but it got off topic for no reason. Why is it looking for Xu Han's childhood medical history and the smell of stinky squirrels?"

But this episode is quite important, and Su Yan couldn't ignore it when writing the script.

This resulted in the fifth episode of To the Moon having a viewership rating of only 3.21%, a significant drop compared to the fourth episode of To the Moon, and the ratings ranking dropped to tenth place in the quarter.

Now Akasaka Yoshitoki finally saw his opportunity.

Once a drama's ratings begin to decline like this, it is often the beginning of the collapse of its reputation.

If the ratings of To the Moon episode 6 drop again, there is a high probability that the ratings of this work will continue to plummet to the bottom from then on.

By then, the reputation will deteriorate and the ratings will drop below 3%. Then he will have a legitimate reason to deal with Su Yan at the TV station.

Naturally, many news media drama critics would not miss the opportunity to belittle the "genius screenwriter" Su Yan.

[Five episodes into the show, the plot of going to the moon is unclear, and I still don’t know the true meaning of the title! ]

[Please ask screenwriter Su Yan to respect the time of TV viewers and not disgust them with boring plots. ]

[The moon is in a mess, and we still don't know how it will end.]

[Science fiction romance theme? Many times, innovation is not necessarily a good thing. 】

[A love story with a known ending will inevitably be abandoned by the audience. The ratings of To the Moon dropped by 0.2%, and it may fall out of the top ten ratings completely. ]

[Genius screenwriter Su Yan ran out of ideas in less than two months. Perhaps young people today should take more time to calm down. How can they create good scripts when they are so impatient and eager for quick success and three dramas in three seasons?]

Go to the Moon crew office.

"It's not good!" Ikumi Shinozaki looked at the complaints and dissatisfaction of many fans on the Internet about the fifth episode of To the Moon.

"Fans are already impatient. They want to see the complete story of Xiaoxi and Xu Han, and are not interested in Shen Yi and Cheng Li's memory exploration."

"It's normal." Su Yan said.

"In fact, when I was writing the script, I could probably guess that by the time the show was aired, fans would be impatient."

The ratings of To the Moon were supported by two actors, Qiu Junlin and Takezawa Kayono, in the first few episodes.

The fourth episode's young love story of Xu Han and Xiaoxi, the dance in the lighthouse, and the wedding oath are all worth watching, so the ratings did not drop.

But the fifth episode is really a test of the audience's patience.

Obviously, the audience's patience is not enough, and the lengthy plot of just one episode is on the verge of breaking point.
"Okay, let's watch the sixth episode." Su Yan smiled slightly.

At this point, the plot setup for the slow-burning but touching story of To the Moon has all come to an end.

The subsequent plot is to retract the foreshadowing and explain to the audience why this drama is called "To the Moon!"

(End of this chapter)