Review: “A Great Way to Care 2” (By MiriamFanz)
Producer: Marco Law
Genre: Medical, crime
Cast: Alex Fong, Tavia Yeung, Yoyo Mung, Ben Wong, Edwin Siu, Ram Chiang
Rating: 
Plot:
Rape, murder, murder, murder. A typical crime investigation series, but with psychiatrists solving the cases instead of police, forensics or lawyers. This is a bloodier continuation of A Great Way to Care. The theme this time is “sane criminals pretending to be insane”.
Review:
Watching A Great Way to Care 2 made me go back to watch the prequel and I must say the original was better. First thing to mention is how there was a bunch of reused actors, although that doesn’t necessarily affect the entertainment value of the series. Recycled actors aside, there were a lot of similar cases, such as the religious cult, the schizophrenic (which has now been severely overused in police dramas), and the vigilante. The most important reason is because the original had a lot more focus on psychology. The sequel feels like a normal police investigation series. The first series had Alex Fong predicting the criminal’s next move or trying to elicit the truth from a suspect via psychological analysis. Here, Alex or the police solve cases by noticing clues that others have missed. In most cases, it was actually quite apparent that the criminal wasn’t a psycho.
Comparing Tavia and Kate as the female leads in the first and second series, Tavia certainly had the more interesting character to work with. She was very impressive as the undercover prostitute and equally good as a crazy killer who took justice into her own hands. Alex Fong as male lead wasn’t much different from the last series. At times, I find him to be a little slow-reacting, although maybe his character calls for that. I enjoyed his casual scenes with Yoyo Mung. Yoyo, though technically co-female lead, serves only as Alex’s love interest, and for the “daring” sperm donation request. I think she is at her best when she plays this type of loud-spoken independent character. Yoyo looks more compatible with Alex than Kate.
Why, oh why, does every sequel need to have a love triangle? Edwin Siu is arguably the real male focus of the show with plenty of screen time. While I liked his witty, self-assured buck-toothed character, it was a drag to go through his love indecision. It was not helped by the fact that his partners were awful to watch. Aimee Chan still has very wooden expression and inexpressive speech, whether it is love scenes with Edwin or emotional scenes with her brother. Her Cantonese seems to be improving though. Or maybe it’s because Christine Kuo was worse. I can usually tolerate bad accents, but I honestly could not make out a lot of what she said. The Edwin-Aimee-Christine line took up too much screen time that other relationships didn’t get proper development. Namely, I wanted to see more of Tavia and Ben Wong because their relationship is actually important to her decisions in the end.
Other characters: Ben Wong actually had a huge personality change from the first series where he was extremely hot-tempered. This time, there is less spark in his character and performance. Ram Chiang doesn’t have much to do in terms of solving cases and his relationship with Leanne Li was unnecessary because nothing happened in the end. Oscar Leung, Power Chan and Eric Li are mostly just sidekicks, but Oscar and Power manage to grab some attention with little habits. I liked Henry Lee’s character after he got friendly with the other doctors, especially that nosy look he has when trying to find out gossip.
In terms of case characters: Matthew Ko was not convincing as the religious cult leader and he smirks at all the wrong times. Pierre Ngo was a better cult leader in the original. Hugo Wong really let loose as a wild “Zeus”. Otto Chan did an admirable job as Aimee’s autistic brother; the way he communicates seems very real. The little scene in the end with his girlfriend was cute. Lee Yee Man tried too hard to look evil with the deadly stare.
All in all, the cases aren’t the most unique or memorable, but it’s enough to keep the series moving at a good pace. Sequels rarely live up to original expectations, but at least this one didn’t completely fall flat.
Rating: Worth the time.
The review is written by Miriamfanz, a Contributing Writer at JayneStars.com. Visit Miriamfanz’s blog!
I agree that Edwin loves relationship took to much of screen time. Some of the footage of Tavia with Ben get cut and their relationship not well develop.
There are a lot of likable characters in tis series but such pity not well written. The story lines was a flop with bad editing. Too much unnecessary flashback which make the some of scenes too repetitive.
The main casts have great chemistry. Love the friendship between Alex-Tavia-Yoyo in last episode (love the scene where Alex and Yoyo tried to persuade Tavia repent) , . Top notch performance from Tavia ( by using eyes performance , she make me feel chill watching her went insane)
Tavia did a good job as insane, but.. IMHO Natalie Tong on “Bullet Brain” as insane does better than Tavia
well both are different kinds of crazy.
Totally agree with 939393.
I agree with cloud9.
Can someone tell me in which episode Tavia and Ben started dating.
Oh yes… anyone know which episode??
I believe in episode 13…when he comforts her after the death of her ‘brother’. It’s not made to be obvious as to when they officially started dating, but during that episode audiences get a feel that they become a couple after that scene. Hope it helps lol
I liked parts of this series, but the cases were not very good and it doesn’t seem like there were even that many? I really liked Alex Fong and Yoyo together, but it doesn’t really seem like Alex was even the main lead! There seemed to be way too much focus on Edwin but I guess it was just edited that way? I was actually very excited to see Tavia in this series, but I felt like she was miscast in this role because she didn’t seem very convincing until the very end when she became crazy. They also didn’t do a very good job building up her and Ben’s relationship, which is something I wanted to see more of.
I’m OK with it. Alex probably wanted to step back and ease in some of the young’uns.
I love you until the end of the world! My heart will go on!
way tooooooooo many characters in this series, not as good as the first installment.
it is a ok series.
Waste of time to watch first 5 eps due to two reasons: 1. A good prequel and 2. Yoyo & Alex plus Yoyo’s last TVB series.
For reason 1., the sequel is so boring, so draggy that I cant even finish the first case and dont bother to find out who is the murderer. Eps 5 is out of my bearable ability. Cant compare to AGWTC. It would be better if the series doesnt heritage the name AGWTC.
For reason 2, Alex has a disappointed change in character. No more charming. Not the doctor I like with Monkey. He turned boring and sleepy walking. Yoyo is ok, but forgettable.
Together with some other factors related to acting, I vote for 2 stars at max.
There is way too many main characters in this
I wished the series focused more on the pscyhological part in cases. It seemed as if the series was bsed on catching criminals who are accused of using mental disorders as a way of reducing their jail sentence time. The only case that stood out was towards with end when it involved Tavia being schizophrenic…
I liked Edwin’s acting, but I hated how the series focused so much on his relationship line. WIth his significantly large screentime in comparison to the leads like Alex, Tavia etc. It makes the drama unbalanced and a bit confusing.
Alex and Yoyo’s line was quite flat and dull imho, though I have to say some scenes were quite hilarious and their chemistry together really showed (i.e. the scenes when she asked him for his sperms xD)
Tavia and Ben- really didn’t expect their chemistry to be quite sweet as a couple. WAnted to really see more of their development…but too bad their scenes were even edited out T_T”
Tavia as a killer left my mouth gaped wild open. Daymn, this girl can really act crazy LOL Really enjoyed her performance during her killing spree scenes and the times when she completely lost her sanity. Hats off to Tavia. Her end was quite tragic, but a very memorable one.
Felt quite sorry for Ben’s character though…he always ends up dating adnormal girls o_O LOL jokes…I liked Bun Sir, don’t remember what his personality was like in the first, but I like how he seems to give off a coolness and tough feel and look,then becomes quite soft and almost timid when he’s around his gf.
I’d say overall,if compared to the first one, i’d say the first installment flows a lot better than the second. The first one dug out interest in its cases and kept me guessing, whereas the 2nd series cases seemed to be kicked to the side while relationship lines became the predominant focus… But if you dissect the 2nd series, I prefer the individual performance of each/certain artists, but there are farrrrr too many characters involved.
For the first time, I thought Aimee was pretty ..
Even the green leaf characters weren’t too good, Ram Chiang and the bad psycho head. I just felt like the story was thrown together.
This series deserves a 2.
This drama started out really good. I think Tavia did a great job as the prosititute, Apple. I really like Alex Fong and his acting and Yoyo, but Yoyo did not have much time to shine. I think at like episode 12, it started to go downhill. They had so many small “pointless” cases. I thought they would do more with the Amy Fan case (Alex’s ex-gf), but no, it just ended so quickly.
I felt the Edwin-Aimee-Christine love triangle was a waste of time. It would have mad more sense if Christine ended up with Power instead.
Tavia did a good job as an undercover prostitute at the beginning and when she turned psycho at the end.
I did not watch this series because it is so bloody.
This series was ok in the beginning when Tavia was undercover, and at the end when she went crazy. The middle was very draggy and there’s too much overlap with the prequel, both in terms of plot and in terms of actors. Otto Chan’s characters are so similar I thought he was playing the same person.
I didn’t really mind Edwin’s scenes though. I actually didn’t think his love triangle was too overly done. I guess he did have a crush on Christine for the whole series but the actual parts where he was two-timing the girls wasn’t very long. Unfortunately Christine’s acting here was even worse than usual…
There was barely any development of the relationships between Alex and Yoyo and Tavia and Ben, that it felt like they were only paired up for the sake of being paired up. I think the best developed relationship was actually Edwin and Aimee.
Alex’s character is weird to me. He’s supposed to be a serious, pretty boring, middle aged man, but sometimes he says really awkward things or makes stupid jokes that seem really out of character. But I don’t know. This happened in the first one too so maybe his character is just supposed to be like that.
Overall the best plot was Tavia’s background and the last case. However, I didn’t really understand what the original plan was with Tavia holding Yoyo hostage, and the thing she said about finding 2 cars that looked the same? I assume it was an escape plan, but really? You’re a psychologist, your friend has a mental disorder, and you’re going to help her escape somewhere where she’ll be by herself?? And why did she fire a shot at the car before shooting herself?
Alex looks like a stone wall. Tavia was ok, as was Ben and Yoyo. Let’s not even talk about Aimee. Acting aside, what is most disturbing is the Christian agenda being shoved down our throats. Go back 20 or even 10 years and you won’t find this type of dialogue in TVB dramas. What happened???
No one has mentioned Otto Chan playing Aimee’s mentally disabled brother. I thought he did a great job tbh, although he didnt have much screentime, he managed to create quite a cute and likable character in my opinion. His sibling relationship he shared with Aimee was quite sweet.
I think this series has a very good beginning & end. The real parts worth watching in terms of plot Tavia’s scenes. She was so good as the undercover prostitute and as a psycho killer. Although her killing spree scenes were really scary, the scene that horrified me the most was when she was threatening Lee Yi Man in the hospital. That scene gave me the creeps. Thumbs up for Tavia’s acting.
PS: I think Lee Yi Man’s acting was pretty good too.
Ben & Tavia’s romance: Sure, they were a sweet couple, but I feel like the script did not develop their relationship enough. The crying scene at the staircase suddenly changed their relationship, and the next second, they’re bf/gf. Too sudden.
Alex & Yoyo: I liked Alex’s character in this, and Yoyo’s as well. They were so funny and awkward at the appropriate times. But again, I felt like their relationship was not developed enough. Everything happened in the last few episodes. Too rushed!
Edwin/Christine/Aimee: They were the comic relief. Some very hilarious scenes, but I think it was too much. Could have given half of Edwin’s screentime to the other members of the cast! (But I do think he did a wonderful job with this role)
Ram & Leanne: “his relationship with Leanne Li was unnecessary because nothing happened in the end.” – Yes, exactly what Miriamfanz said.
All in all, great series because it had an intense/somewhat shocking ending with a sorta twist. The major downside is the poorly written script. Some parts of the plot did not flow well.
I also think the series should’ve been more focused on actual psychiatry. All I remember them talking about was PTSD and schizophrenia.
I really loved this series. Edwin acted very well being the ugly one. I wish their were some romance between Alex and Tavia instead of Yoyo. Nevertheless, Tavia and Ben made a sweet couple with Ben being the soft and caring one which is a 360 degree change when he’s on duty – absolutely hot-headed as a police head. Tavia and Ben should have had more romantic scenes together. I wish TVB would make a romance series with Ben. I would love to see Ben in a romantic series with more romantic scenes. The scenes between Alex and Yoyo are very hilarious with Yoyo forcing Alex to donate his sperms. In fact, the scenes between Alex and Tavia looked great in the beginning. If only TVB had developed a love relationship between them, it would have been better. To be honest, I loved the sequel compared to the prequel. It was good that TVB did away with Kate. It was a great cast with all the actors and actresses. Ben was great.