''iPartment''

iPartment (Chinese: 爱情公寓; pinyin: Àiqíng Gōngyù), is a sitcom from Mainland China. It was produced by Shanghai Film Group Corporation and Shanghai Film Studio, aired by Jiangxi TV in August 2009, with 20 45-minute episodes.

The second season switched into a different style approach with episodes aired online, due to its online fan base and polls for upcoming episodes. The second season featured four of the same characters from the first season, with three new characters. The third season followed with the same cast.

The i in the English title is a reference to ài (爱), the Chinese term for "love".

Premise

The show details the lives of seven youths in their mid-to-late 20s who are neighbors in an apartment building. Each person has a profession of their own and often gets into unexpected escapades.

Although much of the show is filmed on location, iPartment also contains a laugh track. The series uses a cinematic-style of approach with fast-paced editing and transitions, much like the British comedy series Spaced. There are also frequent references to more recent events and culture in China.

iPartment tends to combine genres such as drama, mystery, thriller, slapstick and surrealism. The second season leans more to a cinematic feel, with uses of CGI, camera effects and action scenes.

Cast

• Jin Shijia (Kim Jin) portrays Lu Zhanbo,

- A graduate from MIT who recently returned to China. He works as a network engineer. Zhanbo is very intelligent, but also socially inept and clumsy dealing with girls, often described by others as a stereotypical nerd. He likes watching scientific shows, and is a huge fan of Transformers. He first met Wanyu on the bus trip from the airport to the apartment, and fell in love with her. He eventually confessed his love to her at the end of season 1, which she accepted. He later went on a vacation around the world with Wanyu, and was absent for the whole season 2. He proposed to Wanyu in season 3, but she declined to pursue her future in Milano, and they break up despite still being in love with each other. He returns in Season 4, but then receives a job offer to go around the world for his company. He accepts the offer, and is missing from the rest of the season.

• Zhao Ji (Evonne Zhao) portrays Lin Wanyu,

- The daughter of a billionaire banker. She ran away from home when her father forced her to marry against her will, and met Zhanbo on the bus. She found various work and eventually got a job as a writer for a fashion magazine. She is smart and charming, but often thinks and acts naively and unrealistically in everyday life due to being raised in a wealthy family. She is into fashion designing and likes Tarot/star sign predictions. She becomes Zhanbo's best friend. In the finale of season 1, she accepts Zhanbo and they go on a vacation around the world together as a couple. Around everyday life though, they appear more like friends than a couple. She eventually decides to go study fashion design college in Milano, and sadly parts with Zhanbo in season 3.

• Chen He (Michael Chen) portrays Zeng Xiaoxian,

- A host for the late-night radio talk show: “Your Moon, My Heart.” He is kind, sensitive but wimpy, often being forced into situations that are out of his control. His signature catch phrase on the show is: "Good man is me, I am Zeng Xiaoxian." (Chinese: "好男人就是我，我就是曾小贤！") Despite jokingly claiming to be a famous celebrity, his talk show is very unpopular and he is often ridiculed by his boss, Lisa. He has a long-time crush for Yifei, but he never confessed his love to her due to his cowardice. In the end of season 2, he won ¥5,000,000 from a TV program called Who Wants to be a Millionaire, but lost the money due to one of his fans named Huang Baoqiang winning it all away. At the end of season 3, the new co-host of his radio show, Nuo Lan, falls in love with him, but Xiaoxian has a hard choice whether to accept her or continue trying on Yifei, but deep in his heart, he knows that he truly loves Yifei and not Nuolan. He gets together with Nuolan in the fourth season, but always feels that he still likes Yifei.

• Lou Yixiao (Loura Lou) portrays Hu Yifei,

- Zhanbo’s older stepsister. She is a PhD graduate who works as a lecturer at her university. She is tough, aggressive and very competitive, with many of her friends jokingly saying she has the strength worth two men. She often bullies her friends around (Xiaoxian most of the time) with her forceful personality, and expresses her sarcasm at their incompetence. She is constantly annoyed by Xiaoxian’s wimpy and bumbling personality. In various places, you can see that she likes him, but always denies this to the public. In the finale of each season, she gets a moment of love with Xiaoxian, but it always ends without much meaning with neither of the two confessing their feelings for each other. Up until season four, though, she begins to show that she likes him. In episode 7 of season 4, she gets drunk and shouts at Nuolan that she likes him, but only after she asked her many times. She feels envious and sour when she sees Xiaoxian with Nuolan. She kept her love in for 4 years already, but she's feeling really sour at this point, so it's beginning to burst. In the 21st episode, through several 'coincidental' incidences, she finally kisses Xiaoxian, and naturally he kisses back. The only slight problem is that Xiaoxian also happens to be dating Nuo Lan at the time.

• Sun Yizhou (Sean Sun) portrays Lü Ziqiao,

- A young man who moved into the apartment next-door at the beginning of the series. He is a freelancer, though often thinks of smart ideas to make money or trick his friends into doing his bidding (though also occasionally fail and lead him to trouble). He is cunning, irresponsible but very charismatic, and likes to use his charms to flirt with various girls. Not only is he flirty, but he often gives his friends advice on girls. He uses the fake name “Lü Xiaobu” (named after Lü Bu) when dating other girls. He has a constant love-hate relationship with Meijia, but nearing the end of season 3, while searching for the perfect woman, he realised the person he loved the most is still Meijia.

• Li Jinming (Kimi Li) portrays Chen Meijia,

- Ziqiao’s ex-girlfriend, who moved into the apartment with him to take advantage of a discounted rent deal. She initially worked as Guangu’s assistant, later as Yifei’s teaching assistant (though loses the job due to a clumsy mistake), and later in a pet shop. She is childish, cheerful and ditzy, and gets easily attracted to cute things. She has a love-hate relationship with Ziqiao, and often gets angry at his laziness or flirting with other girls, and she also had a crush on Sekiya for a short time when he first moved in. In season 2, she left the apartment and moved to another city, but returns in season 3 after failing her work there. In the end of season 3, she realizes that she still loves Ziqiao, and is hinted to be pregnant with his baby, but in season 4, she is revealed to be not pregnant.

• Wang Chuanjun (Eric Wang) portrays Sekiya Kamiki (Chinese: Guangu Shenqi),

- A Japanese young man who moved into the apartment. He was a manga artist from Yokohama, but left for China to pursue his career. He is charming and very serious, but when angered, he becomes extremely stubborn and (comically) violent, often taking out a katana and scaring his friends by claiming he will commit seppuku. He is still learning Chinese, and often misuses Chinese phrases. During season 1 he accidentally got a girlfriend but soon broke up. In the beginning of season 2, he falls in love with Youyou and eventually the two of them become a couple. Although he loves Youyou very much, he is often too overprotective, which annoys her. In the season 3 finale, he mistakenly thinking Youyou is pregnant and proposes to her, which she accepts.

• Deng Jiajia portrays Tang Youyou,

- Ziqiao’s little aunt (the youngest sister of his mother). In fact, she is 2 years younger than her nephew Ziqiao. She works as an actress, though her movie character always dies without any character development, much to her frustration. Even outside of the movie set, she likes to act overly dramatic; in one instance she spent a few hours fabricating and acting out a (fictional) story to explain to a stranger about how she and Sekiya met. She is also very bad at keeping secrets, but she always claims that she won't let them out. She meets Sekiya at the start of season 2, and they eventually become a couple. In the season 3 finale, she accepts Sekiya’s proposal, but reveals that she is not pregnant.

• Li Jiahang (Jean Li) portrays Zhang Wei,

- A friend of Ziqiao that he met at the bar. He is a trainee lawyer. In season 1 he was a minor character that Ziqiao found to set up a date with Yifei, but he became a main character in season 2. He moved into the apartment after Ziqiao’s party caused him to miss his own wedding, indirectly causing his fiancée to run away with another man. He is kind-hearted and always keen to help others, but very unlucky and also quite stingy, often claiming he is saving money to buy his own house. He is allergic to seafood and ink stamps, and got hospitalized several times when he mistakenly eats lobster and crayfish, and also when he received an entrance stamp when the boys invited him to a nightclub. Throughout the series he has dated several girls, but his friends always end up unwittingly ruining it for him. In season 3 he leaves the apartment and found work as a lawyer in another city, though he has never won a single case for his client.

• Zhao Wenqi (Vanessa Zhao) portrays Qin Yumo,

A high-school friend of Yifei who first appeared in season 2. She works as an office lady. She is a stereotypical white-collar worker: serious, level-headed but sensitive and easily depressed. She initially moved to the apartment to hide from her boyfriend, Richard. However, she found texts on Richard's phone of a different girl named Tina and broke up with him. Later, she found out that Richard was already married to Tina. Subsequently, she had had a crush on two men but both to no avail. In season 3 she moved to another city, but still occasionally calls everyone to see how things are going.

• Rong Rong portrays Lisa Rong,

Zeng Xiaoxian's female boss and another ex-girlfriend of Ziqiao, she often makes Zeng Xiaoxian feel embarrassed. She often gives Zeng some difficult tasks and wants to fire him. But sometimes she will be sure of his efforts in heart.

• Kenichi Miura portrays Sekiya Kenjiro,

Appeared in Episode 7, Season 4. The father of Sekiya Kamiki . He always expects Sekiya to be a chef of Japanese cuisine instead of manga artist. So he is very strict with his son.

Episodes

Reception

The show has been well received by audiences and met with positive reviews since it is one of the few long-running TV shows that encouraged television comedy. The ratings dropped throughout the show's run mainly because of the constant reuse of running gags and jokes. Most of the criticism is directed towards the written material using jokes from Chinese-translated American sitcoms such as Friends,^[1] How I Met Your Mother ,The Big Bang Theory^[2] and The War at Home^[3].

Awards and nominations

External links

• iPartment's Homepage at Sina.com

References