Serve as Contrast Team in a ‘Dad with Baby’ Show

Chapter 19,Part 1: — What About Lin Momo?

The reason why Lin Cheng thought this theme song was familiar was because when recording the program last week, he often heard Lin Momo popping out a line or two from time to time.

It was only that they weren’t called to participate in the official theme song.

At the end of the theme song, shots of the five family teams arriving at their respective residences appeared on the screen.

As the dad billed as main promoter of this show, Bai Yulin’s team was shown first.

Then came actor Gao Yuankai’s family, followed by chairman Zheng Chengye and his son.

In the same order as the previous trailer, the shots of Lin Cheng and Lin Momo were placed fourth.

On the screen, Lin Cheng and Lin Momo walked into the dilapidated and narrow corridor together, opened the door, and the next second, the footage switched to a shot of inside the house.

During the whole process, Lin Cheng and Lin Momo appeared on camera for no more than 15 seconds.

……

Back at the company, Wang Xi looked at the computer screen, dumbfounded. After an hour of waiting for the preview to start, she only saw Lin Cheng and Lin Momo for a little more than ten seconds.

Although they already guessed that based on the low popularity of the livestream, Lin Cheng’s team may have less appearance in the actual episode than the other dad-and-baby teams, but Wang Xi never expected that it would be this low.

“Brother Cheng’s screen time is so short.” Wang Xi complained in a low voice.

Zhou Qi beside her also frowned—as if he had discovered something—and said, “Don’t you feel that the shot of their house was not right?”

Hearing what Zhou Qi said, Chen Yu and Wang Xi stared at the video carefully, and they found that, indeed, something was wrong.

“This shot of their rooms is clearly from after Brother Cheng’s team already cleaned it!” Wang Xi exclaimed, pointing at the screen.

She still remembered that when Lin Cheng and the others opened the door, the house was a complete mess and it took the ‘father and daughter’ team most of the day to tidy the house up to a habitable state.

“What is the meaning of the program group’s intentional splicing?” Wang Xi said, frowning.

“It’s very likely that they’re having a belated show of guilty conscience,” Zhou Qi said.

“What do you mean?”

.

“In the past, the five family teams were livestreamed under separate channels. If there’s no comparison, then there’s no big gap. But after realizing that Brother Cheng’s conditions were really too horrendous compared to the others, they deliberately edited it like this, so that the audience would think that the house they prepared for Brother Cheng is okay.”

After all, there was a wave of discussion in the internet before on how the house prepared for the Lin Cheng father and daughter team was dangerous and in extremely poor conditions—although those remarks were quickly suppressed by the program team.

Hearing Zhou Qi’s analysis, Wang Xi exclaimed, “The h*ll? The show crew is too shameless!”

Even Chen Yu frowned deeply.

At this time, the content of the preview has already switched from Lin Cheng’s team to that of substitute dad Duan Bei.

Compared to Lin Cheng team’s ‘condensed’ footage, the content of Duan Bei’s team was much more exciting—Duan Bei and his ‘daughter’ meeting for the first time was broadcast for half a minute. Afterwards, Duan Bei taught his ‘daughter’ to recognize the house number; Duan Bei brought his daughter into the house; Duan Bei tidied up the house…; even the scene of Duan Bei tidying up the curtains was not missed.

“The gap is too, too big…” Wang Xi shook her head and sighed. In her heart, she deeply understood the gap between the company’s treatment of favored newcomers and has-been artists.

……

The total duration of the episode was only 18 minutes.

That was not a lot of time. After the five family teams entered their respective houses, the next scenes were a mix of highlights taken from the livestream of the five teams.

The appearance rate of Bai Yulin’s team accounted for about 30%.

As soon as the scenes of Bai Yulin coaxing his daughter to sleep, Bai Yulin combing his daughter’s hair, and Bai Yulin softly comforting his daughter when she was crying were broadcast, there was a burst of [Ah, ah, so much love!], [This group is so cute! ], and [I’m so cute!] comments.

The scenes of actor Gao Yuankai’s family mainly focused on the dad doing housework, repairing electrical appliances, and cooking, and the comments were almost all praises for the dad’s ability.

The substitute dad Duan Bei’s team didn’t have any particularly prominent scenes, but the comment section was nevertheless full of [Duan Bei is so handsome].

As for the brat from the chairman’s family, his behavior of disrespecting people, being a rascal, smashing things, and wasting food had previously caused a lot of controversy in the livestream channel. In the episode, however—after some skillful editing done by the program team—he was much less annoying. On the contrary, the most distinguishing part of their screen time was the brat’s ‘outrageous words’ that made everyone feel he was super funny.

Finally, the Lin Cheng and Lin Momo team appeared on the screen.

It was different from what Chen Yu and the others had been expecting. There were no scenes of ‘father and daughter’ interacting or cleaning the house together. Instead, several short shots of Lin Momo were edited together.

Lin Momo asking the neighbor next door for hot water; Lin Momo asking the old lady Zhang on the first floor for their family’s scrap materials; Lin Momo bargaining with the owner of the recycling station; and at night on the snack street, Lin Momo chasing the boss to buy LPG….

[The daughter in this team feels so smart.]

[Yes, such a young child can actually bargain.]

[She looks very sensible.]

A few viewers sent these types of comments.

But soon, a different voice appeared:

[Although… Lin Momo’s behavior made me feel uncomfortable.]

[Finally someone said what I wanted to say! I also feel weird.]

[Looking for hot water and bottles from neighbors, although they are not valuable things, I feel that it is not good to take advantage of others like this.]

[Also, pestering people to order LPG is also…]

[This reminds me of those telemarketers, it’s so disgusting.]

[Could it be a script? It feels like a child can’t do this on her own.]

[Script +1]

[But to be honest, I don’t like this kind of character design.]

[Too shrewd, without the innocence and cuteness of a child.]

[That is, even if you are as naughty as Zheng Pengpeng, it’s better than this.]

… …

Chen Yu and the other two assistants were, of course, monitoring the comments, and their faces became extremely ugly.

Reading these, as well as seeing the audience’s reaction, how could they not tell that Lin Cheng team’s footage was maliciously edited by the program group precisely for this kind of reaction?

“The program crew is going too far!”

“That’s right, even if it’s for the sake of a higher rating, it shouldn’t be edited like this! It’s completely distorting the facts.”

“And these people in the audience, too. Is it necessary to be so harsh when commenting on a child?”

Listening to the complaints of the two, Chen Yu remained silent, his face very dark indeed.

T/N: Apologies for missing last week’s updates. My asthma was acting up and I was feeling too tired to do any fun stuff—translations included.