I agree with you about it collapsing under its own weight--there were some things that felt like solid callbacks and others that seemed to come out of nowhere, and it didn't quite fit together as coherently as I would've liked. I haven't seen season 2 of the donghua yet, but I thought season 1 did a decent job of tying together the different plotlines and characters into something a little more coherent. It rearranged the timeline of some pieces and gave a few characters (specifically a couple of female characters) bigger roles. Of course that doesn't guarantee it's going to stick the ending either. I should really watch season 2...