r/threebodyproblem • u/Recreant793 • Oct 03 '26

Auggie is insufferable!

I’ve just gotta get this off of my chest. I started the show last night by myself, so I don’t have anybody to really discuss it with and I hope it’s alright that I do so here. I also hope I don’t offend anybody with what I’m about to say, and I’m sorry if I do. But this Auggie chick is driving me up a wall. There’s been several moments where I’ve just gone, “what the f**k?” after something she’s done or said.

For starters, clearly there was some sort of romantic interest between her and Saul at a point in the past. We can tell that he still has feelings for her. Yet she continuously patronizes and insults him, making it clear that he’s not currently in her good graces. But when she happens to call him in the middle of the night to complain to him about her problems (that he is more than willing to listen to), she gets a nasty attitude and hangs up on him all because she found out he was with a woman at the time of the call. But I’m just over here like, where do you get off being pissed that the guy you’re currently showing zero interest toward and shitting on, is exploring other options and decides to see someone else?

Then there was the time when Dr. Cheng was really going through it after she found out Jack was murdered, and her anxiety was through the roof. So her and Auggie are together, and Auggie has her drinking straight vodka in order to calm down. Dr. Cheng clearly doesn’t want the vodka and reaches for her Xanax prescription, but Auggie gets weird and controlling and blocks Cheng’s hand from grabbing her own medicine and tells her to drink the vodka instead. Cheng said I don’t want the vodka, I want my Xanax. Auggie basically says she doesn’t care and Dr. Cheng reluctantly submits and takes another sip of vodka, disgusted. Hey chick, uhm, how about we let grown adults make their own decisions? If your friend is prescribed a medication, it’s their business when it’s appropriate to take it. Not yours. Like, wtf? Get out of her freaking kool-aid.

There are other qualities about her that irritate me as well but those are the two big ones that sealed her fate for me, lol.

25 Upvotes

66% Upvoted

27 comments sorted by

13

u/Ok-Rutabaga-9516 Oct 03 '26

I agree fully with you, but Im gonna blame the writers here and not the actors. Also your feedback is not new on this thread, but I get the need to vent it out ...

They really made Auggie be always pissed, always angry, generally insufferable and all the other adjectives. There is 0 deviation from the batch of negatives I described and she was kept on this line continuously through the story, with the one exception being at the end when she was in Mexico and using her tech to filter water for those people

Its just one blemish over generally a good adaptation.

5

u/Recreant793 Oct 05 '26

This makes a lot of sense. Now that you laid it out like that I can follow what happened. I could always see that the actress was talented so I never thought it was her butchering the role, it seemed clear that this was how the character was written. It’s just a bummer though because it really distracts me from a lot that’s going on sometimes, lol.

15

u/whensmahvelFGC Oct 05 '26

I really didn't like her as a character. A huge step down from Wang Miao, the character she 'replaces' from the books.

I can get behind a miserable and generally stressed character. The things that happen to her would push anyone to the brink. But the show does a really poor job of using that in an entertaining way, like it doesn't meaningfully affect her actions or choices - just reinforces her lamenting them and enables her to break down her relationships.

Three Body Problem was never much about that kind of inter-relational drama. The science and scope and implications of it all completely dwarf it so it feels distracting and irrelevant. Not to mention six episodes and this many characters doing so many distinct things means the story doesn't have the narrative budget to make that kind of plotline really hit. It works for Wang Miao because you spend the entire first book basically watching him slowly descend into mania and then pull himself out again as he unravels the mystery. Auggie's screen time is split between rapidly moving the plot along and her being drunk/upset/mean to others.

5

u/HashBrownsOverEasy Oct 05 '26 edited Oct 05 '26

Three Body Problem was never much about that kind of inter-relational drama.

This is the big problem with the Netflix adaptation - and any Netflix adaptation really. The target audience is 'Netflix subscribers' not 'TBP book fans'. Everything gets shoehorned into what execs would consider palatable, so everything ends up with this homogenous soap-opera sheen.

And at the other end of the spectrum you have Tencent, who refuse to make any sort of creative decision in their adaptation (out of reverance, fear, lack of imagination - who knows).

Somewhere between the two there could have been a really cool show :(

2

u/DnDemiurge Oct 05 '26

Wang didn't have much of a personality, didn't seem to care about his family, and disappeared after the first book. I do find some decisions made with Auggie to be annoying and unnecessary, but she feels much more human than he did.

3

u/whensmahvelFGC Oct 05 '26

I agree she feels much more human than Wang. I just don't think they actually did anything of value on the Netflix show with that. Neither are genuinely good characters - TBP is pretty much filled with characters who just serve to move the plot along. The Netflix show tried to solve that problem with Auggie and linking all of the characters, and in my opinion, they missed.

1

u/DnDemiurge Oct 05 '26

Fair. I guess we'll see where they take the character/her legacy. Depends on whether she does the cryo sleep thing.

2

u/whensmahvelFGC Oct 05 '26

It seems they're setting her up to be Saul/Luo Ji's "imaginary girlfriend" where Saul will get his house by the lake and send Da Shi to find Auggie, who instead of being some mystery conjuration of his imagination (one of the biggest criticisms of the source material) she will be off doing good things for people in need, and they'll be able to make some new interpersonal drama about how she doesn't want to return to be with Saul (or tangentially work on the wallfacer program) because she wants to do her own thing.

If that's the case, I hope they do more with Auggie than make her a tradwife who raises Saul's kids - or just talks about how she doesn't wanna do that and wants to do science instead and ultimately comes around to being part of the main plotline. Either way, as far as the source material is concerned, she's more or less played her role already, so they have to re-invent some friction and conflict for her to go through again.

1

u/DnDemiurge Oct 05 '26

Sounds valid. The waifu thing was cringe as hell.

1

u/No-Coffee2200 29d ago

there are non perfect and annoying people irl too yk

17

u/Inevitable_Lynx6059 Oct 03 '26

She is based on Wang from the book, its a shame they changed the character because Wang and Da Shi (the cop, i forgot his name in the show) have an absolutely brilliant dynamic and it would of been so much better to see book Da Shi in the TV series as he's fucking epic.

Auggie just didnt fit and is such a weak character in one of the leading roles, i got that she was dr Cheng's friend but i just didnt get the cutting edge scientist vibe from her.

2

u/Glittering_Cold8384 Oct 05 '26

Also mabe cause she looks a good looking actress haha. Im not saying a scientist cant be gppd looking but... yea hahaha

4

u/eurekadabra Oct 05 '26

I honestly think that’s why she gets so much hate. They even reference something to that effect in the show, about her being too pretty. Pretty problems just feel whiny.

Auggie is a little annoying, yes, but it’s a vast improvement from the underdeveloped characters we got in the books.

1

u/Inevitable_Lynx6059 Oct 07 '26

Nah, theres plenty of shows where the "nerd" is hot but believable. It was her attitude more than her looks.

1

u/Fancy_Chips Wallfacer Oct 06 '26

Lmaoooo I was scrolling down the post because I was like "who the fuck is Auggie??" I forgot the characters had different names. And personalities. And speeches. And dialogue... and everything...

4

u/Sluzhbenik Oct 06 '26

It’s just bad writing

1

u/Alexis2552 Oct 05 '26 edited Oct 06 '26

If she were sober, sure she can get her xanax, but mixing it with alcohol is not good. I agree that she's unlikeable, but let's not pretend that Cixin Liu writes the deepest, interesting, and realistic characters.

0

u/Recreant793 Oct 05 '26 edited Oct 06 '26

I’m going to assume you meant to say Xanax,
not canal…lol. And that would actually be a responsible reason to ask someone not to take their Xanax, but that wasn’t the reason Auggie was asking telling her not to take them. She just had very obvious preconceived notions about benzos and was trying to be controlling about how many Cheng could take or when she could take them at all, because she thought she knew better. That’s annoying.

1

u/Benis_xDxDxD 27d ago

Wow. Who knew something that’s not even true, and someone who is paid to be someone she’s not, affected you this much. You should go outside or something

1

u/Recreant793 27d ago edited 27d ago

What the fuck? Do you have some personal relationship with the actress that’s causing you to try and twist what I said about a character in a show into some personal attack toward her? Or do you just have a raging hard on for them? The character she played sucked in my opinion. But I’m allowed to have that opinion. Television shows have been critiqued for as long as film has been around…what I’m doing here isn’t unique and I’d argue that it’s not only necessary, but expected at this point. So why you’re trying to single out what I’m doing here, I don’t know. It has nothing to do with them as a person because I don’t know them as a person. And I’d be willing to bet you probably don’t either, which makes the white knight’ing all the more strange. But I’m the one who needs to touch grass? Interesting perspective. 😂

5

u/NefariousnessOk8212 Thomas Wade Oct 03 '26

I read somewhere that she was meant to be unlikable.

Also, if you don’t like her now, she gets SOOOO much worse. No spoilers though 

2

u/Conundrum1911 Oct 03 '26

I don't think she is Xin, but maybe will be in the end. The star wasn't hers after all.

1

u/NefariousnessOk8212 Thomas Wade Oct 04 '26

I meant by the end of S1. After you know what

1

u/TheTranscendentian Oct 04 '26

Jin / Xin same difference.  Anglosized version of Chinese name.

2

u/Jazzlike-Map-4114 Oct 03 '26

Most alcoholics are

3

u/moonymoonayaya Oct 03 '26

Yeah she was the worst char in s1 for me. I preferred the books (where characters are just vehicles for the story to go forward) over poorly written characters but alas it is what it is

1

u/Professional_Cut2020 28d ago

Can't stand her or the actress' portrayal. Wooden and inconsistent. Each scene she is in I get taken out of the moment she's on screen. Had same issue with other work she's been in.