Better Man (2016)

I'll start off by admitting that I have trouble committing to dramas that are longer than 30 episodes. When I first took this one up and discovered that it was scheduled for 80 (later reduced to 60), I was a little skeptical - 80 episodes of nothing but romance? But at the same time, the storyline seemed cute and the comedic moments at the start were pretty good too, so I went on to watch each episode as it came out.

To me, the story was your fairly typical romance; this show just mixed things up a bit by including three couples: three brothers from one family, paired with another's two sisters and their best friend. It tried dealing with the idea of age gaps (a whopping 18 years between the eldest brother and the youngest sister!) which can be difficult to address.

Despite attempts at creating problems for the characters to deal with, I felt that the writers didn't include much real conflict that built each relationship. The consequence of this is that by the end of the 60 episodes, the most sentiment I had was 'oh dang they're cute together' - as opposed to what I think the show was trying to go for; 'they're finally together, after going through so much for each other.' I view this as a failure on the writers' part: they tried to create the sentiment of how relationships can help build each participating individual as a person, but fell short of that goal. Perhaps three couples in one fell swoop was a bit ambitious.

For the most part, this show's strong point is in that it's a pretty easy watch. You have small intense moments that are almost always immediately solved, but almost no anxiety-inducing scenes in which you nervously wonder how the characters can get past a particular hurdle. It's always nice to have a drama on hand that won't cause you constant worry.

Acting wasn't the best I've seen, but it was enough to get by. For the most part, everyone played their roles well; for me, the pair of Jolin and Hope were the most convincing and certainly the most entertaining.

I was split on the soundtrack - the opening ('Faded Pictures' by Vanness Wu) I found incredibly addictive and memorable, but some of the others actually became fairly annoying. It's not a big surprise though, considering that you listen to them basically for 60 episodes straight.

Overall, a pretty fun show. 60 episodes at around 50 minutes each is quite the commitment though, but also necessary to get things rolling with each of the couples. So, there was definitely potential for the allotted 80 episodes, so I'm unsure why they cut it short.

Better Man's main strength lies in its lightheartedness, so I'd find it perfect for kicking back and relaxing.

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Better Man is a great drama. I love every cliche`, cheesy, melodramatic moment of it. I binge watched it to the exclusion of other dramas. I will tell you that I am not even sure why I liked it so much. I am probably totally over rating it. Every once in a while though I will find a drama for which I connect. This is that kind of drama. The story isn't anything new. It is each character living their slice of life that I found engrossing.
The endings for the couples were well done.

My favorite couple is Huang Tender as Yang Zhen Hao and Lin Shara as Wu Yi An. It seems like they made each other better. He helped her be strong and brave and she helped him understand his feelings. They are interesting actors that made me feel a deep connection to their characters.

The other couples could be annoying at times although I totally understand their thought process. It isn't like the character would get to see everything I did. LOL I still found myself yelling "tell him the truth" or "he really loves you, silly" at the screen.

The music is good.

I might rewatch this someday!

I seriously enjoyed all the characters and it was a fun watch. I recommend it to everyone.

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