Well, well, well. Where do I even start?

This is the first Asian drama that I watched that had so many episodes. I finished it in three days, where I was relentlessly stuck to my laptop screen. I laughed, I swooned, I sighed, I screamed- all in all it was a fairly enjoyable ride.

To be honest, the star of this show is Zhou Zhen. The drama would essentially be nothing without him. He's an Alpha Male to the boot. He's got the looks, the rough exterior, the charm and the golden heart to go with it all. He's possessive and controlling and yet, so tender and affectionate. He's a true badass and even though his fight scenes are awfully corny at first, they grow on you. The actor playing the role delivered his best and really there couldn't have been a more perfect Er Ye than Zhou Zhen. The loyalty his subjects have for him is endearing and his courageous personality and give no fucks attitude is so fucking attractive.

And well that's about all this drama has, to be honest. The supporting characters all lie on various scales on the spectrum of annoying and dumb. The main heroine is a horrendously stupid and weak af damsel disguised as a smart female lead. It's convenient how she's apparently good at almost everything except, things that matter.

Like, literally the only time she took out her claws was is in front of the man who loved her with his all. Which was hilarious because for all her bark, she's so irrelevant and legit has no bite. She's always saved by the hero and even when she apparently becomes this badass later, she does nothing except create problems for the guy. Like, there was no scene in the entire show where I was like "Go Girl, that's some mojo".
Nope, she's useless.

Plus, towards the end she commits one of the most brainless acts ever committed in the history of dumb acts committed by brainless heroines and has to pay heavily for it, just because she thought trusting a shady ass man who she met a coupla times was better than trusting someone who was there for her through thick and thin. I really don't understand what Zhou Zhen saw in her and how he was capable of loving such an ungrateful TSTL so unconditionally that he forgave her for her selfishness time and time again.

Then comes Ming Zhu. This girl is even more dumb than our heroine. (Which is quite a feat to achieve in itself, to be honest) She let's herself be manipulated time and time again by the bad guy and has to face so much shit in her life. She suffers horribly throughout and at the end always asks God, why it had to be her.

Well, the answer is because she buried all her intelligence under a rock somewhere and went on her merry way. Like, all the messy things she gets herself in could've been easily avoided but nope, she was hell-bent on making irrationality her best friend. Like really, let me ask you, if somebody who tortured, hit, raped you and was emotionally blackmailing you to do hideous things offered you a gift, would you fucking take it with a big smile or would you throw it in the nearest trash can and be 'oh shit I'm outta here'.

Like, how dumb can you be to trust a guy, you hate? Who's inflicted horrible things on you countless of times. How can you be brain-dead enough to later wonder why he lied to you and deceived you? Like bitch, you thought? You really thought the guy who made your life hell was gonna turn into a boy scout in sixty seconds? I can't.

However, the women are not the only epitome of stupidity here, because we always have the second male lead Ying Dong to fulfill the quota on the men's side. He's simply a selfish, childish brat who always creates troubles for others. Like, he literally does not have a single redeeming quality and frankly, his existence is a waste.

Atleast, throughout the drama he gets rightfully taunted about how he is trash (which he is) and in the end admits that he can only love himself. I literally wanted to punch him in the face. Throughout the show, he gives these fierce and angry looks where he pretends that he's all that but like, he just needs to sit tf down cause he isn't shit. He's a worse damsel in distress than our heroine and his ass constantly needs saving. It's a pity that at the end he still does get almost everything (while even in the last episode he creates shit for other people). His brother, Han Chuan on the other hand was so respectable and a clever and true businessman who I really liked from the start.

Also, one thing that nobody seems to notice is that Cruel Romance plagiarized an entire scene from the Korean Drama Innocent Man, where Ming Zhu asks YingDong to meet her and jumps in the pool in order to show that she is willing to end her life for him. Tsk tsk. However, where it was an impactful scene in Innocent Man, here it was just further evidence of Mingzhu's lack of intellect.

A perk of this drama though, is the Bad Guy. Qian Tian is a good villain. His psychotic and bloodthirsty character was very interesting and he had his wits till the end. The back and forth between the hero and the villain was so entertaining to witness. Qi Ji and Huang Xiao Ming portrayed excellent acting skills and really, they were the only thing that made this drama worth watching.

Even though the heroine independently wasn't much, her chemistry with Zhou Zhen was amazing. The romance aspect of this drama is brilliant and it's filled with iconic, swoon worthy moments. Despite the fact that the drama lost its soul towards the end and just kind of wandered aimlessly with unnecessary sub plot lines and repetition (Literally, the second last episode is filled with characters having flashbacks of things that happened before again and again- I skipped almost all of it because of the sheer redundancy of it ) and the ending wasn't executed well at all but if you're a romance lover and like your guys to be Alphas and bad boys, you'll ignore all of its shortcomings and still get extremely entertained.

For Zhou Zhen's swagger is enough to overcome all that this drama lacked.

I wouldn't say I'd rewatch all of its 40 episodes but there are some scenes that I'd definitely like to revisit.