This review may contain spoilers
Watch the cute and skip the rest ... or don't watch at all
I picked this drama up because I saw that it's the screenwriter of "Lost Romance", which had a dense and smart narrative that is rare for romantic comedies. So I went into this one and found that it was the absolute opposite.
The main couple here is cute, and the way it starts out makes you excited for them. Very early on there is a scene where he (a hairdresser) washes her hair and she closes her eyes and dreams about being caressed and tenderly kissed and that was such a beautiful scene. But in the end it all fizzles out by a ton of back and forth in a sea of the same tropes and the continued und mostly uninteresting drama in the female lead's company that seems to be the worst dating agency on earth. At some point you just start skipping and stop caring.
There are two other couples. An older one which I loved because dramas so rarely features older romances, and it was cute. But that was it. It was cute. It was not enough to carry this drama.
And then there is a gay couple. I enjoyed those two, the actors did a great job, but in the end it was the same old: "Homophobic womanizer turns gay for you" trope. I have seen that a million times 10 years ago, when I was very much into BL/yaoi. And I see we are still not able to call it bi or pan? "I like women, but I also like him." What a shame.
I feel like this pairing if explored beyond the trope could have helped carry those 18 episodes that the main couple could not fill. The potential was absolutely there but the execution wasn't, so all that is left is again: They were cute.
And now to the part that made me drop the drama instead of just skipping to the end. Warning: Spoiler ahead.
The female lead has an amazing best friend who is a confident, independant and carefree woman who loves partying and hooking up. At some point she has an affair with our womanizer turning gay. She becomes pregnant and decides to get an abbortion. And then the womanizer's boyfriend barges in, when she is already on the table and forcefully carries her out, because he wants a baby from the person he loves (a guy he's been with for like a week). Nope. Just nope. This crosses so many damn lines that I can't even.
That part did not have to be written this way. If you want to feature a modern family, you can have your characters talk to each other, find an arrangement they are all happy with, but a guy forcefully dragging a woman out of a clinic after she made a healthcare decision for herself because he wants a baby is not even close to romantic. And that is when I dropped the drama, because nothing that could come from this will ever give me a fuzzy feeling.
It's a shame, really. There are good things, the cute, the intimacy that would be unthinkable in a chinese drama, gay characters that are more than a goofy sidekick, but it is mostly ruined by a dragging storyline and problematic stuff like the above mentioned and the fat shaming I haven't even talked about. So yeah, watch for the cute and make good use of the fast forward button or skip this one all along.
The main couple here is cute, and the way it starts out makes you excited for them. Very early on there is a scene where he (a hairdresser) washes her hair and she closes her eyes and dreams about being caressed and tenderly kissed and that was such a beautiful scene. But in the end it all fizzles out by a ton of back and forth in a sea of the same tropes and the continued und mostly uninteresting drama in the female lead's company that seems to be the worst dating agency on earth. At some point you just start skipping and stop caring.
There are two other couples. An older one which I loved because dramas so rarely features older romances, and it was cute. But that was it. It was cute. It was not enough to carry this drama.
And then there is a gay couple. I enjoyed those two, the actors did a great job, but in the end it was the same old: "Homophobic womanizer turns gay for you" trope. I have seen that a million times 10 years ago, when I was very much into BL/yaoi. And I see we are still not able to call it bi or pan? "I like women, but I also like him." What a shame.
I feel like this pairing if explored beyond the trope could have helped carry those 18 episodes that the main couple could not fill. The potential was absolutely there but the execution wasn't, so all that is left is again: They were cute.
And now to the part that made me drop the drama instead of just skipping to the end. Warning: Spoiler ahead.
The female lead has an amazing best friend who is a confident, independant and carefree woman who loves partying and hooking up. At some point she has an affair with our womanizer turning gay. She becomes pregnant and decides to get an abbortion. And then the womanizer's boyfriend barges in, when she is already on the table and forcefully carries her out, because he wants a baby from the person he loves (a guy he's been with for like a week). Nope. Just nope. This crosses so many damn lines that I can't even.
That part did not have to be written this way. If you want to feature a modern family, you can have your characters talk to each other, find an arrangement they are all happy with, but a guy forcefully dragging a woman out of a clinic after she made a healthcare decision for herself because he wants a baby is not even close to romantic. And that is when I dropped the drama, because nothing that could come from this will ever give me a fuzzy feeling.
It's a shame, really. There are good things, the cute, the intimacy that would be unthinkable in a chinese drama, gay characters that are more than a goofy sidekick, but it is mostly ruined by a dragging storyline and problematic stuff like the above mentioned and the fat shaming I haven't even talked about. So yeah, watch for the cute and make good use of the fast forward button or skip this one all along.
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