I've been wanting to watch a Chinese drama for quite some time and I just picked this one cause it was pretty famous. When I saw it was an adaptation of the same story of Boys Over Flowers I was ready to just give up right then and there, cause that drama is terrible and super problematic, but I didn't have any other thing to watch so I just gave it a chance and it's not as bad as I thought?

Honestly there were very few scenes of bullying that got me super irritated and where very unnecessary. Shancai and Si mostly just bickered back and forth and that was entertaining enough and created the tension needed. The writers could've just made the initial misunderstanding and made the both leads argue a lot and dislike each other. There was no need for Si to humiliate her in public or harass her, but since those scenes were scarce I managed to look past them and not drop this drama.

Aside problematic stuff, this drama has many issues. The story is pretty ordinary and full of clichés. You can tell the writers ran out of creativity to stretch the plot for 49 episodes cause they repeat the same plot line at least four times. I was just glad there was no amnesia plot in the end because I think I wouldn't be able to bear that.

Since there were so many episodes the drama could've explored the supporting characters much better than in Korean dramas, but they just ended up shoving characters that no one cares about in the story and making boring ships instead. Also the characters in this drama are always doing terrible stuff, never apologize and somehow are forgiven anyway.

Also, I've heard that Chinese dramas are dubbed over for some reason and that gave me a major whiplash. The dubbing is so artificial that initially I couldn't focus while watching, but I eventually got used to it. I guess another thing that I got used to was the poor acting in this. Seriously, almost all actors do a mediocre job in this, although I think I could give some credit to Dylan Wang and Shen Yue. I don't know about her, but I'd heard Dylan was still a fairly new actor and that Daoming Si was his first major role and I can say that he compensated his lack of experience with a very natural chemistry with the other actors and a lot of charisma. Many times him and Shen Yue seemed to be legit having fun while acting and I appreciate that. He also made me grow fond of Si, whom I hated in the beginning so props to him.

The music is also meh. I feel like most times the songs they used didn't really feel like were fit for the scenes, however I really loved River by Bishop Briggs.

I liked Shancai in the beginning, she actually stood up for herself, but with time she just became the bland and annoying female lead, like what happens with "strong" FLs in most dramas so I wasn't surprised. She was constantly meddling other people's business and I have to say she was probably the worst girlfriend I've seen in dramaland. She put little to no effort in her relationship for the majority of the runtime of this drama. I never thought I'd sympathize with Si so much, but the dude moved heaven and hell to be with her while most times she just brushed him off or started joking about it. And the worst thing is that the other characters acted as if it was Si's fault for not being persistent enough, when he was confessing and getting rejected/ignored right and left to the point I was convinced he had no self-respect left. Honestly, most of the time I was unsure if Si's friends (specially Lei) were trying to help him or sabotage him.

The last couple of episodes were super underwhelming and full of unnecessary flashbacks. That wedding scene was one of the biggest "????????" moments I've had while watching dramas. I think the writers should've just erased all of the flashbacks and just focused in showing more of Sancai and Si.

Nonetheless, watching Shancai and Si's love story was pretty entertaining and for the most part of this show I was totally hooked. As I said they have a lot of chemistry and they have a nice balance of fluffy, romantic scenes (although some are TOO cheesy) and angsty scenes. Even though Meteor Garden wasn't the best technically, it's still worth it if you have nothing else to watch and are in the mood for some romance.