After dropping "my little happiness" having watched just 4/28 because of the toxic nature of what it portrayed as romantic, I decided to give the next C drama romcom on my watchlist 8/26. I dropped it for the same reasons that I dropped "my little happiness". I understand the tsundere trope - the cold emotionally distant male lead who bullies and hurts the female lead because inside he's a kindergarten kid yanking the ponytail of the girl he's got a crush on. I don't love the trope, but I understand it. I can put up with it too if the bullying behaviour is not rewarded. If the tsundere male lead first has to learn and appreciate that he is being a jerk and modify his behaviour before the female lead develops romantic feelings for him, I'm fine with that. It is, if you like, a redemption arc - people can change and positive character change should be rewarded.

What I loathe is when calculating, controlling and bullying behaviour is rewarded by having the female lead "fall in love" with the bully not AFTER he changes his behaviour but despite or possibly even BECAUSE OF his manipulative mistreatment of her. That is exactly what happened in the first quarter of this drama, and that's why I dropped it. He systematically abused his power and authority over her, singled her out for consistently malicious treatment, and denigrated her competence. The result of this mistreatment? She developed feelings for him. BARF!

Another really troubling element of this trope, one that was very clearly on display and this drama is that the one thing women are not allowed to be is - competent.


The female lead left a good job in Beijing because of standing up for herself and refusing to be abused. She comes to a smaller town, where her resume and skills should make her an automatic hire, but the first quarter of the drama shows the male lead to breaking her down and painting her as consistently incompetent until she admits that she is in fact incompetent and needs the male lead to clean up her mess. This is a really, REALLY toxic message, and its almost universal in 9/10 Chinese romcoms. There is nothing remotely romantic cute or appealing about this often repeated message in C drama romcoms. I hate dubbed dramas, so it's really saying something that as bad as the dubbing was in this drama (and it was AWFUL), it was the very least of my problems with it. I am pleased that that I stuck it out for more than 1/4 of its entire length in order to make a fair assessment of just how misogynistic, chauvinistic and regressive its message really was. The quest for non-toxic chocolate box romances goes on.