Wasted potential

First of all, what is this show about?

It’s Zheng Shuyi, a journalist who comes to know Shi Yan, an entrepreneur, as the uncle of her ex-boyfriend’s mistress. She gets closer and closer to him and sparks form, yet she still hides the reason of their meeting. At the same time, there are the love stories of Shuyi’s best friend, Shi Yan’s assistant, Shuyi’s boss and Shi Yan’s niece.

What can be said that’s good about this drama?

- Amazing cast. This show reunited some of the most famous and most recognisable Chinese actors, with Dylan Wang (LBFAD) and Bailu (Arsenal Military Academy) at the helm, accompanied by Wei ZheMing (Unforgettable Love) Jiang Pei Yao (Go Go Squid! 1), Zeng Li (LLTG) and many more. These are indeed also great actors, with Dylan Wang having grown majorly from his questionable acting in Miss The Dragon, although nothing could beat his acting in Love Between Fairy and Devil.

- Additionally, there seems to be quite a lot of budget for this series, with nice camera work, lots of closeups and flattering light. There’s also some pretty decor, background and overall good composition.

Now this is where everything will turn as this is the end of the positive aspects of this series.

What is bad about this drama? Too many things honestly. But what are the most apparent things?

- Storyline and bad use of time:
In the first part of the drama, the romance is dragged way too much, and there is little time dedicated to the progression of the secondary couples. It’s only when we get to the middle that we see the secondary characters become important. Near the end, we are disappointed and annoyed at the amount of couples that they tried to fit in this story. Some seemed natural, while others were completely forced and added nothing to the already heavy storyline. There are at least 6 couples shown in this, with more than half having little to no real screen-time.

- Lack of continuity:
They give us situations, that have obviously been filmed out of order, but when information has already been given to us previously, they go back on it or don’t know this information exists, as if some later episodes were written and filmed before the earlier ones.

-Rushed ending:
Near the end, they struggled to tie up the loose ends created throughout the series, and most were still open. They introduced so many storylines but didn’t do anything more to meaningfully contribute to the story. We are left with so many questions.

-Useless Characters:
They added characters out of nowhere, only to be used for one or two situations and then never be seen again, like a disappearing act. They were also used to force the main leads to experience the famous clichés (Jealousy, cheating, miscommunication, Rich CEO boyfriend, fake rumours…etc). One character appears in the end of the story, we’ve never heard of her, we don’t know where she comes from or why she’s here, but she doesn’t serve any use other than making the FL jealous and looking innocent.

- Main Leads personalities.
The ML was pretty basic, cold CEO who doesn’t like to talk much, and Dylan’s acting makes it a tiny bit enjoyable. What’s bad is the FL’s personality. It makes no sense. She is shy, yet courageous at the same time. And immature all the time, despite being an accomplished journalist respected by many. She tries to fit the mould of the soft, submissive female lead but all of her attributes fail to build a harmonious personality.

-Useless problems/intrigue:
The whole problem with the relationship of the main leads is the total lack of communication. And that the problem is resolved immaturely from both sides, and then forgotten.

To conclude:
This story tries to be the perfect overbearing CEO with a cutesy FL series, partnered with every cliché known to the CDrama industry. With the amount of budget it had, it’s disappointing story wise and doesn’t give us a proper ending.

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Bad characters: what is a personality?

First of all, the main leads.
I can't seem to know if the main actor is bad at acting, his character is bad, or both.
The 'cold' persona that the character had didn't help him in any way as we would see that he is but a child in the body of a man.
One thing that was interesting was his room, it was logical and added a slight depth to being a famous actor. However that small detail couldn't save the character. Also, kissing the FL when she's drunk, then again kissing her while drunk, yeah, big nono.

The female lead. At first, I didn't have a problem with her, she's that stereotypical 'cutesy' and 'shy' girl, and again they did add things to the character to make it more interesting, such as the agoraphobia: but it was only used as a stepping stone for the male lead to save her.
The more I watched the FL, the more she lacked emotions. When she finally accepted to be the ML's girlfriend, I couldn't see the 'happiness' that one could have. I haven't seen her other works so it can be blamed on lack of chemistry.

The 'villain'
Plainly, boring. That typical villain that has the stupidest reason to be against our ML. I'm sure the actor could be a terrific villain, if given a good role. He was handsome, yes, but it was in no way interesting to have someone always be the ML's enemy every step of the way, for no apparent reason.
As for the villain's 'sidekick', to have such a petty reason like rejection... They didn't even try to make her have a personality other than 'that girl next to the villain'.

The secondary leads.
I liked Qi Chao and his calm demeanor. Plus, him being cold to girls in general was explained, so his character was the best one for me. However, the 2FL was just an obsessed stalker. She was only useful as the main CP's third wheel and the cute younger sister-like girl.

The plot:
It was generic, famous ML, non-famous FL, workplace romance, kinda ennemies to lovers. It was nothing new. It could've been interesting, if the characters were made 'better'. (By better, I mostly mean in personality and actions)



General:
The characters and the story create the show:
Bad characters= half bad show
Okay story: ehhhh show.
Bad characters + okay story? Bad show.
Why? Because characters are everything.

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Plothole central and censorship

The show starts off interesting, aspiring actress meets her idol through particular circumstances, and it just goes haywire.
 
ACTORS:
Bi WenJun plays ML, and I have to say it suits Jim pretty well, though the fake blond hair is horrible to look at.
Other actors are well cast, I like Gu QiaoBei's actor, Guo XiaoTian the most as both his real self and videogame self are different yet similar and he did a really good job on a shifty character with bad character arcs.
One actress that was totally out of place, was the FL, Zhang XueYing. She did her role well as an assistant, but when it came to her being an actress, it didn't suit her. She didn't have that spark of an actress nor did her looks fit the role of an actress that would become famous very quickly.
 
STORY: (THIS PART HEAVY SPOILERS)
 
Along the way, more and more plot holes appear in the series that never get explained nor talked about (might be censorship, but I'll talk about that later).
First of all, why would FL, who's been a hard-core fan of ML for many years, just completely hate him over a minor misunderstanding? Especially one as stupid as water dropping from a ceiling. They created conflict out of nowhere to give us that "ennemies-to-lovers" storyline but failed miserably.
 
The endless jealousy, especially with the random actresses that show up to get together with ML. There are atleast 3 characters used for this same role, all that give no depth to the story or the relationship.
 
Moving on, we have the blatant queerbaiting between FL's brother and ML' bestfriend. You can see they try to create a sort of bromance that could lead to romance if it were not for China's guidelines, but they keep on creating baseless conflict (the acting jobs, the videogame identity) that force the characters out of their roles.

Not only that, the storyline between the ML’s childhood friend and FL’s fake brother is completely out of place. We don’t even know how they met (must be cut scene). But the MLCF still obsesses over this useless man that could be better off not being in the story.
 
Also, the whole videogame part of the story was useless to the relationship. I know they adapted this from a novel, but I imagine that the novel must've done something more than just an immature fake break-up. There was also a big faux-raccord problem (when images and scenes don’t match up.
For example, there was a scene where both leads were shown in-game playing, but when they cut to the real life characters, only one of them is shown in their phone. This happens quite a lot and their are mostly problems concerning the online/offline plot line.
 
Lastly, despite this show being about shooting movies and TV shows, it has nothing realistic about it. It is possible for all of the actress scandals to happen, but the fact that they paired ML and FL a second time, that's not credible, then they almost paired 2ML aswell, that's even less possible. Nevermind the lack of staff when the director's shooting or just giving a bad image to cinema.
The only realistic thing was the nepotism.
 
 
CHARACTERS:
Already talked about the useless female characters only used to induce jealousy, but there were some characters that were worth diving into more.
For example, the FL's brother and ML's best friend. They could've been super interesting if not for the bad storyline.
The ML's assistant that comes out of nowhere? Same for the mother that comes out of nowhere in the last few episodes?
What about the ingame friend they make but never meet? He’s seen once in a video call near the last episodes, but we’ve waited all 24 episodes to have a bit more communication. A simple dinner or hangout would’ve sufficed. What about the other ingame friends? We only meet one of them.
The older actor that we meet once to make ML jealous, where does he come from? We see him again at the award show, but he was introduced for no reason.
 
CENSORSHIP AND EDITING:
Now I don't know what happened; if the series was censored or if they just had to cut scenes because of the budget, but these cuts made us lose important parts of the storyline.
 
The CONFESSION! they cut the confession. We know they shot it and it exists because of the flashback and dialogue, but we don't even realize their change in relationship: it just happens and we don't know it.
 
Other scenes seem to be cut, like the ML finding out FL and FL's brother's link and other small scenes that would be crucial to the viewer's understanding of the show. Some things they talk about in dialogue but we’ve never seen it.

COSTUMES:
One big positive point were the costumes for the in game characters. They were nice to look at flowy, not too many accessories. Overall I really enjoyed the outfits, even for the secondaries. The colors all matched the characters and their personalities as well as importances and the hats were really nice!
 
CONCLUSION:
Mess of useless characters and storylines and censorship that create a nonsensical show that could've been good. Also, show probably very much inspired by Love 020 but disappointing.

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