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A River Runs through It chinese drama review
Completed
A River Runs through It
3 people found this review helpful
by catherine
Feb 27, 2024
36 of 36 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 5.5
Story 6.5
Acting/Cast 6.0
Music 5.5
Rewatch Value 4.5
This review may contain spoilers

What could have been

The teasing male lead, the hilarious bickering, the girl pining over someone else while the male lead pines over her before she realizes who's been there for her all along...all this combine to form one of my favorite types of romance, so this drama starts with a winning formula...but it never actually uses it to its full potential.

While I enjoyed seeing the female lead deal with unrequited love, it should not have SO. DAMN. LONG. She's deep in it for 25 episodes and it lingers for a few episodes after that, and we're hit with scene after scene of the female lead never taking the male lead seriously. Meanwhile, the second male lead (Cheng Lang) pines for another girl, and those two are given wayyy too much screentime. I never cared about them and they kept getting slow motion scenes.

We sort of have the opposite issue with the third couple, Qiu Le Tao and Huang Jun, who also have a really interesting story, but they get together so fast that I found it difficult to care for them. And I even like the ending of her reconnecting with their childhood classmate, but the show tried to give it shock factor and left the reveal till the very end, despite it being pretty obvious. The result of that was no time to develop the actual relationship, and a situation where her supposed best friend Xiao Ju didn't even know she was marrying until the engagement party.

In fact, the last few episodes are just filled with misunderstandings and time jumps, and I feel like the leads really lose their spark. They're supposed to be grown-up, but they're still written like children, and the show opts for "fun bickering" scenes when a more serious conversation was long overdue. The ending, overall, feels rushed and makes no sense, which is sad because the early high school and even college days were still enjoyable to watch despite the flaws.
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