Por Favor, Apaixone-se (2023)

Really silly but enjoyable

This drama starts out with a poor overworked author who ends up dying and getting sucked into her own novel.
Got to love the recent flurry of similar dramas, but what I like about this one is the ML is almost a parody of similar types...the cold, arrogant, overbearing CEO is actually quite silly and a bit insecure. His handy dandy assistant is always having to reassure him that FL is for sure in love with him. 😂
I don't want to give away too much of the plot but the original FL of the novel, ends up being a bit of SFL since the author has fallen into the novel and become the new FL, but then suddenly a secret is revealed about the original. Their interactions all fall into place, it makes the rest of the drama a lot funnier and unpredictable after the reveal.
I found this a bit cheesy but still very enjoyable. The FL author has a mission, she has to fall in love in 3 months time or she can't go back into the real world...but in the novel, she's rich and has parents to take care of her...so why would she want to go back to being a poor and overworked author in the real world? She spends a lot of time and effort avoiding love at all costs!

Give this drama chance, it's about 3 and 1/2 hours long total. It never takes itself too seriously overall I found it entertaining enough for an evening.

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Fun to watch!

This was honestly just a fun show. I've learned that with these short web-dramas, if you don't take them too seriously, you'll end up enjoying them a lot.

Lei Tong is a melodrama writer and gets thrust in to one of her novels as Chu Ji, a character unhappy with her ending. Lei Tong gets the mission to fall in love in three months, but she has other ideas. It's a lot of fun to watch her try to thwart the book's cheesy set-ups, and it was actually very refreshing to see her turn the tropes on their head. Instead of the male lead saving her, she actually saves him most of the time. Instead of the "fall and kiss" trope, she pushes him away to avoid it. It felt like the writers truly were poking fun at these tropes in the best way.

While one could argue there are three other male leads she could end up with, there really is only one obvious option. There's really no big second male lead syndrome, though I do feel for the others a bit, especially as we got towards the end.

However, due to the short episodes, there are some slight problems with the show. First, most, if not all, of the characters are pretty two-dimensional. Even when the show tries to expand on a few of the characters' personalities, it's relatively shallow. Second, there are some plot points that don't fully pan out. The biggest one is Zhong Yi. He starts out trying to prove Chu Ji is two-faced, but we don't see any of his efforts to actually do that. He also pretty quickly switches over to liking her, and again we don't see anything really besides that. Same with Jiang Heng - he shows up when it's convenient, but we don't see much else from there. But again - it makes sense for what the story is.

The one character I would have loved to know more about is Zhong Qing. She was such an interesting character that unfortunately didn't get as much fleshing out as I would have wanted. She also gave me strong GL vibes that towards the end I was cheering for a throuple with Gu Ye Chen, Chu Ji, and her. (I obviously knew it was never going to happen, but hey, a girl can dream).

As for the ending, I feel like it fit with the overall plot of the show. I honestly was wondering throughout how they were going to solve the issue, and I think they did well with what they had. I do think the ending was more rushed than it needed to be - the pacing was fine for most of the show, but towards the end it felt like the writers wanted to fit in a lot more than they had time for, and just sprinted to the finish line.

Like I said at the start though, if you don't take this show too seriously, it's just a fun fantasy romance show that likes to poke holes at the classic drama tropes. It's an entertaining way to spend an afternoon, and if you want to watch something that is pure shallow fun, I do recommend it!

(One thing I will mention is that if you watch this on YT, there will be whole chunks where the sound is off, likely due to music copyright.)

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