Second Lead Syndrome

I didn't even like the drama with one exception Yi Mu.  Beginning to end he was the best part of this drama.  This was my first experience with the adorable, handsome, engaging, charismatic Zhang Vin.  It's interesting that every characterization was ruined from the original She Was Pretty minus this character, who truly became the central focus of the show.  

He was even more engaging in this version.  Siwon's character could be a little over the top at times which is why I still rooted for the first lead by Park (that and his character had moments of sweet vulnerability with the female lead), but in this he just was hard to resist.  Oddly enough even the writing started to veer off into the female lead acting that way which again takes you out of the whole premise of the drama.  

If you've seen the Korean version, i would just watch his parts.  I painstakingly watched everything and was miserable except when my Yi Mu was on screen.  He just elevated everything about a copy cat drama that tried too hard to be different.      

This drama was about Alice, but guess who didn't care about Alice?  THIS GIRL.  I just was really sick of how annoying Alice became to me.  Aaron Yan did a great job as the cold violin player turned teacher to the equally enjoyable Lara Veronin, and I thought their chemistry was fun to watch and made this otherwise quite exceedingly painful drama watchable.  

This showed me the depth Aaron has an actor and not just surface singer turned actor, and I watched it after I saw him in Refresh Man, so I wanted to see him in something else right away.