Adramamama

I'm so annoyed with this drama, I don't even know where to begin! Chu Li is such a disappointment. I guess I shouldn't expect the writers to be infallible, but if you're trying to make an empowered female, then she shouldn't simultaneously be oblivious and reckless. Also, a "strong female lead" who still needs constant rescuing from the ML is oxymoronic. Mostly because she never acknowledges how much he helps and bails her out. Meanwhile she spends a ton of energy pushing the ML lead and 2ML to do things that go against their gut and are ultimately bad decisions. And she never learns her lesson, nor even seems to recognize it was her fault. I'm not saying that the ML is perfect, but the FL character seems to not understand him at all, constantly pressuring him to do things that don't suit him at all (e.g. collaborating with the illustrator, meeting the actress, doing the interview.) Yet, she spends most of the series professing to know him better than everyone else. I get that they needed to drive things forward with the conflicts created, but I just wish she wasn't always responsible for them. It makes it harder to root for her. I also got the impression--that unfortunately seems to be a trend in several of the contemporary C-Dramas I've watched lately--that the FL was just romantically tolerating the male lead, but not really attracted to him or that into him. The NYE scene in the last episode reinforced that, like what girl in love wouldn't be in a hurry to ring in the new year with her boyfriend?! Yet she didn't want him to get her from work and she turned down a ride home to instead slowly walk through crowds of people celebrating. Like WTH, do you even like him at all? Again, I get that they were trying to set up a scene, but I still think it's a really bad portrayal of a girl in love; like completely unconvincing most of the time.
They did a couple of "day-dream" scenes to try to offset her stiffness but her indifferent/standoffish/prude behavior throughout was hard to overlook. Maybe this is a style/theme, but if it's a tag I would definitely avoid dramas with this attribute in the future. I've just started Love Game in Eastern Fantasy (liking it so far) and if the FL doesn't develop convincing feelings for the ML then I'll know it's just an Esther Yu (and maybe Ryan Ding) problem, and I won't watch her drama's anymore.

Positives: the 2nd leads are pretty great and very attractive. The villain is the perfect "love to hate" character. I find the music in dramas extremely intrusive, and this wasn't exactly an exception. However, this OST actually included catchy songs and I liked a couple of them.