altairi

I mean, what were they supposed to do? The drama is based on a novel. The scene where FL is interpreting for the news and her camera feed freezes on her raising the middle finger is literally the opening scene of Chapter 1 of the novel.

Can you imagine demanding a drama crew apologizes for staying too true to the source material? I can just imagine the novel's fans throwing a fit if they had changed it. So they probably were in a "damned if they do, damned if they don't" position with that scene anyway.

Both dramas are based on novels by Zhu Yi. The novels take place in a shared universe and have many overlapping characters. There are more novels that take place in this shared universe, but not as linked as Hidden Love and First Frost, since yes, the the female lead of Hidden Love and the male lead of First Frost are siblings.
But, yes, they did re-cast Sang Yan for this one and I think they more or less omitted Wen Yifan's existence from the Hidden Love drama, although I think I remember Sang Yan mentioning being pursued by someone when Zhi was visiting home and Yan was complaining about having blind dates arranged for him?

Because in their drama Hidden Love, they played the younger sister and the best friend of First Frost's ML character respectively, so it would be a nice surprise if they were to revisit their roles from that drama as cameos in this one?

They do need to do something to earn their existence, though. After all, didn't they already learn the lesson that the manhua world does not have room who serve no purpose in the story. So they need to either show up to throw some trouble in the way of the leads from time to time (you know, just look at it as a hobby they occasionally indulge in when not dating), or they might prefer to take positions as wing(wo)men for the lead couple. But they do have to be active in the story if they want to be able to keep on dating in it.