This review may contain spoilers
ML rocks! hero's arc is well fleshed out. cute office romance with VC investing backdrop
There's nothing new in concept or execution in this story. Age old, rich entitled guy "ill-treats" girl. girl vows to make him eat his words. Girl achieves her goal. Falls in love with guy in the process after discovering that the boorish act is just an act to hide the nice guy. Turns out guy was always in love with her and was denying it. All this over 32(!!) episodes of one hour each!! Help!
One thing to hate about contemporary c-dramas is that the plot tries to force fit "muh china greatest and bestest" at drop of a hat. Here, in the context of angel/VC investing all this is parroted by various actors.
The actor playing the hero Lu jin ming was a great cast! He plays boor, cad, comedy, ineptness, smartness, hopelessly in love exasperated man, tough guy, good friend, etc etc., all on cue. His acting range is great. This serial is his show in the end, and he carries the show squarely.
The script is really well written in consistently showing the hero in a 3-dimensional way. He was always shown to be a thoroughly professional and meritorious when it comes to professional dealings. His tantrums towards the heroine in the beginning were later shown as an awkward attempt to protect her from the dirty investor politics and a subconscious mimicry of his own father's personality which he starts to overcome by himself after realising how it alienated the FL among others.
All of the ML's interactions with the FL are well written and acted out.
Actually kudos to the screen writers for a consistently portrayed character study in all 24 episodes.
Heroine is dressed and presented as way younger than IRL and they do the reverse for the hero, even though they are only 2 years apart. Make-up & costume department was great on this show. Also director does a good job of framing the heroine very pleasingly. Interestingly, the heroine has played a similar role in Flight to You, also released in same year as this one.
The romance b/w ml and fl itself didn't play out sufficiently. The FL actually spends far too much screen time with the SML/villain in romantic settings than with ML. Very disappointing. The SML scenes took far too long and the resolution also ended up very tedious and unbelievable. My low rating comes from this complaint.
The SFL and ML arc took far too long to resolve. The SML arc was a total washout - wasn't needed at all. Totally bombed for me. Big meh. The second couple OTOH were cute scene stealers. The office supporting crew were overall very likeable. Again, the romance angle itself was a big missed opportunity due to all the story resolution taking far too long.
Like many others, I also loathed how much time the SML arc took up on screen, down to the last episode. Good lord, no one cares. The show could have easily given 15-30 mins extra time for the ML to proclaim his love, and then the FL to go doe-eyed on our towering hero and bring him to his knees.
As my wife pointed out the way the last kiss played out could have been done much earlier (at the expense of SML!) and we could have had more romantic interactions post love declaration b/w ML-FL. After all the FL has been pining for the guy since much earlier in the show and that pent up feelings could have been easily channelled through different scenes (her being the first to lovingly lead and plant the first kiss on the hero was totally in character with this picturisation)
Anyway, it's worth a watch. Feel free to use FF button and also the 1.5x play speed button.
One thing to hate about contemporary c-dramas is that the plot tries to force fit "muh china greatest and bestest" at drop of a hat. Here, in the context of angel/VC investing all this is parroted by various actors.
The actor playing the hero Lu jin ming was a great cast! He plays boor, cad, comedy, ineptness, smartness, hopelessly in love exasperated man, tough guy, good friend, etc etc., all on cue. His acting range is great. This serial is his show in the end, and he carries the show squarely.
The script is really well written in consistently showing the hero in a 3-dimensional way. He was always shown to be a thoroughly professional and meritorious when it comes to professional dealings. His tantrums towards the heroine in the beginning were later shown as an awkward attempt to protect her from the dirty investor politics and a subconscious mimicry of his own father's personality which he starts to overcome by himself after realising how it alienated the FL among others.
All of the ML's interactions with the FL are well written and acted out.
Actually kudos to the screen writers for a consistently portrayed character study in all 24 episodes.
Heroine is dressed and presented as way younger than IRL and they do the reverse for the hero, even though they are only 2 years apart. Make-up & costume department was great on this show. Also director does a good job of framing the heroine very pleasingly. Interestingly, the heroine has played a similar role in Flight to You, also released in same year as this one.
The romance b/w ml and fl itself didn't play out sufficiently. The FL actually spends far too much screen time with the SML/villain in romantic settings than with ML. Very disappointing. The SML scenes took far too long and the resolution also ended up very tedious and unbelievable. My low rating comes from this complaint.
The SFL and ML arc took far too long to resolve. The SML arc was a total washout - wasn't needed at all. Totally bombed for me. Big meh. The second couple OTOH were cute scene stealers. The office supporting crew were overall very likeable. Again, the romance angle itself was a big missed opportunity due to all the story resolution taking far too long.
Like many others, I also loathed how much time the SML arc took up on screen, down to the last episode. Good lord, no one cares. The show could have easily given 15-30 mins extra time for the ML to proclaim his love, and then the FL to go doe-eyed on our towering hero and bring him to his knees.
As my wife pointed out the way the last kiss played out could have been done much earlier (at the expense of SML!) and we could have had more romantic interactions post love declaration b/w ML-FL. After all the FL has been pining for the guy since much earlier in the show and that pent up feelings could have been easily channelled through different scenes (her being the first to lovingly lead and plant the first kiss on the hero was totally in character with this picturisation)
Anyway, it's worth a watch. Feel free to use FF button and also the 1.5x play speed button.
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