luckz

Imagine a drama where the annoying clingy 'monkey girl' SFL just doesn't give up and perseveres until she finally gets the guy. It is "Female Chases Male First" taken to the max, if you so want.

There's also a strong friend group focus, like Reply without any of the ajummas.

The producers of this sometimes have no idea what they're doing with the foreign-language music they licensed. For a few of the OSTs, it is a whole 10 hours (!) into the show when they finally try to make them fit the scenes. Earlier a song praising the adored's kissable lips was thrown at... adolescents punching each other. Similarly, there is an apologetic & regretful song that is grossly misused for all sorts of things in the first 10 hours before finally being employed for mending a relationship between two characters.

In case you care for that sort of thing, the kissing scenes ain't exactly passionate or convincing.

I'm not seeing https://kisskh.at/702917-really-miss-you on your list (= Mo Bao Fei Bao: https://kisskh.at/people/18856-mo-bao-fei-bao which you seem to enjoy)

I thought Hidden Love was a bit better, but not dramatically so. (Unless you're rating in terms of, uh, kiss quality.)
Both shows have kind of weak OSTs and some bad dubbing here and there.

Her crying is pretty whiny though. Fortunately there's not super many instances of it.

There are several SML suitors, the FL isn't interested in them and the ML attempts to get rid of them.
The kiss scenes aren't great.
With the ML you watched the much better Love Scenery and with the FL you watched the much much better Love Me Love My Voice.

Of all the shows I watched where "nothing really happens", Love Me, Love My Voice https://kisskh.at/702917-really-miss-you is the only one I can wholeheartedly recommend.

While I don't know in how far "Chinese censorship" really killed this, it certainly feels like the poor, poor writing often has to replace some other planned (or even filmed) content that suspiciously went missing.
Chemistry is... let's say on the lower end of the scale here.
The OST is very boring and a lot of the background music is bad or even bothersome.
Besides the FL's sassy and sometimes violent character, I'm not sure what I could even be praising here.

Since someone else complained that the treatment of animals in various scenes was dumb and nonsensical, let me say that the same applies to the game development and computer stuff here. They even have the standard scene where the ML remotely crashes someone's PC "just like that" to make them stop talking that no pre-teen hacker movie can do without.

Unless you are a Lin Yi super fan, want to see Zhou Ye in something MUCH worse than 'Love Me, Love My Voice', or just need to watch every gaming-related show there is no matter what, you can easily find better shows to spend your time on. Maybe in a parallel universe there's an uncensored director's cut of this that doesn't suck...?

Wouldn't describe Hidden Love that way.

... I actually just posted https://kisskh.at/702917-really-miss-you#comment-16941441 and praised it for not killing me with adverts, but that is because I thought the characters feeding each other milk tea every two minutes was supposed be charming...

✅ leads take center stage and are never rivaled in relevance
✅ no villains, or characters trying to ruin others' happiness
✅ no misunderstandings
✅ no harmful emotions
✅ lots of little details, cast interactions, and tons of scenes/shots include plenty of actors at once
✅ all the 10+ main actors are really natural in their roles, rarely degraded to pure comedic relief, and when someone like Yang Dong Qi appears and intrusively over-acts, it only reinforces how good a job the cast is doing
✅ reasonably few bothersome adverts – they definitely exist, but for me it was within tolerable limits
✅ "comedy noises" are only used very rarely
✅ plenty of music (includes several concerts/performances)
✅ plenty of food
✅ so very much friendship on display
✅ above-par cross-China travel with some really nice landscapes (and again: quite a lot of food)
❌ some viewers might be turned off by the ML being too perfect and the FL sometimes not having more to her personality than "likes to eat & does not gain weight"
❌ after the very strong first third, filler content slowly begins to appear (but does not get overwhelming)
❌ some of the background music is murky, contrasting with the otherwise good to great songs
❌ since the drama is very long, even the nice songs can end up feeling quite repetitive
❌ the second, third, fourth, .. couples are not handled in a very satisfactory manner
❌ some viewers might find this ultra slow

Due to the scene details, food details, performance details, and landscapes I'd perhaps vote for watching this in 4K.

With "anything dramatic like" in it I truly would not have enjoyed this show.

There are tons of kisses.
Secondary couples are unfortunately not resolved until very late.

What do you mean they were only disclosed at the end? You saw little extra snippets at the end, but pretty much everything in there was also expressed throughout the show. The background summaries were nice, but besides the shot that showed SML's other business, I believe the rest was told several times throughout the show.

There is no conflict in this show and nothing has negative consequences.
Technically, twice, someone throws a punch. But again, it does not matter.

It really depends on how you define "dating". Essentially they only have eyes for each other for almost the entire show, and most of the screentime includes or revolves around the leads. While watching, we couldn't even decide who the second, third, fourth (potential) couple would be because all other characters pale in importance so very much.

The (as usual spoiler-heavy) intro also doesn't even show anyone else but the ML and FL.

What is Meco and how can they be worse than Rio?

I still wake up drenched in sweat sometimes, deeply traumatized by the many Rio bottles in some dramas. (Not really, but...)

Because somehow this 'nothing happening' is really well-crafted, with tons of small details, pleasant interactions, etc.
In the middle (where you stopped watching) or after the first third I guess it indeed starts to drag a bit more.

I liked this show specifically because it did not throw poorly written problems into every episode.
Contrasting to another show where nothing really happens and there are no particular obstacles, in something like King The Land they throw fake business obstacles into the male lead's path that he easy clears because he is 1000/10 good at everything. In this show, the 1000/10 at everything ML does not have any 'trouble of the week' to overcome, and thus it isn't annoying how easily he overcomes any trouble.

I can see how your complaints fit the "SFL"'s relationship (giant age difference, and that she is a college student with "nothing interesting about her whatsoever").

For the leads' though, gotta disagree hard.

P.S.: What is wrong with standing right next to a loved one ("way too close") as they cook? I honestly don't get it.

I've rarely seen anyone pull off "I enjoy limitless eating and because I'm this week's Cinderella, I won't ever gain weight" so well. Can't say I found her particularly beautiful/attractive, but she has a lot of chemistry with the ML and 95% of the time she is just convincingly getting along well with the rest of the cast. She does seem as you say 'deficient' in some of the more serious scenes, but there are so few of these in this particular show (which definitely is its core strength)...