allie

i will start off by saying that i did have fun watching this show and it was entertaining. there were parts that had me stressed out and gripping my chest, but there were also more parts that had me wanting to just skip through them….

this show has very high reviews, and i think it’s mostly from the casting. the main couple had such good chemistry and i really did enjoy watching them together! my issue with this show was genuinely the plot. i personally felt like this show absolutely did not need 24 episodes. i had to watch 14-17 on 2x speed because i genuinely felt like i was going to lose my mind. there was so much back and forth, miscommunication over literally nothing, bad advice given/taken and just so much nonsense happening i almost dropped it. i loveeee some theatrical drama, but it got to a point where i was just like ??? are we done yet? like how long could they possibly drag this out for?

and also the kidnapping arc, the tax evasion arc, and honestly the entirety on the wang shuo arc were so nothingburger to me, and i feel like they were just trying to invent stuff to keep the show interesting, but it was boring me to death. i felt like everything was just very predictable, so i think that took the joy out of the roller coaster for me. for example, the minute chi cheng was presented with the tax papers to be signed, i smelt the tax evasion dilemma coming from a mile away… maybe i just read too much BL, but this show was like every single trope you could think of thrown into a bowl without mixing it together and then throwing it all over the table. i applaud anyone who genuinely enjoyed this, i honestly envy you.

also, a lot of these reviews discuss the dubbing, but i think i just haven’t watched enough cdramas because i honestly didn’t notice it most of the time. i think i thought about some things being weird, but i didn’t process that it was from dubbing in the moment, so i don’t think it made this show unwatchable.

note: i didn’t touch on the blatant romanticization of sexual assault throughout the show, but it definitely bothered me up until the end! i was rooting for a guy who literally enabled a gang rape to happen in the first episode….. that was genuinely crazy… i do understand that it’s not real, and this type of thing is common when it comes to these types of plots, but it doesn’t make it any less uncomfortable. there are definitely ways to write a dominant, forceful top without making him an abuser, but i digress…