Honestly I was getting a little bit tired of seeing Annie & George together. It was getting too cutsie for me and their relationship was so similar in both Love, Now & Love Around. Annie whines too much and has a screechy voice that makes your skin crawl sometimes. I hope this new drama series that will air in Mar 2015 will be a departure from their previous love connections.
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Maybe it's a cultural thing. I don't know.
Anywho, I was initially impressed with his character He Bu Fan, a marketing genius who brings much-needed structure and discipline to his brother's fledgling business, which requires him to be a dick at times when he's at work. But then I realized as I watched more episodes that he's no different than any other male lead, treading familiar territory as an emotionally distant asshole with mommy issues. Needless to say, I was disappointed watching him treat his love interest like a child.
Pheobe Yuan's character Xu Man Man started off independent and strong-willed after recovering from a painful breakup with her fiance Shi Bo Hai (Ken Hsieh). Then in later episodes, it all went to shit. I don't know why the writers felt the need to dumb her character down so much.
Oh yeah, Bo Zheng Chen's character was that of some sort of deity or god but his hearing aid was visible. Just Sayin'.
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This review may contain spoilers
This drama sort of grows on you. The recurring theme of Shi Bo Hai's spirit being sent out to help and protect his girlfriend is difficult to understand and of course painful to think about, but the light-hearted presentation makes it palatable. He Bu Fan and Xu Man Man's unlikely romance is the underlying theme of the show. The lead actress, though shown as clumsy at the beginning, and undergoing many professional and personal setbacks is shown to grow more mature and understanding over time. The two other parallel stories of Bo Hao and Xin Ping and He Bu Fan's brother make for some very interesting and stressful moments that the lead story alone would not have fulfilled.
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This review may contain spoilers
The scene when Shi Bo Hai mum rushed to the wedding is ridiculousness and childishness to the highest degree. If Shi Bo Hai is dying the first thing is to get a doctor than taking a taxi to disrupt He Bu Han and Man Man wedding. Further, with Taipei traffic there is no way she can get there on time. It ticks me off when writers is so naive or shall I said childish to write this plot. 74 episode is just ridiculously long. I wonder how there are so many commonsenseless Taiwanese or Chinese writers. It drags on and on with little interesting plots after episode 49. The rest are just rubbish. Was this review helpful to you?
Don't bother
I love George Hu, but this drama is sooo boring. I've watched a lot of C& K drama and I understand they all have similar plots/styles but this one is so ridiculously boring. The actors aren't bad and do a good job with a bad story. Really don't know how I'm going to get through 70+ episodes. The FL is all over the place and not really a good match for George. The story or lack there of is extremely slow to develop. The second leads do a good job. I'll probably still watch it through to the end but I'm not expecting it to get much better. A drama needs to catch a viewer from the first 1 or 2 episodes.Was this review helpful to you?
Unfortunately for Love Cheque Charge, while the premise is a good one the writers clearly had no idea how to fill their ridiculous episode count. While Taiwanese dramas often suffer from a filler problem in the back half and resort to tired tropes and Makjang to fill it, Love Cheque Charge suffers from a filler problem from the first episode.
It's also plagued by poor characterisation that makes it difficult to care about the leads and their annoying over-used set of friends and family.
George Hu plays George Hu, which is to say he's personable and attractive even if his character is kind of a jerk for very little reason other than male leads are supposed to be. He's also a sexist jerk, which is not someone you'd want any woman to end up with. This is a common issue with Taiwanese dramas but for Love Cheque Charge it's a big one since they refuse to acknowledge the male lead's behaviour as wrong.
Phoebe Yuan tries her best with the annoying and poorly-written Xu Man Man whose personality changes in each scene so you never know who she is or how she's going to respond to anything.
Most importantly, while there's a lot of humour to be milked from the premise, the show doesn't capitalise on it. Show should at least be fun but it isn't.
After four episodes - and with Netflix telling me I have 70 to go - I'm dropping the show because I just don't care what happens to these people. Most importantly, since becoming a couple is often the main point of these shows, they'll no doubt drag things out and assassinate their characters till the point where I care even less.
Honestly, there are so many of these types of shows around that you can choose any one of the others to watch. So do that instead.
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