The Early Spring

Really great drama

From the very beginning, I was hooked. The two leads made it seem so real. I think they are both amazing actors. They gave the impression of being very comfortable with each other and made the whole drama very immersive.
The cast were just as good and I can't find any flaw with the actors
The storyline was quite common with the different twists from other dramas, but I thoroughly enjoyed this romance.
One pet peeve I have is the need to dress male leads in oversized jackets/coats to make them look bigger but all they do is make the MLs seem like little boys playing dressup.
The costumes were really nice especially the female actresses.
I really loved this romance drama.

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"Their love survived the bitter winter & finally welcomed the Early Spring"

Contain spoilers:

This was such a well portrayed drama, the character were as real as can be.
The pacing was also not bad, I was wondering how they would portray the 6/7 year relationship then breakup and reunion in 24 episodes but they managed to do it and I think it's perfect that way because there no wasted episodes and personally I don't like long modern dramas, there was a bit of confusion though on which year we were in as there weren't timecards to let us know which year it was, I would sometime hear them mention that its been thus many years and I'd be shocked coz the whole time I thought it was still within the same year, I think this would have cleared the confusion other people had about Luke being rich but having such an old phone.

I loved how Flora and Luke as characters and their relationship was painted in a way that was somewhat realistic, it showed a relationship a lot of us have been in when we were young. It was messy with sweet moments in-between. It didn't paint the female lead as a completely innocent person as well, she had her own flaws just as much as Luke had his own. I think it showed that relationships are work and not some magical event that works itself out somehow, we see this in how things fell apart between them when they didn't communicate and then there would be clarity and harmony when they did communicate and clear misunderstandings and when Luke chose to stop being proud and actually be vulnerable and kind to Flora.
Would I recommend that a friend or younger sister date Luke? Hell no. Not because he's a horrible person, actually he has a good heart and he's teachable and willing to listen when he's being corrected, the issue was his pride and his poisonous mouth that made him a horrible boyfriend sometimes.
Flora had to do some growing up as well, she called him her boyfriend but kept him at arms length, constantly lying to him straight up or by omission, what I loved about her was that she was true to herself and had courage to ask for what she wants even though she didn't look like it in the earlier years, she had way more self-control than I would because the way Luke was constantly coaxing, I'm embarrassed to say would have folded immediately.
One thing I loved about this drama unlike any romantic drama, is that Luke wasn't the perfect white knight and Flora the damsel in distress, they were both each others' savour when needed and I think Luke also points to that symbolism in the end when he reminds her of them rescuing each other during the mudslide.
I thoroughly enjoyed this drama. I enjoyed the frustrating, the sad and heart-wrenching, funny, swoonworthy, heart fluttering moments were all worth the watch.
I enjoyed the friendships that Flora had with Sun Yu and Sun Yuanzhu, Lumi and the rest of her colleagues. I enjoyed the friendship Luke had with his friends especially his mentor and bestie Tan Mian.
I even love that they showed Luke family background and his mentor/bestie gave him advise and didn't make any excuses for his behaviour, it did help us to understand why he was the way he was (nature vs nuture).
I think that they made the characters feel real and bot just there to add to the world of the male and female leads, especially with the heartbreaking story line of Sun Yuanzhu, they showed a young man who carried the burdens of his family's financial needs, witnessing the mum's abuse and not being able to help her or convince her to leave, the gambling dad, the expensive city they were in and the pressure to make it so he can afford all this, he put others above himself and barely took care of himself, he was too young to be carrying all that and while he might have been on meds I'm guessing he was already too tired by then and had given. His story is one I know too well for it to just be a plot to drive Flora to break up with Luke.

On a lighter note, Luke jnr really loves his dad Luke, that cute boy refused to leave his dad and the moment when Luke and Flora were arguing because Luke wanted to see Luke jnr was so funny, it's like they were a divorced couple fighting over custody of their child.
When it comes to character development, I saw that more with Flora throughout, with Luke it was once in awhile and then we see some serious change in the final episodes.
The ending with Luke jnr and the balloon was so cute 🥰
Overall this was an amazing drama, great story telling and the chemistry between the leads was astrononical 🫣.
The OSTs for this drama were the cherry on top, this is the first drama where I don't skip the intro after episode 1 (Liu Yuning did a big one with "Her"), lol I even knew what it means once "You should know" comes on

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A slow burn romance in a intense and realistic way on a professional environment

Shang Zhitao (Sun Qian), a determined fresh graduate from a modest background, moves to Beijing and lands a job at a top-tier advertising agency. On her first day she bumps unto Luan Nian (Jing Boran) and right away urges her to resign, believing she won't survive the high-pressure environment. Refusing to step down, Our female lead stays to prove her worth under his strict mentorship.

"The story centers on their intense personal and professional dynamic, driven by opposing personalities."

I LOVED:

Personal Growth

Two deeply flawed individuals confronting their own insecurities, communication issues.
Our female character is really determined to achieve her goals and i LOVED that about her. Also rare to see a female character in a Chinese drama not being childish all the time, she can BE cute and badass.

Our male character shows a realistic and personal growth that is worth to watch.

Secret relationship: Boss and employee but in a way that is not cringy at all, you know? SLOW BURN ROMANCE 10/10

ACTING AND CHEMISTRY - TOP TIER. You can really see the chemistry between the actors and the vibe. Perfect. They are literally perfect. 10/10

OST!!! i loved every song of it, the melody and lyrics... Just beautiful. Also a 10/10

The Story is Realistic and not forced. 10/10

I totally recommend you to watch this is if you are looking for something new, fresh, mature and beautiful. As any other drama have it has its owns misurderstandings, scenes that make you cry your eyes out (like episode 20) but it is worth it. Every second of it. At least for me it was worth it.

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A love so Imperfect it was Perfect

I have never been so moved and invested into any drama the way I was with this one. I am beyond speechless on how everyone involved managed to deliver such a masterpiece to us in way that retained and conveyed the emotion the book intended. I felt like I was growing/living with them in all the years that their romance spanned, and I was so sucked in one episode a day felt like torture to me.

The story is somewhat of a mature romance albeit a little toxic here and there but that is because the characters are written in a very human way (if you catch my drift). I felt like I could relate so much to both of them, their story, and just the struggles of their relationship. It was almost like mirror therapy with how Luke struggled to be vulnerable and show his true feelings, while flora -at times- did not consider their relationship to be a conventional bf/gf relationship. As a book girly, I was being spoiled! This show had me clutching my pearls and biting my nails from how natural and engaging the script and scenes were. It was like they pulled the scenes out of my mind and brought them to life exactly how I imagined them when reading the book.

I think it was an amazing story if you can recognize that most relationships in reality are not the perfect sell dramas give us. Everyone -including me- wants a Lin Yu-Sen (ikykyk), but the reality of it is that most people end up with a Luke (not that it’s a bad thing, personally on the floor for this Luke), it’s just a matter of setting boundaries and learning each other’s communication styles. There was a power imbalance in their relationship, which definitely played a role in how they interacted in their relationship, and it was just so amazing to see how they explored their relationship while also balancing their work life. The characters, their chemistry, the ost, the visuals, and the outfits -gosh don’t get me started on the fits- everything about was amazing. If there was one thing I would change, is that I wish it was longer and that we would have gotten an episode that shave us a glimpse into their life together in the future especially with their daughter (in the book).

Overall everything was a ten for me and I’m on my way to rewatch it😆.

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Messy, Realistic, and Slightly Overhyped

I enjoyed it, it’s entertaining, it’s easy to watch, and I do think it’s worth watching — but I also think it’s slightly overhyped. It doesn’t necessarily bring anything new to the table. There are a lot of classic office-romance tropes we’ve seen before. What makes it stand out, though, is the relationship itself and just how painfully realistic it is.

This is NOT a green-flag romance where two perfect people meet, fall in love, communicate beautifully and live happily ever after. Absolutely not. These two are stubborn, complicated, insecure, selfish at times, terrible at communicating, and honestly just screwed up. And I actually praise the drama for that because their relationship felt like one of the more realistic relationships I’ve seen in a drama. Relationships like this exist. They’re messy, unhealthy in certain ways, but also filled with genuine feelings.

I kept seeing people trying to decide who was at fault and especially putting everything on the male lead and calling him the red flag, but I really don’t agree. Both of them were at fault. If anything, I sometimes found her to be the bigger grey flag.

Yes, he had his issues, but he genuinely loved her. He wasn’t ashamed of her. He was willing to introduce her to his friends, include her in his life, take her out, and be seen with her. She was the one constantly hiding him. Even her best friend didn’t know about him. After SIX YEARS, he basically still felt like her secret hookup.

And that’s another thing — sometimes they really didn’t give me the vibes of two people who had been together for six years.

Their biggest enemy wasn’t even another person. It was COMMUNICATION.

The amount of problems that could’ve been solved if these two had just sat down and TALKED was insane. They kept lying, hiding things, suppressing their feelings, assuming things about each other and not trusting each other. It became exhausting. Literally one episode suffering, one episode happy, then back to suffering again. The chemistry was absolutely there, but the constant push-and-pull eventually started draining me.

At the same time, that’s exactly why I can’t completely criticize the relationship. It was frustrating because it was realistic. The drama didn’t whitewash either character or try to pretend that love magically makes people emotionally healthy.

Now… Jing Boran.

Let’s be serious. He is largely one of the reasons this drama became as popular as it did. His presence, styling, hair, charisma — the man was RADIATING aura. Some of those outfits were absolutely ridiculous for an office, but he looked fantastic. He ATE this role.

I already loved him before this drama, so I wasn’t necessarily shocked by his charm because I expected him to be good in this kind of romance. I actually think people discovering him through this drama probably had a much bigger WOW reaction than I did. At times, I even felt like I was watching Jing Boran rather than Luke because so much of his own charm came through.

But chapeau bas to that breakup yearning scene. My God. When he cried over their breakup??? GOLD. The heartbreak, the yearning, the acting — absolutely beautiful. Our yearning man DELIVERED.

Song Chan also did a really good job, especially during the earlier part of the drama. She suited that shy, obedient, somewhat broken version of the character incredibly well. Once her character became stronger and started standing on her own feet, I personally didn’t think her performance was quite on par with his anymore, but I still really enjoyed watching her character grow.

Outside of the romance, the storyline itself is nice. The cinematography is beautiful, the OST is amazing, there are some genuinely beautiful quotes throughout, and their scenes together are very well made. It wasn’t addictive for me, but I was never really bored either.

One thing I REALLY didn’t expect to affect me was the flatmate’s death.

I wasn’t even particularly attached to his character, yet his story absolutely broke me. The more I thought about it, the more emotional I became. It carried such a painful message about life, and I really wish the drama had used his death more strongly as a turning point for her. I don’t think they invested enough in the aftermath considering how meaningful that moment could’ve been. Still, it was one of the most unexpectedly heartbreaking parts of the drama for me.

My biggest disappointment, however, is definitely the ending.

The last four episodes were way too rushed. You can really feel that things were cut because so many scenes end before they have room to breathe. After spending SO much time watching these two suffer, misunderstand each other, break apart, push and pull and go around in circles, I desperately wanted more time with them finally getting together and learning how to have an actual healthy relationship.

We barely got that payoff.

I wanted to see them TALK. I wanted to see how they function once they’re finally honest with each other. I wanted to actually enjoy them being together after spending an entire drama being exhausted by them. Instead, everything happened so quickly that the ending left me feeling strangely empty.

Overall, The Early Spring is enjoyable and worth watching, but I wouldn’t personally call it something groundbreaking. Its strength isn’t that it gives us a new story; it’s that it gives us an unusually messy and realistic relationship without trying to make either person perfect.

It’s frustrating. It’s entertaining. It’s romantic. It’s exhausting. Sometimes you want to lock these two in a room and force them to communicate.

But maybe that’s exactly why it worked.

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I can't believe people are raving about this drama!

I can't believe people are raving about this drama! I was lured into this drama based on people's comments about the chemistry between the lead characters. The ML is abusive and they are romanticizing it! Wth. Don't bill this as a romance if you are going to have a toxic power imbalanced relationship as the main story. I mean the chemistry is great, but so what! I only made it halfway through the series and that was too far. I had to drop this. If you've ever been in an abusive relationship yourself as a woman, this should be hard for you to watch. Men like Luke don't change, they only get worse over time. I am not into these dramas for the struggle love. That's easy enough to find in the real world. If you can watch this and ignore all of the red flags, more power to you. Otherwise, please save your time and your sanity. If I could give this a negative rating, I would.

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The C-Drama version of Fifty Shades of Grey

I like how the story has been adapted so far to fit the cultural nuances of a C-drama. It retains some of the basic flavour of the original premise while reshaping it enough to feel at home in its new setting.

The acting is good, but the standout for me is the Music. The OST does a lot of the heavy lifting in creating the romantic tension and atmosphere.

Everything else? Same old, same old.

A fresh graduate falls for her cold, seemingly unyielding highly efficient boss, who is secretly head over heels in love with her but is far too emotionally guarded to express it. Throw in a couple of love triangles to stretch the story across more episodes, and you pretty much know what you're getting.

There isn't much here that feels particularly fresh or surprising, but it's not a bad watch either.

If you have time to spare and enjoy this particular brand of emotionally unavailable boss romance genre, this does the job.

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The Early Spring, or How to Turn a Workplace Complaint Into a Love Story

I wasn't actually planning to review The Early Spring.

I put it on hold once, came back, made it to episode 13 and finally accepted that my grown-up self was objecting more often than my drama-watching self was having fun.

Truthfully, judging purely by where I thought the writing was heading, I probably wouldn't have made it past episode 3.

Somehow I made it to episode 13.

This is what happens when a questionable script is surrounded by attractive people, good styling and Jing Boran looking emotionally unavailable in expensive coats.

I am not immune.

Put that man in a tasteful knit sweater, give him unresolved emotional issues and let him stare pensively through an office window, and apparently my critical judgment develops a ten-episode processing delay.

So believe me, I understand the appeal.

Unfortunately, eventually the paperwork cleared.

And underneath all the talk about how "realistic," "mature" and refreshingly adult this romance is, I kept finding something much more familiar: a fairly conventional workplace fantasy that has discovered sex, muted cinematography and better tailoring.

Which, admittedly, is excellent rebranding.

To be fair, there are things The Early Spring does well.

It looks good. The production is polished without becoming excessively glossy, and the advertising setting gives the drama a distinctive environment for the romance. There are recognizable elements of workplace ambition, exhaustion, competition and hierarchy, even if I don't always buy the situations built around them.

Sun Qian gives Shang Zhitao an appealing awkwardness early on. She feels inexperienced without being completely incapable, and I liked watching her slowly find her footing.

And Jing Boran is extremely well cast as Luan Nian.

That is actually important, because Luan Nian is a character who depends enormously on the audience wanting to keep looking at him long enough to discover what exists underneath all that arrogance.

Jing Boran makes that very easy.

Possibly too easy.

He usually chooses his scripts rather carefully. I suppose even discerning actors are allowed the occasional commercial holiday.

There is also chemistry between the leads. Some of their attraction develops nicely through irritation, observation, proximity and those tiny shifts where two people start paying suspiciously close attention to someone they supposedly don't care about.

I understand why people are hooked.

And yes, chemistry matters enormously in a romance. But if "the chemistry is amazing" has become the final defense of a twenty-four-episode drama, I do start wondering what exactly the other twenty-three hours are supposed to be doing.

Chemistry is the spark. Long-form storytelling is supposed to build the fire.

That's the whole advantage of the format. It has time for attraction to become intimacy, intimacy to reveal character, conflict to produce consequences and those consequences to actually change people.

If two charismatic actors looking very good while wanting each other is enough to carry the entire thing, then we've reduced long-form romance to a short drama with longer loading times.

Watchability and good storytelling aren't the same thing.

My problem is what the screenplay keeps asking me to interpret as complexity.

Take Shang Zhitao's job interview. She is invited into a supposedly elite advertising company despite lacking the experience they apparently want, only for Luan Nian to point out those deficiencies during the interview.

Presumably somebody possessed her résumé before she entered the building.

But perhaps HR was going through something.

She gets hired anyway, of course, because this isn't really recruitment.

It's destiny wearing an employee badge.

Then there is the strange recurring pattern where Luan Nian behaves unnecessarily badly and somewhere inside the behavior we are expected to discover a lesson.

He humiliates, but he's teaching.

He dismisses, but he's observing.

He wastes her time, but he's teaching her that her time is valuable.

Which is certainly one way to do it.

Another might be not wasting it.

At some point I stopped watching a manager and started watching a handsome corporate escape room.

Find the hidden lesson before your self-esteem expires.

And this is where the "realistic workplace" argument starts losing me.

Yes, parts of the environment are recognizable. Young employees get exploited. Offices have hierarchies. People work ridiculous hours. Colleagues dump work on one another. Bosses can be arrogant. Talented people can also be terrible managers.

All true.

But recognizable details don't automatically make the machinery around them realistic.

Shang Zhitao gets pushed around.

Luan Nian appears.

She works late.

Luan Nian appears.

She needs a ride home.

Somewhere, Luan Nian's car senses narrative opportunity.

The company may have several departments, but the screenplay has one:

Romance Logistics.

And this is also where The Early Spring starts feeling like part of a larger trend I've been noticing in long-form dramas lately:

the short-drama recipe has escaped containment.

Manufactured proximity, convenient coincidences, sexual tension and carefully timed emotional spikes aren't inherently bad storytelling. Short dramas practically run on them, and they're effective for a reason: they keep people watching.

But effectiveness at holding attention isn't necessarily the same thing as effectiveness at telling a story.

Long-form has something short-form doesn't: time. Time to let attraction become intimacy, conflict produce consequences and characters actually change between plot beats rather than because the next one requires it.

Borrowing short-form's immediacy isn't the problem.

Letting immediacy replace development is.

When long-form starts borrowing short-form's addiction to immediate payoff while abandoning its own patience, we end up with an interesting exchange:

short-form storytelling with long-form running times.

And considering how enthusiastically the industry seems to be experimenting with it, it will be interesting to see where that eventually takes long-form drama.

At this rate, AI may not even get the chance to ruin it.

The writers may beat it to the job.

I just wish we'd stop confusing the absence of accidental kisses and cartoon CEOs with documentary realism.

The same applies to the relationship.

I have absolutely no problem with flawed people falling in love. In costume dramas I have watched couples survive attempted murder and thought, "you know what, I see the vision."

My issue isn't that Luan Nian is difficult.

My issue is that backstory is not character development.

Learning why someone behaves the way they do can make that person understandable. It can create sympathy. It can add context.

But explanation isn't transformation.

Knowing why somebody keeps setting the kitchen on fire doesn't make the kitchen less on fire.

And "he's flawed" cannot become a universal diplomatic passport that gets a character through every checkpoint.

Of course he's flawed.

So is Shang Zhitao.

She can be insecure, avoidant and frustratingly poor at communicating. In fact, the potentially interesting story here isn't "toxic man versus innocent woman" at all. It's two people whose weaknesses fit together terribly well: one has too much pride; the other begins with too little confidence.

That's interesting.

What bothers me is the power structure underneath it.

Luan Nian begins as the established superior: professionally secure, socially confident and holding actual authority in the workplace. Shang Zhitao begins as the inexperienced subordinate trying to establish herself.

That doesn't mean they can never have an equal relationship.

It means the drama has given itself the responsibility of convincingly showing how they get there.

And maybe the remaining eleven episodes eventually do.

But thirteen episodes is a fairly generous amount of time to ask me to keep waiting for the relationship to become the relationship the drama apparently wants me to believe in.

Up to the point where I stopped, the trajectory felt less like:

they grow toward equality

and more like:

she grows until she becomes worthy of standing beside him.

Those are not quite the same story.

And then we arrive at my favorite word surrounding this drama:

realistic.

They fight?

Realistic.

They misunderstand each other?

Realistic.

They have sex without immediately discussing marriage?

Adults!

They spend years struggling to communicate?

Finally, a drama understands relationships!

By this standard, half of Reddit qualifies as cinéma vérité.

Yes, people really do stay in unhealthy relationships. People sleep with people who are bad for them. They fail to communicate. They repeat patterns. They love people who frustrate them. They waste years. They change. Sometimes they eventually make it work.

All realistic.

But something being possible in real life doesn't automatically make its depiction psychologically convincing or its storytelling realistic.

People also win lotteries.

The screenplay still has to sell me the ticket.

And if we're going to invoke realism so enthusiastically, there is another perfectly realistic ending available:

Shang Zhitao grows up, becomes professionally secure, looks back at six years of emotional exhaustion and sends Luan Nian directly to a thousand hells.

Then she chooses her career.

Or herself.

Or another man.

Or nobody.

And Luan Nian's eventual emotional awakening becomes what emotional awakenings very often are in real life:

too late.

That would be realistic too.

Instead, we know what kind of story we're watching. All this messiness is ultimately moving toward romantic permanence.

And that's fine.

It's a romance.

But then perhaps dysfunction shouldn't automatically become evidence of realism simply because the happy ending takes six years to arrive.

Which brings me back to the reason I somehow lasted ten episodes longer than expected.

Take away the styling, the chemistry and all the attractive people. Take Jing Boran out of those suits, coats and strategically deployed states of undress, and leave the writing to fend for itself.

Would I still have made it to episode 13?

Absolutely not.

I would have been gone by episode 3 with remarkable efficiency.

So while the writing never quite managed to convince me, the eye candy clearly mounted a heroic delaying action.

Ten extra episodes is no small achievement.

And I do understand why the drama works for so many people. There is chemistry. There are good performances and appealing scenes. The production has atmosphere. The characters aren't sanitized into perfect romantic leads, and if you're tired of sugary modern romances, I can see why this feels like a more interesting alternative.

Where I part ways is with the idea that messiness itself proves maturity, or that finding this relationship unconvincing means failing to understand its characters.

Sometimes two viewers understand exactly what a drama is doing and simply disagree about whether it works.

That's criticism.

And perhaps that's why I finally wrote this review.

People should be able to enjoy The Early Spring without having to defend it as a masterclass in realistic relationships.

And the rest of us should be allowed to look at the same six-year romantic journey and conclude that Luan Nian being complicated doesn't automatically make the writing around him complex.

I understood him.

I just didn't particularly want another eleven episodes with him.

So after two attempts, thirteen episodes and a heroic amount of assistance from Jing Boran's face, I finally dropped The Early Spring.

My drama brain considered continuing.

My grown-up brain filed a workplace complaint.

For once, management listened.

The coat remains excellent.

5.5/10. Half the points may or may not be wearing Jing Boran.

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Confused Character

So they both love eachother but they can't express and accept and the guy is on different level like he can't trust her even a bit and girl seems just too gullible like what.....
And why can't they just speak there mind if they don't want anything say why are they just watching each other .
SPOILER ALERT

like in 18th episode the guy didn't like she didn't say he was her bf but in place of correction he just watches her UNACCEPTABLE just WHY can he say he want this or that

The guy is 100% possessive but 0% wants to show he is possessive it don't work that way dude..

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