Screenwriters totally messed this one up.

This is not a classic cold-CEO and bubbly-reporter story. It's a revenge-plot gone wrong. And the people who messed this up were the screenwriters.

Some reviews say that the actors (Dylan Wang or Bai Lu) get the chemistry wrong. That's because they assume it's a cold-CEO and bubbly-reporter. If instead you realize that she's trying to get revenge on the ex-boyfriend, suddenly the chemistry is about right (especially from Bai Lu).

We do get an early notification of the revenge-plot in episode 1... about 10 seconds long at most. Then about 20 episodes before it finally gets to exploding in her face. ML a nice guy, who acts cold to the FL because he knows she has ulterior motives. He fell for her a long time ago, and is trying to figure out why she's approaching him. So he's nice-guy-acting-cold, and she's not-interested-acting-interested.

It's the screenwriters who made a mess here. The audience literally has NO IDEA that he's deliberately faking being cold and uninterested, and is (a) trying to figure out why she's approaching him (he assumes it's money, but that doesn't make sense to him), and (b) trying to hide that he's interested.

Other points:

* The amount of self-conversation / thinking aloud is ridiculous. It's boring for the audience, and *worse* we don't even hear what matters -- i.e. him trying to figure it all out, and her plotting the scheme. There's a remarkable amount of dead-space that drives the audience to some serious boredom.

* The costume designers went way overboard on the currently-popular oversize clothing. Dylan Wang in an oversize suit looks like he's wearing his older brother's hand-me-down outfit. We simply can not take him seriously. He looks young to start with, but in that oversize suit, looks like he's 12. In Rationale Life, he looks like an Adult when he wears a suit.

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A 12-year old's fever dream

This drama series is exactly what a 12-year old expects in a romantic relationship. The main positive is that the actors are all good looking.

The story itself is the usual cheesy cold-male and bubbly-female, who were friends as small children, but it quickly goes downhill from there. The 2ML is rejected many times, continues chasing, and doing things that are manipulative and completely inappropriate. The sexist stereotypes are infuriating, from the usual ditzy women, to the way contemptible way that ML treats FL, to a particular scene involving the third couple right after she visits his grandmother. Of the three older men in the drama (dad, and two businessmen), only one who behaves in a way I would consider a mature adult.

The reason I say it's a 12-year fever dream, rather than simply classic Chinese stereotype is due to some of the behaviours of the individuals. For example, when the girls get excited, they jump up and down squealing. The FL's voice is that cutesy soft sweet deeply annoying one that no real human being has. It's almost as if the characters magically went from age 12 to adult without ever actually maturing.

There are no kisses. Only a couple hand-holds and hugs.

I agree with the reviewers who dropped after a handful of episodes. If you want to enjoy something, this show isn't it. I watched all the way through the end because I kept wondering how much worse it would get. And they successfully kept surprising me by having each episode be worse than the previous.

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Usual cute high school drama with angst and gap

Enjoyed the high-school drama for a while, but it grew tedious. The three main actors (FL=Xia AnSheng, ML=Mo ZiChen, 2ML=Yan Mu) did a good job with their roles. The other characters did their part without any surprises.

Multiple threads woven together in a bit of a weird way. Awkward family relationship, childhood frenemies, bullying, deathly fear of something. And it didn't quite work. You could kind of tolerate it for a bit, but then nothing gets explained to anyone, so misunderstandings abound. Broadly, nobody tells each other anything, so it's frustrating.

The thing that really shot this down and put it in waste-of-time category was the transition from high school to post-university. Five years have passed. Several couples are now married. But ML hasn't grown up *AT ALL*. He's still the dumb-childish-frat-boy-annoying-brat that he was in high school. It's the normal depiction of the non-genious highschool boy in Chinese dramas (i.e. can't be more than 12 years old), but usually they grow up and become adults during the 5-year gap. But in this case, he's still 12 years old. If I were the FL I would dump him in a heart-beat, asking myself why oh why could I have ever liked this dude?? Meanwhile 2ML hasn't grown up either... he knows better than to keep chasing her, but he doesn't even change his tactics slightly.

I needed something to fill the gap. This didn't even fill that need.

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Simple story, relatively well-executed

Basic concept is two young people with unrequited high-school crush, and their parents (his dad, her mom) want to marry. Awkward all around.

Fairly fluffy story with no major angst. Acting was pretty good, esp FL. The three couples were all plausible, and there were no love triangles. Chemistry for main couple was iffy -- sometimes great, sometimes contrived. Simple sets (new city apartment, work location, and village home), but each felt pretty real.

Even with only 22 episodes 15-minutes-long, the story was well-developed. While you may not agree with all the decisions, each character was behaving *in* character (i.e. script writers didn't make them do things that didn't fit).

Overall, worth a watch when you don't have time to invest in long episodes.

Worst part was the subbing -- in the subbed version I saw, sound was off by at least 2 seconds, and English/Chinese subs were disconnected. Subs were OK; only a few that made you roll your eyes. Watch it in Chinese-only if you can; sound was aligned with speech.

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Best friend group, with well-built relationship structures

Story starts at 8-years post university graduation, and focusses on friendship, love, and death. The 9 friends were presented very well, each with real back stories and real personalities. It definitely draws out viewer emotion more than most dramas. I generally do not like dramas with a lot of angst because it tends to be very fake and created for the plot... in this show, the angst was natural, and a part of the characters.

Storyline was interesting, with surprises. The natural ebb and flow of friendships was presented extremely well. The viral-video meme was done OK, but used as more of a plot-hack than a story-driver. I found it annoying that almost every negative character behaviour was pointed out much too late, e.g. "this drove me utterly crazy, but I never told you," and this caused no end of problems.

I felt like all of the (many) romantic lines were somewhat strange. For FL, one line was bland, the other demonstrated consistent immaturity. For ML, one line was stereotypical and over-done, the other demonstrated a strange level of stupidity. Among the friends group, the "social center" had a romantic story that didn't seem to fit his decisive personality.

Acting was superb, notably the very believable crying scenes (which are usually a pet peeve of mine).

To enhance the emotional scenes, things tended to get dragged out. For example, we'd see someone walking around their apartment "thinking" for 5 or more minutes. I found the music annoying... the same 8-measures played over & over.

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Unremarkable

Standard romcom story contract marriage to love, but in 5-minute episodes. He's engaged for business-finance reasons, and falls for FL first so does what he can to dodge the engagement. She has a real suitor that she's not interested in.
Nothing remarkable about their acting. A few amusing scenes as she tries to ditch the various blind dates her mother sets up for her. Her mother was completely unexpected; absolutely the most memorable character. Episodes were so short there was nothing unnecessary or annoying. Despite short episodes, there were no weird gaps in the story.

Sound dubbing was weird in the version I saw -- you'd get about a minute or 1:30 with no sound at all. Auto-generated subtitles.

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They did the "lost memory" meme really well

This was a really well-done analysis of someone who has daily memory loss (no ability to store new long-term memories). They presented the story really well from the perspective of the ML who is the person with the memory issue. They capture his confusion, and all the methods he uses to keep track of his life (post it notes, videos, etc), and the little things he struggles with. They capture his emotions, angry, sad, happy, and manage somehow to convince you that he doesn't get depressed about it but instead choosing to live in the moment.... but it's realistic because there is a scene or two when he does show the anger and depression that results from the ailment. They talk through a variety of psychological / therapy approaches, and give you a justification of what works and doesn't. (No idea if any of this is medically plausible, but it's believable). Jasper Liu gives you a very believable character.

FL does a fabulous job showing how she deals with her job as therapist and finding herself falling in love with her patient. Both the ethical boundary, and how she resolves it. Then once the relationship is established, the way she protects him and supports him when other people might get angry.

The couple have great chemistry, and broadly the cast as a whole comes together nicely.

The twist could have been handled really badly. As soon as the event happened, I thought "oh dear, that's another show that will get a bad review from me," because I thought there was no way they could do a good job. But they handled it EXTREMELY well; in a genre that is done badly so often, doing it well earned them huge positive points. Watch all of the end credits to se how things progress over multiple years.

In "50 first dates," the FL is the one with the memory issue, and the story is told from the ML's point of view (i.e. we don't really see what's going on in her life). It was nice to see it done from the perspective of the person with the memory-loss.

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Great start that crashed and burned

I love both Gao HanYu and Jade Cheng. I love food flicks, and the focus on food as a heart-of-the-family was amazing; Recipes that could be repeated.

Episode one was everything I could have hoped for. ML notices all the social cues he should. FL is competent and capable at work, while also showing her care for work colleagues and awareness of work/life balance. ML promotes FL to director clearly through a show of her skill. We see ML as isolated and lonely, hiding his warmth and caring nature. The recipe was completely at-home repeatable. FL+ML have perfect chemistry. Second couple is a wonderful pair, and teases/supports main couple beautifully.

The next few episodes you have the usual tropes that come with lonely CEO who only has work to accompany him, and FL trying to balance it all. Some of the tropes are pleasantly flipped, like when the CEO is the one who trips and accidentally kisses the girl.

Somewhere around episode 8 I realized that I had been fast-forwarding through a lot of scenes. Repeatable recipes had vanished. Second couple stereotypical but supportive of first couple; waste of time to watch them. Third couple weirdly supporting each other's stalker behaviour; just irritating.

Main couple finally get together episode 9, at which point I realized that both ML's competence at work, and social awareness has been completely written out of the script. He does stupid stuff at the office that's completely out of character. But first dinner with mother-in-law he's completely out of it, for example literally grabbing soup-poured-for-mom and drinking it himself.

Why do script writers feel that they can have such completely implausible behaviour? I know the story is good when I want to yell at the characters. I know that the story is bad when I want to yell at the script writers.

I skipped ahead to the last episode, and watched as much of it as I could. The timing is seriously weird, both the relationship, and the show. In the relationship, they go from barely speaking to each other to marriage proposal ("I've changed") in only a few days time. In the drama, he proposes and The End.

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Manipulative jerk who doesn't respect boundaries

Younger guy who stalks his former teacher who is now a work colleague. He does things that are extremely manipulative and inappropriate in any setting. When she finally accepts him, he starts doing things at work that could get them both fired, despite knowing her concerns, and the boundaries she has set. Very sad that she ends up apologizing for setting boundaries. Not recommended.

5-minute episodes.
Sound production was awful... e.g. music so loud that you couldn't hear the speech, different sound levels for different speakers in the same scene, audio mismatched from video.

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This show was about a cold female CEO with a warm-bubbly male partner. It was a half-hearted attempt, at best.

The FL was cold, but didn't give me a "capable" sense -- she worked crazy hours, but I never felt like she was taking the world by storm. Her interactions with her uncle were particularly lame. The ML was not the warm-bubbly type, but just sort of there. They set him up with a weird disability that I've never heard of, but then we only hear about it perhaps twice again. The chemistry between FL+ML was good while negative/hate, but then suddenly shifted without much warning into CP. I had to blink and rewind... I hadn't seen any clues that either was falling for the other.

The 2ML and 2FL were a great couple. Laugh-out-loud funny.

The first few episodes were much more focussed on comedy. Despite story-line problems, I was really enjoying how silly it was. Best scene: when the ML's home becomes a "for-the-experience" restaurant. That faded in later episodes, and I was watching simply because the series was so short.

The last episode is a left turn out of nowhere. Neither necessary, nor explained. It was a head-spinner. At least it didn't destroy the rest of the show.

Pacing was strange. Sometimes strangely fast (e.g. switch to CP), sometimes strangely slow... like 10 minutes of music and people running around looking for something.

Acting was not memorable -- neither bad nor good. FL lead's crying was better than many other female actresses.

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A walk down memory lane

The main reason to watch this is Nostalgia. You want to see Beijing in the early 2000s.
And, of course, the main actors, who are all eye candy.

But there's just not much to it. The story is bland, and it's really hard to stay engaged. There is a handful of youth actors and their parents. The story's main focus is the interpersonal relationships. You can kind of put up with a few episodes of the background/bland, but then somewhere around episode 6 or 8 it's time to move to actual plot. I can't even say that I think the huge cast of characters had particularly interesting personalities... I did make it through to the end, but only because there really wasn't anything else going on.

Best acting was in episodes 16-18, from ML Zheng SuNian (Lin Yi) and his father Zhen Jin (Fang ZiBin). Lin Yi showed a new skill compared to prior shows (crying, although Dad was still way more believable).

Worst feature of this show: NONE, and I do mean not a *single* one, of the youth actors look like they could be high school students. I believe Lin Yi was the youngest actor (born 1999, age 22), while Chen YuQi is the oldest actor (born 1992, age 29). And they're all supposed to be high school students. It works (or can work) for occasional flashbacks, but not complete episodes.

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Great start turned into girlfriend-from-hell

I was looking for something that really showcased Yang Zi (FL) 's acting. She gets great reviews, but mostly I've just seen her do the character who is cute and fun and hardworking and smarter-than-she-looks.

The first episode had me hooked. She was an amazing, articulate, self-assured business woman. Set goals, expressed herself, resolved disputes. And had fun doing it. I was really pleased to find this show. The chemistry with ML was great -- wow did they hate each other :). The end of episode two continues with an amazing depiction of the scariest drunk you've ever seen. I can't say how much I'm impressed with her acting. (And chemistry with ML continues.) Yang Zi wasn't acting as this woman, Yang Zi *was* this woman.

It turns out that her acting was so good that I began quickly to hate the story. I couldn't *stand* that woman. I wouldn't wish her on my worst enemy. There was a red flag in the first episode, in the interaction with her boyfriend... she doesn't give him a chance to say even half a word. And she tells her parents that he'll do whatever she says. In the relationship: screaming, tantrums, never listening... you name it. At work: mature and sensible.

I watched two more full episodes before realizing that there was *no way* I would be able to watch all 44 episodes. I just couldn't imagine spending any of my free time with someone like that.

Because there have only been two other reviews for this 2016 show (now early 2022), I decided I had to watch enough to justify a review. I skipped ahead to episode 10, then 20, then 30, then 40, and finally 44. I was curious to see whether the new relationship improves. In other words, I was looking for a character redemption arc, which might have been interesting enough to go back and fill in the gaps. While the amount of screaming does fade a bit, she never really becomes someone I could respect. So I haven't gone back and filled in the bits.

The production was odd -- audio was always off the video. You see hands clapping or doors slamming, and then 2 seconds later the sound appears. Voice, background noises, and music are misbalanced. In terms of subbing, myasiantv had an engsub version, but some episodes didn't have sub titles, some had subs that misaligned (like 5 minutes off what you're watching). The subs, when aligned with the scene, were accurate to the story.

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