Second Lead deserved better; Poor Chemistry; Mediocre Storyline

My post isn’t gonna contain major spoilers from the drama, but I am going to mention the novel so I felt that I had to tag it as such. Please read only when you’ve watched up until episode 12.

A few months ago I got to know about this drama because of Wang Haoxuan and my faves from Produce 101. I was quite hyped about this drama so I decided to read the novel and look for updates everyday. Surprisingly the novel wasn’t as good as I thought it would be. The ML (Jun Linyuan) is a huge asshole to the FL (Feng Wu) so naturally I started to pay more attention to the second lead (Yu Mingye)

After episode one of the drama came out I was very surprised that it managed to be a lot better than the novel while being quite loyal to the source material at the same time. I watched more vip episodes and I started to notice that the drama cut out a lot of Yu Mingye’s parts to make Jun Linyuan more appealing, and honestly at first I was quite okay with it since he was supposed to be the ML after all. However as I watched more episodes I started to root for the second lead again since the chemistry between the main couple didn’t change at all. Sure in the novel Jun Linyuan didn’t have a “Loveless Pill” to justify his terrible actions towards Feng Wu, but they had the same forced interactions as they did in the drama.

I’m disappointed as to how they cut out so much of Yu Mingye’s scenes all because he’s supposed to be the second lead. In the drama he simply felt like a character that comes every 5 minutes in each episode. Meanwhile in the novel he expressed many times that he would always be there for Feng Wu. There’s a line from the novel that I liked and I really hoped that they had added it to the drama:

“‘Don’t you think that I’m a bad person?’ Feng Wu kept her gaze on Yu Mingye.

Yu Mingye darted an unconcerned look at Feng Wu. ‘Since when were you a good person?’

‘Good person or bad, you’re Little Feng Wu and I’m always on your side’”

It really showed how much dedication he has for Feng Wu. The second lead and the FL would have a more interesting love story than if the FL was with the ML. Even if Jun Linyuan’s character changed heavily in the drama his chemistry with Feng Wu stayed the same, forced and boring. Why exactly would Feng Wu fall for Jun Linyuan? And why does Jun Linyuan “love” Feng Wu so much? Wouldn’t it be more interesting if Feng Wu was secretly having special meetings with the enemy? If Meng Yuan defied Feng Wu’s relationship with Jun Linyuan and instead went off to be with someone else instead? Being with Feng Wu was life-changing for someone like Yu Mingye, don’t you think they’d be a better main couple? But of course they had to be loyal to the source material. I appreciate how they changed a huge part of Jun Linyuan’s character to make him a better ML. I’m sure they cut out the second lead’s scenes just so people wouldn’t prefer him over the ML but I wish they just made the main couple’s love story more interesting instead of pushing away a good character. If they can make Jun Linyuan a better person then I’m sure they could’ve made his love story a lot better too (but they didn’t).

As for the storyline it’s really not that good though not bad either. If you’ve watched a lot of cdramas then this one isn’t anything special really which is expected since it was adapted from a weak source material. However it is funny and a good series to watch to pass some time.

EDIT: just finished it; im convinced that zhao ge and zuo qingluan are supposed to be a cp but because of censorship they had xuan yi and zhao ge /hj

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