Drama Digest
Su Jian is an aspiring novelist. With little to no success in what her passion lies in, Jian is currently being coerced into taking over the lingerie business her father owns. Upon convincing him that she will become a successful novelist Jian receives an ultimatum from her father that she has to get married in 72 hours. She reached out to an old friend who is also a rich CEO. They were childhood friends that lost touch with each other. They have to live together for the sake of Jian and her career, so they both end up in a contractual marriage. They have a lot of obstacles to get through to cohabitate peacefully. This is because during their childhood Su jian did not have friends as she was overweight and Lu Bo Yan was mean to her because he liked her. All their past occurrences and how they manage to get past that is what this drama offers.
The Feel-Good Part
The idea of contractual marriage was done beautifully while the writers integrated the tropes of childhood friend, childhood trauma and misunderstanding. The main characters have significant chemistry with each other and for the most part really gel well with the scope of the plot. Lu Boyan and Jian develop feelings for each other and as they try to navigate what it means we get some really wholesome scenes involving the both of them. Boyan is especially understanding of Jian and her ambition to be a novelist. Jian tries really hard to appease her publishers demands and often loses ope as she is forced to write storylines that are not her style. Given how she writes stories that would be considered male oriented to readers, Publishers did not want to give her the exposure.
The Disappointing Factor
The female lead Jian was written extremely poorly with little to no character development. She was constantly rude and had knee-jerk reactions to everything Boyan did for her. This was done in an attempt to make her seem independent but it came off as extremely ungrateful and useless most of the time. Because there was no character development on Jian throughout except maybe the ending where she admits to having feelings for Boyan the show becomes tedious to watch. It is difficult to take her seriously as she goes on this streak of acting as awful as one person can manage to be.
In-Depth Analysis
Very cliched, run-of-the-mill tropes is used in this drama. The only credit is that the acting was good and that carried the show wonderfully. Excessively relied on the trope and its alluring elements to further the plot than develop it independently. Very lacking for what one would expect of a romantic comedy. The way this female lead was written makes the audience antagonistic towards her. She was constantly selfish and rude so in effect any success she got eventually in her novelist career she failed to win the audience over. It started off really well with the childhood drama and friendship with the potential to blossom into a love story. Boyan was as supportive as possible and his character was lovely to see on the screen. He was constantly in support of Jian and her wishes. Although sometimes we do see some streaks of jealousy in him too, the problems are easily solved by the end of the show.
Star Power
Ren Yan Kai has previously worked in a number of Chinese dramas and in this drama, he plays the role of the overbearing CEO Lu Boyan. Cheng Xiao meng is the actress who plays the role of Su Jian in this drama, she has previously lent her acting skills in the drama Goodbye, my princess. For the supporting roles, we have Zhao Cheng Yu and Jennifer Xiang amongst others.
Overall Opinion
The show is adapted from a novel. Overridden with tropes of fake marriage, childhood trauma, and misunderstanding amongst other subplots where there is another girl in love with the guy, etc. Ultimately things smooth themselves over, but this show does not have too much inclination toward romance. The character development is poor as well. Only if you priorly enjoy Chinese dramas you can sit through it. For first-time viewers, it would be nice to skip it altogether. The chemistry of the leads was good and that kept the show afloat. But more or less this show feels stretched for too long, it could have been summed p in 12-16 episodes, the fact that it went for as long as 22 episodes make the plot drag to no end. The story brings nothing new to the trope of fake marriage. Or for that matter any trope that it used, The makers relied on the trope and its following to garner more audience for the show and it was evident in the lack of originality in the storytelling.
