Fun Little Palate Cleanser

This silly little drama is wonderful for when you're in between more serious, longer shows and wan to watch something cute before you start something new. The episodes are very short- about 5 minutes per instalment- and that makes it good to just binge and relax for a bit. It's very tropey, but that goes with the territory for this sort of show. It's more an adorable parody of the stereotypical transmigration drama, and thus it's infinitely more forgivable.

My only real Gripe with the show is that our heroine is meant to be a music major, but for the most part the music is forgettable and the only reason to watch the two big musical productions at the end is because they're plot relevant. Beware, those viewers who are easily susceptible to secondhand embarrassment, because while the show is cute and funny overall, the musical sections can definitely trigger it.

But for being a small time parody drama, the acting was superb. Both Wang Haoxuan and Tu Zhiying have done a fantastic job with their portrayals, and where other actors might have seen the silliness of the premise and given half-assed, lackluster performances for the paycheck, neither of them have done that here. Even though the episodes were short, their chemistry was amazing. I'd also like to give a special shoutout to Yan Zixian for his wonderful job acting as my most favorite character in this drama, Liu Lin. I hope to have the time to check out his other projects soon!

Overall, the best part of this drama is it's rewatchability for it's shortness and cute plot. I plan to rewatch many times.

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There are better

To be fair, I started this show after I finished The Story of Ming Lan, which in my opinion is a must-watch MASTERPIECE, so that might be coloring my opinion slightly. But that’s still no excuse for the multiple writing fumbles present. I’ll keep it short.

1. This is a standard “FL gets revenge for her family by pretending to be a doctor/maid/etc” storyline. This time Tian Qi is trained as a doctor. Except she rarely does any actual doctoring. There are a few cursory scenes where she grinds herbs to make poultices but that’s the extent of anything important she does with it. This job is how she integrates herself into the J mansion. She then proceeds to forget almost entirely about revenge for her family because she meets the ML. Which leads me to point 2…

2. The romance in this story is sloppy at best. The ML is self absorbed and rude to the FL and she falls for him anyway because he’s good looking and they have a tenuous childhood memory together. Which is a terrible reason to fall for someone. The FL has more chemistry with the 2nd ML, the ML’s younger brother. They actually get along and have things in common and they both seem to prefer each other’s company more than she enjoys the ML’s. The entire plot line at the end seemed like they realized they wrote a relationship fumble and came up with the most asinine plot line to try to fix it by making the 2nd ML seem like a villain from out of nowhere.

3. This show is low budget. I won’t judge any set or acting decisions based purely on that. I’ve watched many low budget shows and movies that were wonderful. However, unlike this show, they didn’t write entire subplots around their sponsors like this show did. Word of Honor advertised it’s nuts sponsor at comedic times and did so in an uninvasive way that fulfilled their contractual obligations and made sense. This show devoted an entire episode to Tian Qi making a face mask (the sponsor) and gets in trouble when it causes “rashes” and she has to be rescued by the ML for it. The sponsor should NEVER EVER be any part of the plot of a show. It’s tacky and smacks of bad writing, which this show already has in abundance.

I won’t say it’s good, but if you need something mind numbing to sit through after watching better, more complex shows, this one is… fair. But there are better options.

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Don’t waste your time

This show starts out like you would think any little office romance drama would. And the first 5 or 6 episodes really do draw you in. It starts out quirky and funny and you think it’ll be a nice little low-budget drama to indulge in.

Then everything goes off the rails and it’s obvious after a point that the writers were scrambling to stuff as much drama into this show to stretch it out as they could. The main couple start out rocky. The guy harasses Yan at work and his interest and involvement with her cause problems for her with her coworkers and he seems absolutely oblivious to how this could happen. After they officially become a couple they become bland.

The doctor girl Xiang Nan may as well not even be here. She has no chemistry with her musician love interest to the point where I could skip any interaction they had and not miss anything important. She herself has no solid personality so that the writers can have her back-up or argue with a character whenever they need her to based on whatever asinine plot they’ve come up with. It’s disappointing because when I first started I thought she’d be my favorite character and the actress clearly knows how to act the type of mature and calm character the show was going for. It’s a shame they didn’t give her anything to work with.

Han Shuang is quite possibly the single worst character in this show and it’s even worse that the show will bend over backwards to try to make her sympathetic when she isn’t. Her back and forth with Dr. Mark started out rather cute. Then the show takes away any agency and backbone he had at the start and she walks all over him like a doormat and treats him horribly. It got to the point where I don’t want them together at all. She’s absolutely horrible to him. She’s also horrible to her “friends”. She constantly yells and screams whenever conflict arises and it makes everything worse. Sometimes something will be entirely her fault but not once will you ever see her genuinely apologizing or growing from the experience. She’s a selfish, spoiled and entitled brat with a violent streak and I she’s lucky she’s a drama character because if this were real life, she’d have no friends whatsoever and it’d be well deserved.

The only character I have any kind of sympathy for is Xiaolei. Her “friends” are constantly talking down on her and her horrible home life leaves her with no confidence and she’s constantly being blamed by her friend group for things beyond her control, to the point where she ends up in an abusive relationship because a lack of support from her friends drove her into his arms. She does have a love interest that is good to her, but he has yet to return and as I only have 5 episodes left to finish, I doubt the show will be able to do it in a believable and satisfying way.

Honestly if you want a good office romance drama, skip this and just watch Love Is Sweet instead. I’m only still watching this show to make sure Xiaolei gets her happy ending. Don’t bother with this drama if you haven’t started it yet and if you have, get out now, because it doesn’t get better.

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