Disclaimer: this is a review, and as such it contains spoilers of the whole series. Please proceed to read at your own risk if you still plan on watching this show or if you haven’t finished it yet. You have been warned.

Road to Rebirth
(爱在星空下 / Ài Zài Xīngkōng Xià / Love Under the Stars)
MyDramaList rating: 5.5/10

Hello there, it’s been a while! I was planning on uploading another review in September, but then this show turned out to be very lengthy and it took me a long time to get through it, so here we are more than a month later! The thirteenth show my Wheel of Fortune app picked out for me was another one that I must have put on my list after picking it up somewhere. Although I like discovering new shows that I’d otherwise never get to earlier, unfortunately this show didn’t really do it for me. There is a lot to say about it, and I’ll definitely highlight as much as I can, but all in all I didn’t enjoy it very much. I think it had great potential, but the quality of the writing and execution just fell short to me. Still, it’s an extensive project that deserves a proper review, so I will do my best to make something worthwhile out of it.

Road to Rebirth is a ZJTV C-Drama with 46 episodes of about 45 minutes each, which I personally watched on the Yo Yo English Channel on YouTube. It’s centered around the life of Su Xing (played by Jerry/Jia Nai Liang), a famous actor and the representative star of his agency Style. With the support of his manager Peter (Liang Chao), he has worked himself up from extra to top actor. Despite his widespread popularity, he has become known for his occasional erratic and arrogant behavior towards producers and directors. While many have gotten fed up with his attitude, he keeps getting away with it because of his status and reputation. One thing can’t be denied: Su Xing is extremely passionate about acting. He takes every single role he plays very seriously and always does all the necessary research to make his performances as realistic and heartfelt as possible. While he occasionally misbehaves towards the film crew members, he does treat the extras and rookie actors kindly; he’s been in their position and knows how hard the industry is to starting actors. Within his agency, he also treats his juniors the same way, and one of them is a young woman named Zhu Li. Zhu Li (played by Chen Xiao Yun) has always looked up to Su Xing and even harbors feelings for him. Unlike him she has a very hard time getting roles, and Su Xing has always supported her by getting her to appear in minor roles in his dramas. Other than that, it’s clear to see that Peter and the company in general favor Su Xing above all of their other actors, and blatantly pass the other artists over when it comes to catering to their top star. At some point, the agency receives an application of a new young aspiring actor called Qi Yue. Qi Yue (Fu Meng Bo) is a former model and gym instructor who suddenly decided he wanted to become an actor. After joining Style, he starts out in Su Xing’s shadow and also quickly falls in love with Zhu Li.
Regarding his private life, Su Xing lives with his mother Su Li Zhen (played by Yang Qing) and a seven-year old boy he claims to be his nephew, Xiao Bu Ding (played by Liang Xiao Run) – his real name is eventually revealed to be Su Run Xi, but he’s called Xiao Bu Ding throughout the show, so I’ll stick to that. It’s suggested that the boy is actually his illegitimate son, but this remains unclear for some time. In any case, he’s raising his “nephew” at his mother’s house, and keeps him away from the media as much as possible.
On the other hand we have the female lead character, a young woman called Sun Xiao Ai (played by Ivy/Yi Han Chen). She lives in her countryside hometown and runs a locally famous noodle shop with her fiancé, Fang Peng (Wang Xiao Wei). While they are about to get married, it is clear that Fang Peng has some issues with the way his soon-to-be-wife occasionally makes decisions about the shop without consulting him (masculine pride can be a fragile thing, as we know). Apart from her relation to Fang Peng, Xiao Ai has a younger brother named Sun Yi Hang (played by Pei Li Yan) who is sitting out a prison sentence at the start of the show. Xiao Ai is an independent woman who loves her work, shows a lot of compassion to others and isn’t afraid to stand up for herself.
These two polar opposite lead characters meet when Su Xing is scheduled to film a variety show in Xiao Ai’s hometown, and her noodle shop is chosen for the local catering. They immediately start off on the wrong foot when Su Xing doesn’t agree with the food Xiao Ai brings him, and they unwillingly keep crossing paths while he’s filming there. More than that, when one member of the variety show cast ends up getting stuck in traffic, Xiao Ai is invited to fill in and form a team with Su Xing.
Due to an unfortunate twist of events, the show’s wrap-up party at Xiao Ai’s house coincides with a very turbulent wedding dress fitting for Xiao Ai, in which she not only discovers that her fiancé has lost all their savings in a fraudulous investment scam, but also that he’s been sleeping with her best friend, which has resulted in a pregnancy that he’s suddenly decided to take responsibility for. Xiao Ai responds to this situation by getting drunk, returning home to the wrap-up party, and falling off her own roof with Su Xing after mistaking him for Fang Peng.

Quite a lengthy introduction/summary, I know, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. As I mentioned before, the show has 46 episodes and includes a lot of dramatic events. I don’t even know if I’ll be able to get to all of them – I don’t want this review to go on forever – but I’ll take the time to address the events that I remember most vividly and that stood out to me the most.

The variety show is not the only thing that brings Su Xing and Xiao Ai together. Turns out, Xiao Ai is actually Zhu Li’s cousin. After the whole incident with Fang Peng, Zhu Li invites Xiao Ai to come live at her place, which happens to be next door to Su Xing. Xiao Ai’s erratic drunk behavior gets published by the media, which gets her labeled as a ‘crazy fan’ and the event impacts Su Xing’s reputation as well since she openly called him out for cheating on her (because she mistook him for Fang Peng). Her family is jeopardized even more when her brother Yi Hang gets out of prison and openly assaults Su Xing for dragging his sister’s name through the mud. While Su Xing refuses to clear Xiao Ai’s name, he does promise not to sue Yi Hang, under one condition: Xiao Ai has to become the new nanny at his mother’s place. For context: in-between all of this, Su Xing has been searching for a nanny to take care of his mother and Xiao Bu Ding since he himself is so rarely at home. When he tasks Zhu Li with finding him a suitable nanny, she gets Xiao Ai in there one time and Xiao Bu Ding immediately takes a liking to her. Although he is reluctant to accept it, Su Xing has to agree that so far no nanny has beaten Xiao Ai’s family, cooking and household skills, so he basically gets her to work at his house with the promise that he’ll leave her brother alone.

I just want to address something here. When I looked up summaries of this show on drama source websites, I got the impression that the story would be about Xiao Ai getting swayed into working at a famous actor’s house because of her cousin, and that it would take her only a short time to discover his sweet sides and fall for him. Imagine my surprise when she actually got blackmailed into labor by said famous actor, who went on to treat her awfully throughout the majority of the show. For me, the starting point of their “work relationship” was also the starting point of my aversion towards their romantic relationship, and unfortunately that feeling never went away. Although I knew from the beginning that they were going to end up together, I just couldn’t understand how that would ever happen from the way they started out. Even as they gradually got closer and friendlier, there wasn’t a single moment where I felt like their relationship developed into something romantic or passionate. I don’t like to say it, but I honestly can’t remember the last time I felt this little chemistry between two main characters. I’m not just talking about the actors, I’m actually talking about character compatibility. There are many ways to make the “enemies to lovers” and “opposites attract” tropes work – they’re both tropes that I normally really like – but this just wasn’t it for me.

I saw a lot of comments on the videos I watched where people expressed their disdain with Xiao Ai on being so forgiving towards Fang Peng and Su Xing. Admittedly, I also didn’t like that she kept helping Fang Peng out even after they split up – she owed him NOTHING and was in NO WAY responsible for the mess he made. The way Su Xing treated her after that was also horrible, all the more because he actually KNEW about her circumstances. He’d heard that her fiancé cheated on her and impregnated another girl, he KNEW the shite she was facing and he STILL refused to help her out or even clear her name to the press. He really went, “as far as I know, you ARE a crazy fan🤷🏻‍♂️”, which was INFURIATING. And that was a consistent thing he did. At some point in the beginning, he gets the nanny at his mother’s house into trouble after being nice to her, which makes his mom fire her on the spot because she suspects she’s flirting with him (🙄) and he does NOTHING to clear up the misunderstanding. He really made a thing of creating a mess and watching other people fight it out for him while just looking on indifferently like 🤷🏻‍♂️🤷🏻‍♂️. Even after seeing him treat his juniors and the extras on set nicely, it didn’t redeem him for me because he kept treating people like Xiao Ai like trash. The most irritating habit he had, which was also the main thing that kept me from warming up to him and his relationship with Xiao Ai, was that he accused people without first investigating the truth. Xiao Ai literally gave her whole life to him after she started working for him. She became his biggest supporter and stood by him through every shitty thing he faced at his company. She was the only consistent person at his side during his rehabilitation after even Peter abandoned him. You’d think that would create a bond between people, but no, as soon as Su Xing was back on his feet, a single word from Peter was enough to immediately make him turn on Xiao Ai again. After everything she did for him, after all that she sacrificed to be at his beck and call, he was THAT quick to accuse her of betraying him, even though he always ended up finding out she did nothing wrong. He had to crawl back and apologize time after time and she kept forgiving him, and I kept thinking “what the heck is going on”.
That “confession” scene between them also completely threw me off. If I had to explain it, I’d say that it felt like they were slowly but surely warming up to each other, but there weren’t any strong indications in both of them that they were developing strong feelings for each other. At some point Su Xing did start to look at her differently and made some flirty comments, but she always just pushed him away saying, “That’s gross” and it never felt like it reached a peak moment of “Okay, NOW they’re totally into each other”. So when Su Xing suddenly jumped out of that pond and smooched her like “I love you too” it just really threw me off. In the build-up of things, it felt like a really weird timing, and I also need to mention that at that particular moment Xiao Ai was literally crying because she thought he’d killed himself. So yeah, nothing about that confession or kiss was romantic to me. Seriously, Qi Yue and Zhu Li had more passionate kisses than they did. Besides this “explosion of passion”, Su Xing and Xiao Ai share ONE peck in the final episode, and that’s it. Like, it can be very touching when a couple doesn’t go through all the typical “romance build-up” steps and their feelings develop without them actually talking about it, but my point is that I didn’t. feel. anything. whatsoever. On the contrary, when they suddenly started acting like lovers it just weirded me out because in terms of build-up it felt like they never left the “supportive friend” stage.

Anyways, after this paragraph it’s probably not surprising when I say that I supported the second male lead a lot more than Su Xing. Ye Lang (played by Ran Xu) is initially introduced as Su Xing’s massage therapist after he suffers a minor back injury from falling off aforementioned roof. He’s a master in TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) and performs miracles that even Su Xing finds hard to criticize. In the meantime, Ye Lang meets Xiao Ai by chance when she finds a hurt rabbit next to the road and Ye Lang offers to take care of it. Everything about their encounter and the way they organically got along immediately made me favor him over Su Xing. Of course, they ended up not being a great romantic match and I didn’t like how he kept trying to persuade Xiao Ai after she’d already rejected him five times, but I still thought he treated her way better from the start. It was really nice to see how he supported her interest in TCM and combining it with cooking. I really liked the concept of his medicinal restaurant as well, I’d never heard of anything like that. So yeah, even though Xiao Ai pretty much fell asleep during their “dates” and he couldn’t take a hint, I still thought he was a better fit for her than Su Xing, and that says a lot. I gotta give it to him, once Su Xing and Xiao Ai officially got together he did kindly back off and kept supporting Xiao Ai, even if that meant helping Su Xing out, so I had to respect him for swallowing his pride a couple times. That double proposal scene on the bridge in Xiao Ai’s hometown at the end though… that was pure cringe. It made me think of the balcony scene in My Demon where they both just stood there holding out their hand to her😭. There was one comment on this video that threw me so I’m just gonna share it: “If I were put in the same position as the bridge scene I would’ve jumped in the water and swam back home. Too much stress lol” (-@morningr.9502) 😂. It made it all the more painful because Ye Lang was literally proposing after getting repeatedly rejected by her, like what did he expect?🥲
Also, there was this part in the beginning where Ye Lang, or Eason (?) as Su Xing knew him, kind of became their go-to person to rant about each other and I just couldn’t figure out if Ye Lang actually knew who they were talking about and that they were living together? I feel like he did know, so why would he put himself through that match-making shite if he was going to try and win Xiao Ai’s heart for himself? It didn’t really make sense to me, lol.

While the main storyline was probably meant to be about Su Xing and Xiao Ai, I actually found that the supporting storylines got way more screentime and build-up. Honestly, this series might as well have been centered solely on The Dramas of Style Agency, because the amount of scenes in Peter’s office was insane. I saw in the comments that a lot of people actually started skipping Peter’s scenes because they took up so much screentime with so little relevant information.
Basically, Peter was a very shitty manager. Even though he and Su Xing went way back and he definitely started out as a decent supportive agent, he’s come to a point where there’s only dollar signs in his eyes. Or yuan signs, I guess, since it’s China. I honestly didn’t understand what he was trying to pull but it seemed like he told his actors he would get them a role in a new upcoming drama but then held private meetings with producers and directors to persuade them otherwise? Like, the only artists we ever see him deal with are Su Xing, Zhu Li and Qi Yue, but he honestly didn’t help any of them. It was just a repetition of the same conversation over and over again. Whenever the artists got suspicious of his actions, he’d always get back at them with the classic “I’m your only card here, you need to trust me” and they’d be like “oh okay, thank you Peter, you’re really looking out for me, I’m sorry I doubted you!😀” … So yeah, I understand why people started skipping his scenes. They were too repetitive and took up way too much screentime. I would’ve been more interested if there had been a solid storyline and argument to what he was doing and the office scenes actually contained vital information to the plot or something. I didn’t skip any scenes, but at some point I actually found myself looking at my phone during those scenes, and when a drama loses my attention, you know it’s not going to get a high rating.

On the other hand I want to emphasize one thing I did appreciate about this series. I’ve seen a lot of Asian drama series that feature a famous actor or actress as the main character, but compared to those I thought it was really interesting to focus on the behind-the-scenes of stardom rather than the glamor aspect. Yes, Su Xing was very popular and the show does include references to his performances and fans, but the majority of the story is based on the scheming that’s happening behind closed doors. The private meetings between managers, producers and directors and actors trying to trump each other backstage. The focus was much more on how miserable all the people at Style Agency were because Peter was screwing everything up. I’ve never seen a drama series featuring an actor’s agency that focussed on how the artists gradually started losing their minds, and I thought that was actually pretty powerful.

Using that as a segue, I genuinely felt for Zhu Li. She was literally a mouse in a trap with no way to escape, constantly having to rely on her seniors to put in a good word for her so she’d get a minor role somewhere. It’s a mystery to me why Peter held onto her when he clearly wasn’t intending to give her any work. Even when she got a job, he cut it short. When Qi Yue became the new face of the company, Peter actually started telling her he only kept her on because Qi Yue liked her and she was the only person who could get him to stay. It was awful. He even made her sign another TEN-YEAR contract!! For what?! Ten years of no activity? Honestly, I couldn’t blame Zhu Li for losing trust in literally everyone around her. There were definitely times when she was acting like a spoiled little girl, for example when she got angry at Xiao Ai for getting close with Su Xing behind her back, and she was definitely not blameless for keeping Qi Yue on a leash in the beginning, but I could see the position she was in and that did make me feel bad for her. She’s probably one of the few characters that I actually felt bad for regardless of the questionable things she did. She just became desperate for any kind of attention. I thought it was an incredibly powerful move of her to turn Qi Yue in at the end when she realized he’d completely lost his mind. Considering that he was literally the only person she had left that genuinely cared about her, that must have been an excruciating decision to make, but she still did it. It was nice that she got out better at the end – although I really didn’t need Peter and fresh-out-of-jail Qi Yue to be at that awards ceremony. But yeah, Zhu Li definitely deserved better.
All in all I thought it was a very original choice to focus on the dark side of the entertainment industry, on the shite the actors were put through behind the scenes instead of highlighting the red carpet glamor. Looking at this from a new angle put a lot of things in perspective, and I thought that was pretty refreshing, regardless of the fact that the majority of the characters were basically miserable throughout the show, lol.

Maybe it’s time to talk about Qi Yue now. Like I mentioned before, Qi Yue started out as a model and fitness instructor and just suddenly decided to become an actor and apply to Style Agency, home to top star Su Xing. I have no idea how he got in without any prior acting experience, but I guess we should disregard that detail. Anyways, while he starts out admiring Su Xing and aspires to be like him, it doesn’t take him long to realize that Su Xing is literally everything everyone ever talks about. When he joins Peter for introductory dinners with directors, they always just talk about Su Xing and whether he can be the lead in a next movie/drama/play. As a result, Qi Yue gradually starts hating Su Xing more and more, and this eventually leads to him going to very extreme lengths to discredit him. He starts going out of his way to manipulate and fool people to create situations that’ll harm Su Xing’s reputation beyond repair. He starts staging situations that will scandalize Su Xing, he starts kissing up to women with connections to certain directors to gain their favor, and he openly starts cheating to win from Su Xing in audition processes. It gets very ugly. In Zhu Li’s case, I could understand where her misery and despair came from. I could understand that she felt helpless and her little attempts at coverage reflected that. But Qi Yue was just plain ugly. He became a very ugly person, inside and out. I don’t remember ever looking at a character in a drama and genuinely thinking, “You are so ugly”. I mean come on, what did he expect when he joined Su Xing’s agency? That Su Xing would retire in a year and he would just naturally take over from him despite having no acting experience whatsoever? It just seemed like Su Xing was his only rival in the entire world, and that as long as he was out of the way, everything would just naturally fall on his plate. I couldn’t help but laugh at all those moments when he lost an opportunity after discrediting Su Xing and the role just went to another popular actor, like, he really thought he was the default option whenever Su Xing fell away. Also, his acting sucked. This was emphasized several times by directors who told him that he was just portraying the emotions but didn’t understand the character he was playing. But instead of taking that feedback and working hard on his skills to improve, he just blamed Su Xing for everything. Honestly, I had to hand it to Su Xing for remaining so mature towards him. It was very nasty to watch Qi Yue just jump at any occasion to make Su Xing look bad, he really lost it at some point. And yeah, of course Peter was also to blame, because he kept promising to help Qi Yue but then pushed him aside as soon as Su Xing popped up again. But instead of opening his eyes and realizing what a shitty company he signed up for, he just blamed the top actor for not allowing him a chance to shine, as if that was truly up to Su Xing. It was really pitiful. I still can’t believe it took almost the entire show for him to realize that Peter had never been helping him out at all. When a character behaves the same way for 46 episodes and nothing changes, no character development happens and the same scenario is repeated over and over again, that just proves to me that you don’t know what to do with a character. Honestly, it got really hard to watch Qi Yue at some point. I wish they’d established his character a bit better or at least made him mature a little bit. Now he just gradually turned into this “muhaha” crazy rival character, except it wasn’t impressive at all.

The dirtiest thing they pulled on Su Xing was definitely taking advantage of his absence during his rehab. At some point, Su Xing injures his lower back on set during a stunt and this turns out to be so bad that he actually becomes temporarily paralyzed. Imagine that, the most passionate actor suddenly realizing he can’t feel his legs anymore. And while Xiao Ai and even Ye Lang went out of their way to help him back on his feet through this disastrous episode of his life, Peter took the opportunity to actively promote Qi Yue while Su Xing was out of the picture. He didn’t even visit him during his recovery. Of course he proved himself to be double-shitty when he immediately pushed Qi Yue aside as soon as Su Xing re-appeared to take back the role that Qi Yue had conveniently taken over. But the fact that they actually pulled that, that they took advantage of Su Xing’s serious injury and not even looked back at him while he could just as well have lost function of his legs forever? That was lower than low.
I also really, REALLY hated the part when Su Xing got harrassed on set by those petty directors. Yes, he’d been arrogant to them in the past and it was good for him to reflect on that, but the way they treated him was plain petty childish bullying. I get that they wanted to get back at him, but the way they went about it was so unprofessional. They literally wasted precious set time by making him do the same scene over and over and over again just to bully him. I also couldn’t believe they actually asked him to do a major stunt when he’d JUST recovered, like, that went too far even for a petty get-back-at-him. Seriously, that made me SO angry. At the time Su Xing was facing all sorts of backlash for things he didn’t even do, things that Qi Yue staged or manipulated to put him in a bad light, so he really didn’t deserve to be treated like that. I hated the part where he got cheated by one person after another. The only good it did was make Su Xing reflect on how he’d treated people in the past, but even for that it went way too far. I think that was the only time I actually felt bad for Su Xing, because that was just plain unfair.

By the way, I actually thought in advance that the rehabilitation would be the biggest event in the show. Since the first episode starts with Su Xing doing an audition where he channels the pain and despair from his rehab, and also since it was so extensively covered in the opening and ending sequences, I thought that that would be the main event that would bring him and Xiao Ai together, that she would get him back on his feet. I honestly thought the title “Road to Rebirth” would mostly refer to the fact that Xiao Ai helped him through this one major setback. But in the end the “arc” of the rehabilitation lasted about what, five episodes? And as soon as it ended Su Xing turned on Xiao Ai again because of something Peter told him, so yeah, the idea that that would actually bring them together for real was swept out of the window right there and then. That was the thing, when I finally thought they were building up to something, Su Xing’s stupid accusatory habit just made the house of cards collapse again. I actually think it would’ve been a good idea to focus on this one big event as the main foundation of their relationship. Unfortunately it just turned out to be one of a million tiny arcs, so that also contributed to the lack of build-up that I experienced.

Of course, Chinese dramas are typically lengthy, and when I watched Love Under the Moon earlier this year I also felt like they could’ve shortened it or at least made the story a bit more engaging. All in all, I think there were enough inciting incidents in this series that caused some sort of chaos in the story. Whether it was Su Xing’s accident, the staged DUI incident or The Comeback of the Shitty Ex, there was enough to keep the story engaging. However, my main criticism is that the supporting storylines, as I briefly mentioned before, got way more coverage than the main one, which should’ve been Su Xing and Xiao Ai’s love story. The main focus was consistently on the ongoing scheming at Style Agency, and as a result that stuff became bigger than the lead characters’ story. I think this also contributed to why I felt so disconnected from the relationship between the main leads. We barely see scenes of Su Xing and Xiao Ai warming up to each other, it’s just suddenly there one day. On the other hand, the toxic relationship between Zhu Li and Qi Yue and even the romance between Yi Hang and Yu Xuan were explored in much more detail. I remember seeing a similar thing in True Beauty, when some side characters got way more screentime than necessary and it started to distract from the main storyline, and I never like that. I just want to follow a clear storyline and some complementing ones on the side that all contribute equally to the story. In this case, there was too much to focus on, too much noise if you will, and I ended up getting increasingly frustrated by everyone acting ugly rather than that I was able to enjoy the main characters’ romance. Apart from that, things also just started making less and less sense to me, and this only added to my confusion and frustration. I swear, throughout the second half of the show I was just sitting there shaking my head in disbelief towards every single thing, and then they also started adding in all these unnecessary extra tropes towards the end, like Yu Xuan’s blood clot and faked amnesia and Min Na coming back and Xiao Bu Ding not actually being Su Xing’s son – like, these all literally happened in just the final five episodes. It took me right back to the ending of My Demon where they just kept adding in more dramatic details and flashbacks until the very final episode. It just became too much at some point, especially considering they had more than 40 episodes to build up to things. Instead they spent the majority of the show on repetitive scenes between Peter and Qi Yue. I don’t like to rant this much, but I just need to express how frustrating it became to watch. In the end the only characters that actually brought me joy in this show where Qing Ping, Yan Xi and Xiao Bu Ding, because they were all precious cinnamon rolls that didn’t deserve to be involved in the actions of the shady people around them.

Before talking about said precious cinnamon rolls, I want to talk about Yi Hang and Yu Xuan. As I mentioned before, Xiao Ai’s younger brother Yi Hang starts out in prison – I don’t even remember what he did, I don’t think it was that big of a crime but he was definitely a troublemaker. It doesn’t take long for him to get out, together with this other guy who gets picked up by his girlfriend. As soon as Yi Hang lays eyes on this girlfriend, he is sold. Not only does she ride an awesome motorcycle, but the way she dresses and talks fits his type to a T. When she leaves she drops a card from a club and Yi Hang is so whipped that he gets someone to figure out what club it is to find his mystery girl. Mystery girl turns out to be called Liang Yu Xuan (played by Wang Jing Yan) and she is a part-time singer and drum player at said club, so he immediately applies for a job there as well, as a bartender. While Yu Xuan is initially annoyed by this boy who keeps trying to impress her in the most childish ways, she eventually warms up to him and they ultimately end up dating.
When Yi Hang’s wooing attempts started, I expected it to just become a casual on-the-side storyline. Same as with the main couple, although I kind of expected them to end up together, I honestly didn’t think they were a very good match. It would’ve actually made more sense to me if Yu Xuan had never fallen for him. I found Yi Hang very annoying in his attempts to woo Yu Xuan. There are limits to the things you can do to impress someone, and while it’s admirable to show that you’re willing to indulge in the other person’s interests, Yi Hang really went ALL IN. It seemed to me like he was bent on showing her how “cool” he was while that wasn’t him at all. He just acted like a little child, and the way he showed affection for Yu Xuan became kind of animated, like how an animated character would drool over the person they daydreamed about. I get that they wanted him to be the comically silly impulsive character, but I just found it silly. He was basically an enthusiastic puppy that got infatuated with someone, but none of it felt genuine to me. It was as if his focus was more on impressing her than on actually getting to know her as a person. It felt almost like it was a game to him where he had to keep pursuing Yu Xuan until she gave in. It felt pretty shallow to me.
Now that I think of it, this shallowness also extended to his relationship with his sister. Apart from the fact that he and Xiao Ai were siblings, I didn’t get any sibling vibes from them whatsoever. From the way they treated each other, it just felt like they vaguely knew each other, I never felt a sibling connection between them. I also really didn’t like how Yi Hang kept persisting that Ye Lang was Xiao Ai’s soulmate. She kept telling him time and time again that he had to stop and that she didn’t have feelings for Ye Lang, but it’s like he either didn’t hear her or he didn’t want to hear her. Both in this aspect and in his advances on Yu Xuan it felt like he only put in effort on the outside but he never actually listened to or showed genuine interest in the other person’s feelings. His affection was just very animated and performed, which occasionally just made it cringy and not heartfelt. I remember that scene where he and Yu Xuan just started dating and told the club manager and he was like, throwing hearts at Yu Xuan or something and the club manager was watching it like 🤢, lol.
I actually screenshotted the manager’s face because it was EXACTLY the face I made during this part 😂😂.

Yu Xuan’s true identity is actually kept a mystery for quite some time. Apart from the fact that we know her name, we don’t actually know much about her, and at a certain point it’s even suggested that she is somehow related to Su Xing. There is one scene where Su Xing is listening to her sing at the bar and they share a very particular look, as if they both recognize each other. Later on, when Yu Xuan visits Yi Hang and Su Xing happens to be visiting Xiao Ai at the same time, the two basically freeze and become super awkward after seeing each other, even though Su Xing does treat Yu Xuan well by adding extra food to her plate. Ultimately, it’s revealed that Yu Xuan is actually Su Xing’s half-sister, the product of the affair that caused Su Xing’s parents to divorce. Yu Xuan’s mother used to work at their house as a housekeeper and Su Xing’s father impregnated her and divorced his wife to live with her instead (Fang Peng flashback, anyone?). Yu Xuan basically grew up alone, I don’t remember what happened to her parents but Su Xing’s mom did everything to keep her away from the family, labeling her a homewrecker (although of course Yu Xuan couldn’t help being born under these circumstances). Anyways, she eventually ends up living with Su Xing’s family.
There’s one thing about Yu Xuan that I really want to note as odd, because as soon as they hinted that she was somehow linked to Su Xing, something weird happened to her character. At first we only see her as the cool chick that Yi Hang is trying to pursue. Then, suddenly we see a Su Xing fan club meeting with Yan Xi and Qing Ping, and Yu Xuan just comes walking in to join them. During that meeting, she appears to be super bubbly and actively interested in supporting Su Xing. She’s not even dressed the way she usually is, and that just made me so confused. It came completely out of the blue for me that she was suddenly an integral part of the Su Xing fanclub and even Yan Xi and Qing Ping knew her. I thought they could’ve made that reveal a bit more subtle, especially in the process of revealing her as Su Xing’s half-sister. Even if the rock chick thing was just a facade and this was her true self, there must have been a better way to smoothly introduce that, because this just confused the heck out of me.
Regardless of Yi Hang “clearing his mission” of getting Yu Xuan to fall for him, Yu Xuan got some an additional dramatic storyline towards the end that also belongs to my category of too much unnecessary drama to the story that didn’t contribute to the plot. At some point, she and Yi Hang get into an accident when he recklessly jumps on her motorcycle to prove he can drive it. It’s not a serious accident – Yu Xuan falls on the ground and Yi Hang hurts his wrist – but when Yu Xuan gets a just-in-case check-up she gets the shock of her life: she actually has a blood clot in her brain that’s in a very risky position to operate on. I think she already had it and it just happened to get discovered through this check-up, because the accident definitely wasn’t major enough to cause something like that. In any case, the operation has an extremely low success rate and although Yi Hang manages to persuade her not to take it, her symptoms get worse and worse and when the success rate increases to 20%, she still decides to take it. Luckily, everything ends well and although I hated the fake amnesia trope I was glad that at least they wrapped this up in the final couple of episodes. What I could not fathom though, was that after extensively debating whether or not to undergo a low-success surgery and even making peace with the possibility that she could die during said surgery, she actually made a fuss about her hair getting cut off. Seriously, I had no words for that, that was such an unnecessary thing to add to the whole situation. You’d think she’d thought everything through, down to the actual fact that she could die, but NO! NOT THE HAIR! THAT WAS ALL SHE HAD LEFT OF HER MOM! Xiao Ai actually had to remind her of the fact that her hair would grow back and it would still be her mom’s DNA 💀. That was such a random and unnecessary detail to add to that situation, and it completely threw me off guard after watching Yu Xuan make that super mature decision. Like, seriously, you’re more prepared to die in a surgery than you are prepared to cut your hair off, even though it will eventually grow back? Talk about priorities, my goodness.
The last point that I want to make about Yi Hang and Yu Xuan is that while I personally wasn’t that invested in their romance, their love story still managed to become bigger than the main leads’. We see much more of Yi Hang’s crazy attempts to win Yu Xuan over than we see Xiao Ai and Su Xing get gradually closer. With the wonky balance between the focus of the different characters, I ultimately didn’t get invested in any of the romantic relationships at all, which is, in a way, kind of impressive.

It’s finally time to talk about my cinnamon rolls!🍩🍩
I’ll start with Qing Ping, my consistent fave. Qing Ping (played by Jackie/You Ming Tan) is Su Xing’s assistant who is always by his side when he’s on the road or on set. He’s extremely loyal to Su Xing and one of the few people who remain on his side after Qi Yue starts poisoning the world against him. In fact, he actually starts spying on Qi Yue to pass information through to the Su Xing fanclub in an attempt to bust him. Qing Ping was arguably the most unproblematic character in this show. He was just a good guy who fortunately became aware of Peter and Qi Yue’s shady schemes and chose to stick to Su Xing throughout. Even after he became Qi Yue’s assistant and Su Xing went back to being an extra on set, he always made sure to pass by Su Xing to check in on him and pass him something to eat or drink. Even if he did something thoughtless or didn’t give all the necessary information from the start, I could never hate Qing Ping because he was a genuinely good guy who never meant anyone harm.
I also really liked Yan Xi, the president of the Su Xing fanclub. I don’t know why, but for some reason I can’t find the name of the actress anywhere. I actually went as far as finding out the characters of her name and going through the end credits but it looks like she’s not even credited. I am baffled. She was such an important supporting character with a name, a role and a purpose, and they didn’t even include her in the cast list. Well, I’m definitely giving her a shoutout now. Yan Xi is first introduced as kind of a contrasting character to Xiao Ai. While Xiao Ai is initially repulsed by Su Xing, Yan Xi is actively supporting him. What I liked about her character was that, after all the extreme depictions we’ve seen of fans and fanclubs in dramas, she wasn’t just a mindless groupie. She actually made work of showing Su Xing how much his fans still supported him even after he was discredited. She personally came to visit him with flowers during his rehabilitation and encouraged him with her personal story of how much he means to her and so many others. As soon as he gets jeopardized, it doesn’t take her long to suspect Qi Yue since he has a lot to gain from Su Xing’s absence. I loved how involved she got in her private investigation to bust Qi Yue’s lies. She was such a wholesome character. If anyone has any idea who the actress is that played Yan Xi, please let me know because I really want to credit her. She was one of the few characters that actually managed to make me feel something in this show 😅.
Honestly, if there had to be a cute side couple in this show, I wanted it to be Qing Ping and Yan Xi. Qing Ping definitely liked her and they were close friends already, so it could have actually been possible. Imagine that, the one couple I actually shipped didn’t end up together🥲💔.

Finally, we have to talk about Xiao Bu Ding. This little boy was one of the main reasons I kept watching until the end, and his scenes where the only ones that legit tugged at my heartstrings during this show.
In the beginning, it’s suggested that Xiao Bu Ding is the illegitimate child of Su Xing and another actress called Min Na, who left to America to pursue her career after giving birth to him. Su Xing got full custody of the child because Min Na basically turned her back on both of them and hasn’t been there for Xiao Bu Ding at all, apart from a short annual visit during his birthday. Su Xing’s family signed him up as the child of Su Xing’s older brother who tragically died in a plane crash, and therefore Bu Ding has grown up calling Su Xing “Uncle”. He also has no idea that the “pretty aunt” who visits him on his birthday is his mom.
The first time we learn that Su Xing has a heart is when we see him with Xiao Bu Ding. He actually wants to take a break from his beloved acting to spend more time with him. We don’t see Xiao Bu Ding that often throughout the show, but he is an important key character that grounds Su Xing and also brings him closer to his more compassionate side, and it’s also because of him that Xiao Ai gets to stay on at their house. Apart from that, he’s just the cutest little curly-haired boy on the block. The final episode wrecked me the most out of the whole show – my heart was not ready to see him cry and say that he wanted his uncle to be his dad 😭😭😭. That part hit me in the heart and I’m keeping it with me. I didn’t even care that his acting was a bit awkward sometimes because he was just the most precious thing ever and he did amazing for his age. I actually just realized that he was eleven years old when this aired, bro I thought he was actually seven?! I thought he was much younger than that! Anyways, Xiao Bu Ding provided the necessary sparkle in-between all the crazy shady drama and I was very thankful for that.

Although I didn’t like Su Xing’s mom (Yang Qing) that much in the beginning, for example when she fired that nanny for “flirting” with Su Xing and she was initially also kind of harsh to Xiao Ai, everything changed when the Fire nation attacked when she stood up for Xiao Ai after Su Xing scolded her for being responsible for his mom’s fall (which wasn’t true, please refer back to his accusatory habit without fact-checking first). From that point on, I found her a very delightful woman with a very good nose for shady people. It was nice to see how Xiao Ai grew on her and how she picked her side more and more often. When Min Na came back, I just relished in Li Zhen’s disdain with her, that was really satisfying. It was also cute what she had going on with the butler? Driver? I’m honestly not sure who he was, the elderly guy who was often at their house and was clearly taken with her, haha. It’s always nice to have a mom on the good side, and I’m glad she didn’t turn out to be a nasty mother figure. I actually liked her acting a lot, she had a very natural way of being funny.

We’ve come to the final important character, and once again it’s one we all (hopefully) hate. As I mentioned before, Xiao Bu Ding’s mother is an actress that Su Xing used to be with since they both started out as rookie actors, but for some reason she ended up leaving them behind and went to America to pursue her career there. In the beginning, I believe it is mentioned that she would be the first Chinese actress to star in an X-Men movie or something. Anyways, we soon find out that Peter and Min Na’s manager Shu Xiao Pei (Zhu Xuan) – another piece of work that I’m not even going to elaborate on in this review – both collaborated in separating them, and that Peter somehow disabled her from coming back to China. That’s why I got the idea that they were actually strategically separated and unable to reunite apart from the few times Min Na managed to sneak in and visit Xiao Bu Ding. However, when Min Na eventually returns to China during Su Xing’s lowest point, we find out what really happened.
Turns out, Min Na (played by Li Yi Xiao) actively chose her career over the child she just gave birth to. She sashayed away and never reached out to either of them. She didn’t even bother to act like a proper mother to Xiao Bu Ding, not once for seven whole years. But then, all of a sudden, out of the blue, she decides that she has the right to help Su Xing back on his feet and take responsibility for Xiao Bu Ding. Just like that. She hasn’t been around for seven years but SUDDENLY she feels the urge to take her son for herself and maybe even get back together with Su Xing. I don’t know if that’s really what she wanted, but she very actively tried to convince him to ban Xiao Ai from his life with the whole “she’s not a good match for you” BS. Admittedly, I didn’t think they were compatible either, but Min Na shouldn’t have gotten a say in who Su Xing surrounded himself with after abandoning him like that. She actually approached Xiao Ai behind Su Xing’s back as soon as she arrived in China to tell her to get away from him, like?? Who are you, lady?
What made me jump off my chair the most was the way she suddenly “couldn’t help herself” to tell Bu Ding she was his mom. That was insane beyond words. She saw Xiao Ai talking to Bu Ding – get this: Bu Ding had just told her that he didn’t like Min Na and Xiao Ai was actually DEFENDING her – and just barged in, yelling at Xiao Ai to stay away from her son. After that she literally GRABBED and SHOOK Xiao Bu Ding by the shoulders, screaming “I AM YOUR MOTHER!!”, traumatizing the poor boy for life. She absolutely LOST it, and then went back as if she did nothing wrong, she didn’t even apologize to Bu Ding for scaring him. If that tells me one thing, it’s that she has no idea how to be a mother. It was like she just thought giving him gifts and doting on him was enough. She just wanted to take him back with her to America (by force, if necessary) and didn’t stop to think about how Xiao Bu Ding felt. Seriously, that kid was TERRIFIED. And it made it even worse when she just grabbed him out of Su Xing’s arms to take him away. The fact that she was able to watch them cry and hug each other as they were saying goodbye and that didn’t make her think, “Omg look at them, I am the worst person for separating them”, she still grabbed Bu Ding and dragged him off. At least she finally came to her senses and let him go because she “didn’t want her son to hate her for the rest of her life”. Woman, you’ve never even been in your son’s life, I’m sure it won’t be too different for either of you if you leave him with the man who literally raised him as his father. Because, yeah, another last-minute dramatic revelation in the final episode is that Su Xing was in fact NOT Xiao Bu Ding’s biological father. On the night Min Na broke up with him, she got drunk and slept with a random guy she mistook for him. Although it must have been around the same time she last slept with Su Xing, otherwise he would’ve known Xiao Bu Ding wasn’t his child from the start, right? Anyways, yeah, I honestly don’t really understand why it was necessary that Su Xing was NOT his father, because he was, in everything he’d done for him. I get that they needed a reason that Min Na could use to get full custody over Bu Ding, but I found it a bit weird that they only revealed the fact that Su Xing and Bu Ding weren’t related until the very last episode.
In any case, I really didn’t like the fact that Min Na just suddenly barged back into their lives like that. It made me think of the mother from Crash Course in Romance who suddenly came back ten years later after dumping her daughter with her sister without a word and just started criticizing the people who had actually raised her child in her place. Like, who has time for that, especially in the last couple of episodes? If it was going to be like that, they could’ve let Min Na step in a bit earlier, but no, she even kept rejecting opportunities to help Su Xing out before that, so it felt really random why she suddenly decided to come back and ruin people’s lives so late into the show.

Lastly, I want to give one big shoutout to a side character that made a deep impact on me. I’m talking about Cheng Chun Lai, the young rookie actor who was present when Su Xing got into that major accident on set. Chun Lai (played by Xiao Ding Dong) was one of the rookie actors that Su Xing was nice to, and he was an absolute sweetheart. Su Xing even gave him something that belonged to him and Chun Lai was so incredibly thankful. It was heartbreaking that the accident happened while Chun Lai was his co-star (they were acting out a fight on horses and Chun Lai accidentally bumped Su Xing off his horse, after which he made the bad fall). But what broke my heart in pieces was that every single bystander, from the director to Peter to anyone else, put all the blame on Chun Lai. The poor boy was already besides himself with agony and guilt and he even came to the hospital crying because he felt so bad. Of course he wasn’t to blame. Imagine the horror of accidentally causing your idol to get injured. But it absolutely GUTTED me how everyone started gaslighting Chun Lai that he was responsible, even when Su Xing stood up for him (and thank god he did this time). That was so awful and unfair to that poor boy. I really wanted to credit him because he actually touched my heart. Luckily DramaWiki listed him (I’m still salty about Yan Xi’s actress).

Now that we’re finally through the character analysis, I just want to discuss one more point of criticism before my conclusion. As long as it’s taken me to write up till now already, I don’t even think I’m going to list all the cast members 🥲.
Apart from the lengthiness and occasional randomness in the storylines and character developments, there are some things I’d like to point out that I found a bit sloppy. What it comes down to is that, despite its 46 episodes, it was very clear to see that this drama didn’t have a very big budget. I don’t want to criticize that too much because dramas are expensive projects and it often happens that something just doesn’t work out as qualitatively well as one would like. But my issue was that it felt to me as if they actually tried to make it look high-quality even though they blatantly flaunted the cheapness around.
I’ll start with the dubbing. I know that many Chinese dramas do this for time and cost-cutting reasons (which is kind of weird for this seemingly low-budget show), but I found it downright sloppy. It was inconsistent, for one, because some actors weren’t dubbed while others were. Xiao Ai was one of the main characters who was consistently dubbed and her voice just didn’t match her lip movements. It didn’t feel like she was the one talking at all, and I think the least you can do with dubbing is make sure the voice matches the person.
Then there was the music. I remember also mentioning this in my review of The Big Boss, where they had an “idol” character but never actually let him sing and just dubbed his performances over with the soundtrack or some other song that he was definitely NOT lipsynching to. They did the same thing here, for example when Yu Xuan performed at the club. One of the songs from the soundtrack happened to be the song that she always sang (literally, it was the same song over and over again). But sometimes they also did other weird things, like turning up the music when there was a dialogue going on or cueing the soundtrack when someone was actually singing a different song so the two songs clashed. I actually went 🫤 a couple of times because it was not pleasant to listen to.
Then there was the wardrobe issue. I saw a lot of comments on the YouTube videos I watched mentioning it as well, but most of the characters wore the same clothes over and over again. I remember seeing Zhu Li in that red pants suit the first time (I just realized she’s also wearing it on the poster 🙉) and thinking the color looked really good on her – and then I got to see her wear it about 50 times more throughout the show. Qi Yue also had a recurring shirt, the one that said “Treat Boys And Girls The Same” – he was even wearing it when he came to visit that award show at the end, I was like “heyyy there’s that shirt again”😂. Also, Peter with his eternal short pants 🥲 It just started to become very obvious at some point and that also contributed to a kind of cheap look, especially for the characters that were supposed to be actors – you’d think they have a bigger assortment of clothes to wear. And that’s what I mean, it actually started to impact the credibility of the show, because it wasn’t realistic for people to always walk around wearing the same clothes, especially in the entertainment industry. Details like that just made it seem as if they didn’t spend much thought on how to make things look, and that was a shame.
I also remember when Qi Yue briefly hurt his arm and had to wear a cast, which literally looked like he was wearing a roll of kitchen paper around his arm until he slammed it off against the wall and all this plaster fell off 💀 Like, I couldn’t even take that seriously.
SPEAKING OF TAKING THINGS SERIOUSLY. Did anyone else notice that the banners at the funeral of Su Xing’s former teacher all spelled “Extreme, painful mourning”?? 💀💀 I actually made a TikTok about it because it was such an unfortunate moment to show Engrish. It was meant to be an extremely touching scene, with Su Xing doing a speech about his former teacher, and all I could see was “Extreme, painful mourning” plastered all over the walls. 💀 That was not a very welcome distraction, especially not in a scene that was meant to be moving. They could’ve at least double-checked the English or made sure not to feature the text in the shot, because it took away all the seriousness for me.
One other thing I noticed is that they didn’t seem to have put much thought in how things worked. Take Xiao Bu Ding’s allergy, for example. Bu Ding has allergic asthma and is not allowed to play with little animals. At some point, however, he picks up a rabbit and immediately gets an asthma attack. I don’t know what they told the boy, probably to pick it up and immediately start acting like he couldn’t breathe or something. But I saw some valid comments on the videos from people with actual asthma who went like “Uhhh… that’s not how that works, people”. It’s like they added this element to Xiao Bu Ding’s character without even thinking to look up what an actual asthma attack looked like. It’s not something that happens within two seconds of touching a bunny, that’s for sure. So yeah, this also contributed to the feeling that they really didn’t do much research for the show.
Another thing I found distracting was the lack of consistency in shots. Of course, it’s hard to maintain complete continuancy, for example when two people are talking and face each other in one frame and look the other way in the next. But in this show, they honestly didn’t even put in effort to check if things added up, if you ask me. For example, during video calls when one of the people appeared in the top corner, sometimes it was just a frozen screen made to look as if they were quietly listening to what the other was saying. Sometimes it was an actual moving shot, but it felt like it had been recorded separately without any back-talk, so it was just a shot of them smiling and listening quietly, even though the next shot would for example show them with a worried expression.
The most extreme example of shot inconsistency was when Xiao Ai recorded a video of Xiao Bu Ding for Su Xing. She was walking backwards while circling around a tree as she filmed him. Later, when Su Xing watches the video she made, it shows Xiao Bu Ding walking and looking straight ahead as he’s talking, and you can even see Xiao Ai’s side in the frame, walking next to him, like someone else shot the video in front of them! It was so weird! I just couldn’t understand how no one from the editing saw this and went “Yo… this doesn’t make sense.” Those details just make the editing look sloppy, and on top of everything else, that did not contribute to a satisfying watching experience.
I also remember this scene where Min Na started sending Su Xing emails from America which he didn’t respond to. I guess it was meant to show that a lot of time passed in-between the emails, but the way they edited it made it look like she was literally sending one email after another with the same single long sentence in it. I think she even kept wearing the same outfit, so that didn’t help. It was only until Su Xing suddenly wore a different shirt that I was like, “Oh wait is this a different day?” Like, there were such weird things in the editing. Even the scene where Su Xing scolded Min Na for scaring Xiao Bu Ding was followed by a scene where they were happily looking at Xiao Bu Ding’s baby photos together as if nothing had happened. It really wasn’t clear how much time passed in-between certain scenes and that caused me all the more confusion.

So yeah, all in all it’s safe to say I didn’t have the best watching experience, and it also didn’t help that the English subtitles on the Yo Yo Channel was below par. I don’t know why it’s so hard to find proper English subtitles for Chinese dramas. At least I got to watch it in good quality, but it left a lot to be desired.
I’m not going to include an elaborate cast comment section on this one. It’s taken me about four days to finish this review in-between all my busy translation work and assignments, so honestly I’m just glad to reach the end 😅. I’ll just make some brief comments on some acting performances that I did and didn’t like and be done with it.

I actually had mixed feelings about the acting. I guess you could say it was at least consistent with the rest of the elements in the show that some people performed better than others. There were a lot of people praising Jerry Liang’s acting in this show, but honestly I wasn’t too impressed with it. There were touching moments, yes, but he used a lot of the same expressions and sometimes layed it on a bit too thick for my liking. I really wanted to be impressed by his acting in the audition tape, the one that the series also started with, where he channelled the pain he’d felt during his recovery, but honestly I didn’t find it that convincing. I don’t think it’s a natural response to realizing you can’t move your legs to actually slap them and say “Hey, hello, why aren’t you working??” In my opinion it would’ve been much more powerful if he just let himself be swept up in the emotion and left out any lines. Sometimes lines are surplus and actually ruin the effect of a heartfelt scene. That’s just my opinion. I think it also had to do with the fact that I just couldn’t fully warm up to Su Xing until the end, although I did like the parts where he showed how passionate he was about acting, for example when he was researching or rehearsing.
I really didn’t like Fu Meng Bo’s acting. I get that Qi Yue was meant to be a bad actor, but the scenes in which he lost his mind in the end where plain cringe to watch, especially with that fisheye lens that made him look anything but flattering.
On the other hand, I actually did like Chen Xiao Yun’s performance as Zhu Li. I think she did a great job actually. She was one of the few that actually managed to sweep me along with her emotions. Her crying card was on fleek and I really liked her expressions.
In terms of emotional range I also liked Ivy Chen’s performance, but mostly her crying scenes, which maybe sounds weird. The way she cried when Su Xing was able to briefly stand up for the first time since his accident was really impressive. Other than that, I didn’t really get a lot from her. As the female lead, I really would’ve liked to get inside her head a bit more, but I kept feeling detached from her. She occasionally had the same vague, empty look in her eyes and she made weird transitions in her emotions, like suddenly being all smiley again after a serious scene, which didn’t always make sense to me. It was kind of disappointing, because I remember really liking her acting in Skip Beat! (which I watched more than ten years ago).
As for Pei Yi Lan, his acting just wasn’t my style. I get the character he had to play and how he was meant to be impulsive and reckless, but he also layed in on a bit too thick for my liking. I liked Wang Jing Yan’s acting, but the inconsistency in her character made it a bit hard for me to gauge the kind of person she really was. I just liked her because she was chill most of the time (except during the hair-cutting scene💀).
Apart from that, I already mentioned I liked Yang Qing, the actress that played Su Xing’s mom, and I already talked about my cinnamon rolls, so no need to elaborate on them, I think.

I probably wouldn’t recommend this show. It was too lengthy, too repetitive, and it didn’t build up in character development and romance as I’d hoped it would. I definitely found the concept interesting and it had the potential of a proper “enemies to lovers” trope romance drama with the shady entertainment business as its backdrop, but the writing, editing and execution really fell short in my opinion. I’m still grading it above five because I liked that they chose to frame it with the perspective of the behind-the-scenes scheming rather than the glamorous celebrity life. I think there should be more dramas that shine a light on the dark side of the entertainment business with the management rather than the artists at its focus. And there were definitely some touching moments in there, don’t get me wrong. But all in all there was too much noise and there were too many sloppy flaws that distracted from the actual storyline and even the romance build-up of the main couple.

Needless to say I’m very excited to move onto a new show, which hopefully won’t take me as long to finish as this one 😅. We’re already nearing the end of the year and I feel like I’ve barely watched any shows this year, so I hope I can get a few more in before the end of 2024. No hurries, of course, but I’d hate for this to be the last or second-to-last one, haha.

Until then!
Bye-bee! x