Honestly, this was among the first dramas I watched during summer of 2020. From the description, you’d expect something like any other romcom drama until you notice that it’s 41 episodes long and you start to wonder, “Gosh, what else did they put into this?”
Well, it’s the characters lives on display. We delve into Tong Nian and Han Shangyan’s lives. We see what they want and how they go about getting it. We see their problems, both internal and external as they navigate a relationship between a pair who’s 10 years apart in addition to pursuing their own ambitions. But it’s not just our main leads who shine. We have the entire K&K team and Han Shangyan’s former teammates and the drama that drove them apart in prior years. Tong Nian’s friends and roommates and family get their own lives outside the main leads and altogether it makes the cast and characters so much richer and it really adds to the world building.
There’s obviously more to say. There’s the token “let’s break up” that happens once or twice in a drama of this length, the reasons for which I didn’t like in the slightest. There are parts where the main leads are (gasp) unlikeable and do stupid things but it makes you love them for their mistakes and their struggle to push forward.
A good drama that I look back on quite fondly for both the stark presentation of humanity, the chemistry between the leads, and the acting of Yang Zi and Li Xian.