Meteor Garden, like its source material, is full of tropes. The male lead is rich, entitled, rude and aggressive. The female lead is poor, well-meaning, hard-working, and the only person who will stand up to the male lead's antics. There is a cruel mother-in-law, bumbling and poor parents of the female lead, and a love triangle. She is rescued from thugs who've kidnapped her, he gets amnesia at one point, she gets lost in a storm and he has to save her, there's a forced marriage proposal that temporarily halts their relationship, and it goes on and on. Sometimes while watching it feels like Meteor Garden (or Hana Yori Dango) invented tropes.

The thing that made the original Meteor Garden so good – or at least so fun to watch – was that within all these ridiculous tropes there was genuinely powerful and sweet human connection. The leads had real chemistry and their relationship felt on some level to be real, despite the overly dramatic and cliched plot. Because they are so great together I can forgive the original of many of its sins (and it has a lot!). There are things that didn't age well, repetitive story structures, poor pacing and gaps of logic. I can forgive it all.

The Meteor Garden remake, on the other hand, has none of that chemistry. The characters feel flat, their emotional connection does not feel genuine, and the plot feels sterilized for modern audiences and yet still somehow carries many of the issues of the original. Overall it just doesn't feel like a drama that's worth your time. Perhaps I would be a little easier on it if I'd never seen the 2001 Meteor Garden, but I think I would still find it to be a rather flat, dull and cold drama.