this is something that you put on in the background and spare a glance or two at it hoping for things to get interesting while you do something less useless. Since, I sat through 40 episodes of this I feel the urge to write a review ( or just rant ).

The good parts:
- the production. some of the frames were absolutely beautiful and I loved the colours on the screen
- the main character and her acting……partly. She neither underperformed it nor did she go over the top, her performance was just right barring the scenes with our male lead. I fell in love with jiang hu at the start of the drama- it was refreshing to see a fl like her! fell out of love somewhere along the way too.
- the show had a rather strong start and the last episode was nice

Now onto what went wrong.

-I get that the writer wanted to go for the slice of life feels and something that seems more realistic when it comes to the story, the characters and the main relationship. Romance takes more of a backseat here and I don’t have an issue with that. the issue is that it was bland, the story was awfully bland. I am supposed to be invested in the company and the people and root for them but I couldn’t get myself to really care about anything….perhaps 40 episodes were a bit too much.

- the male lead. The character was poorly written with nothing likeable about him and was incredibly one dimensional. He is supposed to be charming but neither the acting nor the writing helps the case. There is mention of past trauma but it isn’t touched upon at all, just mentioned in the passing. The actor was terrible man.
I happened to watch dream garden recently and he was so much better in that. Gong Jun still isn’t out of his wen kexing era! he tries to be cheeky ( A LOT ) but it just doesn’t work like why are you smiling all the time? and he fails at being stoic, doesn’t have much of a screen presence AND those awful, ill-fitted suits. Gao Yi looked and felt more like a lead character.

- the chemistry. through out the run of the show there were grand total of 2 moments where I felt like they had something. My girl doesn’t even try oh my god for the majority of the scenes the character looks pained to be with the ml and there is NOTHING on her face that might suggest something akin to love or hell even just physical attraction.The character clearly has different priorities so I get the unwillingness but still at least put in some effort.