Only for Love (2023)

Waste of Time & Potential!

I did it. I finally watched every single episode without skipping. I was miserable, but I did it because I really love Bai Lu & Dylan Wang. I wanted to give them my full attention until the very end.

This drama had so much wasted potential. I even took down some notes on my phone while I watched. How could a drama with such an amazing cast be so terrible! Okay it's time to let it all out.

Negatives:
- Unnecessarily long staring/pondering scenes. LIKE SUPER unnecessarily long.
- Yi Yang was a useless character. He added nothing to this show. Pure annoyance. This guy couldn't and wouldn't take no for a damn answer.
- Lack of communication within all of the characters. Everyone pretty much knew each other but didn't know that they all knew each other mutually. Does that make sense? Like with Guan Ji and ShanShan... why didn't ShanShan tell her best friend ShuYi that she knew who he was? And even towards the end when GJ and SS got together, she didn't even tell ShuYi until she found out for herself. I actually liked this couple in the beginning, but boy oh boy were they so damn annoying later on!
- Speaking of ShanShan - she gave the WORST relationship advice to ShuYi. And it doesn't help that ShuYi is so dumb. They're basically dumb and dumber, except dumber is giving dumb advice. HAHA.
- Nobody is straightforward with their feelings except the niece, ShiYue.
- So much hesitation with talking & texting. I can't tell you how many times they typed out a decent message but decided to delete it and not send it.
- Many many missed opportunities to clear up misunderstandings. MANY!!!!
- ShuYi's Mom meeting ShiYan was SOOOOO disappointing. We didn't get to see her true reaction to him really being ShuYi's boyfriend. That scene was so boring and the Mom just left right after? What the heck was that all about?! They could have made it so much better. I wanted to see her surprised, but instead she just looked bored and annoyed the whole entire time she was at the house.
- The wedding scene with Tang Yi and her hubby was so awkward. They didn't even kiss... they just hugged it out?! LOL.
- Ending was disappointing and felt empty.

Okay that's enough negatives, now onto the positives:

- I really enjoyed ShiYue's character. She seemed to be the only one giving decent advice, had her head screwed on, spoke her mind most of the time, straightforward about her feelings, great friend and so fun!! Loved her character.
- Great kiss scenes between ShuYi and ShiYan.
- Aesthetically pleasing actors & actresses.

Overall, this was not worth the watch. 36 episodes was way too long. This definitely could have been 20 episodes or less. What a frustrating drama with wasted potential. Disappointing!

Lire davantage

Che dire.... ADORO ADORO ADORO ❤️❤️❤️
Adoro la coppia Yu You/Qin Shi Yue, e il modo di lei di essere un'adorabile stalker 😆🥰.
Adoro la coppia Guan Ji/Bi Ruo Shan e la loro paura dell'amore.
Adoro la parte lavorativa di Shi Yan.
Adoro la parte lavorativa di Zheng Shu Yi.
E adoro follemente loro come coppia, il modo in cui facilmente si avvicinano, il modo in cui si allontanano altrettanto velocemente, i pensieri di lei le prese di punto di lui, gli sguardi che si danno che veramente non hanno bisogno di parole.
Didi e Bai Lu sono due attori eccezionali presi singolarmente che hanno una grande intesa messi l'uno davanti l'altra: li guardo e veramente provo i sentimenti che dovrebbero arrivarmi in quel momento❤️.

Lire davantage

Red Flag

Reposting because my review got deleted to manipulate the score

I watched Dylan Wang's and Bai Lu's previous work and I love them however this show didn't sit with me at all:

First few episodes were amazing. Shu Yi, a beautiful woman aware of her charms, good at her job,
bold and confident, she was a perfect female lead in a pile of female leads where a woman is represented as an insecure average woman, unaware of her good looks and why men like her. Loved her being straightforward and flirty putting the cold male character in a position of being adorably flustered by her charms.

Shi Yan, a beautiful and cold man whose charms come from his love towards his work. He is determined, ambitious and charming. Despite being distant and nonchalant with most things, he makes sure that around the woman he likes, he is ready to be the one to take the first step without shame. Especially if he is jealous.

However, after the 10th episode the story starts going south in many different ways. It is unclear whether Shu Yi immediately falls for Shi Yan's charms or if she is only doing that to assure her interview with him which doesn't fit her character. She is someone who's familiar to everyone she writes about. We are constantly told how amazing she s at her job which doesn't explain us why she has to seduce him in order to do her job properly since that did not help with anything.

She continues to send him flirty texts but the moment he takes the matters in his own hands, she pulls back despite her being the one to initiate it. The amount of times the character avoids and rejects the male lead's advances and kisses starts becoming annoying where the excitement before every kiss is followed by disappointment where it doesn't create the effect of suspense anymore.

Only in ep 20 do we find out her feelings about him which is extremely late. The story makes us think that Shi Yan's cold attitude was an issue but instead, it was always the female lead's insecurity of her feelings that was the issue. The fl is also put in a situation where she goes out on blind dates with another man due to her mother's nagging ignoring the fact that she already has someone she can introduce?

The show keeps repeating the same scenes. We see more finance related things and their work instead of romance. Numerous conferences which keep repeating whenever there's nothing else in the show.

The characters don't have a proper bonding time and everything they learn about each other is through a conversation of other people and eavesdropping. Most of the conversations happen over the phone not allowing them to have a single honest moment with each other to learn about each other which makes the relationship hard to believe in.

The couple keeps going back and forth until a certain amount episodes where the scriptwriter decides to suddenly throw all deep kisses at once which should've happened gradually in much earlier episodes.

Shi Yan's character is not supported by anything other than his looks and little lore we get from him acquaintances making us yearn to see more of him.

However, the actors did a good job at acting but the execution of the story was extremely poorly done for my taste. It is probably the fault of scriptwriter and not the actors themselves.

Lastly that the only well done execution of the character was Shi Yue, who, from a spoiled rich girl learns her obligations towards her work, her boss and also towards the one she likes.

Lire davantage

How not to extend 20 episodes of content into 36 episodes

Started strong, finished okay, middle was a dumpster fire. They didn’t have enough content, so their solution was a) make everyone emotionally stunted, b) make sure no one communicates with each other. Ever. And c)have the FL lead three guys on. She says she loves the ML, then proceeds to date two other guys.

Keep in mind these are 30 something year old people who have all had previous relationships.

Anyway. Waste of a good cast. If you watch the first 15 and last 6 episodes it’s actually good. And honestly you’ll miss nothing but frustration at the terrible writting skipping the middle.

Lire davantage

You can only enjoy this drama if you throw logic away. Great actors, very bad script and editing.

This drama had a promising start but wasn't able to keep up till the end due to a really terrible script that throws logic away. If you want to watch a drama just for the sweet and heart fluttering moments and just shutting off common sense, this can be an enjoyable drama as we have at least five (5) pairs:
1. ML and FL
2. 2ML and 2FL
3. 3ML and 3FL
4. 3ML Father and FL's editor-in-chief
5. ML's assistant and FL's office friend

For me who cannot fathom glaring flaws in storytelling, it's a bad watching experience. The screenwriter seems to lack ideas so a lot of plots are recycled over and over again.
Case#1: Moments between two leads keep getting interrupted by either a phone call or somebody else, then FL will run away and hide.
Case#2: When FL is saying something else in her mind but ended up saying something else in reality
Case#3: Car ride scenes

The FL's character was also written poorly where she was supposed to be a top notch magazine writer that could land big shot interviews for their magazine, thus, who should have 1) good communication skills and 2) excellent EQ but a lot of misunderstandings happen due to her lack of these two. It started with her misunderstanding about who the mistress' "uncle" was and just proceeded with her thought that it was the ML. As a writer, she should have good investigative skills and thoroughly checked the identity of said uncle. This defies the logic of her character. She also is written as someone who supposedly values honesty but her actions towards ML roots from a lie. When her lie was exposed, she didn't give the ML a proper apology. She only apologize for the sake of their collaboration with her digital magazine. Even if deep inside she wanted to say sorry, in reality she just keeps talking about work. And this was dragged for so long. There are multiple scenarios when she could have said "I'm sorry" sincerely but no, the writer dragged this out. And when the ML got really mad at her and decided to keep away from her, she made herself the victim. I can go on and on about the flaws in logic I saw in this drama as there are too many to mention. If it's only a few, I could have ignored those flaws and enjoy this. Thus, story is 3/10.

The OSTs are good but didn't leave a mark on me so 5/10.

The only salvaging point of this drama are the excellent acting of all the actors. Thus, I rated Acting/Cast category as 9/10. I could feel the sizzling chemistry between the leads. And you can see how they work so hard portraying the roles given to them. That I appreciate much knowing how hard they worked on this drama for several months.

So, watch at your own risk. I would never recommend this drama to others nor will I rewatch this in the future. 1/10

Lire davantage

They have popular stars, that is about it?

When I knew this was another story about a controlling/dominant CEO, I hesitated.
I still give it a try since it has Bai Lu and Dylan.
I find the series has the popular stars , but the rest does not impress me. The story is not interesting and it keeps dragging. I don't know if it is the script or the director, I can't feel/see how their love developed.
What is with phone ringing every time when they are about to kiss? If the FL is not ready, can 't they make her telling ML she isn't ready? Why always overuse the phone ringing or 3rd party as interruption? Once may be OK, but this one, multiple times. It is tiring to watch.
The characters, how they handle love are frustrating me as well. ( I might like them better when they are handling work and rival).
Their 'love" may start to show some progress near episode 20 , but I am already worn out and losing my interest with this show.

Lire davantage

Ordinary sweet love story but did not really catch interest.

I am honestly so disappointed how it all went to certain extent. The drama was good only because it had all the popular and highly anticipated actors in it. Yeah, we had a lots of famous figures in it, who are quite popular in lots of famous dramas which have got the best drama recognition from viewers. But the story was disappointing.
Looking back at the comment section, you can guess, how much highly anticipated drama this was, so maybe that's the reason for the heavy disappointed, probably because we expected too much.
Now, coming to WHY DISAPPOINTING?

- Character sketch: Apparently, the character sketch of fl, and her bestie disappointed me the most in the whole story. One is weak and dumb when misunderstandings stand, other is worse in giving advices, and barely held her own relationship. It kinda annoyed me that everytime, their male partners were the one taking initiative, yet they kept acting as if they were being ignored and excluded.

- Plot- too ordinary, too flat, too uninteresting. Once again I would say, it barely got so many viewers because it had popular actors, literally so many popular actors. Even the supporting characters acting mother, father and colleagues are quite famous. That's the only reason it was continued by so many and not dropped. Mainly because we expected since it has our fav actors. The plot seemed a lot draggy.
I am guessing all of the popular actors took this because they wanted to expand their reach internationally, since these kinda modern sweet love stories attract the foreign viewers first, that isthe genre us foreign viewers all started with, when we entered the Cdrama industry. But to the regular viewers, who have been regular watchers of their dramas, it turned out to be a flop :(
Umm, that's all I guess was there to it. That was my personal opinion, I hope, you would have happy time seeing this, and it won't seem disappointment to you, like it did to us. Happy watching!

Lire davantage

Fantastic cast. Horrible script. Lighthearted mindless watch.

I’m only giving it a higher rating because of the actors. I don’t recommend this drama. I usually start my reviews by writing about the general plot of the drama. But the plot is non-existent here. Not only that but the main romance is so ridiculous! Adults who are in the most superficial relationships and communicate like teenagers. It saddens me to say that the script is trash as I love the actors but their talents were seriously wasted here.

POSITIVE:
- Easy to watch before you go to sleep or if you’ve had a long day of work and just want to relax.
- Fantastic cast (literally the only reason I didn’t drop this drama).

NEGATIVE:
- Superficial relationships with childish communication.
- Conflicts that could have been solved with one sentence dragged on for many episodes.
- Stupid “romance” consisting of texting 24/7 of small talk and staring at each other for no reason.
- Zero character development. Zero deep conversations. Just extremely shallow relationships.
- Non-existent plot. Literally nothing happens in this drama. Nothing! All they do is stare at each other, have small talks at dinner, text useless things and go to boring work meetings.
- Kiss scenes were cut! One in particular snowy kiss of Bai Lu and Dylan was shot for 3 hours but on screen shown for 2 seconds.
- BTS of Bai Lu and Dylan are better and cuter than the whole drama which sounds crazy to me when I write it but it’s true.
- Business talks were ridiculous filler scenes.
- Too long and draggy (it would have been better if it was only 24 episodes). I’m sure the 36 episodes were done for more money.
- Underwhelming ending. After 36 episodes you don’t even get to see the wedding of the main leads unless you watch the special episode.
- Secondary couple with the biggest commitment issues was depressing to watch most of the time.
- Weird camera angles. Horrible white filter that makes the actors look like vampires (this might have been fixed by the network later).
- Aesthetic wasn’t appealing. The outfits and the settings were not nice to look at.

COUPLES:
Main couple: their romance was just texting stupid things 24/7 and having small talks during dinner. In 36 episodes they never had even ONE deep conversation about life. This made their relationship feel extremely superficial, shallow and meaningless. Their chemistry was kind of on and off. When he was assertive I liked it but when she was chasing him, it felt forced. At some point when the female lead continued to chase him after many rejections, she looked like she had no self-respect.

Second couple: they started off as the hottest and sexiest couple in the drama but ended up being the most depressing one. Their fun cat and mouse game turned into seeing them depressed 24/7 as they both had commitment issues. Just like the first couple, their relationship had zero communication and felt very shallow.

Third couple: the niece and professor were the best couple for me. Although too repetitive at first as the girl chased him (just like the female lead chased the male lead), their relationship developed more organically. They actually TALKED like normal adults. And resolved conflicts better than the other couples. Unfortunately they didn’t have enough screen time which is a shame as they were the most likeable characters.

OVERALL: If you want to watch a lighthearted mindless drama before you go to sleep, without any character development and adults who communicate like teenagers, this is for you.

Lire davantage

Basically a cute dumpster fire

I think most students learn to write summary statements for stories in elementary/secondary school, if I recall correctly; sadly, this one would be unbearably difficult to write one for. Perhaps it's the poor writing, or the combination of fluff scenes with no intention/purpose whatsoever and a typical, overdone romance plot... or is it the absolute empty-headedness behind each and every one of the supposedly intelligent characters? Regardless, these factors make for a drama with a storyline held together by a single thread and simply not worth watching.

Where do I even start? Ah, maybe the characters that are so easily contemptible...

The FL has got to be one of the most braindead characters I have ever seen. Going into the drama's first few episodes, admittedly, I was pretty interested in her- what's not to like about a smart, strong, bubbly, yet ambitious female lead? With most C-dramas portraying the FLs as weaker, cutesy (at best), and mellow (not that there's anything wrong with that), this one was a promising change of pace where the FL (Zheng Shu Yi) chased the ML and established herself in a difficult career... but oh. OH. Now, we're flopping. By episode 26, ZSY became absolutely unbearable. She did not represent any love or affection, loyalty or caring, etc. towards the male lead more so than a warning against all male audience members against similar women (oh, the woe). She ended up going out a couple times with another man during the 'break-up, cold shoulder stage of all C-dramas that we just can't do without apparently', who she knew harbored romantic interest for her. But of course, we have the ML to love her despite all her brainlessness and lack of morality...

The ML, Shi Yan, could easily be the subject of a tragic love story- one of unrequited love. While you could say some of the relationship faults (communication, etc.) were his, he probably didn't deserve what he got from the naive female lead. Furthermore, his lack of personality and development just did not make him stand out... at this point I remember only that he's quite good-looking and one of those 'tsundere' (in anime terms) characters that pop up here and there.

With that being said, the side characters do manage to salvage the show. The second lead couple is cute and depicted realistically, and over time, I just wanted more screen time for them and less for the main pairing. This one's worth watching, especially to get to know the lesser known female actress who does a beautiful job portraying the bubbly, warm, and affectionate Qin Shi Yue.

I guess that's about it for the characters. Moving on the story, it was more of a culmination of fluff scenes (with no real purpose in the development of the characters' relationships) and every dumpster-fire trope (love triangles, distrust, break-up and then back together, etc.) that's ever existed. It's not really worth paying attention to, and beyond the love story, there isn't much to explain about the story. It's not particularly memorable, either... actually, it's just pretty terrible. The holes and lack of logic is too much for even me (who fills in most logical gaps for shows because I notice them easily).

BUT, this drama does have a saving grace.

To those who love an eye-candy main pairing and cute scenes, some of the scenes are cute enough to watch separate from the drama and the two lead actors do a great job for what they're given. Bai Lu's wonderful (as always) and Wang Hedi portrayed Shi Yan handsomely (though it's not like I couldn't imagine another actor doing the job). The 2nd leads were wonderful as well (Shen Yu Jie particularly), and I would definitely look to find more of her shows.

The music isn't bad either, and reminds me of the typical modern-drama music. Nothing special about it, but definitely nothing bad either. The lyrics are pretty cute for what it's worth and the songs are not absolutely terrible to listen to : )

So, to conclude this long review (hopefully not to boring), you should watch this only if you like cute scenes between two very charming actors. Or, if you watch just the beginning episodes, it's bound to be nice. But if you want a drama that you remember until the end of time, or one with beautiful writing, or one with a realistic, logical love story, please, PLEASE do not watch this. There are better things to spend your time on.

Lire davantage