Cute story and Lovely leads

Story 10.0
My Love and Stars is about an actress (Xin Chen), who gets into a scandal and hence is unable to work under instructions from her company. Her boss and ex (Lu Xin) tells her that in order for the company's big boss (Lu Xin's higher-up) to allow her to take on acting jobs, Xin Chen has to sign An Xiaoyu, who is a rising musician, to the company. In hopes to salvage her acting career, Xin Chen finds herself as Xiaoyu's assistant, sticking around even when Xiaoyu's career takes a hit after someone poisons his drink. Overall, the leads are both very sweet and likeable people. There are many sweet moments between the leads and I feel their chemistry. They're both also very supportive of each other and their careers. The OCD of Xiaoyu is a very insignificant part of the drama, if I may add.

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Girls are great but the programme was not.

Man, where do I even begin?

Let's start with the pros:
The 10 girls were great! Loved seeing their friendship develop although they were in a competitive environment and the girls did very well for their assessment despite having barely any time to prepare.

The stages were also insanely good. The girls are incredibly talented in their own right. Zhuoxuan's vocals and all-roundedness, Yichun's vocals, Jieqiong's pipa skills, Xuanyi's creativity and dancing etc also made their own stages incredibly brilliant. I want to say more but please do yourself a favour and watch their stages!

Now the cons. Although I watched the programme knowing it was going to be a competition, the producers definitely made it a lot more competing than ideal. The girls were constantly pit against each other: they had to vote for who was the worst, who should not get to perform on the big stage, who did the best etc. Thankfully this ended before the 2nd half of the show and producers focused more on cute moments between the girls.

Han Hong the host. Not only was she incredibly biased to the contestants she liked, she was super cringey and made the atmosphere incredibly awkward. She would also mess up on who the girls were. Like. you're a host and there are only 10 of them. I dont know if she was trying to be quirky but it was annoying to viewers. You'll understand how annoying she was only when you watch the show. Best if you just skip her parts entirely. Also, when she threw her cue cards in the first elimination I was just like. What? She also straight up told a contestant that she couldnt help them and told them to work on it on their own. (as if she isnt yknow, PAID to help them?)

Lastly, the show leaves viewers with a feeling of it being unfair. Somehow Yichun made it to the finals despite lacking severely in dance, having a poor attitude throughout the show (insisted on her way despite being the weak link of the Yamy-Yichun duo, messing up the VVS music video and in turn voting out Xuanyi who helped her etc). For their musical assessment, for example, some of them were just given more difficult parts although it was a competition. Their stages also had a clear disparity in the standard of their guests. Some people got well-respected seniors of the industry (Zhou Bichang etc), while some contestants got paired with juniors. Although nothing is wrong with that, it should have been more equal since this is a competition in my opinion.

Also the royalty pick of iQiyi series winning is no surprise but as a viewer, I think there were many more deserving girls. The producers also did not try hiding their favouritism.

Overall, despite my seemingly mostly negative feelings about the show, I would still have to give it a 10. Having stages in China for idols is rare and I'm glad this show was a good platform for them to showcase their skills. Their stages alone are already deserving of the 10/10 stars.

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Amazing talent!

This show really helped me appreciate Chinese culture a lot more! The contestants were very versatile, talented and their stages were all really gorgeous. I'm honestly very impressed that a small group of youths are able to showcase such a wide range of talents, ranging from Qian Wei's guqin, to Liu Feng and Liu Yu's Beijing Opera, to Yang Fei's Wushu and many more. The stages were really fun to watch as they were able to weave their own specialty into every single stage and I found that very impressive!

Production:
Although this program is run by iQiyi, its quite obvious they received no budget whatsoever. Every stage setup was very bland, but I will have to say, it made the focus on the contestants 100%. The traditional Chinese costumes they were wearing, especially the gorgeous hanfus, really made them stand out onstage.

Storyline:
I wish they had added more scenes of the behind-the-scenes rehearsals etc of the contestants, I felt like we were jumping from one elimination to another. Overall, it felt a little bit rushed. The eliminations were a bit too abrupt as well, going from 9 to 3 all of a sudden.

Overall, the contestants really got to showcase many different talents and that was very impressive to me. The friendships they formed on the show are also really cute and they still meet up to this day. The mentors were very knowledgeable and you can tell they treated the contestants really well. These bunch of kids are really way too talented and I need them to get famous! 山顶见！

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this is not it. worst drama ive ever watched.

first and foremost, it is the dumbest storyline ive ever watched. reading the synopsis you might think, OH its a cute second-chance romance kind of story. well, not at all. first of all, 90% of the relationship is one-sided from the FL. they divorced because she was deeply hurt by the ML's actions. not only did he not apologise, he was the EXACT SAME PERSON after they reunited.

then somehow the writers thought it would be a brilliant idea to add an adopted child to the mix, who calls FL "mom" all along and instead of explaining things to the child, the FL and ML just go along with it. after many episodes, the FL and ML somehow end up engaged again. then FL doesnt want to be engaged with ML. then they get together again. then ML cancels the engagement all together. the worst thing about it is that whenever they break up, ML starts getting jealous over FL and SML while she enjoys the attention and is quick to forgive him.

so after 36 episodes, they barely resolved the basic issue of why they divorced in the first place. ML doesnt like FL that much and does hurtful things to her.

and then in the end, he gets amnesia and forgets FL! the end!

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