Fighting Youth (2021)

They should rename it to "Immature Youth"

I went into this drama thinking it would be terrible, but I kept watching it out of my love for Wu Jin Yan. I was excited to see her as an Office Lady in a modern drama. But the poster of the drama and the actual story were rather contradictory. The title of the drama is not fitting at all. Firstly- none of the cast seem "youthful" nor are they that young. They just confused me as a viewer a lot of times. I maintained a love-hate relationship with this drama from beginning to the end.

STORY:
Like many stories, it started out great. The story was a little farfetched and unbelievable right from the get-go but, why complain when watching fiction? This drama started as a rookie salesgirl with a lot of talent to a plot with backstabbing, office politics and boring romance lines. I remember reading a comment as this drama being a modern wannabe of Yanxi Palace drama and that fits the description of this drama somewhat. I think its main flaw was its length. It was unnecessarily draggy, repetitive and uninteresting towards the end. Had it been shorter, I would have appreciated it a lot more. The 47 episodes are a stretch and it would been decent as 30 episodes maximum.

ACTING:
I think this is one area this drama is strong in. I don't think Wu Jin Yan did an awesome job but she is a charming lady no matter how annoying her character was. I'd blame the writing and characterization here. The actress who played Lin Rui was awesome and she had me dreaming of being a badass boss lady like her at her age. All the other supporting cast was fine as well. I was surprised to see Peter Ho in this drama and looking as young and suave as ever. I think he will make the viewers have a SLS although he is much older than Wu Jin Yan in age. Her chemistry with Dan Ding was a lot more believable and I think it's due to the two stars dating irl.

WHAT WORKS:
The cast, some interesting plots till episodes 30ish, women being main players in the workforce and the premise. I really like the sisterhood between Xiao Yu and Lin Rui but Xiao Yu was unbearably immature and ruined their dynamics a lot of times. Peter Ho's portrayal was nice and funny- almost like a parody of CEO characters in dramas. His character never really fit in the drama storywise but still did his best as an actor.

WHAT SUCKED:
Lead girl was immature (her way of talking was very funny), bad people turned out good in an unbelievable way, the romance was meh after few interactions and the plot dragged on forever. It was a struggle to finish this drama.

OST:
Nice opening theme. Rest of OST was forgettable.

OVERALL:
Like I said- it was a challenging watch. It wasn't rewarding in the end but not completely pointless. I had some enjoyable moments and a lot of boring ones. I'd say it is not worth a watch but if you don't mind skipping some scenes, it isn't that bad. In the end, it is never a bad thing to see women being successful in real life or in fiction.

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