I tried so hard to make it to at least to one particular scene in this drama (I'm sure no one is surprised by this, but it was the scene where Terry is shirtless and Da Hua accidentally walks in on him in the bathroom).

I never got there.

This drama didn't know who it's OTP was, and it suffered severely for it. Terry always felt like the clear choice considering how much time he and Da Hua spent together and how Deep he fell for her, but the story could never fully commit to that choice, and I was left looking for a reason to root for them. I needed there to be a reason for Terry and Da Hua to have to be around each other, for them to get to know each other as people, for them to fall for each other, and what I got was the opposite of what I needed.

And I fully place the blame on Da Hua as a character.

Da Hua had no underlying motivation for any of the choices she made. She actively put herself in situations where she was going to be uncomfortable. She actively put herself in situations that Guan Jun was bound to misunderstand and then tried to smooth it all over each and every time. She chose to bail Terry out of the mess he had gotten himself into by lying and creating the contract to begin with. And her determination to finish the ‘contract’ was So. Annoying. It Hurt. Terry was still going to have to tell everyone that Liang Yian was dead thus making the contract pointless and void. She actively did the opposite of what would have been logical in every situation she was presented with.

And before anyone tells me I’m an idiot who clearly didn’t understand the real reason why Da Hua wanted to finish the contract, let me stop you right there.

I know what the drama writers were trying to do. They were trying to trick me into believing that Da Hua wanted to finish the contract because she was falling in love with Terry.

Falling in love with Terry my derrierriere (that is a spelling Choice, not a mistake). While he was clearly starting to have feelings for her, there was no indication from her that she had any interest in him At All. There were no tender glances or accidental touches, no inner monologues about how kind or smart or handsome he was, no lingering in his presence or just generally wanting to be around him all the time. Every time Terry attempted to make a move, Da Hua would practically Fly out of the room, she was so intensely uncomfortable with his attraction to her.

She did not like him.

Which was stupid, because…there was a lot to like.

I mean, he was an idiot who agreed to pretend his fiancé wasn’t dead and subsequently dragged someone else into that mess, but he was still an utterly lovely person.

And could we not have gotten some actual exposition on this whole idea of real love verses being enamored with someone’s physical appearance?

I have no problem believing that Terry was actually falling in love with Da Hua as a person and not because she looked like his dead fiancé. And I have no problem believing Guan Jun was also falling in love with her as a person and not because she was suddenly ‘beautiful.’ I think both actors did a good job of making their feelings for her seem believable.

I Do have a problem with there being zero exploration into what it means to be in love with someone verses what it means to be in love with your idea of someone, considering that was one of the major messages of the drama. There were very valid reasons for our lead to question the motives of these two men, and for us, the audience, to do so as well. But the writers never even touched on those reasons accept to mention them in passing. How am I supposed to pick one of them over the other if I don’t actually know if either of them are truly in love with her?

For my part, I did want her with Terry. If only because of how amazingly good the actor was at giving tender, gentle looks in her direction, and because he was a hottie Mchottieson, and because he was just so incredibly nice. (Makes terrible life choices, but he's still very nice.)

But the drama was too frustrating to finish, and I honestly probably could have substituted it with another drama and been much happier.