How is it possible to drag on for so long?

While I like the casting for each of the characters, all of the actors' performances, and the music/atmosphere of the drama, I greatly disliked the story as well as its overall flow. The biggest problem with the story is how much it drags on. Other reviews mention how terribly long it takes for the main characters to get together, but I think that that's only part of the problem. If there were legitimate issues standing in the way of the main characters being together, I think a slow burn could've been really enjoyable and worthwhile. But, because each issue felt so manufactured and of little consequence, every new conflict that brought them further apart just made me groan.

It's safe to say that I didn't even like the interactions between the main characters enough to completely root for them -- in fact, I found a lot of their conversations genuinely boring, and I wished I could just fast forward or skip, but I didn't want to miss anything that might've been important. On top of that, I found Luo Zhi very unlikable. I did like her when she was interacting with her friends, but a major problem for Luo Zhi was being deceitful (even if it wasn't with bad intentions), and this was something she hadn't taken responsibility for. Perhaps, later on in the story, this comes into play and she does take some responsibility for it, but I doubt it as the story treats this as something almost trivial. She shows no remorse for it, and then she becomes angry at Sheng Huainan for not fully explaining his distance but refusing to explain her own lies. Her lying, her coldness, her demanding of an explanation while also conveniently not explaining herself -- these are all major problems for her character.

But the biggest issue with the narrative from what I could tell after 26 episodes is that, other than the part about not explaining herself, it basically treats her as if she's in the right. Her own mistakes of lying to Sheng Huainan is basically overlooked after an episode or two following its reveal, while Sheng Huainan's distancing of himself is basically thrown in his face for an entire string of episodes. It doesn't feel proportionate, and throughout my viewing of this drama, I just wondered how in the world Luo Zhi would ever progress as a character. Especially since, barring the few times that she comes in to save the day, she's largely being pulled along by the narrative rather than pushing it along herself. If anything, the times that she lied and purposefully created coincidences were probably the only occasions where the narrative was centered around her own action rather than someone else or some outside circumstance forcing her hand. The only other actions that she does tend to just prolong conflict. It makes watching the drama so much more difficult because, if you're able to view the situation between the two main characters with any level of objectivity, you realize how unfair it is that Sheng Huainan has to jump through hoops to win Luo Zhi's favor when Luo Zhi herself didn't make any attempts to rectify the fact that she had been lying before, during, or even after being exposed for those lies.

And when a main character is passive, obstinate, cold, and boring, and the narrative basically doesn't acknowledge these things as flaws, getting through all 38 episodes is an uphill battle, and it was an uphill battle that I unfortunately (or fortunately) could not withstand any longer.

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