Last week brought with it the end of the Taiwanese drama Fall in Love With Me and though I wrote a weekly review of the entire thing, I needed a week off to 1) catch up because I was woefully behind on all my drama reviews (thanks to my little adventure in L.A.) and 2) give myself some time to cool off before I sat down to write an overall review of this rather painful drama.
Starring Aaron Yan and Tia Li, Fall in Love With Me follows the lives of Lu Tian Xing (Aaron Yan), the young, successful, brilliant CEO of Taiwan’s largest advertising company and Tao Le Si (Tia Li), the boss of OZ, a small, struggling advertising production company on the verge of losing everything. Feeling suffocated in his position as CEO, Tian Xing literally runs away from his job and spends the next three months working at OZ as Xiao Lu, a young freelancer Le Si takes in after a chance meeting at a commercial shoot. From there Le Si and Xiao Lu’s relationship blossoms but Xiao Lu can’t keep the truth about his identity hidden for long. Naturally things fall apart when Le Si learns that Xiao Lu is actually her arch-nemesis, Tian Xing and things only get worse as Tian Xing’s surrogate family step in and try to take over his life.
If you’re at all familiar with Taiwanese dramas, you know that they tend to become a bit tedious to watch about halfway through but, for the most part, they end up being alright by the end. This tendency to throw too many monkeys in the barrel makes watching T-Dramas a bit difficult (which is probably why I refuse to watch more than one at a time) but if you can grit your teeth and bear it, you may find that you end up with a rather sweet “happily ever after” at the end. However, Fall in Love With Me is not one of those dramas which is why I’m not going to recommend this one to you. In fact, I’m going to go so far as to tell you to run as far away from this drama as you possibly can. Seriously. RUN!
Now I know that the desire to watch anything starring Aaron Yan is strong and, admittedly, he was the whole reason why I started watching this drama in the first place but I can tell you now, that even a shirtless Aaron isn’t enough to make up for all of the crap you’re forced to put up with as this story unfolds. What’s even more sad is that this drama started off really adorable and it had the potential to become something truly enjoyable to watch but the writers ended up taking this story in such a bizarre and irritating direction that even table flipping couldn’t help alleviate all of my frustration. Honestly, by the time I got to the last few episodes of this drama, I was so sick of the entire thing that I wanted to strap dynamite to my computer and blow the whole thing to smithereens. It was that bad.
However, if you’re one of those people who are able to handle an insane amount of ridiculousness or if you’re not one to be easily frustrated by dramas, you might be able to handle this one. Maybe. There are enough cute moments at the beginning to keep you happy for at least a handful of episodes that cuteness might help you get through a few more but I honestly have to wonder if anyone could sit down and watch this drama without throwing things by the end. If you’re one of those who could, would you mind sharing your secrets?
If you do decide to take on this drama, I wish you luck. If you’re one of those who, like me, watched the entire thing as it was airing, I’d like to know what you thought. Did you like this one? Did you hate it? Could you even managed to drag yourself through the last handful of episodes? I’d love to know your thoughts so be sure to leave me a comment below! Oh, and if you’d like to know all my thoughts on this drama, you can check out my review of each episode here.
I wouldn’t recommend that anyone waste a weekend on the drama. If you like Aaron Yan, then just watch “Just You”. It’s much more satisfying.
For the long weekend I WOULD recommend “Marriage not Dating” which just ended and all episodes are up on Viki or if you don’t have a lot of time, I found”Aftermath” on DramaFever to be very interesting. The 11 episodes are only about 12 minutes each. It’s a little choppy, but it’s nice because it’s different.
Those are all great recommendations, thanks! 🙂
*SPOILERS*
Sadly, I can handle all the ridiculousness of this drama, but I could not handle the final episode. The writer wants to somehow make everybody redeem themselves by the end of the drama, which is extremely unrealistic. Everyone has a change of heart with a happy, happy ending. What? They try to make Lance a bad person, but in the end, he somehow developed a conscience all of a sudden. Forget about Huan Huan, she just somehow had a personality change and then started dating Leo. What? By the end of the series, the main couple didn’t even feel like they wanted to be together, but they had a happy ending anyway. I was disappointed in Aaron’s hair by the wedding scene.The writer tries to tie the ending in with a bit of Xiao Lu, but even that seemed forced. Everyone ended up being paired with someone regardless of credibility. Ah– the drama had so much potential, but I feel like it just veered off course midway through it. I watched it for the leads, but the drama would have worked well if the story line was better with characters who were consistent to their characters.
I can’t argue with anything you’ve just said. This drama had potential but they lost sight of where they were going with the story, about half-way through, and lost themselves completely. One of my greatest drama peeves is when the writers spend so much time making the villains of the story truly awful and then, bringing them back to redemption by the end. Oh I hate that! If a bad guy is bad, he (or she) needs to stay bad throughout the entire story. Sure, sometimes bad guys have a change of heart but the truly great villains are the ones that remain evil until the bitter end. You think Sauron would have been nearly as terrifying as he was if he suddenly decided at the end of all things to just give up and give everyone a hug? Of course not! If you’re going to bring about the destruction of the world, you stick with the plan until the world blows up or you do. You don’t back down. The same holds true for drama characters. If you’re going to be the villain of the story, then by all means, be the villain! Be evil and nasty and vindictive and cruel and selfish and whatever else you want to be but don’t have a sudden change of heart two minutes before the end just so everyone can have a “happily ever after”. That’s just lame! This was the problem with Doctor Stranger as well. The story was fantastic, the bad guys were super evil but by the end, they all had a change of heart and we were left with a super forced and totally uncomfortable, supposedly happy ever after that really made me want to cry, it was really that bad. Forcing characters to end up in a place that should be happy but in reality, isn’t, is just so lame. If you’re going to develop characters this far, at least let them end their story in a believable place. Forced couplings and complete changes in character, personality and temperament are as unbelievable as they are unsatisfying. It was a very disappointing ending and I’m really not eager to jump into a T-Drama any time soon. I’m gonna need time to recover from this one! Ha!
I had no problem with villains finding redemption, but it has to be believable. Lance was set to get all the stock from the company back, but he backs out in fear of being the “bad guy?” Uh…no. It’s what he wanted all along and suddenly, he thinks it’s not right to take them. Eh~ you’re right. I can’t get too excited over a T-drama right now.
I might be able to bring myself to watch one again in a couple of months but I don’t know. It’s going to be hard to get back to one after being so disappointed in this one.