Season Love (2017)

My opinion in short: lukewarm, but pleasant drama. Nothing too special, but nothing wrong about it.

PLOT
This drama is about a girl, Jie An Jie (AJ), whose father is a rich entrepreneur. However, her life is nowhere as easy as it may seem - due to unfortunate events she was in exile for six years, experienced a car accident; first lost her boyfriend and then was abandoned by someone who took a really important place in her heart.

The premise of the drama is really good - we get to follow the struggles of AJ as they are unveiled throughout the drama.

The thing that bothered me about the plot (I will refrain from spoiling) was that there is one important fact that AJ does not know about - but any viewer can guess it within the first few episodes; most of the other main characters find out about it somewhat later, but she does not find out until much later - at which point, whilst it does have an impact on her, it seems like quite an anti-climax. I think that the script did not make the most of that aspect of the story.

Also, the plot did slow down in the third quarter of the drama... I would say that skipping a few episodes around that time might be a strategic move (unless you enjoy the side plot which gets a lot of attention at the time).


CHARACTERS
Another thing is that I found AJ's character rather weak, especially with regard to interpersonal relationships - most of the time she escapes from problems or at best shows a passive attitude. Though in fairness, she also shows good character development in other areas, as she makes substantial efforts and progress both in her work and art.

The main lead character seems in order, but I could not quite help but wonder what made him so interested and devoted in AJ... He is really talented and fierce in his work and really gentle and caring in love - pretty much an ideal combination!

The other characters were fine - AJ's brother, Piao Zheng, was a lot of fun to watch - he cared about AJ a lot, but also had an interesting and entertaining love story.

There was also some valuable character development to be seen in other characters (I shall not spoil) - during the course of the drama some of them realised their mistakes and corrected their ways. Though it was a little annoying that they usually did it when it was already too late to reverse the effects of their actions... I guess that it is more heart-clenching and educational that way.

There were also some other pairings in the drama. Though I found it weird that one of the really side characters suddenly became really prominent around 3/4 into the drama. He appeared for a total of about 3 minutes in all previous episodes and suddenly his love story and problems at work became the main focus of a few episodes, at the expense of the OTP (who hardly appeared at all!), which added to the dragging nature of the third quarter of the drama...

A cute, but sometimes overused aspect of the drama is that similar situations seemed to be happening to a few people at the same time - for example, we have one couple experiencing some problems - a scene later: similar thing happens to one of the other couples... This was applied to some important events, but sometimes would involve something as unimportant as multiple characters being in restaurants at the same time.


ACTING
I was pretty satisfied with regard to acting - my main regret was that AJ's character was not as interesting as I would have liked it to be for Wang Ziwen - she is such a versatile actress, but it seemed like this character was a little too bland.


MUSIC
OST was appropriate, though as far as I remember did not include too many songs. The two songs that it did contain were pretty and nostalgic.

OVERALL
I enjoyed watching this drama, though it was far from being among my favourites. It was pleasant to watch, had some weaknesses (the major one being the script - such a missed opportunity!). I would give this one a go if you have nothing else to watch or if you are looking for a nice, entertaining, neither summery, nor wintery, lukewarm drama.

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