Unchained Love follows powerful Imperial City special bureau leader Xiao Duo on his quest to avenge his brother's murder by climbing the political ladder and weeding out corrupt officials. On the way to discovering the truth, he meets Bu Yin Lou, a royal concubine who is being courted by the newly-crowned emperor. The two become unlikely allies in dangerous court intrigue, and their bond turns into something more. What follows is a forbidden love story that's simultaneously clichéd and romantically riveting. The show grapples with complex themes around freedom of choice, the corrupting influence of power, and society's view of women as decorative objects rather than as fully realized human beings with their own agency and desires. It's certainly a valiant effort, but not always a successful one.

Revenge/romance/historical dramas usually rely heavily on similar narrative elements, and this show is no exception: you've got the plucky heroine and her dark brooding new beau, the two servants who form a bond trying to protect their masters, the evil queen figure with a penchant for poison, and the paranoid king who slowly descends into madness....I could go on. Nothing here is really new or unique, but it doesn't matter, because those clichés exist for a reason: they work! Plus, the antagonism-to-adoration pipeline never gets old for me. However, I wasn't expecting our ML to fall for the FL quite so fast. The production discarded his menacing Bad Guy™️ persona almost immediately. Make no mistake about Xiao Duo: he is really a big softie in black fabric, and you are reminded of this at nearly every turn. This was not an enemies-to-lovers liaison as I expected it to be, but rather...allies-to-friends-to-lovers? I actually enjoyed this deviation from the norm, though there was plenty of room for improvement.

Dylan Wang was great as usual, and beyond stunning with his villainously slanted eyebrows. I like the guy, sure, but he was utterly gorgeous in this drama. One particular scene comes to mind where he awakens from slumber, and the camera is zoomed in on his face...wow. Listen, it was the best kind of fan-service for the female gaze. Dylan is a little typecast these days, but I'm not complaining. I very much enjoyed the eye candy, and besides, he has an undeniable affinity for playing the bad-boy-with-a-heart-of-gold.

I've seen criticisms of the lead actress, as well as the chemistry of the main couple, but I firmly disagree with these criticisms, and suspect a lot of the negative chatter was young-ish Dylan fans with an unhealthy attachment to his previous projects. Perhaps the chemistry was not Red Hot per se, but it doesn't always have to be. These two had a fantastic dynamic, quiet and soft like a slow heartbeat, that felt very harmonious and natural to me. I don't need sexy fireworks all the time, and what stood out here was the love-factor, not the lust. Xiao Duo's curiosity and confusing desire to protect, colliding with Bu Yin Lou's iron will to survive and her determination for freedom? I found it very moving at times, but to each their own. Will Chen Yu Qi win an Academy Award any time soon? Unlikely. But she did a fine job here, imo. Her Bu Yin Lou was frequently understated and very compelling. The character was clever and adaptable without being a savant; plucky and courageous without being irritating and Girl-Boss-y; brave when it counted and deeply understanding of ML's limitations. Chen Yu Qi embodying the character was so refreshing. I think people are so used to overacting in C-dramas that they perceive normal performances of human protagonists as bland. This is a bad take.

By far the biggest point of contention I had with this show was the pacing. It's difficult to articulate how important pacing is: you barely notice it when done right, but when done wrong, it impacts every facet of the narrative.

The transitions in Unchained Love—between scenes, character arcs, side stories, even camera shots—are anything but smooth, and for this, the whole show suffers. The issue is most pronounced in the shoddy editing, which is criminally atrocious. The most egregious example? The truly bizarre cuts during romantic scenes, which I found out later was due to censorship laws, i.e. the couple is about to kiss and suddenly there is a very abrupt cut to a wide shot of nature/scenery. The camerawork did not feel organic or planned, but rather a change made hastily in post-production. Even the romantic climax was not safe from this 'technique.' There were ways to get around censorship limitations without sacrificing the show's integrity. These cuts seemed so unintentional that I actually wondered at first if there was some sort of scandal with the actors. It was really that pronounced.

The editing was problematic in other ways, too. It was clear to me that the story would have benefitted from more linear storytelling. Instead, the production team tried to use a method wherein a surprising or out of character thing happens and then flashbacks are deployed to explain that the joke is on you, and the thing you've just witnessed is ALL A RUSE! It's a very jarring and ultimately unsatisfying tool used solely for shock value. Its' intention is to Subvert Expectations, and when done well can be exciting, but it was NOT done well here, not a single time. It was unnecessary, and it effectively cheapened the whole drama. It felt cheesy instead of climactic. Audiences like twists, not tricks.

I also feel the trailer profoundly misrepresentative. What seemed to be an angsty, vengeful, myopic romance ended up being a pretty cute and silly romcom where the revenge is mostly an afterthought. Albeit it did have some dark/dramatic elements, but as a rule, these elements weren't treated thematically with the reverence and heaviness they deserved. E.g., the human sacrifice ritual of tens of concubines in the first episode. It certainly got darker in the latter half, but by this point I felt pretty confident in a happy ending and thus these moments didn't have the expected impact. I was not really upset about this, but it did seem a bit like false advertising, and in general the tone of the drama as a whole needed to be better controlled by the director—I had frequent tonal whiplash from scene to scene, making the narrative feel less coherent and sometimes like a patchwork of film scraps. I really, really wish I could have seen this show before the editing room hacked it to pieces.

Minor gripes: Ending was super unsatisfying. OST was okay but very forgettable. Some sets were so absurdly cheap-looking it ruined my suspension of disbelief. Leaning harder into Xiao Duo's black sheep antihero status would have slowed down the burn, upped the intrigue, and made the romantic union more cathartic. The only thing that kept that squishy marshmallow from losing his intimidating presence was the excellently choreographed combat scenes; his anime-style crouched slash-y move was such a rush to watch! In fact, the adventure elements were some of the show's strongest perks (GIVE US!! MORE!! PIRATES!!!!) and I wish we had gotten to experience that genre more often.

AND YET, FOLKS....*sigh* I am here first and foremost for love stories. If you are too, be assured there's buckets of dopamine to be found here, with palace conspiracies taking a back seat to romance the majority of the time. If you want two people to be in one another's arms bad enough, you can forgive any number of technical flaws. I can even forgive it for the brief noble idiocy moment, because to be honest I was in need of some angst amidst all the unexpected fluff.

Is Unchained Love an unapologetically tropey mess? For sure. Could it have been better? Without a doubt.

...Did I honestly love watching it anyway? Absolutely, which is why me, a huge loser, gave it a 8.5/10 regardless of all of its many issues. Sometimes, TV just needs to be entertaining and fun, and I did have a lot of fun. This is one of those rare shows that becomes an enjoyable watch because of the clichés it utilizes, not in spite of them. I will definitely revisit it on a rainy day, especially having now seen some of the BTS content and deleted scenes.

Without censorship, this show would have been stellar. It is still worth a watch, though, if you fill in some blanks. To quote another articulate netizen: "Do I rate the show I saw? Or the one I'm pretty sure they made?"