The Love You Give Me

It took me a while to find a nice Chinese drama 😅 See You Again, which I started in March (or maybe even in April😐) is terribly hard to watch, the story is incredibly stretched out, which makes it difficult for me to get into the series. I'm on the verge of abandoning it, but the story itself is interesting, so I'm trying to get through it and believe that it will get better one day! Will try to post a review this year 🙈

But back to The Love You Give Me - it's a great a drama and I had a lovely time with it while my husband was on a business trip 😇 It was worth every minute time of it's 27 episodes, just 28th episode was so-so. I really liked the chemistry between the leads, but their son totally overshadowed them. Totally stole the drama!

The Story:

Five years ago, Min Hui meets Xin Qi. He is searching for his childhood friend but due to unfortunate chain of events, he takes Min Hui for Shu Tian. Their fantasticaly spent 3 months together ended tragically. Xin Qi not only found out about the switch but also suffered a near-fatal heart attack. After waking up, he cuts all ties with her 😣

However, fate decided to put them against each other again. Xin Qi comes back to China with his investment company and possibility to join one of impressive medical projects. Min Hui has risen to become an R&D assistant and accidentaly meets Xin Qi at a business event. Thinking that fate wants him to get his revange, CEO decides to throw all of his anger and frustriations due to betrayal on the girl. But this is not the only acquaintance that fate has provided for him - he is also getting to know that Min Hui's son is suffering from the same exact heart condition as he does. Coincidence? I don't think so 😉

 

 

Why I felt in love with The Love You Give Me:

• Huge chemisty between handsome leads. Both the main female and male characters played in a very natural and convincing way. I like them together and their child is a perfect match for them 😍 
• Interesting scenario with a generally unique story but the adding Shu Tian's brother was a bit exaggerated and luckly it didn't ruin the show.
• The supporting cast was good by themselves but when they started to be missmatched in couples, it went astray. Characters are pretty diversed (maybe even too much when it comes to their jobs) what gave the natural vibe to the show although it would be low likely that surgeon will ever marry balerina 🙈 
• Pointing out that even nowadays a lot of men consider women to be inferior even if they are in the same positions and stigmatizing this behaviour
• THE KID! Quanquan is one of the cutest child actors I've ever seen! Normally child characters are not the one I put attention to in the drama but he is was excelent. Better tat time han parents 😬 Some say that he carried the show... yes and no. He was the main factor why these two came back together but wasn't the only. Kid was one of the best thing in the entire show and sometimes was smarter than his parents and all of the adults combined.
• Flashbacks at the end of each episode (till half of the serie) which explained step by step what happened between the leads 5 years ago
• The villain. Cheng Qi Rang was a very interesting character - ambitious, complex and with a (small) background. I wish the leads would lose to the villain once because then the script would seem more realistic than the lovey dovey ending. But I must admit that his developmet form annoying womanizer to main crazy shit villain was insanely fast. 

I give the series a strong 6.5 but there were some things that I didn't like:

• Lack of character's background. The characters just appear, there is not much said about where someone knows whom, what is their family situation, etc. They are all there. I miss it for the whole character, without the background they are quite flat. It bothered me the most with Min Hui and Chen Jia Jun.
• Stupid reasons for arguments and break-ups. It is a frequent issue in Chinese dramas, leads or secondary couples often do not explain the situation clealy, answer evasively or behave childishly 😤 They are super annoying by that. Such situations are noticable and I really don't like it because it ruins the flow of the drama. Here it happened about 3-4 times unfortunately 😕
• Too many fall outs of leads. The leading couple broke up probably 5 times during the entire series. It was boring at some point. They were constantly dancing 1 step forward - 2 steps back 👎
• I liked the Chen Jia Jun an Cao Mu together as character way more than Zhou Ru Ji and Yao Zi Zhu who were on the other hand very weird combo. First ones had a bit of chemistry but she was boy-toying him too much but second had completly zero nul nada niente 👌 chemisty. It was completely pointless to put these two together.

The story had a lot of potential and the script for this series was very strong and executed very well. I would love to give it 7 and more, but looking at my ranking, where series such as Gobin, The Penthouse or Young Lady And Gentelman have 7 I couldn't equal this dramas 😬 A show to be able to break out of 6 points should have something pretty special in, like a story, a character or performance in general. Unfortunately The Love You Give Me doesn't have that 😕 

 

It is a very nice series for quiet evenings with cold tea in the hot summer. I felt in love with it and bench watch it in a few days as it is light and easy. It is equal for me with Love at Night or She and Her Perfect Husband but better than Love O2O and for sure exceeding Love In Time by miles!

Would I recommend it? Yes. Would I also propose other dramas with it? Defiantely 😆 It is a easy-going drama with some plot holes, few unnecessary scenes and characters but still it is pleasant to watch. I noticed that I tend to rate Chinese dramas with around six points (or lower). The total exception is The Sword And The Brocade, which is my Chinese masterpiece.

Chinese productions are rather stretched over time and usually have almost 30 episodes. They're not as concise and focused as Korean dramas, which I miss sometimes. They are cringey, cute, fluffy and always the good get the happy ending and the life of the bad goes to pieces. In The Love You Give Me the content is quite compact (despite the fillers with secondary pairs) and therefore it can easily get a firm 6.5/10. It was a nice break from the dark and heavier k-dramas I've been getting into lately 😇😍