leahaven
This review may contain spoilers
Charming leads make for a fun drama
Exploration Method of Love is a (mostly) light and fun drama that wins my love because of the excellent leads. The FL, Su Jishi, ends up pretending to be her twin sister for completely ridiculous reasons - just leave your logic at the door - and discovers that she's expected to be in a contract relationship with the ML, Mu Xiulun.
Su Jishi is the complete opposite of her sister, which leads to many hilarious situations, the best of which are when dealing with Mu Xiulun. As time passes, though, our uptight ML starts to fall for this new version of his contract girlfriend. It helps that she's a geology PhD candidate and he's a mining company executive, so they both geek out over rocks and such. Many misunderstandings and miscommunications later, the truth is shared and they admit their feelings, leading to a wonderful, warm relationship (until a messy noble idiocy breakup for half of the final damn episode, pardon my cursing).
Song Yang Fei (Su Jishi) and Gao Han Yu (Mu Xiulun) gave amazing performances as our leads. They were both so funny - after seeing GHY in Love is Sweet it was a revelation to see him be adorkable. They also carried the more dramatic and emotional parts very well, and their chemistry in the kisses and skinship was excellent.
Drawbacks to this drama for me included the misunderstandings/miscommunications in the middle episodes, which were right up to the limit of what I can handle (admittedly, I can't handle much), the final episode separation that took half a star from my rating, and the infuriating second lead couple.
Now I must rant: the SFL, our MLs little sister, started out fun and then turned into the cringiest, whiny, obsessive, immature psycho who fully stalked and harassed the SML into a relationship. It was SO grating that I had to fast forward through all those scenes, which deprived me of precious Ryan Cheng in modern dress screentime. I hate that type of female character and I hate that I had to ffwd through Cheng Lei scenes, so this subplot took a star and a half off my rating.
Back to the good stuff now. Our mains, once they were openly in love, have a great relationship. So cute, so mature. Even when they fought, they would talk and sort it out and apologize like adults. Loved that. The transformation of the ML from uptight and cold to loving, respectful, and goofy was adorable. The way he understands, respects, and celebrates the FL is such green flag behaviour - dreamy!
There's several secondary characters who are quite fun, with my favourite being Su Jishi's sister's manager Feng Jie. I think he's a doll - caring, hard working, and just so funny.
The OST was nice, but not memorable. I will probably rewatch at some point for the humour, the pining before all secrets are revealed, and the sweet and supportive couple time.
Su Jishi is the complete opposite of her sister, which leads to many hilarious situations, the best of which are when dealing with Mu Xiulun. As time passes, though, our uptight ML starts to fall for this new version of his contract girlfriend. It helps that she's a geology PhD candidate and he's a mining company executive, so they both geek out over rocks and such. Many misunderstandings and miscommunications later, the truth is shared and they admit their feelings, leading to a wonderful, warm relationship (until a messy noble idiocy breakup for half of the final damn episode, pardon my cursing).
Song Yang Fei (Su Jishi) and Gao Han Yu (Mu Xiulun) gave amazing performances as our leads. They were both so funny - after seeing GHY in Love is Sweet it was a revelation to see him be adorkable. They also carried the more dramatic and emotional parts very well, and their chemistry in the kisses and skinship was excellent.
Drawbacks to this drama for me included the misunderstandings/miscommunications in the middle episodes, which were right up to the limit of what I can handle (admittedly, I can't handle much), the final episode separation that took half a star from my rating, and the infuriating second lead couple.
Now I must rant: the SFL, our MLs little sister, started out fun and then turned into the cringiest, whiny, obsessive, immature psycho who fully stalked and harassed the SML into a relationship. It was SO grating that I had to fast forward through all those scenes, which deprived me of precious Ryan Cheng in modern dress screentime. I hate that type of female character and I hate that I had to ffwd through Cheng Lei scenes, so this subplot took a star and a half off my rating.
Back to the good stuff now. Our mains, once they were openly in love, have a great relationship. So cute, so mature. Even when they fought, they would talk and sort it out and apologize like adults. Loved that. The transformation of the ML from uptight and cold to loving, respectful, and goofy was adorable. The way he understands, respects, and celebrates the FL is such green flag behaviour - dreamy!
There's several secondary characters who are quite fun, with my favourite being Su Jishi's sister's manager Feng Jie. I think he's a doll - caring, hard working, and just so funny.
The OST was nice, but not memorable. I will probably rewatch at some point for the humour, the pining before all secrets are revealed, and the sweet and supportive couple time.
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