TAIWAN: Fall in Love With Me Review

After months of letting the drama's episodes pile up I finally finished it and just in time to wrap up 2014. It was quite an entertaining drama from beginning to end. Character development was natural, rivalries were fierce, and resolutions were happy. Overall I am glad that I watched it, I'm also glad that it was only 20 episodes, some of it was a bit too melodramatic for me.

What I Liked:
1. The Soundtrack. Sometimes the soundtrack gets really irritating because it's the same five songs played over and over again but this time I latched onto the soundtrack pretty quickly. It may be because most of the songs were sung by Aaron Yan, it could be that I just liked the sound of every song, either way I would recommend listening to the soundtrack outside of the show.

2. The male lead. I'm just a touch biased to Aaron Yan after watching him in Just You with Puff Guo. Like many fans, I feel in love with Puff and Aaron together, but I was very open minded about his pairing with Tia Li and after a while I found myself really liking that couple too. There are quite a few reasons why I like watching Aaron Yan, the first being that he's a amazingly good looking. Aside from that it's his queue of facial expressions that he doesn't mind busting out at any given moment. For a singer he's a pretty decent actor.

3. Lance. There's always a villain and Lance was a pretty good one, but in the beginning he didn't start out so bad. Part of the reason why I liked Lance is because it's not like he was wrong in his thinking. He may have been wrong in his actions but in all honesty he had some pretty valid points. From wanting Tian Xing to return back to the company he was supposed to be running to forcing his family to recognize that they're biased against him. To me he had the right to request those things and if people would have just listened to him he probably wouldn't have turned out to be such a bad guy. In the last few episodes, to many he might have been a complete jerk but for some reason I found the pettiness funny and a little bit enjoyable. I think it's because it was closer to real life than any other part of the drama.

4. Tao Le Si's Parents. So regular parents do exist in drama land! These parents were written perfectly. They knew when to stand up for their daughter and when to allow her to make her own decisions. They gave good practical advice and unlike some parents treated everybody with respect and kindness, even if they didn't exactly like them.

What I  Didn't Like:
I just thought about it and I can't think of anything I didn't like. When you get used to watching dramas you realize everything comes with a territory. I've watched so many forced kisses and wrists grabs, and secret plots that I think I've become immune to it. Though there were moments when I cringed and protested there was nothing that completely drove me up the wall so much that I have to complain about it.

There were too many enjoyable or at least understandable moments for me to have any big dislikes. There were things I disliked in the context of the show, but I found nothing wrong with the writing or cinematography. I just thought of one while writing this.

1. Lu Tian Xing's dandy clothes in the first half of the show. I am not a fan of dudes dressing overly eccentrically. His wardrobe in the beginning was just too much, it made me want to punch him the face. I know I should probably want to punch him in the face more over his attitude than his clothes, but seriously who dresses like that for EVERYTHING!

2. Thought of another one. Why did the writers have to write him to be such a jerk as Lu Tian Xing when he was capable of being nice as Xiao Lu and later as Lu Tian Xing. the bipolarity in all honesty didn't really need to happen. I know they were trying to establish two different characters within one person but they gave Lu Tian Xing no redeeming qualities in the beginning so of course Tao Zi wouldn't fall in love with him. But in the end it all worked out so I guess it wasn't that much of an thorn in my side.

Well, if you're used to Taiwanese dramas then I recommend you check this one out, however I would not recommend it to first time Taiwanese drama watchers. Part of the thing that made this drama enjoyable was recognizing the actors and seeing how the played these characters different from their other characters. If you aren't familiar with the actors then I would say that this drama should be put on hold.