The Early Spring review
Shang Zhitao leaves Harbin for Beijing, lands her first job at a hip advertising agency, and promptly collides with Luan Nian, the genius director who made his name young and guards it behind a wall of aloofness and a very sharp tongue.
They should be oil and water, but they end up in a secret relationship nobody can know about, because he’s her boss and she’s terrified of looking like she slept her way to the top.
What follows is a slow-motion trainwreck of two people who plainly love each other but have no idea how to bridge the personality and power chasm between them.
The Characters
- Luan Nian (played by Jing Boran): The director of the agency, a genius who achieved fame young. He has two emotional dials, sexy lover and arrogant asshat.
- Shang Zhitao (played by Sun Qian): A girl from Harbin starting out in Beijing.
- Sun Yu (played by Qi Tianqing): Sun Yu, who came to Beijing from Guizhou to pursue her career, is Shang Zhitao’s best friend and housemate.
- Sun Yuanzhu (played by Liu Xiaobei): A research talent in the field of autonomous driving. Gentle and considerate, he was a reliable friend to Shang Zhitao, Sun Yu, and others.
- Lumi (played by Zhang Yezi): Zhitao’s mentor and close friend after she joins the company.
- Zang Yao (played by Guo Xiaoting): Luan Nian’s childhood friend of over 20 years. She secretly harboured a crush on Luan Nian for ten years, always remaining by his side as a friend.
What I like
- The writing, honestly. Most idol dramas paint the male lead as a full red flag or the girl as a pure green flag, but here nobody is completely right or completely wrong. Viewers are literally split over whether it’s Team Luan Nian or Team Zhitao, and I think that’s the mark of genuinely good writing. It nails the push and pull of a lopsided relationship so well that watching it feels like gossiping with my girlfriends over coffee about the relationship mess our mutual friend keeps crawling back to.
- The sensual intimate scenes. This is the first mainland Chinese drama to use an intimacy coordinator, apparently! The scenes are sensual and sweet, never cringy, never greasy, and they honour the female gaze.
- The leads. Jing Boran and Sun Qian carry the whole thing. He’s effortlessly magnetic, she’s natural and real, and thank goodness Sun Qian didn’t terrorise us with fish-eyed kisses.
- Side characters with a rich character arc of their own: Every character is a fully fledged personality. There’s one character’s story that moved me to actual tears. The actor did such a good job making you feel for his plight. It’s the episode that tips the whole drama over for me.
- The OST. Early Spring’s soundtrack is the best I’ve listened to in a while!
What I don’t like
- Luan Nian’s mouth. I get that it’s the whole point, but six years of jealousy and the silent treatment and cutting words get exhausting to sit through, even when you understand exactly where it comes from.
- Zhitao’s waffling, even though I understood it, was frustrating to watch. However, it also conveys how hard it is to break away from a relationship that is not healthy for you. That’s very real.
- The editing. They squeezed what was meant to be 32 episodes into 24, so the time jumps are whiplash-inducing and the last stretch feels rushed. This is the one drama where I actually wanted more episodes, mostly to see the bits they cut from the novel.
Thoughts about the ending
Click to reveal
After the hug that sets Luan Nian off, everything finally detonates. There’s a vicious fight, Donny the perv turns out to have secretly photographed them, and Zhitao finally leaves, decisively, and good for her, though I’m sad it took her six years.
Luan Nian enters his grovelling, moping era and uses his CEO skills to, um, watch her from afar, which he seems to think is romantic. It’s creepy, Luan Nian.
Lumi, being the best wingwoman alive, arranges the reunion, and after time apart where they both actually work on themselves, he proposes at the Flora museum, which is cheesy as hell but it’s from the book, and he does it in front of the people who matter to her rather than in secret.
The whole thing lands on the message that they needed to fix themselves before they could come back together stronger, and honestly, the drama sells it.
Tragically, the drama was drastically cut down by 8 episodes due to … reasons. (Youku dramas have been suffering this fate lately.)
I just wish they’d kept the scene where she rushes back to Beijing when he gets sick, because that’s the moment she realises she can’t waste another day.
Final thoughts
When The Early Spring aired, it was a surprise hit, a definite dark horse. At one point, it was even No.2 on the Netflix global charts! Even the producers and actors were caught by surprise by its acclaim and wild success.
A modestly-budgeted drama, The Early Spring was definitely not one of those dramas with deep pockets, staffed with traffic actors who could pull in fans just by their name alone.
At its peak, The Early Spring got a Yunhe score of above 40%, something less than a dozen CDramas managed to achieve in the last few years. It basically devoured the viewership in the market when it aired.
It did get criticisms, however. Mainly from those who felt that the show “promoted toxic relationships” or was dressing up an abusive relationship as romantic.
I did not relate to the criticisms at all, and this coming from someone who disliked Story of Kunning Palace immensely precisely because I felt it promoted toxic relationships and dressed up an abusive relationship as romantic!
It made me wonder if these folks really watched the drama, or just could not remove their own prejudices and strong feelings about the issue and just see the characters as who they truly are.
The show chose to highlight the characters in all their messy toxicity and imperfection. Zhitao has her flaws, Luan Nian definitely has his. So many people were quarrelling online about who is more at fault in the relationship. (It was both fun and hilarious to watch.)
Ultimately, I felt that this drama gave us a hopeful view of how two very messy individuals can make things work out despite the odds. 100% a drama worth watching and rewatching again and again.
There’s a second season planned. Let’s hope it’ll be a banger too.
Final rating: 4 out of 5
I came for the messy romance and stayed for the writing. It was hugely, hugely enjoyable to watch Luan Nian gradually filing down his edges and Zhitao slowly learning to stand on her own.
#4Stars #CDrama #ChineseDrama
