Drama Rating: 6/10 Neck Score: A+
To be fair, only the girl was supposed to be bad. She was the classic childhood friend who didn't like that her thing was being taken away from her, when honestly he never belonged to her. But she was also crazy, because they were tied together by childhood trauma and tragedy, so all she had on him was guilt. She was the worst kind too. The manipulative bitch who pretends to be nice while stabbing people in the back and using their own trauma against them.
The college dude rival was probably supposed to be cute and funny, but I couldn't stand watching his scenes at all because all I saw what the fact that he was basically harassing her and stalking her. He was never serious for two seconds, had way too much money, and was selfish beyond reason. This meant that he only thought about his own obsession with her and ultimately hurt her with his public stalking that made the whole campus think they were an item. He wasn't intentionally being evil or anything, he was just selfish and didn't seem to care about the hurtful consequences of his actions. His relentless pursuit of her, despite her being very clear about her rejections of him triggered me bad and I loathed him for it. I couldn't stand watching any of his scenes and skipped through them all.
So, enough about everything I hated about the show, even though it was a good third of the show. I loved all of the high school beginning segment, which was why I was invested enough to keep going. While it is still the stoic genius/spunky girl plot (which I actually love, that's why I keep watching them) it was on the nicer side. But that also made it frustrating, because they both clearly liked each other, but both were such chicken butts that they never confessed. Neither one did. They were both so delusional that she thought he didn't like her like that, and he thought that she was in love with her best friend if anything. But they were also so very sweet to each other. How could they be so clueless? IDK. Their chemistry was soooooo strong, why didn't anyone else get it back then either?
Other things I loved about the twists on this classic plot. She is a former martial arts champion and can beat up anybody. She sees herself as a noble swordswoman and has constant fantasies where she is the swordswoman wooing a scholar, with all the lovely fantasy genre wire work and fancy costuming. It was on the slapstick comedy style, but they were a fun way to see how her brain worked. He was constantly trying to get close to her, but always had the worst luck, especially since he was looked on as some kind of celebrity with his own fan club of classmates. Whether this was just because he was handsome and smart, or that his father was the local hospital director, not sure, but it made it hard for him to get his intentions across without outright confessing (which thing everyone was too chicken to do) and so he had to instead finagle his way into her accepting him as a friend who conveniently was always there for her. He tricked her into letting him tutor her, learned basketball so he could challenge her best friend to a rematch and actual win, and would show up to get her out of any scrape she couldn't muscle her way out of.
But like I said, this couple has the worst luck and were really good at coming up with any excuse to talk themselves out of thinking that the other one liked them back. She reasoned his constant battles with her bestie as him being weirdly competitive, and he was always around to hear her denying she liked him. It literally took some bully who was mad about the other college boy liking her to get them to realize that they both weren't in one sided crushes. But I loved that in their own way they were reaching out to the other and loving them how they could even when they thought they couldn't. She followed him to college, which meant that she had to be good enough to get into the same college, but he literally tutored her so she could. He helped her through her trauma, she helped him through his. I could have watched 24 episodes of just them, with maybe their high school friends being there, because I was also invested in that story too. Really, less of the other peeps, more of our OTP, and let this drama be the 16 episodes it wants to be. Please and thank you.
