Very uneven. It started off slow, slow enough that I considered giving up, but it did get better and I watched it to the end. Right there that deserves four stars. There are shows I never finish. Unlike most of the Asian shows I watch this wasn't on Netflix, I watched it on fastdrama dot me.
Lai Hai-Ning (
Sonia Sui) is the editor/COO of a small publishing house. She's had a nine year relationship with a philandering author, Fang Cheng-Hao (
Jerry Chih-Wei Huang) , she always forgives him for his affairs, but won't marry him. Life seems to be in rerun for them.
After they break up, and he leaves the small publishing firm, Hai-Ning decides to publish a book where she meets 100 candidates for marriage with herself. She really wants to understand why people get married, because she couldn't.
The 100 candidates she meets are a wide variety of people that provide some interesting situations including: some crazy people, some emotional moments, a reveal about her mother, an old boyfriend of her mother, even a rich CEO. Many are pretty cliche, but some have interesting, even emotional stories.
SPOILER:
Hai-Ning has decided to not publish the book because she hasn't figured out why people marry, in spite of being involved in several marriages and a few more relationships.
The best character developments are with Hai-Ning's coworkers who provide some interesting, eccentric side stories, especially artist, Wen Bei-Sze (Bei-Bei,
Ching Fang).
There are two candidates that Hai-NIng actually connected with, a CEO Benjamin Lun (
Christopher Ming-Shun Lee), who is too controlling, and an ex-con bicycle messenger, Ho Chung-Wen (
Hans Chung) who likes photography. In the last few minutes of the last episode she finally hooks up with Chung-Wen (and decides to publish the book). While this relationship was foreshadowed in some previous episodes, it isn't satisfying because they don't seem to have much chemistry and the show ends with her out-of-work and him living on his bicycle messenger salary. I almost would have picked the CEO at the end because he learned from his mistakes and truly cared more about her happiness than his. Because I didn't believe in the relationships with either man, it wasn't a great ending and we weren't given a hopeful future. Hai-Ning actually had more meaningful conversations with the gigolo candidate!
It is difficult to tell if the main issues are from the writing or the directing, either way, both are involved in the problems, the acting is fine. If you like watching some odd-ball characters and can put up with an uneven series with an unsatisfactory ending (for me), then watch it.
