I can only image how low this drama’s Douban ratings and lack of any buzz would be without leads Dylan Wang and Bai Lu starring in it. I noped out of Only for Love on the early side as even copious FF-ing and staring at Dylan did not help in any way to make it worth wasting my time on. It’s beyond stupid as a workplace and tech plus publishing industry drama, none of the characters resemble real people and none of the situations are in any way plausible. The drama opened on Douban with 4.7 ratings which is either too generous or too low depending on if you’re a Dylan fan, haha, I kid, even his fans accept this drama is just dumb as bricks and he’s neither the cause of the stupidity and may actually be doing more to buoy the travesty. I think Dylan’s limitations are exposed anything he does a stupid plot or unlikeable character drama such as this or Unchained Love but then conversely his strengths are amplified in the right projects like Love Between Fairy and Devil. I guess his agency needs to be really thoughtful in picking projects. As for Bai Lu, she has so much going on a miss does nothing to slow her trajectory.
I’m not surprised at the rating. The leads lack chemistry and their scenes are cringe. I’m not sure if Dylan was a good fit for the character, he seems very robotic. He gives creep vibes when he looks serious. I don’t think the leads are a good fit for this drama.
This drama is unbearable! So cringy!! The plot, the dialogue, cinematography (always in a fog), the clothing (FL has very ugly outfits)… Supporting cast is much more pleasant looking than the leads. FL is not pretty. ML looks like a kid with asymmetrical face.
It’s terrible. I’m still watching it every chance I get, not even to hate-watch even though I do laugh aloud sometimes at how close to parody it comes. I just can’t seem to pull myself away.
I sorta agree with this ratings. As much as I wanted to watch this drama given that I like both main leads, I still dropped the drama after a few eps. The plot is silly and there’s no complexity about the characters. I didn’t find Dylan’s voice bother me but his character isn’t interesting and very predictable like the same archetype of CEO. Even though I found Bai Lu’s style natural without annoying overacting, her acting somehow lacks layered nuance and therefore is getting boring from drama to drama. I was watching two of her dramas at the same time, this one and the costume drama with Zhang Linghe. Tbh, I did not see much differential between her two roles in terms of emoting. There are other less known actresses among her peers who have more acting talent than BL IMO but somehow aren’t able to get popular. For example, the FL of Princess Silver.
Is she also managed by Yu Zeng? I found actresses under Yu Zeng’s agency very limited in acting.
Yeah, it seems the actors Yu Zheng pushes are all pretty limited: Wu Jingyan, Bai Lu, Xu Kai. And it’s only getting worse now that he’s apparently pushing the 2nd female lead in Scent of Time.
I do agree with you here. Bailu’s acting has always felt bland to me – much of it has to do with her lack of micro-expressions.
And I also agree that the actress from Princess Silver was a breath of fresh air from the younger cohorts of actresses. Somehow she really embodied the FL in Princess Silver. It’s just sad how bad that plot was and her ML Aarif was so poor as a partner. She’s the one that made that drama shine, but I haven’t seen anything from her since that she did so well in. I wonder why.
@Coralie, I recall you might have made some comments about BL’s acting before and I didn’t feel that way back then. But after browsing through some of her popular dramas recently, I finally got what you mean. I like her because as I said, she doesn’t overact that’s to my disliking the most. Now I can see why she’s popular but just can’t reach the same level as some 85ers or Yang Zi.
I found the name of FL for Princess Silver. She is Zhang Xue Ying. I personally was mesmerized by her in Princess Silver. There’s no other actresses among her peers who can execute that complex character so masterfully and emote subtly. I’m actually watching her drama now, Double Love, a very unknown drama with cheap production LOL. DL is a light drama sorta copying many gaming tropes from Love 2O2. I’m watching this drama for ZXY and her cute chemistry with the ML who also did a decent job. She did not disappoint me again. ZXY seems to have acting chops to freely transition from role to another without any problems. I wonder why she’s not among the ones with high-profile projects and breakout hits like other much less talented actresses, e.g., Bai Lu, Esther Yu, and the FL of New Life Begins etc., just to name a few. Sorry for no sorry for offending fans. LOL
I’m so tired of stale acting and overacting from those popular C actresses and their badly written, lazily directed drama crap. Now I’m randomly searching among less known C dramas and found this gem, Zhang Xue Ying. LOL. I hope she continues to work hard and hopefully her time will come soon.
Zhang Xueying was a child actress and people had expectations for her. She had a couple of “controversies” in her career. A while ago, she was filmed eating from the same bowl of soup as Qin Junjie, who was dating Yang Zi at the time. Shortly thereafter, Qin Junjie and Yang Zi broke up. There were crazies that had then assumed she was a third party, and she got some bad press from it. Some people think this negatively impacted her career.
A few years later, her sister, who is also her agent apparently yelled at some fan in the fan group chat. I believe the reason stated was because the fan held an official position and did a lot of work for them, but didn’t want to hold an official position anymore. Apparently, this resulted in a bunch of fans leaving her because their support was always voluntary and it’s not like they get paid for it. I didn’t read the chat and cannot attest to whether the sister was really out of line or not.
All that being said, I do think she is a good actress, and had had a little bit of bad luck.
@Soph, OMG, I remember the image of the bowl eating rumours. I always wonder if there were truth in that news.
@Coralie, I have seen her recent drama ChoiceHusband with Xing Zhao Lin (Dropped it), and DoubleLove with Bi Wen Jun(it was not bad for leisure). All are mid budget dramas… To be honest, I dont think we will see her career going too far. It will stay mid range…
Some of you know how I feel about Bai Lu’s acting. It is just too souless for me. She has the techniques but lack depth in her characters. But she is a heavily invested actress, she will still go far and strong.
Whatever happened to her, one thing is certain, she has lost investor’s confidence and no one is throwing money to make her big. She is still a good actress with her steady fandom, thus she can still get lead roles in smaller projects.
@Somebody, Well, I am an Esther Yu fan haha, but I can see why folks might not like her exaggerated way of acting (sometimes) or her voice. She’s the epitome of micro-expressions for me though (like the Chinese version of Jang Nara, except with less aegyo.) Like, just look at this short excerpt of her interaction with one of her costars a while back: https://youtu.be/h49BN_8kfQg?si=S81tpTACVy2uqaq_ – it’s marvelous how animated she looks! I can tell she’s been trying to tone down her voice and acting for recent roles, but I still like her as she is.
I sung praises for Zhang Xue Ying when I first watched Princess Silver. I still do. She is the living, breathing Princess. Per @Soph, it looks like scandals has marred and stalled her acting career. It’s such a shame because she’s such a wonderful actress. Yet, later dramas hasn’t been able to capture her loveliness as much as in Princess Silver. I haven’t finished anything she has starred in since (though, to be honest, I also dropped Princess Silver, but that’s due to the plot.)
@HL – Who lost investor’s confidence? Is it Bailu or Zhang Xue Ying? I thought Bailu was wooden and boring when she first debuted. I watched the web drama that launched her career “king is not easy” starring opposite Zhang Yijie and Zhang Yijie outshone and ran circles around her acting in every scene. Yet, interestingly enough, it was BL that got promoted after that drama and not Zhang Yijie, even though I found Zhang Yijie to be a much better actor. It seemed unfair. Though I’ve seen improvements in her acting, she is still somewhat wooden to me (lack of expressions), which is why it baffled me when people praised her left and right. I think she’s serviceable now, but she’s not my top actress by any means.
@Coralie, investor’s faith in Sophie Zhang is lost…But she can still lead mid range dramas.
They should let Milesbe the ML instead
This I agree, miles would have fit the ceo role
Agree with the rating. It is terrible , there is excitement, mystery , and LOve…I can’t feel the love , the characters are dumb. I kind of mad at people who are lucky enough to cast them both and have fans watching the drama, but seriously that’s all they have? I really think they should have a quality control check department. In every drama at least the side characters would be fine too but here, even the second , third couple are not worth your time. I started to think there were some politic involved in producing this drama, DO THEY HAVE TO IT???
p/s Dylan is still gorgeous but I need to mute his part , he better dub
Wang Hedi already signed on for this project before his LBFAD’s success even though they started filming after that drama. He didn’t have much bargaining power to choose his projects back then and just took up any available opportunities. We shall see how Guardians of the Dafeng performs.
Now it all makes sense. How about Bai Lu? Did she sign up for this before TTEOM?
@XZ Only for Love was already filming or filmed when TTEOTM aired. But it’s unfair to compare both of them because Bai Lu’s resources was much much better than Wang Hedi before he gained popularity from LBFAD. Although Yu Zheng is pretty incompetent, Bai Lu gets priority for the resources in his agency. She’s 1st billing in this drama while Wang Hedi is 2nd billing.
This drama is so bad, can believe those 2 actors who has more say in their projects chose this crap. The writers, clothing styles, musics, producer brings nothing new. Lazy ass investors/producer who only relaid on traffic actors but does nothing to make a meaningful entertaining story.
Unchained love had so much potential. From that Cdrama, I stopped watching dramas that are live-airing. It was disappointing
yeah the photos look boring as hell with no emotion, I did not watch LBFD due to the cringe acting from the actress but agree he looks dull here.
same here, I could not get past the FL cringe acting
2023 was not so good for DiDi
Maybe DiDi can do another drama with Xin Xin again if Dafeng falls flat but I hope not 🙁
Dang it! My below comment was meant as a reply to you 🤪
They really did have the best chemistry with each other out of all their other costars. Except, they have been avoiding each other publicly like the plague so as to not fuel any shipper flames. (Methinks its Dylan’s management more adamant than Esther’s because Esther recently reunited with previous costars—Zhang Ling He and Ding Yu Xi—in projects with no problem and Esther attended the LBFAD anniversary gathering while it seems Dylan was absent.)
Needless to say, I don’t think fans will see Dylan and Esther reunite for project any time soon.
Creo que tod@s quienes opinan o comentan en este espacio son los típicos fanáticos destructores de las carreras de los actores que participan en estas series. A nivel mundial ya todos sabemos que desde antes que la serie estuviera al aire la estaban boicoteando, hay que dejar de ser tan tóxicos, si no les gusta no la vean y ya.