Final thoughts on "Just You"
Sometimes, when you get back from work after a two-hour commute, all you want is to sit down and watch a cute, breezy, and intellectually unchallenging drama. And when I say sometimes, I mean "almost all the time." Which is why I've spent the past two to three weeks watching SETTV's latest Friday-night drama, Just You.
The drama's premise is almost insultingly simple: Qi Yi (Aaron Yan) buys a company called GAZE and, because of a past failed relationship, decrees that the employees are not allowed to date one another. This pisses off the employees, and one of them, Cheng Liangliang (Puff Kuo) decides with her friends that she's going to get Qi Yi to fall in love with her so he'll be forced to get rid of the relationship ban.
Everything unfolds more or less the way you'd expect, with everything from forced cohabitation to silly bantering to gradual realization of love to reapparance of crazy/jealous ex-girlfriend. But even though Just You's entire storyline is chock full of cliches and much of it reads like something I would've written in second grade, it -- amazingly -- works. Here's why:
The good:
* Aaron and Puff had off-the-charts chemistry. SETTV is usually pretty good about finding leads with chemistry, but they were so good, maybe even Vanness/Ady-in-Autumn's-Concerto level good. I didn't have time to watch most of the BTS sections, but I really want to, just to see Aaron and Puff interacting off-screen.
* Qi Yi was a surprisingly likable character from the start. Usually these insufferable-boss types really are insufferable douchebags, at least until they meet the female lead and change due to love. Qi Yi definitely changes when he begins falling for Liangliang, but there was nothing douchey about him. Yes, he could be unreasonable at times (e.g. not listening to employees' complaints about the no-dating rule, or endlessly badgering Liangliang about moving out) and his OCD/germaphobia bordered on ridiculous, but on the whole, he was a pretty decent guy.
* The soundtrack was, like usual with SETTV dramas, amazing. I never skipped watching the opening or ending theme, and the accompanying videos were a hoot. Funny story about the ending theme, Aaron's "Irresistible Sun" (擋不住的太陽), which I've embedded below -- I got so used to hearing it sped up (since I watched the entire drama on 1.5x speed, which I usually do with idol dramas when I'm short on time), that when I finally checked out the normal-speed, full version, I thought it was soooo slow.
Click to view* New faces! Since the pool of Taiwanese actors is so small, you usually see the same people over and over again in these idol dramas, which can be endearing at times (e.g. Yang Liyin and Shen Mengsheng playing almost the eaxct same roles they played in Office Girls) but can get exasperating when it comes to lead characters. It's also not a good thing for the industry in general, since actors usually grow out (or at least, age out) of the idol drama phase once they've achieved a certain level of fame. So to have a decent number of sorta-newbies on screen was a big gamble for Just You, and one that I think paid off, especially since the minor characters were surprisingly engaging.
* Dean (Dean Fujioka) is right up there on my list of favorite SETTV second male leads, alongside Dylan (Fated to Love You) and Hua Tuoye (Autumn's Concerto). He may have been an insufferable flirt, but at heart he was such a good person and was willing to do anything to help Qi Yi and Liangliang without asking for one thing in return. I think my fondness for him also stemmed from the fact that he didn't really pose a threat to the already adorably perfect Qi Yi/Liangliang relationship.
The bad:
* No one's going to win any acting awards for this... which isn't horrible, since one rarely expects that from an idol drama. Aaron was pretty decent in this, though he's likely done similar roles. Puff annoyed me in the first few episodes when it seemed like she was trying too hard to play the cheerful cheerleader, but once she found a balance between cheerily happy and annoyingly hyper, she grew on me fast. (Her character's IQ, on the other hand...)
* Ex-girlfriend Ding Jiayu (Lyla Lin) was a terrible antagonist, and Lyla was a pretty cringe-worthy actress to boot. I didn't hate her as much as I did Tia Li's Zheng Kai'er in Office Girls (who is pretty much the epitome of terrible female antagonist), but if I'd been in charge of the script, I'd have been hard-pressed to find a way to make her more annoying and unbearable. They tried to make her less of a flat character by giving her a sympathetic history, but by then, I just wanted her out of Qi Yi and Liangliang's life, thank you very much. Also, how is it believable that she has a guy (Jerry) who is so head-over-heels for her? She treats him like crap! They have nothing in common! Is Jerry blind???
(This is Jerry, by the way. He's not considered a bad part of the drama -- I actually rather liked him because his attempted kidnapping of Liangliang was hilarious, although I'm skeptical of his taste in girls. Fun fact: he's played by Hans Chang, older brother of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon star Chang Chen. Btw, don't confuse Hans Chang with mainland China's Zhang Han, who has the same Chinese name... they don't look anything alike, thankfully.)
* Aaron Yan's eyeliner. Wut. I mean, he is definitely attractive enough to make up for it (he's now become my favorite Fahrenheit member, though it's not like any of the others are strong contenders), but why bother in the first place...?
The meh:
* I hesitate to label the script as 100% bad, because while it was definitely childishly simplistic at times, I did come to care for most of Liangliang's friends and GAZE coworkers, and I didn't feel like any of them were overused or overdone. So all in all, the script merits a meh from me -- nothing mind-blowing, but nothing offensively bad either.
Would I recommend? If you're looking for something cute and fuzzy, then YES. Just You had so many cute moments that I would rewatch for the "LOL" or "aww" factor, and that's definitely helped catapult it onto my list of memorable dramas, if not favorites. But if you're looking for something serious or ~meaningful~, you should probably just steer away from SETTV idol dramas in general. :P
To end, let's have some Qi Yi/Liangliang lurv. (I love her shirt in this scene, btw, though I would definitely pair it with different pants.)
