First Frost

9/10 is my rating.

Review

(Scroll down for synopsis and spoilers)

This is a very heartwarming romance that will give romantics the warm fuzzies that we look for in romance dramas. I liked it a lot and would highly recommend it for anyone that likes romantic dramas with some roots in some hard realities. My main critique is it started really slow. I am not, in general, a huge fan of just straight up drama.  Up until about episode 10, I was wondering what people liked about it.  But then it started to get REALLY good and I understand why it was very popular. And I also understood, a little, why that long, seemingly slow lead up mattered. But it was a really frustrating later as it kept flashing back and filling in details. There are few instances where I like stories told as flashbacks. I would rather just get the story in the order it occurred.  A technique that gets overused is to tell a skeleton of the crucial events and then use the flashbacks as the reveals. To me, the character finding out those details could be the reveals. Traveling back and forward in time can easily become disorganized chaos. In this story they use a realer like time line and show, as you travel back and forth, where you are at on that timeline during the cut scenes. That helped. But the fact that was necessary is an indicator of how much the story moved back and forth in time.

Synopsis

This is a 2025 Chinese Romantic drama with 32, 45 minute episodes. It was adapted from a novel by Zhu Yi and has the same title.  The main lead character in this played the brother in another Chinese drama "Hidden Love." There are references to the characters from Hidden Love and even a cameo or so. In terms of timeline this takes place partially, in the flash backs, during the same timeframe as the high school scenes in hidden love but after the main part of the story after high school.

Sang Yan (Bai Jingting) and Wen Yifan (Zhang Ruonan) were a high school couple until a series of misunderstandings drove them apart. Wen Yifan broke up with Sang Yan and they were both heart broken. Eight years later they are living very different lives. Sang Yan wealthy and lives in a nice apartment and is part owner of a popular bar and also a video game programmer. Wen Yifan is trying to break into the news reporting industry. She works for a smaller news program and is trying to get a big story to get more recognition and so she is promoted. Because of her limited economic means, she lives in a very impoverished area. Because she has very little resources and is alone in the world she lives in an apartment with multiple virtual strangers to keep living costs down. Due to her beauty she suffers many unwanted advances and has even been assaulted by unwanted admirers. Wen Yifan has avoided Sang Yan for over eight years but starts to bump into him more frequently and then finds herself in a co-habited rental where she knew she was getting a new roommate but did not realize it was the man she was trying so hard to avoid.

Spoilers

Her mother is among the worst I have seen. Call me vindictive but I was glad she told her just pretend like I was a victim of that serial killer you refused to save me from. Because, really, if she hadn't been a tough victim, that is what would have happened.  It was heart breaking when she called her mother begging her to get her out of the situation and saying she didn't feel safe and her mother basically saying suck it up. If you are that cold to someone, anyone, let alone your own child, you deserve to spend the rest of your life thinking of what you could have done better. She tried with her. FL did. She went to her house when the mom reached out but then her horrible aunt was there.  Her last string of trust was betrayed.  The fact that she did not forgive her made me like the show more.

I am also glad FL did not fall for her half-sister's ruse that she wanted to be close to her. I thought it was all about being able to get in with the ML through her. I loved that about the FL. I give you every chance to be a good human but if you don't take any of them then that bridged you burned is not repairable.  You reap what you sow.

If ever you wanted a ML who would walk through literal fire for the FL this was it. He loved her with a conviction and unwavering determination. Some might say he was "stalking" her.  I would agree if he ever approached her and she indicated she did not want him around.  There can be a fine line between the two. But he was clearing watching out for her. Checking in on her. 

I am not usually a fan of people leaving but, in her case, I totally understood. The treatment she dealt with was both physical and psychological torture. She genuinely thought people she cared about would do better without her. There was no malice in her actions.

#FirstFrost