Chinese Drama: Mr. Right (戀愛先生)
Broadcast Date: 1/12/2018
Airs: Daily
Total Episodes: 45
Leads: Jin Dong & Maggie Jiang
Synopsis:
A dentist with a successful career, our hero, Cheng Hao (Jin Dong) also moonlights as a love consultant on the side. Despite never having actually had a romantic relationship in his life, Cheng Hao nonetheless comes across as a great master of romance as he helps his clients from being losers in love to winners. While attending the wedding of yet another client he has successfully helped in Belgium, Cheng Hao meets our heroine, Luo Yue (Maggie Jiang) who mistakenly thought he was assaulting an unconscious hotel guest and has him arrested. Protesting his innocence all the way to the police station, Cheng Hao was finally able to triumphantly tells our heroine that he will demand retribution for what she has put him through when the surveillance camera proves that our hero was only trying to save the unconscious woman.
Hanging her hope on an important promotion at work that she has finally been promised to after five years of working at the hotel as a team leader, Luo Yue has no choice but to cater to Cheng Hao’s every whim once her hotel manager makes it clear that she has to take full responsibility for her blunder. His anger much assuaged after getting to know Luo Yue as she spends a day playing a tour guide for him and his friends, Cheng Hao decides to take back his complaint letter from the hotel manager. Leaving the hotel manager’s office in good spirit believing that he has put in plenty of good words for Luo Yue so that her career will not be adversely affected by the whole unfortunate misunderstanding, Cheng Hao is clueless that the hotel manager will fire our heroine shortly.
Misled by her ex-boss into believing Cheng Hao is the reason why she lost her job, Luo Yue goes back to China full of ire against our hero. Of course, as the drama god would have it, our two leads will have plenty of opportunity and time to sort out their differences as our love guru hero gets finally meets his match.
Ninja’s First Impression:
For those who watched “To Be A Better Man” (2016, with Maggie Jiang as the heroine as well), this one is the second drama in the “Gentleman” series made by the same production team. Similiar to its predecessor, Mr. Right has a very suave and stylish feel to it. In fact, it kinda gave me almost the same vibe as watching Oceans 11 or something with the rat pack. You know, the kinda of show that makes you feel cool just by virtue of watching it? Anyhow, true to the series’ storytelling style, the plot of Mr. Right does meander quite a bit but like I was with the To Be A Better Man, I found myself watching episode after episode without feeling impatient. For those like myself who wished To Be A Better Man had more romance in it, I am happy to report that Mr. Right has plenty of it.
A warning though, I think Mr. Right’s romance between our two leads will be the slow built up sort…which if done right is actually my favorite sort. I was a bit weary at first when the heroine spent the first couple episodes falling in love with someone that is NOT our hero, but then I was amused by the show’s clever way of keeping our hero in the picture (via imagined conversation with our hero as he goes through the science of falling in love) despite the fact that our two leads were apart. (No fear though, the two leads soon had plenty to keep them bickering and close to one another.)
All in all, while it is way too early to call this one a winner, I do think Mr. Right is off to a promising start and will be putting this one tentatively on my watch list.