Drama Review:  Love in Time (我的秘密室友)

Love in Time

Synopsis: He Zheng Yu is a cold and arrogant lawyer living in 2022. He moves into an older apartment complex and finds that a strange time-space phenomenon overlaps his apartment with the previous tenant from four months ago in 2021. Every night at 10:06, He Zheng Yu and Chen Jia Lan become involuntary roommates until 10:52. Using the time-space to their advantage, He Zheng Yu and Chen Jia Lan work together in hopes of altering the events in 2021 to change the future.

Watch Love in Time (我的秘密室友) if you like:

• time fantasy dramas – a time overlap between main characters in 2021 and 2022 without it being too confusing on how the overlap works, but coexisting with both present and past
• more than romance – there’s grit outside of the romance as it focuses on the two working together to save their best friends’ livelihood

Avoid Love in Time (我的秘密室友) if you dislike:

• lack of sugar – though there’s romance, this isn’t full of sugary sweet romance, like other dramas in this year’s Sweet On series
• redundancy in plot – each scenario seems like it’s repeating itself due to the idea of “not being able to change something that’s meant to happen”

Final Review: Love in Time (我的秘密室友)

turning 46 minutes into 24 hours

Rating: ★★★☆☆ 3.5/5

Characters

Love in Time (我的秘密室友 / Wo De Mi Mi Shi You) is a re-make of the 2018 Taiwanese drama,  Meet Me @1006, starring Lego Li and Nikki Hsieh. He Zheng Yu is a cold and arrogant lawyer many people dislike and is often associated with high-profile cases. Due to his personality and success, not even his peers like him. This leads to using Zheng Yu’s high-profile case with celebrity Ji Rong to dismiss him as a company partner. Falling from grace, He Zheng Yu moves into an old apartment complex and meets Chen Jia Lan through the time-space overlap. However, through his hilarious interactions with Chen Jia Lan and genuinely allowing himself to open up to her, it was easy to fall for He Zheng Yu. 

Yang Xu Wen as an actor, did an excellent job at comically reacting to Chen Jia Lan’s “spirit” to being scared of her and holding up his façade of a cool guy. The nuance between letting go and showing the more relaxed and in-love He Zheng Yu in 2022 starkly contrasted with the uptight and arrogant lawyer in 2021 whom Chen Jia Lan would meet and interact with. It was easy to see why Chen Jia Lan could disassociate the two and not get her feelings involved with 2021 He Zheng Yu. Through Chen Jia Lan, He Zheng Yu becomes someone who wants to try harder and make better decisions in his personal and professional life. He comes to understand how unlikeable he was in the past and takes on a different approach to accepting new cases. 

Chen Jia Lan is a hardworking rookie reporter at iNEWS who lives in 2021. She meets the 2022 He Zheng Yu through the time-space overlap and finds out that he is trying to get close to Ji Rong, Jiang Cheng Hao’s fiancée. Because Jiang Cheng Hao is her good childhood friend, she is hesitant that Zheng Yu will try to get in-between their relationship. Though wary of allowing them to meet, Chen Jia Lan relents and finds out that Ji Rong and Jiang Cheng Hao’s sweet relationship is about to meet its doom. With only 46 minutes to meet, He Zheng Yu and Chen Jia Lan work together to prevent the disaster of their friend’s relationship and soon experience a heartbreaking love story of their own. 

With this being my third work from Xiang Han Zhi, I had more expectations of her growth, making me feel like there’s still a lot lacking in her acting. There were many moments when Yang Xu Wen overshadowed her, and I felt underwhelmed by her scenes. However, Xiang Han Zhi does well at portraying Chen Jia Lan, a bright and optimistic young woman who works hard. There were several emotional scenes where I felt the conviction of her loss as she felt hopeless about her future with He Zheng Yu. As righteous, loyal, and fierce as Chen Jia Lan is, her biggest weakness is her love for people. The pull element of their romantic relationship was the inability of Chen Jia Lan to fight for their love amongst the continuous failing results of the butterfly effect. Though the drama does not mention it, this has to do with the loss of her parents. It feels implied that because Chen Jia Lan understands how losing a loved one feels like, she doesn’t want to be disappointed in a love that may not work, nor does she want the other person to feel that way. This trauma gets in the way of Chen Jia Lan more than once and is something she consistently battles with, leading to He Zheng Yu being the one who chases and fights for them.

Another element I appreciate from Chen Jia Lan’s character set-up is that the punches and kicks she throws aren’t focused on making her look pretty for the camera but on venting her emotions. Nor is it a pretty kick or two for the camera, but sparring with Jiang Cheng Hao and protecting herself against the arrogant He Zheng Yu.

As we see both He Zheng Yu and Chen Jia Lan personally evolve through the show, what I appreciate is the natural build-up of their relationship. He Zheng Yu and Chen Jia Lan met with several misunderstandings as roommates and came to work together as partners. This allows their characters to get to know each other and allows other story elements to make them feel more personable. So, yes, this drama does include a slow burn beginning before our couple gets together, and though it has romance, it isn’t unnecessary sugar for cp shippers. I actually love the more subtle romance and the things that He Zheng Yu does and say towards Chen Jia Lun. It made me squeal a bit to myself seeing how much Zheng Yu cares for Jia Lun and the subtle confession of how crazy in love he is with her through reading.

Love is absorbing; it takes the lover out of himself; the most clear-sighted, though he may know, cannot realize that his love will cease; it gives body to what he knows is illusion, and, knowing it is nothing else, he loves it better than reality. It makes a man a little more than himself, and at the same time a little less. He ceases to be himself. He is no longer an individual, but a thing, an instrument to some purpose foreign to his ego.

William Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence

What I like the most about the fantasy element in this romance drama is that the time-space was not only used to give us sweet romance. Though it was a door to how they would be able to meet every night and allow us to see the lovely scenes, it was mainly used to dive into the complexity of the plot as they jump between 2021 and 2022 to try to alter the future through the butterfly effect. It was clever to utilize the different doors of 2021 and 2022, involving the 2021 He Zheng Yu and the method of updating the 2022 He Zheng Yu through his past self. These small things make it feels like a full circle and allows the thorough utilization of the time-space to further the plot. Despite having the powerful knowledge of the future and being able to affect it through altering the past, this doesn’t make our characters powerful. Instead, their trials and errors taught our characters that change is not always positive and the results you see aren’t what you may want. But their resilience makes their desperation more raw and heartfelt. 

Dai Gao Zheng recently received a lot of traction through his lead role in the web drama, Maid’s Revenge (2022) as the governor, Fang Tian Yi. He now plays a doting husband as Jiang Cheng Hao in Love in Time as Chen Jia Lun’s best friend, a second generation heir, and husband to Ji Rong. Wu Ji Rong (Wang Meng Li) is a celebrity who got married to Jiang Cheng Hao, but keeps her only family and brother, Wu An Wen (Cao Zheng) close to her. Although Wu An Wen cares for his sister, his gambling addiction gets to the best of him, and causes issues between the married couple.

Although the issue between these three brings He Zheng Yu and Chen Jia Lun close together, we don’t get many scenes or filler content on them. Their role in the drama is to be used as a plot device to push the leads together and create a solid storyline. In fact, we don’t get much information on many of the characters in this drama.

Conclusion

With only 24 episodes, the writers gave enough room for the main characters to grow, allowed relationships to develop, and utilized the plot’s fantasy element of time-space overlap. From the beginning, we see He Zheng Yu as someone who isn’t likable through how closed off he is. He eventually allows himself to open up and adjust to his new surroundings. It was as if we as the viewers eased into the time overlap and his subtle character change along with He Zheng Yu. While I enjoyed seeing the growth of our leads, I think it would have been great to have a little more depth to our supporting cast. Though we see Jiang Cheng Hao, Ji Rong, and An Wen often, as the plot revolves around their case, it took a lot of work to connect with these characters. It was hard to see Jiang Cheng Hao and Ji Rong’s love and infatuation with each other as there was no chemistry and a lack of scenes to prove otherwise. Ji Rong and An Wen’s sibling relationship is formed through words and not actions, so it was difficult for me to empathize with the difficulties and turmoil they felt.

Out of IQiyi Sweet On series for 2022, this one has a better mix of romance and actual plot content than See You Again and Mr. Bad. In fact, this one does make it onto one of my favorite time fantasy dramas of the year! This concludes my thoughts and drama review on the Chinese drama, Love in Time (2022). If you have finished Love in Time, and don’t mind sharing your opinions with me, do leave a comment!

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