I was looking forward to watching Please Feel At Ease Mr. Ling (一不小心捡到爱) after enjoying Rosy Zhao’s performance in The Long Ballad. I thought it would be good to see her again in a modern drama. But sorry to say, this has not been an enjoyable ride for me. Fortunately, it is only 24 episodes in total. Otherwise, it would be really tough not to drop it midway through. My thoughts are in the Please Feel At Ease Mr. Ling review below.
My rating: 6/10
Episodes: 24
Type: Romance
Aired: May 2021
Images Credit: Youku
The Cast Of Please Feel At Ease Mr. Ling
- Rosy Zhao Lu Si as Gu An Xin
- Terry Liu Te as Ling Yue
- Daisy Li Mu Chen as Gu Xin Er
- Zhou Jun Wei as Gu An Sheng
- Qi Pei Xin as Ling Sheng
- He Peng as Ling Fang
- Yana Zhang Yan as Ai Li
- Liu Yin Jun as Dr. Xiao Yi Shan
- Zong Yuan Yuan as Xu You You
- Liu Zhe Hui as Zhao Lei
- Xu Rong Zhen as Yang Hong
- Wang Shuo as Gu Yuan Chao
- Wang Ce as Ling Tian
- Zhang Heng Yu as Yu Guo
Main Characters
Gu An Xin
An Xin is a delivery girl living on her own. She is also a talented manga artist and likes to draw and upload her works during her free time. An Xin is a hardworking and independent young woman with a kind heart. Her mother died when she was young and she was then fostered by the wealthy Gu family. But she was thrown out after falling out with her foster father.
Ling Yue
Ling Yue is the President of an e-commerce company called New Way. It is part of his family’s conglomerate, Ling Group. Ling Yue is a smart and capable businessman as well as a strategist. He appears cool and emotionless. Ling Yue is also adopted into the family and does not get along with his elder brother.
Gu Xin Er
Xin Er is An Xin’s foster younger sister. She is a jealous woman who couldn’t accept losing out to An Xin. Xin Er has also been in love with Ling Yue since their schooldays and is determined to make him hers.
Gu An Sheng
An Sheng is An Xin’s foster elder brother. His mother re-married after a divorce and An Sheng became Gu Yuan Chao’s stepson. An Sheng is a generally caring person. He loves An Xin more than a brother should and has been keeping his feelings hidden over the years.
Supporting Characters
Ling Sheng
Ling Sheng is the third son of the Ling family and Ling Yue’s adoptive younger brother. He appears disinterested in fighting for control of the Ling Group and is stuck in between his 2 elder brothers. He has fallen in love with Xin Er ever since he was a teenager and has been patiently waiting for her despite knowing that she loves Ling Yue.
Ling Fang
Ling Fang is the eldest son of the Ling family and Ling Yue’s adoptive elder brother. He is an ambitious man who wants control of the Ling Group and sees Ling Yue as a rival. He has always bullied Ling Yue since they were kids and the 2 men do not get along.
Ai Li
Ai Li is Ling Yue’s bodyguard and personal assistant. She owes a debt of gratitude to him and hence, is extremely loyal and dedicated to her job. Ai Li appears aloof and unsociable as she doesn’t talk much.
Dr. Xiao Yi Shan
Dr. Xiao is Ling Yue’s good friend. He is an easygoing guy who has a crush on Ai Li.
Xu You You
You You is An Xin’s best friend. She is the type of girl who falls in love easily with handsome men and develops a crush on An Sheng.
Zhao Lei
Zhao Lei is a manager of a comic studio before venturing out to open his own. He is a fun guy who thinks highly of himself.
Yang Hong
Yang Hong is Gu Yuan Chao’s wife. She is also An Sheng and Xin Er’s mother and appears kind towards An Xin. An Sheng is her son from a previous marriage.
Gu Yuan Chao
Gu Yuan Chao is a rich tycoon who owns the Gu Group. He regards the Ling family as his rival and would not hesitate to create trouble for the Ling Group. He also has a strained relationship with An Xin and has thrown her out of the house.
Ling Tian
Ling Tian is the owner of Ling Group. He has 3 sons including Ling Yue who is adopted. He brought up his sons by making them compete with one another to toughen them up and pick his successor.
Yu Guo
Yu Guo is a revengeful woman who blames An Xin for her hand injury which prevented her from becoming an artist.
Synopsis
Ling Yue is facing an attack from his adoptive elder brother, Ling Fang, who wants to become the successor of Ling Group. His car was sabotaged and he ended up crashing into the sea while on a winding coastal road. He was presumed dead. But Ling Yue managed to save himself and climbed up from the rocks below on a rainy night only to be knocked down by An Xin who was riding her motorcycle.
Ling Yue pretended to have amnesia from the accident and forced An Xin to take care of him in exchange for not reporting her to the police. Thus, An Xin has no choice but to take him in as her flatmate to save on the hospital bills. As for Ling Yue, he wanted to disappear for a while to buy time time to quietly investigate what his brother is up to.
During their co-habitation, An Xin and Ling Yue gradually develop feelings for each other. But Ling Yue continues to pretend to have lost his memory and didn’t tell An Xin his identity. Then, circumstances forced him to return to confront his brother and prevent him from taking over his company which means he has to leave An Xin.
Please Feel At Ease Mr. Ling Ending (Spoilers Alert!)
Please Feel At Ease Mr. Ling has a predictable happy ending. Ling Yue proposes to An Xin at an amusement park and she accepts. There is a happy feeling all around as others join in the sweet occasion. In the last scene, An Xin’s manga depicts them with their 2 kids. Dr. Xiao and Ai Li also end up together after she listens to An Xin’s advice to dare to love. After all, Dr. Xiao sincerely loves her. Zhao Lei and You You also remain a loving couple.
Ling Yue is appointed as the President of Ling Group with Ling Fang’s support. But he relinquishes the presidency to Ling Fang as he prefers to remain at New Way. While Ling Fang did bully Ling Yue in the past and was always competing with him, he didn’t want others to harm his brother. Ling Fang saved Ling Yue and An Xin from being killed by Ling Sheng’s minion. The 2 brothers are back on good terms at the end of the drama.
An Xin and Xin Er also buried the hatchet. Xin Er realizes that she has been wrong about An Xin all this while with the revelations about what her mother had done. Ling Yue and An Sheng establish cooperation on the business front. They have learned to trust one another and An Xin continues to love An Sheng as a brother.
What Happened To An Xin’s Mother?
An Xin’s mother committed suicide in front of her when she was a kid. That is why An Xin is afraid of the dark as it reminds her of the night of the suicide. Her mother was depressed because her father thought that she had been unfaithful since a paternity test revealed that An Xin is not his daughter. So, he abandoned them and An Xin’s mother then fell into depression.
Ling Tian and An Xin’s mother were merely friends. Hence, the rumors that An Xin is Ling Tian’s daughter is not true. Ling Tian wanted to give 5% of Ling Group shares to An Xin because her mother had helped him in the past when his business failed. When he started Ling Group, he had promised to allocate 5% of the shares to her.
An Xin’s Father
An Xin’s biological father is actually Gu Yuan Chao. But his current wife, Yang Hong, switched the blood samples for the paternity test then. This caused Gu Yuan Chao to abandon An Xin’s mother and ended up marrying Yang Hong. An Xin found out about his father’s identity after discovering some old photos at the old house she used to live in with her mother. Yang Hong was working under the doctor who conducted the DNA test then which was why she could do the switch. She and An Xin’s mother were good friends back then.
By the time An Xin found out the truth, Gu Yuan Chao was already stricken with dementia. So, he didn’t get to learn that An Xin is his own flesh and blood. Yang Hao became sickly after her bad deeds were exposed and needed hospitalization pending police investigation.
Who Is Yu Guo?
Yu Guo is An Xin’s ex-classmate. She was jealous of An Xin’s better results and hated her. An accidental bump into each other caused an altercation which resulted in Yu Guo falling down a flight of stairs. Yu Guo’s hand became permanently injured and she couldn’t paint anymore. She blamed An Xin for it and wanted her revenge.
But in actual fact, her hand’s injury was caused by an allergic reaction to a drug. The drug was given by Yang Hong to Xin Er who thought it was a sleeping pill. Xin Er wanted to take An Xin’s place to be the leading actress in the school’s stage show. So, she dropped the drug into An Xin’s drink. But Yu Guo mistakenly drank it instead before she fell down the stairs.
Yang Hong then blackmailed the doctor to falsify Yu Guo’s medical report by threatening to expose his involvement in the paternity test case. She also took care of Yu Guo and periodically gave her money. Yang Hong conveniently used the opportunity to plant the seed of revenge in Yu Guo against An Xin. It was also a way to cover up her own daughter’s involvement in the drugging which caused Xin Er to be ignorant that she was the one who caused Yu Guo’s injury.
The Ultimate Bad Guy
Apart from Yang Hong, the other villain is Ling Sheng. All the while, viewers are led to believe that Ling Fang is the bad guy who keeps attacking Ling Yue. Yes, Ling Fang was interested in being the heir of Ling Group and his intention was obvious. But he wouldn’t go so far as to kill his brother for it. However, Ling Sheng was different. He pretended to be disinterested but quietly worked behind the scenes to kill off Ling Yue.
Ling Sheng felt that his father was bias towards Ling Yue from the time that he was a kid. Ling Yue was presumably his father’s favorite because he was the brainy one. Hence, Ling Sheng wanted to prove that he could defeat Ling Yue. He cooperated with Yang Hong to wrest control of Ling Group illegally. But his plan backfired when everyone else supported Ling Yue to be the company’s President including Ling Fang. Ling Sheng was eventually jailed for what he had done.
Ling Sheng And Xin Er
Xin Er finally gave up on her obsession with Ling Yue when he rejected her time and time again. She realized that Ling Sheng is the one who really loves her and has been waiting patiently in the wings. Hence, she accepted his proposal rather quickly after a brief dating period. When his shenanigans with her mother were exposed during their engagement party, everything turned upside down for her. But she still decided that Ling Sheng is the man for her. When Xin Er visited Ling Sheng in prison, she told him that she will wait for him.
When Did An Xin And Ling Yue Get Together?
Ling Yue first kissed An Xin in Episode 5. They became a couple in Episode 9 and slept together in Episode 12. There is a breakup in Episode 15 when An Xin quietly left Ling Yue as she felt she was a liability to him. But they quickly reconciled in Episode 16 when Ling Yue went to look for her.
Please Feel At Ease Mr. Ling Review – Cliches Overload!
My impression on Please Feel At Ease Mr. Ling after watching the whole drama is that it tries to do too much with a 24-episode series. As a result, the story is all over the place. Just consider this – sibling rivalry, adoption angle, amnesia, co-habitation, jealous love rivals, childhood link, minor breakup, rich man and poor girl are all part and parcel of this drama. It is fine for a romance drama to have cliches. Moonlight and Miss Crow With Mr. Lizard also has a co-habitation and jealous love rival storyline respectively. But there is no necessity to include every imaginable cliche to make it into a story. Moreover, there are also those accidental hugs and stares in Please Feel At Ease Mr. Ling which you can already predict the moment a certain scene appears.
What is pitiful is that the drama actually starts off pretty good in the first episode notwithstanding the plot holes which are aplenty throughout the 24 episodes. But after that, everything is just too basic and draggy until the last few episodes when there is a sudden twist. It is basic because they try to do too much that events are introduced and then glossed over. There are no details provided as everything moves very fast especially on the business front. So, don’t expect to know how outcomes are achieved. Orders are given and they just happened. If you like this kind of simplicity, then it might work for you. But if you prefer more well-written stories, this should be avoided completely.
Plot Weaknesses
I’m not one who likes to look for plot holes whenever I watch a drama. But the plot weaknesses in Please Feel At Ease Mr. Ling are just too obvious. Ling Yue has a phobia against a large amount of water as he was pushed into a pool by his brother when he was a kid. But somehow, he managed to get himself out of the sea when his car crashed into it at the beginning of the drama. Then, in a later episode, he fainted while at the beach because he was afraid of the water. The inconsistency is just too glaring. Apart from water, Ling Yue is also afraid of cockroaches, dogs, and height!
Furthermore, I just find the obsession that some of these characters have for another is just overdone because they are all related in some way. An Xin’s foster brother loves her but she loves Ling Yue. Her foster sister, Xin Er, also loves Ling Yue. If that is not enough, Ling Yue’s brother is obsessed over Xin Er as well in a merry-go-round sort of romantic entanglement!
While it may sound complicated, it is actually quite straightforward in the drama because their feelings are clearly laid out. But the coincidences are just too much. A brother loving his sister (it reminds me of Go Ahead), 2 sisters loving the same man, and a man loving one of the sisters who loves his brother basically sum up the romance part of the story. I don’t know but it just seems such a weird situation to me. There is really no necessity to elevate the entanglement to this level as time could be better spent on a more in-depth plot.
Little Chemistry Between The Leads
A top notch chemistry between the leads can actually save a romance drama from mediocrity even if it has nothing more than a thin plot. My Little Happiness is one such example. The right chemistry could also make a drama sweeter to charm viewers such as Forever Love and Perfect And Casual. But Rosy Zhao and Terry Liu just don’t have enough sparks between them to make it happen in Please Feel At Ease Mr. Ling. The natural feel for the kind of deep love for each other is simply missing. Even her partnership with the much older Lin Yu Shen in Dating In The Kitchen has better chemistry and is more pleasurable to watch.
Perhaps Terry Liu’s inexperience is a drawback and it shows. His acting is still too stiff that he can’t really keep up with the more adept Rosy Zhao. After all, she has played this kind of roles before and portraying An Xin shouldn’t be difficult for her. I just wonder if another male lead could have saved this drama if the pairing has better chemistry overall.
My Verdict – Don’t Waste Your Time!
It is hard for me to recommend giving Please Feel At Ease Mr. Ling a try given the poorly written storyline. Unless you are a Rosy Zhao fan, there is really little reason to watch this when there are plenty of other rom-coms and romance dramas out there. Perhaps the basic plot which doesn’t delve too much into the business aspect may resonate with those who prefer simplicity. But then again, even the ending for some of the characters doesn’t give you the required satisfaction as a viewer.
I suppose if you really want to give it a go, you can do so by skipping some boring parts. The middle of the drama is a little draggy and you can probably skip it to go straight to the last few episodes for the ending. This is really not a drama that will remain in your mind after it is over unlike Love Is Sweet or Begin Again whereby there are parts that are worth a rewatch. Of course, if you can feel the chemistry between the leads, it will be a different story. Then, this drama will be more watchable to you despite the weak plot.
Overall, for this Please Feel At Ease Mr. Ling review, I would give it a score of 6/10. It is not my cup of tea mainly because of the plot which is not properly planned with too many unnecessary cliches. 24 episodes also isn’t really the type of drama that you would want to have too many things going on and 4 couples to share the screen time with. The end result is a bland production that fails to evoke viewers’ emotions towards any of the characters.
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