First Episode 76 ? - 换换爱 (Why why love ?)

[ansileran]

A part of the Grand First Episode Project ( see this thread for more info)

Just a little warning first : this is a Taiwanese soappy romance serie ^^

Title : 换换爱

English title : Why why love ?

Genre : romantic comedie

Episodes : 15

Presentation :

This is a very classical Taiwanese romantic drama. Tong Jia Di (童嘉蒂) is a girl from a very poor family who works part-time to pay for her studies and help support her family. Huo Yan (霍彥) and Huo Da (霍達) are the sons of a very rich company president (I'm not sure what is exact title is) and could not be more different : while Huo Yan works as a manager for the company and appears to be kind, caring... (you get the picture), Huo Da only fools around with his bike and is very rude. The three of them meet at a charity fare organised by Huo Yan's company and where Tong Jia Di works. She and her best friend (Jiang Xiao Nan - 江小南)are selling tickets which can be traded for services (massages, running errands...). Jiang Xiao Nan wants to help Tong Jia Di to find love so she put in two tickets : one exchangeable for love, the other for a week of servitude. Of course, Huo Da and Huo Yan get them...

Characters :

Tong Jia Di (童嘉蒂) - Rainie Yang (楊丞琳) :

Heroin of the drama, she is a very poor girl who doesn't have much of a life outside work and university (she even manages to work there : she sells copies of her notes). She turns 20 during the first episode.

Huo Da (霍達) - Mike He (贺军翔) :

Son of a company president, he is very rude to everyone and seems to only care about his bike - and annoying other people, especially his family. He is the one who got the "one week of servitude" ticket at the fare.

Huo Yan (霍彥) - Kingone Wang (王傳一) :

He is the other son of the company president, works as a manager, and is the opposite of his brother. He is the "knight in shining armor" of this drama.

Yang Yan Shu (楊妍書) - Judy Fukumoto (福本幸子) :

Huo Yan's secretary. She is very serious and appears to be only interrested in Huo Yan.

Jiang Xiao Nan (江小南) - Michelle Chen (陳妍希) :

Tong Jia Di's best friend, she wants to help her to find love and is quite pushy about it (it doesn't end with the "love" ticket)...

Well, it's a classical romance, with equally classic love triangle (not really in the first episode). I enjoyed it (I'm a sucker for this kind of drama and I like the actors - can't help it). It's really light hearted and a good thing to watch if you don't want to have to think about anything ^^. It's meant to be merely untertaining and it's not as funny as some other comedies like 就想賴著妳 (Down with love). There are no absolutely ridiculous scenes in this serie.

First Episode is just the setting of the story so it doesn't develop much. They present almost every important characters there. I'll just try to list what happens in chronological order :

1 - The charity fare :

- Tong Jia Di meets Huo Da and he acts like a jerk. They end up fighting and he throws dirt at her face. There comes Prince Charming (sorry, I mean Huo Yan) who lends her a handkerchief.

- Huo Da does a jump with his bike for the charity (I believe it's more to annoy his father who he gets money from) above Tong Jia Di's head. He makes it and she faints from the scare. Huo Yan catches her before she falls (he is the knight after all).

- Huo Yan and Huo Da gets their respective tickets. End of the fare.

2 - Tong Jia Di's birthday :

- Jiang Xiao Nan celebrates it with her. She tells her that she has to make 3 wishes. Jiang Xiao Nan is quite disappointed that Tong Jia Di only makes serious wishes for the first two. Tong Jia Di then says she gives her the third wish. Jiang Xiao Nan decides that Tong Jia Di has to get the cellphone number of the 10th guy who passes before her (they are at a coffee shop).

- Two guys doing a bike race passes at the exact same time, so they are both the 10th guy. Guess who it is ? The girls follows them and then both guys have an accident. They ends up at the hospital. There we find out that they are Huo Da and Huo Yan (what a surprise). Huo Da broke his legs while Huo Yan broke his arms. Tong Jia Di gets Huo Yan's cellphone number.

3 - Tong Jia Di's home :

- When she gets home, her mother is hitting her uncle with a broomstick. He has debts and wants to borrow money from them. She restrains her mom, her own cellphone falling in the process. Her uncle leaves empty handed.

- Tong Jia Di's brother comes home and breaks her cellphone (more or less on purpose). He is only interested on getting money from their mom and leaves after he gets it.

4 - At the hospital :

- Huo Da and Huo Yan are forced to share the same room as there is only one left. Huo Da throws a tantrum (really, he is behaving like a child).

- Yang Yan Shu visits. Brief insight of the second love triangle of this drama : Huo Da appears to love her while she only has eyes for Huo Yan...

- She tries to find out why they were doing something as crazy as a bike race but you don't get to know that for now.

I would say that sums it.

Episodes with French subs are available here, with English subs here.

Hope you enjoy it !

[roddy]

Excellent write-up, thanks!

[ansileran]

@roddy :

Thanks ! It's the first time I write something like this (took me really long ^^) so any comment/review are more than welcome !

I can't tell much about the language difficulty though... It doesn't seem that hard to me since I manage to get the general meaning without any subtitle (or with help of the traditional characters) but then again, I watch quite a lot of Taiwanese drama so I'm use to their accent.

Vocabular isn't difficult, except when they talk about business but it doesn't happen often and it doesn't really matters... There are quite a few talks on sicknesses and hospital related that might be hard to understand, and you need to at least have a basic comprehension of what they say because it is important for the story, though not in the first episode.

[rob07]

Great work, thanks. Any particular reason you picked this show to do first, is it your favourite?

General question about Taiwanese shows - is there generally a version with simplified character subtitles available on the internet, or do they tend to be only in traditional?

[ansileran]

I picked up that one because it's the one I've watched the most recently so I could do the presentation without having to watch it again. It's not my favorite Taiwanese drama (that would be 就想賴著妳 - Down with love - already in the project) but I like it. I tend to have 4 categories for dramas :

1 - I love it and I'm going to watch it over and over again (就想賴著妳)

2 - I like it (this one and a few others)

3 - watchable, but I'm not going to watch it again

4 - Watched the first one at most and never going to watch the following episodes (It started with a kiss)

Taiwanese drama usually only have traditional subs because they are played in Mandarin (more or less) so they put the subtitles for Taiwanese to understand them ^^. I haven't seen one with simplified characters yet... But traditional characters are not that hard to recognise if you know the simplified form and have the actor say them. You get used to it very quickly (even with my very limited Chinese ability ^^)