Ski into Love appealed to me as a drama because of the snowboarding aspect; the male lead is an Olympic-level athlete who chose to retire from the sport after a serious injury. I have never been an athletic person but I do appreciate athletes and the amazing things they do. Snowboarding is also a very exciting sport to watch; much like skiing was when I was a kid.
This Chinese drama is typical in some ways but unusual in others. Wei Zhi (Esther Yu) is a gifted manga artist who is forced out of her job and loses her pen name due to an enscrupulous publisher (ah, some echoes of my first career in writing! ha.) She goes to Beishan Ski Resort for reasons I'm not too clear on, where she meets coach Shan Chong (Lin Yi, who has been steadily gaining popularity as a series actor). He's the retired athlete who gave up on the sport. As he teaches her how to snowboard, she reignites his passion for the sport. Of course they fall in love.
I took my time watching the 23 episodes, and while the story had some issues overall it was a decent series. The lead actors were not the right age for each other (the female comes off as much older.) They had the female lead put on a burbling babyish persona that wasn't flattering to her and got a lot of complaints from reviewers. The secondary romance wasn't resolved in a satisfactory manner, and due to some odd expectation of how to wrap up the last episode, the series ending was a bit clumsy.
That said, they prominently featured a disabled character (the Disney version of one, of course) which is highly unusual for c-dramas, which usually portray everyone as young, healthy and extremely thin. The female lead was a bit chubby this time. The snowboarding sequences (not enough for me) were exciting, too. Based on the positives, I'd recommend this one. Available on Viki and Netflix.
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