It’s been a week since The Early Spring on Netflix ended. So far, I have shared my thoughts in a video I recorded literally a day after the show ended. Then, I went on IG live with a journalist friend to fan girl over the show. My feed is filled with interviews and translations of interviews with the director, screenwriter, intimacy coordinator and the leads of the show.
My drama watching besties and I share clips, tweets, threads, merch constantly from the show. So, this Sunday morning, I am sitting here in my study, wondering what is happening with me.
For the uninitiated, The Early Spring is a Mandarin language show on Netflix starring Jing Boran and Sun Qian with a cast of some really good actors. The show is directed by Taiwanese director Chiang Chi-cheng. The original story was by Gu Niang Bie Ku and it was adapted for the screen by Gao Xiaoxian. What the show is also talked about for is the use of intimacy coordinator Tsai Jia-yin, who is an actress herself.
The reviews are everywhere. What stayed with me long after the show is over is the acting. Both lead actors brought their A game to the show. The micro expressions. The pause, the hesitation, the eyebrow raise, the use of height and relative placement to denote a balance (or imbalance) in power dynamics. In no particular order, here is what stayed with me.
The characterization of Shang Zhitao, the female protagonist. She is young, eager to make a name for herself, naive but not inexperienced. Pragmatic in relationships, unsure of her own worth. She has a sunny disposition and makes friends easily. She listens and she shares with her peer group. This is important because the hinge of the show is her inability to communicate with the guy she is in love with.
The male protagonist Luan Nian aka Luke, good looking, born into wealth, insanely talented and emotionally walled off. He is impulsive, unusually perceptive except when it relates to the woman he is purportedly in love with.
The power dynamic. Luke is near the top of the organizational hierarchy. He wields power. He is so confident about his place in the world he inhabits that he can make threats knowing he will walk away. That kind of power is frightening. Flora aka Shang Zhitao is a probationary hire, dazzled by Luke. She is also a woman who acknowledges her attraction to her hot boss. The reporting relationship and the conflict of interest in the workplace are never held up for inspection. That is the show’s biggest failure. At every point in the show, Zhitao is negotiating this equation. Is Luke speaking as her boss or as her boyfriend? Her inability to open up to him is tied to this inherent power imbalance and it is never addressed directly.
Growth arcs and redemption arcs. We get to see Zhitao come into her own, finally have it in her to break away from this toxic relationship and build a life of her own. We see her finally stop competing with Luke and stand shoulder to shoulder as a business owner. What we never get is watching her interrogate why their relationship was doomed to fail the first time around. Romantic relationships need honest and open communication to become something long term and committed. Every single time Luke eventually shares his love for her, she responds with a kiss. We never see her say the words. We never get to see her reach for him first.
Luke got his growth arc, his redemption arc and walked away the winner in this show. He gets to fail, acknowledge his failures, work on them, say his sorry and then woo his woman back. Women rewarded that. That may be why the show did well.
The viewership is primarily women, around the world. I am fifty, watching Flora and thinking yup, I know why she does that. The twenty year old Lakshmi in Bangalore knew that feeling too well. The headiness of being your own person for the first time, the lure of the big city without the seeming constraints of archaic notions on morality, a budding awareness of the body and sexuality. The list is endless. Flawed relationships, red flags, power imbalances, an implicit understanding of who gets blamed when things don’t work out. This audience knows all of it. There is empathy here as well as a thirst.
The intimate scenes in this show work and work exceptionally well because it is not just the act of kissing or hugging. It is the camera placement, the lingering on the pause before action, the hand placement, the music, the silence that speaks volumes, the eyebrow raises that have a fandom all their own. Tsai Jia-yin prepared references for close to fifty scenes with physical contact, moved a wall kiss so Flora was not boxed in, and respected Sun Qian’s ask that none of it be shot for the male gaze. It shows. The use of an intimacy coordinator who has done her work, and actors who have put in the work to understand the character and have the life experience to make it feel real.
The wardrobe. For the first time in ages, I got to see a show about a creative agency helmed by a man who understands the job, the sensibilities of what it means to be a creative. The aesthetics of the show, the props, the home, the wardrobe. Everything about it stood out for me.
As a writer, this show was a fantastic experience in seeing how words on paper morph and shrink when they get transmuted to screen. It also sent me back to my own two women. Amaya in A Star Keeps Its Distance had stopped letting herself ask for what she wanted. A hyper independent woman learning to permit vulnerability. Sound familiar? Mithra in Pearls on Marble has spent her life standing on her own, and the man she loves thinks there is no problem that money cannot solve. Sound familiar? Both of them end up doing what Flora never does on screen. Amaya asks. Mithra negotiates consent to help. Signed copies of both available.
Overall, if it is not clear already, I loved this show. I will rewatch it for sure. You should too.
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