Reel Tastes & Travels – a light dose of entertainment to wake you up

Ski into Love is a relatively new C-drama that I happened across. The synopsis mentions a blossoming romance between a disgraced cartoonist, Wei Zhi, and a snowboarding coach, Shan Chong. Sounds like a fairly fun and light-hearted watch with just enough of a dash of drama to keep it interesting. And so far the first 2 episodes delivered on that promise.

We first meet Wei Zhi and the drama quickly shows us her key personality traits (and why we should be rooting for her as the female lead). She is the creator of an immensely popular manga and we meet her as she pulls an all-nighter to get the next edition of the manga out. So right off the bat, we know that she’s talented and hardworking. Her hard work seems to be paying off when her publisher, Tiger Comics, invites her for a dinner meeting with a big media company looking to adapt her manga. However, when they suggest some drastic changes to the comic as part of the deal, she immediately tries to put her foot down, highlighting her integrity and unwillingness to sell out for money. Unfortunately, her publishers isn’t quite on the same page but before this can play out, a much bigger issue crops up – a scandal has broken on social media about Wei Zhi (under the penname Zhao) using AI to generate part of the images for the comic. Of course, given what we’ve been shown so far, she couldn’t have done this but unfortunately she has already been tried and pronounced guilty in the court of popular opinion.

This is when her publisher reveals his true colours and we get our first (main?) villain of the show. He first suggests pinning the blame on Wei Zhi’s assistant. But when she refuses to throw her under the bus (there’s that integrity again!), he turns on her and informs her that the copyright to her work, and even her pen name Zhai, belongs to Tiger Comics and promptly fires her and forces her to close her studio. People, this is why you should always read the fine print on the contract before signing! Although considering that this was probably her first big break, it is somewhat understandable that she may have either not fully understood what she was signing away, or did not consider it very important at the time as she would not have imagined this kind of scenario coming up.

She disbands her team but does set up a stall selling ‘fan-made’ art of her manga at the comic con while she tries to figure out what to do next.  Only to find out her assistant (the very same one she defended) is now masquerading as Zhai. Her friend, Jiang, is outraged on her behalf and looks ready to storm the stage. But Wei Zhi is still trying to give her the benefit of the doubt and believes she may have been coerced. From her conflicted expression when she sees Wei Zhi, I was lulled into thinking that might actually be true but then she told on Wei Zhi and got her stall shut down. So villain camp it is for her. At the very least she does not appear to be an unwilling participant in Tiger Comics’ schemes.

Meanwhile, what of the male lead? Chong gets a suitably heroic intro showing off his snowboarding skills and rescuing a child from getting hurt in the bargain. He then proceeds to have a series of meet-cutes with Wei Zhi. Though can it really be called a meet cute if one of the participants doesn’t realize she’s meeting the same person again and again? First, she rescues him when he’s in a mascot costume from a pair of misbehaving kids, piquing his interest. Then they meet at the comic con (where he’s wearing a mask of course so that she won’t recognize him later on) where he gets ‘fan-art’ from her for his friend and where he buys her old drawing tablet.

The comic con has one last vital role to play – Wei Zhi sees a video playing of a national team snowboarder and gets inspired to create her next comic around snowboarding. Even more importantly, she and Jiang decide to go to a resort and learn snowboarding as research for the comic. We also see Chong looking wistfully at the video. Why do I feel convinced that it is actually a video of him and that he used to be a champion athlete who dropped out due to some mysterious/tragic incident? (Spoiler alert – his flashbacks at the end of episode 2 pretty much confirms this and shows glimpses of a major accident that effectively ended his athletic career).

At the resort, as fate would have it, Chong ends up as Wei Zhi’s instructor. And she is… terrible. She has no balance, tires easily and is altogether a tad whiny. Perhaps a gentler instructor might still have coaxed a better performance out of her. But Chong, who is used to training professionals, is not that person. They both leave a bit disgruntled – Chong perhaps a bit let down that he was unable to make any progress with Wei Zhi (though not sure how he thought his super strict coach persona would manage that), and Wei Zhi ready to quit.

A chance encounter with the pro snowboarder from the earlier video where he gives Wei Zhi his glass cloth to help clean up after a water mishap, re-inspires her and she goes back to the lessons the next day with renewed energy (side not: is the wristband he’s wearing really so unique that she can identify him as the athlete from the video solely based on that?). Of course, in grand romcom tradition, the good Samaritan is again Chong. And of course, Wei Zhi is somehow outside without her contacts and hence is unable to make out his features. Which leads to a hilarious sequence the next day where Chong exasperatedly waits for some sign of recognition from her, finally resorting to covering his face (to approximate the mask he was wearing ) and staring into her eyes. Alas, all to no avail as she remains totally oblivious.

Despite his frustration, the class actually goes a bit better than the previous day. And we see later that despite his gruff exterior, he is warming up to her and even gets her the equipment she desired.

First impressions – a frothy, feel-good series perfect for a light watch.

Stray Musings

• Is Wei Zhi’s friend, Jiang actually wearing a pair of jeans as a top at the comic con? Certainly memorable though perhaps a bit more eccentric than her character appears to be in the rest of the two episodes
• After serving as the initial catalyst for the show, Tiger Comics largely goes silent except to crop up at the end to push Wei Zhi’s assistant to enter a sports themed comic competition. Judging by her unhappy expression, her backstabbing turn is not working out too well for her. I would guess this is primarily there to set up a future confrontation at the competition when Wei Zhi unveils her snowboarding inspired work.