There is an intriguing mismatch at the heart of The Early Spring. Shang Zhitao (Sun Qian) takes almost everything literally, while Luan Nian (Jing Boran) seems incapable of saying exactly what he means. This incompatibility gives Netflix’s new C-drama its best moments across its first four episodes, building a romance that is convincing less because of major plot developments than through looks, teasing, and small gestures of care. The series is a workplace romance starring Jing Boran and Sun Qian.
This is an especially important choice because Luan Nian does not make a good first impression. An experienced executive at a major advertising company, he practically dismisses Zhitao before the young woman can even finish her interview.
Her lack of experience is enough for him to decide that the candidate probably will not last long there. When she finally gets the job thanks to the persistence of other professionals, Luan Nian continues to treat her departure as only a matter of time.
Zhitao could have existed merely as an endearing counterpoint to the cold man, but Sun Qian finds something more interesting in the character. Her naivety does not come with passivity.
She takes on too many tasks, tries to please her colleagues, and still does not fully understand the unspoken rules of a competitive workplace, but there is a quiet stubbornness in the way she keeps moving forward. When Luan Nian suggests she find another job, she listens. She just does not leave.
That persistence matters because The Early Spring does not give its heroine some miraculous skill that quickly proves everyone wrong. Zhitao makes mistakes, learns, and improves. On a business trip, her initiative helps the team reach a director essential to closing a deal. Later, when she starts facing vague demands and endless revisions, Luan Nian teaches her to document everything and use records as a form of professional protection.
The shift may seem small, but it is probably the most significant one for understanding Jing Boran’s character. The man who initially did not consider Zhitao worthy of guidance begins teaching her.
Luan Nian remains harsh and deliberately difficult, but the script gradually shows there is real capability behind his arrogance. He understands negotiations, spots conflicts of interest before others do, and, above all, begins to recognize that the employee he judged so quickly deserves a second look.
This is where Jing Boran and Sun Qian’s chemistry finds its best rhythm. He plays Luan Nian with restraint, letting subtle changes slip through a look or a smile that fades too quickly; she has Zhitao respond with an almost disarming sincerity.
When he tries to lend her his coat because she is cold, she assumes she is simply meant to hold it. When Luan Nian explains that telling a man she is single could sound like an invitation, Zhitao immediately asks whether the same rule applies to him.
She is not trying to beat him. It is precisely because she does not see the game that she can dismantle it.
The problem appears when the series seems to stop trusting that simplicity. In the third episode, a trip to the countryside ends in rain, a landslide, and a life-or-death situation.
Soon after, Luan Nian’s romantic past returns in the form of an emotionally unstable ex-girlfriend and a confrontation involving a knife. For a relationship that had been progressing so well through small changes, these are dramatic shortcuts that are too big and too close together.
At least the landslide avoids turning Zhitao into someone waiting to be rescued. Luan Nian goes out to look for her, but she is the one who appears when he becomes trapped in the car and helps break the window to get him out.
The two save each other, and the experience creates an intimacy that would have been difficult to achieve under ordinary circumstances. It works emotionally; it is simply hard not to see the script pushing the leads closer together.
Curiously, the best result of this sequence comes after the danger has passed. At the hospital, Luan Nian watches Zhitao sleep and realizes she is still reacting to the fear she experienced hours earlier.
He takes care of her when no one is watching. Later, he remembers that, during the accident, Zhitao had spoken about wanting to eat the fish prepared by her father again, and he takes her fishing.
He does not explain his choice. He does not turn the memory into a declaration. He simply does it.
It is probably the most romantic gesture of the first four episodes, precisely because The Early Spring resists the temptation to underline it.
The fourth episode makes that interest harder to hide. At a bar, Luan Nian finds Zhitao drinking with another man and, after initially turning down his friends’ invitation to sing, changes his mind when he sees her.
Across the room, Zhitao is mesmerized by his performance. For the first time, she seems to look at her boss without the filter of work standing between them.
Jealousy finishes the job when Luan Nian realizes that she, already drunk, is about to leave with someone. He intervenes and introduces Zhitao as his girlfriend. Concern for her safety provides a convenient excuse, but not enough to hide what the series has already been suggesting.
When he takes her home, he still has to listen to an unfiltered Zhitao suggest that, in other times, saving someone’s life would have been enough reason to marry that person.
It is an openly romantic scene, but it comes after four episodes in which the relationship has gained enough context to support it.
The Early Spring works best when it remembers that it does not need to do too much. Jing Boran and Sun Qian already carry the series through pauses, barbed responses, and the nearly imperceptible transformation of two people who begin by misjudging each other and end up paying far too much attention to one another. The professional setting also gives Zhitao her own arc, which is essential to keeping her growth from being reduced to winning over her boss.
Melodrama still threatens to throw that balance off. In just four episodes, the series has already put its leads through a natural disaster, hospitalizations, and an extreme situation involving an ex. If it keeps raising the stakes whenever it needs to move the characters forward emotionally, it may end up wasting the very thing it does best.
For now, however, Jing Boran and Sun Qian are good enough to make the clichés feel less worn out. The Early Spring does not need Shang Zhitao and Luan Nian to be at death’s door to convince viewers that something is happening between them. A misinterpreted coat, advice given at the office, or a dish he remembered she wanted to eat say much more.
Four episodes are still too few to know how far this balance can hold. They are enough, however, to make one thing certain: when The Early Spring lowers its voice and allows its leads to simply share the same space, the romance no longer needs any push from the script to work.