I was afraid that she would be ridiculed or turned into a jealous harpy. She wasn't and she had an opportunity to come to terms with the fact that Zhao Yunlan would never return her feelings and get closure.

Yes, there are so many ways this whole scenario could have gone terribly wrong, but the script respects Zhu Hong enough to not do that, and I really love that. :D

The parallel is so great! They can't make Weilan explicitly romantic (no matter how undeniable the subtext is), but they use that parallel and Zhu Hong's feelings to make it as textual as they possibly can. :D