I finished the finale yesterday and I'm still kind of mad about it, so I'm making a thread instead of yelling in the episode comments for the fifth time.

Quick context so you know where I'm coming from: I'm married to the only serious partner I've ever had (9+ years already), so yeah, I'm biased toward "one love" stories. But that's honestly not my main issue. I don't need every drama to end with a wedding. I've loved plenty of shows with sad or open endings. What bugs me is how badly this one was told, start to finish.

The kiss vs. everything after it

The drunk kiss in ep 5? I could've let that go. She was at rock bottom, her career was gone, she'd been secretly paying off Namgung's mom for two years, she was drunk. People break. What I couldn't get past was everything after. She told him nothing happened and even showed him a video of the office as "proof," and once she actually remembered the kiss, she kept it from him. And the way he found out was so cruel. Through the recorder pen SHE gave him to collect evidence against his mom. That should've been the moment the show made her face it. Instead she kept getting pulled back toward Tae-seung, even before the whole "month" started.

The show leaned on her depression to explain all of it, and I get that the depression was real. But explaining something isn't the same as owning it. In 14 episodes she never really says "the depression was real, but the choices with Tae-seung were mine and I hurt you." She apologizes for her dad, she takes all the blame in that hug in ep 13, but it's always vague. So no matter how it ended, it was never going to feel earned to me.

That line in ep 8

When she goes to Tae-seung to start the month, she basically tells him that if she had to choose who to sleep with she'd pick him, but if she had to choose who to save it'd be Namgung. I genuinely can't believe that made it into a KBS drama. It reduces Tae-seung to a body and Namgung to a backup plan. And then the show doesn't even follow through. She never sleeps with Tae-seung, turns down his kiss at the end of ep 11 because she feels guilty about Namgung, and keeps circling back to Namgung the whole month. So why have her say it at all? It felt like shock value and nothing else. Same with her threatening to sexually harass Tae-seung's colleague "in one minute" in ep 10, which got the show torn apart in the Korean press for good reason.

The "month of dating other people"

People keep calling this an open relationship and it really isn't. Open relationships are something two people agree on upfront, with rules, as a way of being together long term. This was "we were on a break," set up three months AFTER she'd already crossed the line, as a way to sort out feelings she'd already acted on. Mi-do even admits she was using Tae-seung so Namgung would see other women and she'd get hurt too, so things would be "even." That's not exploring a relationship, that's self-punishment with extra steps.

And Su-a and Tae-seung got dragged in as test subjects. Tae-seung says outright that he only knows two ways to win someone over, guilt or pain. Su-a tells Namgung he's her first love, and when she offers to prove it by going to a hotel with him, he goes along just to lecture her for it. By ep 13 she's saying she'll stay by his side even if he marries Mi-do, which completely undid her character for me. Neither of them got treated like full people. In the finale Tae-seung isn't even on screen, he's just a voice telling Mi-do's family they're dating.

Namgung deserved better writing

Thirteen episodes of "I'll wait," "go to him," cleaning up everyone's mess, and the nicest thing the show says about him is that he's a "happy pushover." From the woman who cheated on him. His "I've never been happy for a single moment" breakdown in ep 13 hit hard, but the show mostly explains it with his guilt over her dad and never really unpacks it.

The one scene I thought was genuinely great was the mudflat fight in ep 8, where he admits part of him pushed her toward Tae-seung just to hurt her, and she tells him he should've said "let's work through this together" instead. That was the most honest they ever were, and it was right there. The show basically wrote its own better ending in ep 8 and then ignored it.

Everything important showed up way too late

Her dad drowning while saving him is revealed in ep 10. That's the foundation of their entire relationship and we find out with four episodes left. And then in the FINALE we learn they both had other people before they got together. She went on a trip with another guy instead of meeting him when he got out of the army, and the night she turned him down on her 22nd birthday he went to a motel with another girl and started dating her. And it's all played as a cute "honesty day" game with forehead flicks.

If we'd known all that from episode 1, this could have been a really strong story about two people stuck in a relationship built on guilt and trying to get out. Instead it felt like the show kept rewriting what it was about, and those last-minute reveals mostly made the cheating feel smaller.

What happened to Mi-do's actual life?

Her whole depression came from her film career collapsing. The first episodes set it up so clearly: the settlement, the adult film contracts, the assistant director who mocked her. Everything seemed to be building toward her finding her way back as a director. Instead she gives up directing in ep 9, takes a company job, and we never see her direct again. Meanwhile we got how many hours of sweet potato fraud?? "No love other than potato" is honestly the best title this show has.

The ending

On paper it's "both of them bloom in their own spring." The flower pot, the drawing of middle school Mi-do he left in the comic book, her monologue about first snow and spring. I get what they were going for.

But look at where everyone actually lands. Namgung gets a girl who chose him without any guilt baggage, two years at the Paris branch, and finally some distance from a family whose mother once blamed a 7 year old for her husband's death. Mi-do gets the guy she cheated with, a relationship that started as a betrayal, no career that we ever see, and her final scene is her crying over Namgung's drawing.

So which is it? Did the show quietly punish the person who cheated, or does it genuinely think that's a happy ending for her? I can't tell, and I don't think the writer could either. And if Mi-do chose Tae-seung because she loves him, why is grief her last emotion in the entire show?

Also the leads spent fourteen episodes saying they'd basically die for each other and then cut each other out of their lives completely, him cutting off her whole family included. That's a huge swing and we barely get any explanation for it.

To be fair

The beach scene with the drowning kid was beautiful. Turning that childhood tragedy from a curse into a "miracle" was the one moment where the writing matched the acting. And the acting was great all around. Seo Kang-joon especially, but Ahn Eun-jin did what she could with a character who's really hard to root for, and Lee Joo-ahn and Jo A-ram both deserve better scripts.

Anyway

I watched every single episode, mostly to see how much worse it could get. Pure ragebait. Judging by the ratings (it dropped to 1.6% the week before the finale) and every comment section I've seen, I'm not the only one.

So what did you all think?

• Did either new couple actually work for you?

• What was Mi-do crying about in that last scene? Regret, grief, or just letting go?

• If you liked the ending, I genuinely want to hear why. I'm struggling to see it.

(Also, TVING apparently has Love Virus coming next year with almost the same "take a break before the wedding" setup. Are you more curious now, or completely done with this premise?)