eighthsense

Moral math is not mathing.
I’m Toh’s attorney and let’s get this out of the way first: did my client embarrass himself? Yes. Was loving Jimmy a humiliation ritual? Also yes. But does that make Toh a villain? Absolutely not. I understand the frustration with Toh’s character, however I do not understand the grace given to other characters while holding Toh at much higher standard of emotional restraint than others. I cannot believe people are more frustrated with Toh’s actions than with Jimmy for exploiting, manipulating and lying to everyone and their grandmother’s pet dog.
What’s exhausting about the discourse is how quickly people somersault into blaming the wronged party because it’s easier to dunk on a naïve character than to hold a charming liar accountable. Stupidity is not a moral crime but cheating, manipulating, lying is. I cannot comprehend how the blame shifts or lessens on the actual morally bankrupt playboy to the person getting deceived because they decided to fall blindly in love.


In defense of the gentle ones: Understanding Toh.
Flawed decisions in love do not erase a person’s right to empathy or justice. There’s a disturbing tendency in fandom spaces to treat characters who suffer visibly as if they somehow “earned” that suffering. The logic goes: you saw the red flags, you ignored them, therefore whatever happens next is on you. That mindset conveniently absolves the person who actually chose to lie, manipulate, and cheat. Toh’s real setback isn’t kindness, it’s hope. The belief that consistency will eventually be reciprocated if he’s patient enough. That belief doesn’t make him weak, it makes him human. That vulnerability is exactly what people seem most eager to punish. The tragedy is not that Toh loves deeply, it’s that he loves someone who uses that depth against him. By framing Toh’s humiliation as something he “deserved,” the narrative some people push ends up doing something far uglier…. it turns kindness into a liability and trust into a joke. It suggests that unless a character is perfectly rational, emotionally guarded, and self protective at all times, they forfeit the right to sympathy.
It irks me how Toh’s kindness gets reframed as a character flaw rather than what it actually is: a personality trait that other people exploit. Gentleness is not stupidity and emotional openness is not moral failure. Toh isn’t “wrong” because he’s soft, he’s wrong because he keeps extending grace to someone who repeatedly proves undeserving of it. That distinction matters. Being kind does not make him responsible for the harm inflicted on him, it only explains why he stays longer than he should. A lot of the hate Toh receives stems from a deeply ingrained discomfort with characters who don’t perform emotional hardness. People are far more forgiving of characters who are cold, detached, or even cruel, as long as they appear “self aware.” Meanwhile, a character who leads with empathy is expected to magically grow a backbone the moment things go south and if they don’t, they’re treated as complicit in their own mistreatment.
What I mean to say is people should be more furious with Jimmy for taking advantage of Toh when he is naive and kind rather than being angry at Toh for being vulnerable. Instead of asking why Jimmy is comfortable benefiting from Toh’s affection while offering none of the stability that affection requires, the conversation shifts to why Toh “should’ve known better.” Yes, he should have. But knowing better does not equal deserving worse. This idea that victims must behave perfectly to deserve compassion is toxic. Toh doesn’t stop being wronged just because he makes bad decisions. Pain doesn’t become invalid because someone “should’ve known better.” Expecting victims to be rational, detached, and emotionally disciplined at all times is an unrealistic standard we rarely apply in real life, yet people demand it mercilessly from fictional characters they find annoying. You can acknowledge Toh’s mistakes without minimising Jimmy’s wrongdoing. You can criticise Toh’s choices without rewriting the narrative to make him responsible for being deceived.
Reducing Toh to “stupid” or “pathetic” ignores the more uncomfortable truth: many people see parts of themselves in him.
And it’s easier to mock a reflection than to sit with it.


The Playboy Immunity Clause
There’s this bizarre expectation that Toh should have perfect emotional discipline simply because Jimmy has a reputation. As if knowing someone is a playboy automatically immunises you from developing feelings, or obligates you to shut your heart off on command. People don’t fall in love because it’s sensible. They fall in love because it feels safe, hopeful, or validating in the moment, even when it isn’t. You can ask all the logical questions: Why get involved when everyone warned you? Why give him another chance? Why ignore what’s right in front of you?
All valid and fair but logic does not govern the heart. Infatuation may be foolish but cheating is a choice and these two things are not, and will never be, morally equivalent.
Why is Toh expected to walk away perfectly, regulate his emotions flawlessly, make the “right” decision every time while Jimmy is tolerated to lie repeatedly, blur boundaries, cheat, string people along…because “he’s a playboy” or “that’s just who he is”?
Lowering expectations for Jimmy while raising them for Toh is so biased. Being openly morally questionable does not entitle someone to gentler judgment. If anything, the person with less power in the situation deserves more understanding, not less. Jimmy’s “playboy” label is treated like a get out of jail free card. Somehow, people shrug and say: “Well, that’s just who he is.” If you can give grace or justify jimmy’s actions, I don’t know how some people are being so dense with Toh’s actions. It’s not rocket science to understand why he is giving jimmy, a chance.

If anyone is thinking that “He didn’t make it official”, “Jimmy never said he loved him”, “There was no commitment.”, I need you to understand this clearly: a lack of labels does not equal a lack of responsibility. Jimmy may not have made things official with Toh, but he still created emotional dependency. He still encouraged intimacy, allowed attachment to grow, and continued to keep Toh close while knowing full well that Toh was emotionally invested. If you knowingly let someone fall for you, continue to blur boundaries, and then act shocked when they expect honesty or consistency, you are not “technically innocent.” You are being deliberately evasive. Jimmy benefits from ambiguity. Ambiguity gives him freedom without accountability. By refusing to define the relationship, Jimmy keeps his options open while keeping Toh emotionally tethered. Toh gets confusion, anxiety, and insecurity while Jimmy gets affection, loyalty, and access without having to offer the same in return. That imbalance matters. People act like harm only exists once a relationship is formally named, but emotional exploitation doesn’t wait for official status. Jimmy knew Toh’s feelings and expectations but he continued anyway. You don’t need to promise love to owe someone basic honesty. You don’t need a title to be accountable for the emotional mess you create.
Some people try to give Jimmy “credit” for refusing to sleep with his ex. Sure, one good decision but that does not erase the months of lies, manipulation, and emotional exploitation he’s inflicted on Toh. A single act of restraint does not reset the moral scoreboard. Jimmy’s occasional acts of decency are actually part of why he’s so effective at manipulation, they give Toh false hope and make us confuse sporadic kindness with overall goodness.


The Selective Accountability Olympics.
Toh is constantly put on trial for every bad decision he makes, while Jimmy is treated like a force of nature, unfortunate, inevitable, and therefore excusable. Toh is not blameless, he makes choices that are frustrating, self destructive, and avoidable. He gets involved with Jimmy despite repeated warnings, he ignores his brother’s concerns, he lies to his brother’s face to protect a relationship that isn’t even stable. These are valid criticisms, there is no argument there. But criticism is not the same as condemnation.
What’s happening instead is that Toh’s mistakes are being used to absolve Jimmy of responsibility, as if one person’s poor judgment automatically cancels out another person’s wrongdoing. That logic is deeply flawed. Toh’s emotional weakness and Jimmy’s intentional harm are not morally equivalent. Jimmy’s actions are deliberate: he lies, withholds truth, cheats, and manipulates situations to maintain access to multiple people without accountability. Accountability doesn’t mean everyone gets blamed equally. It means blame is assigned proportionally. How is everyone placing the heaviest burden on the person who is being wronged rather than the one doing the wrong. This is just scapegoating.


Infatuation vs Deliberate Harm
One thing this discourse keeps refusing to acknowledge is the fundamental difference between emotional irrationality and deliberate harm. Toh’s biggest “crime” is infatuation. Infatuation is not logical. It makes people override common sense, dismiss warnings, and cling to hope long after it stops being reasonable. That doesn’t make it admirable, but it makes it human. But they exist in an entirely different moral category than what Jimmy is doing.
Cheating is not a misunderstanding. Manipulation is not an accident. Stringing someone along while keeping multiple options open requires awareness, planning, and repeated choices. Jimmy knows Toh is emotionally invested. He knows Toh is vulnerable. And instead of creating distance or being honest, he continues to benefit from that attachment while offering nothing solid in return. What’s especially frustrating is how people collapse these two behaviors into the same level of wrongdoing, as if “making bad choices in love” and “actively deceiving someone” cancel each other out.


Burn this script.
Script doing mental gymnastics to downplay Jimmy’s action is diabolical. Framing Toh as easily exploitable, jealous, insecure when he is just responding to suspicious situations that Jimmy created is malicious. Not them trying to justify a pattern of infidelity and emotional harm while shaming the person who actually trusted and loved.
Jimmy’s ex saying “I should have been more patient, at least you didn’t physically harm me” is an insane moral calculus. The argument assumes cheating is somehow acceptable if it isn’t physically violent. Emotional harm is still harm. Being cheated on is betrayal, plain and simple. It implies that victims of manipulation are responsible for enduring bad behavior. If someone cheats, the onus isn’t on the partner to be patient, the responsibility is on the cheater.
I don’t have a problem with angst or messy plots. I do have a problem with badly done messy plots. There’s a difference between emotional chaos that feels earned and emotional chaos that feels like ragebait dressed up as “realism.” Messy plots already demand emotional labor but when the mess is poorly executed, it stops being compelling and starts feeling like intentional provocation. Burnout Syndrome is extremely messy. The characters are morally complicated, their decisions are questionable, and their relationships are tangled. But it works because the production, acting, and writing are doing the heavy lifting. The characters feel complex and their choices feel like extensions of who they are. The mess comes from psychology and circumstance, not because the script needs a shock factor every episode. That’s why the production, acting direction, film score matters so much when the plot itself is chaotic. In Love Alert, the characters often feel shallow, not because they couldn’t have depth, but because the script doesn’t bother to give them any. They behave the way they do because the plot demands it, not because their inner lives logically lead them there. You can’t just stitch together emotional beats and call it storytelling. Take Love Mechanics as another example. The plot was undeniably messy…..cheating, poor decisions, emotional selfishness but the execution carried it. The scenes flowed naturally, the emotional escalation made sense, and the criticism toward War’s character was earned. He made foolish, selfish choices while actively justifying cheating, and the narrative treated that seriously. The angst was purposeful. That’s the key difference is well executed angst feels heavy, not hollow. The frustrating part in Love Alert is that the concept on paper is genuinely intriguing. There is a good story buried in here somewhere. But the execution falls embarrassingly short. Scenes don’t flow into each other, emotional beats don’t land, and the overall viewing experience feels disjointed.
Now, about the acting. Yes, it’s a little awkward. And that awkwardness is amplified by how uncinematic the show looks. The framing is flat and the scenes don’t flow. Even decent performances would struggle in this kind of visual environment. I will always have grace for actors who are still improving. Acting is a skill. There is always room to grow. I’m not gonna go heavy on criticising actors. I have seen people disguising shallow insults as criticism. Dragging actors’ looks is not critique, it’s lazy, and it contributes nothing. The one undeniable saving grace? The face cards, they never decline but a strong visual cast can only carry a show so far. At the end of the day, no amount of pretty can compensate for weak direction, tonal whiplash, and characters written like emotional placeholders instead of people.


Cheating is not a love language.
Representation is not desensitisation, showing flawed characters, messy relationships, or complex love triangles is not inherently bad. Romanticism of cheating and people defending it proves how desensitised cheating has become. Media consistently romanticises cheating, excuses manipulators, and punishes the emotionally invested, it desensitises audiences to betrayal. When I say “romanticism”, I’m talking about people completely disregarding the victim’s feelings and finding cheating as hot. Evidently seen so in Love in the moonlight and Shine BL dramas. People were hating on female leads for reacting to being cheated on rather than two men cheating on their significant others. They found affairs hot and hated on everyone who didn’t. That is the desensitisation I’m referring to.
Cheating has become normalised, romanticised, and morally diluted. Emotional betrayal is treated as a minor inconvenience, a plot twist, or even a badge of passion. Cheating is cheating, whether it’s physical, emotional, or manipulative. Yet somehow, narratives repeatedly convince audiences that it’s acceptable if the cheater is charming, attractive, or already labeled a “playboy.” The more shocking part? People often empathise with the cheater’s struggle while blaming the victim for trusting, loving, or hoping for loyalty. The moral message becomes insidious, if you want a healthy relationship, you’re unreasonable and if you tolerate betrayal, you’re mature. Fans internalise this, shrugging at repeated betrayal and labeling victims as foolish for expecting basic honesty. This risks glorifying betrayal and normalising manipulation as a core component of romance. Cheating should never be romanticised. Emotional harm should never be minimised. And the moral responsibility of a manipulator should never be lessened because they’re “charming” or “complex.”

I have answered some questions you might be typing in a comment below since this review is so long.