Tia22

No one can do villainess more thoroughly than Im Ji Yeon.

your comment is not a spoiler

not sure what your response is about. Also not sure why you didn't answer my question.

so? did that stop him acting or stop millions of people enjoying his work?

Let me honest. As a Christian, I instantly saw and see your point and it is 100% valid. I simply couldn't argue with it even though I thoroughly enjoyed this drama. The messaging is indeed mostly problematic. I recently struggled when I watched Queen Mantis. It really was a terrible show and I made a comment similar to what you gave above to Dear X lol. Bless you.

I up voted your comment even though I have an opposite angled review for the show. I completely agree with you that everyone is crazy and it is dark and sick.
However, watching it, I genuinely believe the show and the intentional directing did one thing correctly. They portrayed APD correctly. For the audience we gradually snap out of our beauty induced complacency to Ah Jin's behaviours. The show is good at snapping us out of it when we realised just how horrible a person without empathy really is. No matter how beautiful she was, we were able to see her by the mid point as the horror she really is.

What i mean is that the show sends a correct message to people that psychopaths are really just that. No matter how much they pretend, the best way to deal with them is to avoid them, and run away from them because like Ah Jin a pretty one, they can be like gold box packed with disease.

I think that is good messaging. Where I would have been concerned is if they actually tried to make her seem genuinely kind and loving or empathetic like some shows do. here they kept the messaging consistent. We keep hoping she will change. We try to excuse her behaviours like her simps but soon it slaps us in the face that this one is hopeless and we shouldn't have bothered.

In real life, many people are being used by narcissists and sociopaths. Many are dating them or married to them and in this vicious cycle. The funny thing is that I could see that this happens in real life even from many viewers comments. They root for Ah Jin. They think she is cool for controlling men. They praise her, and are 'in love' with her.

this show created two types of commenters. The former explained above and those like me who likes the acting but hates the character and gets the messaging. I was not expecting her to end well because in real life, people like her should not end well lol.

You are so right as well that there is no romance because Baek Ah Jin is actually incapable of it. When people complained that they didn't expect that end, I wondered what end anyone would expect a normal flowery sunset and kisses ending from a female lead that is already not normal lol. In the manhwa she literally raped Jun Seo 😂😂...i like that director just stayed away from that dubious line and created his own ending for the kdrama lol. It would have been an even more slippery slope 😂

Do you know the character that I wish I can slap till date? it if Yeon Jin the villain in The Glory. Her smile, her mannerisms, her voice...everything was just gradually becoming too annoying to bear. She truly is a talent.

Your review cracked me up as I read through it lol. It should probably get a higher score given how passionately you hated the FL 😂😂😂. I agree that what this show correctly does is actually correctly portray a sociopath. Nothing romantic about a genuinely crazy person. She was like a gold covered box of disease and her simps love gold packaging apparently. Thanks for the review. It cracked me up.

Agreed

you are right. The term 'unreliable narrator' was indeed the point of contention. The word 'reliable' beside 'Jun Seo' just comes off the screen as an oxymoron lol. I get what you mean now. While he is indeed totally compromised, definitely complicit and actually dangerous, he was a 'reliable narrator' in the sense you are explaining most of the time. Where I question his narration is that if the whole show was being narrated by Jun Seo including that first scene where she is declared a psychopath, then we cannot be sure as Jun Seo is not a psychologist. However, I am just having fun with this. Everyone has their own view. You don't have to force me to agree with you and I do not have to force you to accept my view either. Just a fun convo. The show was truly enjoyable for me though I do not see any positive messaging besides stay away from crazy people 😂😂

I get a lot of your points here and agree with most but i disagree that Ah Jin is capable of any character development. This is because she has APD. I feel she may be more of a psychopath than a sociopath given all the traits displayed in the movie. This is almost an incurable mental disorder. it is like expecting a psychopath to suddenly start having enough empathy to change. In real life, the only example I know of a change in an actually diagnosed psychopath is David Wood who actually almost killed his dad, ended up in prison, and found Jesus in prison. Since leaving prison almost 3 decades later, has been a changed personality who has no records of repeating his former crimes of armed robbery, arson, murder etc that naturally follows people like him or Ah Jin in this case. David even as a Christian apologist is still a diagnosed psychopath who still barely has any deep emotions or empathy to talk about. He says he changed because he decided to let Jesus's thoughts on right and wrong navigate his life. So it is like a measurement of what to do, when to do it, what to not do because the Bible says xyz, and so he is now a person even more compassionate than normal people.

All this goes to explain that medically, Ah Jin was and remains incapable of a character development. Perhaps a spiritual change like David Wood but not a character change if that makes sense. Even in the Manhwa it doesn't end well realistically.

Have you heard of a psychopath that actually turned around and changed?
The show does an excellent job of depicting that no matter how beautiful and alluring these people are, they cannot change. They lack empathy. You can feel the unchanging chill form start to finish in Ah Jin like a wake up call.

I agree on a lot but I will disagree that Jun Seo is a reliable narrator. He is first of all incapable of being objective or reliable because he is the number one most used character in Ah Jin's world. He also met her young so we can't trace just how twisted his mindset had to be to reach the state we meet them in high school. We got glimpses of her gaslighting when she was still just a little kid. She even fell off the building intentionally to scar him. Second, in the midst of this twisted history with her, he is obsessively in love with her. He has a hero complex for a long time. He is like his book was titled, the Accomplice Y. He was always ready to clean up her crimes which in reality is actually illegal. If for instance she murdered that stalker, him throwing away the weapon, cleaning up and hiding evidence is a crime. He becomes a battery to murder. Lastly, he actually tries to directly kill her by playing God over her life. As crazy as she is, no one actually tried to literally kill her besides her abusive dad. Jun Seo was premeditated and completely intentional. I found is poetic justice that she once again like weed could not be killed off. Jun Seo after Ah Jin, is the most twisted in my opinion. Everyone else was likely already at their own level of crazy like her rivals and husband or they were just casualty like grandma and Jae woo. I wonder if you can see my point. I loved the show. It got me pondering a lot about how horrid APD really is. It is all fun and games in a movie but Ah Jin is not the type of person anyone should meet in real life. She is a literal disaster. Like a disease that rots everything in its path.

'love of her life' that she left to die in the crash 😂😂😂😂 so much for the love of her life lol

Jae oh and Ah Jin was such an impossibility even if she was mildly normal.

I am not offended. I am just trying to figure out how it is possible in this universe for a vindictive and actually horrible villain by all rights and purposes who neveer did one thing for others gets a happy ending. She reached the level to meet someone exactly like Doo Hyuk who read her greed and selfishness like a book and used it against her. The opponent just got tougher.

By the way, i love the character for what she is. Unpretentious and savage but i won't at all delude myself into thinking that someone like that deserves a happy ending. If i knew her in real life, i would avoid her like the plague because such person is a disease and a disaster.

How so? what ending did you expect out of a sociopath/psychopath? a rosy, warm, sunset and kisses ending? 😂 how can an abnormal lead get a normal ending? if her style of getting people killed could be tracked legally and directly associated, she would be a serial killer. No amount of beauty changes the fact that one way or the other 6 people close to or around her died. 6!

You can propose how you feel it would have ended better also considering that the source material also didn't end well for the same reason. The FL is not at all normal, warm, or romantic.

Exactly! The show did a good job of waking the viewers up often from our Ah Jin beauty induced states. No amount of beauty she has could make us not notice how much death follows her. She is like a gold package that when touched gives disease. The show did well with this.

If they ended with her getting a whole sunset and roses and kisses ending I would have puked lol. How can a normal ending be gotten from an abnormal group of characters? 😂

not at all. The manhwa is long and they needed to stop at some point. I feel they did the manhwa justice actually. ALso, Ah Jin is not normal so a normal ending would have been ridiculous. I loved this ending.

You are right. Reading through comments and having people say 'we love Ah Jin', 'she is a bitch but i love her' (viki viewing comments) makes me realise that in real life people stay falling in love with sociopaths and psychopaths especially the good looking ones and getting destroyed for it. It is somehow sad and scary. We the viewers should enjoy her depiction but just observe the chaos that comes with APD types.
The show did a good job of waking the viewers up often from our Ah Jin beauty induced states. No amount of beauty she has could make us not notice how much death follows her. She is like a gold package that when touched gives disease. The show did well with this.