Anastasia Orr

such a disappointment

I swear I want to scream at the screenwriter! UGHHHH... Why is everything so damn downplayed?? The story sets up these HUGE emotional bombs and then delivers them like… a casual Tuesday lunch chat. Le finding out who his mother really is should’ve been a massive turning point — raw, messy, emotional. Instead it gets tossed out in the middle of a meal like someone mentioning they forgot to buy soy sauce. And that’s literally just one example.

I kept watching thinking, “Okay, maybe it’s slow-burning, maybe the payoff is coming.” NOPE. It’s just anticlimax after anticlimax, like the script is actively allergic to drama. How do you ruin your own plot twists?? How do you make every reveal feel like a footnote??

And honestly, Qin Lan’s acting is not helping. At all. She just refuses to go anywhere near heightened emotion. It’s like she’s scared of showing anything stronger than gentle disappointment. It’s the same in every drama of hers I’ve seen — beautiful to look at, elegant, calm… but the moment the character is supposed to explode, break down, do something, she stays on that same soft, neutral wavelength. It kills the momentum.

I’m frustrated because the premise actually had potential, and the setup hinted at something deeper. But nope — everything is toned down, flattened, and delivered like the actors are reading text messages instead of living through trauma. I thought it was going to get better. It didn’t.

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ML is hot in the garage! Great performance!

This show mistakes obsession for romance. Jiang Mu exists only to orbit Jin Zhao, erasing herself while he “lives” by accomplishing her dreams — yet he isn’t truly living either, since he’s chasing a life not his own. Six years pass, bad things happen, but neither grows; the show glorifies silence, waiting, and avoidance as love. Jin Zhao ghosts, hides injuries, and faces no consequences, while Jiang Mu’s devotion is romanticised despite her stagnation.

Esther’s baby-voice and expressionless performance turns what should be vulnerability into a caricature, making emotional immaturity unbearable. She hasn’t fully developed the nuances that distinguish a good actor from a great one, understandable given her experience.

The screenwriter leans on tired c-drama tropes — noble sacrifice, prolonged separation, silent suffering — and calls it depth. By the end, the “romance” is just two people stuck in each other’s dreams, never truly living, never truly growing. It’s arrested development with a soundtrack.

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Phenomenol acting... she was at her best

I feel like I'm defending the show at every facet of it lol but I work in abuse & trauma and I feel quite passionate about it. So if I see a comment misunderstanding the show, I point it out.

To start off with, it's a 9. 5/10 for me — while I saw great support for it in the beginning, I started seeing the hate after the ending and I wanna add my 2 cents worth :)

I reckon most of the complaints come from people expecting a totally different story.

To the ones who whined “The ending sucked / anticlimactic.”
No — the ending was exactly where these characters were always heading. It’s quiet, messy, and emotionally ugly because they are. The show wasn’t going to suddenly turn poetic or explosive in the last 10 minutes. It stayed true to its tone. That’s consistency, not failure.

To the ones complainong that they didn’t stick to the webtoon ending.
Good!!! Bravo to the screenwriter! The webtoon ending wouldn’t have fit the drama’s pacing or the way these characters were developed on screen. Adaptations are allowed to choose what serves the medium better. The drama chose emotional realism over shock value and it works. Expecting a panel-by-panel recreation is unrealistic. If you want the webtoon ending, it still exists.

To the ones who claimed that Ah Jin’s trauma should not be an excuse for any evil she's done.... No one said it was!!! The drama never tries to justify her actions. It shows how trauma shapes people, not how it absolves them. Ah Jin’s behaviour is awful — and the show lets it be awful. That’s complexity, and a reflection of a great understanding of trauma and its lasting impact.

For the ones who claimed that her husband got away with ordering Jaeoh’s death.
I say not really. In fact, he loses everything that actually matters to him — his control, his marriage, the illusion of being the one in power. The show hands out consequences emotionally and psychologically, not legally. This isn’t a revenge thriller!

As an observation, a drama doesn't have to reward our expectation to be brilliant. Sometimes its refusal to do so is the brilliance! ☺️

The show is messy, dark, beautifully restrained, and unapologetically honest. Not perfect, but close.

So if you appreciate character-driven storytelling that isn’t afraid to linger in moral ambiguity, I recommend this but ditch your expectations as that's how you'll end up disappointed 😊

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