This review may contain spoilers
This short drama drags. What a disappointment.
I thought I would binge this drama, but found myself pausing it more and more. Eventually I finished at 1.5x speed. Why? Well, I've been struggling to articulate exactly what's wrong with this one from the beginning.
And I think I have an answer: editing. I think the editing of this drama was terrible.
You know what this is--enemies to lovers, revenge, insane characters, romance, deceit. It does deliver these things, but in such a confusing jumble that it's hard to follow the story. I could follow the plot per se just fine, but never could tell how much the male lead knew. Although, at other times, I knew too much about what he knew. The editor shows him finding out right at the beginning that the FL wasn't the one he needed to revenge on, yet has him acting as though he completely doesn't know. There's no hint or wink to the audience that he's putting on a show. Editing and directing are linked, so I can only conclude the directing lacked competence as well. I don't know if they filmed different versions of scenes, and then edited them together in an incompetent way. Either way, you can't figure as a viewer if he's an unredeemable bastard, or if he's playing 11 dimensional chess. Later on, they try to draw out what the male lead is thinking, which is amazing, where was this at the beginning of the drama? He was a complete cipher!
The obsessed girl character is really boring and the drama took a nose dive after she showed up (2nd obsessed girl, not the 1st one, who died off screen, which is also a negative point against the drama). I think the music, sets, costumes were fine. The leads are very pretty and their acting is fine. The script is very uneven, with some good points and a lot of failures.
I'm not sure what pushed it into "this is a chore to watch," but I simply think it was the inability to find and stick to an emotional thread or throughline for this story. Who are these characters? Besides the most gross outline that we know from the first episode, we really haven't been given enough. And that concludes my review.
If you want to watch a (full length) drama with a similar premise, check out The Autumn Ballad. At the beginning of the drama, the ML despises the FL and they mutually use each other in what becomes an increasingly complicated plot having to do with court rivalries. As you watch the drama, you slowly fall in love with the FL, just as the first and second male lead do, because of her strong personality and will to live no matter how impossible the odds. We also gain a deep understanding of the ML and how he is playing a role for reasons that go into his past; while a piece of his personality that we see is genuine, his "scary" persona that he's created to pursue a singular goal is also the cause of his suffering. It basically does everything that Sinful Marriage does but so much more skillfully. It's like reading an engrossing novel, but as a drama. And one of the best things this drama does is that it has a FL with ambitions and she actually pursues them without compromising. Some viewers were actually mad that the ending wasn't an idol drama cliche after throwing lip service to feminism.
And I think I have an answer: editing. I think the editing of this drama was terrible.
You know what this is--enemies to lovers, revenge, insane characters, romance, deceit. It does deliver these things, but in such a confusing jumble that it's hard to follow the story. I could follow the plot per se just fine, but never could tell how much the male lead knew. Although, at other times, I knew too much about what he knew. The editor shows him finding out right at the beginning that the FL wasn't the one he needed to revenge on, yet has him acting as though he completely doesn't know. There's no hint or wink to the audience that he's putting on a show. Editing and directing are linked, so I can only conclude the directing lacked competence as well. I don't know if they filmed different versions of scenes, and then edited them together in an incompetent way. Either way, you can't figure as a viewer if he's an unredeemable bastard, or if he's playing 11 dimensional chess. Later on, they try to draw out what the male lead is thinking, which is amazing, where was this at the beginning of the drama? He was a complete cipher!
The obsessed girl character is really boring and the drama took a nose dive after she showed up (2nd obsessed girl, not the 1st one, who died off screen, which is also a negative point against the drama). I think the music, sets, costumes were fine. The leads are very pretty and their acting is fine. The script is very uneven, with some good points and a lot of failures.
I'm not sure what pushed it into "this is a chore to watch," but I simply think it was the inability to find and stick to an emotional thread or throughline for this story. Who are these characters? Besides the most gross outline that we know from the first episode, we really haven't been given enough. And that concludes my review.
If you want to watch a (full length) drama with a similar premise, check out The Autumn Ballad. At the beginning of the drama, the ML despises the FL and they mutually use each other in what becomes an increasingly complicated plot having to do with court rivalries. As you watch the drama, you slowly fall in love with the FL, just as the first and second male lead do, because of her strong personality and will to live no matter how impossible the odds. We also gain a deep understanding of the ML and how he is playing a role for reasons that go into his past; while a piece of his personality that we see is genuine, his "scary" persona that he's created to pursue a singular goal is also the cause of his suffering. It basically does everything that Sinful Marriage does but so much more skillfully. It's like reading an engrossing novel, but as a drama. And one of the best things this drama does is that it has a FL with ambitions and she actually pursues them without compromising. Some viewers were actually mad that the ending wasn't an idol drama cliche after throwing lip service to feminism.
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