Arie_Eira

My Dearest Nemesis? More Like My Mildest Nuisance

I dove into this drama without reading any reviews (a bold move, I know), purely because I love both lead actors - and Im Semi is always a treat. I’d seen the male lead in Twinkling Watermelon, Weak Hero, and Taxi Driver, where he nailed that cool, aloof, bad boy vibe. So imagine my surprise when he showed up here as a “CEO” who felt less like a corporate powerhouse and more like... an overconfident intern in a slightly oversized suit.

It took me a solid 7 episodes to even accept him as a CEO. Instead of exuding the classic icy chaebol energy, his performance leaned awkwardly into “mature but childish,” which is a hard balance to strike - and here, it just didn’t land. Honestly, a better choice would’ve been to lean fully into a bratty, mischievous chaebol who can turn on the authority when needed. At least that would’ve felt intentional.

Because of his character's awkward execution, the chemistry between him and the female lead was about as compatible as oil and water at a job interview. I kept waiting for a spark - anything - but it just never ignited.

And the direction? Flat as a pancake. With no syrup.

The story itself is your classic rich guy, poor girl romcom cliché - but stripped of actual plot. It felt like the scriptwriters decided the leads should fall in love purely through excessive eye contact. No real build up, no conflict with weight - just intense staring. So much staring. I lost count. Honestly, if you stitched all their stare offs together, you’d probably get a whole bonus episode out of it.

Okay, I get it - every drama needs a villain to stir the pot. But this one? An evil old lady tormenting her only grandson because his dad died while doing something perfectly normal - driving him to a hobby he enjoyed? That’s just peak melodrama nonsense. Of course a parent would drive their kid. Who else is supposed to - the neighbour’s dog? I mean yes, unfortunately, people like her do exist in real life, but honestly, I’d rather be disowned and free than tiptoe around my own interests just to appease a bitter matriarch with misplaced grief. Watching the poor guy suffer under her tyranny was more frustrating than dramatic.

And don’t even get me started on the trauma angle. Look, I’ve done my fair share of online dating - enough to write a spin off series - and sure, some of it was tragic, maybe even a little horrifying. But life scarring? Please. The way this drama paints a childhood online dating mishap from ten full years ago as the defining emotional wound of their adult lives? Absolutely not. If I bumped into one of my old immature dates now, all grown up and evolved, we’d have a laugh, maybe apologise, and move on like adults. I’ve seen married couples survive much worse - betrayal, midlife crises, in-laws from hell - and still manage to live peacefully for decades. If your biggest relationship trauma is a messy teenage chatroom, then you’ve honestly had a pretty smooth ride.

Anyway, I’m officially tapping out at episode 8. Not because I hate it, but because I’ve found something more interesting - which, frankly, didn’t take much. It’s 2025, people. We’re spoilt for choice with dramas, and this rich-boy-meets-girl formula has been done to death and resurrected more times than I can count. If you’re going to recycle the trope, at least give it some spice. This one just didn’t have enough flavour to keep me hooked.

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Clumsy writing and direction

I just finished Suspicious Partner and Flower of Evil, and enjoyed them both (the latter more), and wanted more of crime/mystery drama so I was excited to give this a go. It was very disappointing to say the least.

It started off with a very intriguing premise: children trying to escape their abusers through the woods or some sort of abandoned area. Couple of kids manage to hide but right when it looks like they're about to be busted, we're brought to present day. Okay, nice, this premise seems to have a good potential to flesh out into a well weaved crime mystery thriller, and especially since this is based on a true story, I was hoping for a more realistic plot. But no! I was so wrong...

Before I start criticising, I'd like to clarify that everyone including the supporting actors did a decent job of portraying their characters to their best of abilities but the direction and writing are just awful. If you've watched true crime documentaries, you'll know right away the writer hasn't done enough research.

We're introduced to a detective (ML) who functions with a brain of an immature kid with anger issues. He's unnecessarily violent and handles every situation messily, and he's displayed this way for us to believe that he's one of those oddball genius detectives whose ways go against standard practice but he knows what he's doing so we should root for him. He has a tendency to put himself in the criminal's or victim's shoes to understand and analyse the situation better and he does this by doing odd yet very stupid things like putting himself into a plastic bag and rolling himself down a mound to mimic a possible scenario of corpse being rolled down that same mound by the killer... Why did he do that? The corpse was not even in a position it would have been if it was rolled down the mound and thrown away. It was in a perfectly sitting position. Was this not obvious enough from the start??? Even if the corpse was rolled down first and then put in that sitting position, there could be signs of damage from rolling down but again this may be determined only through post mortem so whatever he was doing felt so dumb. After this, it just felt like he was trying too hard to come across as eccentric to the point I cringed, like when he tried to mimic the killer by trying to slit the pathologist's lips and she called him a psycho for that. Why does he mimic the most obvious scenarios to understand a situation...? It doesn't make sense... Then he beat up a "junkie" for trying to hurt a girl, which could get him into trouble legally. Was he not trained to incapacitate and cuff assaulters? Why didn't he threaten him with a gun? He was on duty investigating a murder so he should have been prepared. Ugh it was so messy and he felt so amateur.

Some of the scenes were very unrealistic and didn't make any sense at all. The murder suspect stabs his lawyer with a pen in court and the police just stood doing nothing. He then proceeded to jump over the table and climb up to the judge and raised his pen ready to stab the judge who didn't flinch or worry he was going to be harmed, and the police were still nowhere to be scene!! ML was the only one who rushed to save his brother (judge) 😭. And while everyone was in a panic and the whole court was in chaos, the judge was simply sitting there giving his judgement/reasoning on the suspect and his crimes until he jumped up to him to stab him too wtf 😭😭😭

ML's brother just feels like a robot with no sensible reactions. His overconfidence feels more like a supernatural ability to withstand any and every situation. Heck if he was suspended upsidedown above an active volcano, he still wouldn't react. I didn't watch far enough to explore him or the FL so I'll leave it at this.

Then while the suspect was being driven, an accident happens where all the police on board were severely injured due to the police van literally being overturned because a motorbike cut through, but, BUT the murder suspect not only managed to free himself by finding the cuff keys (which was conveniently right in front of him) in all that wreck but walked out like a champ with his injuries and drove off on the motorbike... How the fork??

Then he went over to FL's house 3 hours later and kept her hostage all night and I'm guessing he called the police to threaten them to take back his jail sentence or whatever even though he also clearly says that he knows it won't work, and that he just wanted to kill her for revenge. Okay so why did he keep her hostage all night then? It's not clear who even called the police or maybe I missed it. Though he does later in the hospital say he was ordered to do this by the actual killer, and maybe it is explained later why all this was necessary so if you have the patience, go for it. Then our oddball ML crashes into her house and heroically shoots the guy and he falls over. I understand the FL is all tied up but he lets his guard down to let her loose and predictably the guy gets up and stabs him and then ML passes out... I'm so done with this drama.

I can usually tolerate messy scenes every now and then but the direction and ML's character is a flop. Idm hot headed cops but don't make him do dumb things and don't make cops look like they're useless. Some cops are but this is a story which you can shape however you want, you can make them look at least a little reliable to save the audience from frustration.

This would probably be watchable if you're not familiar with true crime. It has some thrill, just delivered poorly.

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