This review may contain spoilers
Can you hold different kinds of pain with equal weight? If yes, this might be for you.
I needed several days after finishing this one before I could write anything. That's either a warning or a recommendation depending on your relationship with pain.
This is a revenge drama that knows exactly what it's doing and does not apologize for it. The love lands early and hard — which is the only reason the back half works at all, because the back half is genuinely difficult to watch. Think less "will they won't they" and more "will either of them survive themselves long enough to get there." The fighter and survivor dynamic between the two leads is the real engine, and I find it more interesting than any of the external obstacles they throw at you.
What'll hook you
- If toxic, dominant, possessive is your thing — you're going to get that in spades, completely unapologetically. The show tries to do some balancing, but whether YOU can balance it is a different story (everyone is going to be peeved about different things). But both leads are fully fleshed out characters with different damage, different ways of processing, and a genuinely interesting representation of how two broken people exist in a relationship together. If you like pushing what you can accept and understand to try and get into someone's head, this is going to reward that. And if you make it all the way to the end holding these two broken characters, the rain scene in episode twelve will pay you back for the work.
- The acting is phenomenal across the board. You will get so much from faces, body language, how lines are delivered. There are moments where nobody says a word and the scene still does everything it needs to do.
The dealbreakers
Mine: I rationalize a lot of things to get to a happy ending and nothing here was a complete hard stop for me. That said:
- I got uncomfortable with the non-consent elements.
- I got frustrated by the "cured" language when the show otherwise handled mental health better than most.
- I got impatient with the repetitive cycles of the same choices being made over and over. None of it flipped my verdict. But I sat with it.
Worth knowing:
- If non-consent is a hard no, skip this.
- If manipulative families who couch cruelty in warmth aren't something you can watch, skip this.
- If assault is off the table, skip this.
-If you need your characters to stay on the right side of redeemable, this is not going to work for you.
Verdict: Sustained
This one took me on an interesting journey of figuring out how much I could accept, whether these characters were actually choosing to fix themselves, and whether I could get on board with how they forgave each other. It made me think about different kinds of pain, different kinds of betrayal (what's visible versus what's invisible), what reads as obviously wrong versus what does damage so quietly you almost miss it. You could very much get stuck on the surface of this show and be like "what am I watching." You kind of have to be prepared to put some work in. But if you do, it earns it.
This is a revenge drama that knows exactly what it's doing and does not apologize for it. The love lands early and hard — which is the only reason the back half works at all, because the back half is genuinely difficult to watch. Think less "will they won't they" and more "will either of them survive themselves long enough to get there." The fighter and survivor dynamic between the two leads is the real engine, and I find it more interesting than any of the external obstacles they throw at you.
What'll hook you
- If toxic, dominant, possessive is your thing — you're going to get that in spades, completely unapologetically. The show tries to do some balancing, but whether YOU can balance it is a different story (everyone is going to be peeved about different things). But both leads are fully fleshed out characters with different damage, different ways of processing, and a genuinely interesting representation of how two broken people exist in a relationship together. If you like pushing what you can accept and understand to try and get into someone's head, this is going to reward that. And if you make it all the way to the end holding these two broken characters, the rain scene in episode twelve will pay you back for the work.
- The acting is phenomenal across the board. You will get so much from faces, body language, how lines are delivered. There are moments where nobody says a word and the scene still does everything it needs to do.
The dealbreakers
Mine: I rationalize a lot of things to get to a happy ending and nothing here was a complete hard stop for me. That said:
- I got uncomfortable with the non-consent elements.
- I got frustrated by the "cured" language when the show otherwise handled mental health better than most.
- I got impatient with the repetitive cycles of the same choices being made over and over. None of it flipped my verdict. But I sat with it.
Worth knowing:
- If non-consent is a hard no, skip this.
- If manipulative families who couch cruelty in warmth aren't something you can watch, skip this.
- If assault is off the table, skip this.
-If you need your characters to stay on the right side of redeemable, this is not going to work for you.
Verdict: Sustained
This one took me on an interesting journey of figuring out how much I could accept, whether these characters were actually choosing to fix themselves, and whether I could get on board with how they forgave each other. It made me think about different kinds of pain, different kinds of betrayal (what's visible versus what's invisible), what reads as obviously wrong versus what does damage so quietly you almost miss it. You could very much get stuck on the surface of this show and be like "what am I watching." You kind of have to be prepared to put some work in. But if you do, it earns it.
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