Freespirit1221

It had the potential of being a pretty good and empowering feminist drama, but the last 2 episodes completely ruined it for me. This drama is so patriarchal and misogynistic.

Like the title says itself, this drama is about a camouflage marriage between a ‘kindhearted’ naive woman and a total a**hole who had already a main girlfriend long before and during their marriage. The marriage was pre-arranged by the cheating couple, because the mistress is a ‘career woman’ who disliked the idea of getting married, while the husband did it to get promoted in his career. How pathetic.

The female lead Aiko is portrayed as a perfect wife material that every man would wish for. She is a kindhearted innocent woman who puts everyone else before herself and even hadn’t experienced love before getting married to her husband. She quit her job to be a stay-at-home wife to support her husband as the guy wanted. Not only that, she was also perfect at doing chores and gently took care of her husband without any complaints. The husband was completely comfortable at home, while his ‘main girlfriend’ was someone else. How convenient was that, wasn’t it? I can’t believe there would be someone else who’s even more perfect than Oshin as a wife material. I mean, what makes Aiko more perfect is that Aiko is loved and adored by her in-law family, and she’s completely naive, while Oshin was strong, smart, stubborn and definitely not naive, and she wasn’t liked by her in-laws. This character doesn’t sound realistic to me, but let’s say women like Aiko do exist. That would be the typical type of woman to easily get ignored and mistreated by their patriarchal husbands, from what I have seen in both fictional works and real life.

On the other hand, the second female lead Ayaka is portrayed as a ‘career woman’ who puts herself and her career above everything else. I think Ayaka would be a great and powerful female character if she weren’t a cheater who tried to ruin Aiko’s life and looked down on other women who had different values with her. I feel like the screenwriters were trying to downplay and devalue those women who love themselves and value their career through this character. That’s why I said it is a misogynistic drama.

Throughout this drama, I thought it was about the divorce journey between this ‘kindhearted’ naive wife and her cheating husband. Although it wouldn’t be a great drama, it had potential to be pretty okay. I agree with the divorce lawyer that divorce is not a negative phase as people usually think. Instead, it’s a rebirth phase in one’s life. A winning divorce case is when the person becomes happy and the cheaters get what they deserve. After all of that potential, what the f*ck with that ending, my dearest screenwriters? Are you kidding me?? You really think that it's a happy ending? It was so ridiculous that I couldn't even laugh. When they cried and hugged each other, all I wanted to do was to slap both of them in their faces. What is the actual f*ck?

The most unrealistic part is that Aiko didn’t feel bitter at all or develop any trust issues after her divorce. Even the cheating husband’s mother in this drama couldn’t genuinely forgive his son for what he had done. I swear that you would never find any woman on this planet and probably even on other planets who goes through the same situation as Aiko would be able to not hate her cheating husband and his mistress. Perhaps she might not spend her whole life continuing hating them, but there’s no way she would be able to genuinely forgive them. It is not called ‘kindness and stubbornness’ as they tried to describe Aiko. It’s the highest level of dumbness and stupidity. Aiko is literally a doormat! This kind of stupid behavior in female characters should not be normalized anymore, now that we are in this 21st century.

I have met at least 10 women of different ages in real life who had cheating partners. Whether they chose to divorce or stay in their marriage because of different reasons, none of them genuinely forgave their husbands or boyfriends, and some of them can’t even stand hearing their names afterwards. Most of them were so disgusted that they didn’t want their partners to touch them right after they found out about the affairs, even if they might choose to stay in their relationships after that. Those who chose to stay said that all of their feelings and trust towards their husbands are dead. There's no such reasons as ‘he was the first man I ever loved so I can’t bring myself to hate him’, or ‘although my married life was tough, I had loads of happy memories with Seiichi-san too’. Men, please wake up and stop fooling yourself with this type of stupid scenario, because there’s no way in any universe it would ever happen.

For any woman who has watched this drama and is reading what I’m writing, please don’t be fooled. A cheater will always be a cheater. If he deceives you once and he succeeds, there’s a high chance that he will do it the second time or even more times. Please don’t ever think you can fix him and make him a better person. Maybe he would show you that he has changed for the better at first to win you back, just like what the cheating ex-husband did in the last two episodes, but he would return to the same person as before once you’ve changed your mind and forgiven him. I have seen too many of these scenarios. It is not that easy for a person to change their mindset and their personality that has shaped who they are for a very long time. Within just one year, do you really think such a patriarchal cheating jerk can completely change himself into a loving and caring husband?

Another ridiculous part of this drama was that there was no bad karma at all for those cheaters. Both of them had their own happy endings. Nothing bad ever happened to them. The guy got back to his doormat after just one year, while the mistress was about to marry someone else so briefly, when she disliked the idea of getting married in the first place. Eventually, they met again and even gently smiled at each other in the last episode. Give me a break! It was definitely not a funny joke. I absolutely despise this kind of ending for terrible characters who have tortured the main characters for a long time.

If I were the screenwriter of this drama, I would let Aiko watch those cheating rats ruin their own lives and careers after the divorce, and let their affair be revealed, while living on her own as a single mother. I might let Aiko end up with the divorce lawyer, or an even better ending for me would be there’s no more husband for Aiko through her whole life. Like Aiko’s ex mother-in-law said, I also don’t think Aiko would be able to remarry after what her ex-husband did to her. Trust issues exist for a reason. Trauma exists for a reason. “Memories build on one another, and our memories change along with them” is total bullshit in this situation. Dear men, no good memories can make a woman forget about their husband’s cheating behavior for 6 years.

For all the things I have mentioned, this drama deserves 1 out of 10 from me. I feel bad for the cast for starring in this. Although there were a few things I liked in the middle of the drama, I genuinely can’t accept its disgusting ending and can’t rate it higher. Please stop making this type of drama already.