Gern

I don’t get what you mean. In the show I watched, she didn’t end up with anyone in the end. She decided her job was more important than a relationship.

I’m with you. He was the opposite of controlling. His biggest flaw was giving up at the drop of a hat. If the Fl did things to make him question her desire to be with him he just acted like “okay. I get it. You are free to do what you want.” Then he went and dealt with his hurt alone. That’s the opposite of controlling. In a way, he left it up to her to choose him without pressure. Only he carried it to an unhealthy extreme where she couldn’t understand why he didn’t care. Except it was a situation she created that he was trying to be nonchalant about.

For me, the ML just seemed so incredibly uncommunicative that it ended up being a story based on frustration. So much great material to work with about work life balance, fulfillment vs love, but in the end it seemed to come to nothing because people didn’t talk.

Wait a minute. Don’t put words in my mouth. I never said a woman’s heart can’t be trusted. I said in this particular story, this particular woman’s heart couldn’t be trusted. I thought I was clear that her changing the person she loved didn’t bother me at all. What bothered me was that they maintained the illusion she had feelings for two men at the same time. Even that isn’t a huge deal but she didn’t distance herself from one of them. It has nothing to do with men vs women. In fact, I would find it more objectionable if it were a man behaving that way. Would you have been equally accepting were it a guy indulging feelings for two women at the same time?

I think it’s confusing to have her suddenly remember a voice in a conversation between two people, when she’d heard one of the voices in that conversation many many times.

I watched this again after seeing Doom At Your Service and still love the show. Yet somehow I left with the uneasy feeling the Bok Shil was always keeping Louis at a distance. She turned down his marriage proposal, insisted on living apart, and even went on a date with Joong Won and even looked down on the idea of Louis being jealous rather than being concerned about how it might make him feel to see her date another guy. I just never got anything concrete from her that made me feel like she saw Louis as the one she wanted to spend her life with. I’ve noticed this in several shows now and it baffles me. Why portray the female lead as always putting off the male lead all the way to the final credits. Why make it seem like the guy is all-in , but the women isn’t?

This appears to have disappeared from Netflix. Any idea where it can be found now?

My general impression of Miss Truth is that it’s a pretty good overall story hampered by a problematic love story. The crimes, despite often verging on the “modern side” and seeming a little too bizarre and overly complex for the era, were fun, outlandish, and satisfying. They kept the show compelling and entertaining despite it suffering from self-inflicted wounds in the romance department.

The problem with the romantic story was the desire to paint the protagonist as a woman who truly falls in love with two different men. On its own, that isn’t necessarily fatal, but it tried to build the perception she might be in love with both guys at the same time and maintain that illusion almost to the end of the story. This caused two problems. The first was that it became increasingly difficult feel as of the woman’s affections for either man were real as she appeared to flip-flop between who she loved.

The second was that the writer and director could never allow a strong connection and love to form with either male lead. If they did, it would undermine the will she/won’t suspense. Even worse, it would cause the audience to lose sympathy for the woman, and, with it, interest in who she loved. After all, if there were true love and commitment to two men at the same time, she’d be seen as a cheater who betrayed the trust and love of both of men. Even as it is, anyone who has had a boyfriend, girlfriend, husband or wife cheat on them and knows how that really feels may find the romance in this story deeply unsettling.

So the show delivered a love story with no chemistry, no connection, and no real feeling almost to the final episodes. In short we got a romantic story with no real romance until the end, by which time I’d lost most of my interest in who she ends up with. If they’d have abandoned the idea of keeping the audience guessing as to what the woman was thinking and feeling and portrayed it as a mistake for her to invest her heart in the SML, it would have freed the actress to play each romance with much greater depth, emotion and drama. As it was, we got a pretty good mystery story where, until the final episodes, there was no real and compelling romance.

It’s true. It’s forgivable to women because it’s a woman hanging out with two brothers. It wouldn’t be if it were a man hanging out with two sisters. The kind of close relationship she has with both brothers would seem entirely different if it were a guy hanging out and having a blast with one sister while spending most of his time with the other. The problem comes when reversing the roles causes all that romance to evaporate. I’m perfectly fine with the two brothers pursuing her. What makes it not okay is how close she is with two men at the same time and how unaware she is of the signals she is sending them both. Boundaries are the key. If she maintains a certain distance from one of them then I’m all on board.

If there were a phrase I’d use to describe this show it would be “too far.” It didn’t really do anything we haven’t seen in other shows, but there comes a point when the unbelievability goes so far for the sake of drama that it becomes clear it is only doing it to create drama. When that happened I often found myself saying “come on, he/she isn’t making sense. They are only doing this to pile on the drama.”

This starts with the premise. There’s nothing inherently wrong with characters acting in self contradictory ways. A doctor whose out for revenge isn’t a bad concept. But our female lead became so bloodthirsty in her quest for revenge that it tortured the bounds of credibility.

Characters would suddenly change their personality, as if it was a switch for the director to turn on and off as the need for drama dictated. Sullen, broody and mean one minute, then chatty and playful the next. Or they’d turn on a dime as if murderous hate and desperate passion were possible for the same person at the same time. Lines like “you mean nothing to me now,” and “from now on you and I have nothing to do with each other,” are followed shortly after by lines like “I wouldn’t have been so cruel if I knew he was dying.”

Anger over things that didn’t make sense often occurred like “I’m never seeing you again because, during my kidnapping, you didn’t tell me your plan to defeat my kidnapper.” Or “I lied to you by posing as a man for months and making you crazy miserable in the process but how dare you fool me for a few hours and keep me in the dark.”

Again, it wasn’t anything new, but this show seemed determined to repeatedly push it beyond the point that allowed for suspension of disbelief. The actors did their best, but the show could have toned it down a bit in its attempts to conjure drama out of unbelievably inconsistent behavior.

Did you forget the game of truth or dare where the ML says his first kiss was 91 hours ago (with the FL who initiated it) then the FL refuses to answer the same question because it would reveal she leaned into a kissed from the SML since then. That might be just her changing her mind if not for the long and passionate kiss with the ML after she deliberately started dating the SML. All the ambivalence and intricate reasons don’t change the fact she was doing intimate things with two men at the same time while dating one of them. And it wasn’t an accident. It was deliberate. Not cool.

Yes definite cheating. She makes out with one guy while formally and quite deliberately dating another. Anyone who thinks that’s not cheating deserves to have a boyfriend or girlfriend do that to them.

I liked this pretty much all the way through, but it was sometimes as struggle. I felt like the contract between them wasn't spelled out very clearly. Then it seemed like it was made null and void, then magically came back. I didn't get that part, it was confusing. The dialog often seemed to be trying to hard to be clever, but came off cryptic and confusing, making it often hard to follow. My biggest niggle was the way the female lead acted at the very end. She seemed as if she wasn't all that committed to the relationship, like she wasn't sure she really wanted to be with him forever. Maybe they were trying to be different, but it just came off as her not caring whether she had a future with him or not.

I agree with you here. They went through such an ordeal to be together and in the end she didn't really seem all that committed to him. You marry someone because you can't imaging being without them. Her response to the idea of marriage made it seem like she could imagine life without him, like she wasn't willing to vow to stay with him through sickness and health, good times and bad times, until death do them part.

I had no sympathy for a guy who basically left his girlfriend hanging not even responding to a text for years. That is such a cruel way to break up. I get what you're saying, but the way he treated her broke some pretty serious rules of basic decency, he deserved to have those same rules broken for him. I don't think the other guy did anything wrong, given he did it to get her to give up on a guy who never came back into her life.

Expectations can easily shape the audiences response to something. The cast raised expectations to unrealistic levels. It wasn't perfect, but it wasn't bad.

You do realize she's 32 and he's 35, right?

Late. We see signs she might like the ML in episode 19, but then, on multiple occasions, she’s back to ruining her chances with the ML because of the 2ML, leaving you wondering if she still is in love with the 2ML. There’s certainly no attempt to distance herself from the 2ML or to avoid misunderstanding of their relationship until the last four or five episodes. Until the last several episodes, she never seemed committed enough to him to go out of her way to win the ML over.

Hard to say because it was gradual. It didn’t seem like one moment, so it was part persistence on the ML part. If I has to choose one moment, it seemed like she “realized” she loved him after she’d betrayed the ML, gotten him flogged, forced the emperor to decree their divorce, and generally shot their relationship to pieces all for the SML. Once it seemed like she no longer had a chance with the ML she changed her mind.

In a way, your question gets at the fundamental problem with a “true” love triangle. She never really leaves the SML and goes to the ML. She rejected the SML first when she finds out the SML (the covert assassin who had killed dozens of people in front of her) had initially approached her as a part of a mission. In one of the most unbelievable scenes ever, she never even asks if his feelings for her now are real. She just switches off her love and walks away while he’s being killed.

Of course, that’s not the end because they had to keep the “will she”/“won’t she” going. Later, out of what looks like sympathy to the SML (the man she can’t trust,) she reveals details of a secret mission (that her wedding to the ML is a fake,) a little later she appears to outright betray the ML for the sake of the SML, and after that she treats the SML’s wounds when he’s hurt, even as she grows feelings for the ML.

This all goes back to the problem I mentioned at the start. To make the back and forth between the two men work, the writer and director had to make sure the actress never developed any real real chemistry with either actor. They couldn’t cultivate the impression she was destined to be with either man. If she ever went head over heels for one of them and we sensed full-on commitment, the minute she switched back to the other, we’d lose trust in her heart and give up caring who she likes. So we got thirty episodes with no real romance, because true love and commitment would ruin the tension between choosing the SML or the ML.