Gern

Yes, and after she rejected one man and chose the other saying he was the only one she had feelings for, it became difficult to become emotionally invested in her feelings for any other man. A voice in the back of my head kept saying: yeah yeah, I’ve heard it before. You said you loved this other guy and he loved you, and now I’m supposed to trust that this time your love is real?

I don’t mind that she loves the 2ML. What I mind is any man or woman changing who they are in love with (unless their first love remains unrequited.) once two people are together, if one of them changes who they are committed to, it serves as obvious evidence that their heart can’t be trusted and could change again after the finals credits roll. Once a lead commits to one person and they to them they can’t just change their mind without making every relationship no longer feel real.

There a reason to not like it. It demonstrates the woman’s heart can never be trusted and whoever she winds up with in the end could just be temporary because she can change her heart again.

I’m only half way, but I would leave out the “little bit” part. She fell for SML to the point of marrying him out of love and crying out for him to save her from the ML. If she later falls for the ML then she will have proven her heart is fickle and can’t be trusted. She will prove she can fall for a new man at any time. Which makes it impossible to believe any relationship with her has consistency and will last. When the FL can so easily fall in and out of love there can be no happy ending for anyone, because no relationship with her feels real.

We don’t disagree. I just never got the sense she should have ever given him any hope that she’d like him. And in the end, I thought it was a mistake to get together with someone she really didn’t like. I think we were supposed to cheer that his persistence paid off,, but it just seemed sad to me to get together with someone so indifferent to him.

This was a pretty good show that did an admirable job of walking a line between complete silliness and strong drama. All the characters were different, fun, and played brilliantly. It must be hard to pull off the level of lunacy all the characters went through and still make the real feelings work. However it suffered from one self l-inflicted wound I found hard to get past.

Most of the angst in the show stemmed from the female leads promise to and memory of her childhood love. The worst episode came late in the story when the Young Lord entered the picture. At first, for no apparent reason, the female lead found the male lead’s insecurity and jealousy highly annoying to the point of being callous to him, treating him no different than the new stranger. Then she ghosted the male lead altogether, spending her days laughing and talking with the Young Lord, never letting the male lead see her, or even giving the distress she was causing him the slightest passing thought. It left a bad taste in my mouth and clarified a troubling aspect of the narrative. It wasn’t just that she didn’t love the male lead. It was as if he were less than a friend and his feelings utterly irrelevant to her.

This never got addressed, leaving me questioning her love for the male lead right up until the final credits rolled. Instead the whole episode got swept under the rug by a series of really well done revelations. At some point, I wanted the male lead to tell her “I don’t believe you really care about me, the person in front of you. You only love this idea of a childhood friend.” Or , I wanted the female lead to questioned herself. “How can I tell myself I love this man when I agreed to leave him for a different man without giving the pain it would cause him a second thought.”

Even in the fading minutes of the show the female lead seemed extremely emotional over the wounded Young Lord, while totally unconcerned about the stab wounds and arrow sticking out of the male lead’s chest. What these episode made apparent, throughout the course of the show, was that the person she remembered from her childhood no longer existed, if they ever did. So this whole issue of who does she really love, this mythical memory from the past or the present man in front of her never got resolved when it should have been a massive stumbling block for thier entire relationship. I wasn’t looking for some last grand moment of regret and drama. Just a coming to terms with who and what she really loved, and a recognition of the hurt and turmoil her indecision had caused. Absent that, I enjoyed the show, but left it certain he loved her with all his heart, but unsure if she really knew or even gave a rip about real person the male lead had become.

Yes. The FL always liked Chen An more than the male lead.

It never gets all that much better, even after school, they are like two parallel rails that only converge when the woman runs out of track.

I’m afraid I have to echo the sentiments of the last post. This was a story that never satisfied for even a minute. Right up to the very end, it seemed as if the female lead didn’t like the make lead. For me the relationship between Mi Qiao as no Ben Ben outshined the main couple every time they were on screen. I can’t recommend this because it was all just some poor sweet guy chasing a girl who wanted as little contact with him as possible.

Loved the drama. It had truly epic moments on a level you don’t often see. It has the usual stuff for a romance, times when the characters don’t get along and even a period of separation, but the way it was done and how so much other stuff was going on at the same time resulted in much less angst than usual. The plot was smooth and well crafted and the bad guy had a Caligula level vibe to him that was downright disturbing. I have to agree with other reviewers. The romance was superbly written, directed and acted. An all around exceptional drama.

The ratio of men to women has always bend about .50/50. So what I want to know is if this guy had six wives, where’s the story about the six pheasant saps that had no wife :)

She drinks and has numerous meals alone with the 2ML. He buys her gifts which she gratefully accepts. That looks like they had dates to me, even if she never called them that. However, when she moves into a house he arranges where she has meals everyday with him, and goes on strolls and has long talks with him. That’s more than mere dating.

Not that heavy? She goes well beyond see simply dating the 2ML.

I think it’s more disgusting that the female lead, who seems to be empathetic to everyone else, not only doesn’t seem to care a shred how this might make the male lead feel, and. goes out of her way to antagonize him and teach him a lesson over it.

At some point you just want the male lead to tell the female lead “I get it. You don’t want me to care that your seeing this guy. You don’t care how it looks that my wife is staying at another man’s house and you don’t want it to upset me that your with him. You don’t want me to care when you go on dates with him, what you do on those dates, or how late you stay up with him. I get the message loud and clear, and I’m trying my best not to care. So just do your thing and let me be to come to terms with the kind of relationship you want from me..’

Despite flaws in the show you could drive a semi through, I liked this show a lot. The first problem was that it was 20 minutes into the show when I turned to the person next to me and asked “she not supposed to be posing as a man, is she?”,I know it’s hard to hide the narrowness of the waist and wide hips, the larger chest with narrow arms and legs, the lack of an Adam’s apple, dainty facial features and female voice. Yet other shows like “Bromance” and “Moonlight Drawn By Clouds” or even make a passable attempt where this show barely tries to hide her gender.

Beyond that, the character are erratic. Situations that should cause a major rift are sometimes dismissed with an overly casual ease while and others create exaggerated problems, creating a jarring contrast and making the characters seem inconsistent. It strains credibility when a character has heard the same voice for weeks and weeks and suddenly one day recognizes it with unerring certainty.

What made the show work despite its drawback, is that all of its flaws are superficial. They were problems with execution rather than fundamental flaws in the plot. If they would have included scenes at the start that stressed it was a woman playing a man, it would have been far easier to accept. If they would have had the characters agonize a little more over some revelations and less over others it would have worked better. If what was said had led to the certainty that the voice was recognized it would have worked. So, in the end the problems were all easily written off because the plot was otherwise solid and made sense.

In fact, it did something many far better constructed and produced shows such as “100 days my prince” and “King: The Eternal Monarch” never managed.to do. It, like “Imperial Coroner” solved the problem of a prince falling in love with a commoner. In si doing it gave a much more satisfying ending. We weren’t left with the feeling that the two romantic leads could never really be together as they had been during the show. In he end, thwt meant I liked it better than those high production shows.

This show easily made my short list of favorite Asian dramas. The two main characters were both quirky in a way that itself was kind of quirky. Neither seemed particularly suited to romance, much less suited to one another. So much so they for half the show I kept thinking: there not really going to bring these two together, are they? All the supporting cast were great too snd a bit unique in their own ways

Beyond that, it wasn’t your typical mystery. The focus wasn’t alway on solving crimes, but on figuring out what the heck really happened in the past and what the heck was going on now. Cases seemed disconnected but came together in a complicated way that was sometimes confusing, but also refreshing in its intricacy. It was not your run-of-the-mill storytelling, and I found it entertaining from beginning to end.

I haven’t watched this really, but I always have the same reaction to the actress playing the female lead. I can never put my finger on what it is, but she always seem “off” to me somehow. It was an attribute that worked perfectly for her when she played a vampire, where being too animated can be a problem, but here as a normal person her reactions just don’t come off as genuine.

I liked this drama overall. It was slow and steady and absent many of the annoying things shows sometimes do (at least I find them annoying.) my one complaint was that it felt as if the male lead dragged the female lead kinging and screaming into each development of the relationship, right to the end. It never felt as if she was truly all in on the relationship. Other than that, I truly enjoyed this drama.

Sorry for not responding sooner. To call it a fake relationship doesn’t really capture the nuances of the situation, to her it’s very real. The second male lead is using her to get together with another woman he really loves. The ML was suspicious of him, but kept it to himself. It didn’t go on for many episodes, but, of course, he is around the entire show.