Toxic Leads
I watched this series based on its good ratings and some social media posts describing it as funny. The show does have some poignant moments thanks to its premise -- the male lead had a brutal childhood, which he is still addressing in his late 20s, and his misfortune only gets worse when the story starts -- and the show also has its share of hilarious moments.
But...
I absolutely loathed the male and female lead characters. Just hated them, and by the end I did not care if they got some sort of happy ending or not. The male lead, Hae Joo, is immediately shown to be willing to ruin a stranger's wedding out of boredom. Hae Joo decides that was fun, and so next he ruins his ex-girlfriend's (the FL, Jae Mi) wedding by knocking her unconscious and kidnapping her. Once she recovers, he uses every form of manipulation to keep her at his side. It is gross, but I guess we are supposed to see it as funny? Or maybe we are supposed to accept it, because the ML is younger and more handsome than the 2ML? Or maybe we accept it because the ML has some awful misfortune (admittedly his life genuinely does suck)? I don't know. I kept waiting for consequences or redemption or growth from the ML, but he's the same childish mess all the way to the end. This makes the story tougher to swallow.
The FL is almost as bad. She's childish and cringy, showing little development in spite of the demands of the plot. Jae Mi frequently yells and beats on people like she's an idiot. Her treatment of her fiance, the 2ML (Eo), is also gross. Then again, the 2ML is at one point literally portrayed as a whimpering dog... maybe we're supposed to laugh at him? For the FL, the even worse part is her relationship with the ML, which gets to my problem with this series: I think it's celebrating an ugly case of codependency as a "beautiful story."
We're left with two tortured two souls in the leads, which I guess explains the ratings, but the writing doesn't take the characters past wallowing in their own excrement. Further, the whole story is artificially built around the ML -- the ML grabs a love interest who repeatedly overlooks his many flaws, and that leads to a love triangle trope but the ML is so flawed we need a weakling 2ML, plus the story needs supporting characters who cater so extensively to the leads (and the plot) that they might as well be NPCs in a video game. Maybe there is a point about our own selfishness here, which flew completely over my (and everyone else's) head, but absent that, the high point for me is imagining Alan Rickman's voice over and over again, yelling at Hae Joo, "I see you managed to get your shirt off."
Sorry, just not for me. The leads are just too toxic.
But...
I absolutely loathed the male and female lead characters. Just hated them, and by the end I did not care if they got some sort of happy ending or not. The male lead, Hae Joo, is immediately shown to be willing to ruin a stranger's wedding out of boredom. Hae Joo decides that was fun, and so next he ruins his ex-girlfriend's (the FL, Jae Mi) wedding by knocking her unconscious and kidnapping her. Once she recovers, he uses every form of manipulation to keep her at his side. It is gross, but I guess we are supposed to see it as funny? Or maybe we are supposed to accept it, because the ML is younger and more handsome than the 2ML? Or maybe we accept it because the ML has some awful misfortune (admittedly his life genuinely does suck)? I don't know. I kept waiting for consequences or redemption or growth from the ML, but he's the same childish mess all the way to the end. This makes the story tougher to swallow.
The FL is almost as bad. She's childish and cringy, showing little development in spite of the demands of the plot. Jae Mi frequently yells and beats on people like she's an idiot. Her treatment of her fiance, the 2ML (Eo), is also gross. Then again, the 2ML is at one point literally portrayed as a whimpering dog... maybe we're supposed to laugh at him? For the FL, the even worse part is her relationship with the ML, which gets to my problem with this series: I think it's celebrating an ugly case of codependency as a "beautiful story."
We're left with two tortured two souls in the leads, which I guess explains the ratings, but the writing doesn't take the characters past wallowing in their own excrement. Further, the whole story is artificially built around the ML -- the ML grabs a love interest who repeatedly overlooks his many flaws, and that leads to a love triangle trope but the ML is so flawed we need a weakling 2ML, plus the story needs supporting characters who cater so extensively to the leads (and the plot) that they might as well be NPCs in a video game. Maybe there is a point about our own selfishness here, which flew completely over my (and everyone else's) head, but absent that, the high point for me is imagining Alan Rickman's voice over and over again, yelling at Hae Joo, "I see you managed to get your shirt off."
Sorry, just not for me. The leads are just too toxic.
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