L13

She's such a great actress and so charismatic too. I'm so pissed that her next two co-stars are both totally mediocre.

I'm still on episode 4, so I'm a little hesitant to opine on the drama as a whole just yet, but I can't help but notice the clumsy handling of witness statements/how new information is introduced and incorporated into the narrative.

In the very first episode we met Sarah Kim's former friend, whom she duped into investing in Boudoir. That woman told Detective Park a sob story about her deep friendship with Sarah Kim that took 20 minutes to exposit via flashbacks and 2 minutes to debunk once he went back to the office and found out she had sued Sarah Kim for defrauding her and had hired thugs to collect the money she was owed. It didn't make any sense that she would conceal something that the police would INEVITABLY discover almost immediately, let alone that the show would linger on her lie for so long before popping it like a soap balloon.

And then in episode 4 we met Sarah Kim's lover and husband, who each confessed to very serious crimes (conspiring to kill Sarah Kim's husband and then stabbing her by accident, in the case of her lover, and entering into a fake marriage with her to facilitate illegal organ transplantation, in the case of the husband) when there was zero pressure to do so. Sure, any rational person in their place would run a cost-benefit analysis and conclude it was better to confess to everything at once because the police would most likely discover anything they might try to hide and use their failure to disclose it against them, BUT 1. in both cases these were crimes that had gone undetected for a long time, so a person scared of getting dragged into a murder case would most likely NOT bring them up unprompted, and 2. again, in episode 1 that lady did try to hide something that was much more easily discovered because the police already had all the receipts, which she had to know.

Anyway. These repeated instances of strange witness behavior make for lifeless and utilitarian storytelling. New characters enter the narrative periodically to add a new layer of paint to the emerging portrait of Sarah Kim, but none of them behave like real human beings in their own right. The script pays no attention to their motivations/characterization beyond their involvement in her life and uses them as mouthpieces to set up flashback sequences when necessary.

Even Detective Park and his sidekick kinda have this issue as characters. We know NOTHING about them beyond the most sparse and superficial details (which are total clichés).

I get that Sarah Kim is the whole story here and I think the show is doing a great job of gradually peeling back the layers of mystery and deception she's shrouded in, but still, for a story of this kind to work well, it has to root its world and secondary characters in some sort of three-dimensional reality. But here NOTHING feels real except for Sarah Kim, largely because the other characters do not act like actual humans convincingly. Everyone except for her is a vehicle for plot progression and nothing else.

Between the leads? Isn't one of them going to investigate the other's murder?

Yay, thank you! Can’t wait to watch it tonight.

Great, I'm on drama-otaku, so I'll download from there. Thank you!

Nice, the premise sounds very fun! Where can we find your subs, by the way?

No, it’s because it’s very conventional and emotionally manipulative. It hit every cliche from the drink-pouring power play to the disrespectful chaebol heir talking down to an older person to the fist clenching to the vegetative parent in a care facility to the annoying hysterical grandma beating up a random person at her granddaughter’s funeral because Korean dramas always pretend grief gives you license to abuse people.

The first episode was heavy-handed and predictable, and the ending and preview suggest the drama will only get more over-the-top from here. I'll give the second episode a chance, but I expect this one to be a drop for me.

Open relationship, or more like no relationship? I haven't read the original novel, but I'd be surprised if they were hooking up with each other while also hooking up with other people. He seems to have no interest in her, which is fair and understandable; their relationship is in the past and he is embroiled in a deadly mystery that concerns his origin, so he has no time or emotional bandwidth for a complicated romance with his ex. It's her unconditional devotion to him that seems out of place.

I do think if she was shown carrying on with other men, Long Yu's care for Gao Feng would read as friendly concern rather than hopeless pining.

It kills me that Gao Feng is this moody jobless bum who's got a gorgeous bar owner offering him employment, accommodation, money, transportation, a shoulder to cry on, food, positive affirmation, secretarial services, etc. without expecting anything in return and he can't even be bothered to make eye contact with her lmao

Girl, please have some dignity and cut him off...

That's the obvious implication, yeah. My guess would be that Gao Feng is the biological child of the dead woman (who was also Feifei's mother) and another man, and that Feifei's father killed her in a crime of passion. Gao Feng's biological father could be Xu Peng, Xu Zhiyang's father and Wu Guohao's business partner. So Gao Feng would be half-siblings with both Feifei and her husband, and would also be the lawful owner of the shares that are currently being contested within Penglai.

But I wouldn't be surprised if this was all a red herring and Feifei and Gao Feng turned out to have different mothers. That's where the mysterious woman in a wheelchair could come in.

Edit: I just realized I got my dead Penglai executives mixed up. I meant to suggest the recently deceased board member who left no heirs as Gao Feng’s most likely father. I guess Xu Peng could also work, though.

Her being an unreliable narrator and not knowing everything doesn't excuse her terrible personality and poor choices based on the information she did have...

And she clearly met Wang Dan without telling her fiancé (which was already veering into crazy bitch territory) to insult her and throw money at her like some soap opera villain. Then Wang Dan turned out to be better at slinging insults and being a crazy bitch than her, so she... pushed her down the stairs.

Like, I'm sorry, but no, there's no excusing or rationalizing that. She acted deplorably, and what is more, she's a moron who directs her anger at the nearest vulnerable target and can't control her emotions. Again, I trust and hope she'll get some character development, but her actions were completely indefensible.

I've only watched the first two episodes so far, but Wu Feifei's character introduction made her look utterly detestable. Stupid, petty, muddle-headed and vindictive. She dragged that guy into a transparently transactional, loveless marriage and then when it turned out he had had another girlfriend in the past, she got so mad she completely lost her head—and assaulted the ex-girlfriend (not even him!) and left her for dead! And when the ex-girlfriend disappeared, presumably out of fear of her psycho antics, she tried to find the ex-girlfriend again...?

And all the while she was biting her lip and scrunching her brows like she was on the verge of tears. Lady, you're not the victim in any of this.

She needs to get humbled by life HARD because I can't imagine where else her character growth is going to come from.

I find their anger at a fictional child weird and offputting rather than funny, personally.

I’ve no idea what dramas you’re watching or why you’re mad at women as a group. Sorry if you got cheated on or something. I’m telling you your interpretation of this show is insane.

She's been depressed since she was 20 and hated her husband, whom she was forced to marry. She's had a very miserable life and is now reckoning with the fact she wasted her youth following her crazy narcissistic mother's orders, to zero benefit. Sorry to be blunt, but only a very inattentive viewer would interpret her failed marriage as a sign that she moved on from Lee Kyeongdo.

The whole point of the drama is that neither of them has been able to move on because they're both damaged people... This anger is bizarre.

1. Yes, 2. yes, 3. escape her problems, 4. her sister explained her reasoning at the end of ep. 2, 5. there is no child (but even if there was, it wouldn't matter because the husband is a scumbag).

I am liking the main couple here. He’s a bitter loser with a heart of gold, she’s a charming bully, they’re both pathetically obvious about their lingering feelings. The fact they clearly still like each other is what makes their cat-and-dog dynamic so good.

My issues with the drama all stem from its handling of the leads’ backstory. They’re both quite immature on the surface and Won Ji-an can’t help but look her age no matter how severe her haircut and powersuit may be. I just can’t buy that these people are 38-39. They should have made them ten years younger. The flashbacks are slightly excessive too, and less engaging than the present-day scenes.

The person you're responding to gave an example of an actor who often picks masculine, action-oriented projects in response to the bizarre criticisms of the male lead in this drama. I think their comment made a lot of sense. It's weird that you took offence to it.