L13

You mean the one who hired the wedding DJ to impersonate Xia Xinliang (sp?)? I see no reason to suspect it's RZZ. If anything, the way the camera showed us Su Wen right after the guy said it had been a female voice on the phone makes me suspect Su Wen.

She worked briefly after university before leaving the workforce eight years ago, so I’d say 32-33. She also knew/was with her husband for 17 years, and we know she was in love with him at 16, which also supports 32-33 as her age.

He's a weirdo and he's down bad. I don’t think he was planning to keep involving himself, not after he gave her that whole spiel about how staying in touch wouldn’t be good for either of them. But then he couldn’t very well NOT stalk her, you know? Him showing up at the restaurant to creep on her (in his REAL CLOTHES, not the Gao Jun getup, which felt significant) was also pretty funny,

OMG, I'm still on episode 18, but the scene at the pier was so good! Very well acted by both actors and fraught with psychological and sexual tension. The ML's offensive confession/proposition was a way to push and provoke RZZ as per his teammate's advice, but his harsh treatment of her was also borne out of genuine frustration. When he said "I like you," he looked almost angry—was it because he was mad at RZZ for passively accepting her circumstances, because he was mad at her for not telling the truth about XYN's money or because he was mad at himself for actually liking her and getting himself into this mess? I'd say all three.

(You could see earlier, when he offered to go over the court hearing with her, that he did it spontaneously because he wanted to do something for her, contrary to the rehearsed announcement that he was leaving Nanzhou and wouldn't be able to help her anymore. Again, very good acting in this episode, and we're finally seeing the ML's stony facade begin to crack a little.)

And RZZ's furious "I am a human, treat me like one" was so good. That's right, girl, don't take his bullshit! I love that she values her dignity above all else. (That's not usually how female characters are portrayed; pride is coded as a masculine value in most c/kdramas. Obviously it's not as simple in real life, and RZZ is a very lifelike character with a nuanced and distinct personality in place of the gender stereotypes that define the typical cdrama heroine.)

Also I appreciated the Wu woman saying it feels gross that a bunch of men are trying to con a poor widow. It's good to see female characters sticking up for each other!

I also thought that might be it, but there’s another possibility: that they said it as a joking reference to his undercover identity. So it’s not totally conclusive IMO.

I'm afraid there's going to be a long separation and/or the ML will be forced to take a main wife. It's bound to get messy and annoying past the 20-episode mark.

The first 8 episodes were good, but the fact there are still 32 left worries me a lot.

I think, based on her place in the cast, that the ex-GF will be dealt with quickly and perhaps that's why they introduced her early.

It's part of his disguise as Gao Jun, though. He wears the same style of clothing as the real Gao Jun, and presumably from the same brands too. He also wears glasses just like him.

I assume the company that's paying him to pretend to be Gao Jun and approach RZZ bought his wardrobe; whether he actually works for them or is investigating them too, though, is a different question.

Yeah, I guess that’s how it has to be for the timeline to work out…

He wasn’t the only one who said it, though? When his former colleagues saw him, they also said, ‘oh, he was in the military and now he’s working for his uncle.’ If it had been only a few months, they would have found it strange that he was a civilian.

Also, frankly speaking, 3 months is definitely not enough time to go from hating yourself to the point of dumping your fiancée to starting to like another person without even thinking about your ex or why you broke up with her.

It's not a big deal to me, but the timeline in the drama seems off. Taehee lost the young patient Joonho, then quit his job, left his life behind and enlisted in the military... and then he presumably came back from the military and joined his uncle's company. This should take around 2 years total at a minimum.

However, Joonho was Dongjoo's first case when she started working at the funeral parlour, which happened a few months before the events of the latest episodes. She said she just got her third paycheck, so she's been working there for 3 months. We also know that she initially ran away from the boy's funeral and quit her job out of shock, then came back later, so we can add a few weeks to the three months she's been on the job to get the time that's passed since Joonho died. At most, it's been 4-5 months.

KTH and BDJ's timelines don't align at all with regard to Joonho's time of death, unless I'm missing something.

Again, it doesn't really matter to me, but I wonder if there's an explanation or the writer just goofed up.

Yeah, the main point of the drama is the romance. But both main characters have important stuff going on that prevents them from thinking about their love lives (you know, investigating criminal conspiracies, grieving, being defrauded by one's dead husband, juggling secret identities, lawsuits, money, etc.), so it's a very slow burn.

OMG, episode 5 was so cute. I'm loving all this development between the leads.

The drama has switched to a new weekly schedule with 3 days of 2 new episodes followed by one day with one episode and 3 days of rest, everyone. Next episodes come out on Saturday. Look at the episode guide.

Cool fact: a very young Yeon Woojin has an uncredited (on MDL at least) bit role in this drama as Baek Jin, the evil grandpa's secretary.

Absolutely, they're alike in that respect. I also think it's more realistic that way than to have them fall madly in love immediately. But for me that makes their romance all the more satisfying! I know the payoff will be worth it once we get there.

Yeah, that's a reasonable theory; I hope we'll see an explanation later on.

But I think his motivation is still more about getting some use out of RZZ than about protecting her or being in love with her. He keeps referring to some plan he has for her after the lawsuit, plus he really doesn't strike me as a man in love at the moment. (Also, and this was actually probably his main reason for not wanting to call the police, his fake identity would have been exposed.)

That said, I think he's starting to respect her and to sympathise with her a little.

I agree that some of the characters are very poorly written and unrealistic. Bai Shu behaving like a spoiled child at a staff meeting in front of all his colleagues, Tang Hua being aggressively hostile to patients’ families, the PhD guy being constantly helpless and obsessed with Bai Shu, etc. Real adult humans don’t behave so transparently.

Also the medical cases so far have all been very emotionally manipulative and sentimental in a conservative way—a mother who’s rather die than lose a pregnancy, an old woman who’d rather die than leave her husband without someone to cook for him, a very ill adopted orphan, etc. There’s not a lot of nuance or grappling with interesting dilemmas, just a lot of stuff that’s supposed to make us feel sad. It’s boring to me.

Surgeons is another Chinese medical drama with a very similar premise and tone, but it’s more mature and intelligent IMO.

Of course, it’s only been 5 episodes, so the drama could get better. And I like Yang Mi’s character.

I also tend to think he’s a cop (who’s undercover as a fixer, i.e. Mr Tan is not his real identity either), if nothing else because that’s the only way he’s not going to prison at the end of the drama—a cdrama is not going to give a conman a happy ending because of censorship guidelines IMO—BUT his reaction to Lu Yang getting knocked out was really not cop-like at all and made me doubt this theory.