L13

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.

Tang Hua is so fucking stoopid. It took me five seconds to realise the father wasn’t biologically related to his daughter and that’s why he’d never got tested. But even if you haven’t thought of the obvious explanation, you should never tell a sick child who’s already worrying about her health and her family’s finances that her beloved father is a bad person and that’s why you’re disrespecting him in public. A child isn’t going to think “oh wow, my dad must be a terrible person then, thank God the nice doctor was here to put him in his place!” She’ll be fucking sad that her father is being insulted and humiliated in public and she’ll worry about him and wonder what she could do to fix things and protect his feelings. That’s how children think, but no, Tang Hua just had to be rude to a patient’s guardian to absolutely no one’s benefit and harm the terminally ill child’s mental wellbeing in the process.

Anyway, I was just appalled by her behaviour in ep. 5. Bai Shu has also had a few laughably unprofessional moments so far, but this took the cake.

Ooh, good guess.

Is this getting subbed anywhere? (Also... is it good?)

She probably didn't get the full amount for the watch because it has a personalised engraving, and also she really should save that money given that the only job she can get at the moment is washing dishes part-time!

Anyway, I agree, this is such a gripping drama! I'm having so much fun. Both the mystery and the main couple are good.

Thoughts after ep. 14, may contain spoilers if you're behind:

RZZ's in-laws and the ML's (should we call him Mr Tan now?) teammates are SO annoying lol. RZZ's, uh, aunt-in-law continues to be the worst, and the ML's teammates keep doing stupid and illegal shit even though he keeps telling them not to.

We got a reminder today that the ML is not part of the company that hired him to get close to RZZ, BTW. This was already established a few episodes ago in a conversation between his accomplices. They call him Mr Tan, so that must be the identity he uses with them, but is it actually his real name or are there multiple layers of deception to his act?

Also why do they keep meeting on a boat lol

I CANNOT WAIT for You Gang's stupid little extortion scheme to blow up in his face. As much as I dislike his wife, he should have never gambled away their money without telling her—and in fact after she explicitly told him not to—and every single decision he's made since then just makes things worse and worse.

I wonder if the ML's anger when RZZ suggested installing a security camera to identify the intruder was genuine worry for her or an act to manipulate her into letting them change the locks. I mean, I'm sure he was manipulating her, but was he *also* genuinely angry that she thought so little of her own safety?

I'm loving how complex the main characters' motivations and relationship dynamics are, but I'm really looking forward to seeing some sign that the ML is actually warming up to RZZ for real. He seems like such a tough nut to crack!

Also lol @ RZZ thinking she could afford a security camera, though. Lady, with what money???

Oh, and we got confirmation that Lu Yang (I think that's his name? I'm too lazy to check) is cooking up a scheme Mr Qiu doesn't know about. I did think in previous episodes that he was keeping some info from Mr Qiu and here we finally see it confirmed. I wonder who his real boss is.

Lastly, JUICY last few seconds... We're about to get some crumbs about the ML's life outside of this whole con in the next episode!

You don’t have to be autistic to have different priorities in dealing with people and find certain social norms unpleasant. Autism is a specific condition (although it manifests in a wide range of ways, especially in women), not a catch-all explanation for people having different personalities.

I think he might still be someone who knew them in school, but re. the letter I think the real Gao Jun simply gave the ML everything he needed to fake his identity convincingly, so he must have told him about the letter. We’ve got some hints already that the real GJ was the one who hired the fake one.

I think she’s quite smart and observant actually! Definitely not stupid or naive. She can seem passive in social situations, though, even though she is quite proactive in other ways (going to the factory on her own, getting a job as a dishwasher, etc.).

There are several things at play with the in-laws IMO.

One, she's a very proud person and can't bring herself to stoop to her in-laws' level and engage in some stupid argument about money, affairs, etc. She feels it's beneath her. And yeah, there can be such a thing as being prideful to the point of stupidity when it leads to you not advocating for yourself, but I don't think it's a part of her personality she can simply turn off.

Two, I think she still wants to preserve some illusion of peace between them for the sake of Xu Youning's memory and their feelings toward their son. It's not that she still believes he was a good husband, but she's a very proper person who wants everyone to part on good terms for the sake of the time they spent together. Also she still feels indebted to XYN's family for taking her in.

Finally and most importantly, I think she realises her in-laws' behaviour toward her is irrational and spiteful and if she reacts she'll just be giving them ammunition. She's not the kind of person to engage in petty verbal fights and schemes like her MIL and cousin-in-law, so she doesn't know how to fight people like that with their own weapons. She feels it's better to just bear some unfair treatment that she considers irrelevant than to spend extra time and energy thinking about these people and their nonsense because it will be her loss, not theirs.

Like, if she tries to tell them about XYN's women, the fake watch, that he faked her signature, etc., they're obviously not going to go, ooh, fair enough, we’re so sorry! lol

IU? All the rumours I've seen have been about Park Eunbin.

The scene in episode 10 where Zhenzhen broke down in the bathroom because she looked up GJ's coat and realised it was too expensive for her to buy him a new one and she felt desperate was so good. Her frayed mental state (and her pride in being self-sufficient and not owing people anything) was communicated so clearly without any words.