LA_Drama Fan

Ep 50 "It ends not with a bang, but a whimper"

We made it. And thanks to the epilogue at the end showing TK/YD's early moments, this episode fittingly shows us how far we've come (strayed) from the genesis of the series, back in the Spring, when the weather was cool and Hope Sprung Eternal.

All the writers had to do here was wrap up their loose ends and 70 minutes should have been enough time. I'll give them this much credit: They stuck to their guns and kept the characters consistent thru to the end (more on that later).

Notable Moments:
All right, let's get the whole SeJin arc out of the way. After 49 episodes of having to deal with her rottenness, she finally has a heart to heart with her dad, where she accuses him of hurting her plans. GOOD FREAKING LORD! Like I said, at least she's consistent, in trying to paint herself as a victim. She finally reconciles with him, after he nearly croaks in her arms, and leaves the country. For some reason, she's heading to Chicago, like they don't have enough problems there. Look out, Windy City, there's trouble coming!

Hee/DS/SooJung gets their arc dealt with and closed out with the Gong's paying for the kid's medical bills and his 'recovery' (though they never said how? Was there even a marrow transplant?). Oddly, he had no speaking role here, it looked like he was going to say something, but they cut away. That was really weird. In 2025 DS & Hee open a second branch of the chicken franchise because I guess they needed something to do? (just what BN needs, more competition & she loses her chef). Did they marry? What happened to the kid? Who knows?

YM/DW/SK gets NO closure and the writers continue to torture the few of us who were attached to this couple. He fights to get her back, as much as his simple brain will allow and when he has the guts to announce to the families that they are a couple, she shuts him up. SIGH. And still, one year after the time skip (it's now September 2025!) they are STILL dating in secret! This makes NO SENSE, as they saw first-hand how keeping secrets from their parents came back to bite YD/TK hard. Doesn't anyone learn anything in this show? I had hoped that SK would spill the beans at least!

And if it's now 2 years in the future, WHERE ARE THE FLYING CARS WE'VE BEEN PROMISED????

CM/SooJung gets their arc screwed over. The writers punished the one couple who SHOULD have had a child by taking away any opportunity for them to have one. And to make matters worse, they drive that point home twice, once in their bedroom and again at the hospital where SooJung must accept her fate to not be a mother but to be a helper to other moms. This was just cruel. You're telling me that after all that, THIS couple can't bring themselves to adopt?

And finally the wedding: Instead of seeing YD try on wedding dresses, we get the brothers at the tailor with their new suits (what's with the 3-piece suit thing in SK?) and then they meet the girls to try on casual golf attire at one of the company's stores. TK/YD couldn't look more uncomfortable and this theme carries on thru the balance of the episode. The wedding comes and goes and is topped off by another one of their awkward kisses (just STOP, already) and DS getting the bouquet (huh? You were supposed to toss it to YM!!!) And for all the sharp-eyed viewers, was Mr. Kim (the chauffeur) attending the wedding?

And as stated before, this team of writers stayed true to the characters. When TK/YD walk thru their floral path at the end, they stop and he gives her a small bouquet and gives her a heartfelt thanks for being with him. She says nothing in return, (not even the slightest apology for all the pain and grief she brought him) and instead of what should have been a kiss under the sun to End The Show.... they hug. Just perfect. Sheesh! I should look on the bright side: We were spared another cringe-worthy attempt at kissing, at least.

I don't care what all the BTS videos of the cast show; there is something going on with the two of them, at least with her. They were never all that close anyways, but this got ridiculous. I don't even know why they share a bed, given their distance from each other, they should just have separate beds....really! Maybe it IS her personal life's issues, but she's a PROFESSIONAL actress. ACT LIKE YOU LOVE HIM. We keep making excuses for her: She's a victim of bad directing, bad makeup; bad wardrobe; bad hairstyle, bad writing; bad character development, etc. That doesn't mean you can't kiss him. At some point, she has to wear it and take responsibility. AJH has seemingly done his part, his co-star can show the same level of effort.

So that's it. Over 17,000 freaking messages!!!! My GAWD. We've been through a lot together and have collectively written a far superior story than this brain-dead coalition of "writers" was able to. I will greatly miss interacting with all of you, be it arguing, laughing, agreeing or just wallowing in our mutual misery. I've got just enough snarkiness left for a post-mortem on this series either for here tomorrow or the REVIEWS section, but if you haven't read Naebyeol's review, please do so, as she has said everything I could have thought of. It's excellent.

Oh, and what was "The Real"? I guess, although let down by subtitles, it was from BN's speech at the end, where she compares the "real feelings' of the couple compared to when they were faking it. At least, I guess that is what it is. The writers let us down here too.

Have a good afternoon from the West Coast of the US, folks.

that was great, after coming from the grannies who bugged Bong Nim about the guy who tried to steal her baby. I didn't recognize the 3rd nurse, tho. TK is like, "take your seats inside, OK?" LOL

Worst. Kissers. Ever.

Your review said everything I was going to write! And thank you for remembering how fast-paced the series once was and how we marveled at that in the beginning.

THANK YOU FOR SPEAKING FOR US!!!!

The irony is that they are doing the co-parenting, not HW/JM.

Yeah, their initial 'chemistry' (for lack of better words) was fine for a couple that was initially adversarial, and then just faking it to pretend to be a couple. But once they started their arc towards being in love, something should have kicked in, and it didn't. How much of it is due to direction, who knows? But they just don't 'click'.

Ep 49 - "It seemed like a good idea at the time"
(sorry, I'm running a little late, and didn't want to post this at 11pm Pacific time)

So, here we have KJH deciding that he should abscond with (polite way of saying kidnap) HN. What was the worst idea: TK/YD letting him have the baby by himself, or his decision to kidnap her? And who talks him down? SJ, no less (of course, her redemption arc is in full swing). Despite the futile attempt to catch him at the Temple, we get a cute 'family' scene of TK realizing how far he's come in his relations with the Gongs. I did find it cute how they split up the search teams, with the Girls in one car; I don't know why, I just found that funny.

I'm sure we all wanted TK to knock the stuffing out of him when they got back home. I know I did. But a couple of problems with that scene: Sister Eka's continued defense of him was a bad look for her - she should have been the first to scold him. And why on Earth is YD just standing there staring at him with HN??? Did she go into zombie-mode again? She should have snatched the baby and run to her room with IO and let Eka deal with him. Or at least Eka should have snatched her from him. What are the writers thinking? And why did YD not call her mom right away when the baby came back? She waited what seemed like hours to tell her! Unfair to BN, IMO.

The rest of the episode is kind of downhill from there, as they continue to throw scraps to the secondary couples: Hee's son (unseen in this one) continues to get sicker and the pressure is on SooJung to sponsor him, which is really unfair to her. The airheads stumble and bumble along, only seen at the end of the show, but with more airtime than usual. I'd guess they'll get the most airtime together yet in the final episode as the writers try to figure out what to do with them. And JangHo hasn't died yet and we end up with SJ being visited by GS & CS, with advice on her father which she'll ignore, of course. I guess they felt such a scene was obligatory?

For me the most disturbing thing was the insistence to have KJH seen as not-that-bad-a-guy. He gets ample opportunities to apologize, cry, agonize, etc. I guess we're all supposed to forget that without his sister and SJ's prodding he would have taken off with the baby. "Kim JunHa has Come" indeed.

As many of you have done, I've given up trying to figure out or justify the writing decisions made on this show (and AOME as well). We will sit here and take it, as KBS decrees we should. The only thing unanswered at this point is what does the Title Mean? What was "the Real"? Tune in to find out........

Uncharacteristically pompous of her to do that then. And don't get me started on why it was a surprise to TK. Sigh....

Did that one at the beach count? He kissed her.... She didn't kiss him back. (plus, we know now that she had already planned this as their goodbye, but didn't have the decency to tell him).

tomorrow it ends....let's all be thankful for that. It's morning there now, so just relax and revel in the last day! Good nite!

My issue is more of how it changed. Pre Ep 33 it was in the low-mid 8s. But this YLAG wanna-be version is a 3 to me.

Based on my displeasure of both, I'd like their scores to be about the same

Although I wouldn't want him to make it to America, I wish they had taken that to a bit of a further end....
We see him from behind at the airport, and he is about to walk into the jetway from the waiting area, wearing the Baby Bjorn. As he heads to the door a hand plops down on his shoulder, and he stops. He turns and looks behind him with wide-eyes as he sees several policemen and behind them, in the background are CS/TK/CM/YD.

This could actually be a fun game!

I will go to my grave knowing they changed writers at Ep 30-33 ish. Too many fingerprints on the evidence, it has to be. Out of curiosity, I rewatched the first 2 episodes this week. The show is almost completely unrecognizable compared to this. It left me really sad to think of what became of this series.

This is one of those times that KBS owes its viewers an explanation of what the hell happened. I don't expect an apology, their ratings have been "good enough" in their eyes, but an explanation is due.

Of all the stupid things in this series, that decision bugs me the most. They went to all the trouble to set this up and just said, "nevermind". It could have gone many different ways, and they chose none of them. Hee's son should have been his. That would have solved part of the issue (your child will seek you).
Arrrgh. Sunday can't come soon enough.

I can't figure out how TRHC is holding at it's rating....it's as bad as this one, if not worse.

If you're looking for something more on the romance/comedy side, there are tons of recommendations here in this thread. For me, nothing even comes close to King The Land. It completely re-wrote the entire concept based on the leads. I use it to get the bad taste out of my mouth that this series has left. Plus only being 16 episodes, they didn't have time to screw up the series as KBS's 50 episode weekenders have done lately.

I'll offer a counterpoint to what's been posted. If you're interested in this series in any romantic way, FORGET IT, this is NOT the show you'd want.

For them to 'break up' they'd have to be 'together' in the first place, and I'll offer that never happened. Oh sure, they lived together in the same annex and pretended to be a couple, but none of that meant they were together. He did come to have feelings for her, and the car-camping scene was really sweet, but while she genuinely cared about him, she could never reciprocate his feelings for her and always kept a distance. Even when she did finally 'confess' her feelings for him, it was brief and her actions after that proved they weren't real. Their 'breakup' wasn't the typical "we need some time apart" type of thing we're used to being said over an awkward meeting of the couple. Rather, she coldly abandoned him without even a goodbye letter, despite having the time and chance to write one and further, didn't even bother to include him in the goodbye letter she left her family. She then ghosted him for about a year and went on to live her own life. They only reunited by accident. And the way she went about doing it really scarred both of them (especially him) and damaged their relationship. While technically, they were apart for about a year, covered in the timeskip episodes mentioned earlier, they weren't really a couple then.

And IMO, they still aren't, as his feelings still exceed hers and they lac k trust and communication with each other. Their physical contacts seem forced and unnatural and they only hug in response to stressful moments. That said, they are supportive of each other, but not what you'd expect from a loving couple that have known each other for about 18 months (they met in April 2023 and it's August/September of 2024 in the series).

If you were to scroll waaaaaay back in the messages to about the 2,000-3,000 range (back in the Spring) you'd see us chatting about how the inevitable breakup for a young couple in a romantic series would be handled. We had tons of theories about how they'd handle it. None of them came true as this did not become the family/romantic drama we'd thought we were in for based on the beginning of the series.

I get the distinct impression the writers are flailing about and the timejump is a handy life preserver being tossed to them. I don't know how else they are going to write themselves out of this?

I don't think there's been a single kiss on this show at all?