liliso

It looks like it's a fake marriage after all. I wonder what the chairman's motives are. I think it's weird that he would go this far to get rid of SR, and he also isn't the type to help DJ just because he feels bad for her. 
DJ is really going to regret her choice when the truths start coming out about Noel's identity and the chairman's part in the fire that killed SR's dad and sent her own dad to jail. 
I really feel bad for YH in all of this. He was DJ's biggest supporter, and he did everything he could to help her. He really didn't deserve to be ditched and betrayed so cruelly. On the other hand, I hope this spurs him into action. He came back to Korea to take back the company from his uncle, and after 5 or so years, it seems he hasn't done anything other than getting in the way of a couple of businesses. At this rhythm, the chairman will be dead before YH takes over the company. I want to see YH's vengeful side. He has shown himself to be smart and capable, so I hope he starts focusing on taking down the chairman and leaves DJ to deal with the consequences of her own choices.

Those situations you've mentioned all contributed to my growing discomfort with TH's behavior that culminated in that godawful comment. He gave that speech to TM about them having to be careful, otherwise HS would end up getting hurt, which was great at first sight, but looking back was just hypocritical. He said one thing but did the opposite. Instead of taking a step back, he just went on with his pursuit, albeit more sneakily. The fact that he was fully aware of the negative impact his actions could have for HS only makes things worse.

Even though TH's behavior is nowhere near TM's level, it doesn't mean it is right. That comment was gross by itself and in the wider context of the writing for this drama. We already have TM’s harassment of HS being portrayed as something romantic (him reminiscing about that forced kiss and smiling about it as if it was some happy memory and something he was proud of was another low point of the ep), we really don’t need the male lead making that sort of comment. And, for me, the fact that TH is aware of HS’s attraction to him does not make it OK. He could have just said something like “I wanted to kiss you but I held back because I don’t think you would be comfortable with that yet, so I’ll wait until you are ready” instead. Frankly, this was a last straw situation for me. I was patient in the beginning of the drama when TH was being a dick to HS for no reason since I thought he would get better as the episodes went by, then he did get better for a while, but he went downhill again for me after HS told him to stop flirting with her. He agreed to it, but he never actually stopped flirting with her. Instead, he just became subtly pushy. Like with the contract signing situation, he used it as an excuse to convince her to have lunch with him when he could have kept things professional and asked her to go to the office to sign it (p.s.: I’ve loathed this whole model plotline from the beginning, it just put TH in another position of power over HS, on top of being her client at the gym. And this is a criticism about the writing, not TH). Like you said, TH is emotionally intelligent, so he knew exactly what he was doing and that she wouldn’t say no since it was supposedly about work. And, again, the knowledge that his feelings are reciprocated does not make any of this OK. When HS asked him to stop flirting with her, he should have just respected her wishes and given her space. It was not like they would just stop seeing each other, they would still be meeting at the gym and because of the model thing, so they would have probably grown closer over time since the feeling was mutual. Sadly, after 22 eps, I’ve finally accepted TH is not the kind of male lead that I can whole-heartedly root for, as much as I would like to. To each their own, but this was the end of the line for me wrt to TH and HS.

We will have to agree to disagree about what gentlemanly behavior is. For me, TH would have been a gentleman if he had just said he held back and left it at that, but that follow-up comment was anything but gentlemanly.

And now we have TH and grandma walking right past each other in the street and neither one sees the other… It's definitely time for me to drop this, I can't stand this writing.

Totally agree. As much as I wanted to like TH, that "I won't hold myself back next time, just so you know" was gross and pretty much ruined his character and this couple for me.

Pre-ep 22 questions: Why does 9 out of 10 times the promo focuses on gross TM and this nonsense “love triangle”? Why does it feel like TM is the ML and him and HS are the main couple? What kind of bad luck does Ha Joon have to have finally landed his first leading role only to be treated worse than a SML in this clusterfuck of a drama?
Post-ep 22 questions: HS, what the hell? Why are you going around with this fucker after what he's done to you? Before I saw the full ep, I thought maybe the gym manager had seen TM and told HS to accompany him since he’s their precious VIP client or whatever, and she had no choice, but nope, she went of her own volition? This guy has forcibly kissed her, refused to apologize when she asked him to, told her she was the one to blame for his behavior, said he was capable of even worse, and she just gets into his car as soon as he shows up? Does she have no sense of self-preservation? She put TH through some military-grade training as some sort of punishment for hitting on her, even though he had already agreed to stop doing so when she asked him to, but TM has done far worse, and she just lets him drag her around? And then she looks at him all pitifully when he leaves? How does this behavior make any sense? Why does the writer insist on TM as a worthy love interest after writing him as such an obsessive creep who does not take no for an answer? How many of this pseudo dates between TM and HS with romantic music playing in the background as if they were a sweet soon-to-be couple instead of a harasser and his victim will we have to endure?
Sadly, after this, even TH and HS scenes have lost interest for me. At this point, the only scenes I find actually enjoyable are the ones between HJ and MR, despite how awful HJ is. In a drama with so many characters, the fact that the only scenes I’m looking forward to are of a couple where I don’t even like one of them really says something about the quality of the writing. Frankly, I have no hope of it getting better in the second half.

The way YoHan's story was told was just very poorly done. We had almost no info about him in the previous eps and then there was an infodump in ep13. In the span of like a minute we were told he had gotten back together with his wife, adopted a kid, gone back to the US, gotten divorced, and gone back to SK with his kid. It was so lazy, it doesn't even feel like he's a main character. Also, the arguments between him and DaJung are just grating at this point. Both of them are childish and annoying around each other, but DaJung manages to be the worst of them. Like the way she was the one who was running in the street and crashed into him but then was acting like it was all his fault was just ridiculous. I hope we get to the revenge part soon, my patience is wearing off.

I didn't watch TRHC, but every single comment I see about it says that it was awful, so I really hope LYOL won't go down the same path, if nothing else for the sake of the cast. I'm not thinking about dropping this yet, but if it continues like this, I will probably only watch the HS/TH scenes since they are the only compelling part of the drama.

I'd been enjoying this drama despite its flaws, but after this weekend's episodes (I've seen ep. 14 subbed and clicked through ep. 15 raw), I fear it is going to veer into hate-watching territory soon. The plot has just become stale. We're 15 episodes in and it feels like we're back to square one; things have happened, but nothing has really changed. I had the faint hope that TaeHee's revelation at the end of ep. 14 would actually lead to some movement in the plot, but alas it was nothing but a fakeout. So it feels like we're at the same point we were in ep. 1, with TaeHo still being clueless about what is happening with his grandmother and HyoShim still being the family's piggy bank/punching bag. I always expected HyoShim's journey to independence to be slow and gradual, since it wouldn't really be in line with her character to just cut her family off and leave them to fend for themselves (which is what they all deserve, especially her mother; there are no words to describe the hatred I have for this woman, who might have become my most hated kdrama character ever), but I didn't think it would be this slow. I felt that being beaten up by those gangsters had been a turning point for her and selling HD's car to pay back the debt had been the first step in solving her problems, but now she's exactly in the same spot she was at the start of the drama: debt-ridden due to her siblings' immaturity.
The drama is honestly starting to feel like a misery fest with both HyoShim and TaeHo being constantly faced with adversities with almost no breather in between. Like I think other people have said, they are the only bright spot in each other's lives, but they barely get the chance to interact. It seems like there's a pattern where we have one episode with a couple of minutes of them actually together and other where they only talk on the phone (if they talk at all). I usually love slowburns and wouldn't actually mind the pace of their relationship if it weren't for TaeMin's presence. It really does feel like he is the male lead at this point, given how much screen time he gets and how much of that time is spent with HyoShim, to the poor girl's discomfort. I really don't understand the writer's intention. If she wanted to create a love triangle, she should have made HyoShim at least a little bit interested in TaeMin and made TaeMin less of a creep. Instead, we have two people who (are starting to) only have eyes for each other and a borderline stalker who thinks he's entitled to the girl because he has known her for longer and who will simply not give up even though said girl has straight up said she is uncomfortable with his behavior towards her. And now with SooKyung joining the gym things will probably get even more complicated for poor HyoShim because of TaeMin's unwanted advances.
This was long, but I needed to vent after these two episodes. I started this for HaJoon since I've been a fan of his since I saw him in Black Dog a few years ago and I was glad he finally got a lead role, so I really hope the drama will improve soon and it will not go down as a flop.