MadelineMaureen

This was a really nice short drama. It did a good job with the budget they had and the FL and ML felt like actual people dealing with trauma from their own choices rather than caricature of a person.
The underdog team was a nice bit of levity throughout. Even they were fleshed out a bit, which was nice.
I'm not sure how I feel about the wrap up of the last 30 mins...the big bad became a bit cartoonish and the lackies got redeemed a little too easily. I needed to see a bit more in the previous episodes of Yoo Mi questioning her own choices. We only really see her changing her tune in the last 40 minutes or so of the drama.
I think that it made sense that Eun Ho would need time to sort things out on his own. Recalibrate himself a bit, as he had been fueled by vengeance for so long, he really needed to get back to who he truly is at his core. Holding on to anger/hatred is like slowly poisoning yourself. At first you might not notice, but over time it kills who you once were. Forgiveness is not for the forgiven, it's for the forgiver.

So in Ep 3 Lee Kang Hyun uses her gun. But the thing about police guns in Korea...the first bullet is always a blank...so how did a real bullet come out first? I love how the helicopter stuff didn't faze me, but the lack of a blank in a gun did.

Also, if i walk into one more public bathroom with teenagers/pre-teens filming tik-toks on their phones i'm going to actually lose it.

He was the only person in the seen cast that fit the body type of the rabbit mask, but I just figured that we hadn't seen the person under the mask yet. ya know?

Guys...they are finally alone with no one to call to interrupt a conversation! Miracles do exist.

They look to be at least a week behind the actual scheduled release times, as they are only releasing ep 9 and 10 today when we the next episode to air is 17.

The Feng Ruru thing...SAME! Respect your partners work time. It's one thing to send like a check in text or pictures of what you're eating for lunch(it's a thing) but video calling an office worker is wild. I've seen my 16-19 year old employees do this when closing but management would freaking NEVER.
Serious question to people who just chill with ppl on facetime at work...why?
I don't get it. I went into a room the other day to grab something and a phone was on the counter...i looked down and there was a whole ass person staring back at me...like Sir WHO ARE YOU? I knew it was facetime and not a stream or something because I was in a little box in the corner looking up my whole nose.

I know, im trying to figure out when this dynamic came to be. I know it already existed, but because we didn't see HOW it happened it made my brain go down a question rabbit hole.

I paused this drama after getting 5 minutes in to episode 11. I sped through the 16th episode to see how it all ends.....
5 hours of missed story, but the plot was at the same square it was when I left the board.
I truly wanted to like this show from beginning to end, but I feel like the plot and storyline would have benefitted from a shorter episode count.

Does anyone know how Ji Han's manager, Eun Taek, became his driver/assistant? Like in what order did it happen? Cause it's never really clear, and it was just something that I became curious about after watching the two drivers/assistants try to go fishing together, but Eun Taek was too worried about Ji Han not answering his phone.
Like was Ji Han put in Eun Taek's department or was Eun Taek put in charge of Ji Han's team because he knew him? So many questions...they aren't very important to the overall plot or story, but my brain got hung up on it for some reason today.

I've found my people...🤗🤗

I never interpreted it in that way because of how he treats the driver/assistant of his grandfather, and how he goes about everything else in his life.
But maybe.

That's weird(the fighting about what is better). Not everyone is going to like a performance. It's okay to not enjoy something and give an opinion. I like discussing what a production did differently and why I prefer it over another production, so I don't like it when people take it to a school yard level..."my thing is better than your thing" argument.

I love how flawed the main three characters are. I can understand each of them and why they way are the way they are.
I can see all of them fighting to just have their own place/mark...they just have different ways of going about it. They each want to forge their own path, but they dislike interference from others on the way to that path.
Ji Han doesn't want to take the backdoor in to his grandfather's company.
Ah Jeong doesn't like to take things from others just to get ahead.
Do Han doesn't want anything to do with the company that destroyed his mother, he just wants to create art and live in the shadows like how it was before his parents' death.

Do Han can't deal with "too much". Too much love, too much worry, too much pressure/responsibility. That's why he and Ah Jeong get along so well. She is an extremely low maintenance friend who understands this about him.
At an age where he was possibly figuring out he was going to be different from everyone else because of who he is attracted to, he lost both his parents, then found out they were never married, making him a bastard in the eyes of everyone around him. Then he is pulled from his home and school...treated like crap by the family he has left, left holding the happiness of his brother in his young hands.....yeah that's a lot for a kid going through puberty.
He went full turtle and let things happen around him without any input, as it wouldn't have mattered anyway in his eyes. All he wants is to be free of all the burdens that were foisted upon him after the death of his parents. That just so happens to include being responsible for the happiness of his younger brother.

One second Do Han is happily living his life with a loving mother and father...the next thing he knows both his parents are dead, they were never married, and the family he has left that he JUST met hates his guts. This also would have been around the age that he is discovering his sexual orientation. So rejection and self-hatred at that pivotal time will mess with anyone. He is forced to change schools and leave his friends he did have. He went internal when dealing with his struggles of rejection of those around him. So he will leave any situation that is too much for him. Too much love, too much worry, too much pressure.

Ji Han went the opposite. He worked even harder to be liked by others, a people pleaser. He made himself the best possible version so that there could be no fault found in him.
Needs to graduate...okay top of his class
Needs to serve in the military...you got it...Marines
Needs to join the company...blind interview for interns/lower employees, so he can never be accused of nepotism by those in the company.

Ji Han and Ah Jeong are very similar. She has her "Just in case" training for her acting jobs. Ji Han has his "can't find fault vault" of awards and achievements.

I would hope that Do Han and Ji Han would, but they might not actually know where he is buried. As their parents weren't married her family might not have had anything to do with Do Han and Ji Han's father's funeral/burial rites.

Oh yeah it's definitely becoming clearer as to why the grandfather doesn't like/show interest in Ji Han....he sees how he failed his daughter when he looks at him....he sees himself.

I'm not sure what you mean by funnier. I find the pacing and humor to be good in the first 5 episodes. There's a nice balance of levity and seriousness needed for the subject matter. There a lot of high jinks with the FL and ML as well as with the older half brother and sister-in-law.

But we are dealing with a closeted character, orphans, failing in ones profession/dream, failing to receive love from family, etc I haven't not enjoyed it yet, so it just might not be your cuppa, and that's totally valid. 🤷🏻‍♀️

The humor is mixed throughout, but they're not treating everything as a joke.

Hidden Love changed the age difference between the ML(bestie who is a year older than Sang Yan in the stories) and FL(little sister, who I believe is like 7-9 years younger than her older brother)
Sang Zhi is still in elementary school when her brother is in his last year of high school.