MadelineMaureen

literally in episode 12. DongJu has tests done & it's listed in the paperwork. also spoiler tag your comment please.

the logic of some things, and well don't hate me...but the ML not bringing anything to the character and thus certain points fell flat.

I feel like either people aren't understanding Yeo Eun Nam or production didn't do a good enough job explaining her motives. The whole reason she married Yeom Hwi Cheol is so she can get the shares to Daesan group. She believes her stepfather murdered her father and that her mother was in on it. She has her own revenge she has been working on for years. But because the writing for her character is such an afterthought they don't flesh this out. So casual watchers just think she's after her families money. She is not her Aunt. She is Dong Ju, but with less innate intelligence and planning.
If her character was as smart as Dong Ju she would have gone to the grandfather and gotten married to Dong Ju in the first place, as Dong Ju was already Chairman Cha's favorite and most trusted person. Instead, because she has no power/trust, she goes along with the arraigned marriage instead of trusting her partner to help her with her own revenge.
She could have easily slipped to her grandfather that she was seeing Director Seo, and he could have done the work for her to see if DongJu was sincere and didn't know she was the Chairman's granddaughter.

Heo Il Do thought that his college sweetheart and best friend had a love child together. They either both knew something or one was seeking help from the other over something they found involving Yeom Jang Seon. So both adults needed to die. YJS manipulated HID into killing them by making him believe that his lover and best friend betrayed him.
3 birds one stone. Took out the current threat and made HID more reliant on YJS and embedded in the organization.

She's not the lead character. This is a male lead mystery political drama. She is listed under "main role" but she is technically in a support position. She only exists as a catalyst to the plot kicking off and as a way to give information to the ML. This isn't a love story. This is a political/family mystery makjang. She's not even mentioned in the synopsis of the show. This is about the 3 men. Dong Ju, Heo Il Do and Yeom Jang Seon...everyone else is there to help move their stories forward.

I mean. technically not a romance. so the couple thing is just more of a catalyst for the plot to kick off from.

Attempted murder count
1. As a child, car over cliff
2. Shot twice on boat
3. Food allergy
4. Hospital injection backed out at last second
5. Shot in shipping yard

I only included the ones Il Do was directly involved in. There were a few other attempted murder tries against Dong Ju. The attack in the murdered man's apartment. The torture guy...twice. Not to mention all the almost kidnappings and direct gun to head moments. Dong Ju has not known a day a peace.

3. In the flashback of Il Do as a college student we see him being tortured for information on the activist group that he was apart of. That group includes his college sweetheart(mother of DongJu) and his best friend)Yeo Soon Ho) and his wife(parents of Eun Nam)....the only one still in the activist group was Dong Ju's mother. I'm assuming she found something on Yeom or someone he works for and was sharing that information with Yeo Soon Ho or the opposite...Yeo Soon Ho stumbled onto something and sought out help from an old activist friend. Either way they had to get taken out. So to make sure that Il Do did it and remained loyal to Yeom he put it in Il Do and Yeo Soon Ho's wife's head that the little boy was Yeo Soon Ho's love child.
Puppet master pulling strings.

Yeom Jang Seom is toying with Heo Il Do. He is enjoying watching Il Do kill his own child and wants to see if he will follow through with ending Dong Ju with the knowledge that he is his son.
The call was to torture Il Do with his previous actions and as a kind of out for him(Yeom Jang Seom) if Il Do finds out Dong Ju is his son in another way. The "I told you as soon as I found out" type of bs.

I'm not one to agree with AvenueX very often, but her review/rant about the first 17 episodes got to the root issues that I was having and not able to accurately articulate.

The fake bad acting from the father was so bad that it made other characters look stupid. There is bad acting on purpose and then there is over doing it....he fell into the latter more than the former past the midway point.

I think it was all the more obvious when you compare it to the veteran actresses that were in this show as well. They all had moments of drama and extra, but they kept the essence of the character.

With the father it wasn't until like episode 26 onward that production even bothered to show his actual personality without smoke screens. They could have balanced that better once the characters knew he was a liar, but imo ,production, either in writing or editing didn't hit that sweet spot of two faced portrayal.

She needed to bring chargers to the Emperor/court. If Lady Miao refused to help her she would hold her hostage, which is high treason. This would wipe out her whole family aka her father...so, a win in her mind.

YunXi is mad because she is his wife aka her family is now HIS family. So his daughter, mother and Aunt that he spent years trying to find a way to protect them just got thrown into the line of fire because of the woman he thought could protect them went off script.

This is why she writes the divorce letter prior to entering the palace. It was a safety net for the Fu family to not be implicated in her crimes against a royal family member.

Congrats to the sidekicks of both FL and ML of this drama for beating the odds and all surviving a revenge story. Honestly think it's a first for me. The stats were not on their side.

All the mothers and daughters actually look related to each other. Also the Mu brothers actually look like siblings too. Good job casting department...honestly....slay.

I only feel bad for Heo Tae Yun. His father(and mother) keeps trying to kill his Hyung. His Hyung wants to kill their father. His Hyung and Nuna are in love with each other. And his grandfather's secret love child is being brought into the company/family to take his place as heir.
The kid just wants to study and eat ramyeon with his gramps while his family tree turns into a wreath.

He is the son of Heo Il Do and a college classmate of Yeo Eun Nam's parents. All 4 parents were members of an activist group. His mother was still an activist at the time of her death, which I'm assuming is why she had to die.
Heo Il Do did not know that his college lover had their child. He thought that the child was Yeo Soon Ho's biological child. Someone falsifies DNA results to trick Heo Il Do into killing all 3 of them. Cha Deok Hui, Yeo Eun Nam's mother, thought her husband and their college classmate had a love child. So someone manipulated Cha Deok Hui, and Heo Il Do into believing that they were betrayed.

So though Dong Ju and Eun Nam aren't biological siblings they are step-siblings and share a younger brother in common...ah classic Makjang....gotta love it.

Spoiler for identity

She named him. He showed up on their doorstep asking for food. He could only remember his name. She corrected him and said your name is Dong Ju....when she asked for a younger brother from her mother they always said his name would be Dong Ju. He isn't related to them. It was by chance. Her mother was going through a mental health crises and just adopted him into the family without contacting the police about a found child.

Not very accurate but I guess it leave most spoilers out for obvious reasons.

Honestly kind of love the modern classic Kdramas coming back.

Love Scout had the classic romcom but with a kind of gender reversal tropes. Now this one is bringing out all Makjang classics. I feel like I need to dust off my old K-drama bingo card....cause this one is almost at blackout.

Perfect Marriage Revenge is another banger of a modern Makjang-light. All the classic elements without the heavy or drawn out drama...short and sweet.

Seriously, just lean in and go for the ride guys. I've been enjoying watching the performances and seeing what the next pretzel shape the writers will come up with. I really need to try and find my old notebook with the bingo graph I made.

So far the acting from everyone has been amazing. Every single character in multifaceted and has secrets that pop up later on. There is good foreshadowing in episodes that actually lead to things...there was one that didn't lead to anything, but it's whatever.

I just wish I had a bit more clarity into Eun Nam and Hwi Cheol's relationship. Because they live in a studio apartment aka one room. Yet every time they are on screen together she doesn't want to be so much as touched by him. But she "lovingly" fixed his tie....They talk like he's confused as to why she no longer likes him, when from day one he knew she was in love with someone else and was pretty much forced to marry him. I just wish there was more clarity on things. I get that their relationship isn't actually important to the plot of the show but they keep dancing around things. There marriage is important to the plot, but their relationship is very vague.