Taino

I like your long list of details with stuff like this, so I know if I should be ready to skip from now. So... Can you share more details about the second male lead? How annoying is he? Does he spend a lot of time with the female lead? Does the female lead keep him too close? Does the female lead even reject him? Please feel free to tell me these things and anything else that you might consider important..

I gave in! I am watching episode 1, and hoping for the best... I know the love triangle is coming, but I am ready to rant if necessary.

Thank you!

Yes, it feels weird

I've been wanting to watch this one for the longest time, and have been holding back because of those two episodes, but skipping might do the trick for me...

After some research about "Filing for Love", the more I read, the more annoying the love triangle seems to be, so I might pass on this one! But thank you for sharing these details with us.

The love triangle seems to be very heavy in this one! And surprisingly I still find many comments saying that there is no love triangle here...

Ouch!

Indeed! But unfortunately, second lead syndrome is real... and some people forget what the story is supposed to be about and about who the story is supposed to be about. I'd have preferred to watch how the male lead's long plan started to pay off and started turning the tables on his evil teacher and the cult. I'd prefer to watch the evil teacher's minions fall one by one as the male lead outsmarted them and found definitive evidence that they couldn't scape from after they were constantly creating charges for people with no evidence, but we were robbed of that satisfaction and the time that could've been used to make the story so much better, was used used to make the story end up so much worse...

One of my main concerns about the fiction that we can observe and most likely represents some or all of the reality of some of these topics is the culture around alcohol, and how people seem to get completely wasted, and how "work" pushes some people to drink unhealthy amounts of alcohol in forced dinner parties, or afterwork activities or negotiating with a client and "showing them respect" by almost intoxicating themselves drinking in their name... All this, and more is truly concerning.

I believe that what kills the romance in many K-Dramas is that way too many times characters change for the worse after they get together. It seems like this one did the right thing which is either keep their good dynamic from before the get together or introduce a new dynamic to keep us engaged. We don't need boring romance, but compelling romance stories.

These are all the right questions!

Thank you! I will give this one a try when I complete my rewatch of "Shine on Me"

That's how cliffhangers are designed by the way ... that's on purpose and some people love that

Yang Yang is an amazing actor!

I believe it was fine for her to grieve and cry for her friend, but it wasn't done properly. A lot of you seem to forget the historical setting of the story which is why the characters themselves bring the topic of women reputation several times throughout the story. The problem is not that she cried, but that she threw her self on top of him and cried like she lost the love of her life, and while her actual husband collapsed she didn't bat an eye. It made sense for the male lead to cry because he had been protecting him since the beginning and they just fought a dramatic battle together. Also, this is a romance drama, so of course we will watch closely the characters and their feelings, since that is the point of watching and reviewing the romance elements of a romantic drama. The only ones obsessed seem to be those with second lead syndrome all over Dramaland. I don't have any problems with people with second lead syndrome or that you enjoy love triangles, but you can simply acknowledge that the love triangle exists and that you like it. I don't have fantasies when watching a drama, I have expectations for the story to deliver what they promised through the title, synopsis and trailer. The only one treating the female lead like a prop was Ye Xian who killed her horse, hit her with a whip, draw weapons on her and risked ruining her reputation multiple times for his own entertainment. ML was not the problem, he is the victim of becoming a secondary character in his own story way too many times.

I hate love triangles, but I rather have the love triangle and backstory to happen first, instead of sabotaging the story later bringing the past or focusing too much in the love triangle every one or two episodes...

If I ever rewatch this drama, I will start from episode 5...

This is how you do a love triangle... it was annoying, but it worked in the end because it was used for character development.

Indeed! Some commenters say that he is a complex character, and maybe he is, but was most definitely stubborn, entitled, aggressive and childish. He was not a funny character, he was a guy who felt superior to everyone else for the weight of his family. He threw his weight around because he knew his title and his family would grant him privileges, which is why he didn't have any issues pulling weapons on front of women, killing horses, whipping people and almost destroying the reputation of a young lady. Ye Xian does not evolve, what happens to him is that he the favorite of the kid emperor and the protected of the male lead, because without the favor of the emperor or the multiple plans of the male lead he would have been killed very early on the story, and even his merits are all the result of doing what the male lead told him to do, and what gets the male lead, he gets to be treated as a secondary character in his own story. Now, for the FL; She was a business woman, so she most definitely was a able to recognize that Ye Xian was a mad man from the beginning and that was the story for several episodes, but suddenly, we are supposed to believe that they became the best of friends, when the only thing that he had done that far was harass her and even tried to harm her more than once only for his own entertainment. The writers decide to change the tone of their relationship when she ties him to a chair, transitioning their relationship from abuse to "pranks" almost, because now both "are playing games", which again, was completely out of character for the female lead that while stubborn, was the victim until that point, and from there we see the classic girl that doesn't realize that this guy obviously likes her, and she even somewhat rejects him but keeps in touch with the guy and develops a weird relationship that even in the present would be questionable, and so much more in the historical setting of this show. Ye Xian was the favorite characters of these authors, since he received all the plot armor and importance of a main character even after his demise, and the female lead was guilty or leading him on by accepting his weird friendship and keeping him close to her heart even after she supposedly found her true love... I am passionate about this topic because this show genuinely had potential to be so much better than this...