UnaSpenser

Absolutely.

I don’t disagree with you there. It’s not that this should be a higher rating, but that others should be lower.

It’s too bad that there any standards for the rating scale.

I enjoyed it, but it did get formulaic. I was fast-forwarding a bunch in the last 2-3 episodes.

I’d say 8 is suitable. It was entertaining enough. Had the rarely seen enjoyable side characters - loved that the brothers were solid and that the older brother was so consistently sweet. But, it wasn’t stellar or had anything phenomenal about it.

Agreed. The one missing piece, though, was the mother’s history prior to meeting the dad. I would have liked to know more about why she was so vulnerable to such a man. As if she had no self-definition without him. Would not leave him even if he married someone else? And was a frightening psychopath? Would let her child become one of his tools? What childhood led to that?

But, yeah, you come to have some sympathy. In fact, the constant pontificating by the police characters, that poverty and trauma are no excuse for crimes, was getting annoying.

They said it to someone who stole money, because he had no way to earn money to eat or pay medical bills.

Natural law is more primal than manmade law. If a legal/political system leaves people impoverished and desperate to survive, natural law dictates that they will do what they need to. It’s an inherent right to survive.


And the abuse and trauma that the dad endured when he was a child? No wonder he became a psychopath. He wasn’t born that way. He needed help. Where’s the social responsibility for what happened to him, as all the neighbors stayed silent? The state is just going to kill him, like his uncle tried to? Ugh. What a tragedy.

So, that lecturing they kept doing was making them look cruel and it was evoking more compassion for the criminals.

Interesting story in that regard.

You may be right. I missed that she had been asked that question.

Damn, this drama had some darkness.

Every scene with Jiamin, I know I’m going to be so entertained. I rarely look forward to supporting characters, but she’s an absolute delight.

Oh yeah, the brother was definitely trying to get him killed.

I wasn’t sure if she even realized then. If she heard it at all, she might have thought it was Qin. Otherwise, why was she so shocked to learn of his death from the police?

I was confused by that, as well.

Maybe, she sings that to anyone in distress and she thought it was Qin making those noises?

The acting is this is good and the story is, for the most part well-crafted and it keeps your interest piqued.

The one thing that keeps bothering me is how they wrote the FL character. She is wholly unprofessional. its beyond the oh-to-common problematic drama/film construct where a character is not forced to recuse themself from a case that relates to them, personally. It always disrupts the willing suspension of disbelief, as it’s just too unrealistic and such an overused trope.

How would this person ever keep her job? In the beginning, someone else has to keep reminding her, even though she’s been on the job for years, that evidence is required to arrest and convict someone. Her gut feeling means nothing, in the legal process. Then, she runs out into the field, when she’s a tech support personnel, not a detective. She can’t defend herself in a fight, so what the hell is she doing? In one case, she just runs out of the office on her own, to what she knows is a dangerous scene. The whole lone wolf thing only works if you’re actually highly skilled and astute. To save her, her colleague suffers permanent lung damage. And she never seems to acknowledge the harm she caused.

Then, she pays for a defendant’s child’s medical bills, when she’s his prosecutor. Did she even have to study law to become a prosecutor? Do they have the concept of conflict of interest? It doesn’t seem so. Then, she sits in court pouting like a child, when an accusation is flung at her.

The work they are doing is serious and people’s lives are at stake. How could the writers make her behave like a 10-year old? It totally distracts from the quality of the drama. I feel badly for the actress. She had to have been feeling that her role got shafted.

Enjoying this, but sheesh, her voice! What is this obsession with baby voices for fully grown women? She’s a very smart inspector for their kingdom, but she sounds like a 5-year old. It’s grating. Can we stop with this?

In my 60 years, I've never met a single person who did this. I'm a parent and I know a lot of parents and I just can't imagine it.

So, okay, lets say it does happen, now and again. Its such an overused scenario in dramaland.

Wish they had written the FL character better.

I’m only on ep 3. The Yu Shi character is so unfathomable boring. She seems depressed, is totally expressionless, and only seems to exist for the sake of “loving” someone. Ugh. Why can’t she have her own life pursuits, without it being about a man?

Does it get better?

so disappointing. there were so many problems with the script, the dialog was horrible, the lead actress just didn't fit the role, and they made all the characters kind of boring. I wasn't feeling any of it.

Also, why the hell is there any presence of a Western religious organization in a story about the origins of an island off the coast of the Korean peninsula, rooted in Buddhism? It smacks of colonizing savior complex. Just no.

the romance picks up in book 3.

I like that, in the beginning, its just made known that Luo is gay. No fanfare. He just is. Its not some big surprise or the source of any bigoted tensions. The novel is a crime/suspense story and it just happens that the lead characters are gay. And fall in love.

No one ever explicitly states that she died, so, clearly, the director wanted to leave it open.

If it weren't for the fact that I've known people who have died of cancer and how sickly they looked before they finally passed, I would absolutely say that she died in the snow. And he's imagining her.

Having her look perfectly healthy and then just "fall asleep" in the snow is a strange turn of events. Its so unrealistic, in a story that wasn't unrealistic up to that point. People wither away and their face becomes sallow. They get very weak. Her climbing that enormous staircase suggest that she wasn't too sick, at that point. We don't know how long they stayed in Qiang village, but still, she looked healthy when they got out of the car. So, was it suicide by hypothermia, in order to avoid the worst of it? If so, why did he survive? Or are we just supposed to accept the TVLand version of cancer death and see it as her finally succumbing to the cancer she was battling, even though she looks healthy as a horse?

Since, they did that, I find myself able to believe she went off for some advanced treatment and just returned. Except.... why wouldn't her mother have been with her? Or anybody? He would not have left her side.

So, i think its supposed to be that she died and he's wistfully remembering her.

thought I would binge this, but its kinda hard to stomach the way this painfully sick approach to schooling is going on. The acting is almost too good, because they are stressing me out. Will have to pace myself.

Gentle request to mark this as a spoiler. I was waiting for this to finish before starting. Am only on ep 4 and now I know something I wasn't meant to know, yet. Not a big deal, but it would nice if this had been marked. Thanks.

Look for the scene in the ending credits…..

When considering a pairing that defies our norms,, it isn’t just about age. It’s about power differential. A couple should be equitable partners. Neither should feel afraid to speak their truths and neither should feel less than or unable to leave.

In a male dominated world, men start out with more social power. If they’re older they have even more. If they’re famous, they gain more power. If they’re wealthier it’s an even larger power gap.

But, sometimes these can be offset. In this story, she’s the wealthy one. So, she has the social power and financial security to be equal to him. Also, she has been through a lot more than most people her age: parental illness, parental suicide, parental PTSD, her own PTSD, her own illness, a harrowing two years of treatment and a grim prognosis for her life.

She knows that her prospects of living more than a few years are nil. So, she has a certain amount of forced maturity. She also has no concerns about being taken advantage of.

She’s facing death and she wants to have the best life she can. She has no time to waste. Being someone her own age, lacking in the the depth of understanding life and death and what to value, would lead to depression. Exactly the opposite of what she needs. So, she pursues him persistently, because she’s short on time. Her pursuing him and him being reluctant helps to demonstrate that he’s considerate and not some scum dude who treats her like a prize he won.

All of this is why the age gap concern is eradicated. Her close friends and family understand it all. Her mom and Mr. Han both investigated him, to make sure they felt she was safe with him. Once he checked out, they didn’t care about age. They loved her and knew that she had found what she was seeking. It was their gift to her to not make unnecessary issues and let her have a passionate experience before her life was over.