burhaa aadmi

I gave this 9/10 for the sheer intelligence and thoughtfulness of the dialogue that dominated the first two thirds of the drama. It had a lot to say about the role of women of all ages in modern society and the way in which their own perception of their roles often conflicts with what traditional society expects.

In that dialogue, and in the female lead character I was reminded strongly of the second female lead from another drama by the same writer "The Tale of Rose". She too was driven, independent, work focused and I found her dialogue as here almost always impeccably well reasoned.

However, the difference between these two dramas is that the second female lead in “Rose" was also part of a truly moving romantic arc. The development of the love story between her and the lead characters brother had a lot of emotion, and always carried the sense that they were two people in a romantic relationship. That sense was missing almost entirely from this drama. The lead pair did develop strong supportive relationship, but in terms of romance, the best that could be said was that we saw them build a friendship from which romance COULD at some future point grow.

It was a noona-donsaeng ('jia-didi'?) romance apparently but the noona and dongsaeng spent a comparatively little time together and more than 90% of the time they did spend together was exclusively work-related with zero emotional content. Even in the final four episodes, there was no overriding sense that one was watching a romance. The success of the romance in “Rose" proves that the screenwriter can do better, so I'm going to applaud the content she delivered exceptionally well, and check out the Taiwanese original to see whether the constraint of adapting someone else's material had any impact on this Chinese remake.