irmar

While it is true that very often a successful drama will launch a trend of dramas riding the wave of its success, you cannot call this plagiarism. For instance, even within Korea itself, the theme of the city dweller going to a rural environment to heal was explored in quite a few dramas. We had the quirky "I'll Come to You When the Weather is Fine" (2020) - very different dramas in many ways, though! - then the success of Hometown Cha Cha Cha itself one year later, inspired that utterly boring and lifeless drama with Im Shiwan playing a librarian, "Summer Strike" (2022). And of course the trend of "healing" and "rural setting" in general is top in the past 5 years or so, as in that wonderful drama "Our Blues" (also from 2022).
The success of "What happened to secretary Kim" inspired many, some good and some mediocre, one of the best being "The Secret Life of My Secretary", the last being "King The Land". - which would have been a nice drama if it didn't come after the others, and felt like a poor copy of the original.
The success of "Mr. Queen" launched the fashion of screwball period comedies, such as "Forbidden Marriage", the best one, and many other mediocre ones in its wake.
One could make many such examples.
So yes, themes become popular, and it's very usual that writers (of manhwas, novels and dramas) and producers of TV shows are inspired by the success of others to make something similar, hoping theirs will attract viewers too. That doesn't make it plagiarism, though, unless it's a really close copy with too many same things to call it a coincidence.

This is not an easy thing to do. All the other actors have cleared up their schedules for this time slot, many could not be available anymore if it's postponed, and they probably have signed contracts too already. The channel too, has its programming, it had this drama set to fill the slots for this particular period, changing the dates would upset all the programming of other dramas.
After all, it's 12 weeks, three whole months, not a week or so.

Yes, that's very easy, I can just visit here or elsewhere and look for spoilers. But I wasn't talking as a viewer. The dilemma was whether to ask for the channel at Viki to create a team and work on it. (Once you commit as a channel manager or moderator or editor, then of course you have to stick to it till the end.) For this you cannot wait, you have to apply before the drama airs.

Thanks to everyone for telling me that, so that I know not to ask for it! I was with my mouse on the "Apply for Channel Manager" button, ready to click, but I thought I'd check with all of you here before committing.
I hate tragic endings. So many tragic deaths all around me in the past couple of years so thanks, but no thanks.

True! Although they do, when they die on us.

I didn't say "only" boxing matches, LOL. But you do want to watch more of them, whereas for me they are my least favourite part of the drama.

You are really a guy, aren't you? That explains why you'd rather watch boxing matches. :)

Dogs break things too. My mom's dog chewed all slippers, LOL!

Of course, in the classic movie, they don't exactly end up together. But we are left with hope. Because "tomorrow is another day".
And, @PuriPuriPurple, one never knows how faithful they will be. Even when the source is Korean, you can never be sure, because sometimes they change the story from the novel or webtoon when they make it into a drama.

Probably.

Of course new glass vases can also be broken. Those of us who have children or cats know that pretty well.

Ι think what you say might happen. There isn't a single story, the love story goes alongside her professional story and her trauma. It's very probable that she discovers love for boxing along the way (overcoming trauma), and then the male lead will have the dilemma of letting her win and do what her heart desires and the fact that the thugs will kill him. He will decide to be noble and not ruin her career (redemption arc) and she will find out and... Something like that. I think it highly probable.
No point in hiding this conversation as a spoiler, none of us have watched the future episodes, all this is only hypothesis.

Why would you do that since she hates boxing? I'd like her to do whatever makes her really happy.

A glass vase which has broken, even if you glue it back, it will always show the patch and the water will seep out.

My son used to be a tech support agent for Sony mobile. He told me that if a phone falls in regular water, there's no big problem, but if it's salt water (as in this case), it can be very serious, because salt is corrosive. So it's very difficult to salvage. The ML really put an effort there!
He also told me that some stupid clients put their phone on purpose in the sea to test whether Sony's claim that the Xperia Z was waterproof (can withstand being submerged for up to 30 minutes under one meter of water) was true. But the joke was on them, because in the small print it specified that it didn't mean salt water or Coke or other stuff, only regular water. That was years ago, since then they removed "waterproof" and they put "water-resistant", to be on the safe side.

Their contract is for only two matches, so she is bound to stop being his athlete - unless there is some twist in the story.

Tragic can also be beautiful. Remember Romeo and Juliet?

Spoiler? When we know they are the main leads and their names are together on top of all promotional material? Come on! How many times have you seen the two main leads not have a love story? (There have been a few instances, but they are the exception that confirms the rule)

That's very true in real life, unfortunately. Not all love stories have a happy ending, and you may invest years and years of your life for someone who's not worth it.
But here we are not the main leads of a real-life love story. We are consumers of TV-series. We don't want to get heart-broken like in our own love life. We don't want to have wasted hours of our time being invested in the progress of a love story, only for it to be cut short or fizzle, and another love interest coming into the scene. There surely are dramas where one of the leads starts off as in love with someone else, but this person is soon proved to be the wrong person, and the male lead starts to occupy all the space.
There are two exceptions I can think of, and they didn't go well with most of the viewers: The King Loves (oh what a traumatic affair the change of main lead was!) and Yumi's Cells, where we were thoroughly invested in the two male leads of seasons 1 and 2, and neither of them is end game.

Here was my review (not here)
"I had to force myself to go on and eventually finish this drama. The story was cliché and over the top, the main actress, Hwang Jung Eum, was extremely irritating with her clownish over-the-top acting (same as in the first episodes of She Was Pretty). She is a very plain woman, and it’s perfectly okay: not all heroines have to be pretty. I don’t mind it at all, if they are charming and have charisma, and act well. For instance give me a full drama with Kim Seul Gi as a heroine and I will do a happy dance. (She’s so good in everything she does that I actually don’t find her plain, although other people say she is) But Hwang Jung Eum has absolutely nothing going for her. Plus the person who is responsible of her makeup, hairstyle and clothes should be fired and never find work in entertainment forever and ever.
The partly coloured orange lips on that huge mouth, the straight semi-short hair hanging on both sides of her face, a style which would make even a beauty queen look uglier... and these formless mismatched clothes! Towards the middle of the series they started changing her wardrobe, making it a little more feminine. They also gave her bangs, which made her a bit prettier but older, totally an ajumma.
And her acting became more restrained as well as the show went on. Maybe she read the online comments which unanimously said that she acts the exact same way in all her romantic comedy roles and she tried to salvage her image and the series- but too late. (By the way, I had liked her acting in the dramatic Secret Love, with Ji Sung, the one where she was a single mom in prison. Maybe she should only take on dramatic roles?)
But let’s not lay the blame solely on the actress. I don’t know whether it’s because of her, the director, the script or whatever, but Namgoong Min, whom I usually love, was in one of his worst moments. His lovely face was wooden and expressionless most of the time. He was trying to portray a reserved man, but the result was extremely boring. I’m really really sorry to say that, but I didn’t like him here. There were some moments, the cute parts in the countryside, the rehearsal of meeting the father... But they were sparse. Their relationship? Their skinship and kisses? I didn’t even want them to kiss, it was cringe-worthy. Zero chemistry! Like two co-workers doing a chore together.
The side characters were meh, not bad, not good, okay. The story... Midway we forgot about the Zero-members and focused on the boring love triangle too much. Then they read the comments and they remembered that some of the show’s best moments came from the Zero-members and they picked them up again, in a hurry, towards the very end. And this gave us some MORE clownish acting from the main lady, when she reacted at a man’s body hair as if she had seen a cockroach or something (what?! Do Korean men shave their body?)
The ending episode had a surprise for us. Some cheesy cliché lines that reminded us of shows from the 1970s. I felt genuinely sorry for the poor actors who had to say those things.
All in all, a total waste of time for everyone involved.
Ugh! Namgoong, choose more wisely next time!"