lilili

I feel like a crazy person reading the comments I swear because I'm like holy shit I know what the drama is serving. You can reasonably debate whether the drama succeeds on what it's setting out to do (and I have a love-hate relationship with this drama) but it's crazy how many people just do not get it at all. I don't know if it's a failure of the writing or if people's expectations were cemented by the off-base marketing (selling this as a standard Park Min Young romcom when it's very much not that) and they just couldn't reset their expectations.

This is such a good summary. I swear I feel like you're the only person who's watching the same drama as me 😆. The child trafficking aspect is super interesting because Jiho is looking into the circumstance of the adoption and I'm so glad the show doesn't seem to be papering over that aspect of the story. It is absolutely human trafficking and we can see how much it's damaged Sang Eun.

Mi Ho is the closest thing to family Sang Eun has ever known, regardless of what their true relationship is it's not surprising that SE would struggle to cut ties with her. She has no other family. You just need to see abusive relationships in real life to understand it that it's very hard to cut people off if you care about them.

I don't think it's voluntary, she was going through a major personal scandal when the show launched and I think that's why she looks so thin and unwell

She won't.

Because she was brought up to be used and exploited and she never learned how to set boundaries

Assume that all the currently airing shows will be cancelled this week. When the Sewol ferry tragedy happened all shows were cancelled for two weeks.

I agree with you, I didn't like most of the popular dramas. The only one I really loved was Semantic Error.

I feel like I understand what they were going for in the first half of the drama. First off, it's a subversion of romcoms, not actually a romcom. They are sort of indicting the fantasies we have of the rich handsome man sweeping us off our feet (Hae Jin's OTT dates with Sang Eun) and instead showing us that the quiet heartfelt dinners at home are much more meaningful and valuable. It's also a character study of deeply traumatized people struggling to learn how to love and be loved (because none of them feel like they deserve love because they didn't get it as children, see the ex wife's comment about only people who've been loved know how to love). The setup is ridiculous but the emotions feel very real. I liked that it started out tonally weird going from funny to romantic to tragic to sexy all in one episode. And Go Kyung Pyo is absolute fire as Jiho. It's a hard role to pull off because sometimes he's ridiculous, sometimes he's tragic, sometimes he's sexy but GKP can do it all. And his chemistry with Park Min Young is incredible (which you'd expect since she's the queen of generating chemi with her costars)

But there were a few problems with the setup that are now dragging down the show and turning it into a straight melodrama. One is that Hae Jin was not well integrated into the plot. Unlike a lot of people I like the character even if I have not one tiny particle of SLS. But because it's crystal clear from the first episode that Sang Eun is in love with Jiho, Hae Jin's character is eating up too much screentime given he's not ever in the running to be with Sang Eun.

Another problem with the setup is the whole chaebol plot and Madame Yoo. I actually love the idea of a weird surrogate mother who is toxic but also the only parent the FL has ever known so they are tangled up with each other in bad ways. But you didn't need the whole Eena group mess to get there. Or at least it didn't need to be this complicated. The chaebol shenanigans are taking away attention from the leads and also from Gwangnam who is a wonderful character and deserves to be better developed with his own romance.

Despite all the second half problems I still love this show because somehow the core romance is poignant. I just love them both so much and I'm rooting so hard for them to heal together. When Jiho went to the birthday dinner it was a fantastic moment for him because it showed his character growth thanks to Sang Eun's influence and I just want more of that and way less Eena group bullshit.

I love what you wrote here 🥹🥹🥹

It's a polarizing drama. People either love it or hate it. You should watch the first couple of episodes and decide for yourself. I'm in the love camp along with one of my podcast partners but one is hate watching and one dropped after the first two eps.

Because Yoo Madame is the closest thing she has to a mother and it's hard to toss out your mother.

I loved the drama to ep 10. It's gotten too melo for me the past two eps but I'm still enjoying parts of it. And I love Jiho and Sang Eun and I'm invested in Hae Jin even if he's an immature mess.

https://twitter.com/beanyon21/status/1585652626439294976

The one tiny moment I loved but that got lost in all the plot machinations was when Jiho went on his own to the staffer's birthday party and was able to be polite as he sat there and sipped his juice (d'aw). It represented huge character growth for Jiho and showed the positive influence Sang Eun has had on his life despite the craziness with the marriages being revealed.

It was never a love triangle regardless of how he feels. I think the writers are messing with our expectations around love triangles

I'm pissed we're not getting that and instead spending time on chaebols we don't care about

😭😭😭

I feel like I could understand her though, because she grew up so poor and unloved that in her mind financial security and social status will protect her and make up for what she lacked. But the way she's written makes her a straight a villain and I hate that.

I'm with you. Ep 11 is the first episode that I deeply disliked. 100% agree on too much unnecessary crap going on.

My favorite scene was when Jiho tried to ask Sang Eun 500 questions (lolol) and the kiss which was extremely sexy but far too short.

I've been a Hae Jin defender but wow he was terrible in this episode, immature, weak willed and unwilling to just step the hell out of Sang Eun's life like she's asked him to. And I hate that Sang Eun keeps getting manipulated because she's still emotionally immature and trained to please people instead of setting appropriate boundaries with Hae Jin (and Yoo Madame too).

One thing in particular I want to call out is Jiho's awful ex. Why make his ex a villain? She should be a sympathetic character given how she grew up and her time with Jiho when they were teenagers and instead she's doing all of this unethical crap, screwing over her client and trying to destroy Sang Eun, it's ridiculous.