Hard disagree on "romanticizing criminal behavior". Criminal behavior is most definitely not romanticized. The evil boss ends up in jail. JA does pay the price for her actions, though obviously the context and circumstances are taken into account, as they should, namely 1) her framing the guy at work was reversible, and they did revert it, winning over the evil boss thanks to her, 2) she was paid to be DH's enemy, but seeing that he was not a corrupt lowlife focused on playing political games, etc., and seeing how he was fundamentally a kind and decent person, she was unable to continue with it and she protected him, against her interests, and would have been willing to live on the run forever in order to protect him, 3) she was coerced/forced/pushed into crime in order to protect her family, she was a young woman who was routinely violently beaten by a violent thug that was also threatening her only surviving relative, her disabled grandma, who she also had to look after. She was also in abject poverty and was forced to come up with a lot of money fast, not like there were a lot of options there given her circumstances. I mean, this was not YH betraying her family completely for self serving reasons, this was her being pushed into crime by a violent loan shark in order to protect her disabled grandma. I would say that any morally normal person, when pushed with their shoulder against the wall and forcing to make such a choice, would decide to protect their families if they had any decency in them. DH certainly understood and would have similarly done anything to protect his family. 4) in the course of the story, not only does she change and starts protecting DH, but has a positive influence on his life, helps the faction was initially working against to get rid of the CEO, and even let YH know about the CEO and supposedly made YH less self serving, given JA was willing to sacrifice herself to save DH, who she was supposed to, and had every reason to, work against... frankly, YH would have been in her debt even just for helping her dodge a bullet given the fact the evil boss would have never married her due to her low birth.
JA's actions were motivated by her and her family being threatened and pushed into a corner, with very little options, and wanting to protect her grandma: she was obviously no career criminal enjoying what she was doing or acting out of sheer greed, otherwise she would not be living in poverty, but rolling in dough. It's clear to me that if there was any obvious path she could have chosen where she could have successfully protected those she cared about without committing crimes she would have gladly done that instead. Of course, she might be missing out on opportunities because of unknown unknowns: for example she didn't know of the help she could get for her grandma, due to the gaps in her education and nobody apparently ever bothering to tell her that it was a possibility (I have to say, in terms of services that one didn't have a great discoverability, probably something they need to fix as a matter of policy). That said, it's not at all self evident to me that she was wrong in her basic premise, because it's not as if someone without an education could easily put together the sums that the money lender was threatening her over in any useful amount of time for her situation. Frankly, I would not want to be the family member of someone that in JA's place would throw me under the bus and *wouldn't* make the same choice to protect me.
Quite frankly, I am much more disturbed by people normalizing/justifying the complete betrayal of one's family. To state the obvious, no, not "everyone" would have done what YH did. DH was unhappy, and never did anything remotely similar to what YH did. YH's sister in law was separated from DH's brother and asked for a divorce. Not to mention the female bar owner, who is someone that would have very much benefited from actually pursuing another relationship. For that matter, basically everyone around DH, besides his wife, is utterly loyal: his childhood friends would have been willing to risk getting in trouble with the police to cover with him, etc. In that sense, his decision to not distance himself from them as his wife demanded was 100% vindicated, because he would have turned his back on people that would have never betrayed him, for the sake of someone who turned out to be a liar and a cheater, someone disloyal and utterly untrustworthy, who betrayed him completely.
Most people are pretty decent, and would consider the notion of betraying and deceiving one's partner for a year, having an affair with their abusive boss, staying with said boss even when they turned out to be willing to frame one's partner (by contrast, considering a deal breaker him lying to you about camping... decades and a kid togeher, and that's all it was worth), and conspiring to get one's partner out of a job, take on debt, mortage his house, and take on risk, just to make herself feel better, or improve the "optics", because it was more convenient for the two lovers for DH to be out of the company, only to then be ready to remove JA from the picture despite knowing she was the only thing protecting DH from getting framed and fired, something she told her she didn't care about anymore now that she was no longer with the boss and it was not her problem... a normal person, I was saying, would consider all of that to be utterly repulsive. In fact, I think it would be pretty scummy to consider doing any or all the above, let alone trying to present it as a reasonable option. On the contrary, I am not sure that most morally normal people wouldn't be willing to commit a crime if a gun was held to their family's head and they were backed into a corner.
Not to mention, everything JA did was revertible (excluding getting rid of the money lender, which I consider a heroic act of self defense from a battered child that defended her family, and for which she should have gotten a medal and the appreciation of the community): the guy she framed then got his position back and then some. DH's public humiliation was due to YH's betrayal, JA would have been ready to live on the run forever to avoid it, DH correctly chose to sacrifice himself for her sake, and in any case it was thanks to her that DH avoided getting fired and the destruction of his life was contained to the degree it was possible given the position that YH had put him in. By contrast, YH's actions are not reversible: there is absolutely nothing she can do to undo what she has done. Incidentally, YH also knew that her lover had framed the guy they mistook DH for in the beginning, and kept mum about it. And for entirely self serving reason: she didn't have any grandmother to take care of.
YH's actions were cruel, utterly needless, entirely and easily avoidable, and self serving. She could have easily been honest with DH and divorced him. In fact, that was what one had every right to expect from her. By contrast, JA's actions were motivated by her and her family being threatened and pushed into a corner, with very little options, and wanting to protect her grandma: she was obviously no career criminal enjoying what she was doing or acting out of sheer greed, otherwise she would not be living in poverty, but rolling in dough.
It's clear to me that if there was any obvious path she could have chosen where she could have successfully protected those she cared about without committing crimes she would have gladly done that instead. Of course, she might be missing out on opportunities because of unknown unknowns: for example she didn't know of the help she could get for her grandma, due to the gaps in her education and nobody apparently ever bothering to tell her that it was a possibility (I have to say, in terms of services that one didn't have a great discoverability, probably something they need to fix as a matter of policy). That said, it's not at all self evident to me that she was wrong in her basic premise, because it's not as if someone without an education could easily put together the sums that the money lender was threatening her over in any useful amount of time for her situation.
So, on one hand, a cruel, meaningless, needless, utterly avoidable betrayal of DH, or her child, of her family in general, that YH freely chose to do out of her own free will, for self serving reasons. On the other hand, we have JA being threatened and coerced by the money lender, and needing to put together a lot of money in a short time, to protect her grandma. Pretty humongous difference, morally, on any level. And, as if that was not enough, there is also the fact that when push came to shove and JA actually got to know the person she was framing, she was unable to go through with it, and reversed course at a high personal cost. Contrast this with YH doing what she did to someone she had known for decades, and the father of her child.
YH was a liar and a cheater that was moved by entirely self serving reasons. She was also DH's wife. JA was technically supposed to be DH's enemy and was moved by the desire to protect her family. And yet, between the two, nothing could be more glaring than comparing YH's dishonesty and deception to JA's behavior, who, for example, couldn't help but give DH the suggestion about the phone booth despite it going completely against her interests, because he couldn't continue to look at him being deceived. This despite the fact that she was supposed to be on the side of those interested in working against him, and doing all this in order to protect her family, and being in an atrocious situation where she was beaten and lived in poverty, while YH's actions were entirely self serving. Plus, she was a stranger who was paid to be his enemy, while YH was his wife and lived with him every day, she had known him for decades, and DH was her child's father. And yet JA showed him more loyalty, starting out as his enemy, than his own wife.
It's simply natural to side with the underdog, than those hurting them for self serving reasons. So, I sympathized with JA being threatened and pushed into crime in order to protect her grandma. By contrast, I feel no sympathy for the money lender, despite him losing his father: to me his sob story didn't work and I didn't find him any more acceptable after his last minute turn around. Useful? Yes. Also too little and too late: there is nothing he could do to undo what he had done to JA and her family. A last minute change does not make up for years of vicious physical abuse and all the rest. And he had no right to hurt JA for defending her own family from his horrific father. He could have easily chosen another option and in fact one had every right to expect him to. Plus he was a genuine criminal. JA though? She was pushed into crime by the money lender, because he was threatening her family.
Again, I contrast this with YH, who could have easily chosen another option. Her own sister in law was separated from DH's brother, and YH was a lawyer. DH would have been more than ready to divorce her and had every right to expect her to be upfront with him and honestly break up with him. I simply won't conflate a deliberate betrayal and deception, like YH's, with DH being unwilling to change something core about his values such as the role of family and friends in his life, or to simply stand alone in an empty house because she was irrationally jealous of his other family and friends, and somehow she didn't consider a woman that helped raise her own kid, DH's mother, to be part of their family. That would be, to me, like DH pretending that JA stopped considering her grandma family and distanced herself from her for the sake of his own irrational insecurities. It would be a non starter. I think that the drama made this perfectly clear, so I wouldn't say that it "romanticized cheating", any more than I would say that it "romanticized crime". It simply didn't make any character, including the villains, one sided caricatures.
I also won't conflate those easily avoidable deliberate acts, for self serving reasons to boot (the money lender could have simply not abused JA, rather than routinely beaten her and threatened her family, YH could have simply been honest with DH and separated from him like her own sister in law did with his brother, rather than deceived him for a year and counting, and betrayed him with his own worst enemy, plus everything else she did) with JA being pushed into a corner and forced into crime because she was threatened by the money lender and she wanted to protect her family.
Ultimately, if one was honest with themselves, I doubt that anyone sane would prefer someone that was attached to friends and family, and wanted to spend quite some time with them, but that fundamentally treated them with loyalty, honesty and respect, or someone that was didn't show them any loyalty, honest or respect, and was willing to betray them with their own (the betrayal's victim's) abusive boss, and gaslight them, and deceive them, and manipulate them, etc., plus everything else YH did to DH? I would say that the choice ought to be obvious. Even if one were to split over differences of priorities and values, at the very least the former wouldn't betray one's trust.
Let's put it this way: never in a million years would I want to be the partner of someone that would trivialize and minimize such complete betrayal, nor a family member of someone that would be flippant about protecting their only remaining relative... Nothing much, simple self preservation: they are essentially announcing they would be more than willing to throw me under the bus, which I would very much like to avoid.
Frankly, I must say that "orphaned young girl being routinely violently beaten by loan shark, and pushed/forced into crime to protect her grandmother" is something the non sociopathically indifferent (or physcopathically sadistic) part of the population would have zero problem sympathizing with. Frankly, it's up there with Bambi or an toddler cancer patient. I am not sure that most morally normal people wouldn't be willing to commit a crime if a gun was held to their family's head and they were backed into a corner.
I think that the only person that this "romanticizing crime" bit could be applied to, it would be the loan shark. I found his actions completely repellent, even if you include the background and the last minute change of heart in it. Too little and too late. But I have already talked about it above.
JA's actions were motivated by her and her family being threatened and pushed into a corner, with very little options, and wanting to protect her grandma: she was obviously no career criminal enjoying what she was doing or acting out of sheer greed, otherwise she would not be living in poverty, but rolling in dough. It's clear to me that if there was any obvious path she could have chosen where she could have successfully protected those she cared about without committing crimes she would have gladly done that instead. Of course, she might be missing out on opportunities because of unknown unknowns: for example she didn't know of the help she could get for her grandma, due to the gaps in her education and nobody apparently ever bothering to tell her that it was a possibility (I have to say, in terms of services that one didn't have a great discoverability, probably something they need to fix as a matter of policy). That said, it's not at all self evident to me that she was wrong in her basic premise, because it's not as if someone without an education could easily put together the sums that the money lender was threatening her over in any useful amount of time for her situation. Frankly, I would not want to be the family member of someone that in JA's place would throw me under the bus and *wouldn't* make the same choice to protect me.
Quite frankly, I am much more disturbed by people normalizing/justifying the complete betrayal of one's family. To state the obvious, no, not "everyone" would have done what YH did. DH was unhappy, and never did anything remotely similar to what YH did. YH's sister in law was separated from DH's brother and asked for a divorce. Not to mention the female bar owner, who is someone that would have very much benefited from actually pursuing another relationship. For that matter, basically everyone around DH, besides his wife, is utterly loyal: his childhood friends would have been willing to risk getting in trouble with the police to cover with him, etc. In that sense, his decision to not distance himself from them as his wife demanded was 100% vindicated, because he would have turned his back on people that would have never betrayed him, for the sake of someone who turned out to be a liar and a cheater, someone disloyal and utterly untrustworthy, who betrayed him completely.
Most people are pretty decent, and would consider the notion of betraying and deceiving one's partner for a year, having an affair with their abusive boss, staying with said boss even when they turned out to be willing to frame one's partner (by contrast, considering a deal breaker him lying to you about camping... decades and a kid togeher, and that's all it was worth), and conspiring to get one's partner out of a job, take on debt, mortage his house, and take on risk, just to make herself feel better, or improve the "optics", because it was more convenient for the two lovers for DH to be out of the company, only to then be ready to remove JA from the picture despite knowing she was the only thing protecting DH from getting framed and fired, something she told her she didn't care about anymore now that she was no longer with the boss and it was not her problem... a normal person, I was saying, would consider all of that to be utterly repulsive. In fact, I think it would be pretty scummy to consider doing any or all the above, let alone trying to present it as a reasonable option. On the contrary, I am not sure that most morally normal people wouldn't be willing to commit a crime if a gun was held to their family's head and they were backed into a corner.
Not to mention, everything JA did was revertible (excluding getting rid of the money lender, which I consider a heroic act of self defense from a battered child that defended her family, and for which she should have gotten a medal and the appreciation of the community): the guy she framed then got his position back and then some. DH's public humiliation was due to YH's betrayal, JA would have been ready to live on the run forever to avoid it, DH correctly chose to sacrifice himself for her sake, and in any case it was thanks to her that DH avoided getting fired and the destruction of his life was contained to the degree it was possible given the position that YH had put him in. By contrast, YH's actions are not reversible: there is absolutely nothing she can do to undo what she has done. Incidentally, YH also knew that her lover had framed the guy they mistook DH for in the beginning, and kept mum about it. And for entirely self serving reason: she didn't have any grandmother to take care of.
YH's actions were cruel, utterly needless, entirely and easily avoidable, and self serving. She could have easily been honest with DH and divorced him. In fact, that was what one had every right to expect from her. By contrast, JA's actions were motivated by her and her family being threatened and pushed into a corner, with very little options, and wanting to protect her grandma: she was obviously no career criminal enjoying what she was doing or acting out of sheer greed, otherwise she would not be living in poverty, but rolling in dough.
It's clear to me that if there was any obvious path she could have chosen where she could have successfully protected those she cared about without committing crimes she would have gladly done that instead. Of course, she might be missing out on opportunities because of unknown unknowns: for example she didn't know of the help she could get for her grandma, due to the gaps in her education and nobody apparently ever bothering to tell her that it was a possibility (I have to say, in terms of services that one didn't have a great discoverability, probably something they need to fix as a matter of policy). That said, it's not at all self evident to me that she was wrong in her basic premise, because it's not as if someone without an education could easily put together the sums that the money lender was threatening her over in any useful amount of time for her situation.
So, on one hand, a cruel, meaningless, needless, utterly avoidable betrayal of DH, or her child, of her family in general, that YH freely chose to do out of her own free will, for self serving reasons. On the other hand, we have JA being threatened and coerced by the money lender, and needing to put together a lot of money in a short time, to protect her grandma. Pretty humongous difference, morally, on any level. And, as if that was not enough, there is also the fact that when push came to shove and JA actually got to know the person she was framing, she was unable to go through with it, and reversed course at a high personal cost. Contrast this with YH doing what she did to someone she had known for decades, and the father of her child.
YH was a liar and a cheater that was moved by entirely self serving reasons. She was also DH's wife. JA was technically supposed to be DH's enemy and was moved by the desire to protect her family. And yet, between the two, nothing could be more glaring than comparing YH's dishonesty and deception to JA's behavior, who, for example, couldn't help but give DH the suggestion about the phone booth despite it going completely against her interests, because he couldn't continue to look at him being deceived. This despite the fact that she was supposed to be on the side of those interested in working against him, and doing all this in order to protect her family, and being in an atrocious situation where she was beaten and lived in poverty, while YH's actions were entirely self serving. Plus, she was a stranger who was paid to be his enemy, while YH was his wife and lived with him every day, she had known him for decades, and DH was her child's father. And yet JA showed him more loyalty, starting out as his enemy, than his own wife.
It's simply natural to side with the underdog, than those hurting them for self serving reasons. So, I sympathized with JA being threatened and pushed into crime in order to protect her grandma. By contrast, I feel no sympathy for the money lender, despite him losing his father: to me his sob story didn't work and I didn't find him any more acceptable after his last minute turn around. Useful? Yes. Also too little and too late: there is nothing he could do to undo what he had done to JA and her family. A last minute change does not make up for years of vicious physical abuse and all the rest. And he had no right to hurt JA for defending her own family from his horrific father. He could have easily chosen another option and in fact one had every right to expect him to. Plus he was a genuine criminal. JA though? She was pushed into crime by the money lender, because he was threatening her family.
Again, I contrast this with YH, who could have easily chosen another option. Her own sister in law was separated from DH's brother, and YH was a lawyer. DH would have been more than ready to divorce her and had every right to expect her to be upfront with him and honestly break up with him. I simply won't conflate a deliberate betrayal and deception, like YH's, with DH being unwilling to change something core about his values such as the role of family and friends in his life, or to simply stand alone in an empty house because she was irrationally jealous of his other family and friends, and somehow she didn't consider a woman that helped raise her own kid, DH's mother, to be part of their family. That would be, to me, like DH pretending that JA stopped considering her grandma family and distanced herself from her for the sake of his own irrational insecurities. It would be a non starter. I think that the drama made this perfectly clear, so I wouldn't say that it "romanticized cheating", any more than I would say that it "romanticized crime". It simply didn't make any character, including the villains, one sided caricatures.
I also won't conflate those easily avoidable deliberate acts, for self serving reasons to boot (the money lender could have simply not abused JA, rather than routinely beaten her and threatened her family, YH could have simply been honest with DH and separated from him like her own sister in law did with his brother, rather than deceived him for a year and counting, and betrayed him with his own worst enemy, plus everything else she did) with JA being pushed into a corner and forced into crime because she was threatened by the money lender and she wanted to protect her family.
Ultimately, if one was honest with themselves, I doubt that anyone sane would prefer someone that was attached to friends and family, and wanted to spend quite some time with them, but that fundamentally treated them with loyalty, honesty and respect, or someone that was didn't show them any loyalty, honest or respect, and was willing to betray them with their own (the betrayal's victim's) abusive boss, and gaslight them, and deceive them, and manipulate them, etc., plus everything else YH did to DH? I would say that the choice ought to be obvious. Even if one were to split over differences of priorities and values, at the very least the former wouldn't betray one's trust.
Let's put it this way: never in a million years would I want to be the partner of someone that would trivialize and minimize such complete betrayal, nor a family member of someone that would be flippant about protecting their only remaining relative... Nothing much, simple self preservation: they are essentially announcing they would be more than willing to throw me under the bus, which I would very much like to avoid.
Frankly, I must say that "orphaned young girl being routinely violently beaten by loan shark, and pushed/forced into crime to protect her grandmother" is something the non sociopathically indifferent (or physcopathically sadistic) part of the population would have zero problem sympathizing with. Frankly, it's up there with Bambi or an toddler cancer patient. I am not sure that most morally normal people wouldn't be willing to commit a crime if a gun was held to their family's head and they were backed into a corner.
I think that the only person that this "romanticizing crime" bit could be applied to, it would be the loan shark. I found his actions completely repellent, even if you include the background and the last minute change of heart in it. Too little and too late. But I have already talked about it above.