lmangla

Unlike other dailys where the boardroom stuff is blah, I totally enjoyed this shareholder meeting shenanigans and Aunt's role in this. It was cool, calculated and like dominoes effect, Ms Choi continues to create havoc. So JaeIn has not demonstrated that she is capable of being an independent woman who can make decisions outside of Ms Choi. She continues to be Ms Choi's puppet and enmeshed toy.

This is why SeungWoo tips over when he hears how Ms Choi talks about him. His decision to vote against JaeIn is not just about protecting his interest but also asserting that he is a Kang (even if he is supposed to be illegitimate) and he has a right to sit at that table.

SeungWoo showed a lot of spine when he told JaeIn that he is capable of making independent decision that suits him. So he did. While he feels emotional, he also understands the power of his inheritance and he is not making rash moves.

I thought it was interesting that Aunt warned JaeIn not to take advantage of SeungWoo. Aunt is giving real life world lessons. It was JaeIn who decided to liquidate her assets and it is also her decision to keep the shares. So she needs to fend for herself. Also, given the way Aunt and SeungWoo voted, they cannot stay together anyway.

Aunt is making choices for the business as she asserts to JaeIn that chairman was first her brother before he came JaeIn's father. Her loyalty is to her brother and father who built the business and she wants to make sure the company does not collapse because of JaeIn's incompetence.

It is actually a brilliant move on her part to negotiate with GiChan about profit distribution and right to nominate leadership. She then becomes a very powerful shareholder as well as board member -- she will get to control things and rein in decisions if things get well out of hand. Her goal is to protect the company and she is keeping the keys to do that.

For those wondering why I say it is brilliant, this is typical move by business families to keep the keys while they hire a management CEO to lead as a placeholder. So I appreciate the writer taking cues from real world and keeping the drama onboard.

The only thing I disliked in this episode is Dr taking JaeIn to his house. The man needs to decide whether he hates her or likes her. This kind of waffling is strange. It will be very problematic when they all find out it is JaeIn and everyone is going to be upset. If Dr had some sense, he would openly say who she is to his family.

So in business families, it is always easier to kick out the outsider -- the CEO appointed by management than the family member who has gotten the seat due to bloodline. There are always issues with shares and people making decisions out of emotional loyalty and successions can get very messy.

So often in many companies, they will put in a placeholder where they hire someone like a banker or some industry insider to lead and the person is not expected to lead the company for decades.

Instead, their job is to hold the fort till someone from the family can take over. In most instances, the outsider will get a golden handshake and move on to another company. Even if they want to stay, the family will close ranks around the shareholders and the outsider CEO will get ousted. That is the kind of thinking Aunt is coming with here.

hahahha... actually train wrecks can be very fun to watch with the right crowd. :)

That said, the progress I want to see most with JaeIn is to have a healthy, independent mind and relationship that is away from her mother. She is completely enmeshed and their relationship is toxic to the point that it has impacted every area of her life.

Ms Choi will pretty much hate anyone JaeIn gets with and will always try to spoil that relationship. Instead of putting boundaries, JaeIn passively watched it happen in her first marriage and then was shocked to find that GiChan actually hates her.

However, as Dr pointed out, if GiChan was willing to hospitalize JaeIn, then the feelings left long ago. Instead, there was resentment and more. So unless JaeIn learns how to put boundaries and really observe how folks are doing, she will not grow.

Her reading people needs to come from a place of humility and not entitlement or spite. Then only she will have truly grown -- hopefully we will see that in this drama. There are some dailys where the FLs never actually learn from their mistakes and continue to be idiots till the end.

That is how guardianship works though -- hospitals will not entertain every relative who shows up and asks about the patient. Instead, they will only report the prognosis to the guardian. In many instances, only one person is allowed into ICU for visitation and they don't allow anyone else to visit. So relatives not being allowed to visit does happen in hospital settings. It is actually quite common.

In the real world, extended relatives will not have access to doctors and due to patient-doctor confidentiality laws, in many countries, doctors won't tell anyone else other than the guardian about the prognosis. So it isn't a stretch from a drama's perspective that Aunt just took GiChan at his word. She had no reason to override his guardianship.

"I think there ARE kind people without any friends. It just so happens :)" -- that is a really interesting comment and one has to ask why that happens. I see lots of online posts from young people who are struggling to make friends and they say that they are good but people don't seem to like them or even resent them. So it would be an interesting question to ponder on as we watch the drama and see if the writer has ideas towards why and how that happens.

If people are convincing with how the answers are given, people will tend to hold their concerns because they don't want to interfere into another person's private matter. It happens all the time in the real world where you are not aware of all the details and you feel something is off, you ask questions and everything seems okay and they retreat. Only later, they come to know that their intuition was right after the crime happened and hit the news.

It depends on the hospitalization but in some severe mental health cases, only the guardian would have access to the patient and none of the other relatives are even allowed to visit or consult. I was reading a Reddit post where wife was not allowed to even visit the husband because the doctor deemed the husband too volatile and self-harm tendencies. Instead, only his parents were allowed access because he would react violently at the sight of wife. So these kind of issues do happen and in that sense, it is not surprising that Aunt did not check up on JaeIn personally. Instead, she relied on GiChan because he was the husband.

JaeIn becoming homeless is essentially a result of her own actions. Who sells a house without making sure you have a place to move into? Did she ask what would happen to SeungWoo or Aunt if she sells the house? JaeIn is not thinking.

So if everyone is going their own way and making decisions for themselves, then JaeIn needs to do it alone because she certainly isn't thinking of others and how her actions effect them.

As for aunt's relationship with GiChan, she is cautious. She is consistently asking questions and he is giving her well-thought logical practical answers. So while she may not agree 100%, she is not like Ms Choi who is going to poke her nose in unnecessarily. She respects people's spaces. Ultimately, she is the true business woman and she should be leading the company and not JaeIn.

His actions will lead him to losing what he gained. But at this point, he has proven himself at work. JaeIn does not have a leg to stand on other than her being a Kang.

However, this is a publicly traded company that has gone through turmoil with recent events. GiChan was the one leading as temporary chairman during this time. So he has proved himself as well as through the years before.

So shareholders are going to vote for who can lead the company, make money and protect their investment. JaeIn is woefully unprepared for that. It would be fine if she could admit it but like Ms Choi, she thinks she is entitled to that position just because of her bloodline. That is a problem when she does not have enough experience or track record or frankly any common sense or ability to read people or make clear decisions with any foresight. She does not have the qualities needed to be chairman and lead a company where so many employees depend for their livelihood.

So from a business perspective, she needed that knock on her head.

I think a better analogy would be to typical Greek tragedies in Lit where everyone is an idiot and doing stupid things that result in unintended consequences like a typhoon. So there no one is fully good or bad including the main characters and essentially it is a train wreck and plays are about human mistakes. It makes sense because this type of literature were the original soap operas/telenovelas where everything was over the top.

I don't think JaeIn is naive in that typical FL drama way. She is naive because she is entitled, has been treated like a princess all her life and had everything go her way.

As long as things suited her, she was totally oblivious -- it is very telling that she has hardly any allies and she is losing one after another. This isn't something that is happening out of selfishness but rather resentment towards JaeIn or Ms Choi or both. So resentment is why JaeIn is going to be alone for a period of time.

If she was so nice and kind, she would have real friends. She does not have any true ties to anyone and that one has to ask why she is so isolated compared to other FLs who have some support. 🤷

So GiChan was being mistreated by Ms Choi for years and he was expected to roll with it. She was mostly just passive watching it happen. Now, when the same happens to her, she is shocked. Similarly, she saw YuGyeong being treated as second class while she was put on top because she was from rich family. It didn't really bother her but the moment MIL treated her the same way as YuGyeong, she was shocked.

Doctor pointed out that Ms Choi faked cancer diagnosis but when GiChan does the same thing to her, she is shocked that such a thing can happen in the system. Why is she consistently shocked? Because she can't believe it can happen to her.

Even her words to GiChan about getting divorced was that it is fine if she divorces him but it is not okay if he divorces her. Why? Is she planning to be a true crime episode??? Ms Choi also had a similar mindset. She wanted JaeIn to divorce GiChan but had a problem with him having an affair. Why? Because she can leave but he cannot. That is entitlement.

Aunt is a sharp cookie unlike JaeIn who is still in entitlement mode. It was actually nice to see the smile fall off her face when her name wasn't announced as chairman. She just assumed that she was going to get the vote from everyone including the doctor. 🙄

First she has no clue who he is and yet she assumes that when it comes to money and investment, he is just automatically going to side with her? Please, that alone makes her a terrible candidate for chairman because she does not know that shareholders are primarily interested in making money and seeing their investment grow. People don't invest just because you are a friend. You have to prove that you got the talent or at least convince them with your charm.

So both JaeIn and Ms Choi got lessons in the real world which was frankly needed.

Aunt and GiChan will square off at some point and I think it will be way more entertaining than JaeIn. Aunt will also have homeless uncle her former flame who also apparently is some sort of investor. So once they lay their enmity aside, they may be a power couple who are going to shake the ebbs and flows.

Meanwhile, JaeIn will continue to get bad advice from Ms Choi who thinks the world will bend to their will. 🙄

Going to go against the grain here because why not! I disagree that Aunt is a villain or her vote against JaeIn is a bad thing.

Frankly, just as SeungWoo is not suited to lead the company, neither is JaeIn. However, what goes against JaeIn is that her actions show that she is going to cut out SeungWoo even though she claims he is her brother.

Aunt's words were cryptic when she asked if JaeIn was aware that male child inherits the company. Now, it is quite possible that SeungWoo was adopted by chairman precisely because of that as he didn't have a son. This means that Aunt might have given up any parental rights to raising SeungWoo in order for him to inherit and also respect her brother and father's wishes.

While JaeIn thinks of this as her father's company, she is not thinking about what is best for the company. She herself admits she is motivated by vengeance.

Aunt on the other hand also has a link to the company and has to make a decision on what is best for the business and she is thinking with a cool head. JaeIn is not the right choice because she is erratic, unproven and does not have the track record.

Aunt is not going to vote for a candidate who can torpedo her father's company just like Ms Choi did in a few days with her actions.

GiChan has put in the work for so many years and has proved that he has the calibre to lead. With a lack of other choices, GiChan is the only choice here. So from a business perspective, Aunt is right in protecting the legacy her father and brother built over so many years.

I would have given it a higher rating if it wasn't for the lacklustre ending. If the writer didn't want to kill off Seyoung, she should have ended up alone and rebuilding her life somewhere on her own. Why make her so weak that she needed to be with JiSeok? There was no need for couple swap and everyone being happy at the table in the end. That was just weird.

Yea, there are only two more episodes. So any reveal will be lacklustre at this point.

Has the writer forgotten about the death of Goo parents?? Are we not going to get any resolution for that???
SeYoung clearly asked MeyongJi how she made her money and MyeongJi deflected with a vague real estate explanation. Is that all we are going to get?

Rather than redemption, am expecting a tragic ending for SeYoung. Despite JiSeok telling her to let go and form her own identity that is outside of her mom, it is decades late. The girl has been a puppet all her life and desperately wants to trust MyeongJi.
If she has to accept the true face of MyeongJi, then she also has to accept that she has been an accomplice and is perhaps the cause of all this mess. As it is, the guilt of losing YuJin at sea gave her nightmares and anxities for years. Now, to realize the weight of death of YuJin would be too heavy a burden to bear.
MyeongJi is not going to admit that it was all greed and it was for Hyesung group. Instead, she will turn it around and put the blame on SeYoung.
MyeongJi will realize too late the pain of losing a child and wondering what happened. Jail or bankruptcy will only fuel her anger as her entitlement is very high. So losing SeYoung will be the only thing that hurts.
The question is how that happens. Will SeYoung lose her memories to protect herself? Have some fatal disease? Have an accident? Fall into a coma? Or die tragically?

hopefully they will explain on how she managed to make so much money behind everyone's back...

YeoJin and Secretary Jang seem quite meticulous when it came to business. So my theory is that they were stealing from some of the proceeds of the corporate raids which would not have shown up on the main books. This way, there would have been no accounting and no one would know if a little was missing here and there.