Sol1056

And on top of that, one of their last discussions was his intention to basically gut her favorite hotel so it could become part of an international chain. Remember the trip to the mountain -- YZM was showing it off, but both Madam Chen and MCH saw the property as having lost its soul.

It's possible she originally intended to leave the hotel and villa to YZM and the house and the trust fund to MCH -- but it seems her last discussion with YZM changed it from "here is this grandson I love, who came to stay with me because he loves me" to "this grandson wouldn't have come back into my life if it weren't for having something he wants."

You're comparing apples to oranges.

You would absolutely hide such things from a stranger, though. It's not a matter of trusting anyone's morality. It's a matter of seeing things as not the business of a stranger, and that's a very different issue from bribing someone to not speak of business they already know.

We all seem to be forgetting that relatively, YZM is already making what in US terms would probably be upwards of 400K, probably more. He was living at a 5-star hotel, now he has a spacious apartment in an "elite" building. He's not hurting.

Plus, she gave him the house that would've been his, if his father hadn't run away in a huff. That was where she'd lived with her first husband, and where she didn't want to live because of the bad memories, yet she's held onto it for so long. My guess is she held onto it precisely for YZM, because it'd mean something to him.

I get the sense the grandmother married MCH's grandfather after MCH's father was teenager or older. He calls her Madam Chen like a respectful stranger, and his one visit to her made me suspect he's never really spoken to her unless absolutely necessary. On an emotional level, she's family only through her connection to MCH, not the father -- so I think if she'd had any inkling and *had* offered help, MCH's father may have refused. She's practically a stranger to him, and a stranger offering charity is very, very different than a family member, even one only family by marriage.

As for the father "covering the payments" for his step-mother -- isn't MCH doing exactly the same when she hands over her paycheck to her father? He may not be close to Madam Chen, but he still does his duty by her. Notice that not *once* has the mother *ever* suggested if they made Madam Chen move to a cheaper nursing home, they'd have more money. Never. MCH never spoke of anything negative, probably at her parents' request, so as to not burden Madam -- on her tiny fixed income - with things she can't do anything about.

There is an exchange, here, after all: the step-son is supporting his step-mother, who in turn supports her step-son by what probably amounted to daycare for the working parents.

Ironically, it's thanks to YZM -- in trying to appear like he's "taking care of" MCH -- that Madam knows anything, and her prodding finally gets MCH to open up. So with everyone there, and Madam now fully apprised of the situation, she's finally able to offer something. Which is not a rental or extended hotel stay, but her own house.

MCH's father never knew Madam Chen that well, so he didn't realize she would (and more importantly could) offer her support. And Madam Chen didn't know her step-son that well, so she had no idea MCH's family was in such a state. I don't think either is to blame for the distance between them, or their mutual failure to cross that chasm.

I was a jock in high school. I could leg-press double my own weight, run two miles without getting out of breath, and even *I* would've had to take a break at some point during an hour and a half of hitting something. Anything! That's a tremendous amount of strength and stamina required. I mean, even my friends in longer-duration sports (ie football, rugby) got regular breaks!

Unless the actress ran marathons for breakfast and could bench-press her classmates, "90 minutes" just isn't believable. Now, if it was actually ten minutes but it *felt* like 90, that I'd believe. People unused to physical action -- especially when adrenaline is involved (fear, anger, etc) -- are very, very bad at calculating the passage of time. Twenty seconds can feel like five minutes.

However, even fifteen minutes of extended physical activity is hard for most people. Especially teenagers who don't spend all their time at the gym or track -- and weigh ninety pounds sopping wet holding a brick.

Okay, I'm baffled, b/c it seems like there's a lot of talk about MCH does this, Gramma does that, and so on, but I've caught up to ep18 and haven't seen any of that happening. Are y'all talking about future events as they happen in the book, or are these plot points in the trailers, or are you getting access to episodes ahead of we unwashed masses?

Ep16 feels totally earned. Everything has had to build up to this, with each evolution getting more and more extreme. I know plenty of people were saying FL should push back at her mother before even ep1 had ended, but each point of the building conflict was understandable from both sides -- and it remained so. A family dynamic like that, you excuse each small drop, over and over, until you realize you've been underwater for years. The show wasn't going to give the FL that realization until there were enough drops (figurative and literal) that every single character was drowning.

Some shows have character development. This show has nailed conflict development.

ep13 and the plumbing was such a true-to-life panic of the Boots Theory:

"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. ... But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet."

You can't afford to replace the thing, so you keep trying to patch it up, make do, and in the end, the cost of fixing is triple what you would've paid if you'd replaced it in the first place... if you'd had any money. What might've been fixed with just $50 has become a catastrophe that'll end up costing so many times that.

When a wildfire came so close to my house, I had the same adrenaline-fueled panic as Mom -- like, I grabbed an old family picture and one of the scrapbooks, and didn't even think to grab my laptop, my phone, or the cat! Adrenaline really does paralyze your brain, to the point that one minute feels like ten, leaving you only able to react, but not actually act. You can't get ahead of it.

Cripes. That whole bit, watching the mother's terror, was just heartbreaking, and relatable.

Considering the number of times I've heard mothers in the Deep South shriek at their children, "I brought you into this world and I CAN TAKE YOU RIGHT BACK OUT AGAIN"? Frankly, so far the mother hasn't hit even the top ten of Bad CDrama Moms, in my book.

He's mostly been playing a role in her professional destruction -- followed by 'giving' her a major demotion. He's benefited a whole lot from her, but any benefit he's given her is so low it's in the negatives. The boy has a long way to go to convince me he's worth anymore more than a kick about two feet higher than the knees.

I'm on ep9 and so far I've compiled almost a dozen things that would've been a permanent deal-breaker for me. Being obnoxious at my workplace to force me to go along with his un-warned and ill-planned childish desires?

I legit would've turned around and walked back into the building, telling the guys at the front I don't know that man, I've never seen him before in my life, don't let me stop them from hauling the guy away. And I wouldn't even throw the ring at him. I'd drop it in an envelope, no note, and mail it back to his house.

The FL's patience is damn near sainthood levels at this point.

I didn't like the mom all that much, but the more I see the bf's mom, the more I can see at least the FL's mom has a good heart and means well, even if she's easily distracted by expensive things, is as impulsive and leap-without-looking as the bf. The bf's mom, though -- I don't think she even sees anyone else as human. It's not like her daughter's attitude sprang from nowhere, y'know.

I'm not sure if it's greed, so much as covetousness paired with a whole lot of naivete. She only sees the prize and doesn't see any of the consequences. Actually, come to think of it... She has a lot in common with Jia Liang.

FL's friend wasn't wrong when she said the FL wasn't a girlfriend but a babysitter.

Exactly! And he's a broken record, not thinking beforehand, and just apologizing afterwards, and thinking that makes it alright. By the time the families meet and he can't seem to say a single word in her defense, I was so hoping she'd turn to him and ask if this is how it's going to be if they're married: his mother and sister just insult her, while he says nothing? Of course, the FL has more class but damn.

And then it just keeps getting worse... I know "connections" are important but boy am I glad I worked for corporations where kickbacks and backroom deals get you insta-fired, not promoted. Cripes.

I just got to the knight in armor scene of ep4, and I am really, really, REALLY hoping someone gets punched in the face, because damn.

It's not like there's a good option either way. She keeps talking, she risks feeding the trolls along with possibly souring the govt on giving her a fair shake. Really, fans, anti-fans, and onlookers seem always ready with a verdict, and rarely interested in being confused by any facts.

Sometimes discretion really is the better part of valor.

As I understand it, YBY actually did get a warning, but it was from her local tax authority -- like your state/province picking up on irregularities and asking you to correct before bigger fish notice. She apparently did nothing, so when it got noticed at the federal/national/central govt level, well, she had been warned. So they just came down on her without pussyfooting around first.

immortal samsara.

I'm just glad she's continuing to play smart, self-aware, self-confident female characters instead of going back to the dim-witted nothing-behind-the-smile characters she'd been playing.

yeah, that's the acting part 😉