SO much wrong with this

I came to this because I just discovered Takeru Satoh - I just watched all the Rouroni Kenshi movies and wanted to see something else he was in. This was one of the few things I could find - and man was this a horrible shift.

Everything about this drama is so wrong - from beginning to end, this drama is what is wrong with Asian rom-coms. That someone thought this was a good story of a ‘romantic’, healthy adult relationship is just a bit disturbing.

While commenters have issue with the age gap - that is not really the problem - its the maturity gap. She has the maturity level of a teenager while the ML has the maturity level of an adult . Not to mention the power dynamic that he is her superior at work. It’s all just so wrong.

Let’s start with the idea that a teenage girl, on her day of graduating from high school, goes to a temple to pray that she finds a good man, stumbles upon a woman with a medical emergency and the dashing, handsome doctor shows up, smiles at her, pats her on the head and whola! - I’m in love! To the point of running off to become a nurse so she “can be near him’ - not because she wants to be a nurse and help people, doesn’t decide to become doctor because she just witnessed him saving the woman - but, no, lets be a nurse so I can stand next to him - wrong!

She then spends 5 years to go to school so she can get a job at his hospital, then shows up and runs around proclaiming her love for this person in the middle of the workplace- to a man who she has only even, met briefly once in her life. She then spends all her time bumbling around, acting like a pre-teen with a crush on an idol. And she never grows out of it. Wrong!

Then there is the whole awkward dating situation - again, the maturity gap happens - he clearly has experience and she clearly has none. She has this very romanticized, teenager mentality of what being in a relationship means and it just doesn’t fit - most of the time she seems terrified - that dear-in-the-headlights, ready to jump out of her skin look on her face and in her demeanor - very subservient, bowing and apologizing all the time - all the while he is calling her an idiot every five minutes. It is just the most unhealthy dynamic and yet the writers/directors and even viewers - all think this is ‘romantic’, it is not.

You never get a real sense of why he likes her and it isn’t event until the second to last episode that he says anything. He spends most of the time ignoring her, glaring at her and generally looking like he is annoyed with her and then one day, just turns around on the street and kisses her - what?!?!

I also do not see, not just one, not two, but three grown men falling in love with her - that this idea of an immature 22 year old, who behaves like teenager is somehow so appealing that men are falling over themselves - is just absurd.

And then there is the older sister of the dead girlfriend who shows up and just happens to look EXACTLY like the dead girlfriend, hasn’t seen the guy since she died and is now ‘in-love’ with him - seriously! I cant even with this stupidity.

Overall - most of the problems come back to this maturity issue. it would be one thing, if through out the show you see her mature and him soften - but that never happens (he does, ever-so-slightly - but not really enough)

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Romanticized stalking

This was not a big it for me - mostly because of the writing - it felt so lazy and sloppy - like someone just cut and pasted every rom-com trope, wrapped it around a rescue team and threw it out there. I had a hard time right out of the gate with the very premise of this ‘love story’.
You have a 15yr old girl who survives an earthquake and immediately ‘falls in love’ with the man who rescues her. She never even actually speaks to him until he is leaving. Then she obsesses about him for ten years (again, never meets him or talks to him in all this time) , comes back to find him (randomly) and then basically stalks and harasses him. I was disturbed at the romanticization of trauma induced feelings (it called transference), obsessive love and then stalking that is played off as determination and persistence. And it wasn’t just the main FL - you had her best friend who was obsessed for 10 yrs with her, you had the celebrity girl who kind of stalks the best friend - the amount of completely unhealthy ideas of ‘love’ this drama had was astounding. All packaged as somehow romantic and ‘cute’.
Next there as just the bad, lazy writing that had repetitive story’s all through the drama - like, how many times are the leads going to get injured and end up in the hospital. How many times is the FL’s coworker going to try and screw her over - it just kept happening, over and over and over to the point of absurdity. The ultimate being the end earthquake - come on - really, she goes back to the place where she experienced the first earthquake, only to have another one just conventionally happen again - it was just dumb.
And I get that this a drama - but so many pieces that were just beyond absurd - made it hard to watch sometimes (especially the parts of her constantly at rescue scenes and jumping into the middle of them - soooo would not happen).
I also wondered if the FL was ever going to write a story that did not involve the ML and his crew - seemed that was all she ever did or covered.
In then end - it just became draggy and predictable and I didn’t really care about most of the characters. Main couple was ok - but not great. They actually felt a little awkward to me. They have the FL be super-aggressive in chasing him and then once caught - she becomes coy and shy - super-annoying and inconsistent (again, writers fault here) Kissing scenes were horrible - FL leads to learn how to move her lips - its that horrible dead-fish kissing

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Missed the mark

I found this drama randomly, read the synopsis and decided to watch it. It has such great potential, but ultimately failed.

Let’s start with the positives - since there aren’t that many.
Kim Nam Joon play this role brilliantly - the character itself is a whole other issue and will get to later
Lee Kyung Young is fantastic as the newsroom director
Newsroom cast is mostly good

Now to the failures
When storytelling - there should be a main character that you have empathy with in order to be invested in the story - this is where this fails the most.
Lest start with the FL . You want to like this character - she is a bad-ass news anchor woman who has risen to the top. We are supposed to admire her determination and ambition. I would normally admire these traits - especially in a culture that is horrible mysogynistic - unfortunately, she is also self-centered, has no thought for those around her or how her actions impact them, is quite manipulative, mean to the point of cruelty. They try to redeem her in the end - even try to make her the victim - but it just doesn’t work.
She lies about knowing Kevin and Myongsuk-Woo and only comes clean when backed into a corner. She cheats on her husband - not once, but twice (and then tries to play victim on both accounts). And then there is the abortion story - I am all for any person making this decision and having control over their own reproductive life - but that she goes and does it without telling him and only just informs after the fact, when he was clearly showing up to celebrate the pregnancy - it was just cruel. There are just instance after instance of her showing she has no concern for her husband and is just mean to him.
I honestly do not get the appeal of this woman and why two men were willing to throw their lives away for her.

Now to the ML - again, you want to be sympathetic towards him - but you just can’t in the end. She is very clear when she marries him that its not out of love, but convenience. He chooses to ignore that and thinks she will change. He lives in that marriage as if its a traditional/real marriage, when its not. Then feels sorry for himself. Then they turn him into the simpering puppy asking her for forgiveness for not being a good enough husband. He has literally spent 7 years with her and has NO idea who she is actually is - he has a dream of who he wants her to be - but not who she is actually is. And, to top it all, he is a really bad lawyer. Their whole relationship, except for a brief moment after the trial is just the two of them constantly lying to each other

Eun-joo - just, come on lady - your husband repeatedly cheated on you, you lie about that fact and for some reason its Hye Ran’s fault?? I hate the trope of women blaming other women for their husbands cheating. And, the person who actually slept with him isn’t even Hye Ran - but the other news anchor lady - which is conveniently ignored after a couple of episodes.

Myongsuk-woo - really dude - you spend 19 years in prison for this person and somehow think you are the only person in the world who gets decide if she is happy or not or if someone loves her properly or not. This weird sense of possession of other people in S.Korea is just so weird to me.

And dont get me started on the parents with no sense of boundaries - seriously - letting yourself into your grown-ass, married son’s house without permission and being waaay too involved in their reproductive life is just gross.

And then there is the detective - seriously, would not the spouses have been two of the first people you looked in to? How was the ML not even looked at until the end of the trial - this is just absurd.

And, can we talk about the ‘accidental’ meeting at the airport - they try to play this as if she doesn’t know who Kevin is or what he looks like. It’s not like there weren’t pictures of him on the tour - so this scenario just doesn’t work for me.

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