Seriously, do you know how hard you have to work to get me to be angry enough to where I don’t even want to watch Ha Joon acting on the screen???

Do you know how shitty a character you have to write to make me regret the time I’ve spent watching only certain scenes from this show and the effort of making clips from them???

I officially want to shout out--like Sally Brown did to Linus van Pelt in that pumpkin patch--“LYOL, you owe me restitution!!“

I really dislike Tae-ho’s manipulative whining, and aggressive PDAs...and his little cute jokey fun bamboo-steamer-as-hat outfit looked stupid. Grr. Hyo-shim shouldn't have to take care of herself AND deal with the onslaught of everyone else's emotions as well.

Hilarious that DIL is made to actually work since Hyo Shim isn’t around. 😃 why is it Hyo Shim’s responsibility in Hee Joo’s and HS’s mom’s head that Hyo Jun is well fed? 🤦🏽‍♀️
Tae Min likes Hyo Shim because she is the only one not swayed by his money or position. That makes sense. It was great when they spent time together but how can he not see that she just isn’t into him?
Ru Bi and her mother are cringe. It’s great though that Mi Rim and Tae Hui are fulfilling our wishes and kicking the brothers around a little. 🍿 time
Sook Yung hasn’t declared war so much as burned bridges, she’s gone scorched earth. It would be quite a stretch for her to come back from this and pair up with Tae Min.
Umm writers - we are now almost half way through the show and I haven’t seen the promised living her own life.

@quirkycase, thanks for the highlights !

Speaking of stressed-out fathers…. Hyo Seong spies daughter RuBi with her oppa.

Tae-min is a stalker at this point.
Hitler and Elvis show up in Mom’s conversation 🙄
Adolph would be 134 years old
Elvis would be 88.
Tae-Hee and Ga On are the only sane characters 🤨

Watching Indian TV shows since childhood has made me immune to illogical plotpoints, but even I'm having trouble believing that one of the richest men in Korea is working out of a shoe shop without any security personnel hiding in plain sight. And that a reporter can just walk into the office of a Chaebol. And that a singing competition on TV can have its preliminaries and finals in two days it took for GaOn's father to come back from his trip. And that TaeHui is somehow running a egg tart shop successfully while also doing all the baking herself.

What do I write about the TaeMin-HyoShim-TaeHo triangle except that all three of these 30-somethings are frustratingly immature. This week I was feeling more frustrated with HyoShim for going on that date with TaeMin. He had no right to gatecrash her personal party, but instead of telling him that she sat in his car like a dumb mannequin and walked around the city with him quietly listening to his monologues. She should know that not setting clear boundaries with him means encouraging him. And really, by now she doesn't need her female colleague or even TaeHo to tell her she is being used by her mother. The way the old hag kept calling her........GAH!! What HyoShim is displaying now isn't filial piety, it's being a doormat.

The only bright spots were TaeHee and MiRim kicking the useless brothers' asses. But this isn't enough. We are almost at halfway point. The FL needs to grow a backbone, and fast.

With TM's criminal harassment and TH's manipulative no-boundary excuses towards HS, can't we all pray for a Shaman intervention?

Ugh Tae-min returns to hog all the screentime. I'm sick and tired of him. I don't get why Hyo-shim gives him any of her time after he assaulted her.

Tae-ho is so cute and I love how he makes Hyo-shim smile. BUT he's definitely putting the moves on her, even though he promised not to. I guess it may not be aggressive enough to be considered "putting the moves" from a guy's point of view, but from a woman's POV, anyone who does what he does after admitting to like you romantically...those are definitely moves.

Tae-hee- I'm glad she's drawing the line with Hyo-do, but she'll give in once he does one nice thing. She's already slightly smitten. She's just angry at the moment.

And the siblings' mom is terrible - nagging at Hyo-shim to come home and pretty much slut-shaming her when she doesn't even wonder where her youngest baby is sleeping.

I'm starting to enjoy the Mirim and Hyo-jun couple. Given the other relationships in this drama, theirs is the most comfortable. None of the guilt, forced pleasantries, or feeling like one owes the other or one taking advantage of the other. Low bar, I know. Also, I think these two seriously have to go back to their Hawaii to spare all the lawyers, judges, actors, and directors out there.

Ga On's story is too disconnected. And the sound system for the competition was terrible. She sounded much better in the home scenes.

I still find the Tae Ho/Hyo Shim scenes utterly adorable, especially how she smiles, loosens up and is so comfortable around him. He is the only one around her who seems to genuinely care or notice if she's struggling. Both times he asked her to go for a walk it was because he noticed that she was upset about something.

Well, at this point, @quirkycase is watching a different drama than me. 😄. But @attiton is watching the same one. 😊 Always fun to read different likes/dislikes and interpretation of various scenes/dialogue.

I got nothing to add about these episodes, so I'll repost something from MDL earlier this week:

Episodes 25/26 are the mid-point. If writer-nim doesn’t throw some major plot twists/reversals in the next two weekends to keep the audience through the holidays (both Christmas Day and New Year’s Day are holidays in Korea), then this show is going to sink beneath it’s own weight of story quicksand.

We need some MEGA Shake-Up scenes/events. Hyo-shim and Tae Ho playing kissy face (as he trivializes her guilt over her mother) do not qualify.

Much of this was "promised" during early press releases and promotional material. The half-way point seems to be the time when writers have the ability to tweak around the edges or decide to round file whatever the original plan may have been and start over again.

Whoa- Tae-min had a heart-to-heart talk with his father about his troubles over a woman. Who saw that coming? For once a real father and son moment.

We actually saw some progress this week in our stories. Except for Tae-min who continues to go backwards.

Anchor Lady’s dad has his star reporter looking into what happened to Tae-ho’s parents- and the reporter visited Tae-min’s dad at his shoe shop. Result: This week’s cliffhanger with our Chairman appearing to suffer a stroke. Or was this really Anchor Lady’s idea and is she simply out for revenge? Or is she playing for keeps? Because if she wants to blackmail Tae-min into marriage then this is probably the only way to succeed. If so then she is acting irrationally because that is not going to be the real marriage that she wanted, leading me to think that maybe this is pure revenge. OK, so now I am really curious as to which it is because the result is an adversarial and hostile relationship. While Tae-min’s stupidity is the root cause this would be Ms. Choi's mistake- unless she really does want to end things with Tae-min. She can blame it on her dad but in fact she has made a major blunder if a real marriage is truly what she wants. Does the writer have a plan for fixing that? Good thing we are only at the midpoint because whatever can be done is not going to be easy. One of my complaints about the writer is that we never see these two actually really talk to each other heart to heart- and that is simply stupid. This may be one of the single most frustrating match-ups in K-drama history: We have two people who are actually perfect for each other but do not know it because they do not take the time to learn about themselves and also learn about the other person as well. They are both simply too proud to acknowledge their mutual ignorance. Assuming that writer-nim ultimately wants these two together then some way needs to be found for a truly serious conversation to happen.

Her dad just caught Ruby with her boyfriend. It was about time that she was humbled but so far, she is just defiant, as would be expected from someone who has been raised the way that she has been. For all that Ruby may think she has her parents buffaloed in fact the ground has shifted and she knows it. Suggestion to writer-nim: Maybe her parents can announce that they are taking a second look at the potential of her younger brother?

Hyo-do is also being humbled. This is really long overdue. But Tae-hui still wants him? This has to be the least believable thing in this drama. She should go for IT company guy instead.

Mi-rim is like a drill sergeant to Hyo-jun- which she has to be to break the bad habits that he has regarding the taking of the Bar Exam – and while it has been a long time since I passed two of them, I can promise you that everything she is telling him is absolutely spot on. He never lacked the brains or even the knowledge to pass- he lacked the disciplined approach that is required to pass the Bar Exam. This is precisely what I meant when I said the Bar Exam is as much a test of character as of knowledge. Before it did not matter, because he had no desire to pass. Now he needs to. Good thing he has Mi-rim to help him.

Tae-ho was really sweet this week, but what does that really change? We saw the reaction of Hyo-shim’s mother which proves that Dear Old Mom never intends to let Hyo-shim out of her evil clutches. At this point I wish that Tae-ho’s Grandma would pick up the phone and give a call to her buddy The White Truck of Doom.

We will not know until next week what has actually happened to the Chairman. Even if he did not suffer a stroke the position of Tae-min's parents is now massively damaged: From now on they will always dealing from a position of weakness, not strength. That is why the meeting between Hyo-shim and our Evil Aunt will be far different than what we are used to seeing in this situation. Perhaps this will be the point where Hyo-shim finally gets to start calling her own shots. Some of the people who need to live their own lives are beginning to make progress. It is about time that this happened for Hyo-shim and Tae-min as well.

Tae Min just needs to stop pestering Hyo Shim. I want him out of her life.
Hyo Shim should just stop being considerate of Tae Min. At this point, she earned the right to ignore and be rude to him. Why is she still being nice to him? He will not get the memo by still continuing to meet up with him!!! My gosh Hyo Shim is so frustrating!
Tae Ho is right that Hyo Shim should be less considerate of others and love herself more. But he is also not handling his feelings well.
We are already almost halfway in this series but there is so little progress with character development. Does the writer plan to zoom through the character development in last 10 episodes or something?
Only Tae Hee is almost likeable at this point.

This is for folks (@oldawyer, @John and others) who are interested in the character of Soo-Kyung. I began this draft a couple of weeks ago, but never finished - perhaps some can add other scenes that help describe the character of our TV Anchor Lady.

Choi Soo-kyung – Who is she?
First, I’m beginning to question if the character of SK was originally planned for the drama. Most of the following dates/info are based on actor Lee Kwang Ki’s (Yeom) ig page. None of it is conclusive, of course.
● The actress (Im Ju Eun) was not shown in the video of the first script reading in May 2023 (even the president of TS Fitness- a minor character - was there).
● Her appearances in Episodes 1 and 2 were minimal – less than 30 seconds, by herself from the “TV studio”.
● Although most other cast members spent the summer in sweltering heat in various outdoor scenes – scenes that were liberally sprinkled throughout Episodes 1-8, her 1st outdoor shot appeared in Episode 11 when she met TM in the TV Live parking lot.
● She was at the “First Day Rehearsal” inside studio on Sept. 7th – less than two weeks before the drama’s 1st episode.

Although other character personalities have been described in various press releases and articles, Choi Soo-kyung has not. Her description is: “ daughter of the President and anchor of Korea's best full-length TV live” (TV Live appears to be Korean version of CNN or FNC – 24 hour “news). So we are left to interpret various scenes and statements.
Ep. 5: “I want my husband to be devoted to our family.”
Ep. 12: TM Mom (Kocowa): She’s not too bad and is pretty in a way. . . She might look cheeky, but she comes from a decent family. She is relentlessly ambitious and thinks quickly on her feet.”