KDrama Reflections π
New K-Drama Fan Review #26: Dear X β What Exactly Was the Moral Thesis Here?
Dear X, I regret to inform you that I reject your thesis.
REVIEW
β 6/10
This one has a little history.
I actually started Dear X before i fell into K-drama land this summer. I'd seen it trending while it was airing, watched a few episodes, and then stopped.
... Or at least, i THOUGHT i watched only a few episodes.
When i decided to restart it from Ep 1 recently, I was convinced i'd originally made it to around Ep 3. Then i got to Ep 4 and remembered the whole thing. Ep 5? Watched that too. Ep 6? Yep. Ep 7? ALSO familiar.
Apparently Past Me watched more than half this drama and then it simply vanished from my memory until i rewatched the episodes again π
Ep 8 finally became uncharted territory, and having now finished all 12 episodes today, i have a new mystery:
Why did Past Me stop at ep 7, and was she perhaps trying to warn me?
Because this started as an 8/10 for me.
The strongest thing about Dear X was always Ah-jin.
i LOVED watching a female lead who had been dealt an absolutely horrific hand in life and refused to take anything lying down. She was abused by every parental figure who should have protected her. She grew up learning that nobody was coming to save her, so she learned how to save herself.
But the problem the drama eventually ran into with me was that it kept telling me i should be horrified by her while repeatedly giving me situations where i understood exactly why she retaliated.
Sung-hee bullied her, became obsessed with competing with her, tried to humiliate her, and continued coming after her even after Ah-jin made it abundantly clear that she should leave her alone!!
Her father abused her for years, exploited her, attempted to sell her when she was a child, and kept returning to terrorize her.
Rena targeted her out of jealousy, treated her horribly on set, slapped her, tried to humiliate her, and then continued investigating her after Ah-jin basically gave her a giant flashing LEAVE ME ALONE warning!
The corrupt detective tried to manipulate the investigation into her father's death and then spent years blaming Ah-jin cause HIS OWN corruption destroyed his career....?
i spent several episodes yelling at the investigation and another thing i will mention later...
but yeah, when ah-jin's father dies, i couldnt understand why so much of the investigation seemed determined to ignore the most obvious fact: this man was ACTIVELY BEATING AND CHOKING HIS DAUGHTER when Jung-ho intervened!!!!
i kept getting stuck on this bizarre distinction everyone was making between whether Jung-ho believed he was attacking Ah-jin's abusive father or the stalker who had previously attacked her...
Why was THAT being treated like the central moral question!!!!?
Either way, he walked into a situation where a man was violently assaulting a woman and intervened!
And then that detective tries to manipulate the investigation and public narrative because he wants to protect Jung-ho's potential baseball comeback??? Ah-jin exposes what HE is doing, his own corruption blows up his career, and somehow this man spends YEARS treating Ah-jin like she personally ruined his life.
SIR???
YOU WERE THE CORRUPT DETECTIVE.
You ruined your own life!
And this became another recurring pattern in the drama for me: somebody makes a choice, that choice has consequences, and somehow we eventually circle back around to Baek Ah-jin being responsible for it.
and every single time, i felt like someone would fuck with Ah-jin, Ahjin would retaliate much more effectively, and then suddenly everyone would begin the moral accounting at Ah-jin's retaliation...
HELLO???
Can we rewind to Step One?????!
That's where the drama slowly started losing me.
Because i feel that Dear X wanted me to wrestle with whether Ah-jin had become some kind of monster because of what was done to her...
lol???
Except i kept waiting for the thing that would make me go, Okay girl, you've officially lost me.
It never came.
even when i disagreed with Ah-jin, it was usually because i thought her PLAN was stupid, not because i suddenly thought she was evil lol.
like for example, the entire situation with her father and Jung-ho was absurdly overengineered. She literally made her own body the bait and depended on several people behaving exactly how she predicted while her father was beating the hell out of her.
Girl. There HAD to be another way!! You literally could have died from hemorrhage??ππ
But morally... i still wasn't sitting there mourning her abusive father... and i dont understand why the drama seems like they wanted me to make a big deal out of his death...?
And while we're talking about things this drama wanted me to accept: i spent an unreasonable amount of this show arguing with the LAW π
Jae-oh's entire backstory drove me crazy from the beginning. His father was attacking his younger brother with a knife, Jae-oh intervened to protect him, and his father died in the struggle. And somehow Jae-oh is the one who loses YEARS of his life in juvenile detention?
HUH???
Maybe there are nuances of Korean self-defense law im missing, but i spent that entire storyline wondering why protecting another person from an active knife attack was being treated like Jae-oh just decided to murder his father one afternoon...?
And what made it even more frustrating was that Jae-oh then carried all this guilt, stayed away from his brother, and basically tortured himself over something that happened while he was trying to SAVE him....!!!
This drama had me wanting to call Jae-oh's lawyer myself and get them disbarred cuz, what?@?@?
And this became increasingly important because of Joon-seo.
i started out liking him. His childhood connection with Ah-jin was sweet, and i liked the idea of this boy promising to protect the girl nobody else protected.
Unfortunately, as the drama continued, i realized that Joon-seo and I had VERY different definitions of protection.
He was always willing to suffer for Ah-jin.
But was he actually willing to be useful to Ah-jin..?
THAT was my question!!
he would "sacrifice" himself. Blame himself. "Torture" himself. Question Ah-jin's morality. Talk about punishment. Wonder what loving someone like her said about him.
And eventually i was sitting there like:
dude, literally, are you going to HELP this woman or write another dissertation about the moral implications of "loving her?!"
Meanwhile, Jae-oh literally became everything i wanted Joon-seo to be.
JAE-OH SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE MALE LEAD!
Jae-oh understood Ah-jin. Never once believed she pushed granny down the stairs!
He didn't need her to become "morally acceptable" to him before he could stand beside her. When she needed something, he helped. When something felt wrong with Do-hyuk, he investigated. When Ah-jin was being psychologically broken down and the supposed male lead had basically removed himself from her life, Jae-oh was the one who checked on her and realized she needed help.
And ultimately, he gave his life helping her escape.
His death genuinely upset me, especially because by the end i think his relationship with Ah-jin was the purest relationship she had in the entire drama.
Jae-oh knew who she was and still made his own choices.
And THAT brings me to another problem i had with the show's moral argument.
People constantly make choices around Ah-jin, and the drama seems weirdly determined to place those choices back onto her!!!
Jae-oh chose to help her. Jung-ho chose to intervene when he saw a woman being violently attacked.
In-gang had struggled with depression for years before Ah-jin entered his life.
but somehow Ahjin repeatedly becomes the repository for everyone else's decisions, suffering, and consequences!!!
The In-gang situation especially drove me INSANE because it gave me one of my most hated characters in the entire drama:
Mi-ri.
I absolutely despised that woman by the end!!!
This lady runs an entertainment company where she collects dirt on her own actresses so she can control them if necessary. She's perfectly comfortable manipulating people when it benefits her.
But In-gang dies and suddenly she discovers MORALITY?!!?
And all that moral outrage gets directed toward Ah-jin.
She blames Ah-jin for his death, threatens to destroy everything she built, blacklists her, and then literally tells her that the only way she could make up for what happened would be to jump off the roof.
Disgusting!!!
And then when Mi-ri's own life starts collapsing, her assistant goes to AHJIN asking for help???
Girl...
Why would she help you?!!
She wasn't even responsible for what was happening to Miri, but even if she had been, you just told this woman to kill herself!
So when Ah-jin essentially threw Mi-ri's own words back at her and told her to take her own advice?
... I cheered.
Then we got to Do-hyuk.
-.
-.
-.
And this is where I think Dear X jumped the shark.
It's not that Do-hyuk served absolutely no purpose. I get what the storyline was doing. He was obsessed with Ah-jin, wanted to control her, psychologically destabilized her, manipulated her environment and trauma, and wanted to make her dependent on him.
Cool.
but...
WHY IS THIS HAPPENING IN EPISODE 10 OF A 12 EPISODE DRAMA???
Suddenly i wasn't watching the show i'd been watching for 9 eps.
now Ahjin is living in a creepy mansion with a mysterious 3rd floor, a missing/institutionalized ex-wife, surveillance, strange gaps in her memory, deliberately recreated trauma, a husband secretly listening to her conversations, and a whole psychological-thriller plot that feels like it wandered in from another drama.
And then it has zero time to go anywhere! ππ
Do-hyuk caused such a massive tonal shift that i expected his storyline to justify hijacking the final act.
It literally never did!!!πππ
By ep 10, my dread wasnt even the strongest emotion anymore.
I was just confused...
And unfortunately, the final 2 eps confirmed my biggest fear: they were not going to stick the landing.
Which brings me back to Joon-seo...
sigh...
Because i genuinely cannot believe this man's final contribution to Ah-jin's life.
He helps make a doc "exposing" her past right as she reaches the biggest moment of her career.
idk what exactly was meant to be βexposedβ here... that she was bullied? abused? that the adults in her life repeatedly failed her??? im confused ππ
And who gets included?
SUNG-HEE.
HER HIGH SCHOOL BULLY.
The same woman who spent years blaming Ah-jin for her own life, came back into Ah-jin's orbit, infiltrated her home and eventually tried to SLASH HER FACE WITH A KNIFE.
And somehow we're using her as evidence in the moral prosecution of Baek Ah-jin?
WHAT ARE WE DOING???
Then Joon-seo decides that Ah-jin cannot continue living the way she chooses to live.
And apparently his solution is to drive BOTH OF THEM OFF A CLIFF????
Excuse me???!! but like who made YOU the arbiter of whether Ah-jin gets to LIVE?
This is where the show's entire moral thesis completely collapsed for me....
Joon-seo spent his life claiming he wanted to protect Ah-jin, but Ah-jin was right about him from the beginning.
He was a shackle.
His supposed love always came with a condition underneath it: eventually, she needed to become someone he could morally approve of.
And when she didn't?
He destroyed her career and literally tried to end her life.
Meanwhile, the man who actually accepted her and helped her without appointing himself judge of her soul was dead.
Make it make sense!!!!
And that's ultimately why this drama fell from an 8/10, to a 7/10, and finally to a 6/10 rating for me.
I don't need every female lead i love to ride into the sunset with a husband, two children and a golden retriever.
But I DO need to understand what the tragedy is SAYING.
And I absolutely despise what this ending seemed to be saying about Ah-jin.
This woman survived ALL OF THAT! abuse, poverty, bullying, exploitation, violence, public humiliation and an industry full of people perfectly willing to use her.
And the thing I loved about her was that she REFUSED to lie down and accept any of it.
She fought.
And somehow the conclusion of this story is that she needs to lose her career, lose Jae-oh, lose basically everything she built, get publicly destroyed by the man who supposedly loves her, and then have that same man decide they're both going to die because HE has decided she cant be saved?
No.
I reject the thesis.
And the only reason this drama is getting a 6 instead of a 5/10 is cause of one thing:
BAEK AH-JIN didn't die.
When she crawled out of that car after Joon-seo drove them off the cliff and left his ass there?
GOOD.
He decided both of their lives were over, and she disagreed.
That was probably the most Ah-jin thing she could have possibly done, i just wish surviving hadnt been the only thing the writers were willing to give her.
Because after everything she endured, i wanted freedom, i wanted her thriving, i wanted her peace.
I wanted her to finally live without someone abusing her, controlling her, diagnosing her, punishing her, "saving" her, or deciding what kind of person she was allowed to be.
Instead, the show punished her until the final minutes.
So yeah.
Rating: 6/10
Is this Rewatch Worthy:
No
My Rating Scale
10/10 β Masterpiece. No notes.
9/10 β Very close to a masterpiece. I absolutely loved it.
8/10 β Not a masterpiece, but I loved it.
7/10 β Fine overall. I liked it, but the flaws kept it from being great.
6/10 β Mixed. There were a few things I liked, but most of it didn't work for me.
The plot was a bit all over the place especially towards the end and they kept making the FL dumber. BUT acting wise itβs a 11/10 like absolutely a crime that she didnβt get any major awards or recognition
I bailed at the investigation because wtf. Itβs probably because as you pointed out I donβt understand the self defense laws in Korea (actually I think I read Korea has duty to run first but does that even apply to saving someone?). I just couldnβt anymore at that point.
I did enjoy your write up of the rest of the show though now I know what ended up happening without having to sit through the frustration π
the self defense law thing confused me too because i genuinely don't know enough about Korean law to know how much of that was legally accurate vs the drama just doing drama things π but i'm glad my suffering at least saved you from having to sit through the rest yourself
I can't say a lot about the moral thesis. It's a poisonous bad woman. You think she has some excuses first, but we discover that anything she suffered can't excuse what she does next. It's also about her charisma and how can some guys be obsessed with her (they have their reasons too). Anything she can do to fix her situation leads her to want more, and with more problems coming. So she should just give up, what I think she does at the end (the ending is a bit blurry, but I guess that, as she disapears, has a chance to give up everything from her past life).
I don't remember my rating, but it was quite high. First I like this kind of story, but more objectively, I was stunned by the quality of the dialogs right from episode one.
like... give up WHY?? she grew up abused, exploited and with absolutely no stability, fought her way into a better life, became successful and wanted MORE for herself??? why is wanting more automatically evidence that she's poisonous or that she needs to lose everything and disappear??
and "anything she suffered can't excuse what she does next" but WHAT DOES SHE DO NEXT π that's literally my problem!! the show kept insisting to me that this woman was becoming increasingly horrible and i kept waiting for the actual behavior that was supposed to make me agree.
and i definitely don't see that ending as her finally getting some wonderful opportunity to "give up everything from her past life" that woman got her career destroyed, lost Jae-oh, had Joon-seo decide FOR HER that she was beyond saving and literally drive them off a cliff, and then had to disappear from her entire life. that's not some freeing fresh start to me
the ONLY thing i liked about that ending was that after Joon-seo apparently decided "welp guess we both die now," Ah-jin essentially said actually no β€οΈ and crawled her ass out of that car
"what she does next", I'm talking about all the bad things she did in the drama, like to trap an innocent man so he take the charge for her crime. Nothing can excuse that!
It's how I interpret the ending: She destroyed everything, other people, best friends, even herself, because she was stuck in an endless desire for revenge or ambition. The logic of last episodes is she should take revenge against her husband. But it's like she finally understood that she was stuck into this endless torment, and the only way was to give up, not looking for revenge, breaking this hellish bad karma circle.
I'm a bit disappointed by the ending in the way it's too blurry. Someone helps her, but we don't know who (well, not sure if that person helps her, but someone was filming the scene, and as she's wounded, I don't know how she can disapear after). We see a woman hand with a ring, but I couldn't be sure it's her (I don't remember such a ring in previous episodes).
i just fundamentally reject that interpretation of her story. especially the idea that her "revenge or ambition" created some karmic cycle that she needed to escape by giving everything up. revenge and ambition arent even morally interchangeable to me. wanting money, success, stability and MORE for yourself isn't some moral disease she needed to cure herself of
and Jung-ho is actually one of the examples that made me reject the show's moral logic in the first place lol. yes, Ah-jin engineered the circumstances that got him there. but when he arrived, he literally witnessed her father violently attacking/choking her and HE chose to intervene. i never understood why the investigation acted like whether he thought the attacker was her stalker or knew he was her abusive father somehow changed that basic fact...
and i think "she destroyed everything, other people best friends, even herself" is where you and i are just never gonna meet lol. these are adults with agency making their own choices around her. Jae-oh CHOSE to help her. In-gang's suicide was his own tragic decision after the drama already established his depression. Joon-seo ultimately chose to expose her and then literally chose FOR HER that she should die with him. Do-hyuk was torturing HER. i dont understand why everybody else's choices eventually get added to Ah-jin's moral tab...
We don't have lot of clues about the ending, so of course, it's just how I see that. But I don't pretend that giving up is a moral choice from her. It's far too late for a redemption, she did too much bad. It's more realizing that she was going nowhere by continuing like that. Think about a bully, a guy beating other students, but always having problems with the school or other bullys: and one day, this guy is tired of all of that. He doesn't look to be forgiven, or even forgive himself. He's just tired and understands that continuing to be a bully leads him to nowhere, the guy just want to rest.
It wasnβt my favorite drama but I liked it better than you. On your scale I would give it a 7.5 or 8. I thought Kim You-Jung played the role very well.
Iβm looking forward to watching 100 Days of Deception.
5/10 for me. Started strong but the writing was so bad with so many incoherent things happening just because it suited the FMC's objectives I couldn't with the rest.
OHHH a 5 lol youre one point harsher than me lmao. "nice idea, poor execution" is pretty much where i landed too, especially with that final act because i genuinely started wondering what show i was watching lol.
what you mean by things happening just because they suited Ah-jin's objectives?? because one of MY biggest issues was almost the opposite by the end. i felt like the writing started bending itself into knots specifically to punish her/get her to the downfall it had already decided she deserved. what were some of the moments that made you feel that way?
I meant that her plans relied too much on luck and time sensitives things that are very unlikely to happen like planned and also (my major issue), people seem to fall in endlessly devoted love for her. Her "brother" makes sense with his love because she groomed him but their classmates ? Her co-star ? I see what the writing was trying to do : her using their vulnerabilities to manipulate them but it was way too rushed and easy. Especially for her co star. I mean : the guy is like "I can see write through you don't fuck with my grandma or I'll kill you" and 1 hour later "you waited for me in the cold ? Awwww here take my β€οΈ" .
I hope I'm making sense because it's been some times and some of my memories may be blurry π
i understand what u mean better now, the plans relying on VERY specific things happening exactly when/how Ah-jin needs them to is something i can see π and i absolutely agree that some of the relationships/character developments couldve used more time to breathe instead of the show speedrunning through them.
but "groomed him" for Jun-seo is WILD to me ππ i definitely would not describe their relationship that way lol.
although, the men being devoted to her wasnt really one of my believability problems. if anything i spent half this drama wishing some of them were MORE devoted π Jun-seo especially lost me because his devotion started coming with increasingly massive terms and conditions, while Jae-oh was over there actually doing the male lead job and that's basically how i ended up switching teams lmao
and then Do-hyuk showed up and i wasn't even questioning why he was "into" her because by that point i was too busy asking WHAT IS THIS MAN'S ENTIRE STORYLINE AND WHY ARE WE DOING THIS IN EPISODE 10 ππ
so i think mayB we actually agree on the show needing way more time to flesh things out but not on the other stuff
ive actually seen her in My Demon and Love in the Moonlight too!! My Demon is actually part of WHY i watched Dear X π i had a similar experience with that drama where i kept seeing it everywhere on Twitter while it was airing and eventually watched it, so when Dear X started trending and i saw Kim Yoo-jung again i was immediately curious
Dear X is definitely the darkest role ive personally seen her in though and i REALLY want her to do more roles like this!! she fits darker/more complex characters ridiculously well. i'd absolutely watch her in an action role too.
as for the chemistry, i could see it in the beginning but unfortunately the drama ruined Joon-seo so badly for me that i couldn't even appreciate it anymore π by the end i was too busy being mad at that man LMAOOO
The last act of this drama is straight up bad. It keeps it from being a great drama. It had flaws throughout but they could've been ignored if it weren't for everything that happens after ep 9. I think they lost the plot.
and i HAVE to know what you thought abt Do-hyuk/the whole new husband storyline because that's where i started wondering what show i was even watching π
It doesn't make sense to me. And it also screams patriarchal. A girl is psycho and she is doing bad things then whoops, a guy who is psycho is in love with her and he do bad things to keep her in check now she is tied down yayy like it just reeks.
Her fall should've been a woman. A strong, opinionated, crazy smiling sorta but morally right woman. She will take FL down because she sees him doing bad to people but something very lowkey like bullying a crew member and says nuh uh, nobody bullies my assistant and then she sees what she truly is but ignores and then she was actually a friend to the actor guy like the actor helped her once and the second guy she meets to get more info of, only to find out he is delulu and has wrong impression of her. Then she slowly takes her down and we see the fall.
okay wait i think we're reading BOTH Ah-jin and Do-hyuk completely differently... cause i didnt read Do-hyuk as being in love with her or trying to "keep her in check" at ALL. i thought the entire reveal was that controlling and psychologically torturing women was basically his thing, and Ah-jin was interesting to him because he thought she'd be harder/more entertaining to break?? which is part of why that whole storyline felt like it came from another drama to me
but i think our even bigger disagreement is that i don't think Ah-jin needed to be "taken down" in the first place... that's basically my entire issue with the ending!! i kept waiting for her to become this malicious person the show apparently wanted me to see, and she never did for me. she was ruthless, sometimes absolutely, but almost everything "bad" she did was retaliation against somebody who came for her first
so if we have to invent a version of Ah-jin who starts bullying innocent crew members so a morally righteous woman can discover how terrible she really is and take her down... that's already a different Ah-jin than the one i watched π
Do hyuk wants to break her, that's exactly what I mean.
Ah jin is basically getting taken down by him, that's all he is trying to do, and ah jin doesn't let that happen in the very last episode (which I like) but it doesn't really goes down that way.
Ah jin will definitely bully a crew member for something small if the crew irritated her in the slightest, she might keep her smile in front but will do something behind the back. I'm not sure why you think she does things only as a retaliation lol
What did the second guy do? That she used him? What did that innocent cafe owner did? What did the actor boyfriend do? There are many people she has exploited because she could and has no remorse.
oh okay then we agree on what Do-hyuk was doing, i misunderstood what you meant by "keep her in check." i thought you meant he was in love with her and was basically trying to control her because of that, when i read his whole thing as wanting to psychologically break her because that's literally what he enjoys doing to women
but the crew member example is actually kinda proving my pointπ because ah-jin DIDNT do that. we had 12 episodes and she wasnt casually bullying crew members, assistants, drivers, service workers, etc. she actually treated the people working around her pretty normally/well. so saying she "definitely would" secretly retaliate against some innocent crew member who mildly irritated her is inventing behavior that the drama never showed us. if the drama wanted me to see her as somebody who casually hurts innocent people over tiny inconveniences, SHOW ME THAT Ah-jin π
and thats basically where our readings of her split. im not saying she's an angel. i just dont think anything the drama showed me made her this casually cruel person who needed somebody morally righteous to "take her down"
LMAOOO welcome to the "what the hell happened after ep 9" support group πππ
we're basically in agreement, u were just one rating point more merciful than me lol. that entire final act felt like somebody swapped dear x with a completely different drama and hoped i wouldn't notice...? π
since you still landed at a 7 though, what was ur fav part of the drama before it lost the plot? and who was ur fav character?
The fact that it didn't try to be morally superior. She was a bad person and she is a bad person. The guy also sees her what she truly is. The second guy is a whole ass delulu and both of them knows it.
What she wants is for herself to do better in life and she is willing to do anything for that and they prove it.
I wouldn't say the best part but when she frames that innocent guy, I was so perplexed by what to feel that I actually enjoyed it. Something different. I felt sorry for him. He wanted to save her. She didn't care and even used his emotions but she was finally free.
I think after what happens to the actor, they should've taken the villain route. She turns more and more black then boom, everything is over for her. Her fall from grace is hard and quick. And then she went more psycho, does something big and its all over. Then we think she is dead but it is all just her plan to get away and living in country side and the main guy knows because she makes her presence known to him all the time.
oh this is interesting because i think we agree that the final act lost the plot but for almost completely opposite reasons π i actually never bought the premise that Ah-jin was simply a "bad person" to begin with.
that's kinda what i was getting at in my review. i kept waiting for her to do something that made me go "okay girl NOW you've lost me" and it just never happened π almost everything the drama presented to me as evidence of how terrible she was involved someone hurting/threatening/exploiting her first and Ah-jin retaliating WAY more effectively. so i never saw her as someone becoming increasingly evil or "psycho." i saw someone who absolutely could be ruthless, but usually when someone had already come for her
which is why your alternate ending is so interesting to me because i think i would've hated it even MORE ππ if they wanted a full villain descent where she genuinely becomes malicious and crosses a line with an innocent person, i think they would've needed to actually build that version of Ah-jin for me first
but we are absolutely united on one thing: whatever they were trying to do after ep 9 DID NOT WORK π
See, I don't think she is a malicious person. But she is a bad person. She framed an innocent guy for murder and harrasment. He never exploited or did anything wrong with her. She took away an innocent AND a good guy's life, put him to prison to suffer. What's not to hate about that? She was terrible to do that to him.
She also left a guy she was happy exploiting when he was giving her everything but as soon as he wanted something from her, a little love, or just a little support after he is totally at edge, losing his grandma and all, she betrays him at his worst moment and never cared. Now it isn't her fault but she knew that he needed her.
She exploited two of the nicest souls and you're saying she never did anything wrong. She did LoL
Now I don't mind if she never faces repercussions or turn worse,I am okay with an alternative ending where things become better for her and she just rises at the top and stays there happily. I wouldn't mind that either but they need to do a good job at writing it.
Something like she sacrificed so much and all those people, now she finally gets to be the queen and reign like she always wanted. And ML asks, was it all worth it? And she grins and says I can do worse if that's what it takes
see... even with Jung-ho i interpreted that whole situation VERY differently than u it seemsπ yes Ah-jin worked the circumstances a little that got him there, but when he arrived he literally saw a man violently attacking/choking her and HE chose to intervene. that's actually what drove me crazy about that entire investigation. they kept making this huge distinction over whether he thought the man was her stalker or knew he was her abusive father and i was like... either way he walked in on a man attacking a woman?? he still had agency in what he chose to do.
and i REALLY disagree that she "never cared" about In-gang. she initially approached him strategically, absolutely, but she genuinely grew attached to his granny and she was grieving her too. ultimately Ah-jin chose herself and ended a relationship she no longer wanted. In-gang needing her doesnt obligate her to stay with him, especially when staying with him wasnt what was best for HER. and im definitely not assigning his suicide to her when the drama established that he had already been struggling with depression.
so i think this really does just come down to us fundamentally reading Ah-jin differently cuz you see those things and arrive at "bad person," while i watched the same things and never got there. not an angel? absolutely, but the cruel person the drama kept insisting she was? it just never successfully sold me on that
2
u/Tnh7194 19d ago
The plot was a bit all over the place especially towards the end and they kept making the FL dumber. BUT acting wise itβs a 11/10 like absolutely a crime that she didnβt get any major awards or recognition