### No Spoiler Review

First. It's good to see a Noona romance not involving a high school student.

The shows potential lies in the women empowerment storylines. I believe this show would have been better sold as a story centered on Jin A, a woman trying to navigate her way through societal expectations. Something more in the tone of My Mister or Misaeng. It falls short of those shows in many ways, but the blueprint is there. The romance should just have been something that happens in Jin A's life, not define it (I want that for so many of romance stories I have seen). I love the relationship between the female characters here, especially Bo Ra and Jin A. Wish we'd have got more of that from the very start, including conversations that didn't center on the male characters.

But first there's the soundtrack. The show has many lingering shots which would provide an opportunity for the soundtrack to stand out, if only it was good. The score is quite good. However, the song choices ruins everything. Not only did they choose poorly composed music, with average melody and terrible lyrics, they had to reuse them multiple times in the show. It's another reason why I think the second half is kind of better, since it has less of that shitty music. Something I realized is that they didn't have a single Korean song. I feel anytime I have watched a show with English songs, it's often terrible. Should they have written better songs for the show, it would have been a lot better.

### Spoilers start here.

Having read some of the reviews on the show early on, I expected a huge dip in quality in the second half of the show. Other than the cliched evil mom, the show narrowing in on the workplace discrimination and sexual harassment plot elevates, if only for a bit. Many who must have picked up the show for the romance will probably end up disappointed. This is where the comparison to My Mister and the likes comes in. There's that hint of realism that you don't find in many shows. It's why I think the mom being against the relationship works for the story (It would have weird to have no one be against it when the first half focuses so much on hiding the relationship). That's not to say it was done well. I still think it went over the top and the lack of self-reflection or at least more insight to the mother's psyche has it teetering on the edge of the absurd. As much as I am praising the second half, I still think it is a worse than the first mostly due to the lack of consistency. The romance becomes repetitive with the couple having issues over the same mistakes. I was expecting a bittersweet ending given societal taboos, but I think the lack of proper communication between the couple ruins everything.

I give the story a 7 since I thought it was good but could have been better, starting with the side characters. We've already talked about the mom, but this applies too to the workplace characters and the rest of Jin A's family. The audience isn't given enough to root for or against them. This is what keeps the show as an average romance story rather than a great slice of life drama. When we think of the good slice of life stories, their success comes from having well developed characters. This show has only hints of it and it is not for a lack of time. The first part has so many slow scenes that could have been cut out to accommodate the other characters and plotlines. But we got the repetitive music instead.

I'd recommend the drama for the friendship between Bo Ra and Jin A but even that is hardly explored to be worth anyone's time.