This was supposed to be it. The holy grail. The chosen one. The drama of the year. It all started absolutely perfectly, first three episodes were flawless. At the end, I was speechless. I was ready to give it a perfect score. But then something happened. Something unthinkable. Something I was afraid that will happen. The drama started to fall back. But let me start form the beginning.
I have to admit, I was absolutely in love with this series since the first episode. Because this show started with a bang. Kang Hae Ra is a successful woman with an even more successful but abusive husband. Her life starts to crumble when during dinner with helpful fan she blacks out and wakes up to the accusations of a romance with much younger man. Her contracts are terminated and bank account seized. Cancel culture at its finest. Hae Ra gets suspicious seeing the recording allegedly showing her entering hotel room with an other man. But the woman on the recording is wearing completely different shoes. Hae Ra hires Hu Eun Hye, reporter who quickly discovers that something’s wrong. Hae Ra is ready for her revenge.
The magical thing that shook me the most after watching this episode was how Hae Ra was shown till this point. She was supposed to be this weak, abused woman. But suddenly we see that she hit her husband back. That she knew before that he was cheating on her, but without concrete proof and with her husband being public figure she couldn’t do anything. But now, with proper recording she can get her revenge. And she does that completely cold blooded.
After that another characters are coming to the team. Cha Min Joon is a cold blooded attorney that decides to help Hae Ra in exchange for her continuing her revenge channel. She’s supposed to help women that were wronged by Min Joon’s clients. Soon it turns out that it might not be the only reason Min Joon needs her help.
So first of all, characters are absolutely amazing. They all have very clear motivations, are amazingly written and are overall very believable. Even villains here are interesting. I have to admit, the character of Hae Ra’s husband was my favourite at the beginning. Of course he was a human trash, but writing this kind of character in a way that viewer wants to know more about him is something. In this case Lee Hoon Seok is cold, calculated and absolutely ruthless, yet still on the outside, for medias, he’s calm and composed. Perfect scene showed him on the conference’s backstage, when he talked with Hae Ra, and turned his microphone in perfect moments for audience to hear his accusations, without showing the whole conversation that would put him in bad light. Conflict between him and Hae Ra, where they basically throw the ball back and forth trying to make their life miserable was absolutely fantastic. And this may sound as if I was a sociopath, but it was just so well written.
And at this point, after couple of episodes, I was hoping only for one thing: let it last. I was just hoping that the drama would just maintain this level till the very end which will easily grant it a ten point score for me. I was ready to announce it being the best drama I’ve watched so far.
In my native language we have saying that goes more or less like: don’t praise the day before the sunset. And this fits here perfectly, because at one point, around episode sixth or seventh I was noticing something bad, and it got only worse with time.
So on sixth episode I’ve noticed the pattern. And it’s never a god thing, especially with the drama that’s main strong point is unpredictability. But it was there, because Hae Ra every time just let anyone corner here and by cleverly placed phone she get the proof good enough to get her revenge. So since there all I had to do was just wait for the phone to be revealed.
And when on eight episode we got a White Truck Of DeathTM it was a beginning of the end really.
And don’t get me wrong, by this point the drama still got that initial punch. Still was able to absolutely surprise me in the most unpredictable moments.
The main plot was great, it was witty and well written. But side lines were sometimes just plainly ignored. Till the end I was waiting for explanation of some very important parts. And some events seemed to just be ignored by the characters. Like someone betrays your trust completely, you just don’t quickly forget it and go on with your life.
The series started the best it could but lost its momentum half way through. It become repetitive and stagnant so bad that I’ve barely watched last three episodes.
Character were rather well written, but there’re so many side characters that it’s easy sometimes to lose track on who’s who, especially that they like to change side from time to time, and we get those minor characters that just come back after a few episodes and viewer needs to search in memory who this person is.
First episodes were amazingly thought through plotwise. Characters actions were logical and justified. So it pains me twice as much seeing all this ridiculous things that happen in the last episodes. It’s like writers just took a day off and quickly scribbled some solutions to emerging problems.
So just to sum it up somehow. I still love this series. I still think that it was one of the best ones I’ve seen recently. That’s why I’m so sad that it turned out just average at the end. I’m so sad that the punchy, cliffhanger episode endings that carried this series in the beginning were gone. I’m sad that we get so many repetitive solutions to the problems. We have characters in situation that is seemingly hopeless and then boom, 180 turnover and suddenly everything goes according to plan. And it’s great one, or twice. But seeing it almost every episode just seemed so unrealistic.