Overall - one of the best romantic dramas I've seen
Set against a context of a competition between two web companies for market share, each having a markedly different philosophy and ethos. One is very capitalist, managed by those who prioritise only profit and are happy to victimise their own staff to protect themselves, and the other run on more ethical lines.
Easy to vilify the capitalist teams, but this is slightly subtler, and there are always suggestions that the main manager in that company has other more complex motives
Set against this, we have three women, who are linked in a number of ways, which are revealed as the drama unfolds. Each is a complex character, and - unusual in Kdrama - each is both strong, and develops and grows over the course of the series
And for each there is a romance which also develops over the series. The main romance is between an older woman and younger man - a detail which she struggles with much more than he does. It's very engaging, but while it is well acted and fairly well written, is not really all that substantial : we understand that they love each other, and the issues for each of them - but we don;t actually see all that much of WHY they have these feelings, which appear to be largely based on appearances and - well - good sex. That said, even if the sex is good, for an inordinately long period (after their first encounter) they don;t actually have sex at all, so, yes, that's not very credible.
However, I would say that may be the biggest weakness here, and it didn't much bother me. The premis of an older woman/younger man romance can be difficult to pull off, but - frankly - the completely unrealistic beauty of these actors made it very effective. If they had been more normal looking, it would have needed a lot more depth though. However - spoiler alert - I was very struck by the way in which the (male) directors managed to capture the erotic nature of the female gaze, and also showed at times a different, gentler angle on male sexual attraction. Sweet. ... there is no even vaguely explicit sexual "action" though - not necessary.
Pacing - was mostly good. I often hate the pauses in Kd and liberally apply the FF button. Here, this was pretty lightly used. It's telling that most of those instances were during lengthy patches meant (I think) to be reflections on the romance/feely goings on, and I think this is probably an indicator that the romance between the M and FL could be much stronger.
The techy context was very glamorised (computer work is NOT this pretty) even though they were shown working long hours. For some reason, even though we were supposed to see them working 12-18 hour days, they still had lots of time for faffing about with their personal lives. My own experience of that is ... you go straight home, eat and sleep, and any other interactions (including hygene) are conducted at high speed using minimum of energy. You can't make a drama out of that!
The acting is wonderful, even more enjoyable because this is an ensemble piece, with a number of characters shown in the round. Of course, most of them are fairly snap-shotty, but many of those have evidence of more than one aspect of their personality and behaviour. Lots of strong female characters - even the b****ds. YAY! Males are good too. Nice. Very good writing
Much of the drama looks at commercial ethics and sketches in some dilemmas. A lot of that is simplified, but still thought-provoking. There are also issues of abuse and exploitation - including in a chaebol setting - some of it dark and stifling, but handled in quite a satisfying way, with it being resolved in an unexpected conclusion. Clever.
I must say something about the music. I confess I FFd a fair bit of it, when we were supposed to infer characters were reflecting on stuff. It is a pleasant OST, though. Latterly, however, after I was struck by something I saw / heard, I started to listen to more of the tracks. I found that - more than at any other series I've watched including Itaewon Class - the music added to the drama, actually reflecting the events, sometimes with gentle humour. Some of the music is really beautiful, with absolute poetry for lyrics. Don't be like me - give this a fair crack of the whip.
[It reminded me of Possession by AS Byatt - a brilliant novel about literature, with the narrative switching between times, and interspersed with poetry. I skipped the poetry on my first reading, but re-read it on a recommendation from a friend - and when I did so read the poetry too: it was stunning, that it so deeply added to the narrative and showed incredibly clearly and deeply the internal world of characters, set against their environments, and revealed insights into the central mystery of the plot. This drama is not working at that level, but there are similarities for me.]
Overall, yes, I loved this, and it's unusual for me to experience such an unmixed pleasure with a drama. Highly recommend.