Good drama

Overall, a good drama.

Personally, I would have liked to see SFL struggle more to get back SML (actaully, to be honest I would have very much preferred him to look at other options and conclude the obvious, namelythat he could do better than someone that would treat him as she did, deceiving him for more than a year, disappearing for two years without a word, and then have the gall to ask him to get back together after she broke up with the guy she cheated with... and he could do better with anyone else, or even by himself) or at least a stronger love triangle where SFL actually faced a challenge. I mean, there was more struggle and uncertainty with the This Week My Wife Is Having An Affair love triangle, and it was basically an afterthought. I wished that SML had channeled Astrid from the ending of the Crazy Rich Asian movie and demonstrated he had a little spine, self dignity and self respect.

The fact is, SFL doesn't really have to face the consequences of her actions, because such consequences are a token resistence that crumbles basically in their first meeting, then he takes her back. And that happens in the first episodes, after which she is no longer the one that chases after him and tries to get back together, he is the one that chases after her, from going to her apartment after their first intimate encounter to literally begging her not to run off with DK, the man she had cheated with, once again. This is insane. Even in something completely ludicrous, where FL should have definitely not taken him back, like World of the Married, the cheating partner has to go through more hoops in order to get a new chance, while here, absurdly, its the SML that runs after her anyway and tries to convince her to stay, after basically folding immediately when she asked him to take her back, despite the pain and betrayal she had put through -what he had to put up with was orders of magnitude worse, she just walzes back in his life after more than one year of cheating and two years off with her lover... I mean, they don't even discuss why she is back: did she have a change of heart, and if then why? Did the relationship just not pan out and so he is the backup? Did DK cheat on her with the briefly mentioned model? One really is forced to try to convince themselves of the first option based on what little evidence the show provides, and the "why is she back" bit is barely touched on-.

I mean, compare this with the hoops the SFL in Backstreet Rookie has to go through, after merely kissing another guy and briefly leaving: there we at least see the reason she is back, we see that she finally learned to appreciate ML (and she never really loved the other guy, anyway) and before she didn't realize how committed the latter was to her, and she goes back (and never really gets a chance). Here we don't know why she is back (did things not pan out and he is the fallback? Or did she suddenly realize she really loved him? But she said she loved DK when she run off with him, and seemed to know all along how much HS loved her and how she was his entire world, so it's not as if she knows anything more about him than when she intentionally deceived him for more than a year while seeing DK behind his back, and run off with DK for two years without saying another word to HS... I really would have liked to be given a reason beyond her saying that she wants to get back together).

This is exemplified by the flippant way his concerns around DK are dismissed/made fun of. He tries to play it cool, but is disturbed that she is still talking with the guy (and meeting up one on one, with a creepily intimate vibe and her giving clever replies and not really putting the foot down and drawing boundaries, when he is still trying to win her back). I would have been okay with saying that his advances were inappropriate and she was going to walk away if he didn't stop hitting on her (she banters with him and makes clever comebacks, frankly it was more like flirting, and I would say that she was at least indulging his flirting if not partecipating -by the end, definitely participating and stringing him along to make HS jealous, which given DK was the guy she cheated with for a year was simply insanely disrespectful, though I liked the jealousy on *her* part, high time she understood she couldn't take him for granted, though unfortunately in practice she could safely take him for granted and he was back to begging and grovelling in two seconds flat-), though I would have very much preferred if she had shown some consideration for HS's obvious insecurities and understood that this was a bad idea in the first place.

Here we are not talking about indulging or pandering to some irrational jealousy. The key point here is that no, her being with HS is not enough to reassure him that he is the one she had chosen, because prior to that, while they were together, she cheated on HS with DK for more than a year, so clearly her being with HS was insufficient to assume she wouldn't cross any boundaries in the past: it would have been a completely different situation had she decided to break things off with HS and then purse a relationship with DK, in that case it would have hurt, but he could have at least trusted that if she had developed feelings for someone else she would talk to him about it and not double time him. He simply cannot make that assumption, because she has shown herself to be the kind of person that would keep her foot in two shoes and lie to his face for more than a year (for that matter, I was about to say "chose him over DK", but it's not clear whether this was because she relized she loved him and not DK, or because DK cheated on her with the underwear model, or she broke up because of something else DK did, so it's not clear that the "choice" is not a convenient fallback... I chose to go with the first option because the alternatives would be even more unpalatable and even more taking him for granted).

Given that betrayal and the fact that DK is still trying to get back with her, this is not simply mantaining a friendly relationship with an ex-bf, it's not a separate matter. And if HS feels that he has to keep his mouth shut about his feelings to be able to stay with her, and when he tries to express them he is not taken seriously, there is a problem. If YJ has no idea that HS would be bothered by her taking calls from the man she had been seeing behind his back for more than a year and agree to one-on-one meetings and lunch, then she would be completely insensitive. I was about to say that nobody could have expected him to be relaxed about that that quickly, but that was before knowing of the betrayal and about YJ using DK to make HS jealous... after knowing that, I would switch that quickly to ever, and say that the phrase is validated, because nobody did expect that, and in particular she did not: she knows perfectly well how HS truly feels about DK. When he comments on him wanting her back because she is a talented artist, she says it's a surprise to hear him say something nice about the guy (considering he had been seeing his gf behind his back for more than a year and she run off with him for two, what a surprise). And later on she exploits the pain he felt with regards to DK to remind him that she had lived with the guy in their NY house and he still has feelings for her, and she might be starting to reciprocate, to make him jealous, before outright telling him that she is going back to him.

To be honest, if we were to speak about practical advice I would give someone in HS's situation, it would be to run for the hills and choose anyone else (or nobody and stay single). A perfect life of two rich artistic guys with nice houses, the dream life/couple? And YJ and HS being even more unhappy than FL? Well, in reality I would say that HS was the only miserable one, and he had perfectly good reasons to be: that completely ignores the fact that there is more to life than money and YJ betrayed HS, while nobody stabbed FL in the back in such a manner. Her knowing him so well as to share something like the little foot fetish and choosing to lie to his face for more than a year, knowing full well about how much he loved her and trusted her, and self servingly exploiting and breaking that trust, and then running off for two without a word, and later exploiting knowing which buttons to push to hurt him with his insecurities regardind DK... it all makes her actions all the more damning (in Backstreet Rookie at least SFL was confused about ML's commitment to her and didn't realize how much he had sacrificed for her, here she knew all about his feelings and took him for granted, deceiving him anyway and then later intentionally using DK to hurt him).

I would have liked to see a real triangle, for HS to have had other actual relationships and given it a real try. It just seems mightily unfair that he would wait for her for years and not have the chance to truly explore and discover whether someone else could make him happy... with him being strong armed and pressured into a decision and not having any experience with a relatioship with any other girl, I really cannot say he is making an informed decision (and in fact imho anyone else would have been a better choice, given that they had not betrayed him in such a horrific manner, in fact staying alone would have been preferable). More than that, that way YJ would have had to actually do some work to win HS back, while this way she essentially just shows up and asks. One cannot even talk about her evolving: she still thinks that it's okay for someone to stab people in the back to get what they want (she tells ML that had he really been interested her being his cousin's gf wouldn't have mattered and he would have tried to steal her away for real... as if people simply acted on their impulses with no consideration for the fact that they are hurting people that they don't know and never did anything to them, or people they know and care about, and getting what they wanted by any means necessary is the only thing that matters... would have liked to see how she would have felt like had she been on the receiving end of such a life philosophy and had someone really been trying to take HS away from her, rather than it being HS's one sided crush... this is simply basic golden rule stuff, treat others like you want to be treated, and people being able to separate their emotions from whether pursuing someone is a good idea and wouldn't want to come between two people in an established relationship, and I would have liked ML to push back on her hogwash and restate that no, as he told his gf, the fact that he is HS's cousin mattered, he is not a sociopath that is completely self serving and does not mind stabbing people -in this case family he cares about- in the back in the pursue of his goals... though his flirting was still inappropriate -it was not clear to me that HS truly didn't mind when he put his head in YJ's lap, but it's something ML should have wondered about, though maybe it's something he did, and in fact he did seem aware of the fact that he and his flirting were not being taken seriously- and I appreciated FL calling him out on it), she just decided for some reason that now she does not want DK anymore and wants HS again.

It's not clear to me that he can expect this not to happen in the future, and to be completely honest I guess that nobody can guarantee not to fall out of love with someone and in love with someone else, and in such a case it would be perfectly fine to be upfront and honest about it and break things off, the worry is whether she would be like last time and deceive him for more than a year: to be clear, had she simply dumped him and run off for two years, while unpleasant for HS, I wouldn't have had a problem with it, because she would have been honest and really the only alternative if she was in love with DK and not with HS would have been what she chose, namely lying to HS' face for more than a year. If she still thinks that what she wants is all that matters and she can stab the people she loves in the back to get it (as she implied when talking to ML about his crush on her), then with that mentality it's not clear that she wouldn't lie to HS again if a similar situation to the one with DK arose in the future, maybe being in DK's shoes this time around and hurting someone else as well, like she suggested ML to hurt his cousin by pursuing his girlfriend for real. The notion that one might think that despite one's feelings and emotions and what they want/wish for, there are other considerations, and they don't want to be the type of person that would come between two people in an established relationship, or be willing, in order to get what they want, to unfairly treat someone they didn't know and that never did anything to them, or stab a family member and someone he cares about in the back, as if wanting something or someone is a free pass, a get out of jail free card, and merely desiring something or someone wsa a universal justification in and of itself. Again, the double standard of thinking that this is all perfectly okay if she does it to someone else, but it's not if even much less is done to her. That's the reason I would have liked her to have some real competition, rather than simply someone that had no interest in coming between her and her boyfriend and was completely unthreatening.

It's absurd that she doesn't have to do anything to win the person she deceived for more than a year back other than show up and ask, and he is the one that needs to beg her to stay, again. Once again, it's not her fighting to get him back, it's him fighting to get her to stay -and, after putting up with more than a year of betrayals, he needs to beg her not to run off to the lover she cheated on him with *again*, when she was the one that asked him to take her back? After more than a year of lies and running off for two years without a word, she gets to come back into his life just by asking once and barely saying sorry, and he has to grovel and beg her not to leave him again for the man she had cheated with?-. I simply find it absurd that she basically didn't need to face any challenge to get him back, she just had to show up and ask twice.

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