…to keep telling yourself that it’s a makjang whenever you find yourself yelling at the screen. The second rule of watching a makjang is not to forget rule #1.

Oh jeez, I don’t even know how to rate this one. It really should be a “nah” (my personal rating system is "loved," "liked," "meh," & "nah”), but to be angry at a melodrama for being completely illogical is like being angry at the sky for being blue. I’m not even sure why I kept watching it, but I did. I even finished it despite the temptation to drop it halfway through the last episode (seriously, is it a thing in melodramas for the ML to ghost the FL for YEARS in the last episode only to have her lovingly forgive him at the last minute!?).

I liked the original premise of this drama. Plastic surgeon and gangster, what an interesting combination. Except that the entire drama was based upon the completely illogical premise that they could not be together. There was absolutely. no. logical. reason. for this. So what if he had a baby mamma!? He was not into her—and had never been. Plenty of people co-parent without being in an intimate-partner relationship. So what if he was a gangster!? He barely deserved the term--their business did not include human trafficking, prostitution, and drugs. Nightclubs, liquor businesses, and loan sharking is more like the mob than gangs, isn’t it?

In a telenovela, trapping a man into a loveless marriage with an unwanted pregnancy is a classic trope. I shouldn’t be angry at the b@t$***t crazy jealous girlfriend because it was just a trope, but I was. She demanded to marry him even though she knew that, not only did he not love her, but that he loved someone else. If someone is with you for eight years, never says that they love you, never discusses marriage, and never even moves in with you (or vis versa), then they’re just not that into you. You’re nothing more than a glorified booty call. And then when he finally got the b@**$ to break up with her, she couldn’t understand why anyone would NOT want to be in a loveless marriage (a marriage based upon the sole reason that he’d treated her like crap during their eight-year relationship and felt like he owed her something). Much less getting married to someone who, every time he saw the woman he was actually in love with, the world stopped and the two stared at each other so longingly it was the equivalent of neon signs over their heads flashing “we love each other!” (which was super annoying because the staring was just long enough to get annoying that I’d hit the 10-second ahead button only to miss something important and have to back track). I do appreciate the SML for giving up early--thought I thought it was a bit annoying the way the FL kept chasing after him. I think she was trying to just be a supportive friend but the way they portrayed it, it was more like she was keeping him around as Plan B.

Edit: I totally forgot to rant about the FL's bestie! She made me so mad in the beginning that I had to fast forward any time she was on screen. Holy toxic friendship, batman! "Oh! You're rich and like my friend? Here's her phone number, her address, her birth sign, her SSN, her GPS location, and whatever else you might need..." "If he was rich, I'd let him hit me," was an actual line from her. She got better towards the end, but in the beginning that character was being used solely to push the FL into romance and it was done in such a way that any person with self-esteem would have cut that person out of their life--and probably sued them, too, for violation of privacy. Sheesh!

Anyways, if you’d like to take a trip back to early 2K melodramaland, go for it. I would say to just remember my two rules above, but as you can see from my ranting, I clearly didn’t follow them, either. :D