CdramaMaven4762

I think something / someone scared him badly....

No. She heard he was stumbling around drunk and was afraid he would say or do something inappropriate.

Yes, this ... this is why I don't understand the people complaining about how "petty" he is ... smh

I never even thought of this before you said it.
Not really feeling it, but you do you...

Meanwhile I've been pining for it to air since last November.... kml ...

It's not really a plot hole. They're expecting us to connect the dots.

He set them up. The lover apparently arrived at the Zhao house in a drunken panic, and she was already off-kilter emotionally because her husband had insulted her by refusing to accompany her to her mother's birthday party.
This was all due to the MLs manipulation. Even the scholar guy being there was part of his plan.

It's always been that time.

I'm convinced somebody scared the bejesus out of him ... kml

This feels like you are expecting what is in effect a period drama from a historical perspective to contradict history and uphold modern norms and standards. No matter how stupid we may think it is today, at the time in which the drama is set, social norms and values, especially amongst the nobility, were different.
In the first episode, the drama makes it quite clear that the "training" the young women would have received was to be sexually assaulted. Every woman aside from the grandmother was going to become a sexual slave, including the little girl. Given the social norms of the time, when even remarriage as a widow was considered "not quite", such a fate would have seemed worse than death to these women. The education they had received, after all, would have been focused on Confucian ideals of honor and morality. From their perspective, dying well was better than living so miserably.
Again, the grandfather is indeed foolish for allowing his family to be condemned in that way, but by his lights and the standards of the time, he was considered honorable and worthy. The Lin family, OTOH, would have been thought of as "not quite" ... and the whole business about meeting one's ancestors would have held a kind of meaning that would not resonate with us today.
The FL, decision to marry the ML.... how much agency does she have? We are not that far along, but does she even have a choice? From her perspective, the Lin family cancelling the betrothal was to be expected, since she was going to become a slave anyway. When she heard about his marriage, IMO her reaction was less to him marrying someone else and more to the reminder that her true self was dead to the world and she couldn't go back. And given a choice between living as a slave, at the beck and call of everyone, rather than as the head wife, able to influence what happens to everyone, she chooses wisely.
As for the MLs lack of dimension, I think 8 episodes in is a bit early to make that judgement. There are two ways writers can create rounded characters. We see the first in Xingtang's character. She has both positive and negative traits and is given a set of circumstances that make the audience view her as more than just a textbook villain. I think the ML is the second kind of rounded character. The drama is slowly revealing who he is to the audience. This first image is important for the story telling because it makes the FLs eventual influence on his life more obvious, but even in these early episodes, where he is sharp and targeted, we already see hints of other aspects of his character in his scenes with his mother and his reaction to the news that his former handmaid had been married off to a mentally challenged person.
This drama is definitely focused on showing the lack of agency women of the era had. However, it also illustrates that even the men were bound by the patriarchy their ancestors had created and by the social system that created order from chaos at the cost of personal freedoms. And while I agree with you that the majority of Chinese women probably did not live so cruelly, there's enough information about some who did to make such a portrayal relatively realistic.
I think it's easy to view historical stories from our modern lens and dismiss anything that doesn't fit our own world view. I think this drama is encouraging viewers to enter the world of the drama and experience life from the perspective of the people within it.

That guy in the library is the reason she got married to the ML in the first place, to cover up their scandalous doings ... and he is also her lover while the ML is gone ... basically she never ended it with him.

Archer Ma ... beautiful young man ...

The FL and the assistant have had less than 8 minutes screen time together in 8 episodes ... what are these people smoking??? kml

She was cheating with the same guy the whole time, her cousin. Otherwise I'm with you.

I think he knew she'd been involved with someone prior to their marriage. He's the kind of guy would would have had her background checked out. The fact that they sent him damaged goods pretending to be something else would have fueled his resentment. And a great deal of his resentment towards her personally was because she kept acting like a Zhao in his house; instead of becoming a good wife and daughter in law, she spent all her energy manipulating and mistreating people in his household and under his extended control [e.g. the shopkeepers].
To put it another way; if she'd been receptive to the "no-fault" divorce option at the beginning of his return, she might have been spared the embarrassment.

I've been wondering WHY people seem to dislike him so much. He seems to get along well with the younger people he works with, the cute up and coming actors [eg Ao Ruipeng] included. But there is a segment of the idol fan world that absolutely and obsessively hates him. And he was once an up and coming actor himself, but other MLs in their 30s don't get the same flak.
I keep wondering if it isn't from his earlier roles like Hao Chen in Love and Redemption ... people don't like that he doesn't just stay a bad guy but is instead a gorgeous, talented actor.

So, how is giving her money and sending her away justice for all the people she mistreated??? She was WRONG. He was very kind to her in that he kept her "exposure" limited to literally the only people who already knew everything. She didn't deserve any more that that from him. The man from whom she DID deserve more, OTOH, deserved every bit of the beating he got.

You are so right ... can't understand how you could be so firmly in the woman's corner that you hate the man because she is bad ... smh

Key word is START .... she could have arrested that development if she was a better person. But no, she just got worse and worse.

I think he could have gotten over that if she'd been a decent person in other ways. He hates her for several imo well justified reasons. The final straw for him was him being called back by her father, only to discover she was mistreating his people and stealing his family's money.

And she got very lucky with that divorce. Did you not hear the options? Be publicly divorced, which is social death for her and her family, or pretend to be dead, but not be buried in her husband's family plot, also social death for her family. She was fortunate not to be laughed through the streets.

I would definitely not call this guy petty. He's just not, never ever, going to let anyone continually take advantage of him or maltreat his family and let them get away with it. The entire Zhao clan deserved what they got. They tricked the Lin family into marrying their feckless daughter, who went on to embezzle the family's money and treat his family and servants with disdain and even cruelty.

Frankly, people who defend this woman and say it's the man's fault remind me of the greedy relatives in those short form dramas who get mad when the FL / ML stop let themselves be used as tools and money bags ...