I have one reason, and one reason only, for why I dropped this drama.

Cheating. There is a strong case of cheating in this drama, and I cannot abide it.

Yes, many will consider the cheating pseudo-cheating as the male lead's fiancé is an awful person, and their relationship is more for show than out of love, and they both acknowledge that. But all of the things said cheating brings along with it are so glaringly awful, I refuse to put up with them.

There's how it completely distracts the female lead from her goal of disrupting and changing the political landscape of her town. The story is meant to be about tackling government corruption and laziness and just downright ineffectiveness, but instead, it becomes about two people having a secret, untenable relationship that ultimately makes them both miserable, because they're not being honest with themselves.

There's how it ruins the female lead as a character, because instead of fighting for justice, she's mopey and whiney and constantly pining over this secret relationship and ultimately becomes the type of person who's willing to hurt others and sacrifice them for her own personal gain.

There's how it highlights that the male lead is so selfish that instead of breaking off his engagement to a woman he doesn't love so he can be with a woman he does, he would rather go through with the engagement and eventual marriage while stringing the female lead along beside him, never to be first in his life, always to be second.

And then worst of all, the fact that the female lead knows full well that the male lead is engaged and, Believing It To Be A Genuine Relationship, goes along with the cheating anyway. You want to make a case that he's not cheating on anyone because he and his fiancé don't actually love each other, fine. I'll let it slide. But her? She thought his relationship with his fiancé was real, and she was okay with ****ing that over.

Not. Cool.

Now maybe all of this was intentional and later in the drama the writers were going to show the leads just what kind of people they had become, just what they had sacrificed out of their own selfishness. Maybe there was an entire redemption arc planned. But I read spoilers for the later episodes, and that's Definitely not where I saw the story going.

I'm not saying that stories shouldn't talk about and address cheating, that characters are never allowed to cheat in a story, but I sure as hell am saying that a drama that portrays cheating as somehow romantic and not a big deal and easy to gloss over is Not a story I want to watch. In any context.