I finished this drama out of a sense of obligation to the beautiful story the production team had made together more than anything else. While I wrote down many, many quotes in my journal that I found particularly moving and profound, I ultimately didn't connect with the story or the characters as deeply as I had hoped. I was particularly disappointed by the romance, namely how little there was of it in the second half. The way the male lead expresses his feelings for the female lead, initially only to himself out of respect for her marriage, then slowly more openly where she can see, until eventually, declaring his love and making it clear where he stand, I appreciated his delicate and respectful yet earnest and open approach. Their natural transition from friendship to romance was very true to life. But once they're together, the drama really pulls back from giving us more than the lightest hints of romantic interactions between them, and I just don't get why. Why not give us the romance we've been waiting for? Why not give us the romance you've been teasing us with?

Then there's the issue of her being a single mother. There was so much focus on this in the first half, how her husband left her high and dry and she's had a genuinely hard time of it, and you feel genuinely upset on her behalf. But part of me wonders what was the point of the writers focusing so much on this if they were only going to drop this plot point from the story almost completely in the second half. We go so long at one point without any mention of her daughter or her ex-husband that I forgot either existed. Once she starts working at the publishing company and the story begins to focus on her difficulties with being respected and taken seriously at work, she stops behaving like a mother altogether, and it begins to feel somewhat like child abandonment.

There are a number of positive things to say about this drama, of course. I am giving it a 9 overall, after all. First, I found the story and the treatment of it's topics thoughtful and retrospective. When it did address the difficulties of single parenthood, it did so with honesty and kindness. Similarly, it handles the struggles of being a woman re-entering the work-force after a long absence due to motherhood, etc. with a compassionate touch. I don't know that I agree with all of the messaging the drama presents around this topic, but I understood where the drama was coming from and can agree with it's ultimate message that just because you chose to take a step back from the working world to start a family, that doesn't mean you have nothing to offer when you come back.

Ultimately, I think my problem with this drama is simply that I expected something very different. This isn't quite the story I thought it was going to be going in, and that had an impact on my viewing experience. That's not the drama's fault. The writers told the story they wanted to tell, and it's not their responsibility to make that story appeal to absolutely every person who watches it. I was just hoping for something a little different, and it didn't quite meet my expectations. But I can say that I appreciate this drama for what it was hoping to achieve, and that it ultimately did achieve it. And that's really all that matters.