This show puts on display all the worst of Korean dramas. The basic plot concerns the efforts of a ruthless woman (Lee Yo-Won) to dominate the business and even political world she lives in and her relationship with a younger woman (Uee), whom she hires, mentors, discards, befriends and oppresses in that order and then not in that order and on and on. There is also a suggestion that a romantic relationship from student days might rekindle, a suggestion that goes nowhere.
So want went wrong? Well, just about everything. First, the writer's powers of invention failed long before the 20+ hours were up, so that the same ideas and dialog were recycled over and over. The plot calls for everyone to double cross everyone else but over and over again, the protagonists commit the same stupid mistakes of trusting each other that defy credibility. Lee Yo-won has two male subordinates who are regularly unable to prevent one of her ruthless opponents from kidnapping and manhandling her or Uee. Not once does she feel the need to beef up her security.
Next, the amount of portentous dialog over endless cups of tea or coffee or cheap restaurant meals is insufferable. And one of the most annoying tropes of Asian drama, characters delivering themselves of pompous rhetoric and walking away without waiting for an answer, is repeated here again and again.
How convenient too that the villains always seem to be able to summon at will supine prosecutors to arrest or harass their opponents.
The costuming is also ludicrous. Indoors or out, everyone, male or female, lead character or supporting character, is wearing heavy winter coats in just about every single scene. Uee in particular is the ultimate coat horse - for a supposedly impoverished woman, I never once saw her in the same designer coat. What were the makers of the series trying to tell us? Perhaps I am just dense, but the coats soon became an irritating distraction.
The show offers microscopic hints of romance, but does nothing with them. Our comely female leads and rather handsome male leads show only homeopathic levels of interest in each other, which peter out long before the show grinds to a close.
And what an ending . . . it wasn't. No real climax, no denouement, just a damp blanket thrown over the corpse of the story.
