What a weird drama, oh my god I don't even know where to start..

Alright about the premise, the whole way the relationship/marriage started is completely insane. I kept watching, because Perfect and Casual had a similarly insane first 2-3 episodes & after that it turned out to be one of the better cdramas I've seen.
In all honesty around e7-8 I started thinking this show will be like that too, before the secondary love interest shows up most of the episodes were a work of art. There were several episodes in a row where there was no plot, but only very chill, cozy and a bit moody romance & I felt I could keep watching content like this for a hundred more episodes.

I think our leads look great together, in an attractively misfitting way. They had slowly developing, but good chemistry & if I focused exclusively on their romance, then that was quite good up until the finale. They had their ups and downs, but there were no serious problems or misunderstandings that took too long to resolve.

This is a visually stunning show, it's really high up there in terms photography & the sets, sceneries are just amazingly beautiful..

To me this drama feels a bit like they hired the best possible actors, the best possible cinematographer, procured some great background music inserts and gotten an amazing director too. Unfortunately as it often happens the writer did not work out. I already talked about the premise, but I'm almost at a loss of words about the things that go down in the second half of the drama. There is big twist too & that is indescribably absurd & once that is resolved ridiculous business problems crop up & suddenly the money required to solve problems shoots to the stratosphere, they start throwing around numbers that make no sense..
There is some propaganda related messaging as well in the final episodes, though I'm not sure how much of it is intentional.
Unlikely coincidences sure happen a lot in dramas, but good gawd in this one the unlikely chance meeting trope sure is overused & that's an understatement.

One thing that is not writer's fault is the puppies on the show. What the characters describe as "stray dogs and cats from a nearby village" are specimen of incredible pedigree. To me that was extremely immersion breaking, similarly to when in other dramas they adopt and raise randomly found imported hedgehogs that look like $2000. Though in this show it's worse, because the meaning & messaging associated with strays is very significant & then showing dogs that are worth more money than my car is just absurd.

Just to reiterate, the plot twist shocked me more than anything else I can remember in cdramaland, the egregiousness of it, not because it was so impactful.. I'm even suspecting that a large chunk of the drama failed censorship, so they quickly filmed that birthday scene & moved on from all family conflicts with a single stroke.. (the 23 episode length does support this theory) I'd be happy to read your opinions about that under this review :P

5.5 may seem like an unnecessarily low rating, but I don't have it in me to go any higher!