First time I watched this I really enjoyed it. Attracted by the premise of a mature woman finding herself and her feet, while renewing older relationships, and moving through divorcing her cold and unloving narcissistic husband I thought rewatching this might be like visiting an old friend.
This time, there were too many weaknesses for me to ignore them. FL is rather pathetic, supposedly is 37, but due to her few, rigid facial expressions usually looks nearer 50 to me. Very stiff and instead of "feeling" emotions and trusting the camera, too much mugging and telegraphing crude emotions. Most of her reactions are quite immature - and any hint of "romance" or physical attraction and she's as shocked as an outright virgin - but this woman has a nearly-adult son, so why is she startled when a man catches her to prevent her falling? She does show us a woman changing and becoming more confident and assertive, but at any point where she needs to show us a complicated, ambivalent, or confused emotion, she fails, and presents the same rather grumpy face. I think this is the main reason why she looks so much older to me - in shots where her face is relaxed (sleeping for example) she looks much more normal, and more like the age of the character. This problem made the character less believable to me, and fake.
ML is similarly ridiculously immature - behaves like a teenager who fancies a girl so is rude to her to get her attention.. Flip flops between cold, rude and humiliating and warm and supportive. And he's the "better" option.
"Ex"-husband who has been badgering her to divorce him for 2 years, is a blustering manipulative liar, who will say anything to get what he wants, and consistently gas-lights everyone. He is very narcissistic but appears to mellow later in the plot. Narcissists don't do that. This role is the best acted of the three - even though the character is sooo annoying. Choi Won Yung managed a fine balance which made this character more real.
Both men have a bad habit of grabbing her wrist and dragging her off to Talk, and demanding she answer questions she has clearly told them are none of their business. And it's always Urgent when they want to talk - not so much when she has something to say.
Other characters, while attractive, are little more than cyphers. place-holders or plot devices. This is a shame, because this time around the relationships with minor characters and the way in which their early distrust of the FL changes as the get to know her - including her son - are actually the best feature of this drama. Those are increasingly less important to the drama though, and the last ... half (?) dragged as a result. Sad.
I re-watched this with an optimistic heart, but sadly, it did not deliver. This time I could see the regular Kdrama plot devices, plot twists, tired conventions, cliches and tropes to such an extent that I found little originality in the story. Instead of a character-driven consideration of late blossoming personality and autonomy, this was simply a wander down familiar paths with the same micro-aggressions masquerading as feelings that we see too often. It is not as well written as I had thought (re-watching is always a test of this) and the pacing was not consistent throughout. Plot was driven not y the people but by the artificial arc of events planned out.
Many, like me initially, seemed to like this story.
Very disappointed this time around.