Thank you @missvictrix for hanging in there till the bitter end. Your recaps were fun, can’t say the same about the drama.

What an utter disappointment and waste of talent.

Micheal chang? What happened to this? They didn’t want loan shark to get more screen time. Or did he not show up on the set that day and Tae Oh replaced him??

This show was nonsensical. It’s worse than flat beer on a hot day.
I didn’t care for any of them. And suddenly everyone gave up their dreams and decided to be zen?? In the last episode?

Handing over the ‘Bean of Disappointment’ to this drama. And fairly positive no drama can take this bean in the reminder of the year.

So the guy saw fireworks an dreamed of being in these people's place. They live in Asia, every occasion is good to have fireworks. He had no real reason to go against the chairman in the first place. So he became the handyman to In-Ha who used him like he used every other people in his life... The chairman was so right, he lost everything : his friends (even if they never were really friends in the first place), his love, his mother... All of that to be alone in a big tower watching fireworks.

In-Ha could have been way more interesting if they developped the reasons and feelings and not suddenly giving us only crazy actions.

Hye-won says, “I want to focus on myself now” (uh, when did you do anything but that?) I had the same reaction. She was so useless as a character. They never showed us what she could do, what she was actually doing except being stupid by not taking measures to not be followed... I never felt sorry for her. She used In-Ha too.

It was not a good story, the acting was meh, the direction didn't bring anything to this mess.

[In-ha] later commits suicide in his cell as a single tear drips down his cheek.

SHUT THE FRONT DOOR!!! No way. NO WAY. No.

How did you all survive this? Can we send help in anyway? Chocolate? Alcohol?

Thank you for the recaps @missvictrix. Cheers to you and all the rest of us for hanging in till the end of this train wreck 🥂!

I think the last paragraph of the recap really encapsulates the primary issue with the show - the absence of an actual story to tell. Characters and plot points were introduced and forgotten in quick succession over and over again. Like the conversation where Tae-ho was going to make Hye-won the heir 🙄.

Even when it supposedly 'closed' the story loop, there was no real resolution - the only way in which the story knew how to move forward was either by killing off people or time-skips.

Here's hoping all the actors find themselves with better work in the future 🙏!

OMG, I forgot about Hee Joo's marriage, LMAO. This drama was so BAD. So many unanswered questions. What was the point? WHY? Who were we supposed to root for? I understood nothing because the writer didn't know what they wanted, so they put everything in. SIGH

I won't remember much of this drama (thankfully), except that the music was quite impressive and often really loud.

Whilst I was also pretty bored during the last two episodes, I asked myself, not for the first time, who would voluntarily move into such an ugly office? Is it even possible to heat this room properly? I would probably have permanently cold hands and feet. Questions that are more exciting than anything this drama had to offer.

Random notes about a random drama:

So the Kang family robs Tae-oh of everything he has - the girl he likes, his mother, his freedom (for a while), his best friend - and then Chairman Kang faults him for failing to ‘protect’ all that? And then, apparently for no reason, offers him one more chance? Huh? And it turns out the chairmanship was in Chairman Kang’s gift, and at his whim? All that Board of Directors maneuvering and corporate scheming was meaningless? Figures.

So the Royal Road development somehow morphed from the Palm Jumeirah in Dubai to, I don’t know, random ecologically disastrous resort plunked into a swamp? That seems about right.

For a show as queer-coded as this started, they did a horrible job making any sense of In-ha’s and TO’s relationship - they hinted at what attracted them to each other but there was no further sign of that until the very end or of what each perceived, expected, needed, or wanted from the other.

Among the few things I liked:

- When TO takes down the PCITA, it feels like a breakup - the only emotionally resonant moment in the show.
- I laughed out loud when, um, what’s-her-name the FL says she wants to live for herself now. That’s her big character resolution? Like everyone’s, my reaction was, when did she ever do anything else?
- Hee-joo’s unwanted fiancé was hot and funny and I enjoyed his precious few moments onscreen.
- At the end, each main character is alone. The price of power apparently is isolation, but the show mercifully refrains from commenting on that.

How a drama could go this wrong should be studied in a lab.

I am sooo glad I didn't watch this, after all. Thanks for your hard work recapping such a mess of a story.

Funny how fireworks played such an important role visually and as a metaphor in both Impossible Heir and Wedding Impossible.

I am going to go against the tide here and say that I don't think Lee Jae Wook is a good actor. Apparently, Taeoh's first reaction watching fireworks was that of amazement? I thought Taeoh was disgusted by such a lavish spending or recognized that he was studying with the son of his biological dad. I had so many explanations for his reaction and neither had anything to do with the excitement.

To make it fair, the whole show felt as if it had 30 episodes and the last minute, was cut to fit into 12 episodes. Maybe Lee Jae Wook was given a different description of the scene before the writer randomly decided Taeoh wanted those dumb fireworks.

Either way, it was fun watching the show from afar. Dropped it after second episode and stuck to the recaps. 10/10.

So, another ☑️ in the column titled “glad I didn’t subscribe to Disney”

@missvictrix, you are to be commended for sticking with it!

This was on my watchlist (I'm not sure why) but I held off for the very simple reasons that something told me (intuition?) that a drama with lots of twist and turns and with Lee Jae-wook would end with LJW the "hero" and the other main male lead would be the bad guy. But I followed the recaps to see if I might be wrong and there might indeed be a surprise or two for the viewer.

Alas, score one for my intuition. Thanks for the recaps @missvictrix - instead of wasting my time on this drama, I have doubled down on spending my kdrama viewing hours on investigating every clue, hint, subtlety in my obsession drama Queen of Tears,. 🥰🥰🥰

Random thought I even forgot what chaebol mother exactly did so I thought she was framed for Tae-oh's mother's death when arrested.
Never saw a drama this confusing

Thanks @missvictrix for finding ways to point out the ridiculousness with more humour than the show deserved. It worked for me as the one beanie who was ok with drama despite everything.

There were of course many questions left unanswered but these were the things that I was left with.
I noticed how power corrupts because Inha’s lawyers ensured he was given a life sentence when he did far worse crimes than Taeoh who had been given a death sentence.
The mystery of Inha’s missing mum was solved with one graphic image but we never saw the link between his life with her and his connection with the sea in times of distress.
Taeoh getting the company and the two siblings left standing being ok with him and each other was unexpected.
Special mention has to go to wardrobe for dressing the chairman of a massive corporation in the standard loan shark uniform throughout the drama and it worked.

Thanks @missvictrix for every witty and resigned weecap. I have not commented on them all but read them and helped me get through this nonsense. I don't regret having watched, though. I always say you learn as much from bad dramas than from good dramas.

I just didn't get so many things in these episodes: the Michael Gold plot? Why? The sloppy prison guardian that doesn't check they guy he's payed to kill is not actually dead. The lack of security cameras in a prison. A doctor woman who was addicted working in a men's prison in SK (this is specially laughable). Inha taking his own life while watching the photo of the three. HyeWon saying she will focus on her life. All those old men saying they would follow Inha when he has nothing... anyway, nothing made sense because this was written by a 12 years old who thought a revenge and witty drama should have all these brilliant twists. Guess what? They were not brilliant. Someone please tell writer-nim.

I hated the acting. I consider Jun and LJW good actors, but they were just over the top, and the second part of the drama was actually painful to watch. Opening your eyes a lot should never count as acting. As for terrible FL, she's already in the list with you know who. I will call her from now on you know who 2 or you know who heir one.

The one thing the drama did well was about the actress portraying Monk Mum: she actually shaved her head. Considering how much I hate when in a drama someone goes through neurosurgery or has big injury in their head and not a shaved head, I was very surprised. My deepest respects for the actress who took her role seriously (I can't say the same about the rest of the cast).

@missvictrix Thank you for convincing me to stay away from this one! You gave it fair chance and it looks like this one didn't give any payback for that chance.

My biggest complaint about this drama is probably the fact that it doesn't make me feel happy that I watched it. Initially, I was fine with the fact that I was indifferent to the drama and its characters, because it meant that I would accept whatever happened in the plot calmly. There are many dramas where I don't care about the fate of the characters and I still enjoy watching such dramas. However, here my indifference towards the characters made me see more clearly all the mistakes that were made in creating this drama. Indifference towards characters is good when the drama is good. When the drama is not good and the audience cannot like any of the characters, they become merciless towards the script. I have a major complaint against the screenwriter for not presenting the characters' motives in a more clear way for the audience. I have read various comments and I have the impression that some viewers did not completely understand what the characters' motives were, but I blame the script for not presenting these motives well. For me, this drama will be a drama from those that you forget and don't want to come back to. There is nothing about it that would make it worth wasting time on again.

I enjoyed the first 3 or so episodes, but man...crash landing badly!!

@missvictrix , I salute you. For your endurance and wit. when I saw this was up I literally took a bottle of cold water a d a yougurt drink to treat myself properly to this highly anticipated finale (of recaps)
Your deadpan delivery of the most "emotionally potent" moment cracked me up.
Fav qoute:
"After a handy three-year time skip, we see our Tae-oh and Chairman Kang duo surveying their very CGI Royal Road.". Laughing as I'm writing it. Wishing you excellent dramas for the rest of the year, you earned it!