The trailer teased a rom-com with two characters with strong personalities who are hopelessly prejudiced against each other, but the show winds up being a rather watered-down, run-of-the-mill romantic dramedy with good production and decent acting, but misses the mark on both the chemistry and the social commentary.

For a title supposedly showcasing a strong woman, the FL did not feel "strong" to me at all. I wanted to see the FL kicking ass, yes, but not LITERALLY. Being able to knock grown men to the ground isn't empowering to me. Being good at what you do, being confident, and being able to face off adversities in life is. And right off the bat, FL doesn't seem to be particularly capable at anything besides resorting to intuitive violence.

I am perhaps less forgiving towards this show due to how high my expectations were going in, thanks to the spectacular trailer. I was looking for an independent and successful FL with a strong personality, which would seem like a well-equipped matchup against the ML, who was presented as rich, popular, but flat-out misogynistic. Instead, FL is a (once again) struggling lawyer who is physically strong, yes, but not at all professionally savvy, and far from being able to establish a balanced power dynamic with the ML, who just so happens to be the top actor in the country.

I'd have loved an enemies-to-lovers a la Pride & Prejudice , with both of the lead characters realizing their own misguided beliefs and falling for each other in the process. Even without it, enemies-to-lovers is in itself my absolute favorite rom-com trope of all time, and fake dating is also high up on that list. Therefore, it seemed as if this drama was headed straight for success in my book. Yet the enemies-to-lovers setup somehow fell flat. They never seemed to have much basis to hate one another. Perhaps if the showrunners had dared lean further into the characters' respective misogyny and misandry, it would have seemed more convincing. But in between the lukewarm characterization, uncompelling storyline, and untimely attempts at slapstick humor, nothing worked. There was no insightful commentary, no sizzling chemistry, no gripping drama, no nothing.

It felt like the show wanted to make a strong FL, as opposed to the typical romantic k-drama FL, namely, the cheerful, kind-hearted, and naive girl. I thought the show failed in that respect. However, I have seen quite a bit of backlash against the decision to incorporate gender politics in this show, so it would seem that at least some people do find the FL "strong". Yet my complaint isn't that the show does too much with the politics, but that it does too little.