This was in that awkward zone of not being bad enough to drop but not being good enough to really satisfy. It peaked in its first four flashback episodes, which were excellent. They did a great job setting up the twisted family dynamics and a potentially interesting plot with high emotional stakes. However, once they were adults the ML and FL were such insipid characters. Their romance was painfully bland as well. Between this and Mask I've learned Ju Ji Hoon can't act in makjang to save his life.

The plot would have been fine at 16 episodes, 20 episodes max, but was too thin to fill 30 episodes. There were cool twists and reveals, but it also got slow and repetitive. The great villains are what kept me going. Chae Shi Ra was excellent as the evil mom, she was so charismatic and totally commanded the screen, and Ji Chang Wook was similarly strong as the jealous, vengeful stepbrother. Since the "nice" characters were mostly a bunch of drips I was always rooting for their evil schemes to succeed. I'm not mad I watched it but I also don't think it was worth the 30+ hour time commitment. Thankfully, Kim Soon-Ok would later explore similar themes in a similar setting with much greater success in the Penthouse.