this show is generally illogical, frustratingly outdated, and comically dramatic but every time i tried to turn it off choi jiwoo and kwon sangwoo would mindwhammy me with their chemistry until i sat my ass back down. maybe it's recency bias, but i don't remember the last time i watched a kdrama where the romantic leads feel like real BFFs. doesn't matter if they're jobless or cheating on their partners or maimed by their cartoonishly evil relatives, at the end of the day you know jeongseo and songju are giggling and frolicking on the beach and playing dress up with $1 dollar and a dream.

blatantly reheating endless love tetralogy nachos, especially autumn in my heart and winter sonata. it kind of feels like one person wrote the plot by pulling kdrama tropes out of a hat and another person tossed in the themes and motifs that actually define the show (ex. romanticization of the afterlife). and much like autumn in my heart, STH really drops the ball on developing the stepsisters' relationship even though it's central to the story.

between all of the terrible communication and soapy camera zooms, sometimes the show can feel surprisingly down-to-earth. simple things like jeongseo and songju "gifting" each other trust, hope, and gratitude because they have nothing else; the unwavering belief that they'll always find their way back to each other; songju, a semi-playboy CEO archetype, genuinely believing in love (!) and telling his mom, "isn't love what makes life worth living?"

the women are 2-dimensional villains yet the men are always redeemable, even though the things they do are way more realistically horrifying. taehwa is a pest and he's definitely not in heaven.

what's annoying is that this show often has the foundations for interesting relationships but doesn't bother developing the female characters. they could've done so much more with yuri and her mom mira, yet they're presented as the same type of villain when they want very different things: mira only cares about wealth and status and will sacrifice her children to get it. yuri is starved for love and attention and latched onto her mom the instant she saw an opportunity to secure her affection. yuri's punishment for being a bad person is going to jail for the car accident but jail is vanilla retribution. jail is the bare minimum. if you want to punish yuri specifically, let her love for songju (true or not) be the catalysts for her downfall. let it lead her astray from the scheming and plotting and cause a rift between her and her mother. when mira inevitably decides yuri isn't useful anymore, that would be yuri's ultimate punishment — realizing her mom never really loved her.

somebody hand jeongseo a cane and some agency jfc