I am very conflicted, lost and angry about this series.
I was hooked from the first episode. The story was promising, the characters seemed interesting and complex. We started of with seemingly clingy and annoying FL and capable and loving ML. Throughout the next episodes we come to know more about each character, we let them into our hearts, they become three-dimensional with their traumas and reasonings. Eun Ho with Hye Ri grows on us, we start to like them. At the same time, we begin to see and understand problems with Hyeon O.
However.
Instead of the story focusing and staying on Eun Ho / Hye Ri (the DID, the trauma of loosing everyone she ever loved - parents, sister, grandmother; the problem of not having any friends, any hobbies, etc.), it swerves. It skims through uninteresting, unnecessary side characters, it brazenly shifts and fixes on Hyeon O's story, His history, His reasonings, His trauma. More we learn about him, more despicable he becomes in our eyes, to the point where we start to think - "oh, this is not a Romance romance, Eun Ho will actually overcome her pain and hurdles on her own. Wow, such idea! Such power to the FL! Finally!"
Then comes the 10th episode, then 11th, then 12th.
We are then left wondering, what happened to Eun Ho's mental problems? Where, how did they disappear? Why are we forced to witness a doomed relationship, based on manipulations and codependency? Why make your ML so unlikeable, so despicable and still force your FL to love and stay in a relationship with him?
Does the writer hate women?
Is the writer even human?
Oohhhh.......
This might actually be the beginning of a new era. An era where viewers will be left wondering, whether the script was written by a human, with human emotions or just an AI. When, in the story, the emotions are not emoting, the plot is not plotting and characters are not fully themselves. Everything in the story is dreamlike, and on the other side of their screens teenage viewers are raving about the depth of the story (which is as shallow as a dried puddle); the constipated romantics are hallucinating the romance of the ages (which is as toxic as the site of Chernobyl in May, 1986).
I am angry and sad that I invested my time, my emotions in a story that has gone nowhere, that there were no real healing in a story about traumas and mental problems. I am extremely angry that creators in 2024 are still trying to romanticise and sell abusive, manipulative men just because they have mommy issues.
"Dear Hyeri" did us all dirty, because it had platinum grade potential, extraordinary cinematography, enchanting musical scores, it promised us the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, instead delivering "the holograms of Blade Runner" from TEMU. And yes, I do think that from episode 9 the script, if not fully, then partially was written by an AI.
