Letter #116: My Sibling's Romance

Good morning, Erin.

Sometimes, it takes me a little while to realize just how clever you are. 

So, I like to revisit my favorite podcast about Single’s Inferno 2 from time to time—because it’s a fun listen, of course, but also because I love reliving the whole thing as I hear them discuss what happened from one episode to the next. But, this latest time through, something occurred to me about exactly why I love reliving the show:

It's kind of perfect. 

There’s a compelling cast, the pacing is great, and the story could not have been scripted better—from the main “plot” of the rivalry for Seul-ki’s affections to the running secondary thread of So-e’s romantic interests tying the first half of the season (Seo-eun x Yoong-jae) to the second (Se-jun x So-e), pretty much hitting every major beat at the same tempo as a well-written drama. 

I’ve always said only you could have gotten me to watch a reality dating show—but no other dating show could have gotten me to love reality dating shows. No matter how much I love Heart Signal 4 and Transit Love 2, I’d never have come away from either of them desperate for more had one of them been my K-date starting point—they’re too long, too detailed, too slow. But with Single’s Inferno 2 as my touchstone, everything about dating shows unlocked for me. And now I can’t imagine having to go without one in my normal TV-viewing rotation. 

I don’t yet know why you wanted me obsessed with these shows, Erin, but, looking back, clearly you knew exactly how to make it happen. 

Clever girl. 

Which brings us to now and to My Sibling’s Romance, the internet’s perfect balance to the mess of Transit Love 3—at least, that’s how it was persistently pitched to me as we rounded out the season: “Oh, you have to watch it! It’s so wholesome and sweet! Ugh, I’m so tired of the drama of TL3, and MSR is just nothing but cuteness and rainbows!”

Of course, I didn’t think Transit Love 3 was particularly messy, so I wasn’t sold on the “counterbalance” pitch that the audience wanted to sell me. But, with TL3 wrapped up and my next K-date stop as yet undetermined, I figured I’d join the cheering masses in the comment section. After all, there was about a half-season of My Sibling’s Romance episodes out already, which meant I’d have plenty to chew on if I liked what I saw. 

And y’know what? I liked what I saw.

That said…don’t waste your time on this one, seonbae. It’s not worth it. 

Now, again, I enjoyed it—but I can’t recommend it. Now that it’s over and able to be evaluated as a single piece of entertainment, it simply isn’t satisfying. I know I told you that Heart Signal 4 kind of stumbled across the finish line, but I still think it’s worth watching—and, in my case, worth rewatching—even with the last few episodes not being as good as the previous ones had been. This, though? Oof. I wasn’t anywhere as mad as the internet was (and we are absolutely going to get into it), but I definitely had my arms crossed for a looooong time. And, in the end, those crossed arms affected my thoughts on everything that came before it.

So…spoilers ahead. Because there’s no reason to keep things vague.

All set? Then awaaaaaaay we go!

1. So, for some context: this is a show from the producers of Transit Love. (In fact, it looks like they skipped Transit Love 3 so they could produce My Sibling’s Romance.) As such, this is basically just Transit Love but with siblings instead of exes. Well, and also the siblings don’t date each other—which I had to make clear to someone, so I guess I’ll point it out, here. But, yeah, they come in without revealing who is related to whom, and so there’s that extra layer of detective work to do. And then it’s basically every other dating show from there, structurally.

1A. Except that the siblings, by virtue of being siblings, are sort of primed to wingman each other, both before and after the reveal of whose siblings are whose. So, you get a bunch of instances of them meeting in secret or quietly stepping in to direct attention to (or from) their siblings. They all do this to one degree or another, but the variation in relationships among the sibling pairs makes for an added layer to this already additional layer to the cast dynamic. (More on that later.)

1B. It doesn’t take very long for the show to reveal the siblings to the audience, which ends up being a boon to the overall experience. It might have happened a little more quickly than I’d have wanted it to, sort of curtailing the “detective” phase for the audience, but it was definitely fun to know who went with whom early on so that their actions and reactions regarding their siblings (whether offering some sly help or making a disapproving face) could be viewed in full context. 

1C. Additionally, it’s really interesting to see how the siblings react as individuals to the others in the house—that is, to see the similarities and differences in how each brother and sister feels about the cast. Before the duos are revealed, and before they all get to know each other more, there was a surprising divide in who was attracted to whom, with siblings who had similar upbringings or education levels sort of naturally clustering together. Then, once everyone got to know each other a bit more, there seemed to be a fair amount of one sibling being attracted to someone and (separately) having formed a solid friendship with that person’s brother/sister. Things don’t quite stay that way as they spend more time together—and especially not after the sibling reveal (whether that’s a coincidence or not)—but that’s when we move to the “blood is thicker than water” phase of things, which is also fun. (Keep that in mind for later.)

1D. Of course, the real kicker of seeing who is attracted to whom is noticing when that person looks like or acts like the smitten person’s sibling (or, for a couple of the boys, mom).

1E. Oh, and it’s all brother/sister pairs. They don’t pull a pair of brothers/pair of sisters scheme to really throw off the crowd (though I imagine this would be on the docket for a…third season). And, though this was a much-vocalized question at the start of the show, they don’t pull the Transit Love 2 move of leaving one-half of some “couples” to turn up later on—that is, all eight original cast members are in fact there with their siblings from the start. (Though I promise you this split would appear in a potential second season.) 

2. No, I didn’t do such a hot job guessing the siblings. Though, in my defense, I was using their behavior towards each other as my barometer rather than similar facial features…which is what the cast used on each other, to a much higher degree of success—though also in my defense, two of the girls absolutely agreed with me about who one of the sibling pairs were. And all three of us were very, very wrong. (But, like, they were always sitting next to each other, and she repeatedly had to stop herself from smacking him every time he made a bad joke! Of course I assumed they were siblings!)

3. I recognized two of the hosts: Code Kunst (host from Change Days) and Bam Bam (host from Transit Love 2). So…that was nice.

3A. Oh, and I saw that Bam Bam’s YouTube channel kicked off a year ago with him interviewing Transit Love 2’s superstar cast member, Hae-eun, who was known as much for her fairytale noona victory ending as for spending almost every second she was on screen crying (to the point where people would automatically hand her the tissue box whenever she walked into a room). So, when Bam Bam comments about his lack of success with dating, Hae-eun responds with:

Sigh…she was such a good time. I miss her. 

3B. Wait—Hae-eun has a YouTube channel, too?! Sweet!

3C. Wait wait wait—and she reacted to My Siblings Romance?! Oh, this is too perfect. Gimme a sec; I’ll give it a look. 

3D. Okay, so she’s generally very positive about the show and the contestants—but, oo, check out the absolute venom she unleashes as Ji-won questions whether the obviously smitten Jae-hyung actually likes her:

Brutal. 

3E. Heh, looks like Min-kyu from Heart Signal 4 is also doing a reaction series on his YouTube channel. Oh, and with his sister! Who—aww—isn’t on camera with him. Drat. She’s pretty. 

3F. …um, anyway!

4. Internet-celebrity(?) brother/sister pair Jonathan and Patricia are hosts, as well. But where Jonathan spends most of the show cracking up the rest of the panel with his quick wit (and he really is quite funny), Patricia rarely says anything apart from an occasional coo over one of the boys or a sharp rebuke when she thinks her brother’s jokes are too lame to let go—with the exception of the story she tells at the start of the show, which is about how she didn’t realize the call they’d gotten to appear on the show was meant for them as hosts and not contestants…leading her to worry about how much exercise she could manage to squeeze in before filming started. 

5. One of the mainstay additions to the typical dating show format is actually something we started to get in the latter episodes of Transit Love 3: the siblings were always alerted about how the anonymous end-of-day “made my heart flutter” texts would go for each other. Initially, they’d get a message that just let them know how many text messages their siblings got—but it eventually changes to letting them know who texted their siblings. This doesn’t cause the kind of tension it does on Transit Love 3, of course, where the cast would sit there fuming over finding out someone was sniffing around their exes, but it did lead to the hilarious realization that only one pair of siblings ever thought to exchange that information with each other.

6. Gosh, I’ve got 19 pages of notes, and I’m not really sure what’s worth discussing and what’s not. But I suppose practicality (and, to some degree, tradition) dictates that a summary of the participants would be more than a little helpful. So…here goes!

6A. So, we’ll start with the girls—this time going from best to worst:

• Se-seung - she's pretty, she’s smart, she’s charming, she’s bright, she’s thoughtful, she’s articulate, she’s fun, she’s witty—she’s just darn near perfect, and the producers knew it, giving her probably the most airtime for her confessionals. That she also had the most going on, wooing her choice from the moment he walked in the door (aided in part by—almost literally—the hand of God constantly throwing them together as a pair), and that she ends the show in a couple undoubtedly made it even easier to give her such a prominent role. But I think she’d have been the star nonetheless. I loved every second she was on screen, and she cracked me up more than anyone on any of these shows. She’s the best one, hands down. A total pip. Sign her up to host the next season. Or literally anything. 

• Ju-yeon - a smile personified. Se-seung was my favorite, but I fell for Ju-yeon. She’s bright and oozing with positivity. Cheerful but with a tinge of melancholy—and she had me the moment I saw her. I wouldn’t describe her as pretty, but…the way she carried herself, the energy she gave off…I thought she was just beautiful. She was part of the ship I was rooting for the hardest, and her ultimate disappointment left me heartbroken. She could subtle-flirt like a pro but had no problem just outright admitting she was smitten. Always honest and genuine—and, hey, Se-seung absolutely adored her, too, so…clearly top-tier girl, here. 

• Cho-a - quiet and sweet, very much a “once bitten, twice shy” type. She was (I think) technically the most popular girl on the show, at least for a little while, but something about her didn’t sit right with me, whether it was the coldness I could feel lingering underneath her or the seeming, um, slowness of wit that she seemed to display. She was at the bottom of my list for the longest time, but she climbed up by the end, as much out of sympathy for the heartbreak she suffered as admiration for the genuine warmheartedness and thoughtfulness she displayed once she felt comfortable enough to really relax. She left the show alone, but the internet loves her deeply. 

• Yun-ha - probably the least dynamic member of the ladies’ side of the cast. She’s not the most talkative person, and far from the prettiest—but the minute you learn about her personal accomplishments (doctorate from Yale, professional cellist), she comes through in a different light. She’s smart and lighthearted and…fine. I was mostly neutral on her, except that I felt bad that, with one brief exception, she seemed to catch no one’s eye at all—but who cares what I think, because she walked away as one of the endgame couples and is still coupled-up to this day. (Plus, she was one of the few bright spots by the end of the show.)

• Ji-won - the sarcastic goth gamechanger who went from hero to zero in a heartbeat. Cool, level headed, and hip to everyone’s jive. Immediately drew the attention of the four original boys with her drastically different vibe, sly smile, and sharp wit. She wasn’t exactly my favorite, but I found myself slowly being won over as she spent more and more time with everyone, and particularly once she found herself in what the show—and the audience—felt was going to be the big endgame couple. Until it wasn’t. In the worst way possible. She dumped the internet’s boyfriend in exchange for coupling up at the last minute with (at that point) the most reviled K-date cast member ever. I don’t hate her—and, trust me, everyone else has that covered—but her ultimate disingenuousness as she bungled her way through the last three episodes makes her the easy pick for last place. 

6B. And now the boys, again from best to worst:

• Jae-hyung - shy, dopey, good-natured, innocent, and as seemingly laidback as he was handsome (the cast keeps saying he looks like Mr. Goblin, but I thought he looked more like Mr. Death), Jae-hyung quickly went from adorable puppy to the internet’s boyfriend as he jumped from a background character in the first couple of episodes to the male lead by the time gamechanger Ji-won arrived on scene to take up all his attention—and then shooting into the stratosphere when he got the chance to flex his singing muscles, immediately becoming the world’s most casual pop star (...to the girls on social media, at least). I was immediately charmed by his unassuming nature and nervous nonchalance as, being the first participant to arrive, he tried to keep himself occupied (by smelling everything in the living room) while waiting for everyone else to enter the house. I was all-in on his potential romance with Ju-yeon (because she was SOOOOOOOO into him), but it wasn’t to be—especially after Ji-won, who was 100% his type, threw all her chips into his pot and took up all of his attention. That Ji-won ditched him last-minute confused and infuriated the audience and only led to his being that much more loved—again, by girls on social media. For  my part, I found him amusing and consistently likable, from start to finish.

• Cheol-hyun - handsome, sweet, considerate, and sharp as a spoon. I never had particularly strong feelings about Cheol-hyun, but I never felt anything negative about him. As the show went on, he had less and less to do, unfortunately, but we also got to see more facets of his character because of it: his philosophical nature with Se-seung; his supportive flirtation with Ji-won; his devoted protectiveness of Cho-a. He was notoriously dim, but only in his raw comprehension skills, never his emotional awareness. He may have been the most unreservedly open book out of the boys, but his genuineness wasn’t enough to sway any of the ladies into courting him. Because of the shenanigans at the end of the show, he ends up being one of the good guys—and #2 on my list. 

• Yoon-jae - a nervous wreck, obviously only on the show for his sister—and somehow the lone hero of the season, as his last-one-in gamechanger status had him zeroed in on one girl and one girl only (Yun-ha)...and, boy oh boy, did it work out for him. And if you’d told me any of that when he showed up, I’d have laughed at you. Total dark horse. He even had an arc of self-discovery as he made strides to be more sensitive towards and supportive of his sister (whom he had previously neither gotten along with particularly well nor cared much about). I wasn’t very interested in him, but seeing him dote on Yun-ha was becomes one of the few instances of the late-innings romance on the show actually working out, so he became a whole lot more worth watching as things wore on. Of course, even if he’d just been little more than the perfunctory 10th member of the cast, he’d still have been my pick for #3, if only because he’d still not have made me angry. 

• Jung-sub - oof…we went on a bit of a journey with this fellow, Erin. He starts out as a smart, funny underdog (though he was the most popular guy, at first—and never knew it), and then he spirals into being a mix of insecure former fat kid and too-confident math nerd, caught between his disbelief in Se-seung’s insistent affection and thinking the “hot” girls were giving him little hints. Alternately sweet and incapable of understanding human emotions, he too often thought like an engineer (that is, all logic all the time) and not like a decent boyfriend, frustrating not only Se-seung but me (and the audience at large). If not for his sister’s intervention, his intermittent inability to communicate like a normal person would have tanked him. I was done with him about halfway through the season, and I couldn’t convince myself to turn back, no matter how big Se-seung’s heart-eyes grew as she looked at him. He may have snagged the best girl, but it was obvious he wouldn’t be able to keep her. And he didn’t. 

• Yong-woo - I want it on record that I didn’t like this guy from the moment I saw him. It wasn’t just that he was obviously handsome in that manly-man kind of way (which I’m always wary of as obviously a more sensitive, intellectual handsome man); it was that I could see a sly kind of cockiness to his demeanor, a layer of insincerity and inconsiderateness that I instinctively felt in his seemingly easy charm and lighthearted jesting. Then, once it became obvious that he was also thick as a brick (or, really, a pile of bricks), I was all but entirely out on him, carefully granting him the benefit of the doubt that he was actually a nice guy who I just happened to not like—but then s*** got messy as f***, and I was proven more right than I ever wanted to be. The crux of the situation is that he screwed up his romantic focus (understandable), not wanting to ditch the girl he seemed to like when the gamechanger showed up and wanted his attention…and then slowly decided that, nah, he’d jump ships TWO DAYS BEFORE THE FINALE, make his original girl feel like garbage as he did, loudly declare to everyone in the house that he was no longer chained to anyone, fake-flirt with his rival’s sister to pump her for information, take advantage of his own sister’s romantic vulnerability to better position himself in the last hours of the show, and then wedge himself between his new target and her main focus. (And, yes, it takes two to tango, so Ji-won’s not free of blame either.) I don’t know how he managed to run through all of Gwan-hee’s red flags into just two episodes, but…here we are. I’m not out for a pound of flesh like the rest of the internet, but he absolutely killed the season for me. And I’m still not sure where he falls on my “absolutely f*** this guy” list of K-date jerks. 

6C. Oh, gosh, I should probably let you know who the siblings are, too. Heh, wow, can’t believe I almost skipped one of the core aspects of the show. But here they are, older sibling listed first:

• Jae-hyung and Se-seung

• Yun-ha and Jung-sub

• Cho-a and Cheol-hyun

• Yong-woo and Ju-yeon

• Yoon-jae and Ji-won

6D. And I should also make clear who the final couples were, right? Right:

• Yoon-jae x Yun-ha (the still-together golden couple)

• Se-seung x Jung-sub (the pins-and-needles couple)

• Yong-woo x Ji-won (the oft-called “most hated endgame ever” couple)

• Even the hosts were like, “Uh…well, love sure can be…surprising,” when these two picked each other. I’m telling you, no one was happy about this. 

• Further, the show knew that these two would be so unpopular that they decided the best place to end the final picks segment was not with this big decision but with Jae-hyung having to reject Ju-yeon—presumably so that we could round everything out with watching him have a brief, quiet cry to himself as the emotional weight of it all finally overwhelmed him.

7. One of my favorite things about this show was watching the relationship between Se-seung and Jae-hyung, who were probably the most sibling-y of the sibling pairs. Their trust, concern, and allegiance was always assumed, no matter their moods or actions or situations, with neither ever questioning nor considering that the other wasn’t always on their side. Even their quibbling was playful, no matter how serious or frustrated they were. And they could always be counted upon to look out for each other in their own distinct ways: Jae-hyung would give Se-seung a quiet reminder to stay a bit more objective about her romantic feelings, and Se-seung would subtly talk up (or, really, “cool kid” vouch for) Jae-hyung to the ladies when they seemed uninterested. And, of course, they were the only ones to consistently share information with each other for strategic purposes—frequently in these amusing hit-and-run conclaves so as not to be discovered. And it’s no wonder these two were easily the audience’s favorite sibling pair.

8. To wit: my favorite thing about the show was Se-seung’s reactions to Jae-hyung, which were frequently quiet frowns of disapproval (if they were in a group) or exclamations of disbelief (if she was in an interview)—but my favorite favorite thing was her inability to say nice things about her brother without literally gagging a little. I’m telling you, she was a frikkin’ riot. 

9. That my beloved Ju-yeon was the younger sister of total dumbass Yong-woo didn’t feel great—like, from the start, back when I thought he was just an empty-headed oaf and didn’t want to have to deal with him cluttering up my time fanboying over her. But, by the end, I felt awful for her, because her brother–whom she clearly loves and admires—comes off being a total knob and earns the ire of the entire internet. That’s going to suck for her no matter how many people clearly say they like her just fine. It’s her brother. And spurned netizens are not kind.

10. In his confessional right after the first eight people arrived, Jung-sub complained to the producers that they’d doomed him by putting him in a house with three tall, handsome men. Which made me laugh. And sympathize. Not because I share Jung-sub’s insecurities, of course, but because I’m predisposed to believing no one likes me. 

10A. “...uh, I mean, I don’t dislike you, I guess.” Awwwww, thank you, Erin! 

11. I’ve mentioned that some of the cast aren’t necessarily the brightest bulbs in the chandelier, frequently faking an understanding of the “missions” they receive from the production staff (about how dates will be picked for the day, for example) in the hopes that one of the smarter people will just naturally explain it in a way that everyone can understand—and then having to eventually speak up because the smarter people never feel the need to spontaneously CliffsNotes what they’ve just read. BUT…in their defense, the missions on this show really do seem to be written in the most convoluted fashion imaginable. There were a couple of instances where even I, after pausing to re-read the subtitles, just gave up on trying to figure out what they were supposed to be doing and, instead, just waited to see how things played out. And I’m the world’s greatest detective! 

12. …is any of this coherent? I feel like it’s not. It’s not stopping me from continuing; I just want it noted that I can’t tell.

13. While Se-seung and Jae-hyung did the best job fooling everyone into believing they weren’t siblings, the show pulled an absolute rope-a-dope on the audience by having them be the first two people to enter the house, knowing that we’d never believe that they’d start with a sibling pair. The production staff was very proud of themselves, laughing at the stunned hosts when it was revealed that that’s exactly what they’d done.

13A. To her credit, Se-seung really sells that she’s not related to Jae-hyung at the very start by complaining that he didn’t flirt with her when she came in. 

13B. That said, when the time comes for everyone to read aloud their introduction letters (that is, letters by their siblings to introduce them to the group), Se-seung assures us in a confessional that, though she’s written a stirring letter for her brother, she’ll be able to keep an even-keeled look on her face because she already knows what’s in it—and then we see her struggling to contort her face as tears stream down her cheeks once he starts reading. (Though, if the edit is telling us the truth, Yun-ha is the only one who noticed it.)

14. In Episode 4, Jung-sub so colossally bungles flirting that I had to stop the episode—and I didn’t come back to it for FOUR DAYS. (He buys some fancy chocolates and does a little wink-wink/nudge-nudge with Se-seung so they both know that he got them for her. When Cho-a comes home from work, Jung-sub rushes to open the chocolates and offer them to her. IN FRONT OF SE-SEUNG.)

15. During their date, Ji-won and Yong-woo go for a ride on a glass-floor cable car over the ocean, and you can f*** right off with that, I will tell you right now.

16. One of the fun threads about Yun-ha x Yoon-jae is that Yoon-jae’s entire family predicted he would like her even before he met her: Ji-won knew as soon as they met her, and Yoon-jae and his mother (disguised as restaurant employees during a cast dinner) both picked Yun-ha pretty much the moment they laid eyes on her.

16A. Hang on…why have I written her name as “Yun-ha” but his as “Yoon-jae”? I know I take my cues from the subbers, but…that seems inconsistent. Huh. Maybe the subbers switched from using u to oo by the time Yoon-jae showed up, but I’d already become used to writing Yun-ha. 

17. Whoever the main host lady of this show is, I think she’s HILARIOUS. (Lemme check…her name is…Han Hye-jin. She’s a model, apparently.)

18. Oh my goodness, the face Se-seung makes when she has to listen to Ju-yeon gush about having heard Jae-hyung sing at karaoke on their date! Soooooo good!

19. Episode 6 went full Transit Love on us and didn’t give us the opening title sequence until about halfway through the episode, eliciting a little cheer from me. 

20. Having to listen to Yong-woo and Cho-a on their dates was painful. Regardless of my disdain for Yong-woo, neither of them is particularly bright (him much more so than her), and having to listen to two intellectually unimpressive people try to carry on a conversation was just…ugh. 

20A. That said, only Yong-woo still suffers from dimwittedness when mixed with the smarter members of the cast. Cho-a and Cheol-hyun at least have thoughtful sides that are brought out by being engaged with intelligent conversation. He’s such a twit.

20B. And, look, I’m not trying to be snooty or anything—everybody’s brain capacity has a ceiling, and some hit it sooner than others. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But we’re not even talking about people being particularly “brainy” or “hifalutin” in conversation either. You give them a little push, and Cho-a and Cheol-hyun will usually give something consideration and come to a conclusion. Yong-woo? There’s just a vacuum up there.

20C. …at least, that’s how it looked on TV.

21. Fittingly, I made sure to write down this Yong-woo quote: “The thoughts became complicated, so I stopped thinking.” Sure, it’s out of context, but…not that out of context. 

22. The show introduced gamechanger Ji-won by sending the gents out for a boys’ night, then surprising them with individual meetings with the new girl. The whole affair ends after midnight, and, when the boys come home, they find the girls are all miffed for having fun without them—to the point where Se-seung locked the front gate so they couldn't come back in. (She eventually lets them in, of course, but only for them to find Cho-a waiting with her arms crossed, ready to put the screws to them to find out what they were up to.)

23. An example of how brave and cool Ju-yeon was about letting Jae-hyung know she liked him:

JY: “I think I’m older than you.”

JH: “Really? Huh. I’ve only ever dated younger girls.”

JY: “Then never mind, I think I’m younger than you.”

24. Relatedly: I mentioned that I was a hardcore Ju-yeon x Jae-hyung shipper, but what struck me as funny was that everyone kept saying that Jae-hyung looked like Gong Yoo, and I initially thought Ju-yeon looked like dollar-store Kim Go-eun. So, inadvertently, I was just shipping Mr. Goblin and Eun-tak, again! 

24A. …of course, my truest ship was Se-seung x Ju-yeon. And I’m so glad these two are still pals. 

25. Speaking of ships—I want to clarify something about the “most hated endgame” couple: it’s not that I have a problem with both of them clearly thinking they’d missed their chance and then realizing they were denying something they both wanted. I mean, obviously, if they were both on their way to possibly starting relationships they wouldn’t be invested in at all, it would only be fair to all parties involved that they, y’know, not do that. Even leaving sweeties like Cho-a and Jae-hyung to be with each other isn’t the issue, much as it sucks to see those two get hurt. The issue is that both Yong-woo and Ji-won (to admittedly different degrees) were total dickbags about how they split up with their unofficial significant others, with him (repeatedly!) giving Cho-a some cockamamie allegory about his heart and her blaming Jae-hyung for failing to win her over completely. Totally inauthentic. And audiences do not respond well to inauthenticity on these shows. 

26. So, let’s have a little chat about the edit: when it started, My Sibling’s Romance was slated to have 10 episodes…but, somewhere in the middle, they announced it had been extended to 16. Similarly, Transit Love 3 had started at a 15 or 16-episode series that eventually got bumped up to 20—again, after a chunk of the season had aired. Obviously, this means the audience response to the show influences the ultimate length of the show—but it also obviously means that the production doesn’t know how many episodes they have when they start editing the series to air. Which means the first few episodes are edited with the understanding that there are fewer episodes with which to tell the story of the season…which likely means that the first few episodes are edited perhaps more narrowly than they would otherwise have been, or that the later episodes are padded and rearranged to fill the time. And, while this was only noticeable in Transit Love 3 because its pacing went from perfect to excellent in the later episodes (e.g. certain conversations lingered a bit longer than necessary for the story), it is immediately obvious at both the beginning and ending of My Sibling’s Romance, with the earlier episodes absolutely blowing past huge chunks of time that can’t possibly have had nothing going on (like, there’s an episode that literally skips from the end of one night to the start of the next night, time-lapse footage-ing through the whole day in a blink) and the later episodes—and this is the kicker—beginning with the hosts wearing the same clothes they’d been wearing in the previous episode and then suddenly being in different clothes when the show would reach what was obviously the original stopping point for the session they’d recorded. I was shocked by how obvious it was. 

26A. Does this explain why we got every single moment of Ju-yeon mentioning Jae-hyung’s name for literally any reason despite the fact that it didn’t turn out to be the setup for a surprise late-innings romantic victory for her? I have no idea. I’m still confused about why we needed to see all of that. (I mean, I’m not complaining, because I absolutely loved every second of it—but even I thought it was an odd choice if it wasn’t going anywhere.)

27. In one of the earliest episodes, Jung-sub receives two end-of-day texts after A) spending the day flirting with Se-seung, B) making a last-minute snack for Cho-a, and C) not talking to Ju-yeon at all. He figures out that one of the texts is from Cho-a but cannot—for all his supposed intelligence—figure out who the second text could be from. 

28. Just reminding you that Jae-hyung and Se-seung’s duet cover of “Twenty-Five, Twenty-One” is amazing, in case you haven’t checked it out. 

29. Oh, speaking of: when the cast is told that they will be splitting into sibling pairs to have a karaoke contest, pretty much everyone grumbles about it—except for Ju-yeon, who immediately says, “YOU MEAN I GET TO HEAR JAE-HYUNG SING, AGAIN?!”

29A. …which may or may not be similar to how I reacted to getting to hear someone sing again, recently.

30. While in Singapore, Jung-sub wants to just cool off in the pool, but, before he can, his sister tells him that he’s too out of shape to do so without wearing a swim shirt. He leaves to put one on, but, now feeling very self-conscious, he walks to the pool practically hiding behind his beach towel, drawing the attention of everyone else in the house, all of whom continue to stare at him as he gets in the water, commenting about how he must be embarrassed about his tummy. So…well done, Yun-ha.

31. In an absolutely ridiculous segment straight out of Single’s Inferno, the girls have to have a chicken fight to determine who gets to go on a mega-fancy date. Se-seung then proceeds to rip through tough-girl Ji-won, 5’9” Ju-yeon, yoga teacher Cho-a, and got-a-free-pass-to-the-final-round Yun-ha, proving that she is, in fact, the best one. 

32. Yun-ha and Yong-woo have a conversation about spending time in America (she was at Yale, and he was training to be a pilot), and, in what I think is a translation error, say the following:

YW: “I’ve even been to New Haven (Connecticut)!”

YH: “Really? No one knows that place!”

YW: “I know! Not even people in New York!”

Now…New Haven is where Yale is located, so I assume the idea is that he’s telling her that he’s been to a bunch of places in the U.S., including where she had spent all her time. So far, so good. But it’s the next bit that’s bizarre—because I don’t know anyone in New York who doesn’t know New Haven is a place in Connecticut. Now, that said, I’m sure most people in New York have never been to New Haven, so I’m wondering if that’s what they meant when they said whatever was translated as “to know a place.” As in, they were saying that people literally didn’t know the streets and places in New Haven, rather than not literally knowing it exists. 

32A. I realize I am the only person on the planet who cares about that point. Thank you for your patience. 

33. Jae-hyung and Cho-a form one of THE BEST friendships on the show, immediately seeming like they’ve been together forever when they’re paired up for a date for the first time—which, unfortunately, only happens in the last couple of days on the show. But, it does lead to one of the best moments of the series: having come back from a somewhat disastrous date with Ji-won, Jae-hyung flops face-first onto the couch next to Cho-a, who immediately starts stroking his hair like he’s her child as she asks him if he’s feeling okay. 

34. Speaking of Jae-hyung and couches, though: there’s a round of dates where the girls get to choose which boy they’d like to go out with—but, if their choices overlap, it’ll be up to the boy to choose which girl he’d like to go with. The sisters are then sent the options for the brothers, and they all scatter to talk to each other about the selections. Up in their room, Se-seung tells Hae-hyung that he’s been picked by Ji-won (whom he likes) and Ju-yeon (who really, really likes him)...and, after much deliberation, he picks Ji-won, telling Se-sung that he feels bad about having to reject Ju-yeon. After he sends production his pick, he and Se-seung head back to the living room to convene on the big couch with everyone so they can all get the results of the date picks. He and his sister are the last ones to arrive—but, more importantly, in the time between the last time we saw everyone start to sit down and when Jae-hyung entered the room, the production staff has rearranged who is sitting where…so that there are only two spots available: one next to Ji-won, and one next to Ju-yeon. He notices this and stops dead in his tracks. And I shout at the TV, “That was mean!”

34A. He sits next to Ju-yeon—but only because Ji-won realized why he was hesitating and waved him over to sit next to Ju-yeon. 

34B. In response to Jae-hyung expressing his concerns about making Ju-yeon feel bad, Se-seung tells her brother to leave comforting Ju-yeon to her. Because, as I said earlier, Se-seung x Ju-yeon.

35. I’ve told you that the end of this series is a disaster, but I don’t know how I can properly illustrate just how much (or how loudly) fans dissected the last few episodes after it ended. It was like if the Zapruder film had originally been leaked on Twitter. It was nuts.

36. Truth-or-dare night was like watching a crowded school bus explode in slow motion.

37. …including Ju-yeon asking what about her is so unattractive that no boys she likes ever like her back. Which broke my f***ing heart.

37A. For the record, I totally understand what she means, why she’s asking, and, to some degree, can see why she’s seemingly having these issues—in fact, I can kind of relate. So, it’s horrible that she feels this way…but it’s not illogical that she’s asking. And the truth, of course, is that there’s nothing wrong with her. She’s just not had the luxury of meeting the thousands of guys who would absolutely love to go out with her—regardless of whether they’d have the luxury of catching her eye.

37B. And further: though I earlier said that I thought she was “beautiful” more for her personality and poise than her looks, I do want to make clear that I still thought she was good looking, as well. In fact, the handful of times she dolled herself up just a little bit had me gawking like a total dufus. When she wants to be, she is absolutely stunning. 

…I thought that screengrab would come out better. Hmm. Well, just trust me—she looks stunning. And she’s a total catch. Give it a little time, and she should have TONS of guys after her.

And that’s it. End it on a positive note. (Well, end the end of that on a positive note.)

Hoo-boy, what an experience all of that was. I…don’t miss it. I miss Single’s Inferno 2, and I miss Heart Signal 4, and I miss Transit Love 2 and 3, but this? No thanks. I’ll stick to lurking around the instagrams of the people I like, thank you.

But I’d totally watch a second season of this. Just FYI. 

Anyway. Thanks for sitting through this. If you did. I wouldn’t blame you for not sitting through it, though. I’m sure it’s a total mess. 

Or it’s not. I dunno. We both know I’m not going back to re-read it.

Hope the summer’s treating you well. 

More soon. But, like, actually soon, this time. Round out that classism (or whatever) trilogy for you.

I can hear your excitement from here.

—Daryl