Madame Antoine

                                   

Episodes: 16 

Synopsis:  

Go Hye Rim uses her strong instincts and observational skills to run a Madame Antoine Cafe and play the role of a fortuneteller for her clients. Pretending that she can talk to the spirit of Marie Antoinette, Hye Rim is pretty successful in what she does. However, one day, a psychotherapy clinic opens right above her cafe. After constantly butting heads with the psychotherapist, Choi Soo Hyun, they come to an agreement in which she helps work as an adviser to him. 

    However, there is more to this plot when we find that Choi Soo Hyun is running a top secret experiment on her. He says that the experiment is about what one's ideal type is and its relation to one's immune system. Instead, it is an experiment on love in which he presents three different men to her who all treat her amazingly well. As she falls in love with one of them, she will go through certain phases of the experiment to show her love. The final part of the experiment includes tying ribbons around a tree and calling out "I love you!" 

     He decides to run this experiment on Go Hye Rim. However, Hye Rim is smarter than expected. Will she beat him at his own game or will she fall in love with him despite it all? 

Review: 

I really enjoyed this drama initially because it was quirky and cute. The characters were all very intelligent and unique. It was very nice to see a woman with so much experience, knowledge, and insight as Go Hye Rim did. She was also very smart as she doubted certain aspects of the characters, of the experiment, and she wasn't scared to take revenge when she needed to do so. Go Hye Rim is a divorcee and she has a daughter who soon went to go live with her father. Her ex-husband and daughter didn't play that big of a role throughout the drama and I think it was more to get a back story about her and how harsh love was to her. 

     I liked how both Choi Soo Hyun and Go Hye Rim involve themselves with psychology. This drama used a lot of psychology concepts in treating different clients and it greatly influenced the interactions between the characters. It was very interesting to see them come together because they both used psychology in a different way. One used in a very factual sense and based it all on science, anatomy, and chemistry. The other based it on emotions and noticed little details to get insight. It was very interesting to see how they both worked together to help out clients and how together they were able to help the people more than they would have on their own. 

      I liked how the main character wasn't fooled by the experiment and that she found out pretty early on. She was also very smart in how she cautiously tested waters and so far. However, I did start to get annoyed that she started disregard that fact and fall in love, hoping that Choi Soo Hyun would give up on the experiment. However, nonetheless, she was still a strong woman throughout the drama and managed herself pretty well despite being deceived and despite possibly being heartbroken. I didn't like how she treated her sister at times because she felt as though she was the center of attention. Her sister really was looking out for Hye Rim but Hye Rim was always pushing her down at times. I did like how the sister found love with someone who really saw her as beautiful and I loved how they shared a cute romance throughout the drama. 

      It was harder to get into the drama as it went on because it was hard to trust or enjoy the romance when I knew about the experiment and Choi Soo Hyun's intentions. Even though feelings were developing for both parties, I couldn't trust it. I also found it amazing how quickly the other two men who started developing feelings for her during the experiment immediately lost feelings soon after they decided to drop out of the experiment. At the end, they all had other people they interacted with more than they did with her. I didn't enjoy the romance as much because it was built on false pretenses and revenge. It was fun to watch but it was really hard to get into the drama. 

      I also felt bad for Doctor Bae Mi Ran as she suffered from thyroid cancer. But I didn't like how the drama kept constantly bringing Seungchan and her together and kind of forced this idea of how she just had an "innocent one-sided crush on him" and all that. She's fine to do that but I wish it wasn't forced and I wish the other characters didn't always mesh them together. I liked their friendship toward one another and all that. But it was weird every time the fact that she liked him in a romantic way came up considering they had a 36 year age difference.