I was flipping through channels when I stumbled across a drama comedy (“Queen of Reversals”) on one of the few channels ever watched in our household. Within minutes, I was able to gather the general premise: guy likes girl, guy dumps girl for being an utterly conniving – albeit good-looking – bitch, and retorts as he’s doing it, that he’s fallen in love. With a responsible career woman that pays for her own bills and designer bags. By career woman, you begin to think horrific things, and that he’s made the obvious mistake. As poetic justice dictates, the ambitious, straight-path woman is the uptight one that will end up robbing the man of his joy, while this woman he calls a failure is probably the one that should have been his love interest. Right?

Truth is, Tae Hee (played by Kim Nam Joo), the lead character and company team leader, is hard to swallow at first glance. Rocking the ever-so-current librarian-chic red-rimmed glasses, she’s likable, and yet unlikable. Dressed in impeccable 1950s-era Mary Tyler Moore chiffon, cropped tweeds, and hunter-greens – with a current Tom Ford polish – she is a stickler for polish, smartness, and workplace prestige. Every word she snidely dictates is through periwinkle pink lips and a pretentious wide-eyed stare that is hard to like. In fact, for a first-time watcher tuning in halfway, it’s indecipherable whether this vain, conniving woman is actually the villain or the heroine.

Until two scenes demystify this puzzle – the preliminary scene that reveals the woman’s genuine self-sacrificial interest in the man, which involves some slap-stick comedy, and the appetite-whetting first alcohol-induced date following a friendly-walk-home-turned-detour-to-a-roadside-bar, which involves Tae Hee’s first honest confession about her less-than perfect life. Before you know it, you can’t help but end up liking her for the very reasons you’d like any other free-spirited, likable heroine – she’s genuinely in love with the man/co-worker (no matter how secretive she is about it), and she’s actually far from perfect. The man of her interest, her work team member, acts tame around her until he eventually finds out that she had suffered a devastating stomachache attempting to digest another meal just to go on his last-minute lunch date. I believe every girl has been in the position of liking a guy to the point of suffering – physically. Whether it’s skipping a meal to eat with the guy, eating an extra meal and stuffing your face to eat with the guy, or just simply suffering in some way to fit, wait, conform, or squeeze yourself into a person’s day or time – without his knowing – the lead character endearingly shows the unrelenting childlike devotion of a woman gone smitten. When the man eventually discovers this secret –  obtained by his ex to repulse him – he’s actually penetrated by her self-sacrifice, and starts to take notice of the casual lies she tells him to win him over.

As the two walk home from work together one starry night, they decide to take a detour for some shots of soju at a nearby stand. Pensive and nervous, the woman appears like a dolled-up, prim, and proper deer in the headlights. Of course I know what she’s thinking: How does my makeup look? How do I look? Do I look nervous? This is so out of my element, and I belong in a furnished, air-conditioned room with a roof. Not outside in the humid, with this lovely specimen. But attempting to be a good sport, she throws caution – and worries about work – to the wind, and starts to down shots like a champ on happy hour. The man’s curious affectation immediately changes from serious to pleasantly surprised.

Then, in a state of charmed inebriation, she confesses: “When you’re in high school, they tell you to apply yourself. So I applied myself. They told me to get a job, so I got a job. They told me to be a team player, and I’m a success. And yet I am my mother’s biggest shame. And all my friends consider me a failure [for not being married]. After all this, why do I feel like I’m the outcast?” She built up this entire life on worldly success, and yet in a cruel world of judgment, she finds no acceptance. All because she’s unwed. In that moment of vulnerability, you see past the veneer of the perfectly coiffed, bouncy hair that frames her face or the sophistication that once shrouded her character. She suddenly transforms from a hard-scrubbed and polished woman into a humble, rueful, sympathetic character with chips on her padded shoulder. Fixed to the TV monitor – I had to gasp aloud at the beauty of her honesty.

Honesty is a tiny bit of embarrassing, private, less-than-appealing self exposed – even at the risk of judgment or humiliation. In that scene, the man, overcome by compassion and near-guilt, clutches the woman in dire reassurance. He had no clue how complex and imperfect her life really was. In that moment, he falls for her honesty. While she tries so hard to conceal her true identity, her honesty saves her. But with ladylike dignity.