Protect the Boss

8/10 is my rating. 2011 South Korean romantic comedy drama with 18, 60 minute, episodes.

Noh Eun-seol (Choi Kang-hee) lands her dream job as a secretary with DN group, under an immature and ineffective Director, Cha Ji-heon (Ji Sung). Eun-seol discovers some of the reasons behind Ji-heon's behavior and works with him to develop the skills and overcome his personal obstacles to show he would be capable of leading. Ji-heon's cousin and long time professional and romantic rival, Cha Mu-won (Kim Jaejoong) hired Eun-seol and becomes a mentor to her. As their friendship evolves he develops feelings for Eun-seol as does Ji-heon. The cousins have a history of liking the same person. Mu-won is the opposite of Ji-heon professionally he is confident, diligent and seems to be the perfect successor. Seo Na-yoon (Wang Ji-hye) is the childhood friend of both Ji-heon and Mu-won and both had past romantic relationships with her. The elders envision either Ji-heon or Mu-Won marrying Na-yoon as she is also from a wealthy background. However, when both heirs turn their romantic attention on Eun-seol things become complicated Eun-sol at first wants no part of this crazy Chaebol heir world. But things change as she cannot help to see the vulnerable sides to these heirs and how their worlds overlap.

Spoiler 🚨 I liked this but I didn't love it. There were parts where it felt like the story dragged and I didn't find some things particularly compelling. I did like the character development. The ending is very important to me and this ended well or I would have rated it lower because of the slow parts. There were some decisions that Eun-seol made and things she decided to keep secret that I found a bit frustrating. (spoilers from here) I was really disappointed that Ji-heon's father turned on Eun-seol at one point - I liked it much better when he liked her. I could never quite figure out what the point of having Eun-seol's father involved at random points in the plot had. I liked the way the relationship between Ji-heon and Mu-won evolved as I really liked both of the male central characters and liked that they became more friendly with each other. Na-yoon was a surprise - usually that role is the evil character who is always out to get the main girl - I loved that she became friends with Eun-seol and even Eun-seol's roommate "wrestler girl" - that was just a cute relationship. I wish that Mu-won's mother and Ji-heon's father would have developed into a side romance as I could have seen those two together. I would put it on a watch list but just not as a high priority.