Harmony Secret Finale!

I didn’t quite get the whole break up between Ai and Mae and their assistants. The bidding also confused me for a while, but I think I saw somewhere that Mae didn’t like how Ai was essentially making things go easier for her by intentionally leaking stuff to her or introducing opportunities to her. So maybe Mae got the feeling that Ai saying 30 million on call was her trying to give the win to Mae, so she decided to not raise the final number??? I also despise Rachen for what he did to Ai because he got exposed as a cheating bastard. I also saw people saying that Ai is a red flag turned green flag considering what she did in the beginning.

The episode starts with a scene only in the uncut/IQIYI version: Ai announces to the members of its board that she will resign after the bidding and move to Boston where she will lead the joint venture there. Her father tells everyone (except Ai) to leave the room. He refuses her move, she has to run Orienna duty free, but Ai points out that they haven’t won that concession yet, but her father won’t budge, saying she mustn’t leave. Then take my life, Ai says because that’s the only thing she has left – and leaves. The cut YouTube version starts with Mae driving in her car when someone is bumping into her; as she’s talking to the driver, two guys on a motorcycle stop and steal her phone and tablet, unbeknownst to her. The driver who bumped into her then drives away; she returns to the car and notices the missing items. The thief quickly unlocks her phone and then uses it to impersonate Mae in text messages to Ai to lure her to the Beach resort where they spent episode 6. The uncut/IQIYI version shows that it’s Rachen who sends the text messages and then blocks Ai and deletes the contact so she can’t reply anymore. G gives Mae a replacement phone, she quickly detects that her contact to Ai is missing from the cloud backup they restored. As she never did that herself, there must be something shady going on. Good thing that G still has her contact for Yam, who tells her that Ai is on her way to the resort to clear things up with Mae. Only on uncut/IQIYI, Mae tries to phone her up first but Ai maybe on a plane, so Mae leaves to follow her. At the resort, Ai has arrived and enters the condo – there is some wine prepared, but nobody seems to be there. The IQIYI-only version shows Rachen gun and jacket first, the YouTube version cuts directly to him greeting Ai, who reveals himself to be the one chatting with her. He wants to show her his revenge for cutting him out of the competition. Ai tries to leave, but Rachen quickly overpowers her. She tells him to kill her then, because if she survives this, she’ll come back for him again. He then dowses her with the wine she prepared which contained some kind of date rape drug; he wants to film her while raping her. Mae arrives on scene and quickly gathers the situation and grabs Rachen’s gun which is lying around. She points it at him telling him to stop but gets momentarily distracted by Ai calling her so that Rachen can grab the gun and throw it away. He the proceeds to choke Mae, but a weakened Ai is able to grab the bottle and hit him on the head with it. He lets go of Mae but quickly recovers and grabs the gun again. Ai tries to shield Mae with her body – but gladly the police arrives and points three guns at him. Rachen drops the gun and is arrested. In an IQIYI/uncut-exclusive scene, AI is still under the influence of the drugs. Mae tells her to focus, but Ai just wants to kiss her, so they both drop into the pool hoping that this helps Ai. She gets a little better. Once out of the pool, Mae calls her father to tell her of Rachen’s doings, he promises to inform Ai’s father and tells her to hurry back. Mae wants to take her back to Bangkok the next day, because of the drug the still might be affecting her, but Ai tells her to just drop he at Orienna. They return to Mae’s place, and Ai wants her to stay a bit longer; she falls asleep in her arms. The cut YouTube version directly proceeds with Ai waking up alone, but Mae is still there, preparing breakfast and treating her to a PONDs commercial. At breakfast (again exclusive to uncut YouTube/IQIYI), she’s still shaky but is getting better. She meets Mae’s father, who assures her all has been taken care of, then, he wants to speak with Mae alone. They hug and he tells Mae that they still haven’t settled this. Again, uncut YouTube cuts directly to Ai’s father who experiences a flashback to the night his wife left. He tried to put a young Ai to sleep with a record that he still has. Then, Ai comes in – she’s worried that she might be hurt somewhere and proceeds to hug her. Ai wonders if this is just acting, but he genuinely worries about his daughter. This confuses (not only) Ai as from a young age she had to pull herself up and he never hugged of comforted her. Her father says he always tried to do what is best for her, being a single father raising a child alone wasn’t easy. He may not always have done the right things, bet never wished her any harm either. Ai then asks about her mother, where has she gone to. He’s close to tears as he tells her that she left them for another man, it was her choice, not his. But it was his fault, he focused too much on work and not enough on his loved ones. He never told her because he didn’t want to blame her mother, as it was in the end his fault. They hug again. AI tells her she needs something to tell him – but we don’t find out yet what it was. We get a montage of the Orienna and Superior boards discuss the bidding; then, we switch to announcement day. The project goes to Orienna – which surprises Ai and her father, because the thing she told him was her leaking the final bid number to Mae with a phone call. We flash back to the scene from last week. But Mae stuck with the original bid, Ai asks her why she didn’t use the number she told on her phone. She did that on purpose, asks May. Yes, because she felt guilty for spying on her earlier. Mae then confesses she never gained any intel from that bug; she just kept it there to hear his voice. Ai returns to the press conference, Ai then invites Superior to become a strategic partner for the concession. She is asked about the rumors about Mae and her again, but she denies them firmly. Mae sits crying in her car, then gets a call by G – but it’s Yam answering the phone and telling her how the spying by Ai came about and that she didn’t want to do it but had to. Mae ends the call, then turns around the car and drives to the Anthea bar, where Ai awaits. Mae asks why she hasn’t told her about all the things she was forced to do, she responds by telling her it wouldn’t have mattered because in the end, she did them, anyway. Mae says they should leave it all behind; then, she tells her of the high school incident, which left her so bitter, she promised back then that she would get payback someday. The bidding was that chance to prove herself and to beat her – but she lost from day one because she loves her. Ai then retells her side of the story, that she’s been waiting to reconnect with Mae ever since, and that she probably never dated anyone else because of that. They kiss. Ai tells her that she announced that strategic partnership, but Mae wants to find success on her own terms, not under the shadow of someone else. That sounds like a breakup, Ai state, and Mae is sorry. But Ai will keep on loving her all the same. She will keep waiting for Mae to return. With that, they part. Yam receives the news from Ai. G says this doesn’t need to have anything to do with them, but Yam says they must focus on being their assistant now, and how could they be in a relationship while their bosses are hurting. G accepts Yam’s decision but is clearly unhappy about the end of their relationship. We get a montage of scenes with Ai, G Yam and Mae thinking about the past. Then, we get some scenes of Ai handling the duty-free concession and of Mae tackling her next project, Superior Vietnam. Months later. Mae is preparing for the signing for their Vietnam business and G encourages her to smile. Then, a package arrives; it’s from Ai telling her that she wants to celebrate her success and sign with that pen she threw away in high school which is included in the package. She signs the Vietnam deal with that pen – and then drives to Ai’s room at the Orienna and opens it with the key card she still has. Why is she here Ai asks. When she saw the pen, her heart told her to, Mae replies. She apologizes to keeping Ai waiting alone for that long. Ai thanks her for not letting it go on any longer. Thay hold hands, hug, and eventually kiss; IQIYI/uncut viewers are additionally treated to roughly one minute of both of them in bed together. Then, we cut to G drinking in a bar with Yam arriving, asking her whether she’s thinking about someone. G says yes, but not about Yam, but about someone she didn’t know that well – but she saw sides of her that no one else saw. It is this one, Yam asks as she removes her glasses, then again as she unties her hair, and finally as she starts dancing wildly. G wants to drag her off the dance floor, but Yam just kisses her, saying they should get back together, as their bosses did. She starts a suggestive dance, then finally G kisses her back. The scene runs a little longer on IQIYI with G and Yam dancing. The final scene is with Mae and Ai back at the high school where Mae threw her pen away and Ai collected it. They reminisce about the rivals who would eventually become lovers Mae posits the theory that it’s fate playing tricks on them, but Ai theorizes it was also their hearts who led them. They exchange love confessions, then, they kiss. The end. ___ The final episode was IMHO also the weakest one; they tried to put too much into that episode, and especially the second half lost the steam the first half had. The worst part for me was the 180-turn of Ai’s father, which really didn’t make any sense and didn’t fit with his previous actions, though the IQIYI version details his turn a little better, but still not convincing enough. The second thing that IMO made no sense was the two assistants splitting up (and getting back together) as their bosses did the same, if felt just hokey to me. And the third thing was the time skip with ten minutes of air time left; even “Pluto” did a better job, placing the time jump at the beginning of the last episode, making it feel more real. I think these limitations, plus the bidding, which ended up a side story, could have easily remedied by making this a ten- or twelve-episode show. That’s not to say I didn’t like the show; it deftly builds both the romances also the pressure up, it just couldn’t stick the landing. Plus, I’m a little ambivalent on all the toxic stuff they added that wasn’t in the novel. I’m giving it 7.5 stars out of 10, or a B-/C+ in US letter grades.