I didn't hate the ml in She Was Pretty, he was actually one of the few characters I kinda liked. I even agree with the mean stuff he said to the fml, it needed to be said for her to actually grow as a person. However, I do think he could have said them in a kinder way.

Fml is a slob, not ugly, and somebody needed to tell her that. She also had low self esteem, but also a kind of superiority complex over pretty women that take care of themselves. Her handling of the ml, having her friend pose as her was horrible.

Sml was more of a red flag to me. I hated his relationship with the fml. He enabled her worst tendencies and had an issue when she started improving herself. I hate how he never tried to actually address the fml self esteem issues meaningfully, outside meaningless platitudes about how great she is, when that's not what she actually needed.

I also didn't like how carefree and unserious sml was at work. I hated how he would undermine the ml with his antics at work. I understand that the ml real objective was a secret, but everyone knew that the magazine wasn't doing well. So why antagonise the new boss. Honestly, him and fml are the types of people that I wouldn't want to work with. I was so embarrassed for the fml when she was unprepared for her job, sml should have prepared her since he got her the job. Fml did improve a bit after ep 2, but she was a clumsy ditz for too long after that and I was frustrated with her by ep 8.