This drama was quite excellent, 10/10. Yes there are issues such as quite a few dumb decisions by our MCs and some semi obvious plotholes, but still I find that it's much better than dramas such as Master's sun & DoTS, maybe even slightly better than Pinocchio. Honestly I did not feel that the ending was rushed at all, it had everything that's important. I especially liked that every 2-3 episodes there was a little breather from the melodrama. Probably this is the most underrated drama that i've seen thus far. Shin Mina was even prettier than usual, it seems like she gets prettier every year, her figure especially is quite something, if real...

Normally I don't like watching melodramas, but I don't regret watching Tomorrow with You for a second, I'll just need to watch a couple of Running Man episodes to get over it.
edit: Now I'm a lot more experienced with kdramas than at the time of writing this review, this is definitely not a melodrama, it just has a little melo flavor.

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Loose ends, loose ends.. *sigh*

The second season is still relatively close to kdrama perfection, while maintaining the Reply writer's unique style. Also there is nothing that aired since It's Okay to Not Be Okay that comes anywhere near HP2 in terms of raw production value, it's nice to see that Korean television can still do it :-)

The recurring cast members were still brilliant, however compared to the first season there were a few sub par supporting actors cast as patients and their relatives. Then again it's not realistic to expect that a show could get 5+ new AWESOME supporting actors for minor 2-5 minute roles every single episode, so I'm okay with that.

I'm happy how everyone that should've gotten together has gotten together and that nothing particularly annoying has happened in the 12 episodes. The second season is full of funny and extremely touching scenes, I may hate shows that want to drag things out for as many seasons as possible, but I could keep watching HP for 10 years in a more episodic format, no problem. Hospital Playlist is still a strong medical drama, even without all the romance, but I do realize that some people that don't like this genre felt bored during surgery scenes etc.

So why is it not a 10/10?
Something is off with the story pacing. It took way too long to for the 3 new couples to get together & the final episode is extremely rushed & lacking for a series finale. I have the impression that the production team is expecting a season3, or they were at the time of producing most of the episodes. So yes, while I'm happy see Jae Hak's storyline has gotten a closure, but I would have rather had the Chuchu couple resolve the evil mother in law issue, or SongHwa to become a family to Ikjun's son. IkSun deserved a lot more camera time as well. There were so many things I've been looking forward to & almost none of them ended up happening. Admittedly I'm not a fan of open endings, or loose ends, especially loose ends that had a tremendous amount of buildup as is the case with HP2.

So yes, the production team may have done most of the filming with a third season in mind, but the final episode is full of red flags for that. So I no longer hold much hope for s3. With that said I've read in the comment section how people think that the last subtitle line "Thank you for watching Hospital Playlist" means exactly that, but that's probably a minor inaccuracy, because the Korean text may have had "Thank you for watching Hospital Playlist++", so "+++" could still in in the cards, but only time will well.

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I did not expect a good and coherent story with this premise, but this was below my already low expectations.
The drama The Beauty Inside was an attempt to replicate the success of the fantastic Another Oh Haeyong and Perfume seems like an attempt to make another Beauty Inside (which was quite entertaining still), the story is very similar, but the drop in quality is just too much. Lee Minky is not a good actor, he can only play one thing, which is essentially himself, but that character was a good fit in This is My first Life & The Beauty Inside as well. Now in Perfume Shin Sung Rok was trying to be Lee Minky essentially, even though it was not terrible, but it wasn't really enough. For reference this actor played the main villain from the classic drama My Lover From the Star, which was actually a great fit for him.. I was already kind of a fan of Go Won Hee, after seeing Welcome to Waikiki 1, but I think she shouldn't have been cast for this. Make no mistake she did pretty well, I just think that this role was miles outside of her comfort zone. A 40 something woman, who wanted to commit suicide, because of all the atrocities life has given her gets to opportunity to become young and beautiful again, sure fine, but the end result shouldn't have been a perky, go lucky Go Woon Hee, I don't think.
Now about the story, it's pretty typical in some ways. We have the dumb puppy second lead type, who just keeps pushing, pushing & pushing. Basically the writers just added the most typical classic kdrama triangle possible. Some common tropes were blatantly copied from famous dramas, for example they've taken the mysterious liquid thing from The Secret Garden (even the set and the music are super similar for those perfume related scenes), then there is the love triangle cohabitation from Jealousy Incarnate and some others.. Also I don't believe that the abusive (ex)husband character needed so much screen time in a romcom like this.

Had the show been really funny I could have ignored most of the above, however it wasn't. The physical gags involving the ajumma form's obesity were almost offensive. I'm fine with watching fat/obese ppl on screen really, but this path of trying to make fun of them isn't very nice, though I do understand that in Korea fat women are shunned quite a bit more than in the west. Overall there were very few really funny moments, which is such a shame with an actress like this, who is basically a comedy goddess, or something along those lines.

Had the romance been good I could still have enjoyed this quite a bit, but the chemistry between the leads was at best average. There are also major problems with how their relationship progressed, or rather regressed at times. There is just so much push pulling. From "I have decided that I love you, even though you are not Her" we go to "I just realized it was Her all along whom I've loved" then rinse and repeat. For those that watched the episodes as they aired this might not have been as annoying, but I watched the entire thing over the course of 2 days.

TLDR: I don't exactly regret watching the drama, but I don't feel that I've had quality entertainment, will never consider rewatching.

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It's not great.

I love noona romance cdramas, but this sure does not feel like one. FL is in her late twenties, has a child & is divorced, but acts like a shy 18 year old college student most of the time and her kid has largely no plot relevance. ML is the usual 24 year old domineering CEO, however he devolved into an insolent teen as the story progressed. His character is not very well acted either, the actor did FAR better in Sweet Teeth. I don't see much chemistry between the mains either. Yes, there is a lot of fluff, but it just feels too fake. Like seriously this drama has some of most forced (forced in the sense that it feels weird & fake) hugs and kisses I have ever seen in a romance drama. The reason why it's a 5 and not 3 is, because it's rather low on angst, there are no love triangles worth mentioning & there are just no villainous characters overall. Even the mom is unusually well behaved.
Also like half of the show takes place in a corporate setting, but the writers have forgone the usual crap that goes down in workplace cdramas.

-I must mention that the final reveal about the forgotten ehm incident was the most underwhelming thing ever & the rushed ending left a sour taste in my mouth.

-Also the second lead couple's story was just stupid, I'm sorry.

-As for the third couple, their story is basically educational content to teach us how much better it is to NOT be a sissy. The censors must have loved this.

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The first 11 episodes were way too slow and boring, I would rate them at 6/10 at most. 12 to 23 were fairly enjoyable, reaching 8/10 levels and then we had 2 episodes of predictable, but still arbitrary separation for noble reasons & then we had the usual short happy ending in the last episode, followed by 10 minutes of weirdness aimed at the Chinese censoring body.
With the above in mind a high rating is impossible.

The actors were great. I think despite the comments that I've read, the leads had pretty okay chemistry, they looked adorable together & the rest of the cast were more than fine too. It feels like their efforts were wasted a little. Some of the side characters felt aimless, what's the point of having great actors playing interesting characters if their stories are going nowhere.
The side couple was pretty much all set up, but then it never ended up happening, why bother then?

I think I like the body-swap gender-bender genre. I loved Secret Garden and that drama despite being 11 years old is much better in many ways.(admittedly it has more cliche domineering CEO things) Also I cannot help but recall the movie "Your Name" . Compared to those two, The Day of Becoming You is fairly bland. I understand that Chinese dramas are inherently more relaxed & have less emotional impact, but I just feel that the limits of the genre were not tested in this one, many opportunities for great comedy were missed.
The cuteness and the fluff are the saving grace of the drama, because there is a lot of that!

The love triangle is on the weaker side and it ends early enough, but it still annoyed me. Test dating that guy due to weird reasons & then even agreeing to go to that resort, it was just weird & unnecessary.

I think this drama had the worst OST of any Asian drama i've seen thus far. This is entirely subjective, but I really hated that "I see the light" song and it's overplayed & it has somewhat ruined some of the drama's best scenes for me & that's a first, I can usually just ignore a bad OST..

TLDR: I think the drama could have been funnier, it could've had a much more satisfying ending & there was way too much time wasted early on, before the real story started. 6.5/10

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I picked this up, because someone in the comments mentioned that this drama's poster is the most misleading one she has ever seen. It's indeed a little misleading, but I wouldn't say that this drama is completely free of triangle makjang.

Jung Kyung Ho is without a doubt the best thing in this drama. However seeing him in Hospital Playlist being a much better version of himself, also having much better chemistry with another actress makes his performance a little disappointing to me. I like Kim So Yeon, but her character was somewhere between bad weird, and two dimensional, if that makes any sense. The rest of the cast were not worth mentioning, even the second couple's story is short and bland..

The main romance in this drama just doesn't do it for me. I'm alright with the supernatural element of the story, but due to the sequencing of events & the absurdity of the whole premise it is just too much for me to accept these two being happily together, at least not so soon.

The romance may not be great, but it's not even the drama's greatest problem. The majority of the plot revolves around corporate infighting, scheming and other similar stuff. It's not only that these things are almost always boring and annoying to watch, but the corporate plot in this drama is a new kind of low I have not yet seen before. (or maybe I have in the cdrama "Love is Sweet") So yes, the writing is just teribad.

It's worth mentioning that despite this drama not being that old, it feels really old school.(98-2005 era) There is a lot of shouting, throwing things around, flipping tables etc that modern dramas fortunately don't have anymore. The second ML is also a very old school villain character.

The ending is weak. Important things are left unexplained and we just get a completely random 5 minute long happy ending.

Ultimately the drama has very little going for it. There is no hook that would make me forgive all the stupid, or annoying things. The melo does not work, the romance does not work, the chaebol procedural part of the drama is just trash and thus the rating of 4.5 seems overly generous already.

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This show is an odd animal. It's like Veep meets Brooklyn99 with a little (very little) kdrama romance added in. The problem is if I look at this show comparing it to those american works it falls short. Sure it's supposed to be a political/crime comedy, but it's not really that funny most of the time. If I look at it expecting intricate plots & interesting procedural proceedings it just doesn't deliver, that said korean political thriller? shows almost always suck. The story is really bad, with so many plotholes that you could drain the ocean with them. When a comedy show doesn't take itself very seriously & it's really funny I can ignore the bad plot, but that's not the case here and it does try take itself quite seriously at times, in an inconsistent manner. They've spent the entire first episode setting up the main leads & then their joint life kind of fades into the background, bad rewrites perhaps?
It's not all bad though, like there is a little "Catch Me If You Can" vibe at times and both female leads were quite good. I couldn't help but notice that Lee Yoo-young's eyes are very unique looking! I kind of liked the ending too, normally I prefer long happy endings, but in this genre this 10 seconds long ending was okay, it reminded me of the endings of classic heist movies, such as Entrapment for example.

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Reading the overview & reviews I've expected that this would be a semi episodic drama where every couple of episodes an alter ego would be resolved. I thought it would be like a medical drama that that briefly touches upon some serious topics, with some romantic comedy added in, very much like what I've experienced in "It's Okay, That's Love". That's not it, the medical things are just fluff with no consequences, the FL does not do anything that a doctor should do with a mental patient. Despite this show being a fairly recent 2015 title it feels old, it's very much like a 2005 drama. It has several cliches that have been retired long ago, also at certain points in the drama I felt that it's overflowing with makjang. The second FL did not have a lot of screen time, but whenever she was on I found her character to be completely unnecessary and annoying. I like Park Sojoon as an actor, but oh my god his character was annoying me to no end, he portrayed a very oldschool second ML. The chaebol infighting wasn't interesting at all, even though this topic has been done to death, I've seen MUCH better written and more interesting iterations, both in older and newer dramas. There are also some serious problems with the pacing, there is a lot of filler in the first 17 episodes, the story becomes quite draggy in the middle. This could have been acceptable, but after all that time they only delivered a 10 minutes long happy ending & many of the story threads aren't really resolved in a satisfying way. (like what happens with mom, dad, second FL etc etc) The last 90 minutes are really rushed and I'm not entirely happy with the conclusion. I feel that there were some missed opportunities, imagine an alternate ending where Segi & Dohyon join hands to navigate both their personal & professional lives with great success. Also our villains were dealt with under a minute, it's not as bad as their entire family dying, because they get hit by a meteor, but it's a nearly as random of a conclusion to their story.

Despite all of the above this drama has some outstanding qualities. The main actors were an awesome pair, they've had good chemistry. I have liked Hwang Jongeum already and she did not disappoint. Ji Sung delivered some genuinely impressive acting, maybe the best acting I've seen in the alter ego genre thus far. If I look at the story as a romcom & ignore everything else then it is a very good romcom, there were some exceptionally funny moments. Even though many of the supporting characters were not very well written, the actors playing them were quite good, especially Kim SeulGi, it would be nice to see her as a main lead someday.
The OST is also a bit oldschool, but it's really good, especially the title track.

8/10 seems a bit too high of a rating, but I was entertained enough I suppose..

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I watched this after seeing Pinocchio & While You Were Sleeping. IHYV is very similar to these two, it's written by the same writer who seems to specialize in these procedural supernatural romance dramas, so no surprise there, I wasn't disappointed, for the most part. What's interesting that While You Were Sleeping feels like an improved version of the same underlying story, we even had precognitive dreams in IHYV too, so in originality naturally IHYV wins big time.

So let's begin with the negatives. I really didn't like the love triangle, especially around episode 9-11. In a mystery/procedural drama there is no need for this, since there are plenty of tools to keep the viewer on edge, this defo felt out of place. (Pinocchio & WYWS also had triangles, but those were very weak & benign in comparison) Sungbin's story felt unnecessary once her trial was over. I like the actress, but there was definitely problems with her scenes in the second half of the drama, maybe she served as a tool for some clever product placements that I've missed?! The amnesia plot was annoying & unnecessary,it was a low point in the drama. Also there are problems with drama logic, like can the Korean police be really that incompetent...
Positives are aplenty. I really liked the unusual main couple. Especially Lee Boyoung did an excellent job. I also loved the judge character that is played by the guy I already knew from Running Man. The ending was one of the best I've seen so far in a kdrama. Also the bromance between the female leads was really good, even better than in DoTS. I liked the OST, though it's obviously nowhere near as good as in WYWS. The plot (except around ep9-11) had a nice flow & I liked the theme of the show overall. There are more positives, but there is not much reason to talk about them, overall this is a very pleasant watch with forgivable flaws. I think Pinocchio is still the best in this genre, out of those that I've seen, but this is not far behind.

edit years later: Decided to change my rating to 10, while my criticisms have merit, I have seen very few kdramas I enjoyed more & the rewatch value is really one of the best as well..

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One of the strangest cdramas I've seen.

When earlier today I was watching episode 25 of this drama I was wholly prepared to rate it at 6, write a few perfunctory lines & move on to the next drama. If I want to be entirely honest, up until that point we have not gotten anything special, ignoring how unusually pretty the leads were in the drama that is. I mean sure over time the chemistry between Xiao Zhan & Yang Zhi has improved tremendously to the point that I could barely believe it, but there was not much else going on. The leads shared an extremely shallow, borderline juvenile relationship that followed the the usual cdrama templates, involving a really stupid breakup due to ehm reasons. The secondary love interests were annoying in the early episodes, but they have not overstayed their welcome, so actually love triangle haters can safely watch this show, but I digress. The point is that basically up until the last 3-4 episodes I perceived this drama as kind of a shallow idol drama with no value beyond the fluff and oh boy there sure was quite a bit of fluff, were there like what 30 kisses before the rolling credits? Then suddenly things have turned real... Cdramas simply don't get happy endings like this one, since the fans will watch the final episodes anyway, there is no reason to upset the template. (proposal>meeting of the parents>pre wedding group fight>wedding>kid>credits) This is the first time in a long time (or perhaps ever?), when the ending of a cdrama has really surprised me. It was so well acted, so full of heart, so touching & so beautiful. I did not even really notice that the drama had an OST in the early episodes, but even that was so impactful during the final moments of the drama, I'm speechless.

Normally I wouldn't rewatch something like this, but I've started to doubt my own perception, were the early episodes REALLY that bad? Perhaps I'll find out and soon at that :-)

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I've seen worse dramas, but not many.

I suppose the best thing I can say about this drama is that I enjoyed the first 4? episodes, up until FL met her mom. Even before that point it was super super silly, but -to me- entertaining. It is thanks to that and my handy fastforward button that I managed to finish this. From then on it becomes a complete mess, where the writer has not even attempted to respect her audience and the things I wanted to watch were dialed down to the absolute minimum as well. (comedy, romance) Naturally as a comic book style thriller of some kind it's still garbage.
So yeah it's trash, just do yourself a favor & skip it.
I guess I should try to be more descriptive, but believe me it's not easy in this case. Okay here goes nothing! Imagine a 50 hour long family drama about a Chaebol family that has supernatural elements and a lot of vigilante justice involving 3-4 couples and a lost daughter. Now take away the BEST 35 hours & what's left would probably still be better than Strong Woman Kang Nam Soon.

Comparing it to the so called prequel, Strong Woman Do Bong Soon is pointless, because fun cameo notwithstanding they have nothing in common at all. (It makes one speculate about some things about the writing process and interns. I apologize for the dumb tinfoil hat moment..)

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It's not nearly as good as the best family dramas! (Once Again, Father is Strange etc)

In "It's Beautiful Now" the story revolves around three couples & two families. This is a fairly basic family drama setup, there is also a big mystery connection between these two families. It's a textbook setting for this genre, really. In good old family drama fashion the production team tried to please all age groups, so no one will feel this is the best thing ever, but everyone will find something to enjoy. The reason why this is inferior to Once Again is because the couples are just not nearly as entertaining, I guess for me this is what it usually comes down to, when judging how good a family drama is, because the other things are usually fairly similar across all family dramas & that is certainly the case with this drama as well. To iterate on this more I absolutely adored the Hae Jun couple & that is what kept me going for 50 episodes. However the other two couples are very problematic, the Hyun Jae couple goes from super boring to makjang-ish and the Soo Jae couple is so difficult to empathize with that I skipped most of their scenes. It's normal for family dramas to have unlikable characters, but in this one they're far more numerous than usual, though many of them received minor character adjustments making them more bearable in the later episodes.

If I disregard everything else other than the Hae Jun couple, then this is a 10/10 romcom. However if I do the reverse, looking at everything else, this drama is rather mediocre, with quite a bit of makjang. I'm not sure anymore, but If memory serves, then there were like 10 rather bad episodes in a row (maybe from 32 to 41 ~) Also the ending is a bit disappointing, I love long happy endings and this is one thing family dramas usually do extremely well, since out of 50 episodes there is more than enough time to finish up with 3-5 fluffy episodes giving everyone perfect closure. In this drama though two out of three couples had EARLY weddings, so instead the writer went with a little medical emergency type of thing, which was not horrible or anything, but maybe a little out of place!? Though admittedly I liked the early weddings & the newlywed banter a lot..

So is this drama worth watching? If you have seen the best family dramas already, such as Once Again, My Father is Strange, Five Enough and you noticed that you like this genre, then you should be able to enjoy this, otherwise I would stay away.

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Good, but overrated!

I'm quite shocked that almost everyone is rating this at 10/10. I mean sure it's a drama that is worth watching, but it's not overwhelmingly great. I'm fine with romantic comedies having absurd nonsense stories, but CLoY is not supposed to be just a romcom, there are times when the the show takes itself very seriously and there is supposed to be quite a bit of impactful melodrama. I feel that it does not quite work.(the serious melo parts) Maybe it's because of the cartoon villain style adversaries, or because of the 4 idiots in the second half I just cannot take the sad bits seriously. Also the drama was much better in the first half, I think there was no need for the idiotic plot that commenced once Seri has returned to the South. I have seen people discussing how many details they've gotten right about the North, there were even some real north koreans refugees interviewed. I'm sure they've gotten many minor details right and that's laudable, but there are just so many absurd things, let's not even get me started about product placements..

Anyway I enjoyed the comedy, especially before they've gone to the South. The romance between the leads was so so, I don't think that the Hyun Bin+Son Ye Jin coupling was a particularly good choice. I think Hyon Bin was a lot better in Secret Garden and Son YeJin also did much better in Something in the Rain. Don't misunderstand I do think that they did a decent job at their characters, I just did not feel the same authenticity, or the chemistry that they've had with other actors in the past. I must admit that Seo Ji-hye was incredible as Seo Dan, I'm looking forward to seeing more of her in the future. As for Alberto Gu, well I'm not sure what was the deal with him. For starters he did not have a lot of screen time, nor did him dying serve any meaningful purpose. I mean sure I did enjoy the ~20 minutes he spent with Dan, but it feels like he was the redshirt that the writers used to make a bigger impact for the ending. Ah yes, the ending, they just had to go with the forced separation for 2 years formula, not the worst, but not great.

The production quality was on an extremely high level, they had a really high budget & used it well for the most part. I found it incredible that they've even used anamorphic lenses in the pilot episode. The anamorphic look really worked too with establishing that authentic war movie vibe.
The music is a mixed bag, on one hand they've made some amazing OST tracks for this show, on the other though the director did not do an amazing job at arranging those tracks to fit the scenes particularly well.

edit: Hyun Bin and Son Ye Jin as of now are supposedly dating in real life. Despite me not liking this pairing in this drama too much, I gotta admit their behind the scenes videos/bloopers showcased hugely more chemistry than their actual scenes shown in the final edit..

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It has an absolutely awful, disrespectful ending!

Endings are important to me, when the writer completely gives up common sense in the final episode flipping the proverbial table, then I tend to just lose it & from then on I won't be able to write an objectively fair review.
Twenty-Five Twenty-One's ending made me change my rating from 9+ to 3.5. Trying to look at this objectively I think Who Rules the World's ending is even worse, perhaps the worse ending I have ever reached. The only reason I'm not THAT harsh in my scoring today is because at least the romance has not been ruined, but everything else is, what happens in the final episode is so egregious that I can not easily put it into words.

I'm so angry that I'm really not in the mood to talk about the good things. Just to sum it up real quick, the romance is really really good in this one, which is about 40% of the drama. Chemistry, bickering, cuteness, fluff etc it's all there, it's as good as it gets from a semi-historical show. The palace politics genre is something I generally hate watching, but in this drama up to maybe episode 25-ish it was really really well done. (there is only one evil queen, so the usual cold palace concubine garbage is mostly not there) At that point I still thought a 10/10 final score would be possible. In the later half though the plot deteriorated quite a bit, however after watching episode 38 I thought this would still be at least a 8/10, but then the ending came..

The Wuxia part of the drama is good and bad at the same time. There are many Relatively well done fight scenes & we go through various Wuxia classics, it even has a saint's trial. However the whole thing in the later episodes about armies clashing & whatever else is pointless to me.
In an acceptable Wuxia-world (no pun intended) strong cultivators decide the outcome of all battles & a weak king without the permanent support of a strong cultivator can never amount to anything ever, no matter how big his army is. Since if he offends a cultivator, they can literally just enter the palace & kill him effortlessly. I think the argument that this is not the case in this specific fantasy world is a bad one, since something similar happened not once, but twice in this show.
Also there were two plots related to cultivation that I thought were incredibly bad. The first one is about the theft of that certain technique, that's something absolutely insane, so much so that no self respecting wuxia writer would ever write that, because it's like fan fiction. The other one is the potion that supposedly disperses all inner force, though my dislike of that is more of a personal preference, it's not completely unreasonable.
Oh I almost forgot FL's sect is supposed to be one of the top righteous sects in Jianghu, however they are repeatedly the useless pig teammate throughout the entire show (useless+weak+stupid the whole lot).

If by some random chance someone who has not watched this drama yet chanced upon this review, my suggestion to you fellow MDLer is to maybe watch up to episode 38 & then just pretend the show only has 38 episodes & call it a day. The romance gets proper closure by that point-ish.

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Awesome up until episode 13!

The Good
⌲ The unique & fun romance
⌲ The acting
⌲ The subverted tropes (not all tropes though)
⌲ The fun second couple (I wish they had more screen time)
⌲ The pillow fight!
⌲ Most - but not all- annoyances were dealt with very quickly.

The Average
⌲ The love triangle (not bad not great ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
⌲ The ex-secretary club (I don't think the writer knew what she wanted to do with them)

The Bad
⌲ ML's jarringly forced character growth(s) in the later episodes!
⌲ All the horrible corporate and vengeance plots in the later episodes!
⌲ The lack of fluff in the later episodes
⌲ The ending feels super forced. (As much as I like a nicely wrapped happy ending, I would rather have loose ends, than everything resolved like this)

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