Go Young's Tragic Autobiography

The best way to describe this show is snapshots of our main character Go Young's (Nam Yoonsu) life. We first meet him in college, where his queerness makes him a loner. This doesn't stop his pursuit of love, but not all romantic encounters are created equal. Go Young finds again and again that love requires not just the right person, but also the right circumstances. In his quest to figure out what love looks like and how to make relationships work, we see him continue to get his heart broken, both by his own faults and his partners'.

I think what really sold me on this show was the way it was done. It felt like it was being told as if Go Young had written his own autobiography, where he emphasized what he found important and left out the details that seemed too mundane. We get glimpses into his life and his relationships, without ever getting to see his day-to-day life. What happens in an episode may be a few weeks or a year, depending on how important the events felt to Go Young himself. Each relationship he enters presents new challenges, and unable to navigate them, Go Young continues to feel tired and alone. I did not expect such depth of issues on queerness coming from a Kdrama, and it was done beautifully. The issues were never taken lightly or laughed at, and the relationships were portrayed in such a realistic way that it truly felt like this could be someone's autobiography. It was unfortunately sadder than I had anticipated, and the realism just emphasized the tragedy, but it was beautiful nonetheless.

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An unfulfilling short series

I was really excited to start The Bequeathed because it seemed like it had everything I liked wrapped up into a short 6-episode series. It wasn't until I started the final episode that I realized there was no way they could wrap everything up as cleanly as I would have liked. The twists in the story weren't all that surprising, and I felt that I wasn't too invested in ay of the characters.

Yoon Seoha finds out she has inherited a family burial ground from a recently deceased uncle whom she had never met. Meanwhile, she finds out her husband is cheating on her and she likely didn't get the job promotion she thought she would. When a man claiming to be her half-brother starts fighting her for this burial ground, it seems like Seoha's life is spiraling out of control. No matter which way she turns, it seems that only hardships follow, and though she's suspecting everyone around her, she can't help but feel like it may be her family's own bad karma.

When it comes to crime K-dramas, there's a high bar. I love a good mystery, a good investigation, and a good, well-thought out killer. Unfortunately, this one just didn't quite deliver. While it was a very enjoyable and quick watch, I felt that something was lacking the whole time. I found Seoha difficult to sympathize with, as she always threw the blame on the closest person and never seemed to think things through. If they wanted to focus on the police investigation, they could have done that too, but that also felt like it was only peripheral even though they attempted to flesh out the cops working the case as much as they could. I think this story would have been a lot more compelling if told from the perspective of the lead detective instead of Seoha, or if Seoha was a bit more likeable as a character. Still, it was a fun show and an easy watch because of its length.

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A Business Gay Performance

This show is not good. I'll start there. However, it is hilarious. If you watch it like you're watching a badly scripted SNL skit, it's AWESOME.

The plot is Nine and Mill are debuting together in a group with the concept of "business gay performance," which is essentially fanservice. Naturally, the two of them realize that they have feelings for each other as well. The pacing of the show is totally off, the script is bad, and the acting is worse. It's basically them acting out poorly-written fanfiction. It's never as queer as you want it to be, and instead you're left laughing at the absurdity of the show. I enjoyed watching every episode of this and laughed real hard at it. Don't go in with high expectations. It's probably only worth watching if you're a fan of onlyoneof, in which case the plot seems very fitting considering the group's concept.

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Only good if you're a big fan of EarthMix

Out of all of EarthMix's projects, this one is by far the worst. While the two have great chemistry, who thought that this plot was a good idea?

Win (Mix) is in a car accident with his sister, Lin, and when he wakes up he's in his sister's body. He then embarks on a journey with his former friend Korn (Earth) in order to retrieve holy water to return to his body. Along this journey, past issues between Win and Korn resurface and as the two learn to get along again, feelings between them emerge - but does Korn have feelings for Win, or does he only care about the body his soul is transported in?

The entire conflict of this show being "is he into me or is he into me because I'm in my sister's body" is crazy. What even. Regardless, watching the relationship between Win and Korn change was very enjoyable, and the fairly slow burn friends-to-lovers was fun to watch. But thank god it was only 10 episodes because I don't think I could have watched much more.

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One of the only dramas I would consider perfect

Some of these reviews calling Vincenzo overhyped baffle me. This was hands down one of the best dramas I've ever seen. Song Joongki as Vincenzo was absolutely amazing, and the rest of the cast perfectly complemented him.

Vincenzo is a mafia lawyer who has left his mafia family in Italy to return to Korea and retrieve the money he has stashed there. in the form of gold. This gold is conveniently buried under a building in order to keep it safe, but he must tear down the building to retrieve it. One small issue: the building is full of tenants. In the midst of attempting to figure out how to get these tenants to leave, Vincenzo encounters a much larger problem: the conglomerate Babel is attempting to buy the building from him in order to demolish it and build their own. Vincenzo decides to take the side of the tenants in order to secure his building, without revealing his true plans. This gets him wrapped up in Babel's business, which leads to bigger problems than he ever anticipated.

This is a drama that starts off seemingly light and fun, with funny building tenants and even funnier interactions between them and Vincenzo. However, as the show progresses, it becomes darker and darker. The morally gray protagonist Vincenzo makes you question whether or not you should be rooting for him time and time again, and while he always seems to come out on top, you're never quite sure if that was for the best, or if the ends could ever justify his means. Throughout the show, this unsettling feeling grows in the viewer, until you're not really sure if you should have ever rooted for him in the first place...

This show kept me on the edge of my seat every episode. With elements of crime, law, and mafia, I knew I was bound to like it but it truly blew me away. I wish I could watch it for the first time again.

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A good direction

Anyone that watches danmei adaptations is aware of the censorship this typically comes with; however, Meet You at the Blossom manages to get around this and delivers on the romance aspect of this wuxia. Unfortunately, I still found this show a bit lacking in the non-romance department, which was in part due to the characters themselves, and in part due to the 12 episode limit.

Jin Xiao Bao is nearing marrying age, and is determined to find the most beautiful woman to make his wife. During an unexpected encounter, he watches Huai En face many men single handedly, and instantly falls in love with her. However "she" is actually a man. Huai En is perfectly fine with Xiao Bao being in love with him - but it seems he may be motivated to keep Xiao Bao close for other reasons than his own feelings. The two enter into a relationship claiming they will always forgive the other no matter what, but how far can this promise extend?

The relationship was fun to watch develop, with cold Huai En slowly warming up to Xiao Bao. In this style of drama, I was very used to a relationship being built purely on tension due to censorship issues, so to get an actual relationship in this show was very refreshing. One of my biggest complaints though is that Xiao Bao is utterly useless. Huai En is a great cultivator and very intelligent. Xiao Bao is.....neither of those things. I just wish that Xiao Bao could have stood up for himself once in awhile, instead of always relying on others. I actually really enjoyed the political issues in the show, and thought they were the perfect level of complex for the length of the show. I do think that we could have benefited from a bit more time with the characters to watch them grow, but there's only so much you can do.

In all, I just hope that this opens the door for more danmei adaptations produced by companies willing to keep the romance. This was a short watch with the perfect amounts of romance, heartache, and betrayal, but would have benefitted from a stronger lead character and slightly less toxic relationship.

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A Heartfelt Revenge Drama

This drama really surprised me with how much it was able to do in the short amount of time it had. Reading the description, I was a little worried with how much background and world building we might have to go through, but honestly there was the perfect amount of information given to the viewer to make things make sense, but not too much exposition where it felt like they were overexplaining things.

Song Yi Heon is a high schooler who has been horribly bullied for years, and decides to take his own life. As he is jumping off an overpass, 47-year-old gangster Kim Deuk Pal sees him and saves him - except, as he catches Yi Heon a truck drives by and kills Deuk Pal. In a strange occurrence, Deuk Pal's soul is transported into Yi Heon's body. Deuk Pal wakes up in the body of this high schooler, and decides to get back at the bullies and sort out Yi Heon's school and family life (while also attempting to pass high school classes).

I was honestly worried that we would get too much with the whole soul-switching thing, but they discussed it the perfect amount for this show. I loved how Deuk Pal's gang ended up getting involved in Yi Heon's life, and how Yi Heon's family businesses all tied together with it. The twists and messiness of this show was perfect, because they still managed to have everything tied up nicely even with just 8 episodes. I do wish we could have gotten a little more time with high school Yi Heon before his suicide attempt, and that we got more drama with some of the characters involved in Yi Heon's personal life, but overall this was a fantastic watch. The goofiness of an adult not understanding high school kids' lingo and style paired with the intense fight and drama scenes worked perfectly. I would highly recommend this one to anyone who enjoys gang/revenge/high school drama shows. It checks all the boxes and does it well.

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Cute and Sweet

I originally wasn't planning on watching Only Boo, but I kept seeing people talking about it and they finally convinced me. While it may have not been the most innovative or exciting show, it was a very fun watch and a really cute romance. Don't expect too much from the plot or characters, but just enjoy the little romance between the main characters and you'll have a good time.

Moo (Keen) is sent to the country side by his mom to focus on school instead of focusing on idol auditions like he has been. His mom says he needs to finish high school before he can think about becoming an idol. However, Moo refuses to let go of his dreams. While in this new school, Moo meets Kang (Sea), a curry rice seller near his apartment. Moo very quickly develops feelings for Kang, and has to partition his time between school work, secretly practicing for idol auditions, and flirting with Kang. However, even after he starts winning Kang over, Moo realizes there a lot more problems to come in this relationship if he wants to be an idol.

Truly the best word to describe this drama is "cute". A high school romance between Moo and Kang develops slowly and eventually turns into a relationship between them, but still has its ups and downs. I think the characters could have had a little more depth, and I wish we got even more back story of both of them to really flesh out their characters more. For a lot of the series, they felt a bit one-dimensional. I also think that the conflicts towards the end could have been sped up a bit just to get some more time with Kang and Moo together. Overall, an easy and fun watch!

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What makes a good killer?

A Shop for Killers is a very unique take on the contract killer plotline. It was a show that I was very excited to start, especially as a fan of Lee Dongwook, and it was very entertaining all the way through. However, I felt like there were a few parts of the show that felt off. The first bit will be free of spoilers, so I'll mark where they start.

The opening scene of the show has Jeong Jian, our protagonist, getting shot at in her home. A very striking opening scene that had me excited to see both what happens next and how we got there. However, it's the latter that I have to complain about. This show jumps back and forth a LOT between the present and the past. Jian has an uncle, Jeong Jinman, who seems to be up to some shady business. These jumps to the past allow us to understand what exactly that shady business is, and how it concerns her. However, it is very non-linear in its storytelling. I think the one thing that bothered me the most about this wasn't the fact that we kept jumping between times, but the fact that they replayed scenes we had seen before so many times to orient the viewer in the timeline, but it was just excessive and unnecessary most of the time. The replayed scenes were so much longer than they needed to be, especially because this is an 8 episode series. If you've forgotten THAT much of the show when it's so short, it's probably because you weren't paying attention.

Another fault brought about by this non-linear storytelling was the fact that the viewer didn't get to learn the truth alongside Jian, but rather knew before her. You learn very early on about Jinman's career as a contract killer, but you have to watch a confused and scared Jian learn this WAY later than you do, at which point it doesn't pack the same punch. I will say though, watching Jian go through so many emotions in the span of just a few days is an incredible watch, and the actress did a great job portraying her.

**Spoilers start here**

My last and biggest issue with this show was the ending. What a copout! You get to watch Jian go through all this internal turmoil of should I kill or should I not, how could I ever run this business, etc. just for all that to go out the window because Jinman is ALIVE?? The entire story could have been avoided. You could argue that that's what makes Jian such a tragic character, but I thought that leaving the storyline right before they introduced Jinman at the end would have been a perfectly fine ending - a young girl, left to figure out the world with no one on her side. Could Jian become a killer like Jinman? Does she have what it takes, or is she only fueled by the rage that her parents' and uncle's death caused? I guess these questions don't really matter, because she doesn't need to be on her own anymore!

Overall, it was a good show and an engaging watch. Besides some issue with the storytelling and the ending, it was very interesting to watch the plot unfold both in the past and present. Frankly, I think this could have have spanned two seasons, with one season being all about Jinman and one about Jian, but the back and forth didn't get too messy. Worth checking out if you like short and dark thrillers.

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Wanted it to be better

As a huge fan of crime/legal dramas, I was really looking forward to this one! Especially since one of the main characters is a lawyer, I was thinking we would get some good courtroom/law scenes that we just...didn't get. I understand that the plot of this one was about figuring out how to catch a killer that has way more power than the victim, but a lot of it just felt like it had been done before in so many better renditions. Plus, the relationship didn't seem to develop all that smoothly? It seemed like at one point they hated each other and then all of a sudden they were together? It felt like a show that could have been done really well if given the proper time and budget, but it just fell a little flat in both the romance and the murder storylines.

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Underwhelming

I LOVE crime dramas and law dramas. Unfortunately, this one failed at both. Do Kyungsoo does a wonderful job portraying prosecutor Jin Jung, who is more than willing to bend the rules in order to punish people for their crimes. As a new prosecutor, he tends to get easy cases that don't involve too much digging - but when a seemingly clear-cut murder case comes across his desk, the more he reads into it, the more complicated it gets. However, it seems there are a lot of people that don't want this case investigated.

In the classic "prosecutor takes on the Ultimate Bad Guy" fashion, Bad Prosecutor is set up to be a very enjoyable show where the villain and protagonist go back and forth on who has the upper hand in their series-long battle. However, there a few things that this series got wrong that just made it significantly less fun to watch than most other crime/law dramas I've seen:

1) Predictability. There were very few times in this series that I was actually surprised by a twist (and liked the twist). Most of the time, the ending of the episode could be predictable by halfway through the episode, and that made what should have been cliffhangers underwhelming.
2) Protagonist. While Do Kyungsoo did an excellent job portraying Jin Jung, I still didn't love the character. I was hoping for a morally gray prosecutor who didn't care whether he was breaking the law to get what he thought justice was. Instead, we got a prosecutor willing to go around the law, but still abide by it when push comes to shove. In his eyes, "Justice = Laws", which I feel could have been played around with more, especially with the horrible things the villain in this series had done.
3) Law. Considering the title, I assumed there would be a lot more courtroom scenes in this show. While I still enjoyed watching them chase after the villain, I think my expectations were a bit different considering Jin Jung is a prosecutor, not a cop.
4) Outcomes. There were many times where they could have had bigger and better (or sometimes, worse) outcomes for a character's actions, but they seemed to downplay any repercussions that should have occurred to both the protagonist and antagonist. I was waiting for the ending battle to really kick in and it never really did. It was much more anticlimactic in that sense than I expected.

If you enjoy crime/law dramas, you'll probably still enjoy this! Just beware its more of a cop show than a courtroom show, and you might be able to sense exactly where it's going (and be right 95% of the time) pretty easily.

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WAY better than I expected

Even though I have seen this drama recommended over and over again, I kept putting off watching it because I don't like hospital dramas typically. But then I started watching it and was HOOKED. This isn't your typical hospital drama with the focus on a patient every episode. It's so much better.

Tin is a third year resident doctor in the ER. His job is busy - there's constantly people that need his attention, whether that be for some scrapes and bruises or for CPR emergencies. When he's not dealing with that, he has to deal with Professor Sak on his back about prioritizing the right cases and sending the rest to him. One particularly busy day, Tin gets multiple life-or-death cases, and he attempts to help a college student named Tol who was in a car crash. No matter how hard he tries, Tin can't save him and the student dies. Then, when Tin wakes up before his shift, he realizes that he's living the same day over again, down to the last detail. When Tol shows up in the ambulance once again, Tin's attempts still fail to save him. How many times will Tin have to relive this tragedy? How can he change it, and what repercussions will these changes have?

The way that Tin and Tol's relationship develops over the course of the show is absolutely spectacular. It's not the main point of the show, but rather a secondary plotline that helps build the characters they're playing. Watching Tin get closer and closer to Tol, but still having to watch him die over and over again is painful but amazing to watch.

I was worried that it would get stale and that watching Tin repeat his days would get too repetitive but BOY was I wrong! Tin's character continues to find new ways to attempt to save Tol, but this can lead to unexpected consequences. The further he goes back in time, the closer he can get to Tol, and the larger the impact of his actions on his future. This was a series that surprised me throughout the entire show and is not one to miss.

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Disappointing

I think the issue here was the writing of the characters. I love watching crime dramas, and I thought I would be really into this based on the synopsis, but it unfortunately missed the mark. I've seen Jang Kiyong in other shows and really enjoyed his performance, but his character in this one totally fell flat. You're waiting for something to happen between him and the female lead, waiting for his cold exterior to crack, and you never really get that. His character isn't very likeable, and even though you're rooting for him, you're not really sure why.

I think they also tried to do a bit too much weird worldbuilding and almost sci-fi kinda stuff. It felt like it should have been introduced earlier or simplified in order for it to make sense. I feel like there was a lot of potential wasted on this one.

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Unfinished and Unsatisfying

While watching this drama, I LOVED it. I had recently finished Devil Judge with Ji Sung and wanted to watch something else with him in it and this seemed like the perfect drama for me. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time and it was super fun to watch.

Then, as we neared the end, I started to wonder how they could wrap this show up. So many loose ends, so much unsolved still. I was excited to see how they would pull it off!! And then they didn't pull it off at all. It felt like when an American show thinks it'll be renewed for another season but it gets canceled and doesn't have an actual ending to it. If it had a proper ending, it would've been a FANTASTIC drama.

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I thought this was a cute and happy show. I was wrong!!

I LOVED the best friends to lovers plotline. It was done so well, and the longing that Eiw felt was portrayed so well. THe dynamic between Cake and Eiw was done perfectly, and the actors had amazing chemistry.

I did think that they could have sped things up a little bit. Earth cried SO much in this series, and while he's a great actor, at some point you get tired of a character constantly being upset about the situation. But honestly, it was so well done that I didn't even mind much. One of the BEST scenes addressing what it feels like to have to come out to people and not know if they will accept you or not. Many BLs don't address the internalized homophobia aspect of this, and it's done so well in this show. The time jump was seamless and perfectly placed, and helped the show a lot. I think the last two episodes should have been moved up by one so that we got a finale centered around the relationship and not external issues.

Overall a fantastic show. Definitely worth the watch!

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