Lee Je Hoon but at what cost?

The drama just didn't hit the spot for me. It had all these grand plans to dive deep into history and stir up political intrigue, but somehow, it lost its way in keeping things engaging. There were these bits here and there that had me hooked, they were pretty intriguing. But the storytelling was all over the place, and the characters barely had time to develop. That lack of consistency seriously put a damper on my enjoyment. I was left feeling like there was this untapped potential, they could've given us more depth and made everything gel together better. Anyway, the ending felt like it was missing some scenes before the credits; not smooth.

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My boyfriend Is a Gumiho!

The introduction wasn't encouraging at all with this extremely superficially imaginary cuts of pseudo romance. Even after the time-skip it didn't improve much in that regards. The romance throughout the drama was overbearing with prolonged dreamy shots that made the lengthy runtime even worse. The drama featured your typical low-level boring villain to keep you bothered. Bae Suzy was too soft to play the role she was given. No matter what she does, she doesn't look intimidating or fierce enough. Sung Joon's acting is usually better than this, I don't why he was so bad here.

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Six flailing crooks!

I hate how this was a prequel to "Tree With Deep Roots", I already hated what they did with the roots plot in that one. This one simply followed its predecessor in that regard, just an extension of the same aggravating plot device structure but this time it's double the length!! Doubling down on Tree With Deep Roots' biggest weakness without fixing its fundamental problem. I would presume they have gotten enough feedback from "Tree With Deep Roots" to do a better job but it doesn't seem to be the case here. There were some interesting moments, interactions and ideas but these were overshadowed by everything else. The cast was an even split for me, some of them were likable while the rest I really disliked throughout. Shin Sae Kyeong was a literal plank of wood for most of the drama. Anyway, if I had to really pretend to be blind for 2 seconds then the drama had some nice action sprinkled scarcely and that's probably what I would be remembering it for. In comparison, it's slightly better than "Tree With Deep Roots" but can be categorized equally the same.

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I'm your father

It's the usually daily format so temper your expectations accordingly before proceeding any further. Both Seo Hyun Jin and her character contributed a lot to the drama to keep it decent enough. Her interactions were the most memorable. On the other hand, the writer robbed off Seo Woo from making her a decent character, writing wise. Meanwhile, Jo Hyun Jae was as static as always throughout his entire career, the man would rather die than changing his expression. There's no justification for the long runtime other than they were contractually obligated to follow the template dedicated to this time slot. At least give the high moments more time to sink in. Especially the ending, there was no need to make it this short, they had the time to take a more relaxed approach.

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The circus

It's a villainess drama which we don't get to see a lot of. Knowing Kdrama, they generally give the same immature treatment for 99% of all villains ever. Even when we have a villain lead like this drama, they don't break the rule to have a better portrayal of a good villain character. Instead we get a silly dumbed down version of a baddie. You may as well add squeaky sound effects and air it on Sunday morning cartoons. To boil it down, you'll be watching 50-episodes of this king and concubine being clowns until they reach their demise because the drama ran out of episodes. I was hoping for a smart cunning play but we got a reckless uncalculated short-sighted arrogant one. Also, the drama had this habit of re-using the same evil tricks over and over instead of coming with something creative. Setting up the same traps is a case in point. On the bright side, Kim Hyun Joo was keeping the drama afloat.

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A broken pot

This drama didn't deserve to be longer than 10-12 episodes at best for the amount of material it had to offer. Quickly enough, they deviated from pottery making in favor of typical bland drama antics. Pottery making was its selling point but we barely got a slight tiny glimpse of that field. They kept all details and technicalities to minimum, how do they expect the viewer to care? I guess having a love square is more important to them. Looking at the cast it seemed promising but it turned out to be quite disappointing. Nonetheless, did we really need that awful nasty 17-years timeskip before the end credits? Massive yikes!!

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DOA

The late-2000s/early-2010s extreme edgy vibes were too damn strong with this one, from the awful OST and soundfx to the comical acrobatics and the pretentious attitude. Moreover, an obvious poor job from the directing department worth a slap on the wrist for their empty shots, lousy compositions, hasty transitions and un-cinematic pretentious edits with no purpose trying to mimic cinema as if they were following a template. This is not how you create a slow-burn. The leads story, their entangled relationship and their journey to fall in love all were the furthest thing from being natural and smooth. If the edgy writing full of cringe was playing against them then the directing was the cherry on top to cross the point of no return.

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RUN!

The kid was pulling this drama together from the very beginning. While the chase was interesting to follow at first but soon enough it became tiring and boring and a change of scenery was due at that point which took longer than expected to get to. The drama had some nice side characters which didn't become overbearing, namely So Baek and her father which provided a little distraction from the long wait for the story to move. There were a lot of elements I didn't like in this drama but I probably will remember this drama for the kid. However, there was one particular major issue the drama suffered from and that is the godly impervious plot armor eliminating any sense of danger or stakes driving the drama in an extremely predictable bland route.

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I had a dream...

Casually confirming for nth time how unappealing Choi Soo Jong is in historical dramas as always since the start of his career. Just from reading the synopsis you may expect a big historical drama with big sets, big battles and big production, but this drama was embarrassingly scuffed with minimal efforts after the initial batch of episodes. As always with these type of shows, they blow their budget early on on flashy scenes then left wondering how to produce the rest. You may expect inconsistencies along the way, like having two or more camera angles of the same scene with different color grading and quality. I suppose an intern was editing that day. Anyway, the drama itself was underwhelming and almost nothing about it stand out, not even the cast nor their performance. All of their dramatic creative liberties proved to be unsuccessful and dull, as expected. A lot of petty fights that are always annoying to watch and lasting too long. At least the drama served as an example for how not to tell history in an entertainment medium.

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Power down!

Reminds me of some cheap fantasy anime. Executed as a one and equally as garbage. Terrible writing from the get go. Poor storytelling and structure. Painfully underutilizing the generous long runtime. Filled with irrelevant nonsense that doesn't contribute to anything, not even for a side gag or filler. While the cast may not have been terrible, but they were definitely careless and under-performing. It's not like that had much to work with in the first place. The director doesn't seem to be helping in that regard either. I don't think this drama would have worked even if it was just a 2-hours movie.

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A medical scam

Reminds me of some cheap isekai anime. Executed as a one and equally as garbage. Terrible writing from the get go. Poor storytelling and structure. Painfully underutilizing the generous long runtime. Filled with irrelevant nonsense that doesn't contribute to anything, not even for a side gag or filler. While the cast may not have been terrible, but they were definitely careless and under-performing. It's not like they had much to work with in the first place. The director doesn't seem to be helping in that regard either. I don't think this drama would have worked even if it was just a 2-hours movie.

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Empty

It's impressive how they managed to turn it into 21 episodes with what they had going on. This wasn't worth more than a quick short web drama of 4 to 6 episodes 30 mins. Temper your expectations and expect a quality in accordance to that. This wasn't the last time Seo Woo played an airheaded character.

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Disconnected and scattered

Just another historical drama confirming, yet again, how much I don't like seeing 'Choi Soo Jong' in a historical setting. You would be dreaming if you thought the drama will utilize the 200-episodes runtime wisely. Expect a lot of useless scenes/chapters/arcs/stories/characters. I really wish they didn't waste too much time with the childhood period, the first +20 episodes were too much for an introduction. A quick introduction of max 2-3 episodes would have been way more than enough to establish what needed to be established.

When zooming out, the drama is split into 3 major parts. The first 1/3 consisted of the back story and the personal relationships. The second 1/3 consisted of forming the religion then turning it into a cult and watching madness ensues. The last 1/3 is was just generic wars and battles. The last 1/3 had a major tone shift and turned the drama into something different. It was a bit too disconnected to associate it with the first 2/3 after what had been already established. It should have been its own thing and the drama should have ended after the second 1/3. I feel for those who had to watch it serializing for 2 years, the shifts were too unpleasant as if they were jumping different shows.

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