Redundant Love

The drama feels like it was made by someone who watched a lot of 2000s Korean drama and wanted to replicate a one just like it. It's a Korean drama but it always felt it was missing something. Anyway, the drama itself had an awful set up that stretched it thin even if this were to be a satire. The characterization of these characters wasn't appealing, you had no one to root for or like. The drama delved into love and sacrifice, but more often than not, it went all in on the melo, way too much. It ended up overshadowing any chance for a more subtle, nuanced take on the intricate web of human and familial relationships which is what the drama needed more than anything else. They tried to do that a little bit later on but it was too late anyway. The visuals were passable but they couldn't quite make up for the gaps in the story.

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"Fashion", allegedly...

Whatever they did with that introduction with the military stuff and other nonsense was just bad and embarrassing. They could've cut to the adults without giving backstory and it would've been fine. Anyway, the story itself was very slow, everything was moving at a snail's pace. I wasn't a fan of the love story here, it was just a girl who fell in love with the first man she saw after spending 10-15 years in isolation on a men-less island. You may expect the usual empty shots and over-dramatic reactions from older dramas in this one, while they weren't necessarily bad but I've seen these elements done better from the same era in mid 2000s. I found the last few episodes to be an unnecessary big wild stretch. It was done that way because they had nothing prepared beforehand for the end.

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The Equity Man

It amplifies the sarcastic mid-2000s melo cliches to the max, something about is just endearing to watch despite its comical nature, that's why it worked back then. But this drama kept it going for too long and it started to get annoying. Some scenes were too obvious they were added to pad its length, I would say these were the worst part about the drama. These useless scene were more important than the story according to the director and writer since the story was filled with incomprehensible skips and gaps in every other episodes that each left its own problems. I'm not asking a melodrama cliche to be logical and sensible because they'll never be by definition, but at least don't go too far like that insane 13 years time skip! On another note, Han Ji Won was pretty useless despite being the FL, little to zero contribution before or after the blindness episodes. One last thing, I wasn't a fan with anything they did for the last episode. The drama gets an extra point for the skewed morals.

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River Where the Stars Fizzle Away

The story suffered from erratic pacing, cramming too many plots that made it hard keep any interesting narrative. The characters were a simulated circus clown that kept making foolish moves intentionally at every turn. Might explains why it's 20 episodes. The childish love square was another contributor in that regard. Na In Woo's portrayal felt strained, his expressions, intonations, inflections, and emotions seemingly forced to fit the character mold. Comparing it to the original version, it seems there was a notable disparity. Checked a couple of scenes side by side, there's a clear difference in the delivery, as big as expressing an entirely different emotion of the exact same scene. I wonder what was the director even doing? The lack of chemistry with his colleagues was obvious too. He was called to fill in a role on a quick notice with so little to work with in the first place. All of that didn't compare to the abysmal last episode, and even worse, the detestable last scene.

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Unfortunate letdown

The drama had so much potential, but never managed to break through. The pacing was inconsistent for its elongated cool-down periods and its redundant flimsy 24 episodes. One moment you're going at a steady pace and the next, you're like, "Come on, let's get moving!". These long breaks in between didn't even serve a meaningful purpose like to develop the characters or build up for what's next. It should've been cut down to 10-12 episodes while cutting off the nonsense and focusing on the politics. The story slowed down and became less interesting in the 2nd half when the prince went into the palace. On another note, Go Ah Ra, she didn't fit her role at all, too fragile and soft looking. Strangely, her character (Yeo Ji) got demoted to a guest character in the 2nd half, little to no contribution or screen time. If I have to take a guess, the character didn't really fit the narrative to begin with, so it was hard to keep her around in the 2nd half, which also explains the attempted romance, the writers were desperate.

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Queen: War of Love

The drama felt like it was held together with duct tape. There was this missing spark to make the twins plot work. How are we supposed to buy into this twin dynamic when there's no connection?Somehow, the dead twin had a better chemistry and her replacement twin never worked despite being the same actress. The romance as well suffered because of that, incompatible by design. Out of all the ideas that can be spun from a twins plot, they kept it very simple while doing the bare minimum to fill the episodes. Which also resulted in long draggy uneventful events. On another note, out of all of Jin Se Yeon historical roles, this is her weakest performance yet.

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Lawless flower

It's safe to say I hit a wall around episode 9-10 of that drama. Everything felt like a lullaby—monotone and sleep-inducing. Later on, things didn't improve much, but I guess I sort of got used to the dreariness. However, that last episode was a total distaste. It crammed in so much last-minute chaos and then ended with an unsatisfying departure that seemed like an afterthought. There were two things I hated in particular about this drama that were too glaring to ignore and subsequently detracted a lot from the drama, not that it was gonna be something spectacular without them anyway. The gags/comedic-relief moments accompanied by the unpleasant comedy cue made going through the episodes just a tad bit tougher than it already was. The other reason was Sung Ji Hun in general, the man sucks on a cosmic level, both the character and the actor. It would have been infinitely better to completely strip the drama from this deplorable attempted romance. Any love triangle that involves Choi Tae Joon is usually an unquestionable bad time right out of the gate.

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An awful half drama ½

To say I'm frustrated with this drama is an understatement. From reading the synopsis and from watching the first batch of episodes, it became quite clear that the prominent characters are Prince Kwang Hae and his sister, but alas, this was barely the case. Cha Seung Won left the drama half way through making the plot irrelevant later on for everything that was established earlier. His departure didn't leave an impact either for what's to come. Subsequently, Princess Jeong Myeong became a side piece to roam around the plot with little to no meaningful contribution. The second half in general was a significant downgrade in all regards. It was almost incomparable to the first half. It became as dull as you can imagine without much "character" left in these characters. It reminded of The Great Seer (2012) how there was a massive shift in every regard with the second half.

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A good half drama ½

I found the earlier parts to be quite good with a reasonable pace. However, 25 episodes later things started to change in a weird direction and the initial spark faded away. Yet, the reality was a letdown. Jeong Do Jeon, the pivotal figure, felt like a distant acquaintance rather than someone I could understand. His struggles and triumphs failed to resonate the longer the drama kept going, leaving me disconnected from the heart of the story by the end of the drama. The ending was very typical with these kind of shows, everyone lose their marbles abruptly so they can jump to the historical ending, if there's any. Jo Jae Hyun and Yoo Dong Geun did a great job as leads, they simply carried the drama with their performance. Even their character was methodical and well written. One thing I wanted to see is having Do Jun's wife playing a bigger role in supporting her husband. I really appreciate their casting choices. Going for a mature looking cast was the correct choice. New to semi-new generation cast with soft looks in their mid 30s would have been disastrous.

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Mask On

A snoozefest by definition. It felt like an endless, meandering road leading absolutely nowhere, like a book with no chapters, just pages and pages of the same old, same old. This what an AI is capable of generating when giving it the prompts "power, struggle, palace" in no particular order. It would have been less tiresome if it were only half its length. They were so desperate to prolong the drama that they added a war in the middle despite being outside the theme and scoop of this drama. The writing was abysmal and shameful, they made the characters like clowns. Although we were introduced to face reading at the start but that played little to no importance later on and was rarely used outside some fillers.

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Political intervention

A boring start, it certainly took some time to get going. Even then, it wasn't a smooth sailing after that. Whenever the drama managed to pick up a good momentum, they shove in a massive intervention with their palace politics. Disrupting the flow and the main attraction of the drama. Like pulling the sheets away on a cold winter night. Which is why this was its biggest problem, being wrapped around politics instead of giving it its independence. This was easier for the writers so they don't have to go into too much details and technicalities, instead auto generate some mindless palace drama to fill the gaps. I found the ending to be quite distasteful to this man's journey.

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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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