Okay

It's a watered down tale with low tension and disappointing baddies which all made the insane runtime just a tad bit more unbearable. The entire story is confined to in-palace drama where the king likes a commoner while another woman grows to be super duper extra jealous. You may imagine how the story will pan out for 60 episodes. Its length turned out to be its biggest weakness, this is further emphasized with its first and last 5 episodes of which they were dull and redundant. It would've been significantly better with a short runtime since the main leads were likable. Speaking of which, the main leads scenes were generally enjoyable, they had a good chemistry but only when it's NOT romantic. Their romance sucked! Making the king physically a weakling was a nice touch. Although the drama is named after the historical character and we were shown and told about her having ambitious ideologies but we rarely got to see that side of her character in the drama, just a few scenes in the middle and around the end. Instead, we got a typical melodrama in a historical setting while borrowing small bits and pieces from the real historical character for world building. The main leads were doing a lot of heavy lifting to keep the drama afloat. The drama is okay but it doesn't have much to offer and the long runtime is really hard to justify.

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Poor!

From the story to the characters behavior and their relationships were all made from pure revolting cringe. This drama's female lead had the perfect embodiment of the childish naive mentally handicapped female lead despicable trope. I truly dream of the day when Korean writers wake up to the realization that this behavior is NOT cute! Disguising this behavior under the umbrella of youth and innocence is borderline pedophilic. The leads' interactions and romance had to be the most painful part of the drama. But the pain didn't end there, the drama's length was utterly fatal. Excruciatingly long for all the bad reasons. As if they didn't edit the drama at all and just threw in all the footage they had filmed.

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Could have been better...

It was a seriously bad decision to show a battle as an introduction to the drama. Slow movement, bad choreography, extreme camera shaking to cover the extras' performance in the background and post production ugly blood splatter. It was clear the drama wasn't going in that direction, there was barely any fights after that. Aside from that, the drama had its issues with the writing. That can range from unnatural flow, disjointed pace, inconsistencies, and a poor transition/development of the characters. Soo Ro going into politics and a position of power was the worst direction to the character. It's outside the scope of his character and always came off as a child playing politics. The drama handled death poorly, whenever someone died you don't feel the impact and weight of their death. It's almost irrelevant after the next episode. The same can be said about the entire situation with the love interests the drama had. Which also featured questionable chemistry between anyone and everyone. With all that being said, at least the cast was decent (and you had a couple of shirtless Ji Sung scenes) to keep you distract for a hot minute.

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What even is this....

Shamelessly copy-pasting their homework from Police University (2021). Nonetheless, the drama had the worst combination of anything and everything which ruined any appeal for it. It would have been a tiny bit better if the drama didn't have any romance. Aside from the first 2 minutes and 42 seconds of the introduction scene of the first episode, this drama was a waste of carbon emissions.

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A sloppy mess for an interesting setting

It became quite apparent right off from episode 2 that this was a massive flop. The drama would have worked wonderfully and masterfully as a movie or at least as a 3-4 episodes short drama, otherwise, it's absolutely riddled with problems in its current condition and format. The unique setting and scenery weren't enough to help its case. It ingeniously transformed the art of storytelling into a chaotic, avant-garde mishmash of disjointed scenes that left me pondering the deep mysteries of life, such as whether the writers had ever heard of structured narrative or if they were just operating under the belief that plotlines are mere suggestions for lesser beings. Each plot twist, if one could even call them that, was a tantalizing leap into the abyss of narrative incoherence, leaving me on the edge of my seat not in anticipation, but in a desperate attempt to maintain my balance amidst the swirling vortex of plot holes and character motivations more elusive than a unicorn at a camouflage convention. I can't thank the creators enough for their valiant efforts to reduce character development to a cryptic crossword puzzle that nobody asked for, but we apparently all deserved, according to them. I wish to see better attempts going for a similar setting and theme from more competent creators. It's hard to recommend this drama unless you're a diehard fan of some of the cast members. Jun Ji Hyun disappearing for ~5 years then coming back with this project was nothing but a disappointment. It made it harder to be excited for her next project "Polaris (2023)".

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It's about friendship

Kinda boring. Maybe because I was expecting better revenge schemes? In fact, it wasn't about revenge. Just a group of lost souls who needed a friend at desperate times. But even then, the theme was weak anyway.

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YAWN!!!!

It's unbelievable how boring this drama was. Most of its run was wasted on a single plot that is the lost daughter. Other than the main characters, everyone else felt expendable and useless. The writer didn't put much effort in the side stories either. All of them were short and lacked development despite having 80 episodes. The romance was straight up forced and it only started to happen in the last 8 episodes. The drama clearly ran out of time or was cut short just by looking how they made the last 2 episodes. A quick abrupt time skip and a generic update of the character.

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Hmmm....

Poor quality, low budget, scuffed effects, poor color grading, murky story line, half functioning cast and a handful negative IQ characters. Uninspiring and dull cases. Might be the worst "negotiation" themed piece of media I've ever seen. Still watchable, I guess.

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Disappointing...

I don't know why but for some reason I had high expectation, it turned out to be a complete flop. One of the worst chemistry for a lead couple ever. They might as well replace the male lead with a random support character and it wouldn't matter. Most of the relationship is one sided, FL who is doing most of the heavy lifting and constantly being abused meanwhile ML barely there or reacting, all talk no action, it's truly exhausting to follow their relationship, especially with the unjustified hatred from the in-laws. It turned to a pure blind hatred.

The drama had no clear direction, around mid way through they were making shit up as they go. Random plots and character appearing and disappearing. Soo Bin completely disappeared in the last 1/3 despite being a main character, they didn't even bother writing anything for her. Even though she had a heavy involvement/impact on the story early on. Yu Ri's father inclusion was the worst part about the drama. For the second half there was no story going on other than the leads' story, all side stories were dead by then.

I don't recommend this drama. Because of the amount of shit they were making up, they writers completely trapped themselves in a corner and the only option to get out is to introduce terminal illness to force some emotional investments from the viewers for the climax. Evidently, the ending turned out to be bad with how they decided to execute it.

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Out of the 4 'Endless Love' installments, this one is the worst.

The mothers giving up their daughters to one another so easily was off putting, weird and irrational. This shitty start will linger with you for the remainder of the drama. Of course with such oldies they slap you with the classic terminal illness trope to give you an ending only your grandmother would love.

Out of the 4 Endless Love installments, this one is the worst. Spring Waltz, Summer Scent and Winter Sonata were better than this. This one isn't well written, they push hard to maximize the angst and sadness while neglecting anything else. Song Hye Kyo was gorgeous and remained so 22 years later!

Don't watch it from Amazon/KOCOWA, they cut some scenes here and there, and later on from episode 9-16 they shave off 5 minutes from every episodes. Watch the TV version or even better the DVD version if you can which got extra scenes where every episodes reaches +1h and got separate deleted scenes.

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The mask

Truly inconspicuous! The drama made me mentally and physically drained and exhausted with each single episode from the ridiculous godly amount of insane lousy shouting. I went to an ENT doctor and he told me I needed a new brain transplant since the old one was incapable to perceive any type of sensory stimuli. Huh. This drama was the equivalent of a nagging little spoiled brat roaming around you non-stop for no purpose other than seeing you losing your sanity or equivalent to a fleet of mosquitos determined to penetrate you as the last human left with suckable blood. What I'm trying to say, if the director was really entranced by vibrating vocal cords then he should've brought a real man to do the job. On a small side note, I find this period and setting of Japan/Korea to be the worst to watch through any media. They "almost" don't know how to go on about it. I can count a few rare exceptions on one hand.

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Pain

The story was so soulless and shallow it made the 12 episodes runtime so damn dreadful. The whole trio main cast were lackluster from all angles, both the actors and their characters. This drama was nothing but a cheap BL bait anyway. It should have been a short drama thrown on some random streaming services instead of being a full TV broadcast.

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BAD!

I was expecting mature human drama but I got stinky rubbish. Stupid story, stupid writing, stupid demented delusional characters. How was this even approved? This drama is actually the worst of its genre. It's impressive how bad it was. At least it serves as a good example of what not to do.

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.

It's a decent thriller mystery with an interesting premise and a good performance by the lead. Namkoong brought a lot of character to his character while trying to work with what turned out to be a mediocre flawed script with the usual plot holes. The pacing became problematic halfway through, as it felt sluggish and failed to maintain an engaging momentum. Its length is a contributing factor to that. The village story wasn't big enough to work with. Both female leads were poorly written and their inclusion affected the drama negatively. There was a poor attempt to force a romantic plot line which felt contrived and disrupted the narrative coherence. It would have been fine if they were to commit and go through with it rather than abandoning that. Both female leads lacked chemistry with Namkoong whether it was friendship/professional/romantic. The ending followed a typical and predictable pattern for its genre resulting in an underwhelming and unsatisfying ending. There was clearly a massive bait trying to capitalize on the "multi season" trend.

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