NO....

The looks are too deceiving in this one, this is 5% family drama and 95% melodrama with the usual violent violin playing in the background every 2.1 seconds. This is not a family drama and the tag should be removed. For the length the drama had there was barely any story and the writing wasn't passable at all. I was losing my mind because of this "James" plot line, 100 episodes of endless tease and hundreds of close encounters to reveal the father identity. That's mostly the main story, what's even worse is that the exact same scenario step by step is being repeated for another 30 episodes for the grandparents identity. The last 30 episodes were random shenanigans and cringe.

This drama definitely had one of the laziest dumbed down writings out there. The writer was relying heavily on the mentally challenged mother to create tension, I lost count how many times a character threaten the mother that result into a problem and people shouting. It also extends to the characters' writing, all of which were bland, one dimensional, single digit IQ and unlikable. The writer was also trying to push her political agenda of pro-life antiabortion so damn hard with multiple extensive dialogues sequences.

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Bad...

This is the worst long-running drama I've seen from SBS usually they are serviceable, no wonder they canceled the time slot. It's really unfortunate that Choi Jung Yoon came back from 7 years hiatus for this awful project. This is one of the most brainsmooth stories in kdrama I've seen, absolutely mind numbing. This is the writer's first drama and it's showing big time. Amateur writing, cheap production, bad stylists and horrendous cast performance. There are kids shows better written than this, it's hard to believe a human wrote this. A production value from 20 years ago, awful lighting and sound design. These stylists need to be fired, look at the characters' faces, a thick mask of whatever make up they have is about to fall off. Finally the cast, which consists of 85% of unknowns who can't act and are always awkward. For the same reason, the few side stories we had were uninteresting and lacked and characterization. I think what contributed to the death of this drama the most is the lack of familiar faces, the size of the cast and the side stories.

Misleading poster, the redhead was only there for the first 25 episodes then turned to brunette/dark.

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Kinda watchable...

Don't watch it for the romance, this is 90% politics/business/drama and 10% romance. Most of the couples don't get together until around the ending. Speaking of the ending, last 15 episodes was a one big event that got stretched for way too goddamn long. The ending itself was really lame, this weak-ass ending isn't fitting for a 64 eps drama. Many characters didn't get a follow up or update at the end, like Soo Hyuk's mother and her love interest.

The drama also lacked consistency, its pace is all over the place especially the writing quality, as if there are more than one writer going against each other. Episodes 30 to 50 felt like a dry batch. The excessive time skips were another weak part of the drama and a prime example for how not to do a time-skip. Every time there was a skip the drama created a jarring big disconnect with its content and flow. The action/fighting scenes look too staged and artificial. The dramatic thunder clap sound effect radiates extreme cringe energy.

It's weird for Jung Hye's father to feel this entitled for a daughter he didn't raise for 30+ years. He was introduced around the end and his sole purpose was to create some tension with the baddies, another reason why this drama should have been only 50 eps. Speaking of female leads, imagine if the writers gave both female leads more than 1 singular brain cell! That would make the drama a bit more tolerable.

Cha Soo Hyuk (Lee Pil Mo) is the worst part about this drama, this pathetic leech of sub-human with severe inferiority complex and victim complex. He deserves a worse ending, how he ended up wasn't enough.

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Great love story.

What's love? This is a mature story about people falling out of love, searching for love and are afraid of love. Great character writing and smooth exchange of dialogue. The subtle comedy was done wonderfully. The drama had a unique sense of direction at times where it expands beyond the conventional realm of drama, it even steps into film territory briefly with film-like shot compositions and witty dialogue. This is the type of drama where whether the couple came back together or not is irrelevant, their love story is what made it worth it. The drama isn't perfect by any means, but it succeed in delivering a well made package. Although I wish if they merged Mi Yeon and Yoo Kyung into one character/story instead of giving each a section in the drama.

Lee Ha Na, this is her first acting role in drama or film and she absolutely nailed her performance. She even outshone Son Ye Jin every now and then. I find her, as an actress, is better fit in casual roles like this one over action ones like in "Voice". It would be nice if Voice would just end with season 5 and Lee Ha Na would move to bigger and better projects.

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Passable, I guess?

The opening scene is a teaser from episode 17, I hate when a drama pull this kind of stuff. It's okay to tease a couple of episodes in advance but not a teaser from the ending. Speaking of the ending, the last two episodes were bad, they were leaning to heavily on old melodrama themes/cliches that doesn't work in the context of this drama. Most of the cast did a half-assed job, their performance came out as awkward and immature, especially from those who work in the campaign. The candidate's son Jang Sung Min was the worst character/actor in the dram, replace him with a stranger might be better.

Regarding the story and its events, there was no real big escalations that you might expect in a political focused drama, it was mostly the known generic jabs in a political context. They forced "In Yeong" and "Min Ki" plot line but then proceeded to brush it off aside without much regard. Their screen time appearance was very limited after that. The drama was passable at best.

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I had some expectations...

If you're looking for a historical drama about the foundation Goguryeo then this drama is NOT it. This drama was mostly about the in palace melodrama and conflict. Furthermore, it's important to know that this drama included a handful of fantasy elements sprinkled around all over it, so don't expect it to be grounded to reality. Han Hye Jin who played the female lead as Soh Seo No was a poor cast choice. Soh Seo No needed a more rigid and stubborn looking actress to better fit the character.

A weak incapable king, a greedy prince and an underdog illegitimate prince going aimlessly in circles. Wars, fights and action were surprisingly and disappointingly scarce for a never-ending 81 episodes historical drama about the founders of Goguryeo. Which is why we had little to no planning or strategy for these wars. That one big war at the end against another nation that we waited ages for, was condensed down to just 1 singular episode of utter disappointment. In fact, the entire last episode was extremely rushed and we were given a joke of a wrap up. They had all the time in the world and they couldn't make a decent send off. The last episode was absolutely stripped off genuine emotions. It robs you the wrong way after you had gone through 81 episodes. Speaking of which, they were trying too hard to reach the 81 mark with prolonged uncut full-scenes repeated flashbacks! You would lose your mind watching it serializing.

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Lazy writing

The insane amount of plot conveniences ruined the drama and killed even the slightest potential it might had which made the writing seems abysmal. Not only it was stupid with every step along the way but it also removed the tension with any serious scene. Moreover, we were over fed the same repeated information like babies. Even if we were to disregard all of that, the pacing was terrible with a big empty gap of nothingness in the middle parts. None of the side cast were interesting enough to make the middle parts worthwhile. Aside from the first episode, there wasn't much appeal left.

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Interesting concept but fails to deliver

That was kinda boring. We are barely given information about the mystery, it's mostly a slice of life with loads of repeated scenes. The actually story is no bigger than a 2-3 hours movie. Almost nothing happens in the first 5 episodes, the story starts at episode 6 with tiny bits of small teasers every now and then. Most of the "previous life" story is condensed in episode 15 and half 16. At least it was nice visually.

On another note, I prefer to see Yoo Ah In in movies rather than long format dramas. He was also the main and the only highlight of this drama.

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Decent

It's a decent drama but a few things held it back. Inconsistent pacing was too obvious to ignore. The inconsistency carries on with the writing, sometimes they are strategic and smart while other times they throw themselves as a human shield, this is coming from the same army and the same leadership. I liked the leading cast they did a good job but I wish they put more effort into writing the character Yi Hyun. While the romance is a side thing, they could have given it more attention to let it mature and develop more appropriately or remove the romance altogether. Their encounters were scarce which made the high moments less impactful due to the lack of investment in their relationship. Anyway, the drama is one of the better historical ones.

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Messy

It started with a lousy introduction that was too ambitious on paper and then began to jump between one plot after another until the end. There was a desperate need for a better coherent structure and pacing. The characters were more or less fine but, despite being one of the most important characters, the ghost lacked a better characterization to make her role more impactful. The last 1-2 episodes were fundamentally bad, their main purpose was to lay down a handful of new elements for an imaginary sequel. This is a bad common practice streaming services have been pulling since forever to keep hold of the viewers attention regardless if they were planning for a sequel or not. The only acceptable scenario for such a practice is to have a direct sequel to follow it. Anyway, the drama was very mediocre Sci-Fi with a handful of failures.

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Poong, the Joseon Virgin

The earlier episodes of the first season were decent and promising but there was a clear and undeniable pattern slowly starting to emerge after a few episodes. The drama was heading in a downward spiral throughout its both seasons. There was no clear direction to its story, I wanted it to remain as a slice of life but even that was not attractive on its own. Each passing episode felt like a downgrade of the previous episode. By the end of 2nd season, my interest had plummeted and it lost any remaining appeal. The only plausible reason for this drama to get a season 3 is if the studio wanted to commit some kind of money laundering/tax fraud scheme. It's never a good sign to adapt something and have its serialization based on public perception. This will most likely result in incomplete stories and padded semi-soft endings unless its creators were to pull through and be the exception. In more than one way, the Anime sphere shifted mostly towards this scheme in the past 6-7 years and it turned into a survival of the fittest type of race. The Kdrama is slowly heading in the exact same direction.

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The Red Death

Some soundtracks were brilliant and went hard while other ones were pure rehashed garbage picked up from your local free-licensed store. However, the drama itself suffered from being painfully long-winded, with excessive and unnecessary long shots that reflected negatively on the cinematography. Especially when the chemistry was average at best. Plot-wise, it fell into the trap of being extremely formulaic, treading familiar ground seen in many dramas with the girl/prince trope. It didn't dare to try anything new or to spin its own twist. The male lead made the whole experience significantly uncomfortable and challenging, his personality didn't exude any attractive qualities in the slightest; in fact, I found his behavior to be quite repulsive, appalling and off-putting, catered exclusively to the fan-fic obsessed mindset, which may explains its ratings.

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Vampire Diaries

The poorly written prologue wasn't a good sign going into this drama. The leads didn't develop their relationship naturally, most of what we got to signify their romance was long dreamy stares. That's pure lazy writing. This what their romance was based off which made it hard to care about their romance, let alone their unmatched chemistry. If we were to ignore the romance, then we are left with the vampires which were equally lacking. The pacing of the storyline seemed uneven, resulting in moments of sluggishness followed by rushed progress. The bad guy barely showed up in the first half. Although I didn't expect much but the ending was just too boring.

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Not good

A well sizeable chunk of the beginning was wasted and failed to hook the viewers in for quite some time. The ending as well was equally bad if not worse than the beginning. The writer completely gone mental in the worst possible way. Maximizing the cringe and the illusion of creating something artistic, not knowing he was a clown in a circus. The drama itself was embarrassingly dry and lacked appealing elements. A story not worth telling. I'm not sure about the historical accuracy but they did a poor job with storytelling regardless. They also turned Empress Ki into a joke of a character. The drama had a dislikable selection of leading cast. I hated watching Son Chang Min as a lead, Jeong Bo Seok was too much in your face and Seo Ji Hye was just okay-ish.

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