Stockholm syndrome in a nutshell

WARNING this review may contain very slight spoilers, so if you're like me and you don't want to know anything about the drama before watching it, please reconsider reading it.

Watching this drama was truly a wild ride. For various reasons. For first five episodes I was questioning my life choices and wondering if it really is the drama recommended for me by a friend. For a moment there I was sure it was a cruel joke. Like twenty episodes of shaky cam kind of joke. Because getting through those first episodes was really difficult. I don’t know what happened there, who was to blame, but this drama really doesn’t start well. But for those who manage it, their patience will be rewarded. Kinda…

So first impressions. Camerawork is absolutely bizarre. And I’m not only talking about shaky on-hand camera. Using fish eye lenses and very weird angles in the most unexplainable scenes, it all adds up to very weird and sometimes hard to watch cinematography. Plus it makes the series look very outdated. Shaky cam may not be annoying all the time, but in a scene where two characters are running with cameras strapped to them and next on hand camera following them, I’ve honestly started feeling nauseous. The problem persist with the lighting, or lack thereof. We only have natural lightning, which really doesn't do it's job. Colours look very washed and a lot of unnecessary shadows appear. Sometimes it looks almost as those cheap para-documentary series.

Let’s talk about first impressions about the characters.
So we have couple of main characters. I’m not sure why does the trope of male lead being a total asshole at first even exist, but it does and needs to be talked about. I’ve seen it a couple of times already and male character making fun of female, being absolutely mean towards her of even openly ridicule her is just so bad. Why does it even exist when after scenes like that I never want leads to end up together? I understand character development reasons, I know that in couple of episodes those characters will fall in love with each other, but at this point it just seems so unrealistic, that even later on I had trouble coping with it. There are some things that just cannot be so early forgotten.
Villain in this series is absolutely exaggerated. Him and all his people is just such a weird bunch of characters that there’re mostly ridiculously funny rather than scary. It's really hard to treat seriously someone who's main character trait is eating chocolates in weird manner.
Overall characters sometimes seem so childish it just seem so unrealistic that their actions would be possible in the army.

So we get the main character, Lee Jae Ha, your average, everyday Korean prince. You know the type, right? I always assumed that being royalty means that from early childhood you’re being taught how to manage this life. Well I guess Jae Ha skipped some lessons, because his older brother was equally with me embarrassed with mostly all the things that he did. His greatest accomplishment in the early episodes was not being killed right away by the North Korean team and trust me, nobody would blame them. And I know that it was explained that he attended normal school to blen in with the plebs or something, but still it looks like the guy has no preservation instinct whatsoever.
Opposite him, we have Kim Hang Ah, lethal weapon of North Korean Army. Woman who can kill you with rolled newspaper or whatever there is. Her only weakness is that the moment she changes from her uniform, she becomes this annoying high school girl who only dreams of finding herself a boyfriend. I’m not kidding, the change was overwhelming and so comical that I just couldn’t believe it. At one point she’s this strong soldier and then she acts like a damsel in distress being absolutely childish. When she’s off duty she dresses and acts like a high schooler and it completely doesn’t fit her serious army demeanour.
One more thing about this character, or rather the actress portraying her. Ha Ji Won. I’ve already seen her in Secret Garden, and I don’t know what happened but here her acting in some moments was so off. Maybe it’s because of her North Korean accent. To be honest, I’ve heard genuine North Korean accent only couple of times, so I’m no expert, but for her it sounded so artificial that it was hard to watch some scenes. It looks more like she tried to make fun of the accent.

So after all of this, we finally get like eight episode and finally this drama can pass as watchable. I will try not to include any spoilers here, but beware. At this point we get some instant character development (like, you know, absolutely irresponsible child of a man suddenly decides that he can rule the country of something) and finally some minor intrigue (till this point the villain was mostly unintended comic relief). We’ve been served cliche amnesia and blackmail. But life seems back to normal and anthem is the biggest issue now. We discovered that casually listening to Flight of the Valkiries while chilling in the garden passes in Korea as something normal and news headline is absolutely valid piece of evidence in court. We’re being served harsh truth about life and some other weird ideas. Overall a lot is happening in this drama, but it’s mostly just a lot of minor events that barely influence anything since they’re rarely mentioned more than once.
Scenes related to politics and international relations were mostly ridiculous and thanks to English speaking actors exaggerated ad unintentionally comical.

And here’s a twist. After all that bickering, after pointing out all of those things and more, that I cannot write here, cause spoilers, I woke up one day and decided that I enjoyed this drama. I don’t know what kind of weird Stockholm syndrome that was, but at some point I’ve actually started liking the characters and the drama started to be even enjoyable. I still seen all those ridiculous motives, I still think that the villain here was one of the worst I’ve ever seen. But somehow after twentieth episode I decided that I’m going to miss this drama.

I’d say that this drama is like a pug. You know, this small, cross eyed, snoring dog. It’s a bit ugly, it’s somehow sad, but you still love it. It just grows on you.

And I want to explain the rating I'm going to give. 6.5/10 is for me hight for this drama. At first I was thinking about giving it 3, but second half of the series redeemed a bit the mistakes of poor writing and bad cinematography. This drama is not perfect, it's somehow good but only when it's not embarrassingly naive. Still, I'm glad that I made it to the end.

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Amazing acting and poor writing

I’m so angry at this drama. Not because it was particularly bad. Because I had such high hopes for it I was just expecting more. And the truth is, this drama is average, but should be great. And ts was destroyed by poor writing and bad plot solutions.

First of all, casting was really good. There was maybe a couple of characters that wasn’t so convincing but the rest was truly memorable and could stand on their own. Ji Sung in main role was class of his own, even tough sometimes his shrieks were more comical than sad. But those were singular moments and wasn’t a big problem at the end.

But writing… especially in the second part was just bad. And basically only in one direction, which was sadly enough. Because let’s talk about villain and what we can do. Because apparently he can do everything without any consequences. He can lie himself away from every situation, he can kill anyone who tries to interfere with his plans and nobody would bat an eye. At one point I was sure he could just shoot the judge in the face and leave courtroom as a innocent man. No proof is enough to sentence him, no witness is enough and certainly not safe. When in doubt he can always use his trusty orange truck of death and problem is solved.
I’ve heard that chaebols can do a lot in Korea without consequences, but this guy just went too far. And obviously, when he couldn’t do something, be sure that his dad could.

This was so annoying that I was just praying for this series to end already, because his senseless impunity destroyed drama, that otherwise could be very good. And with it, it was average at the most.

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Missed potential in beautiful package

I think that no drama this year gave me so mixed feelings than Vincenzo. I’ve changed my mind about it multiple times while watching it and I’m still not entirely sure what exactly to think about it. For me this drama was just so uneven that it’s hard to give it just one score. But I’ll go point by point with this and hopefully at the end I’ll have my mind set.

The goodies:

Production
A while ago I’ve said that It’s Okay to Not Be Okay was the most aesthetically pleasing drama that I’ve watched this year. But after a bit of thought, I think that it should be ex aequo with Vincenzo on the first spot. While in It’s Okay to Not Be Okay more care was put towards scenography and costumes, in Vincenzo production itself was top notch. Photography and the way some scenes were shot was just so good that I think it could easily compete with western hight budget series in this category. And let’s talk about scenes that took place in Italy. Because you know what? They weren’t actually shot in Italy or anywhere near Europe. All of them were actually shot on green screen and even some actors weren’t in the same place, but were put together in post production. Which makes those scenes even more impressive.
For those interested, here’s material published by Netflix on their YouTube channel, mind blown, am I right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eQz7orIi8Q


Acting
I mean, with a cast like that I wouldn’t expect anything less than perfect. And I have to say, all actors deliver. Song Joong Ki had a particular hard job with his character talking a lot of Italian but it worked out better than I thought. I mean, I don’t speak Italian, I’ve watched some analysis of his language skills made by actual Italians and they had rather good opinions of it. And for my ear it actually sounds better than his English from Descendants of the Sun where it sounded like he just got the text written phonetically to memorise. This time it sounds more natural at least on the first glance.
Amongst others I’d have to highlight performances by Ok Taec Yeon (obviously, but I have to say that he’ve done a hell of a job with a character that could otherwise be absolutely ridiculous and exaggerated) and Kim Yeo Jin (the same as with character played by Ok Tae Yeon. I’d say that this drama served a bit too close to comical relief with it’s characters, but was saved by top acting).


Comic relief
About comic relief, but this time the intended one. At some point I was really confused of what this drama is trying to be. Because amongst all those pretty intense mafia scenes we have those little hidden gems of comic relief scenes and characters that actually, after some time, fit perfectly as a bit of pressure valve after some emotional or just simply intensive scenes. I’d say that my favourite comic relief were the tenants of Geumga Plaza, they’re such an amazing blend of personalities that comedic scenes with them were a pure gold for me.

Characters (esp. villain)
There’s a lot of them, which not always is a good thing (about it later) but I have to admit that all characters in this series are very well developed and thought through. There’s basically no weak link here.
And let’s talk about the villain, because that was hands down the best played character here. Ok Taec Yeon done such an amazing job portraying Jang Jun Woo that he basically saved this character that otherwise could be unintended comic relief here. But the way this character progressed being more and more psychopathic was a masterpiece. That ladies and gentlemen is how villains should be written. The way that we know what they could do without them showing it it’s just enough to make us shudder.
About Vincenzo himself. At first I’ve seen him as a bit exaggerated with the notion of him being basically more Italian than pizza itself. But it kind grew on me and the way the character was developed made him more believable with each episode. Finally we have what was promised, a cold blooded mafia guy who’s not afraid to use cruel methods on people who crossed the line, at the same time being composed lawyer choosing peaceful (or semi peaceful) methods first.

Baddies

Pacing
And here we have first problem and the thing that I was most angry about it because it spoiled my fun from watching this series. Pacing. It’s really bad in some episodes. Somewhere in the middle we have situation when in episode we have 90% of nothing happening and one really amazing scene that made me not drop this drama. I’m used to filler episodes, but here they were really bad, especially that there was no point in having them, since we were basically always in the middle of the action. Maybe it was because Vincenzo has 20 episodes, maybe with 16 it would be much better. Luckily, this 10%, this one really amazing scene kind of rewarded us for waiting remaining hour filled with monotonous dialogues.

Plot
Plot was the thing that I’m the most unsure about whether I liked it or not. I think it’s still linked to pacing of the show but at one point I felt that too many things are happening. We had so many side plots that it was hard to tell what’s happening with the main problem. It made the drama look pretty chaotic and watered down. Especially with this amount of characters. Even tough well written the abundance of them made it pretty hard to follow who’s who and what is he/she doing.


So to somehow bring it all together. For me Vincenzo was a bit of wasted potential of being really amazing series. A bit of it was lost because of really slow paced plot but the good things remain underneath it. So maybe it’s not for everyone, maybe you just need patience for it.

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You'll cry (mostly of laughter)

Mr. Queen was somehow shot in the dark when I decided to watch it. I basically seen one scene somewhere and it seems crazy enough to make me watch it. And it was so worth it.

This drama is weird and one needs to understand it, but from the first episode we get full force of weirdness of this show.
This drama starts off with a self absorbed womaniser waking up in woman’s body somewhere in Joseon era. And obviously this woman is no other than a queen. Go figure. And right away we get full freakout in fear of losing genitals and this may not sound good, but thrust me, this scene is pure comedy gold.

From the very beginning thing that I noticed the most was acting. And here a moment of sidenote. We have a situation where we have a man in woman’s body. All voiceovers were at this point made by Choi Jin Hyuk, actor who played main character before we has brutally misplaced to a different body. And this was reason why we couldn’t forget that the queen is not exactly the queen, but not only because of that, but also thanks to Shin Hae Sun’s class A acting. In my opinion it’s crucial to watch some other drama with Choi Jin Hyuk before Mr. Queen to know how amazing job is Shin Hae Sun doing with recreating his mannerisms. It was absolutely amazing.

It was around second episode when I notices how well balanced this drama was. Comedy mixes with mystery in great proportions. Plus amazing OST making it feel like we’re watching contemporary drama, not quasi historical one, and it doesn’t let us forget who’s trapped in Queen’s body.

The pace slowed down a bit by ninth episode, but it was saved by bringing up the subject of Jang Bong Hwan’s comatose body. Honestly I think that screenwriters could’ve focus on this subject more, because it was at this point just showed once and then immediately dropped.

By the tenth episode I noticed that drama was slightly loosing it’s appeal. We were deep into the palace intrigue which is not the most interesting motive of this drama. Plus there’s less and less Mr. in this Queen. His internal voice was suddenly changed to actual queen’s voice (at least it was properly explained why it happened) as well as scenes from the hospital that were just cut and till the last episode not to be seen. As the drama progressed is gradually turned from time travelling to period drama. Pace slows down and even though there’s some amazingly funny scenes, the drama loses its spirt which made first episodes so unique.

Because honestly, this drama could solely focus on cooking scenes and still would be amazing, since they’re truly highlight of the show. Just imagine recreating instant ramyeon during Joseon period or making veggie burger for very official palace meal!
Absolutely fantastic acting of Shin Hae Sun carried this drama. The most amazing part was that the viewer could clearly see when Bong Hwan took control of the body and when the queen was back., The difference in movements and even tone of her voice was staggering.

I was surprised that writers decided to change person doing voiceovers. I think that first choice- Choi Jin Hyuk was a very interesting idea and changing him, for Shin Hae Sun made it lose a bit of character. By then the viewer sometimes had to remind himself who’s mind was in queen’s body.

Chemistry between main characters, even though sometimes a bit confusing was working very well. Reintroducing the queen and some of her memories made the story less chaotic compared to the scenes when only Bong Hwan was in charge of the body.

Some background characters were not so distinguishable at first, but this issue was solved later on. I mostly mean here two older queens and duo of Kim Byung In + Prince Yongpyeong who at some point were barely distinguishable and it was hard to tell who’s on which side. Or maybe that was just my feeling but I felt a bit confused there.

And I cannot forget about the music, with very contemporary sound perfectly fitted with character of the drama not really being a period series but a time travelling one.

Overall I think that Mr. Queen was very good drama, the one you just watch with pleasure. Some pacing problem and filler episodes were easily balanced by comedic scenes. And the most important, acting was absolutely top of the class.

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Mediocre at best, but nice if you have some time to spare

I believe that there’s not really much to say about Bring it On, Ghost. And I’ll not try to sugar coat it. It’s not bad overall, but it’s not exceptional either. It’s just average, and I think that writing about average dramas is the hardest task there is.
Bring it Ghost is mostly carried by secondary characters that mostly work as a comedy relief here. The pair of students and always hungry old monk are usually the most interesting thing that’s happening on the screen.

So this drama started off as bad as it could actually. From the start I wasn’t really liking it, it felt mediocre at best. We’ve already had ghost motive in other dramas that made it more interesting than this one. Secondary characters helped a bit and actually were the reason that I’ve decided to stay by it (I mean, who could resist Kang Ki Young’s appeal, king’s of the secondary characters?). The main couple was promising and chemistry between them seemed to work, as long as they wouldn’t make a romantic couple out of them, which obviously happened.

But still, I’ve decided to watch it till the end. First, because I really don’t like dropping dramas, secondly because after Vincenzo I was really curious what Ok Taec Yeon was really capable of.

And the villain was honestly interesting from the beginning and surprisingly didn’t end up being completely over exaggerated character.

This drama certainly needs it’s time to get up to speed. Which isn’t necessary good, since you need to actually survive to have any form of fun here.

The ghosts’ side stories were mostly interesting on their own, sometimes even more than the main plot. They certainly made the whole drama easier to watch. In the end this is a “monster per episode” type of drama for most part and it swiftly was pushing everything forward.

The thing that I couldn’t get past here was logic behind the way ghosts function.It just seemed so weir idea that ghosts need actually food and sleep to function that I wasn’t able to get used to it.

In the end unfortunately it become just a mediocre and forgettable drama at best. The one that you need a synopsis to to actually remind yourself what it was about. I don’t want to be harsh here it’s not that I regret watching it. It actually had some quite good moments when I believed that I can really start enjoying it. Like I’ve said before, it’s not a bad drama. It’s just a drama to watch in the middle of things, where you don’t necessary need to focus much. If you need something to watch in between series like Mouse or Strangers from Hell, this is something for you.

And honestly, if Ok Taec Yeon won’t make you feel better then I don’t know what will. This guy can emanate really cute vibes when he wants to and he created surprisingly likeable character.

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I’m in this drama, and I don’t like it

Have you ever dreamed about being magically transported to your favourite drama? To meet the most interesting characters and have a great adventures with them? Have you ever wondered how would it be to be a part of a great romance, see all of this emotions and fun up close? Dream no more, and watch Dramaworld, because I swear, we’re all a Claire here.

Let’s start off with one thing, Dramaworld is not exactly a drama. It’s a not so subtle tip of the hat towards all the drama fans. And I regret one thing, that I’ve discovered it so late. But maybe it’s better, I could catch all those traps that writers prepared for drama veterans.

The story seems like a fan fiction of a thirteen year old, in a good sense of the phrase. Claire is a massive fan of Korean dramas. To the level that her family doesn’t really want to hear about another role of her favourite actors (seems familiar, huh?). Suddenly, thanks to a magic portal in her phone, Claire is transferred straight into the middle of the drama she’s currently watching. Soon, thanks to Seth, another person who comes from the normal world, Claire learns that she has a special mission to complete. She needs to take care that the drama will end as it should. With a kiss and a happy ending of main couple. Everything seems to be going incredibly wrong so far. And Claire soon messes up by trying to help too much to get main leads together and it’s so relatable because how many times while watching a drama we wanted to speed things up to see the main couple together already?!

But the plot isn’t really important. It’s simple, first, because there’s no really much time to follow it, Dramaworld consist of 10 episodes that takes up around 15 minutes each. Second, the plot is really just a secondary character here. The most interesting here is dissecting the drama tropes that attack us right and left. We have the ones that are openly talked about, like main character’s steamy hot shower or him always catching female lead when she falls. And then we have a second tier with fake sponsorships at the credit scenes or legendary kimchi slap. This drama is just tail made for drama fans and it’s so amazing.

I’ll finish it here, no sense of convincing anyone, this show should be watched by anyone who likes dramas, because it’s just a cheeky wink towards a whole k-drama fandom! It doesn’t need a long review, let’s make it as brief as the show itself, I could write about acting that's not so perfect, rather cheap production or naive plot, but why should I bother. For me this show is about having fun and it done a great job with it. That's why my score for it is very subjective, I wasn't expecting from it the same thing I'd expect from a normal drama, because why should I? It's not a drama, it's just a meta show to treat with a grain of salt.

Go watch it and have fun!

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Potential lost on those additional episodes

WARNIG, this review contains some massive spoilers!

This drama gave me a lot of mixed feelings. For the most part it seemed very interesting and actually well written. I think I should be warned beforehand by really bad reviews, but at first I didn’t understand why it was so criticised, as it seemed to be actually entertaining. But then something happened.

Let’s start from the beginning. The idea is simple and actually well known. Gu Seo Jin is a young chaebol, director of amusement park. He is very composed, everything must be according to his words, he rules his company in a very stoic manner. And there’s a very good reason for it. Seo Jin has a DID, dissociative identity disorder. And his other identity, Robin, who’s name everyone avoid, can appear when Seo Jin’s heart rate will go too high. So no excitement for Seo Jin. But his five year steak of being Robin-free is about to be broken when Ha Na appears on the scene. Young circus actress work on Robin in mysterious ways and soon he appears.

And honestly, that’s a neat idea, and how it was done was also interesting. The comparison with Kill Me, Heal Me comes naturally, so I’d only say that transformation lacked weird effects, like change of eye colours, magically appearing tattoos or eyeliners (as it was in Kill Me Heal Me). It all seemed a bit more natural here, but of course it wasn’t perfect either.
And at first I really liked this drama. It all seemed pretty well. Production-wise it might’ve not be the best looking, there were some weird, pretty ridiculous moments, but not bad at the end. Main characters were interesting and well played (I mean, duh… Hyun Bin, right?).

It was sometimes painfully cliche. Because of course, and here comes major spoiler, so be aware, Seo Jin’s trauma from the childhood was caused by kidnapping. And of course, the child that was kidnapped with him is now a perp who kidnapped Seo Jin’s therapist. And Seo Jin wanted to save the kid as well but wasn’t able to do it, so that’s why Robin has a need to save people.

But aside all those things, up to some point this drama was pleasant to watch, just like that. Wasn’t the best, but I wasn’t bored, I felt somehow even invested in the story. Characters were interesting, there was some king of plot, even though writers seemed to forget about some motives and they brought them back out of spite.

What you can see from the beginning is cheap production. It’s maybe not incredibly obvious but I laughed my butt off when I’ver seen how they’ve changed car for accident scene. Brand new Mercedes shapeshifter into old Nissan. I mean, color was the same so I guess it’s all fine. But you can see after scenes like this that it’s not all perfect here. At least CGI gorilla wasn’t the worst.

So I actually enjoyed watching it, it all seemed very good, aside of those minor flaws that can be overlooked considering that this drama is not that new.

But you may ask, what happened then? Why am I writing good things about drama that I’ve marked so low?
Well… it all happens somewhere in the middle of the series. I’m always a bit sceptical towards drama that have more that standard 16 episodes. I’ve learned that many times writers just don’t use this additional time perfectly. And it happened here again. For four episodes we have an absolute chaos that doesn’t really changes anything. There’s a lot going on, but it doesn’t have any effect on the main plot.

A lot of new motives were brought then and some were totally forgotten about (third identity, anyone?). And yet, there were just too much information, too much was happening at the same time but the issues were not solved. There was no real plot development.

There was one episode that I swear was just dialogues. Nothing real happened, there was just exposition talking. Who’s who, and what could happen, that sort of things.

And the villain, interesting at first he grew into this exaggerated, over the top bond-type villain, who can do anything and cannot be captured. There were moments that I was wondering if he’s invisible because despite doing pretty obvious things, police still couldn’t figure out that it was him all along.

And don’t start me on the hostage situation episode. Yes, EPISODE. The whole episode when we had exclusively hostage situation. Nothing more happened, just talking about kidnapper. How it ended? I have no effing idea, it was so chaotic that I actually I haven’t catch all of it.

After this we had stretching motives till the very end. One issue had to be talked through by everyone and before anything happened my curiosity was long gone.

And only at the end, last two episodes we had some sense back, those two episodes brought my faith in this drama back a bit, but nothing could bring back my time that I’ve lost before.

So… I’m a bit in a pickle here. I really wanted to like this drama. Despite all of its flaws, ridiculous solutions and poor production. I liked main characters and I really liked how it all ended between them. But the truth is that Hyde, Jekyll, Me should have 16 episodes, no more. That’s it, thank you.

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Not only for medical drama fans

From the beginning I liked the way that the characters were introduced. Little by little, showing just enough information for this moment. Slowly uncovering the main plot. We were subjectively shown what happened, not always getting the whole picture. So it was a slow exploration of the story, but very satisfying one. From the first episode we got three characters who were clearly somehow connected- directly or through similar experiences. And the first episode that was somehow a prequel to the mail story perfectly introduced us to the characters without uncovering all the cards.
I’m, not a big fan of medical dramas, I think I’ve already said it in other of my reviews. In my life I watched enough medical series so everything after that seems just not enough to keep my interest. But here the medicine seems to be just a background to the events of the drama. It sets the tone, but here, people are the main focus, not necessary their illnesses.
It’s hard to find drama that have so many interesting characters as this one. They’re all well developed, they all have their specific set of characteristics. They all are motivated by their own set of rules and truths. And it doesn’t matter if we’re talking about main characters, secondary ones, background characters. We have so many interesting stories of patients that even during slower episodes, lack of progress of the main plot line wasn’t a problem. And kudos for the “villains” of the story. For their humane side and well explained motivations. It’s just that all of the characters seemed very human, very true. And sometimes it’s just difficult to have such a great cross-section of different personalities without even one being over the top or exaggerated.
I don’t know if I have to even mention acting here. I’ve learned long time ago that Ji Sung could play turnip and it would be the best acted turnip in history of vegetables. This role seems to be just made for him. The composure and cold calculation mixed with personality of a person who always had to count on himself just works perfectly with him. I just think that this actor does his work the best with difficult roles. I’ve seen him in some pretty normal ones and they just wasn’t it.
The rest of the cast delivers as well. Lee Se Young who for some reason I haven’t recognised from Kairos, even tough I love this drama, was very good. And duo made by Lee Kyu Hyung and Shin Dong Mi and their characters path of understanding was just perfect.
This drama couldn’t defend itself from couple of standard cliches that maybe weren’t that obvious, but if you watched enough dramas already, you kinda knew what will happen now. I’ll not spoil any more, but let’s say, that what I was afraid would happen, happened and I wasn’t happy about it, since it’s one on my least liked tropes in dramas when it comes to figuring out the finale.
And the music. It’s nothing big, there’re no big hits here. No loud bangers. But it just fits perfectly. After finishing the drama I like to listen to soundtrack, even during writing of the review, and I was pleasantly surprised how many good song there’re there that were amazing background to the events on the screen.
Just to conclude. I wasn’t really sure what to expect here. I’ve read some mixed reviews about it, but was very pleasantly surprised with what I got.
If you like medical dramas and don’t mind some standard plot cliches, by all means, watch Doctor John, you’ll like it.

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Guilty pleasure, I guess...

I swear I was open minded as I could be starting this series. From the start I knew that it’s a simple melodrama and I shouldn’t expect much from it, I should just sit down and enjoy. I wasn’t expecting elaborate plot or great action. Just good chemistry and a lot of emotions. And it started just as it should be. Right away we got interestingly composed characters. Shin Joon Yeong is an asshole of an actor who gets diagnosed with terminal illness. No Eul is poor reporter with loan sharks breathing down her neck who lost her job because she was so desperate for money that she took a bribe. She want to make a documentary about Joon Yeong but he’s clearly against it. Until it turns out that they’re actually long lost friends.

So I have to admit, first episode was exactly what I wanted from it. We got some additional plot lines, additional exposition showing what exactly happened before that lead to this situation. And it was a pretty solid introduction to the characters. You know, two full episodes of flashbacks, thanks to which we exactly knew what for the next 18 episodes our main characters will be moping about. And there’s plenty of moping here. And watching longingly through the glass at laughing people. And lying and deceiving. Are you interested yet or should I continue?

So for first couple of episodes I have no objections to. Characters’ actions are pretty logical, even when they don’t seem like that. Like the way Joon Yeong acts. He just doesn’t care at one point. He knows that he’s going to die so he’s not looking at the consequences of his actions. He’s not bothered by the outcome so he just proposes to No Eul during his concert in from of thousand of fans. Does it make sense? Has No Eul showed her interest in him? No to both, but he couldn’t care less, really. And honestly, that totally makes sense, even if it doesn’t seem like it.

And it all was nice and breezy until I’ve noticed one worrying thing. I could swear that last episode that I’ve watched then, and it was something in the middle of the drama, consisted in 90% of two guys starring at a girl longingly from the distance, and honestly it was a bit much. But the notion of it being simple melodrama still persisted, so I hope for the better.

All things aside, Kim Woo Bin gave an amazing performance throughout the whole series. The problem was that characters were absolutely unlikable, doesn’t matter from what perspective to look at them.
Almost all characters in this drama are awful human beings. They lie, deceive, are insincere and get angry easily. They don’t talk to each other, and if they do, they either lie about their feelings or are absolutely awful to each other. Seems like their aim in life is to make their or somebody else lifes miserable.
No Eul is absolutely shameless, trying to get money left and right. Even after getting billion Won from Ji Tae it seems to not be enough from her and she want to get more from Joon Young. And she’s absolutely not hiding her motives here. And no, the argument, that she had financial problems and she tries to provide for her family is not an excuse to her behaviour. And Joon Yeong is honestly not better. Some of his actions can be excused, but most of the time he behaves as a grade one asshole. I’ve figured out that something is wrong with him when he made No Eul believe that he’s in critical state in hospital just to get her confession. And until somewhere half way into the drama, their love-hate relationship is what het this drama going, it’s the guilty pleasure in the purest of forms. But it gets tiring pretty fast to be honest.

Because I swear, 90% of this drama is just everyone suffering from the distance without telling anyone why they suffer. And as it traditionally goes with this type of drama, a bit of communication and honesty would solve most of those problems. Here everyone claim that their method of coping with the situation is the only true one so there’s zero talking and only sulking. BTW, the remaining 10% of the drama is just understatements that further complicate the plot.

The plot is pretty slow, and it’s not the issue of lack of development, it’s just that relationship of main characters is very stagnant. The issues that they’re having are not being resolved, they just get more and more complicated without actually moving forward.

Some events seem to not have any real influence here. We get some informations that are soon to be ignored, replaced by other events. No Eul discovers that Joon Young was the one who stole the usb with evidence in her father’s death, but apparently that’s not a problem for long. Everything seems back to normal pretty quickly especially that she also discovers that he’s dying. And while we’re at it, not much shows that he’s actually terminally ill. Some headaches, some blurry vision and some minor memory problems but for most of the time nothing really indication that he’s supposed to be dead in a month, since he’s living pretty normal life so far. And I know that showing his suffering probably was not an aim of this series, but it just looks hard to believe that he’s really in a bad state.

In the end, it started as a nice guilty pleasure and ended as a partially pleasurable torture. To each their own I guess.

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I guess I've seen it somewhere before...

There’s not really much to say about this drama. And at this point you probably wondering why then I’m writing this review? Well, the reason is simple. The fact that there’s not much to tell, is a review of its own. 18 again is just a concept that was seen before and there’s not much more to add.

We’ve seen this before. Zac Efron is a basketball star at his high school but for some reason his life does not go according to plan and he wakes up one day as a bitter 30 something year old and want some change. The chance appears when in by magic he get’s a second chance in life, he wakes up as a teenager. Simple? So now, let’s translate this idea to Korean and add another 15 hours of content to this idea that was born as a single movie.

I don’t really remember original movie that well, but I could’ve swear that I’ve seen some scenes from first episode so I guess it was pretty close to the movie.

But let’s just leave this issue. This drama is not original, we’ve seen it before, but does it defend itself on its own? Can we just watch it without thought of Zac Efron in shorts in our heads? Pretty much yes, and then what is left, it pretty good. You know, mostly because somebody tested this idea before.

Overall I like the idea of the fresh perspective, when we progressively see the same topic from various points of view just to know that our main character might not be entirely right in showing the reality of situation. We had similar idea in Familiar Wife, where we also progressively unveiled how things looked according to other character versus the main one. And obviously it changed how we seen the relationship between main characters. In 18 Again we have Hong Dae Young perspective, where he thinks that he’s done everything he could for his family, but when we hear what his wife thinks about it, the situation looks pretty different.

Honestly, I wasn’t too invested in main characters relationship. Hong Dae Young for me was moderately interesting, especially in his teenage version. By the way, when did we cross the thin line between Yoon Sang Hyun playing sexy rock start in Secret Garden and father figurer that got old pretty badly? Because that’s like eight years between those two dramas but I barely recognised him!

Anyway, back to the point. I like how this drama slowly changes from the story about guy who suddenly goes back to being teenager to a story of how other characters cope. Hong Dae Young is a centre of the plot, but not necessary its main focus point. And that’s good, because sometimes the background characters are much more interesting than what happens to the main ones. Secondary characters are truly building atmosphere here. Especially that romantic motive between Jung Da Jung and young Hong Dae Young is at some point pretty weird. I mean I know that in this body there’s almost 40 year old man, but Da Jung casually dating teenager just looks weird. This whole situation seems wrong. And if we’re already here, there’s around zero chemistry between those two.

To add to all of this, we have a bunch of unnecessary cliches. We have a white truck of death, we have people who know each other but don’t know it till the end. And then suddenly it’s a big of a deal.

On a plus side, we have good comedic relief motives. I have to admit, scenes where Hong Dae Young and Go Deok Jin argue as a son and father and are constantly overheard by the office staff is a comedy gold here. Especially with half of those dialogues being beeped out because of swear words.

Overall I kinda enjoyed this series, but more like a guilty pleasure. It’s not bad remake after all, so if you don’t mind watching very predictable series, then I guess go on.

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Have you watched Strangers from Hell and decided that you need more? Or maybe you think that this drama would be much better with, I don’t know, mutated monsters? What if beyond completely weird tenants, the building would be isolated from the outside world? If you thought all of those things and wanted to watch something like that, I have a good news for you, somebody thought about it as well, and here we have: Sweet Home.

Right off the bat in the first episode we’re introduced to some of the characters and we get to know surroundings. So we have this shabby old building filled with weird characters that we don’t know what they’ll do next. They are absolutely white cards and often they turn out to be not what we first think them to be. All characters are a bit (or actually very) weird and honestly, it’s hard to trust anybody, even when we get to know them a bit better.

This drama is equally amazing as it is confusing. We don’t get the whole spectrum of informations, we don’t know what’s going outside of building, what’s the reason for monster invasion, what is the reason not everyone turning into monsters. This is the reason why this drama is so unpredictable.

And let’s talk about special effects. They’re not perfect but they’re enough to get the atmosphere absolutely right. Sometimes they look like a stop motion animation but they look very good. Together with lightning and scenography they give us the feeling of an old fashioned gore horror.
Plus music and we have a perfect combination. The soundtrack will stay with me for a long time, especially Warriors by Imagine Dragons. Even though it’s my husband’s ringtone, from now on, I’ll only think about those epic episode ending scenes that this song was a perfect background music to.

And let’s talk about acting. Because Song Kang, among others does such great job here, that I had to actually google him to check where I’ve seen him before because his acting was just so different here comparing to Love Alarm that I haven’t recognise him right away. Along with him we have Lee Do Hyun, who even though very young is already a recognisable face in drama world, and also does amazing job. Them both plus couple of other actors (if I had to list all good actors here, this review would turn out to be too long) and we have very good, very balanced cast where all members create very unique characters.

So if you like monster horrors, are not afraid of blood and intestines basically everywhere and have like ten hours of your life to spare I guess you should definitely watch Sweet Home.

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Perfect simplicity

I don’t give a perfect score lightly, let’s just say that officially, that’s fifth drama that I gave 10 out of 10 and I just had to check it, because I honestly didn’t remember when was the last time I did it (for those interested, four remaining perfect dramas on my watchlist are: What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim, Love in the Moonlight, Kairos and Goblin). But with this I really didn’t have a choice. It took me a while to understand that this drama just deserves it, since I could’t find any weak side to it. Somehow I decided that there must be something wrong with it. I was just looking for a reason not to give it a 10, but I couldn’t. This drama is just perfect.

The story is simple. Hyun Jin is high positioned manager in a cosmetic company. She’s self assured woman of success. There’s just one thing that’s missing and it’s a child. So in a pretty advanced age of 41 she finally get’s pregnant. The thing is that work is everything for her, so she doesn’t really have time to prepare for maternity. After difficult birth Hyun Jin and her husband discover that they’re pretty clueless about what to do with an infant so they go to the titular Birthcare center, a luxurious resort, where young mothers can relax after childbirth.
Hyun Jin quickly learns that rules in Birthcare Center are totally different than in outside world. Here nobody cares what are you doing and how old are you. Your name cease to exist, since everyone will call you by your child’s name. And the most important thing is to have enough breast milk to feed the baby.

The drama doesn’t really have one main plot. There’s one motive that travel through some episodes, but the main action point is Hyun Jin stay at Birthcare Center and her path to become true mother. Instead of main plot, every episode is about one problem or subject related to motherhood. From what young mother should sacrifice for a child to naming, we get vast array of subjects that bother young mothers.

At one point I’ve noticed that I’ve just watched a whole episode about breastfeeding and it was absolutely amazing. Because this drama shows that there’s not just one way to be a good mother. I love that to this one sided environment where the amount of sacrifice shows how good of a mother you are suddenly comes a woman that openly admits that mother’s feelings are also important.

Because characters are what build this drama. From main characters to the ones that appear only for one episodes. They all bring something to the story, even if we need to wait for it for a bit. And they all have their own problems and own bigger or smaller successes. Privately I loved the most plot line of Hyun Jun’s (or “Sa Rangs mother”) that suffered from her husband indifference. For almost whole series I had my mind set to what I want this plot line to end like. And it turned out to end totally differently, and after seeing the reasoning behind it, I’ve decided that it makes a prefect sense. But throughout the whole series viewer saw this situation and it was almost clear what the outcome would be.

Playing with convention in this drama is another reason why this drama is so perfect. From “escaping zombies” from the hospital and leaving the infected behind, to introducing Birthcare center hierarchy with Snowpiercer reference. And all of it is just a background to the bittersweet story about hardships of being a new mom. And what this drama does perfectly is juggling between comedy and drama. There’s nothing in between here, honestly. It’s either visiting shaman to find out which name would guarantee that the child would become a lawyer or absolutely heartbreaking side story about loosing a child and trying to fill the void.

And this drama can keep the viewer entertained even with a smallest of story. Even side plots seem interesting enough.

And all of those things aside, what this drama hit me the most was an emotional baggage that came with it. The dilemma that was the centrer of the story about what a woman has to sacrifice to be a mom was for me truly depressing. When I saw all those young (and as it turned out later on very successful) mothers stripped from their identity by wearing those horrible, saggy dresses and being called by their child’s name. And the way Hyun Jin tries to stay relevant at her job, but is inevitably slowly replaced by someone else. This was truly terrible. Like, because she has a child, she has to resign from her life, when her husband is living pretty normally. To be honest, I’m actually trying for a baby with my husband. We had some rough moments so far, so some story here hit me personally. And when I’ve watched this drama, what I initially felt was fear. Is it the reality of motherhood? Is really sacrificing all your life the core of motherhood? Is it really the end of the life as I know so far?

This drama asks all those questions, and its characters answer them in a lot of different ways. Which is also another answer of its own. That there’s no just one way to be a good mother. That motherhood is absolutely complicated and sometimes incredibly exhausting. That it’s normal to ask yourself a question: is it worth it? And: am I doing it right? And it might be silly to read all of those things from a drama, but maybe that’s the reason it’s so great. That underneath all this silly humour and ridiculous scenes there’s something more to this rather simple story.

This review turned in a very personal and a bit off topic direction. But what I want to say here is that this drama is the best that I’ve seen in a while and will stay with me for a long time.

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Punchy, surprising but unfortunately, not till the end

This was supposed to be it. The holy grail. The chosen one. The drama of the year. It all started absolutely perfectly, first three episodes were flawless. At the end, I was speechless. I was ready to give it a perfect score. But then something happened. Something unthinkable. Something I was afraid that will happen. The drama started to fall back. But let me start form the beginning.
I have to admit, I was absolutely in love with this series since the first episode. Because this show started with a bang. Kang Hae Ra is a successful woman with an even more successful but abusive husband. Her life starts to crumble when during dinner with helpful fan she blacks out and wakes up to the accusations of a romance with much younger man. Her contracts are terminated and bank account seized. Cancel culture at its finest. Hae Ra gets suspicious seeing the recording allegedly showing her entering hotel room with an other man. But the woman on the recording is wearing completely different shoes. Hae Ra hires Hu Eun Hye, reporter who quickly discovers that something’s wrong. Hae Ra is ready for her revenge.
The magical thing that shook me the most after watching this episode was how Hae Ra was shown till this point. She was supposed to be this weak, abused woman. But suddenly we see that she hit her husband back. That she knew before that he was cheating on her, but without concrete proof and with her husband being public figure she couldn’t do anything. But now, with proper recording she can get her revenge. And she does that completely cold blooded.
After that another characters are coming to the team. Cha Min Joon is a cold blooded attorney that decides to help Hae Ra in exchange for her continuing her revenge channel. She’s supposed to help women that were wronged by Min Joon’s clients. Soon it turns out that it might not be the only reason Min Joon needs her help.
So first of all, characters are absolutely amazing. They all have very clear motivations, are amazingly written and are overall very believable. Even villains here are interesting. I have to admit, the character of Hae Ra’s husband was my favourite at the beginning. Of course he was a human trash, but writing this kind of character in a way that viewer wants to know more about him is something. In this case Lee Hoon Seok is cold, calculated and absolutely ruthless, yet still on the outside, for medias, he’s calm and composed. Perfect scene showed him on the conference’s backstage, when he talked with Hae Ra, and turned his microphone in perfect moments for audience to hear his accusations, without showing the whole conversation that would put him in bad light. Conflict between him and Hae Ra, where they basically throw the ball back and forth trying to make their life miserable was absolutely fantastic. And this may sound as if I was a sociopath, but it was just so well written.
And at this point, after couple of episodes, I was hoping only for one thing: let it last. I was just hoping that the drama would just maintain this level till the very end which will easily grant it a ten point score for me. I was ready to announce it being the best drama I’ve watched so far.
In my native language we have saying that goes more or less like: don’t praise the day before the sunset. And this fits here perfectly, because at one point, around episode sixth or seventh I was noticing something bad, and it got only worse with time.
So on sixth episode I’ve noticed the pattern. And it’s never a god thing, especially with the drama that’s main strong point is unpredictability. But it was there, because Hae Ra every time just let anyone corner here and by cleverly placed phone she get the proof good enough to get her revenge. So since there all I had to do was just wait for the phone to be revealed.
And when on eight episode we got a White Truck Of DeathTM it was a beginning of the end really.
And don’t get me wrong, by this point the drama still got that initial punch. Still was able to absolutely surprise me in the most unpredictable moments.
The main plot was great, it was witty and well written. But side lines were sometimes just plainly ignored. Till the end I was waiting for explanation of some very important parts. And some events seemed to just be ignored by the characters. Like someone betrays your trust completely, you just don’t quickly forget it and go on with your life.
The series started the best it could but lost its momentum half way through. It become repetitive and stagnant so bad that I’ve barely watched last three episodes.
Character were rather well written, but there’re so many side characters that it’s easy sometimes to lose track on who’s who, especially that they like to change side from time to time, and we get those minor characters that just come back after a few episodes and viewer needs to search in memory who this person is.
First episodes were amazingly thought through plotwise. Characters actions were logical and justified. So it pains me twice as much seeing all this ridiculous things that happen in the last episodes. It’s like writers just took a day off and quickly scribbled some solutions to emerging problems.
So just to sum it up somehow. I still love this series. I still think that it was one of the best ones I’ve seen recently. That’s why I’m so sad that it turned out just average at the end. I’m so sad that the punchy, cliffhanger episode endings that carried this series in the beginning were gone. I’m sad that we get so many repetitive solutions to the problems. We have characters in situation that is seemingly hopeless and then boom, 180 turnover and suddenly everything goes according to plan. And it’s great one, or twice. But seeing it almost every episode just seemed so unrealistic.

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Warning, this review contains massive spoilers related to character identity and ending, so beware.

So I’m continuing my unplanned series of time travelling dramas, this time with Tunnel. After Signal and Kairos, there’s time (heheh, get it? TIME) to get into a bit more literal time travelling, since till now the dramas revolved more around time communication, not direct travel. This time, we’ve got it, there’s movement here, movement in time (cue Doctor Who intro).
So we have late eighties, when leather jackets were in and humanly treatment of suspects was unheard of. Park Gwang Ho, young team leader of violent crime unit, is on his way to catch serial killer who strangles women with their own stockings. Unfortunately something goes a bit wrong and Gwang Ho wakes up around thirty years in the future (cue Mr. Queen intro). Luckily this time Choi Jin Hyuk’s genitals are intact (don’t hit me, watch Mr. Queen for reference) but the status of his life, not much so. He get’s the job of junior officer in the same department that he worked in the eighties, but there’s a lot of questions he wants to know the answer to. One of them is who is the guy with the same name, that Gwang Ho replaced and why are people so obsessed with phones. The new problem arises when he finds another woman strangled with her stockings. Thirty years later.
First feeling that I get after watching first episode was flashbacks to Life on Mars (original BBC version). There we had similar situation but in reverse (travelling to past, not future). There also we had similar problems with fitting in to new environment that is using different investigation methods. And the same as in Life on Mars, I’ve instantly fell in love with dynamic between two main characters. Park Gwang Ho and Kim Seon Jae are both unlikable but with different reasons. Gwang Ho is loud and obnoxious, dive kicking the suspects whereas Seon Jae is silently judging everyone, not bothering with answering questions. Which later on, makes Seon Jae’s relationship with Shin Jae Yi perfectly believable. They’re both pretty weird.
Some things are unfortunately painfully obvious to the viewer. Like true identity of Shin Jae Yi being daughter of Gwang Ho. The viewer can clearly see where this motive is going couple of episodes before it’s finally revealed. But unfortunately, the amount of coincidences, like that is just too much and it makes some things obvious later on. Viewer just learns to look for patterns like that. Like every time someone’s identity is to be revealed, we can tell in advance what’s going on. And you know, in mystery drama, it shouldn’t really happen.
And since I’ve lost hope, that this review will be spoiler free, let’s talk about relation between Gwang Ho and Jae Yi, because how it develops is absolutely crazy to witness. Right away after knowing his true identity she’s staring to treat him as her father, even being urged to call him Appa. And you know, for any other character I wouldn’t be so surprised, but Jae Yi from the beginning was shown as this weird, socially distanced character who’s relation will people is absolutely antisocial. The idea of her being all of a sudden touchy feely to an almost stranger was for me very unnatural. Plus Gwang Ho from the bat starts to call her by her old name (that he learned from someone on the way, since till then he didn’t really know at this point that his wife was even pregnant) and is treating her as his daughter (with standard “you cannot date this man”) which is an absolutely cringe, since technically he’s younger than her.
We have very narrow number of characters here. There’re no new suspects, they all emerge from characters we already know. And this is not that bad of an issue, but just working with the same spectrum od characters all the times felt a bit stuffy at some moments. But that might’ve been just my feeling. Aside of that we have a very nice array of characters, to the point that we quickly get familiar with them.
I’ve wanted to ignore the ending, but I have to say something, because you know what, it absolutely spoiled my impression of this drama. After all this back and forth time travelling, I was sure that the reason for Gwang Ho to travel to the future, was to know the identity of the murderer and to finally catch him in the past. You know, so he wouldn’t commit all those crimes. But no, or at least it wasn’t shown, because it seems, that after catching him in the future, Gwang Ho came back to just live his life, and with all the information that he had (including his diary where murderer one by one describes his crimes) catching him would be fairly easy, right? So it seems that catching him in the future was partially pointless, without saving all his victims that he killed on the way.
But, cutting back to the chase. Overall, I find Tunnel a good drama. With some exceptions of course, but I have to admit, the characters and their chemistry was what finally bought me. And you know, you can never have enough time travelling plots!

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There's something seriously missing here

I have this thing that if somebody would recommend me to watch something a lot, I would instinctively postpone watching this thing till forever. Normally I want to know as little as possible about the series I’m about to watch, that way I do it with clear mind and no expectation. And maybe that was exactly the problem I was so disappointed after watching Signal. Plus, at the same time I was watching Kairos, series that’s based on very similar idea, and that gave me additional perspective on how Signal is using the motive of communicating with the past.

The idea is relatively simple. In 2017 detective Park Hae Yeong is solving long lasting murder case when he finds old walkie talkie that allows him to communicate with Lee Jae Han, who turns out to be police officer from late eighties, who’s also working on the same case but in the past. Knowledge that they both acquire helps them solve the crimes that were opened for years. But there’s a catch. Every, even slightest change to the past dramatically influences events in the future (or present, depending how we see it). So every step is very risky.

Writing about Kairos couple days ago I admitted that I love time travelling related motives and Signal was actually first on the list, since it was recommended to me so many times. And I’m honestly not sure where does all that praise come from, since Signal turned out to be merely mediocre drama for me.

I’d like to say here that I’d probably won’t be able to restrain myself from comparing Signal to Kairos, so if you don’t want any spoilers from both of the series, please beware.

I like how whole mechanism of communication via walkie talkie was introduced early on. Basically the first episode was pretty neat introduction to the characters and the way changing the future influences future events. So at his point the viewer has more or less knowledge of what can happen when the past is changed. Even tough first episode was pretty slow, at his point it wasn’t an issue. The problem was that the pace was like that basically throughout the whole series. It wouldn’t be that bad if we get some connection with the characters, but unfortunately they seemed so distanced that it was hard to get emotionally attached to them. And I don’t only mean time distanced but I think it also played a valid role in how the drama was viewed. I’ve wrote in Kairos’ review that the strong side of that drama was emotional bond with the characters. We’ve seen events basically from their perspectives. We’ve shared their feeling, we could immerse ourselves in their pain. Here I had the problem that characters of Signal were much more distanced. Obviously one reason was that they weren’t so connected to the cases they’re solving as it was with Kairos. They were also separated by much longer time period. The crimes were mostly pretty old, since in the present timeline they were dealing with very old, sometimes over 20 years old cases. So the emotional attachment towards them was almost inexistent. And I mean, we've seen some tears, we've seen some anger, but it was just not enough.

The first episode also proved that changing the history is not easy even if you know what will happen. There’s just so many variables that there’s always something that can goo wrong. This drama doesn’t give simple solutions, characters need to fight for the truth constantly, not being sure if their methods will work. And of course past doesn’t want to be changed. Every try may result in failure in other aspects of the investigation. Nothing is this drama comes easy for characters.
At one point this drama was so emotionless it was almost painful to watch. Overall slow pace of the show didn’t really help either.

After couple of really slow episodes, in the second half of the season we’ve finally had characters involved somehow in the action. The fact that they were directly connected to the case made it a bit more interesting. The fact thew Park Hae Yeong and Lee Jae Han actually almost met in the past seemed a bit too much of a coincidence but was quickly explained in a way that didn’t really spoiled anything.

Overall I was impressed on how detailed this drama was to all the events, but unfortunately very slow pace any really unlikable characters threw me off. I just couldn’t immerse myself in watching the drama. And I know that it’s very subjective but this drama just didn’t worked with me, it was missing something to make it more alive. What was good story worth when we get characters that cannot deliver it?

And why the hell is Park Hae Yeong whispering so often? Most of his conversations with Cha Soo Hyun are whispered and most of the times is doesn’t really make sense!

So overall, I really wanted to like this drama. It seems to fit perfectly in my interests. But I just couldn’t. I see good sides of it, I see well developed plot, but no chances to actually get caught up in it.

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