Time I will never get back

I'll start by saying that since this was from 2014, the production value was grainy and the dubbing (why do they insist upon doing that? These actors can't possibly have worse voices than the people dubbing!) was truly awful in some places.
WRITING: So many people said they found this fun and funny. I didn't find it to be either of those things. Full of stereotypes (which I can't lower the rating on, because they are in every Asian show), so many of the characters were unlikable and/or irritating. I'll address the main two: I found the character of Shan Shan to be the epitome of a silly, not-too-bright, ditzy woman, and she didn't seem to improve over the life of the show. The writers had her having internal dialog through the whole thing, which was very irritating, and I never could understand why Feng Teng liked her. Which brings me to Feng Teng: this character, for me, was completely one-note. I didn't necessarily have problems with his "stalker-ish" tendencies as others did, (I have to admit, I thought that him having lunch "with" her on both sides of the window was sweet), but he was not very nice to anyone, and the way he talked to his employees would have the human resources department very busy fending off lawsuits. Part of it, I think, was I didn't find him physically attractive, but since I tend to find attractiveness even more in a person's actions, I REALLY didn't find him attractive. All the women were fawning all over him, but it must have just been because he was rich. All of the scenes of the workplace made every female employee look like she was only working to 1) meet a man; or 2) gossip. And there were a LOT of scenes at work. This show would have benefitted from a good editor and half as many episodes.
ACTING: A lot of overacting was being done by people (perhaps trying to make the show seem amusing) and in the case of the male lead, a lot of under-acting - he had one expression and was not able to generate anything using his face/eyes/body. He was very wooden. There were numerous scenes where it felt like there were pauses waiting for someone to remember what their lines were.
MUSIC: I don't remember it.
RE-WATCH: Are you kidding me?!

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This one got to me!

This is a slow (in a good way), simple and beautiful story. I'll start with the bottom line - it's been quite a while since I've cried watching something, and I cried a couple of times during this movie. I was swept into the story and could feel the nervousness of the female lead, but she wasn't portrayed as a loser at all. The meeting of the leads was shown in a good way, and I was rooting for them from the start. Wu Nien Hsuan as Yi Bin and Zhou Yi Ram as Tong Zhi Liao were perfectly cast. I could feel sparks between the two from the beginning. I was torn, I wanted to find out what happened, but I also wanted it to go on and on. It was a lovely journey of discovery and spoke to lost chances and regrets. The story line of the old lady and her regrets mirrored the lead couple perfectly.

Normally, I struggle with Chinese dramas, the episodic ones are normally too drawn out for me, and the movies often don't give me enough time to invest in the characters. add to that my problems with dubbing and overacting, you'll see my dilemma. This movie was, quite simply, a hidden gem. I happened upon it quite by accident. The script is good, and the acting is understated. There are no over-the-top characters, and they are all likeable in their own way. No love triangles, and there wasn't much time spent on any of the secondary characters, other than the old lady, so we really got to know the main couple.

I might watch it again, if only to get lost in the story once again. The ending is ambiguous, and I think that's for the viewer to decide what they want to happen. I choose to go the happily-ever-after route.

I can happily and unapologetically recommend this movie!

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Lovely

There are spoilers interspersed throughout my review, because some of them were things I liked, some I didn't.

LOVED:
1) Zhao Lu Si as Sang Zhi. She is so beautiful and bubbly, I felt she was perfectly cast for this. Finally, a show in which they didn't put her in a lot of oversized outfits.
2) Chen Zhe Yuan as Duan Jia Xu. I've not seen him in anything before and I loved him in this. First, he's gorgeous. Second, the character was a warm and caring person.
3) Romance chemistry - just wow! The ML said things that most women would love to hear from their man. The way he looks at her, sigh. Good kisses.
4) Story - knowing someone for a long time and developing a relationship. For the most part, this was handled well.
5) Victor Ma as Sang Yan. He was a terrific character. The dynamic between him and his sister, and him and his friends was such fun to watch.
6) SPOILER: It seems like most romances have a secondary female that used to be a girlfriend that comes back after years and wants to pick up where they left off. She thinks she's entitled to him because she wants him. FINALLY, this show portrays the female the way I feel about the secondary women in other dramas. She's a stalker and not-just-a-little unhinged. And I love how the FL told the stalker's friend to go with her to get some counseling! END SPOILER.
7) Ending - I cried.
8) The voices weren't too terrible and the roommates weren't stupid and irritating.
9) The focus was on the romance of the main couple. Not a lot of wasted time.
10) She met him when she was in middle school. The way they handled her crush, her youth, and how he felt about her was handled well. This could have been kind of creepy if he liked her too soon. And the progression of how his feelings changed made sense.
11) The brother's reaction to finding out his friend was dating his sister.
12) The fact that the ML didn't drink alcohol.
13) I know it's not realistic, but I love when the people haven't had relationships before. When he came out and said he'd never dated...he got me!

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: (SPOILERS THROUGHOUT)
1) Sang Zhi acted in a very immature fashion when she was younger. I get that she was young, but when a girl has a crush on a guy, especially an older guy, she does everything she can to demonstrate how mature she is.
2) She's had a crush on him for literally years. She grows up, he confesses his feelings, and she says she needs to think about whether she likes him. I wanted to smack her upside the head. I felt so bad for him, but thank goodness he was patient. I think he knew, even if she didn't say anything. I was mad for a couple of episodes.
3) Her friends saying she needed to "test" him, and her doing it. Game playing in a relationship isn't a good thing, and it, again, made her look really immature.
4) Her making herself cry (when she was younger) to get her way. Once she grew up, I felt that she was still trying to manipulate people.
5) Them saying they would be there for each other, but then keeping things from the other because they didn't want to bother/overwhelm them.
6) One of the last episodes, he's alone in the living room drinking. She comes out and asks him about it, and he never opens up about what the problem is. AND, I really had a problem with the fact that the first time they were intimate he was drunk.
7) Parents, especially, complaining about the age difference. It was five years, people!

Kudos to the writers for not making this a long and drawn out story. My fast forward button got a good rest while I was watching this. It's low angst, light, fluffy, cute, and all the other things when you don't want something heavy. It's one of those shows that I put off, thinking it couldn't possibly be that good, and then I was disappointed when it was over. I will definitely be re-watching it at some point in time.

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Tedious

After not enjoying SITR (unlike everyone else in the world, apparently), I should have known better than to waste my time on this drama, considering it's the same writer, director, and main actor.

I'll start with the good - there was nothing wrong with the acting, everyone played their part well, I enjoyed the interactions between the sisters, but I think that's as far as I can take the compliments.

STORY: Oh my gosh, there were so many unlikable characters! The ex-boyfriend, both sets of parents and yes, the female lead. Female lead - I think she was supposed to be this outspoken woman, but apparently that only came out with the male lead. With him she was bossy, demanding, cranky and immature ("It must be nice to be able to eat, you must not be bothered by this at all.") She spent almost EVERY episode meeting up with the nightmare of an ex-boyfriend. She was a weakling where he was concerned, even though she knew she didn't love him. Was she trying to be nice? I couldn't quite get it. The ex-boyfriend trying to get her to marry him went on until the next to the last episode. He was just creepy. Give it a rest! Seriously, she should have gotten a restraining order or something. And then there were the parents - I know that it's important to respect your elders, but when your elders don't have any respect for you and won't listen when you say you don't want to marry someone, there's something wrong. Each episode seemed to be just a rehash of the previous one. Should she pursue this new relationship? Should she give the ex another try? The male lead was smitten with the female lead because she came in for hangover medicine? Why these two liked each other was never made clear. Almost all of the conversations revolved around how they were going to manage, because everyone was against them. I realize that Korean mores are different than American, but they made the male lead out to be a terrible person because he had a son. Then when the female lead APOLOGIZED to her mother because she was involved with a man with a child, that really irritated me.
CHEMISTRY: Kisses. I didn't feel chemistry between the leads at all. There were a couple of technically good kisses, but again, I didn't sense chemistry.
COSTUMES: She was a librarian. Was it absolutely necessary to make her dress in such a dowdy way? The clothes and shoes she wore made her look so much older than she was.
OST: Three-four songs on repeat throughout the whole drama. The songs were in English for no discernible reason and they were very distracting.
REWATCH VALUE: Not on a dare!

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It didn't deliver for me

This show had a lot of good moments, but for me they were few and far between. Go Kyung-pyo (Kung-soo) and Chae Soo-bin (Dan-ah) played their parts well, but the script fell short, mostly because of how irritating and unlikeable the character of Dan-ah was. I did, however, love the character of Kung-soo. I was impressed by his strong feeling of right and wrong. I also loved the community he built with all the drivers he'd worked with over the years. That was the strong point of this show, the friendships. The demonstration of how people that are enemies can become friends, how friendships remain even after your geography changes. It was a testament to Kung-soo that he had all the friends he had, because he was genuinely a good and nice person.

Dan-ah was kind of the polar opposite. She was not a nice person, and because of that, didn't really have friends. Everyone was either in awe of her or feared her. She apparently was never taught to use her words, because she is forever hitting or kicking someone, which sometimes worked for the sake of comedy, but certainly didn't endear her to me.

The ending tied things up neatly but wasn't especially memorable.

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Just my opinion...

Apparently, I watched a different show than everyone else. I'll put the sadly necessary disclaimer - this is my own personal opinion, so don't come after me.

For me, the show had a lot of style, and not much substance. Beautifully filmed and beautifully dressed beautiful people, so much of the time I felt like I was a spectator watching a fashion show runway catwalk. Lots of walking from here to there, "look at what I'm wearing now", models with no expression.

I just didn't like anyone in this show. For me, there has to be something likeable about someone to make me care about what happens to them. Both the ML and the FL had personality issues. FL in particular was unlikeable, she was such a cold person. Kim Ji Won tends to play the same type of character, and her lack of facial expressions just doesn't endear her to me. The ML's reaction when he found out she was sick was just wrong. And the sequence, with the overabundance of flashbacks, was out of synch and made it hard for me to like them. I didn't believe in their story and was never able to feel their love for one another, even at the end.

And can we talk about tropes? In this drama, the tropes were piled high, one after another. When they got to the amnesia part, I laughed out loud - my trope bingo card was complete!

Should you watch it? Don't go by me, because apparently, I'm an outlier. Give it a try and come to your own conclusion.

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Talk about chemistry!

D.O. and Nam Ji Hyun both did a wonderful job. Their parts were written so well. D.O., as the crown prince, had the hauteur that you'd expect from royalty. Even when his memories were gone, it was ingrained in him. Yet, there was a loneliness and vulnerability and you could feel his want of family. His facial expression was pretty flat through most of the show, but he has such expressive eyes. Nam Ji Huyn - how can a woman be so beautiful with no visible means of mascara on her eyelashes? Normally, makeup is used to enhance looks, but she doesn't need it. Her character was spunky, industrious and extremely likeable. To be honest, I've loved her in everything I've seen her in. Their chemistry together? Off the charts! I loved the scenes when they shared the screen. Everyone in the show did a good job, but I had to deduct points for two reasons. First, there were just too many evil guys in this drama and they all looked alike (that's my problem with period costumes). Evil men, evil women, evil groups, evil sub-groups. It left a sour taste in my mouth on the heels of the lovely romantic scenes. I had to deduct another point for the last episode and the tie-up of the relationship between the leads. She was strong throughout this show, and she always seemed to have a good sense of self. However, she suddenly did a 180 turn and pulled out the "I'm not worthy of your love" card. It didn't ring true, especially after the heart-wrenching scenes of each of them living separately. And her saying she'd marry that other man? Um, no. It felt to me like they pulled in a separate writer for the last episode and the flow was lost. There was a happy ending, but they waited until about the last five minutes to tie everything up. I was so disappointed after all the time I had invested in watching their relationship develop and unfold.

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Blown Away!

Some shows you wonder if you should continue wasting your time watching them, hoping they'll get better. Some shows you are anxious to finish all your chores so you can watch them. I kept vacillating back and forth between wanting to forego my life just so I could watch one more episode, but then being sad in advance, knowing this wonderful ride was coming to an end. I was so thoroughly invested in this show, now that I've finished it, I have to say I'm really sad it's over.

STORY: A new village and a new set of people for our leads to get to know and come to care about. I'll admit, the long hair on Wook in the first few episodes really drove me crazy. But then I realized it really suited his kind of quirky personality. There were some new twists in this season, which brings me to the reasons that I gave this a 9 rather than a 10 - and here are the spoilers:
- Really, the whole thing is a suspension of disbelief, which is what I loved about it, but the reason (or lack thereof) for the captain not being able to leave her village didn't make any sense.
- Too many loose ends at the end. Which is fine, if there ends up being a season 3 (though PLEASE don't make us wait two years!)
- Mentions of other villages. Great concept but again, I didn't like that it was just setting up for another season. Because if it doesn't happen, then we're all just disappointed.
- Main bad guy - he was able to get away?! Please, don't have him in the next season. I don't ever like to feel like the bad guys are untouchable and that nothing can stop them. Plus, one of the things that I appreciated about this show was that the police knew what they were doing - I'd like to feel that they'd plan for any eventuality.
- You had BETTER NOT kill off Detective Shin. A mine field, really!?!
But other than that, I thought that this season was just as good as the first. I'll say again, what I said in my review for season 1, I love found family. Again, it was in the village, with the team, with the detectives, and I loved the addition of Bo Ra, and when Wook was explaining to her what it means to be a family, that summed it up perfectly.
The Oh Il Yong storyline - it was brilliant. I didn't get a good vibe from him in the beginning, which is what was supposed to happen, but his storyline was powerful and surprising. And I loved the relationship between him and Wook.
I loved that Jong A played a more integral role, as well as the fact that she stepped up to make herself more indispensable and figured out how to find more missing children. Gotta be honest, the potential for her to see ghosts is exciting, but there is something to be said for having someone on the team that is a little bit out of the loop. You lose some of the elements of surprise if everyone knows what's going on.
This season, the detectives were starting to figure out that there was something different about this team. I like that Detective Shin knows, but the others don't, but they know that there is absolutely something strange going on. That, to me, was amusing.

ACTING/CAST: Stellar. I was glad to see Thomas, even though it was too brief. I continued to be impressed with everyone in the cast, but this time around I have to give a shout out to Lee Jung Eun as the Captain. She's one of those actresses that I love her in everything she is in. That sweet/beautiful face and smile, her short, round body (I mean that in the best possible way - don't you think that she would give the best hugs?), I'd love her to be my grandma, but then I remember I'm old and she'd have to be my sister, but still. I liked the clothes that the costume designer put her in, Peter Pan collars, knit comfy sweaters, long loose skirts and sensible shoes. She just seemed so approachable. And to have her be the first person you see when you enter the village and have her say that she's made food, come in and she'll explain what's going on - she was the heart of the village. Jung Eun's acting is normally understated, but there were times in this show that her pain, anger and loneliness were almost palpable.

And that was the conundrum for these villagers, especially those that had been there for a long time. You want the children to be able to move on, but it's heartbreaking when they do.

MUSIC: I especially loved the theme song, I found myself humming it - I loved hearing it at the beginning of each episode, but at the end I didn't like it so much because that meant the episode was over.

REWATCH: For me, this isn't the type of show I would rewatch again, because I know what is going to happen.

However, if someone asks me for suggestions for well-written shows, with good character development, excellent chemistry between all actors and that have sucked me completely in, to the detriment of my "real" life, I'd definitely suggest Missing: The Other Side, Both Seasons one and two. You could probably watch only season two and figure out what is going on, but season one really does a good job of laying the groundwork for season two. Really, to be honest, I'm afraid that this show has set a bar so high for me that I'm doomed to be disappointed in other shows, especially since, as a romance lover, there has been so little good to choose from.

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I wanted to like this one, I really did

However, after reading all the good reviews, maybe it's just me, but this show really fell short. The script was all over the place and nothing was delved in too deeply. Even considering that, I still fast-forwarded through a lot. Multiple cases in a law drama can work very well, but here they didn't. I didn't find the cases interesting enough to begin with and the stories felt like they were just to get us to the next episode.

I didn't care for the main characters. Lee Seung Gi - I don't believe I've seen him in anything else and I'm going to find something else to watch him in, but here I didn't find him attractive at all, especially in all of the unfortunate "squid games" track suits. His character wasn't especially likeable throughout the first part of the show. I love the idea of having liked someone for years, but you couldn't really tell, he was terrible to her.

Lee Se Young's character yelled and screamed a lot. I found that very off-putting. I did like how they tried to show her growing through the cases she took on, but she continued to be the "damsel in distress". Then there was the "sex contract". Give me a break!

Jo Han Chul, who I LOVE as an actor, WAY overplayed his part. Was he supposed to be crazy, funny, farcical, sociopathic? I don't know, but I couldn't stand to watch him.

Top all that off with the fact that I didn't feel chemistry between the leads. Now I feel like I need to re-watch something I've already loved to cleanse my K-drama palate!

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How is it possible to get bored with only 10 episodes!?!?

The first few episodes rushed the whole story along and then they had to backtrack and add problems to fill in the rest of the episodes. I couldn't wait to finish this one. For me, this fell in the camp of "that's time I'll never get back."
Here are some of the problems that I had: 1) why did he like her? From just seeing her? 2) the ML was very one-dimensional, showed absolutely no emotion whatsoever throughout the show; 3) the FL starts out somewhat strong and has career goals for herself, and ended up just giving everything up for him; 4) Look up stalker in the dictionary - ML's picture will be there; 5) the show was unbalanced, it tried to go from ROMCOM to farce and then started to take itself seriously; 6) Almost every man in this show liked the FL. Why? 7) Large cast with inadequate development of characters. Grandmother was the cliche "bad guy" and the brother seemed to be thrown in to try to further the story and that whole storyline was not addressed in a way that made any sense; 8) No chemistry between the leads; 9) she spends a lot of time, in essence telling him to go away and not be a stalker, but then she's in love with him. Again, why?

This is a show that was actually irritating me as I watched it. For one reason, I think I've only ever dropped one drama and I felt compelled to complete this one, and that made me mad. As I was watching it, I just felt that, the leads especially, were just going through the motions. I couldn't relate to them and I didn't care about them.

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My personal opinion only

Acting: Seo Kang Joon as Jin Ho was excellent. He didn't say much, but then he doesn't have to. He just has to BE. What he said in the voice overs was beautiful, but I kept wondering why he never verbalized any of his thoughts. Park Min Young as Hae Won - in my opinion, she can do no wrong, she's that good in everything she does. However -
Characters: Jin Ho kept everything bottled up inside. Hae Won reminded me of Eeyore, she was so morose all the time. There were some other interesting characters in this show as well. I loved the scenes with the book club meetings.
Music: The music was wonderful and went perfectly with the show.
Cinematography: There is no question that this show was beautifully filmed. The camera angles, the scenes in nature, the close ups.
Story: Here's where it goes wrong for me. The story itself might have been really good, but this was one of the slowest shows I've ever seen. I like a good story as much as the next person, but when you show scenes again and again of making coffee and tea (are we in a Folger's commercial?) or take five minutes showing the female lead walking up a road dragging her suitcase behind her, that's just too tedious for me. There was so much quietness in this that I felt like no one was talking to each other.
I would, however, say to give it a try for yourself, since I am definitely in the minority on this one.

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Time I will never get back

I decided to watch this C-drama because it only had 24 episode (which is short for C-dramas), but once I got started, I quickly realized that this could have been completed in half the episodes, and it would have made the whole thing more interesting. I felt that this show REALLY needed a different editor, there were some episodes that, once I got to the end, I realized that the entire episode was a complete waste of time. I really felt that a lot of it was like watching paint dry - boring as all get out.

I suppose the actors did a good job with what they had to work with. The problem was the script. The main character of Tu Mo was so irritating. First, she'd been liking a boy for years, and that boy was one of the most irritating characters I've seen in a show recently. Then, I couldn't actually see what Gu Wei Yi saw in her. Then, she always seemed to be mad at the male lead for something, but rather than talk to him about it, she did a lot of clomping out of the room, slamming doors, and generally not being very nice to him. She was very immature.

Overall, no chemistry between the leads, too many irritating characters, too much dog and cat sound effects, fish kisses, and multiple unnecessary scenes/storylines.

It was sad for me to realize, after watching this, that most of the C-dramas are along these lines and not, for me, overly enjoyable. Love Me If You Dare and Dating in the Kitchen are the gold standard for me, and I will continue to hope that I happen upon other C-dramas that live up to them.

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Sweet story

This was a cute show without too much angst. However, it took them FOREVER to tell each other they liked each other!(ep 18 when there are only 24 episodes!) Once they admitted their feelings, it was fun to watch them, because they are such a cute couple. And his dimples!! I really like watching shows where the friends are loyal to one another and this show had good examples of that. I felt that, at times, the male lead was too wishy washy about whether he liked her. I would have liked to have had a more visible conclusion for the photographer - I believe he got his happily ever after, but they didn't really show it.

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Lack of chemistry and unlikeable characters were the downfall for me

I was excited to see Park Min Young again, I've always thought that she was a good actress and I've enjoyed most of the things she's been in. Go Kyung Pyo, honestly, I'm on the fence about him. I've seen him shine in a couple of things, but he seems more like a second lead actor. He just doesn't have the charisma needed to be the main actor. However, the acting wasn't the problem, the story was, and the way the actors were written. I found that I couldn't root for any of the characters, so I was unable to invest totally in the story.

Park Min Young and her character - first, has she been ill? She did not look well in this show. She looked almost frail she was so thin. Add to that, there was no "spark" to her character. I didn't like her or her motivations.

Go Kyung Pyo and his character - I'll say again, he just doesn't have the magnetism to carry off a lead role, especially here. A lot of shows are throwing in socially awkward characters, which is fine, but I'm thinking he was on the spectrum somewhere? His flat affect, his mannerisms all led me to believe that which is fine, but he's no better at the end than he was at the beginning. I didn't see or feel any growth in either of the characters.

There was no chemistry between the two leads. Add to that, there was an inordinate amount of time where nothing was happening, too much staring without dialogue, and the storyline was weak.

For me, this was one I kept watching, hoping that it would get better, but it never did.

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I hated the characters!

STORYLINE: I didn't buy this story. She falls in love with him why? After hearing him give a speech? He is the epitome of a cold fish, and no matter how mean he is to her, she still loves him. Can we talk about having no self-esteem? There are a number of words that came to mind watching her - stalker, dumb, crazy, silly. As for him - mean, robotic, verbally abusive, poor decision skills, self-centered. I didn't care for either one of these characters throughout the entire show. I like to watch shows that have people that I can relate to in some fashion - either in shared experiences or people that I might be friends with in real life. Add to that the fact that the male lead supposedly has a complete turnaround in the last episode. I have absolutely NO idea why he would have fallen in love with her, other than he liked the idea that she worshipped him. And I'll get a little picky here, but can someone please tell me why he always that his giant bag slung over his shoulder, yet carried his books in his other arm?
ACTING: The acting is bad in this drama; however, I will say that if it was supposed to be like a live-action cartoon, they accomplished that goal. He is completely flat with no emotions whatsoever throughout the entire drama. He had no emotions in his eyes, he was wooden when he walked. The female lead what just completely over-the-top. Her constant pursing of her lips, which looked completely unnatural and forced, and her eye rolling and "comical" expressions and movements did not work. There was a lot of overacting by many others in the cast, most notably his mother and her friends. All of their reactions were so exaggerated so as not to be realistic at all.
CHEMISTRY: None. There were a couple of kisses but I was still never able to figure out why they liked each other.
REWATCH: Not on your life!

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