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Heartbeat korean drama review
Completed
Heartbeat
1 people found this review helpful
by Myaiv
Aug 16, 2023
16 of 16 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 3.5
Story 2.0
Acting/Cast 5.0
Music 8.5
Rewatch Value 1.0

Atrocious horrible awful writing

This drama sucked out 16 hours of my life that I'll never get back.

What I liked:
*The performances. The acting is pretty good in this drama, considering the awful script, except for one and a half (?) actors who gave consistently bad performances. Baek Seo Hoo who plays Lee Man Hwi... No comment. I'm not 100% convinced about Won Ji An though. It could be In Hae's unlikeable character or the actress herself, I haven't seen her other dramas so I can't judge it fairly. Yoon So Hee who was unfortunately given a horrible character (Hae Won) played her well, good for her, I hope in her next drama she is the MFL, I kind of want to watch her play a well-written character.

*The characters of Woo Heol and his friends, Do Sik and Hae Won. Overall the characters are pretty shallow and one dimensional but they don't annoy me. I felt bad for Hae Won at first, she seemed like a good person, and she was honest the whole time and got nothing, she deserved better, until, of course, her character's assassination happened and erased some part of the complexity (which it doesn't have a lot in the first place) in this drama and turned her into a stereotypical evil and jealous female second lead.

*The soundtrack is pretty nice, especially the title song. That song introduced me to the singer Han Seung Yun whose discography I liked a lot. Btw stream Han Seung Yun's album 'Lovender'.


What I didn't like:
*I don't like how the main female lead has no chemistry with either of the male leads. I'm not rooting for either of the couples. I wish her 'falling in love' arc was about finding herself and loving herself but alas.

*The plot dragged. If the characters weren't so slow figuring out the basic plot, this drama could have been shortened by half. Also, there are weird cuts/transitions between scenes/plotlines. Lots of unnecessary flashbacks when the flashbacked snippet happened literally one scene ago. Also, why did the plot start normally happening only after the 10th episode? Overall, an interesting premise ruined by dumb slow characters, horrible pacing, and overall bad script. From the 14th episode, I started to skip through filler parts where nothing was happening. Thank god I saved some time which I'll be using watching better dramas.

*This drama has a 'no communication' trope instead of the 'miscommunication' trope which is so much worse: (Woo Hyeol doesn't say that he's going to die if In Hae doesn't fall in love; Do Sik doesn't directly ask In Hae about Woo Hyeol being a vampire immediately after seeing Woo Hyeol's supernatural powers; Do Sik takes out the journal about vampires, which he has been safekeeping as a family relic, straight after finding out about their existence and does not read it right away (????????); Mr. Ko telling Woo Hyeol the conditions of turning himself human bit by bit during the drama and not at once). Everyone is lying/omitting information and being vague about everything being okay. This only artificially builds conflict to solve later in the drama. All of the conflicts arise from not communicating properly and not actual problems/dilemmas. It's just bad writing.

*In Hae's character and Lee Man Hwi + other characters. She is a girlboss for being principled and not letting anyone push her around but dear god she's so annoying. In Hae has the audacity to be angry when Woo Heyol rightfully states that she ruined everything by waking him up early. She also has the audacity to forbid Woo Heol from leaving the house. Is he a child, is she his mother? Also, her personality turns 180 degrees after she confesses she likes Woo Hyeol. She said she needs him in a too-dependent kind of way. It's so weird and uncharacteristic of her. 'Don't you think it's selfish' says In Hae to Woo Hyeol who said that he would rather die than kill her because he already has lived a long life. Absolutely unhinged behavior by the MFL. This was done with no organic build-up. /// Baek Seo Hoo who plays Lee Man Hwi gave a pretty terrible performance, his portrayal of a villainous vampire seemed so fake it took me out of the drama. /// Most of the other characters are also written pretty badly. Everyone, including the characters that I do like, is so slow/dumb, they do not understand basic subtext/meaning when somebody says something or they don't understand what is happening. Watching them question what other characters have said or done when it's obvious is torture.

*The character assassination of Hae Won. At first, she was a nice, ambitious woman, straightforward about her intentions but then, after Woo Heol rejects her (very nicely by the way), she turns into a cartoonish villain who says 'This (the drawing of Woo Heol's first love who looks just like her) is enough to kick out In Hae (from her own freaking home that she owns and take over her place so Woo Hyeol can fall in love with her instead)'. Pardon me? Who wrote this? Because this is not how good writing looks. She spews similar absurd obsessive statements a bunch of times absolutely demolishing her character.

All in all, I will be avoiding the screenwriters of this drama because this is the worst writing I've seen in a long time.
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