A drama of half-formed ideas

I score dramas based solely on my enjoyment of them, so my rating doesn't reflect the quality of the drama but how good of a time I had watching it. For me, Kokdu was a very long, painful ride.

I started the drama as it was airing and I hated it. Right from the first episode, it was obvious that the writing was sloppy and the plot was poorly placed. I was in a bit of a drama drought and tried to stick with it for as long as I could, but 4-5 episodes in I caved and dropped it. It was boring and while I enjoyed the ML for being a very out-there character, the FL was as sturdy as wet cardboard. But, oddly enough, I went back to it all these months later on a whim and, for some reason, found myself genuinely enjoying it. Was the writing better? No. The characters? No. All that changed was my mentality. I laughed at some of the jokes and had a grand time, and when the writing was bad or the pacing was weird, I laughed at that, too. If you don't take it seriously, it can be a pretty entertaining show. (The last 1/3 of the drama really drops off, however, and everything goes about how you expect so there's no need to force yourself to sit through it if you feel it's dragging.)

The biggest issue this drama has is that it doesn't follow through with any of its ideas. It'll throw plot twists and developments at you left and right without fleshing them out and then will forget about them just as soon. For example: the FL is a doctor, but she doesn't actually feel like one. She ends up opening a clinic, but the only time we see her doing her job is when it's convenient for the plot. By the halfway point, she basically isn't seen working at all.

Then we have Kokdu or, more to the point, the person whose body he takes over: Jin Woo. At the beginning of the drama, he dies and Kokdu has to deal with the affairs he left behind - his girlfriend, the plot of the villain, the FL Gye Jeol, etc. But partway through the drama, his soul is returned to his body by Gye Jeol's command. In this sort of show, this is something that often happens and makes up a big chunk of the story. But here? He's around for around 2 episodes, in which he discovers what's happened in his absence and decides to cling to life. This amounts to a whole lot of nothing. He dies again shortly after so Kokdu can take over his body and is never heard from again. There's no closure for him, he doesn't accomplish much of anything while he's around, and after he dies again no one really talks about him, not even the leads or his ex-girlfriend. It's filler.

This isn't the only instance of this, though. At one point, Gye Jeol's brother is kidnapped and the two leads go to save him. This is used as a trigger for Gye Jeol to finally realize that Kokdu's not human (which, how did she not notice this sooner??) and they begin their dramatic angst to waste even more time. And the brother? Well, when they walk off to have their angst, he's freed. Somehow. I guess. We're never shown if Kokdu went back to set him free, if he got out himself, or anything of the sort. Again and again, the story will introduce a plot thread or some side story and drop it just as quickly. Take the ending: Kokdu dies? No, he survives and is asleep in the hospital. No wait, he's actually awake and is staying past his 99 days. No, wait, actually, he's trying to get Gye Jeol to confess to him so that he can die. So what if he said he would stay with her no matter what half an episode ago? Oh, wait, he's dead again, for real this time. Except, of course, there's the mandatory time skip and he's revived for their happy ending. I didn't even mind the very end itself, but the lead-up to it was dreadful. There's also a point at the start of the last third of the drama where Kokdu stops being a fun character to watch and becomes more of the standard, brooding ML you often find in these shows, which killed a lot of my enjoyment.

Characters will say their opinion on one thing and change it at the drop of a pin. Kokdu remembers his little brother from his past life randomly, starts doting on his reincarnation for all of 10 seconds before he's shoved aside with no further development between them for the rest of the series. The second couple will fight over something randomly and then get along again. Actual plot points will happen off-screen and then will be explained to us lazily through exposition - or maybe not explained at all! I could go on and on about how hot-and-cold this drama is, but you get the point. All of these half-formed ideas get thrown in without being properly fleshed out and it really kills the drama.

So why am I still giving this a 7? If I have this much (and more) to complain about, then why not rate it to reflect that? Well, at the end of the day, for 2/3 of the drama I was enjoying it, even if it was a hot mess, and that's what mattered most to me. I laughed at how bad it got and enjoyed some aspects of it. The demi-gods were fun to watch, there were some good jokes sprinkled in, and beneath all the crap there was a sliver of hope that this could have been something. It feels like the rough draft of a story, just thrown together with a bunch of ideas that were never written out properly to be given substance, and if I think of it like that, I can move past some of its bad moments.

TL;DR: It's a badly-written show, yes, and the latter 1/3 is a slog, but if you're the type of person that likes watching bad shows now and then, and you want some turn-your-brain-off garbage to veg out to at the end of the day, give it a shot. And if a good plot with good writing is integral to your enjoyment?

Run the other way. Run as far as you can.

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It didn't feel right

So I came out of this drama not too enthused, but my issues weren't with the main couple not ending up together. Because this was inspired by the song of the same name, it was pretty evident to anyone who made that connection that this would be the case and we knew from early on that BIJ and NHD wouldn't be endgame. There were a lot of other things about the ending, though, that made my feelings turn sour.

At the start of the drama, I was engrossed. It had a lot of charm and magic to it that motivated me to do things after watching an episode. I looked forward to it as a sort of end-of-week comfort where I could watch these characters strive to connect and grow and find themselves. Usually, I don't like youth dramas. In fact, I almost didn't watch this drama because of the 'youth' descriptors it had when it started airing and only really gave it a shot because I had a spare hour and nothing else to watch. But I surprisingly liked it. I liked the characters and their personalities, and though I really didn't care for any of the scenes where fencing was highlighted, I had fun. The side couple was easily the best part of the series, and what I appreciated about BYJ and NHD's relationship was just how good they were for each other and how, unlike a lot of romances that have been airing in recent years, they felt like they deserved each other. They built each other up and were each other's strength and support, and you could tell how much they genuinely cared about each other. I felt that if the drama decided to derail the ending of the song, it would have been earned.

It was the last 4-5 episodes where the magic died for me. The comedy was still fun but as the characters moved on from high school, everything felt bleak and miserable, like their lives were over. The issue with KYR's family that lasted, what, almost en entire episode? It felt unnecessary like they were wasting time and just trying to use it to form a rift between the main couple right as they were just getting together. We don't really get to see many scenes of NHD and BYJ dating happily before or after that incident. It was as though the drama only wanted to get them together in order to break them up as the song dictated, and that was one of the things that soured the experience the most for me. We spent twice as long agonizing over their breakup and how their relationship wouldn't work out as we did with them actually being together, and we spent even longer than that running around, trying to get them together in the first place. In the end, that disproportionate focus made their development just feel like a big waste of time. On top of that, the way the characters spoke made it feel like they thought their lives were already over the moment that they graduated. We had present-day NHD constantly talking about how carefree and happy she was back then and how it felt like they had forever, as though being an adult and having additional responsibilities meant that she couldn't enjoy her time anymore, which is probably the bleakest message I've seen from a drama in a long time.

By this point, the drama just wasn't fun to watch anymore. I sat on the last episode for a week before finally getting up the will to finish it, and I want my time back. I didn't enjoy it, and they just focused on the breakup itself. Wouldn't it have made more sense to dedicate some time to show how they got their lives on track and moved on? We heard about NHD getting married and retiring, but we never saw her husband and don't even know his name. We didn't see her fall in love again, or how this new guy was a better match for her than BYJ. We just saw that, hey, they had a kid together. He's apparently overseas on a business trip. Convenient. For BYJ, we just know that he took over NHD's mother's job and got his family back together, but we never see him in the present-day, either (I'll presume because they didn't want to recast him). Did he ever move on from NHD and fall in love with someone else? Does he have a new family, kids? Or is he just working and doing absolutely nothing else with his life? We don't really get to see many friends of his other than the ones he shares with NHD and that one guy from work, which is depressing, so it just feels sad to think about where he ended up.

Speaking of the present, was any of it really necessary? I don't think so. the actress who played NHD in the present, while pretty, didn't really feel like NHD. She felt a bit generic and was boring to watch on film, and I don't think it's really her fault. She just didn't have much to do. Her daughter was literally just there to introduce the diaries and barely has a unique personality, and in the present, we don't get to see any of the other characters because, again, they probably didn't want to recast them. Or they didn't put much thought into what they were doing now, so many years later. So if we don't get anything out of it, why is it there? We don't see how things have changed or what's happened over the years, which would be the only reason to add those modern-day scenes. Instead of adding those, I wish they used the time they spend on the modern scenes to instead give us some of that middle-ground of their relationship working before it collapsed, or some closure as to what happened to them after that breakup.

I'd also like to comment a bit on the breakup itself. As someone who was in a long-distance relationship for several years with someone who lived halfway across the world (and is now married to that someone), while I do understand their struggles, the scenes between them while they were apart and the slow-building frustration they had left me a bit... I don't know, exhausted? Separation like that is something that a lot of couples have to deal with, even more so now in today's day and age. I will concede that these days it's significantly easier to spend time with people across the world and long-distance relationships aren't as difficult as they would have been in 2001. But those issues being brought up in such extenuating circumstances as the aftermath of the 9/11 attack felt a bit... off, or cheap, or exploitative. Not being able to be with your SO because their work takes them all around the world is one thing, and I get being bitter about a relationship because of that, but in circumstances like that, knowing what BYJ was dealing with, I wasn't fond of the way NHD handled it the moment that he got back. I feel like relationship troubles should be put on the back burner when a tragedy like that is involved.

Do I disagree with them breaking up? No, not really. If she wasn't able to be supportive in that situation, then it's probably for the best. If he couldn't trust her with what he was going through and open up, then they weren't good for each other. But that's what feels so wrong to me. They WERE that supportive earlier on in their relationship before they ever started dating. They opened up to each other and were each other's strengths, and even when BYJ disappeared without a word to anyone, NHD still waited for him. So of all the ways for them to end their relationship, this way felt wrong. It didn't feel like them. If they realized they wanted different things out of a relationship and out of life and separated on good terms, that would suit this couple. But, I don't know... maybe it's just me. When the problems they encountered were so similar to what they overcame before, it soured the experience.

Overall, the last few episodes aren't really worth watching. They're not enjoyable and I found myself checking the clock multiple times, waiting for each one to end. They were too long and lost the spirit that the show started out with. Would I recommend the first 12 or so episodes? Yeah, definitely. But I wouldn't recommend the rest unless you don't have much else to do.

It had a lot of promise and spark, but I'm just not happy with it, and the issues I highlighted above soured the earlier episodes for me, so I don't think I'll ever pick it up for a re-watch. There are just too many good shows out there to spend time on one that didn't feel satisfying.

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I really wanted this to be good

Coming off of shows like Sweet Home and Happiness that did survivalist horror so well, I had expectations for this. They weren't that high and I wasn't expecting another Sweet Home out of a traditional zombie apocalypse story, but I was anticipating a fun, off-the-walls zombie flick that would keep me entertained for a few hours. And it did! At first. Let me explain.

The drama starts off great with some well-shot, high-action scenes and a lot of unabashed gore and really gets you into it. You don't really know much about the characters other than a few facts thrown at you, but hey, it's zombies, most of them won't survive anyway. So I got really into it at first. The mystery surrounding the source of the virus wasn't all that interesting and immediately felt like a half-baked origin story, but it was good enough for the B-horror I was expecting.

Problems stemmed when time started to pass. The initial mayhem was brilliant but after a certain point, when the characters start talking about being hungry and thirsty, issues arose. The characters explicitly explain to one another what would happen if they didn't eat or find water soon. Then, well. They don't find any. What would normally be an important plot point in other zombie shows becomes a moot point here. They drink some rainwater at some point, each takes a bite out of a candy bar and that's about it. They talk about being hungry but show no signs of getting weaker or being malnourished, and their only goal throughout the series is to get rescued, never to find food or water.

The show has a LOT of B-plots and side characters that never have any satisfying conclusions. They introduce a bunch of characters that you think will be fleshed out or explained later but never are. And there are a LOT of plot holes. For instance:
1. The pregnant student is shown heavily in the first episodes. Her identity isn't explained and we know nothing about her aside from her giving birth and tying herself up with ribbon (just ribbon, yet somehow she doesn't break free) to keep from hurting her baby after she turns. That's it. She was there to add drama and tension but she wasn't added with a plot or reason. Shock value, at most.
2. On Jo's father is keyed up to be the man who will save the day. In early episodes, On Jo talks about how her father promised to be there for her if anything happened to her, that he would save her, and throughout most of the series, he does everything in his power to see that through. Most of the scenes we get of his character are him making his way to her school, so naturally, we expect the reunion to be a big, key point in the series, right? They've built it up that way. But no. He dies about 7 minutes after reuniting with her. In fact, their reunion is used as the big cliffhanger for one of the episodes, only for him to be turned into a zombie at the very beginning of the next. It was one of the biggest letdowns of the series and leaves a sour taste in your mouth when you realize that his entire purpose was just to build up tension. To add insult to injury, his 'noble sacrifice' was unnecessary. After he threw the first flare, the zombies ran to it and cleared a path for everyone to escape safely. Throwing more and not escaping was pointless.
3. The bullied girl had no character arc. She is one of the few intelligent zombies we get throughout the drama and so I expected something big to happen with her, but she just wandered around on her bike after trying and failing miserably to burn down the school. Then when I saw she reached the quarantined zone, especially after she bit her schoolmate, I expected all hell to break loose there. Nope. She was subdued. The whole point of her was to show the military that asymptomatic infections were a thing so that they would abandon the main cast at the school. Great storytelling.
4. Cheong San's mother. They had her do a little rescue mission only for her to fail at every obstacle. Her entire role was to leave a vehicle for the policemen to use (they could have just had one there from someone else, there was no reason to use a character for that) and to get to the school so that her son could be sad that she was a zombie. That's it.
5. Gwi Nam as the main antagonist of the series worked for a little while, but he got old pretty quickly as he never did much of anything. He'd show up, attack, they would 'kill' him and he'd come back after healing only to find they'd moved. Not that big of a threat, really.
6. The police officers, especially Song Jae Ik, were a great addition to the cast. I thought. Jae Ik was there from the start, saw Byeong Chan, and had the task of finding the laptop, so I naturally thought he'd be one of the few adults in this that would actually help the kids. Nope. Not what happened. He saves the baby and another random little girl, sure, but the moment the military saves them, he just dips out of the story. You see his face once or twice after that and that's it. He had fewer scenes and yet a better role in Happiness.
7. There was literally no point to the streamer. At all. Why was he in the story? He did absolutely nothing. Not one thing. And then he disappeared with the police officers.
8. The girl (I don't remember her name) who used her handkerchief to infect another student. She escaped, hid away in a storage room, was having a change of heart and was going to bring supplies to the others (and hey, that would have helped with that one plothole, wouldn't it?) and then she's killed off randomly. I didn't like her and don't care that she died, but if they were going to do that, they could have just had her die right away in the halls.
9. When Gwi Nam bit Nam Ra, she became an intelligent zombie. Everyone else he bit became regular zombies. How does that make sense? The strain that's passed on should be the one that he has, so logically, everyone he bites should become an intelligent zombie. What, is the virus prejudiced?
10. When Byeon Chan turned, he didn't look like a normal zombie. It looked like he became an intelligent zombie. This is never addressed, and we never find out either way. Maybe they just did it that way for dramatic effect? Not a good move.
11. What was the point of the assemblywoman? Why was she in the story at all?
12. In the end we see Nam Ra seemingly well-adjusted after being out on her own for a few months. How? How is that possible? When we last saw her, her hunger was so bad that she tried to bite On Jo and left because she could no longer hold herself back. So how is it that she's perfectly fine around them now, and that her eye has healed? It doesn't explain anything about that. It just leaves it off trying to make us think she's a cool badass zombie-fighter now, but I'm just left with questions.

I know I'm missing some, but you get my point.

Most of the plot was jumping from one closed-off room with no resources to another. A few ideas they actually do have are foiled by what's going on in the outside world, like phone lines and the internet being cut off. It was fine at first, but the kids never got any smarter and never adjusted to the zombies, so that's all we ever got. To the very end, they had absolutely no control over the situation, which isn't what you want to see in a zombie series.

I have a lot of gripes with this drama, to the point that it negatively impacted my viewing experience. But like I said, it was fun at first. I do recommend at least watching the first half because some of it is a lot of fun, but don't expect anything more than a few good scenes and some light comedy in the first few episodes. After that, decide for yourself if you want to suffer through the mess that is the second half.

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Go into it with certain expectations

I'm coming out of this drama conflicted over how I feel about it. From a slice-of-life perspective, it's fantastic. The characters are all very well thought-out, from their backgrounds and histories to their personalities and how they react to the world around them. I think Woong himself is the best example of this, introduced as the kid in school with the worst grades whose only ambition is to live comfortably. Over the course of the drama, we get a lot of depth into how he really felt during that point in his life as well as how he feels in the current day, and there are a lot of layers to his character that you wouldn't expect if you were only to see the first few episodes. Yeon Soo also has these characteristics, though her side of things didn't pull at me the same way Woong's did.

The story has a bright cast of side characters, too, who make the world feel very lively and lived-in, and they wholeheartedly make the drama better. Except... the unfortunate reality is that they're underutilized. Early on they feel like they might be important, but as the episodes go on they lose their significance. I can't really say that any of their stories are left unfinished, but none of them were particularly satisfying. Ji Woong is the best example. Early on, we're shown just how close he is to Woong, we see them growing up together and later on we see them leaning on one another. But further into the show, that starts to fade. As they pull more and more focus on the main couple, they leave him behind to deal with this small, out-of-nowhere plot with his mother. His mother is important to his character to a degree, sure, but that's all that his story amounts to in the end and that was really disappointing to see. Certain aspects (spoilers - if you watch it, you'll know) felt like they were just thrown in to find a way to end his conflict, and his romance with his coworker, which was hinted at and hinted at, was resolved very briefly out of nowhere. All of the couples but the main one were like that. We could have gotten so much more out of these characters than what we did.

That doesn't mean I hated the show. I liked it, I just didn't love it. The show shone its brightest during the original flashback scenes. All of the high school content and the original documentary was a lot of fun. Woong and Yeon Soo were lively and funny and charming, and it really felt like something special. I honestly wish the rest of the drama could have kept that feeling going, because it just became a bit generic once their adulthood started. And for a drama whose premise centred around a follow-up documentary to the one they starred in during their high school years, it didn't seem to matter all too much to the plot.

Our Beloved Summer does have some really heart-wrenching moments. The characters are very human and sympathetic, and it plays its strengths well. But it's not perfect, and it could have done better. A good example of its shortcomings is the plagiarism incident that happens early on in the drama. Another artist goes on television and implies that Woong has plagiarised him, but when comparing both artworks it doesn't really become apparent how the work was allegedly plagiarised, other than (I think - don't remember too clearly) them being drawings of the same (or similar if I'm remembering incorrectly) building. The thing about buildings is that if they're drawn at the same viewing angle, those drawings will look pretty similar. It's a bold claim and one that's taken very seriously in the art world, but I couldn't see the plagiarism myself because of that and thought, well, maybe they'll point out how it was plagiarised. But they didn't. They introduced the conflict and used it to push their plot along and show different facets of their characters, but they didn't care about the plagiarism itself. Naturally, Woong did not plagiarise. If anything, I believe that the other artist plagiarised Woong, but what bothered me was that there didn't seem to be a reason for this claim to be believed. Woong didn't address it and it faded from the story. Like a lot of other subplots. It came in, caused some trouble, and then vanished without any real resolution.

So, watch Our Beloved Summer. It's cute, and they care a lot about their characters. Well, about the main 2. Like cute couple scenes? Watch it. Like slice-of-life? Watch it. Don't like things feeling half-finished? Well, then maybe this one isn't for you.

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They wanted me angry and they succeeded.

I'm left frustrated, which is exactly what the writers wanted me to feel. If you're looking at One Ordinary Day expecting a satisfying conclusion, you're looking in the wrong place. This isn't a drama that will give you the sort of clean, neatly closed ending that many crime dramas do, and it doesn't want you to feel good. They have an angle and they stick to it, and that's exactly why I respect this drama so much.

I'm sure I'm not alone. We're all sitting here after watching episode 8, wondering what, exactly, we just saw. Angry at the police and prosecution for the absolute joke of a case they formed against Hyun Soo, annoyed at the judge who sentenced him and every person involved who let the investigation of the Guk Hwa's murder become the joke that it was. We're frustrated with the prosecutor's promotion, the team leader's peaceful retirement, all the while our lead is stuck in prison while his very stressed-out lawyer goes and does the police's job for them, only for them to take credit for his achievements in the end. So without an apology, after watching a man die in his arms, Hyun Soo is tossed back out into the world, the family that had begun to doubt him acting as though nothing ever happened. He's expected to return to his ordinary life after all of the unfairness he experienced, knowing first-hand just how corrupt and broken the judicial system is. There's no big, dramatic reveal of who the real killer is, no flashback to the night of the murder, and no repentance from the people who botched the investigation and even demanded the death penalty for our innocent lead. Nothing.

The last several minutes show Hyun Soo returning to life, sombre when surrounded by his family, living in a house with "murderer" vandalized on the wall, buying cigarettes and consciously aware of the eyes around him. Even free, he can't return to his old life. He can't fix anything, and this is his new reality.

So One Ordinary Day doesn't leave you fulfilled. Like its characters, you're bitter and unsatisfied. But you're thinking. You're thinking and reminded of just how warped the world can be, and that's exactly what they wanted. That's some pretty good storytelling, wouldn't you say?

And, you know, the stellar acting didn't hurt. I loved seeing Kim Soo Hyun in a drama again, and Chae Seung Won is as amazing as ever. So I'm angry, but I'm very glad I watched this.

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Before it's a thriller, it's an exploration into what it means to be human

For the first section, I'll keep it spoiler-free!

The first thing that intrigued me about Happiness was the way the virus functioned. Despite the zombie-esque premise, the infected are alive. Once their episodes pass they return to themselves, they can think and feel and communicate. Despite having the same hunger and urges that your everyday zombie has, they're still people. And sure this isn't the only time this has been done in media, but in a genre oversaturated with dehumanized corpses, it provides us with a much lesser shown perspective. Humanizing the infected made the situation both hopeful and bleak as we're shown them in both their frenzied and calm states. But their living state doesn't necessarily grant them compassion from every character, and the lines between what is okay and what isn't start to blur.

To start from the beginning, Happiness is less a monster thriller and more an exploration into the different forms of happiness, what they mean to those who seek them, and what lengths those seekers will go to reach them. Yoon Sae Bom's motivation at the start of the series is to have her own home, a place that is entirely hers, after growing up never having her own space. She had a rough go of things when she was younger and is now desperate to take her first steps towards that long-sought goal, so much so that she even takes Jung Yi Hyun, a long-time friend, to be her fake husband in order to get the apartment that she wants. JYH, for his part, reached his lowest point in high school when an injury took his future in baseball away from him, and it was YSB who pulled him out of his thoughts and allowed him to think clearly.

But Happiness isn't just about these two characters. Over the 12-13h runtime, we get the stories and motivations of about a dozen other characters, each in pursuit of happiness of their own, be it in the form of money, companionship, lust or family. The pursuit of happiness isn't always a noble battle, and what means the world to one person could mean nothing to the next. In this way, the drama explores the darker sides of greed, envy and lust very thoroughly. Because of that, there are more characters you don't like than those you do, and even the ones you've enjoyed early on can infuriate you later. For me, that was the beauty of it. It felt very human, if exaggerated. Let's be honest, it can be a bit much. In around two weeks, we see people fall to newer and deeper depravities to get what they want. Desperation can do a lot, but the sheer number of people who break apart so quickly in this series is staggering. But, well, the pandemic showed us just how quickly panic can bring about stupidity.

So on one hand, we have a bunch of people infected with a rabies-like virus who still retain their humanity. On the other, we have a bunch of people with different beliefs, motivations and moral compasses all stuck in a building together. From cops and bickering siblings to murders and scammers, they either try to sway the rest to their side or try to determine who they should trust. At the end of the day, if they all stayed in their units and had appointed a few people to bring their food and water to them, then this story would have had half of the blood and death in it that it does. But we've all experienced quarantines and know how big of a hit they can take on mental health, even if there aren't zombie-like people trying to break into your building. And we all know those people who just won't follow the rules and stay indoors. Not everyone listens. Almost everyone is scheming. The entire story is a mess and I love that about it. I even love how angry it made me and how many times it sent me on tangents complaining about the characters. Because, for all of the annoyance it caused me, I liked how it actually felt like characters other than our leads were moving the plot along.

Spoilers ahead!

Happiness, like its concept, isn't perfect. Sometimes the leads made stupid or reckless decisions. Sometimes the other characters did, too. I can't really hold that against it, though, because humans by nature aren't very logical. We panic, or we're hasty, and we make bad choices. We mess up. It happens. Naturally, there were some things that I didn't like beyond that, as well. The first is the serial killer story that developed in the latter half of the series. While everyone could see what was going on with Andrew from a mile away, I did feel like his identity-stealing serial killer subplot felt a bit out of place and tacked on. They needed to up the stakes for the last few episodes to make it interesting, but suddenly bringing in a serial killer who doesn't have anything to do with the main conflict of the virus was a bit too left-field for my liking, even if their goal was to show that humans themselves are more dangerous than any monster. If they were going to add it then I wish they went deeper into his story and the plot surrounding him to make his story feel more grounded.

What really bothered me was what they did to Kim Se Hoon. From the very start of the drama, he was an interesting though very rarely seen character that I wanted to see explored more. He was a paranoid, doomsday-conspirator survivalist right out of the gate and I loved that about him. Despite his very radical beliefs and his concern over catching the virus, he was kind and considerate not only to our leads but to the other characters as well (even if under YSB coercion). He came down to place his vote on whether to kick Kim Seung Beom out of the building even when he didn't want to leave his apartment until the quarantine was lifted and shared his food, even considering to share it with the rest of the people living there despite not really wanting to. I really wanted to learn more about him and see him survive until the end, but instead, he's killed off-screen (though I believe there was a flashback later) and his body is dumped. Not only is he ultimately a tool in the Andrew subplot, but he's left forgotten until they need to use moving his body as an excuse for one last high-stakes conflict. They could have done more. I wish they did, but that's what we're left with.

I think Happiness could have done well with either an extra episode to properly resolve everything, or a restructuring of the plot to allow more time in the end. It felt too rushed and there were a lot of loose ends that needed to be tied. We saw that Han Tae Seok's wife survived, but what about their child? It never showed the child being born or passing away despite being so heavily referenced in his scenes. We never had YSB visit her mother in the nursing home even though she voiced her regrets over not doing so before the quarantine. We don't know if Park Seo Yoon's father made it out (they mentioned severe symptoms for him, but we never saw the family fully reunited), or if Kim Jeong Gook was okay after being treated or if his wife was okay (we can assume, but we don't see him after recovery and we never see his wife despite, again, mentioning her throughout the whole story). These are just the ones that stand out in my mind, but there are probably other loose ends left hanging. Dramas can't always close off every little thing, but even having ten minutes at the end of the episode to show these characters finally reunited with their families would have been a nice way to close things off.

So yes, I have a lot of gripes. But even with all of that, which would normally bump this drama down to an 8, I have to give it a 9. It may not have closed off as nicely as I would have liked, but the relationship between YSB and JYH was beautiful. From episode 1 their chemistry was great, I loved their dialogue and their scenes together were my favourite, but by the end, I really felt how much they meant to each other. JYH was willing to do everything to protect YSB. They trusted each other unconditionally, and the only time we ever see someone talk an infected down from an episode is between them. It isn't just them, though. The old lady, despite being one of the first ones infected, never has an episode (to our knowledge). Her husband is harsh with his words and bickers and complains, but after finding out that she's been infected, he quarantines with her in their apartment and stands guard outside the bedroom door at night to watch over her. He never leaves her, and she's never put in a situation stressful enough to attack. She has the willpower to control it the whole way through the drama. And even her son, one of the stupidest, most obnoxious characters, experiences character growth by the end. After abandoning his family when he found out that his mother was infected and stealing their food, he returns in the end and reconciles with them, and they wait there together for the soldiers to arrive after the quarantine is lifted. Another woman gains the courage to leave a man who clearly doesn't value her, and a brother and sister whose relationship was strained reconnect after almost losing one another.

So, okay, it's not perfect. I hate a lot of people in this. My quibbles are endless. But somehow this is still one of the dramas I enjoyed most this year, and I'm happy to have experienced it.

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I have never seen a more genuine couple in my long history with kdramas

Dali and the Cocky Prince is really something special. I've gotten accustomed to writing reviews about dramas that don't offer anything new but are enjoyable nonetheless, but Dali is not that. It's a lot more. Sure the premise is simple and has been done before, but the execution is brilliant. The characters are wonderful, from the leads to the side roles, and they bring the story to life in a way that feels refreshing and new. They're entirely believable.

Moo Hak is an eccentric male lead, which was a really popular trope for a long time, and he's the poster-boy for that trope. He has his tacky, flashy designer suits and his expensive watch, he's extremely bad at English and he's not well-versed in common cultural knowledge and phrases. But his shortcomings are balanced out with his business savvy and his very genuine predisposition. Moo Hak is not a polite man by any means. He's rude and brash and loud, loves money, and commands attention when he walks into a room. But he's honest, more so than anyone else in the drama, and he's passionate about everything he does. Food is important to him. He runs a restaurant chain, never skips a meal and cares not only about how food tastes but also about how well it will fill his customers' stomachs and how affordable it is. And when he's passionate about something, he puts a lot of care into it. And that's just what we learn about him in the first few episodes. The characters are multi-faceted and deep, enough to feel like real people.

Dali, on the other hand, comes from a very different world. Where Moo Hak is uneducated and had a rough childhood working for his father's business, Dali comes from a prestigious family who has owned the Cheonsong museum for generations. She's well-educated and passionate about art but has trouble taking care of herself - even eating and sleeping on her own. Reality hits her when her father passes away suddenly and she's sent from the Netherlands to Korea to deal with the estate, the art museum, and the many debts her father left behind. But she's resilient and determined to take care of the museum that her father loved, even at the expense of all that she has left. To her, Moo Hak is a strange but incredibly interesting man. He makes her laugh and gives her the help that she needs to try to protect Cheonsong, even if the ways he does so are crude and frustrating to her at times.

As I said, the story itself, if you're just looking at it from a plot perspective, is nothing new. It's how it's handled that makes it special. With a drama like this, you can easily look back at your previous experience with similar stories and imagine what plot twists and dramatic turns it's going to take, and know where you're going to end up in the end. Except that a lot of those common pitfalls don't happen here. The misunderstandings, the sudden revelations, the big reveals and family please for the couple to part - all those annoying subjects crop up exactly where you're expecting them to, but Dali isn't so easy, and it's going to subvert your expectations wherever it can. Those romcom climax lows where everything is suddenly going wrong and the characters who were best buds in one episode are suddenly enemies or apart for the next two or three? Yeah, no. Dali's not about that. And that's what I loved about it. It's one of the few romances I've watched in the past several months - maybe a year? - that doesn't use those tropes to pad out the last 6 episodes, and I'm eternally grateful. I enjoyed every minute of it, from beginning to end, with no dragging in the middle.

The biggest appeal for me, though, is the relationship between Dali and Moo Hak. They're genuinely in love. They have an adorable honeymoon phase, they're honest with each other and they prove how much they care time and time again. I've watched a lot of romances. They're my guilty pleasure when I'm sick or having a rough go of things. I've seen couples turn on each other or break up for several episodes just to add drama and pad the runtime. But every time these two go through one of these things that would, in any other drama, take several hours to resolve, they work it out. They talk to each other, they work it out, and they don't let the other person go. In addition to that, we get to see a lot of shows of affection between them that you don't see often in Korean dramas - butterfly kisses and implied sex (which is getting more common but not overtly so) to name a few. I could maybe see some people being turned off by just how much and how often these two are showing affection for each other, but when I'm watching a romance, that's kinda what I'm looking for and I loved it. I genuinely believed in their relationship, and I rooted for them all the way. These two are precious.

So watch Dali and the Cocky Prince. Just do it. I suppose if you prefer mysteries then maybe it's not for you, but I don't think you'd be looking at Dali at all if that's what you're after anyway. So just give it a shot. It's funny, charming, sweet, and brightens your day. What's the worst that could happen?

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The journey is worth the time

I liked this drama. I really liked it. But if you're looking for a unique story, this may not be the best place for you. Gumiho follows the same trends as most interspecies romances, from the trigger that pulls the characters together to the overly-predictable "plot twists" towards the end that make you wonder how far they have to go to pad the runtime. But there is one thing that Gumiho has that a lot of its predecessors are lacking: a unique mood.

While on paper there isn't much that Gumiho does new, it does present its plot and characters in a unique way. The melodrama is forgotten in favour of a bright, colourful world of comedy, charms and ridiculous moments. The solemn, isolated otherworldly creature is still present in the ML, but he meets his match in Lee Dam, a bright college student who has no qualms about closing the gap between them. Both the actress and character have this infectious happiness about them that draws you to them in much the same way she does Shin Woo Yeo and I found myself binging the episodes without ever intending to.

Gumiho doesn't just have good leads, though. A lot of the characters are unique, with stories and interests of their own. For me, Yang Hye Na really stole the show with her over-the-top yet very genuine personality. In most stories, she would be turned into an antagonist who is either at odds with the main couple or trying to tear them apart. But no. She's amazing. Despite her apparent lack of interest in SWY, she helps him watch over LD and gives him all the advice in the world to help him become human before his time is up. The relationship that she instead forms with Do Jae Jin, LD's friend, is silly and wholesome and everything you could want in a side couple. We don't see much of LD's brother Dan, but what we do see shows the same world building - he's a character that only shows up now and then and is never deeply delved into, but we see he had an interest in archery. That may not sound like much, but there are so many dramas out there that are so focused on making their characters do the thing that they want them to do that they forget to give them hobbies and interests, which are so integral to understanding a character. There's even a sibling duo found in the second love interest and his sister (Gye Sun Woo and Gye Seo Woo) that feels strangely fantastical yet totally believable. Props to the team for that. Really, I couldn't have asked for more.

The show has its faults, though, which mostly come in the form of the writing further into the show. As soon as the main couple comes together - in the same episode, in fact - they're suddenly bombarded with 101 reasons they can't be together, reasons which were not really present at any time before that, and they're all the plot twists that you've heard before with interspecies dramas. This is where my binging turned to watching every few days. Conflicts need to exist in a story for it to continue moving forward, but the conflicts they used were so arbitrary and the writing surrounding them so bland that I started losing interest. Everything else outside of those issues was still enjoyable and I liked it, but with the central focus being so unoriginal I found that even the acting suffered and it was hard to press 'play.' They even introduced the dreaded love triangle that is totally one-sided and is just there to slow our main couple's relationship down.

Putting that aside, I do really think that this drama is immensely enjoyable. It's creative and fun, most of the characters have amazing dynamics together and the team took the time to make them feel real. The biggest problem is the endgame conflicts, but if you go into it prepared and steel your heart from some disappointing, eye-rolling developments, you'll be just fine. Don't let the weak ending deter you - the journey up to it is worth your time.

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I have a few unpopular opinions

For what I expected to be my favourite drama of the year, I've concluded it with lukewarm feelings. As much as I know a lot of people really loved this show, I have a lot of issues with it from morals to general plot progression and characterization. I don't think it was all bad and the premise really showed a lot of promise, but for me, it failed to reach the potential that I thought it deserved.

Let's start from the beginning. My hype for Mouse was at its peak before I ever started watching it, back when the description was just a vague blurb about a world where psychopaths could be determined before birth and the societal response to that. That right there is interesting to me, extremely. Just that short, nondescript idea was enough to get me really invested in what this show would become. So I was already past the point of no return when I realized that the writer for this drama was the same writer as Black. For anyone who has actually watched Black, you may understand why this set off alarm bells for me. But whatever, I was already set on watching it. I was even more excited than I was for Beyond Evil, which has so far been my favourite mystery/thriller this year.

From the very first episode, something did not sit well with me, and that was the portrayal of psychopaths. You know, the entire focal point of the drama. I knew going in that it wasn't going to be realistic because of the introduction of the psychopath gene and the prenatal test for it. Okay, fine. But the drama heavily referenced psychopaths being serial killers. Actually, all of their arguments centred around the idea that every psychopath was a serial killer when, really, most aren't. And the fact that the show was demonizing unborn children? It bothered me. But well, that's what I signed up for! I knew going into it that it would do that, and my hopes were that the drama would challenge the biased opinions it set out at the beginning throughout the drama. And well... it didn't. Not even a little bit. It just reaffirmed them throughout. Hm. Well okay. Maybe I won't agree with the morals, but I can still enjoy the story, right? Well...

I found the start of the drama a little fun. The moments of suspense reminded me of a b-horror movie which could be both cringy and fun, so I was okay with that. But the further I watched, the more I realized that it wasn't very enjoyable. To be enjoyable, a drama doesn't necessarily need to be funny and charming. Dark, gritty shows that make you think can be entertaining, too. But as I watched, I realized I didn't like any of the characters. They were all characters who had been deeply scarred by past events and losses in their lives so I didn't expect them to be happy, good, fun people, but their flaws didn't seem to justify their actions and, honestly, they felt a bit like caricatures. Those singular events in their past defined who they were as people.

Take Moo Chi - he's an off-the-walls alcoholic detective with anger issues. Why is he that way? Well, his parents were murdered and beheaded by a serial killer and his brother was seriously injured in the same event and had to go through many operations just to keep his life. His brother never recovered. That night still lives with him and he can't escape it. Okay, makes sense. So, what does he like? Well... alcohol, I guess. His brother? His team, maybe? Half the time he's fighting with them, so I can't be sure. What are his interests? Hm. Drinking? Chasing criminals? Being depressed in his room? Depression makes a lot of sense for his character, especially after his brother's death, but he has no interests. There's nothing in his room that indicates that he's cared about anything but catching criminals his entire life and that just isn't a character. You can say that he's obsessed, but even people who are will have things they've picked up over the decades of their lives that they care about. And it isn't even like he's a good detective - he's very slow to piece things together. While watching Mouse, I never really cared for the moments he was on screen. And I don't think it's at all the actor's fault. He's doing his best with what he's been given. He's a good actor. But there wasn't much to work with there.

Okay. Bong Yi. Where to start? Well, she was a victim of sexual assault when she was younger and is scarred ever since. Same deal as with Moo Chi. She's traumatized and that's entirely valid. She loves her grandmother, but also somewhat blames her grandmother for what happened to her. That comes out when she's angry. She has a temper, like Moo Chi. She knows how to fight - I can assume maybe self-defence classes in her past. She... boxes? I guess? Great, a hobby! And she has a crush on Ba Reum. Okay, so she has interests! Right? Well... not really. The strange thing about this writer is that she's actually not great at writing women. You can see it in Black, too - the badly written female characters. She tries to follow the 'strong female character' trope that's become popular over the years but doesn't go far beyond the trope. The girl can fight, great, but whenever there comes a time where she actually needs to fight, she's useless. She'll almost catch a criminal here and there, but mostly her confrontations will end in her being a victim that needs to be saved. Throughout the series, she was just a magnet for every serial killer and rapist. They all gravitated to her house like there was a big red sign out front that read 'TARGET'. As for her crush on Ba Reum, that was her entire role. She was meant to be the love interest and victim of the serial killer in order to add more angst, drama and tragedy to the script.

Ba Reum. Well, personality-wise, he was a bit likeable. He was meant to be. In fact, his kind act was so caked on that most of the viewers realized in episode 2 that he was going to turn out to be the serial killer while the show was trying to act like it was some big twist to be revealed at the 3/4 mark. It was predictable. But what bothers me with that is that him being a genuinely nice guy who likes to take care of animals would have been the better twist. Everyone also figured out early on that he was the Head Hunter's biological son, too. It would have been a good chance for the show to challenge the earlier morals that it established but, well, it decided that no, psychopaths are determined at birth and they all need to be aborted because the only route they'll take in life is murder! I won't go into that rant. That aside, his character was... okay. He still didn't really have many interests, but they at least established more of his history through his friends. We got more info through the backstory of his family and their murders... but I really don't want to touch on what a mess the family history is in this show. 'Serial killer turned nice guy' was his entire personality and we can just leave him at that.

This goes for most of the other side characters, too. They're very one-dimensional and when you look back on it, it makes them hard to like. This isn't a Mouse exclusive problem and actually tends to be a big issue I have with a lot of thrillers, but the writing of the focal points matters a lot in whether these simple characters bother me or not. Unfortunately, the story wasn't enough to detract from that. What a mess. It bothers me that this drama isn't tagged as sci-fi because of the brain-transplant element later on in the show. And the psychopath test. Of course. The plot was really inconsistent from thereon. Looking back, it feels like the entire middle of the show could have been cut out and we would have still ended up in the same place. Ba Reum's amnesia only succeeded in dragging out the show. It could have been 16 hour-long episodes or less and I feel that the takeaway would have been the same. Actually, how interesting would it have been to have Ba Reum wake up remembering that he is a serial killer, but now also being able to feel the guilt that he never could have before? Following that character would have been very interesting. That's not the show we have, though.

There was too much going on at once I think. The story was vast, but it didn't amount to much. The OZ conspiracy was honestly unnecessary. The government being involved felt a bit silly. If this show had stayed solely about the serial killer and was shorter in accordance with that, I think it would have had more of an impact on me. That was the part that was interesting. That was what I hung onto. But by the time we reached the end, it felt like the spark just sort of... fizzled out. The last episode was focused on wrapping up loose ends but by the time Ba Reum was arrested, I realized I didn't care about what was happening to any of the characters. I didn't like Bong Yi, Hong Ju or Moo Chi. They, like I said, didn't feel like real characters. Then the law was passed to abort fetuses with the psychopath gene, and I was wondering whether that was supposed to be considered a victory or if it was supposed to be seen in a negative light. I wasn't sure how I felt. Especially after the show essentially showing Ba Reum's mother starting everything. She misinterpreted Ba Reum's intent to kill his brother and told his adoptive mother to kill him. Ba Reum's family was murdered before him, and his first murder was of the man who killed them. That was the trigger. It does make me wonder how he would have turned out had it not been for the actions of the people around him. I assume that was the writer's goal, so props for that.

There are some bright sides to this experience. In concept, it was interesting. I'm glad it went the route of Ba Reum being the original killer instead of Yo Han. And hey, the ending wasn't half as bad as Black's. But unfortunately, the whole journey felt a bit meaningless to me and that last episode especially left a lot to be desired. Episodes were focused on ending with big cliffhangers and shocking the audience rather than telling a well-written story and the characters were stereotypes that failed to break the mould. I can't say that I regret watching it though. It was nice to see Seunggi acting again and I had fun in some of the earlier episodes. There were moments I got excited, too. So I can't say it's not worth watching, but I also can't say that it is, either. I do get why so many people loved it, and I feel with some changes maybe I would have been one of them.

For me, Mouse will remain a terribly long journey and a cautionary tale not to get too excited by a drama's premise.

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Bring Tissues

Going into this, I had a lot of expectations and reservations about the show. I knew it would make me feel things, but I was also worried about how it would tackle so many delicate subjects at once. In many cases, it's not handled well. But with each episode, Move to Heaven continued to surprise and impress me.

Naturally, every episode of Move to Heaven deals with grief. Each case is unique and deals with its own circumstances surrounding the deceased and the people in their lives. The people range from every walk of life and tackle a lot of big topics that are relevant today, from the LGBT community to the problems with overseas adoption. Geu Roo's character was handled with a lot of respect, too, and he's extremely likable. I can't say whether his portrayal was accurate or realistic as I don't think I'm qualified to, but it felt very well done. His relationship with both his father and uncle was amazing to see and the way each character grows from episode 1 to episode 10 was beautiful.

It's heartbreaking. Naturally. The job of Move to Heaven is not only to clean up the deceased's belongings but to say to their loved ones what they never could. It's sad, but it's also uplifting as you watch the small impact these things can make on someone's life. I give it the highest of recommendations. Whether or not we get a season 2, it's worth your time.

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There are better ways to waste your time

This drama is a mess. And I tried, I really tried, to give it the benefit of the doubt and watch to the very end. But in the end, all I ended up doing was wasting 16 hours of my life. I'm sure you'll see plenty of reviews like this, so I do want to mention the very, VERY few good aspects of the show as well to be fair.

The first 2 or 3 episodes were actually pretty good and I can easily see how the jumbled up pieces of it could have been turned into a really solid drama if it had a much better writer and director. The actors were all good, it was the roles that they were given that created all of the problems we saw and not the actors themselves. What stood out to me in the first episodes was how some things were handled. HBS finding out about OJI's circumstances with her mother was done well. Despite how poorly they got along at that time, he stopped everything to help her get to her mother even while not fully understanding what was going on. It may seem like common sense that you would help someone in a tough situation like that, but it's surprisingly not handled that well in most dramas. Another thing I have to give it props for was the arguing, oddly enough. In the beginning. Not after the stupid break-up episodes. But at the start, when they started to fight there weren't any big blow-ups where one would storm out or OJI would tell him to leave. They worked through it, maybe not amazingly but better than most fights in dramas. So again, props to that. There were some things like these that were handled nicely. In the beginning. And never again.

The drama after the first 2 episodes had no plot. Nothing, not even one bit. The characters would just lamely wax poetics at each other for 20-40min of an episode, we'd get the really annoying side couples to pop in and waste time, an unnecessary love triangle was thrown in to, again, pad run time, and then we had the cliche 'I'm breaking up with you to protect you' mini arch that was about where I had to start skipping through. And I never skim dramas. Usually even the worst trash I'll sit through, but I just couldn't.

The 'disappearing' aspect of the show was both stupid and unexplored. It isn't the first time a drama has given a character who has died or was going to die a second chance with a time limit to do things over and set things right before they leave. Off the top of my head, I can think of Please Come Back, Mister (which had a lot of problems of its own, but wasn't as bad as this) and Miracle That We Met (which doesn't have a time limit but is close enough that I think it could fit). While neither is a perfect show and has problems too, they at least had a plot. They had plot, they had character growth, and they were entertaining, even if some aspects were frustrating. They were watchable. But with Ladylord, after being hit, HBS spends so much time not even fully realizing the situation. It's only around the halfway mark that he even understands that he's going to just... pop out of existence. Which is weird to me. I don't know why they didn't just have him die 49 days later. I guess then they wouldn't have been able to do those weird 'disappearing' scenes... which probably would have been better for the drama anyway. But no, his biological father is apparently an angel there to tell him that doom is at his doorstep and 49 days from now - poof! Gone. Like magic.

That's the problem with the drama. Well, the biggest problem. Nothing is thought out and everything is haphazard. Instead of focusing on the plot and the details of what is happening, it gives us scene after scene of the leads being 'cute' together that amount to nothing long-term. It feels like the writer and director didn't actually care about what was going on with the show or whether their audience enjoyed it. The angel is seen only, what, 3 or 4 times throughout the whole series? The end game is an afterthought. The supernatural aspect of the show never should have been added to this drama because they weren't willing to flesh it out enough to make it a real part of the plot. It was just a consequence. It's just like how the step-father was so heavily in the early episodes and then after the mom found out, they just didn't need him anymore and it was like he never existed in the first place. And it doesn't even matter because he was just playing a cartoon villain anyway.

The writer didn't bother trying to make this drama good. I really feel that there was no effort put into the script at all beyond maybe the initial set-up. They should have tried to add a plot to the characters' everyday lives instead of these one-off instances of drugging and abduction, a dating scandal and a random accusation of plagiarism that came out of nowhere and left into nothing. Their lives had no structure. And it's not like structure can't be added with plots like these (I use 'plot' very loosely here) because we've seen it done in plenty of others. There are really amazing cohabitation dramas. Heck, Lee Min Ki himself was in one that was done really well! And there are plenty of great supernatural dramas out there, too. There are dramas dealing with a character's last days/months alive, there are ones that deal with a second chance of life after death, and most of them are better than this.

I'll stop there before I get more depressed over my wasted time. I've never said this about a drama before, but don't watch it. Don't even try. It's not worth it. The few positive points I mentioned disappear a few episodes in anyways.

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The drama that made me cry in episode 1

Navillera is the beautiful, heartwarming story of a man in his twilight years trying to finally pursue his dream. It's a show that embodies the mentality "it's never too late to start." It's also the story of the most unlikely of friendships as SDC, a man in his 70s looking to pursue ballet, and LCR, a man in his 20s who excels at his craft but is too lost and unmotivated to give it his full attention meet. These two make this drama. The supporting cast is amazing, too, with characters that each have their own personal growth and stories throughout the series, but it's the leads that steal the spotlight. Their interactions are some of the most wholesome things I've ever seen, they're inspirational, and seeing them help each other get back up when they've been kicked down is enough to bring you to tears.

That brings us to my gripe with this drama. The tears, or lack thereof. This is really going to be dependant on your tastes so you may have liked this, but personally, I was turned off of the series by the shoehorned-in Alzheimer's plot. I'm fine with Alzheimer's being present in dramas and I think it's an important talking point because it affects so many families worldwide, but I wasn't particularly fond of the way it was implemented here. In this drama, Alzheimer's is mainly used to up drama and make the viewer emotionally invested. That's fine in other narratives, but I feel that it just wasn't necessary here. I felt emotional in the early episodes before Alzheimer's became the main focus. I teared up in the beginning because the story was just so beautiful and inspirational. It didn't need more drama, it didn't need more angst and it was already making me cry. Navillera thrives on its very human, everyday atmosphere. Sometimes ordinary life is heartbreaking enough. You don't need to have a terrible illness or disease to go through hardships in life or to make the viewers feel for the characters. So when ballet started taking a backseat to characters having revelations about SDC's condition, characters crying over SDC, and SDC himself reminding us that he doesn't have much time left, my eyes dried up. Yes, it was sad, but it made me feel like those scenes were added just to pull at my emotions, so I didn't get teary-eyed or emotional over it. I haven't caught up with the webcomic yet, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm fairly certain that Alzheimer's isn't a plot device in the source material and it was just added into the drama for, well. Drama. Again, I've started reading it but haven't caught up, so I could be wrong here.

I wish that the writer and director were confident enough in their story not to add in little melodramas like that. There were other instances, like with the youngest son's backstory of being a doctor who left his field after his patient died or the situation with LCR's dad, that were just added in for what feels like the same reason, but the Alzheimer's took up a large majority of the plot in the second half of the drama so it was the most glaring. The simple story of a man trying to pursue his own goals at an age where most people would have considered his life over was powerful enough on its own. The relationship between him and LCR as his instructor was amazing and heartwrenching all on its own.

Despite my gripes, I still love the drama. It's different and unique, and I do understand why dramas have such a tendency to fall on these tropes and cliches. It's a drama. It needs to be dramatic. But if the addition of the Alzheimer's subplot doesn't deter you, it's still a great story. The ending is satisfying, not great but it doesn't leave you wanting more, and the characters will stick with you for a long time afterwards. Give it a try.

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Dong Sik and Ju Won make this drama what it is.

I'm going to keep this review relatively spoiler-free, but in order to make character references and because a big draw of the plot is whether or not the leads are involved in the murder, I'm going to use a spoiler tag as talking about their characters in-depth will reveal whether or not they're involved, so keep that in mind while reading.

It's really hard to write a detective thriller that works. We've all seen them, dozens of them. A fair amount of the most popular dramas over the years have fallen into this category. With so many to choose from and another 1-3 cropping up each season, it's hard for any individual title to leave its mark on you. You've seen it all before, all the twists and turns. And buddy cop dramas? They're a dime a dozen. Every dynamic has been tested, all the tropes are set, so the moment that you see a new title following the same formula, unless it has a gimmick, you don't bat an eye.

Beyond Evil is just like all of those other thriller detective stories. Except where it isn't. There's something different about this drama that really struck a chord with me. The setting of a small town with a history of murder where everyone knows each other and they all have secrets? That's nothing new. A 20-year-old-murder that's never been resolved is suddenly brought back into the spotlight when the killer kills again? It's been done to death. What about two very different police officers who are forced to partner up to solve the crime? That's one of the most popular dynamics in the genre!

Except, it's not. What really fascinated me about this drama wasn't the mystery, the setting, nor the plot. There was something different about the relationship between LDS and HJW, something that I couldn't quite place in the early episodes. When I started watching episodes 1 and 2 I had predicted the turns their relationship would take right off the bat. On one side we had an unconventional older cop who's been around the block and whose past is always hanging over him. He's bitter with the world, angry at himself, and is known to fly off the handle when provoked. Only... that's not really accurate. We can make assumptions about LDS before we really get to know him that can lead to those conclusions because that's typically how these characters go. And, honestly, he looks pretty unhinged early on, enough to make you wonder if HJW is right, if LDS has been the killer all along. The further the story goes and the more you see of him, you come to understand that what's on the surface isn't all there is to his character. Despite going off when he's angry, he can also be extremely rational. In those fits of brash action that he takes, he knows what he's doing, where it will go and what will happen because of it. He laughs like a madman not because he's unhinged but because of what he's been through. When fingers are being pointed at him, when he notices other cops making the same mistakes now that were made 20 years ago when he was named a suspect, he laughs at the absurdity of it, of knowing it was exactly those leaps in logic that ruined his life all those years ago and that, even after no evidence could be found and he was released, he's the first suspected when something goes wrong. LDS is a very thoroughly thought-out character, and I was honestly shocked by that as detectives don't tend to be that fleshed out in these types of stories - often their main character trait is 'the family/friend of victim A who wants to avenge their death'. LDS is no exception to this rule; he's a cop with a murdered sister who wants to find her body and catch the murderer, but there was more to him than that. Take that fleshed-out character and add the phenomenal actor Shin Ha Kyun and you have an amazing performance.

HJW is a little different. At first, I was sure that he was a badly written character. No matter what happened or how his logic was challenged, he was dead-set on LDS being named the murderer. In the first few episodes, he only vaguely considered other possibilities. Even when other characters tried to rationalize with him or let him into their lives, he just pushed them away. He didn't want anything to do with them. All that mattered was that LDS was the killer and that HJW was going to arrest him. But just like LDS, he's a character with a lot of layers. We get to see glimpses of his past, the grudge he holds against his father and how completely alone he's been throughout his life. The closeness of the Manyang police officers is foreign to him. He's not good with that sort of environment because he had never experienced it before. When someone shows him compassion, he pushes it back. He doesn't need it. He can't grasp the feelings behind it. Everyone has always wanted something from him, everyone always had expectations of him, and if they show one bit of kindness then they must be the same. To a man who doesn't believe in sincerity, it's easier to be alone. And honestly, before you know really know him, seeing him acting like this is frustrating. You just want to take him by the collar and shake him. Yeo Jin Goo plays this role perfectly as well. I honestly couldn't imagine another actor in his place, and even when you want to punch him, you can't quite hate him.

What really stands out about Beyond Evil is the relationship between these two characters. Now, I like detective thrillers. Even despite how much flack I give them, I still try out almost every one that comes around, I give them all a chance. I'm only so critical of the genre because of just how many I've seen and how a lot of them blur together. A drama doesn't necessarily need to have a good plot or production for me to like it. Usually, the first thing I look at is characters. If the characters are good then I've even enjoyed dramas that have very low ratings or little popularity. If a plot is really good but I hate seeing the characters, it's hard to get through. What surprised me about LDS and HJW's relationship is that it's not a typical enemies-to-friends dynamic. It isn't just two different people learning to depend on one another. For most of the series, these two clash. They butt heads every episode, they bait each other every chance they get. Compliments are backhanded insults and there is no trust between them. Half the time you'd think they hate each other. Half the time, they do. There's no bonding session 4 or 5 episodes in that makes them get along or work together better. It just doesn't happen. Every time LDS reaches out, HJW slaps him in the face. Again and again. But despite how terribly they get along, they start to worry about each other. They look out for one enough even while pointing figurative (and literal) guns at each other's heads. The way LDS talks and reacts to HJW reveals just how little he actually blames HJW for his actions. He sees him as a young, naive boy who doesn't have much experience with the world and lets him get away with a lot. You realize how tolerant he is. At the same time, HJW begins the long, slow journey of learning more about the world and himself. He opens up. Even if he has a sharp tongue right up until the end, he starts to ease up and let people into his life.

Beyond Evil is great. And these characters are just two of the rich cast we're given. Each character has their own secrets, their own stories and trials and everyone has their place. And the plot, while a little too messy at times, does a great job of bringing those characters together in a unique and interesting way. For me, this was the only drama this season that was consistently good from the beginning right until the end. It was the one that left me the most satisfied, and looking at where we started to where we are at the end has made me appreciate it even more. This is a classic in the making and I really hope more people give it a shot because it's worth your time.

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The heart makes up for the plot, I swear.

Hello Me is the perfect example of a drama not necessarily needing a well-written plot in order to be memorable. During a season filled to the brim with suspense thrillers, murder mysteries and dark-themed dramas, this little romcom was my oasis. It re-energized me in the middle of weeks filled with murder, betrayal and frustration. Without it, I probably wouldn't have made it through the other shows that aired.

The story for this drama is actually pretty simplistic, and more than a bit convoluted. BHN is a woman who, after the death of her father, essentially gave up on life. Blaming herself for his death, she was never able to get her feet off the ground. She was a fixed point in time. While the world around her kept changing, she refused to change with it, and her inability to adapt found her living off of her sister's success in exchange for housekeeping, with a job that didn't give her much of an income. At 37-years-old she had nothing to show for herself. But on her worst day, she gets a second chance as her 17-year-old self appears from the past and gives her the push she needs to reinvent herself. This concept has been done before in many different ways and variations and isn't anything new. A lot of the drama's shortcomings stem from this premise as they try to think up ways to explain - or avoid - the time travel and the convoluted nature of how things ended up this way, and it only gets worse when they try to send 17-year-old BHN back to her time.

Despite the lacklustre plot, it's worth a watch. It makes up for its shortcomings with a powerful message, heartwarming moments and great characters. Hello Me tells a story of loving yourself and accepting who you are, no matter your faults, where you came from or how you got here. We follow BHN's journey as a sad, guilt-ridden woman at the end of her rope as she regains lost confidence and learns to stop blaming herself for the past. Through her own will, she finds a career and reconnects with friends and family with whom she had grown distant over her 20 years of grief.

I wouldn't be doing the drama justice if I ignored the supporting cast. HYH as the male lead was amazing. Following the theme of BHN herself, many of the other characters go through their own growth period throughout the story and the male lead is one of them. HYH begins his journey as an immature, indecisive young man with a good heart. He has no direction in life and no interest in the family business so he spends his days learning new skills and collecting very niche licenses that he says will be useful when working in the future, even though he's never had a job. After losing a bet against his father, he's kicked out of the house and has no choice but to try to make it on his own. The chemistry between HYH and BHN is amazing. They genuinely feel like they care about one another as they grow close and every interaction they have, while oftentimes silly and over-the-top, is natural and fluid. There's no sudden forced romance like you usually get with romcoms. Everything is slow and they go at their own pace, forming a close bond before anything more than HYH's crush is brought into the spotlight.

YCS is a former school-bully-turned-actor hiding his past behind his new name Anthony and a lot of plastic surgery. Pretty topical, given the past few months. I honestly hated his character in the early episodes, but at some point he did start to grow on me. We follow him as he struggles to regain his lost popularity and to make amends for his past wrongdoings, and the journey was better handled than I expected it to be, honestly. Even smaller characters are given their own personal journey's, whether it's BHN's family finally coming to accept her again after 20 years without support, HYH's father worrying that his son will never grow up or even the younger BHN maturing and coming to love her future self as her future self learns to accept her in turn. Everyone has a story and these are just a few.

So if you hate plot holes, maybe avoid this. There are plenty, especially towards the end. But if plot doesn't matter to you as much as the heart and soul of a drama does, give it a shot. There are some wonderfully written characters and a beautiful message in every one of them, and if that's not enough then the relationship between the leads is incredibly adorable. It's funny, it's sweet, and it holds a special place in my heart.

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I didn't know I needed this but here we are

If you're looking for something totally new and fresh, this may not be the drama for you. The story contains all the tropes you've come to expect, even if it makes fun of them, and there's nothing to it but the romance and friendship between the characters. But if what you're looking for is something to lift your spirits on a rough evening or to bring a smile to your face, you're looking in the right direction.

Scripting Your Destiny is a quirky, fun take on the overused notion of 'fate' in Korean dramas. It puts a face to that unchangeable fate in the form of deities of destiny, beings who exist to write a person's fate the way a writer does their characters. Over the course of this short but sweet series, we get to see a mess of ways these deities can affect their charges using their books and how the people being written about can both conform and change the destiny they've been given. This is all centred around Shin Ho Yoon, a deity seeking to write the perfect destiny for his charge Jeong Ba Reum. That includes the perfect romance, of course. The problem is that Ho Yoon has no experience with romance nor the skills to write the best romance it can be. To solve this issue, he plagiarizes Ba Reum's love interest Go Chae Kyung's old writing in an attempt to bring the couple together. In doing so, at some point, in some way, he finds himself becoming her love interest instead. This is a problem as deities of destiny must remain impartial to their charges and feeling anything for a human risks elimination.

This drama is great at setting a mood. The cinematography is really good for such a small, short drama, the OST perfectly suits the story and the actors do a great job. Everything comes together well and the best part of the story is the fact that it's so short. Because there isn't much time, it focuses on progressing the plot and building character relationships rather than adding in unnecessary conflicts like a lot of long-running romcoms are so prone to do. While it at first seems like the start of a love triangle is forming, it never gets there. There are no backstabbing friends, no parents trying to get in the way of the characters, and really, no unnecessary complications to the plot. Well, mostly. There are some moments towards the end that feel a little muddied as they try to up the severity of the one big conflict the drama does have, but they're rectified and didn't derail the story.

Even if there's nothing new, the story stays true to what it intended to be and knows what it is. It's character-driven. There's comedy, there's the overused notion of fate, and there are characters that you really grow to like over the drama's short run time. My one gripe has to be that I wish it was just a little longer. A little more detailed. I wish we got to learn more about Ba Reum as his character doesn't get the same sort of conflict and growth that I thought he was going to have in the early episodes, and I wish we saw more between him and Ho Yoon as their dynamic of deity and charge could have been really fascinating to explore. And, well, I liked the characters. I would have loved seeing more of the two deities interacting and their history or had more detail on the flashbacks that are shown. And it would have been nice to have more concrete knowledge on how the deities function themselves, how they come to be, how it's decided that they're eliminated, and the inner workings of their world. It's mentioned that there are deities for more than just destiny, but we're never shown them. The world this could have created could rival many big fantasy dramas of the past if given the chance, but well. That was never the drama's intention. It didn't want to be the next Hotel Del Luna or Goblin. Still, it would have been nice to see.

If you like calm romcom settings with a bittersweet twist, give this one a shot. It won't take up much of your time and you may find something memorable along the way.

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