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AudienceofOne
Apart from what remains of our lives.
What remains of our lives always meets us
In a way that is not at all remarkable.
Though you might not wish to believe it,
It is not at all remarkable.
At its core, this sweet little drama about physical therapists and other people who work at a hospital started as it ended – as a quietly-joyful slice of the ordinary.
Lee You-bi is truly delightful as Woo Bo-young; a contracted physical therapist who wants a full-time job and love in that order. Bo-young finds herself in the middle of a love triangle that launched a full-scale shipping war while the show aired: will she choose the urbane, professional Dr Ye or the childish first love Min Ho? But in the end this show is not about romantic attainment or who ends up with who - rather it's a beat in the lives of ordinary people. And it's in that beat that we find the poetry in the average human soul.
With an alternative - and preferable - title of You Who Forgot Poetry, this is a show about the compromises people make to make a living and the need for us to retain our original aspirations in our lives. As people who opted for a steady, safe income over their dreams, most of us can empathise with the underlying concept of poetry as a metaphor for romance in a petty, silly, vainglorious world.
The show has lots of quirky humour in the vein of a more-subdued Scrubs and elicits its fair share of laughs at the general absurdity of life. But it's in its overall message - that the ordinary can be poetic - that this show is quietly and subtly beautiful in a way that is as unexpected as it is joyful.
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The show started off very strong. Although Derek Chang's An Quinhui is very young and very immature, he has lovely chemistry with Ruby Lin's Xiaofei. The acting is very good and, at least in the beginning, the show has a nice vibe of verisimilitude: these people feel real, their lives feel real and the story feels real too. This is a classic slice of slice drama - or at least it is until the episode 14 mark where it starts to go horribly wrong.
At one point it became clear that Quinhui was far far too young and far too immature for Ruby Lin's character and the idea this relationship would progress to a romance was somewhat laughable. No mature professional woman her age would be genuinely interested in this child and yet the show pursued the relationship anyway. It's not surprising that it inevitably crashed and burned.
I am yet to see a Taiwanese drama that doesn't attempt to fill its long episode run with a touch of Makjang and unfortunately this was no exception. The last few episodes were a tough watch as An Quinhui responds to his feelings in the most immature way possible and the people around the main couple behave just as badly. In the end, what I had enjoyed about the show was slowly eroded until I was just left with frustration and second-hand embarrassment.
I only finished this show because I'd already devoted so much time to it. It's yet another Taiwanese drama that started off well but couldn't maintain it over so many episodes.
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I really hope there's a season 2 but even if there isn't this was still pretty much the most perfect short drama I've ever seen.
10/10
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Having said that, there's a lot to like in this show. It's one of the few Thai BLs with strong and well-developed female characters and with a solid grounding of family. Bank and Golf's lives are messy and this mess gives it a sense of realism that a lot of similar shows lack.
Spread over two different timelines 8 years apart, we soon learn that Bank and Golf are stepbrothers who were in love while in high school but separated by their parents when their relationship was discovered. Bank has made a successful and stable life for himself in the US but Golf is a mess; cut off from his family and bouncing through south-east Asia and the Pacific working as a diver. In this, the characterisation is superior especially as it portrays Bank. Portrayed in the film as being fragile to the point of being infantilised, this Bank is a definite improvement being strong, smart and utterly comfortable in who he is and with his homosexuality.
As the couple fall in love in the past, they attempt to navigate their relationship with each other and with their family in the present. Bank is engaged to another man but is instantly torn when faced with his past love. Golf is so unhappy he's determined to recreate the past rather than try to live in the present. It's a new and interesting path for a BL to tread and gives us some lovely and intelligent moments between two adults rather than the confused children BLs are usually concerned with.
Unfortunately, given 12 episodes to really explore why these two men fell in love and why they're drawn to each other again, the show instead gets distracted by other plotlines and other characters. Perhaps one day we'll get the season 2 that wraps up the plotlines and resolves the somewhat unsatisfactory ending. But until that day, this is it.
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In the end, there was very little point to this show that promised magical realism but gave us little magic.
On paper, Evergreen should have been one of those delightful and heartwarming Korean dramas we all know and love. Lee Jong-hyun plays Oh Soo: one of a family of guardians of a magical tree; the pollen of which he uses in his cafe to help couples fall in love. Determined not to love, he nonetheless meets and falls for Seo Yoo-ri (Kim So-eun), a policewoman who was recently dumped by her boyfriend.
With a magical tree, enchanted coffee, and a strong female protoganist, this show could have been an enjoyable watch if it wasn't all so boring and meaningless. Oh Soo is also an expert in AI for no clear narrative reason but nonetheless spends most of his time making coffee. The female lead is a badass cop - whom they repeatedly damsel to prop the male lead's heroism. The second male lead... exists. The show makes a half-hearted attempt to make fun of the cliches and tropes it's embodying but simultaneously embraces them in a way that makes the show feel generic.
The blandly-nice OTP fall in love despite the threat of the blandly-nice second male lead. Their love is threatened by fate. The ending is meandering and ultimately unsatisfying, despite the show pulling out every kdrama cliche short of a birth secret.
In the end, like the magical tree itself, this show exists. But like the magical tree itself, I'm not entirely sure why.
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The plot is far too sparse; acres of character development being leapt over in large Superman-like bounds. I can understand why this was later slated for a televisual adaptation. Far more time needed to be spent on characters and background to make this work. In some cases, as with the boys' absent parents, this lack of insight worked as it further highlighted the boys' isolation and feelings of abandonment. But in others, it made people's behaviour inexplicable and led to some confusion.
Others may find the ending tragic (and it is). I just find it bemusing and somewhat random. Overall, this is a sad film about very sad people. But that's Thai BL.
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There could not be a more-brilliantly insightful opening to this evocative, powerful, visceral, offbeat and oftentimes brilliant drama about a woman who disguises herself as a highschool student to help her daughter: a traumatised victim of school violence. As Kang-ja begins to peel off the layers of the incident that hurt her daughter, she discovers that the issues leading up to that bullying are more pervasive and more systemic than she could have bargained for.
Once one suspends their disbelief enough to accept that this middle-aged woman could pass for an 18-year-old highschool student, Angry Mum delivers an impressive 16 episodes of television filled with complex, fun, and often quirky characters and a surprising sense of joy for a show dealing with such serious issues.
As well as Kim Hee-sun's fierce, blunt, fiery and fiercely-loyal Jo Kang-ja, the show also has standout performances from Jisoo as troubled student Go Bok-dong, Ji Hyun-woo as idealistic schoolteacher Park No-ah and even the often-bland Kim Yoo-jung as Oh Ah-ran. But it's Go See-hee who steals the show as the badass, overweight, tattooed gangster Princess, Han Gong-joo, the second titular Angry Mum of the series.
Angry Mum works at meshing broad, often crazy physical comedy with much-more serious themes and messages. One can be laughing along one minute at the antics of Han Gong-joo and the next minute be stunned by a dark turn in events. Unlike other shows that attempted this and failed - Strong Woman Do Bong Soon comes to mind - Angry Mum makes it work in a way that makes the show a cohesive fun-tragic whole that has you laughing despite the darkness.
Kdramas often pretend that sexual assault and harassment and predation don’t exist. This show does not do that and it benefits from being more honest about the world we live in. It also frequently overturns tropes, clichés and stereotypes in a way that allows you to be surprised (and often horrified) at the way the plot progresses.
More importantly, it has a truly powerful message about problems being solved with love rather than violence. Not in a trite “love conquers all” way but in a “people need to feel somebody is on their side” way. And if the wrong person gives that love, then terrible things can happen.
Like many 16 episode kdramas, Angry Mum is not perfect. I have quibbles and that's why this didn't get a full 10/10. Once the plot shifts to politics, it becomes less compelling and the show struggled to maintain its pace through the whole run. But while those quibbles are there, they don't detract from this drama as a whole. I highly recommend it.
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This review may contain spoilers
There was a point during Misty's run that it was shaping up to be 2018's Forest of Secrets. An intelligent script, excellent acting, striking cinematography and a haunting, beautiful score all combine into a compelling piece of television about a powerful woman trying to attain her goals in a hyper-patriarchal society: all the while rocking awesome pantsuits and never letting the cracks in her life show in public. Dark, mature and atmospheric with a powerful female lead, this show was amazing until the inevitable Episode 15 slide in quality that condemns it to being ALMOST the best show of 2018.Go Hye Ran has hit the glass ceiling but instead of quietly disappearing like older women are supposed to, she refuses to go anywhere. Fighting constantly against corruption, discrimination and vicious gossip, she has become cold, driven and untrusting but is fuelled by a strong desire for justice and a determination to win against all odds.
Kim Nam Joo puts in an exceptional performance as the complex, brilliant and uncompromising Go Hye Ran who is charged for a murder and represented by her lawyer husband, Kang Tae Wook (Ji Jin Hee). The rest of the cast also do superb jobs. Full of timeline holes, unreliable narrators, unlikeable characters and deliberate misdirections, this show will have you second-guessing everything you think you know about the characters to the last scene.
Which brings us to the ending...
Like a lot of people, I was very dissatisfied with the ending and found the finale overly-long and self-indulgent. As can sometimes happen, what I thought was the main point of the drama and what the writers thought was the main point of the drama diverged wildly around the end of episode 14. As such, I found the last episodes frustrating, watching time tick down to a finale that I knew wasn't going to contain resolution to the plotlines I cared about. The ending in particular I found depressing in a way the rest of the drama - however moody and dark - wasn't.
Textually, in terms of the shows themes, I personally found the ending contradicted what (I thought) was the point of the show as a whole. In that respect, it negated to an extent the show's message. It is this - the negation of the show's underlying point and a resolution that is ultimately depressing - that makes the ending so bad.
However despite my frustration with the ending, this was a very good piece of television overall.
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Kim So Hyun and her character Song Geu Rim were by far the best part of this otherwise mediocre show that had hints of a much better drama wanting to get out. It had some bright spots in the acting and the use of anti-climax to defuse conflict but other than that it was beset by tired cliches, one-dimensional antagonists and inconsistent characterisation of some characters.
It's very sweet and a lot of people will love it anyway but if you want your drama with a bit more meat on its bones this is not for you.
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Like Snowpiercer before it, Train To Busan deals with societal issues in a tight and claustrophobic environment of a train. But unlike Snowpiercer, which was complex, metaphorical and somewhat inaccessible, Train to Busan has a pared-back plot, effective in its simplicity. It's emotional and even heart-rending at times, with the emphasis on the human aspect of the story. The moral messages and social commentary are there but subtle enough that you can just enjoy this as a film about zombies if you so choose.
Gong Yoo gives his usual stellar performance, Ma Dong-seok is excellent as well and Kim Su-an demonstrates why she's a child star to watch.
If you're tired of your zombie films being thinly-veiled xenophobia and NRA propaganda, you'll enjoy this one set in a country where no one has guns so the protagonists have to survive using their wits instead.
For action and horror - and probably quite a few tears - in a film paced as fast as the train in which it's set, watch Train to Busan.
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This was one of the best dramas I've ever seen until the end of episode 12. The acting was amazing. The concept wasn't new but the execution was excellent. There was so much complexity wrapped up in the premise that I couldn't wait to see where it led. I was wondering why nobody raved about this little gem! Then episode 13 and 14 weren't great but I figured they were suffering from the episode 14 kdrama slump and would bring it home for the final two. I couldn't have been more wrong. This has the worst ending of any drama I've ever seen with the possible exception of Black. The disappointment is greater because it was originally so good.
I won't spoil it for anybody contemplating it. But, for me, I really did waste 16 hours of my life. Watching 16 hours of a bad drama is better than watching 12 hours of an amazing one, 2 hours of a moderately good one and 2 hours of the worst bullshit I've ever seen.
There are a lot of really interesting confronting moral issues in this drama that the writers simply decided to blow by off screen because they couldn't handle it. The ending will have you wanting to tear your hair out it's so bad. I've never been so angry at a drama before. Never.
This was my first Hong Sisters drama and I now realise this is their modus operandi: complex moral quandaries and narrative conflict that they then ignore and tell you got resolved offscreen. This is why I will never watch one of their shows again.
BTW, Gong Yoo was amazing. But if I was Shin, I'd sue.
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At the beginning this seemed like a standard BL: full of the same tropes but a bit quirky and funny. By the end, it was such an interesting and complex study of relationships.
This was far more nuanced and sensitive than I could have originally foreseen, especially around the progression of the main OTP. By initially embodying all the standard tropes, it was so much more effective when the show basically upended them halfway through. I'm not even sure if Pop and Oat are going to end up together or even what "together" means. What is love anyway? seems to be the question the show is asking and it asks it in a variety of ways.
As a consequence of this more-nuanced storytelling, some of the humour of the earlier episodes was lost at the end and the anticipated Season 2 meant several plotlines weren't resolved. In fact, after 20 episodes, I was a little bit disappointed that the show didn't have an ending. It meant the final two episodes felt meandering and anti-climactic.
But for being so unexpectedly enjoyable to watch, this is a strong 8/10
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Bae Do Na and Jo Seung Woo are exceptional in their roles as a rare non-romantic buddy-cop partnership. While this show deals with familiar themes of corruption that kdrama viewers will find familiar, it is an interesting and gripping examination of the issue with a verisimilitude that borders at times on depressing.
Intelligent, fierce, uncompromising and stark, this is television at its finest.
10/10
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Instead the drama took a detour to crazy town and for far too long. Second female lead was ridiculous and annoying and almost ruined this drama for me. Add to that female lead's insane Noble Idiocy and a good chunk of this was strictly for fast forwarding.
I’ve only watched a few Taiwanese dramas but I’ve found almost all of them have some light, fun, very shallow rom com premise and then a bazillion episodes to fill. They nearly always end up in Makjang territory to try to stretch the story long after the premise has run its course. This wasn’t as bad as Fall in Love with Me, which completely forgot what it was supposed to be about in the first place. But it got pretty bad. Jia-yu should have just gotten the psychiatric help she needed early on and we could have gotten back to the fun.
If you fast-forward most of the back half, there's a delightful little rom-com in here trying to get out. Aaron Yan is always an enjoyable and Puff Kuo stops yelling her lines after a few episodes and becomes very enjoyable to watch. Edit out the makjang and it's a fun little show, second female lead notwithstanding.
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The plot runs in a perpetual circle and gets more and more ridiculous as you go along. Memory loss, chaebols, controlling mothers, kidnappings, makeovers and second lead syndrome - this is like the mother of all kdramas. It gave birth to the rest.
I can't say that I liked it and I certainly wouldn't want to watch it again. But for some reason I don't dislike it and even want to recommend it. I have no idea why.
At 25 episodes it's a bit of a marathon so pace yourself.
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