KatiaSchwarz
This drama is for people who like:
✓ Fleshed-out, real main characters who have their strong sides and weaker sides but are all entirely human and react as real people do.
✓ A slow-burn and well-built relationship that will make your heart melt and wish you were one part of such a couple.
✓ A ML that is extremely devoted to the FL and will literally do anything he can to make her fall for him (even if sometimes he is really clueless and offbase)
✓ A FL that is cute and energetic, but also smart, hard-working and friendly.
✓ Characters who COMMUNICATE and get straight to the point.
✓ Teasing. Lots of adorable teasing.
✓ ML with a smile that will melt your heart. Speaking of hearts, he throws heart-eyes at Si Tu Mo like he's a pro at it.
✓ A crew of side characters who are people and have their own personalities.
✓ A series that will put a constant smile on your face, to the point that you will feel embarrassed bc??? it's probably not healthy??? to be this happy??? for fictional characters???
✓ Shows like Boss & Me, Love O2O, Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo, Oh My Venus, etc...
Don't watch this one if you like:
✘Angst. Because this show is THANKFULLY low on it. It's hard enough for two people to fall in love and make it work, they hardly need the heaps and heaps of additional stress and angst most dramas throw in the mix, So if you need that extra extra spice in your relationships, probably go for Boys Over Flowers or the Heirs of something like that haha
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Love O2O may be 30 episodes long, but I felt like I was watching a drama half that length. It was so good that it made me confused every time an episode ended, because how could it end already? Did I really just watch 40 minutes of a show? Are you sure?
It has this ability to make you so lost in what you are watching that you fail to notice the passage of time, and I can't even explain to you what makes it so. It was just so... lovely! It's the type of shows that make you happy and full of love.
A lot of this is because of our main characters, Wei Wei and Xiao Nai. These two are the most level headed couple I have ever had the pleasure of following in a drama. They don’t let others confuse them or shake their trust in one another. They don’t waver or hesitate. They are straight forward and open with one another and absolutely sweet with each other. The way they look at each other, especially when they tease!
It was wonderful watching these two become more comfortable around each other, especially Xiao Nai who is a really great guy but he is rigid and cold at the beginning. Through his relationship with Wei Wei he becomes more openly teasing and relaxed and his smiles become far more frequent (and when he smiles he is drop dead gorgeous lol)
These two have two core groups of friends around them, and their interactions with their friends are so satisfying. It felt like watching real friends. In a sense, this was the most natural and authentic representation in this show, and I loved every single one of them.
Another unpredictably captivating element in this show was their online life in the game. It was fun to watch and interesting to note how the online world mimicked the real one in a lot of ways.
Now, the bad guys. I admit, I sometimes wanted to slug them in the face (I mean, there is a limit to how much you can impose your twisted views of pretty girls and Wei Wei in particular on her and slander her character, and based on some strange logic that game and real life are the same) but they weren’t evil by any stretch of the imagination. Just human. I loved that this show did not try to make them evil incarnate, just bratty, or misguided, or selfish. But yes, I did think some of those plotlines stretched too long. We would see a scene of them, and then two episode without them and repeat, and I always had this feeling of “wait, we’re still there? Really? It hadn’t been resolved yet?”
Now, for the girls like me who love kisses and look forward to them in every drama:
Kissing: 5/10
Xiao Nai knows how to kiss. Wei Wei is either being told to stand there like a frozen fish or is uncomfortable with kisses. It got better as the show moved along (she at least moved to smiling as they kissed and holding on to him), but it was a bit cringey most of the time and unfortunate because with him there was the potential of some EPIC kisses to be had.
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Whatever it was, I thank my lucky stars that I choose this show to introduce me to the thriller side of dramaland, because it's one I now plan to explore.
At its core, this show is about people. Wonderful people; Angry people; Broken people; Hotheaded people; Closed people; Straightforward people. People who come together and find in each other a place to heal and to mend. A place to find closure.
And this, THIS, is what makes Tunnel a fantastic show. Not the mystery. Not the time travel element. Not the case-of-the-week format of the first half of the show. No, it's the people. It's these characters and the fantastic relationships that form between them. It's the way they navigate and evolve in the situation they have been thrust into. It's the way they start the show one way, and you love them, but then they end the show in a different way and you love them more than you could have imagined. It's the little things; the little looks, the little touches, the little hesitations, the little steps forward. It's the way they find this incredible balance between them.
I have to give such a huge, huge applause to the actors for portraying these characters so brilliantly, for making me feel every single thing alongside them, and for the writers for writing such nuanced characters. And for the casting director for choosing the right people; I can't imagine enough else as these characters.
There are a lot of good things about this drama, like the side characters who are equally amazing as the main trio and help make this show one to remember. I could talk about the mystery, and how it's never supposed to be a mystery to us the audience, and yet it still keeps us in suspense. I could talk about the killer, and how I think the writers wrote him perfectly because of what he turns out to be at the end. I could talk about how much I love the way the old and the new interact. I could talk about how it left me tense every episode, and how I bit my nails as I was watching. I could talk about a lot of things.
But really, I think I have said enough.
If you love character driven shows with a lot of heart and just a smidge of romance to make you all fuzzy inside, do yourselves a favor and pick this one up!
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Let's go over the good and bad parts of this show.
THE GOOD
✪ Takeuchi Yuko and Kanjiya Shihori as Sherlock and Watson respectively. Look, those are some beautiful looking women and staring at them all episode long is pretty great. Moreover, I really liked their portrayal of the characters; especially Sherlock's.
This Sherlock makes perfumes and toners, wears fabulous high heels, acts like a child and can't help her grabby hands. For me, this was all really fun. It was nice seeing a female Sherlock allowed to be... well, female. I have seen some complaints about this that baffle me--why does a female Sherlock need to be more manly? Since when did you need to act like a man to be a genius deductor? (aside for the fact she definitely has enough male traits).
✪ The sibling relationship. Most portrayals of the Holmes siblings shows us a mostly dysfunctional relationship that is mostly rival-based. Yes, they respect each other, but they always try to one-up each other. Not here. Maybe it's because Older brother-younger sister allows for the removal some of that tension, but these two siblings will protect and back each other through any situation, which I personally loved.
✪ Detective Reimon and Officer Shibata. I honestly loved these two--I loved that Sherlock obviously respected Reimon and didn't belittle him, while we still have that dynamics with Shibata--the two fight like siblings which I highly enjoyed.
✪ The cases are interesting... if predictable.
THE BAD
☛ The cases are predictable. I set through 8 episodes of always calling the twist and real criminal from the beginning of the ep. This is probably not something someone who hasn't seen many crime shows would be troubled with, but for me, who has seen plenty of those, I read the hints like a roadmap and was never surprised.
☛ The last 2 eps. Honestly, I can't remember the last time I was so aggravated with a series. I wanted to strange everyone on screen, most of all Wato whom I loved before. I kept thinking "why was this storyline necessary" throughout it all. And in the end--I never really got a satisfying conclusion!
☛ The Villain. Look, Moriarty is always a tough one to pull. But this one was maybe my least favorite one ever. They remind me of Red John from The Metalist - an almost god-like existence because we never get an explanation as to HOW they managed to do all that shit. Not satisfying, and most importantly... not interesting. This Villain was bland and forgettable and even played the part that way. If I had to listen to their monotone delivery one more second....
☛ They didn't "earn" what they were trying to do with Sherlock and Watson. I get what they were going from, but they didn't really set it up enough for the ending to feel authentic. The other versions of Sherlock did it much better ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Would I recommend this show? Probably to people who are not huge fans of Sherlock, sure. Would I watch a second season of this? Ehh... no. definitely not.
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This drama forgoes all this and instead focuses on making Bong Soon Min Hyeok an otp to remember and top lists. I love those two (together and separately) to death! The process of them falling in love was such a lovely journey to be part of, and the way they looked at each other made my heart flutter. Especially Min Hyeok, who was so gone it wasn't even funny, just extremely enviable.
These two were simply adorable, and their personalities are really the strongest part of this drama. Bong Soon is a little ball of fire, and Min Hyeok becomes a teddy bear whenever he's around the peanut-sized king kong, even when he tries really hard to be mean (in a playful way). They were the whole package!
Now, I have absolutely no complaint about the entirety of their relationship, and again, I WOULD RECOMMEND this drama in a heartbeat, I really would. But at the end of the day, I couldn't give this drama full stars even though a part of me want to just for my otp. I think this is partly because I already watched Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo which is kind of the perfect drama in my opinion and does what Strong Woman tries to do perfectly.
What do I mean? Whereas the romance is the definite strong suit of this drama, the side plots is where it falls. Because honestly, there was only one truly interesting side plot to this drama and about a dozen unnecessary ones.
And Strong Woman drags *all* of them.
(1)We have the serial killer, who was interesting and made me bite my nails but fell flat at the end. (2) The whole unrequited-maybe-required love situation. (3) I admit I liked the gang members...at first. Then I kind of wished someone would kill them just so I wouldn't need to hear another peep from them. (4)There was also Min Hyeok's family, wasn't there? or did I imagine it? (5) Can't forget Bong Soon's mom and her entire family (will I get stoned if I say I really liked her mom? Even those she's brash and abusive?) (6) Oh, and her game! (7) And there is that annoying sunbae Dong Byung and his whole part of the story, which was murder on my ears and just gah.
And those weren't all. Each one of them *could* have been interesting and had potential (okay, perhaps all but Dong Byung. AND the gang members should've quit while they were ahead). but at the end of the day, almost every one of the many stories this drama tried to tell beside the one of our lovely main couple ended up falling short. They were either too long, or too short, or just broke the flow of the entire drama or made me scratch my head wondering why they were needed in the first place.
I enjoyed the heck out of this drama, don't get me wrong, and I smiled nearly throughout the entirety of it, and I LIVE for portrayals of romance such as this one, with the full on heart-eyes and inability to contain the love. But I also feel like this *could* have been the perfect drama if you made it 12 episodes and cut off giant chunks of gang-member nonsense and idiocy and focused instead on just a few of the plotline and saw them through...
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