I loved the concept of Hyeon-woo and Jeong-eun in theory; JE's eccentric yet strong personality was refreshing, and Kim Jae-won infused HW's ambiguous character with a dark charisma and his smile was deadly in the few lighthearted flirty scenes HW and JE had together. I also liked the premise of their relationship because I'm trash for revenge romance.
But I found the execution to be lacking, unfortunately. The drama didn't do enough to establish HW's feelings for JE for me. I know he was supposed to be dead-set on revenge and his feelings for JE were a distraction from his plan, but we didn't see the actual distraction part, just the part where he treated her like shit. There should have been more romantic interactions between them to make their arguments over HW's plans feel like charged confrontations between star-crossed lovers rather than like JE being a nuisance and HW being a psycho (which is how he tried to present their dynamic because he was in denial, granted--but again, I wanted to see more proof of the actual feelings being denied!).
Basically, I felt like their romance was a bit neglected/underwritten. Fewer scenes of Mi-joo being the stereotypical clingy rich fiancée and more scenes of JE and HW being cute and sexy together would have improved the drama massively.
By the way, I liked that the mother in this drama didn't actually want her children to live with her and wasn't the stereotypical controlling shrew. Sure, she was very unreasonable and mean at times, as all parents are in family dramas, but the drama presented her tantrums as childish and comedic instead of as expressions of maternal concern that have to be waved off/forgiven because of emotional blackmail.
Ru-da should have just told her creepy ex he's trash for humiliating a patient with depression and low self-esteem like that and abusing his professional position instead of starting some competition with Ji-hyuk over whether she could ~fix Young-shik. It doesn't matter how pathetic DYS's life is or isn't; what Ji-hyuk did to him (to say nothing about his original intention, which was to hurt and pressure Ru-da by embarrassing Young-shik) was completely shitty in every way and is more than enough reason for LRD to never talk to him again. She doesn't owe this dick an explanation for dumping him or proof that there's a better man than him in her life! He sucks!
Can someone spoil what really happened with the Fl's mother why she was jailed. I don't have the energy to watch…
MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR THE WHOLE DRAMA AHEAD:
The FL's mother was having an affair with the ML's father and had visited his room just before his death. The ML saw them kissing that night, but in the confusion after his father's death and at his mother's urging (his mother knew about her husband's affair and hated the FL's mother) he did not tell the police that they were kissing, just that he had seen the FL's mother in his father's room before his death. His testimony, plus the evidence his mother planted at the crime scene, was enough to get the FL's mother arrested.
At the same time, the ML's mother was also having an affair and had asked her lover to come over and kill her husband because she was mad at him for loving another woman and having a child with his mistress (this child being the FL). Her lover decided he couldn't murder her husband, but her lover's younger brother snuck into the house with the intention of killing HER (the ML's mother) because she had ruined his brother's marriage. However, he ran into the ML's father first, the ML's father realised his wife's lover's brother was there to kill his wife, the two got into a fight, and the ML's father died. The killer ran away. The ML's mother covered up for her lover's brother (while thinking he was her lover and had killed the ML's father at her request) and framed her husband's lover (the FL's mother).
To sum up, the FL is the biological child of the ML's father and the ML is the biological child of his mother's lover, so they're not blood-related. And there's never a moment when they think they are, since the fact the ML is not his father's biological son is an open secret in Kougetsu An, so there's no fake incest or anything, although the fact they turn out to share a father (biological in the FL's case and adoptive in the ML's) is weird.
As a bonus, the killer ends up falling in love with the FL...
This is all extremely convoluted, so sorry if I didn't explain it clearly enough.
honestly, i loved the story and its many twists and turns, but i hated the romance. all of it felt SO forced and…
I loved the romance actually. I thought it was sexy and fun in a slightly unhealthy way that preserved the dark atmosphere of the manga. I was very glad I didn't have to sit through 10 episodes of stupid love triangles, misunderstandings and denial of feelings. Instead, the main conflict driving the relationship development between Nao and Tsubaki was their belated realisation that they really were in love with each other, instead of just engaged for strategic revenge/power trip reasons, and that being together for real seemed next to impossible.
Basically, the drama skipped all the stupid cliches and jumped straight to the good shit (angst).
If by rushed you mean that it's weird they slept together after being engaged to each other and sharing a bed, well, I didn't find it that unrealistic, personally.
We're a same bcs I also was a fan of medical romance too!! Even only a part of it related to medical either female…
Haha, I'm the same; even if it's just a part of the drama, it draws me in. (I also like crime dramas that have some romance, but they're unfortunately pretty rare.)
I didn't have Sweet Teeth on my to-watch list because I wasn't sure about the dentistry stuff, but if another medical romance fan recommends it, I'll put it on the list! Thank you.
I assume you've watched You Are My Hero, which is the most popular medical romantic cdrama to come out this year, but have you seen Surgeons? I like that one even more. The romance is a bit more mature and subtle and both leads are doctors there.
I'm also looking forward to Thank You, Doctor, which should come out next year.
This is not a medical romance. Only Gu Wei is shown as doctor by profession. This is just a beautiful love story.
The fact one of the main characters is a doctor and their relationship begins because of the other person always being at the hospital is enough to suggest it will be a major theme, but yes, I know it won’t be a medical drama in the same way as, say, Surgeons.
I'm a fan of medical romance and the slice of life tag is encouraging as it suggests there won't be too much dumb melodrama here. I'm looking forward to the drama! Has the novel it's based on been translated to English and does anyone happen to have a link to it?
This sounds awesome! It's so rare to find a crime thriller with psychological tension and an interesting mystery that also has a good romantic subplot (or any romantic subplot at all). I hope the mystery and romance here are both done well.
Some stupidity that is so silly with ep4..1) when a colleague tells his captain abt a potential crime nexus in…
1. This is true, but Yoo Dong-man is a very exaggerated character unlike detectives in real life, so I don't know why you expect his colleagues to react to him like he's a normal policeman.
2. Bullying and immature gossip seem endemic in Korean schools based not just on kdrama cliches but also on news stories and mental health statistics about Korean society. And unfairly blaming and ostracizing kids for their parents' actions is a recurring trope in kdrama precisely because it's a social issue that Korean TV makers feel they have to address.
Psychological assessments and screening do not ensure you'll get a group of virtuous people who will never gang up on someone they perceive as weaker, especially not in institutional cultures where bullying is a serious problem, and also... there were no psychological assessments and personality tests shown in the drama, so why do you assume Oh Kang-hee's classmates passed such tests?
3. Again, your criticism seems to be "people with these credentials could not possibly be so petty in real life," which is simply not true. Additionally, there's clearly more to Prof. Kwon's dislike of YDM than the incident YDM caused years ago; they seem to represent opposite approaches to policing and standards of professionalism.
4. Hacking a student discussion board to delete a cruel thread is morally AND legally very different from hacking into a criminal organisation's bank account on an unofficial request from a cop who's not technically on the case anymore. Doing the former while having reservations about the latter makes perfect sense.
5. The professors' treatment of OKH was most likely exaggerated for dramatic effect, yes, but also "cops are supposed to be better than this" is, again, simply not based on fact... Cops are *not* better than this, not in Korea and not anywhere else. The police is a notoriously discriminatory institution in almost every country in the world: on the basis of gender, race, and sexuality, as well as against homeless people and perceived criminals. If OKH is considered tainted by her mother's crimes in Korean culture, then it's perfectly conceivable she may face discrimination in university.
6. Uh... YDM was shocked by the thing he found out and wanted to address it immediately because he's a hothead, Prof. Kwon was driving slowly because he was on campus and how do you know he didn't see them? I can tell you were sick of the drama by this scene...
It's a silly and lighthearted drama that is not meant to be taken seriously, so I'm not saying everything in it makes sense, but you picked some peripheral issues to nitpick. In general, you seem upset that the drama portrays the police as a flawed institution full of prejudiced people, which is actually the most realistic aspect of it IMO--and also something that is very prevalent in Korean TV. Maybe kdramas aren't for you if you object to negative representations of police.
This was a lovely drama and probably my favourite romantic jdrama. It contains a lot of the best of romantic jdramas (understated, complex and occasionally raw emotions, adult characters, realistic and touching portrayal of existential struggles and relationships) and very little of the worst (dragged out love triangles, the leads denying their feelings until the last moment, pointless separations and long-distance relationships in the last episode, etc.).
That said, it did have one thing I hate in jdramas: an annoying second male lead who gets way, way too much screentime and attention. Every time you think the President has finally taken the hint that Kurumi likes Shun, he turns around and inserts himself between them again. And in the final episodes we're supposed to treat it as noble and well-intentioned, like when he hijacks Kurumi's date with Shun to go to the fancy restaurant with her!
I wish there was less of this useless guy, but other than that, a great drama.
What I love about this drama is that it portrays Seon-ho's adoptive family as real and loving, which is relatively rare in kdramas (or at least it was until a few years ago). His occasional insecurity about his place in Mr Yoon and Seung-beom's lives is realistic, but it's obvious that the three of them love each other and that Mr Yoon is a great father to both SH and SB. It warms my heart!
1 
But I found the execution to be lacking, unfortunately. The drama didn't do enough to establish HW's feelings for JE for me. I know he was supposed to be dead-set on revenge and his feelings for JE were a distraction from his plan, but we didn't see the actual distraction part, just the part where he treated her like shit. There should have been more romantic interactions between them to make their arguments over HW's plans feel like charged confrontations between star-crossed lovers rather than like JE being a nuisance and HW being a psycho (which is how he tried to present their dynamic because he was in denial, granted--but again, I wanted to see more proof of the actual feelings being denied!).
Basically, I felt like their romance was a bit neglected/underwritten. Fewer scenes of Mi-joo being the stereotypical clingy rich fiancée and more scenes of JE and HW being cute and sexy together would have improved the drama massively.
By the way, I liked that the mother in this drama didn't actually want her children to live with her and wasn't the stereotypical controlling shrew. Sure, she was very unreasonable and mean at times, as all parents are in family dramas, but the drama presented her tantrums as childish and comedic instead of as expressions of maternal concern that have to be waved off/forgiven because of emotional blackmail.
The FL's mother was having an affair with the ML's father and had visited his room just before his death. The ML saw them kissing that night, but in the confusion after his father's death and at his mother's urging (his mother knew about her husband's affair and hated the FL's mother) he did not tell the police that they were kissing, just that he had seen the FL's mother in his father's room before his death. His testimony, plus the evidence his mother planted at the crime scene, was enough to get the FL's mother arrested.
At the same time, the ML's mother was also having an affair and had asked her lover to come over and kill her husband because she was mad at him for loving another woman and having a child with his mistress (this child being the FL). Her lover decided he couldn't murder her husband, but her lover's younger brother snuck into the house with the intention of killing HER (the ML's mother) because she had ruined his brother's marriage. However, he ran into the ML's father first, the ML's father realised his wife's lover's brother was there to kill his wife, the two got into a fight, and the ML's father died. The killer ran away. The ML's mother covered up for her lover's brother (while thinking he was her lover and had killed the ML's father at her request) and framed her husband's lover (the FL's mother).
To sum up, the FL is the biological child of the ML's father and the ML is the biological child of his mother's lover, so they're not blood-related. And there's never a moment when they think they are, since the fact the ML is not his father's biological son is an open secret in Kougetsu An, so there's no fake incest or anything, although the fact they turn out to share a father (biological in the FL's case and adoptive in the ML's) is weird.
As a bonus, the killer ends up falling in love with the FL...
This is all extremely convoluted, so sorry if I didn't explain it clearly enough.
Basically, the drama skipped all the stupid cliches and jumped straight to the good shit (angst).
If by rushed you mean that it's weird they slept together after being engaged to each other and sharing a bed, well, I didn't find it that unrealistic, personally.
I didn't have Sweet Teeth on my to-watch list because I wasn't sure about the dentistry stuff, but if another medical romance fan recommends it, I'll put it on the list! Thank you.
I assume you've watched You Are My Hero, which is the most popular medical romantic cdrama to come out this year, but have you seen Surgeons? I like that one even more. The romance is a bit more mature and subtle and both leads are doctors there.
I'm also looking forward to Thank You, Doctor, which should come out next year.
2. Bullying and immature gossip seem endemic in Korean schools based not just on kdrama cliches but also on news stories and mental health statistics about Korean society. And unfairly blaming and ostracizing kids for their parents' actions is a recurring trope in kdrama precisely because it's a social issue that Korean TV makers feel they have to address.
Psychological assessments and screening do not ensure you'll get a group of virtuous people who will never gang up on someone they perceive as weaker, especially not in institutional cultures where bullying is a serious problem, and also... there were no psychological assessments and personality tests shown in the drama, so why do you assume Oh Kang-hee's classmates passed such tests?
3. Again, your criticism seems to be "people with these credentials could not possibly be so petty in real life," which is simply not true. Additionally, there's clearly more to Prof. Kwon's dislike of YDM than the incident YDM caused years ago; they seem to represent opposite approaches to policing and standards of professionalism.
4. Hacking a student discussion board to delete a cruel thread is morally AND legally very different from hacking into a criminal organisation's bank account on an unofficial request from a cop who's not technically on the case anymore. Doing the former while having reservations about the latter makes perfect sense.
5. The professors' treatment of OKH was most likely exaggerated for dramatic effect, yes, but also "cops are supposed to be better than this" is, again, simply not based on fact... Cops are *not* better than this, not in Korea and not anywhere else. The police is a notoriously discriminatory institution in almost every country in the world: on the basis of gender, race, and sexuality, as well as against homeless people and perceived criminals. If OKH is considered tainted by her mother's crimes in Korean culture, then it's perfectly conceivable she may face discrimination in university.
6. Uh... YDM was shocked by the thing he found out and wanted to address it immediately because he's a hothead, Prof. Kwon was driving slowly because he was on campus and how do you know he didn't see them? I can tell you were sick of the drama by this scene...
It's a silly and lighthearted drama that is not meant to be taken seriously, so I'm not saying everything in it makes sense, but you picked some peripheral issues to nitpick. In general, you seem upset that the drama portrays the police as a flawed institution full of prejudiced people, which is actually the most realistic aspect of it IMO--and also something that is very prevalent in Korean TV. Maybe kdramas aren't for you if you object to negative representations of police.
That said, it did have one thing I hate in jdramas: an annoying second male lead who gets way, way too much screentime and attention. Every time you think the President has finally taken the hint that Kurumi likes Shun, he turns around and inserts himself between them again. And in the final episodes we're supposed to treat it as noble and well-intentioned, like when he hijacks Kurumi's date with Shun to go to the fancy restaurant with her!
I wish there was less of this useless guy, but other than that, a great drama.