L13

I got to the episode where Wakaba starts dating Mr Shindo (when it’s already clear to everyone, including her, than she likes Sota) and got a bad feeling about the whole thing, so I decided to spoil myself and checked the synopsis, and yep, just as I suspected: she goes as far as to agree to marry the rich lawyer and needs him to Dump Her Nobly at the altar because she's too much of a delusional doormat to choose Sota, the guy she likes, over the guy she clearly has no interest in... and this foolery goes on until episode 10? The leads only confess their feelings to each other in THE FINAL EPISODE? All the worst things about romantic jdramas in one place! I’m so relieved I didn’t invest too much time in this trainwreck.

"oh an ex-prosecutor is using his connections to let the culprit run free? no problem, we'll just use our own connections to make sure we secure the culprit."

WTH and KSH were so annoying lmao. When they were standing around calculating age differences and class years I wanted to reach through the screen and beat them up.

The scene was also a callback to Simok's earlier conversation with Kang Won-chul, when Simok caught himself slipping into the same mindset you're describing and consciously pulled back.

You... don't like women? Could have stayed quiet about it at least...

It’s a very fitting ending that gives closure and peace to the main characters, but it’s not exactly happy.

TBH I was hoping JTBC would pick this up after the good job it did with Miss Hammurabi (this writer's first script, which was based on his book). TvN has been a little hit or miss lately with its maximalist aesthetics and hamfisted direction.

Nevertheless, I am super excited! I love legal dramas and Miss Hammurabi was one of the best for me, plus the director also worked on Children of Nobody, which was good.

I don't think there are that many good people in the police and prosecution lol. The first episode was about the prosecution abusing its authority and the first real case we'll get into is cop-on-cop crime. And both YJ and SM's bosses are clearly very cold-blooded.

I'm sorry to say this, but I don't think this will be a full-length drama. I think I read 6 or 8 episodes? But I hope I'm wrong!

I wonder who’s going to play the associate judge (and if it will be a man or a woman) since that sounds like the other main character.

The stupid shit I read on MDL lmao

His played the most interesting character in Black Dog and delivered a great performance. I hope he'll take another good role soon.

Is looking like Jung Eun-ji a requirement for being able to investigate mysteries across time? I'm not sure you understand the premise of the drama...

Yes, that's the simplistic interpretation of his character that the drama offered initially and then spent 16 episodes subverting. What I'm saying is that you're wrong.

I think her role in Rookie Historian really suited her, especially the comedic parts.

Sera and Gong-myung's romance is so cute! I really hope they don't have to go through a breakup period/made-up drama in the last 3 episodes like most kdrama couples and just keep being disgustingly lovey-dovey and kick ass together to the end.

This is such an underrated drama, or maybe it's just perfectly tailored to my preferences. There were a couple of plot points that were glaringly unrealistic, but that's only because the rest of the story was so well made. I loved the complex characters and their various motivations; the layered mystery; the villains; the slow pacing, which allowed the drama to build up characterisation and psychological tension; the resolution and ending; and the motifs of lies within lies and dangerous truths. I anticipated most of the major plot twists, but that didn’t detract from my enjoyment.

I thought Ho-gyu's death was gratuitous at first and I was super mad at the drama for killing off one of my favourite characters, but I should have expected it to treat its characters harshly when Sang-hoon's limbs started turning up, which was an unusually brutal starting premise even by crime drama standards. I can't deny Ho-gyu's death was pretty emotionally impacting, and so was the entire final episode later. (It was somehow really fitting that Tae-shik sacrificed so much for the case and tried so hard to resolve it but still ended up failing to prevent a tragedy because of everyone's refusal to tell the truth and Sang-hoon's all-consuming drive to reveal it.)

Oh, and: I want to give special props to this drama for some of the best/funniest chase scenes in kdrama. Everything about the gambling den chase scene in ep. 3 in particular was priceless. Another thing The Lies Within did exceptionally well by kdrama standards was keep the police brutality to a minimum and deliver calm and realistic interrogation scenes.

Just one thing: there were definitely some Undertones between Tae-shik and Seo-hui, and while I totally understand why the drama had to deny them/leave them unfulfilled within the scope of the story--the entire drama was about them trying to save Seo-hui's husband, after all!--I'd like to imagine they'll cross paths again later, once their trauma and grief have begun to let up. I don't buy that "we shouldn't meet again" BS!

But he had emotions? The position of the drama was that the people around him were ignorant/intolerant of difference and convinced him he was abnormal and less than human for having a different and more muted range of expressions, and Yeo-jin alone, as a person who sees past stereotypes and prejudices, recognised the hurt and need for human connection in him, which allowed him to see himself through her eyes and begin to heal. Not sure why everyone took the ‘no emotions’ pseudo-scientific exposition babble in the first episode at face value when the rest of the drama clearly contradicted it.

It's going to be a mystery drama about a former military officer who's hiding a secret (Joo Ji-hoon's character) joining the park rangers working at the Mount Jiri national park. Jun Ji-hyun will play a fellow ranger as far as I understand.

I've gotten this info from various websites, but it may not be accurate as we don't even know when the drama will air yet. Plus, even if it is all correct, I'm sure there's a lot more to the premise that we haven't been told yet.

I canNOT believe we're only a month away from this drama!!! It still doesn't feel real to me.

I am intrigued by the power play between the police and the prosecution and look forward to seeing how Shi-mok and Yeo-jin will navigate it. Will they mistrust each other at the beginning of the drama? Will they compete for information? Will they need to go behind their superiors' backs to work together once they team up?

I don't think they should add a romantic ~subplot~ either, but there was definitely romantic subtext in the first season IMO and I wouldn't mind that being acknowledged in one or two scenes/dragged closer to the surface in the second season.

This drama is much better than I was expecting. The direction is great and I really like how natural and human the characters are. I also like how the main mystery/final boss case is being revealed to us bit by bit instead of infodumped all at once in the first two episodes. The plot structure and character types are nothing new, but the execution is what makes the drama great (so far).

Also I don’t want to clown myself, BUT I am Sensing things between Detective Oh and Reporter Jin, and since this is not an OCN drama, maybe we’ll get some payoff before the end? Fingers crossed.