Sarann55
UK
Set during the early 20thC Japanese rule of Joseon much of the action takes place in Gando, a border area claimed by both China and Joseon, with a frontier desert landscape peopled by bandits and "questionable" characters. The landscapes and towns / villages represent almost further characters in this drama, with some stunning cinematography showing its beauty and harshness.
Great costumes and styling, with attention to both Joseon and Chinese traditions all in a state of transition into the modern world. These somewhat show the complexity of these communities on the edge, all rigidly overseen by Japanese army aiming to secure full control of the people. This conflict is particularly significant because Gando is remote, logistics for the Japanes are difficult and the area is in fact a centre for the small liberation movement made up of different factions who are not aware of each other but aim for similar goals.
Japanese occupiers see native Joseon as mere animals, even where they adopt Japanese customs with loyalty to the Emperor. They routinely massacre entire villages or towns and abuse Joseon people in all the usual ways
Lee Yoon is a phenomenal gunman and fighter, and of course KNG has incredible charisma in this role. But while the man with no name was a loner, Lee Yoon is a brilliant military leader as well as moral giant, has his own struggles but is still a truly 'ideal' man, rising from slavery to genuine greatness.
Lee Yoon's former master/owner, Kwang Il, was supposedly kind, and did free his slaves. However, now a member of the Japanese army, he has fully adopted their ideas, mostly as a self serving strategy. When Lee Yoon severs his friendship/ connection to him, he resolves to have him killed, using a female assassin who as a child escaped her village's massacre and now lives only to survive.
In the meantime, Li Kwang's fiancee lives a double life.
The tensions in the area are complex, with bandits in Japanese pay, others just thieves, others fighting to undermine the Japanese, a kind of mainstream independence movement (playing a very minor role here), Japanese regular army plus Japanese colonial forces (who jostle for power), and of course 'middle class' settlers who are probably loyal to the Japanese, and peasant settlers who could be in Japanese pay, or rebel spies, or simply looking for a quiet life. But it's not very obvious who could be who.
The story is lively, with lots of locations and lots of action, including different levels of battles between factions. Of course there's a love interest, but while it's one of those soulmate passion plays, it's very low key and is left open ended.
I really enjoyed this series. It feels gritty and authentic (though the recovery times for multiple injuries is rather ... optimistic). Characters, even where support rather than main, and even where quite minor roles, are well written and well portrayed – with many familiar faces in play. I loved the visuals, and how it is presented with so many echoes of classic westerns, yet never losing its sense of place. The music is great too, and well suited to the action and mood of each moment.
I'm trying to think of flaws. But I can't, unless I nitpick really hard – for example I wasn't much into the romance moments – but the actors and performances were very believable and chemistry was good even if subdued which was dramatically appropriate.
The ending is slightly rushed and inconclusive, but since we have reason to look for S2 I thought it was OK.
Kim Nam Gil has already leaked the question of an S2 stating that if there is another series it won't be made by Netflix. I am intrigued by what happened behind the scenes to prompt that – or whether it is issues on profit shares – wouldn't be the first time.
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Good potential in this concept but unfortunately badly flawed by cliches and plot holes
Vet visits a farm to attend a sickly cow, and while she and the farmer are handling it, they are struck by a meteor, imparting each with psychometric powers to read the minds of any person or animal who they are touching in the same place as they touched the cow – him on the leg, her on the bumA supposedly hot-shot detective is demoted from Seoul to the small town of Mujin where he is desperate for that single big case which will get him back to the capital.
After a predictable period of distrust, with him being especially hostile and dismissive, they begin to work together on a series of cases (successfully, leading him to trust her assessments/visions totally), and eventually on a number of brutal murders.
The drama is not awful and at times quite amusing. A certain amount of comedy 'business' is mined because she is obliged to find respectable reasons to touch random bums, and due to his complete ineptitude in the face of local customs and certain styles of communication among the natives. He routinely has to have his colleague 'read the room' for him and translate local euphemisms about his behaviour. Various other local characters are also good fun and relationships among the local people are often quite charming and engaging
The cases start off being quite lightweight, and there are a mixture of police investigations and vet work all resolved by her being able to read peoples' bottoms. The serial murder cases though are darker and there are hints that a number of tragic deaths in the families of protagonists many years ago may be linked with current events. So intriguing, but it looks like these are never going to be investigated, nor the link/s checked out.
For me a lot of potential in this concept, but petty ineptly applied by the writer and director. The psychometry s played too much for laughs, and hardly ever taken seriously – even when it is accepted as true.
Neither the vet now the cop are particularly professional. The vet often finds a dead or injured and bloody person and NEVER knows what to do! She goes straight to panic and whines to a man for instructions. Any medical scientist will look at a pool of blood and know immediately what to do and how to do it – and will do it while multitasking to call for help. Good grief even I can have a good stab at that (pun intended)
The hot-shot cop seems pretty incompetent. He ends up taking control of his police team despite the presence of a superior officer (who limply protests but not much), but leaps to a series of unwarranted conclusions about who the perpetrator is, based solely on suspicion or personal dislike and never even considers actual evidence. His attention bounces from one person to another and occasionally rotates round individuals in the group. This is frustrating and confusing - poor writing reduces my engagement with the central drama.
On the whole, this is an enjoyable little drama, but imperfect. Writing and plotting is somewhat perforated (there are holes) and I found the ending a little artificial. OK but far from the best. The best thing I can say is that the bad guy wasn't immediately obvious to me ... but I found his revelation badly over-played.
This drama also committed a few several pet peeves. Young attractive and intelligent female characters are styled to look just ridiculous. The pretty vet is in boxy jackets that are 5 sizes too big for her, chunky jumpers that swamp her, and trousers cut too short, making her legs dumpy. Her 'assertive' friend, notorious for having a mind of her own and a temper, is styled like a clown : but when she meets a man who unexpectedly tickles her fancy she suddenly tones down the make up and starts to look more human. Our FL's aunt, divorced and desperate to regain that lost love of her youth, dresses too young for her age, but looks good on it however, her demeanour is that of an aged fan-girl desperate for attention.
Meanwhile, our male actors are styled as normal males. Depending on their work role they are dressed for the part. They're neither fashionable, nor dowdy – unless they are oxter deep in a cow....
For me this kind of sexism in character styling makes me question the competence of designers and directors. It's unnecessary fancy dress - and actually gets in the way of me enjoying a drama unfold. It's all too common, though.
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This review may contain spoilers
Third rewatch - perceptions change.
Well, I've been holding this back for a while.The first time I watched this I was early in my Kdrama immersion and I loved it. Lots of eye candy and many quite engaging characters, some of whom I hated, some of whom I whole-heartedly rooted for. I found the acting for the most part excellent and enjoyed the simple but at times sad plot lines as well as the horrid and toxic manipulations of the powerful. Even that first viewing made me feel that most of the problem I had with this drama was centred in the tragic miscasting of the female lead. More later.
The second viewing was less satisfying but still engaging. This time the FL was even more misplaced, but I thought that the writing of her part and possibly the way she was directed sadly affected how she portrayed her character. One-dimensional, pathetic and gurny.
In this, my third viewing I find that Go Ara's role rendered it all almost unwatchable.
Please don't misconstrue this - GAR has been excellent in other roles I have seen her in, so I don't altogether blame her. She is a very skilled actress - when properly cast and directed
However I always felt that in this drama her acting was lamentably one-dimensional: she is always to some extent angry or scared or worried. Her method for conveying all these different states is centred on what I called "grumpy chin". It's almost laughable - even when she is experiencing the first stirrings of confused romantic love, she is Miss Grumpy Chin. Sometimes her chin calms down and is almost normal, but if so then her forehead becomes loomy.
Now, I think there is good reason for her character to be worried, vulnerable, scared, given her station in life, but even in the early stages of the drama when she plays a young woman about town making an unexpected success and good money by telling romantic stories for small crowds, she conveys every excitement of those romantic tales with her grumpy chin or sour forehead. When she drinks the wages that she is owed, she conveys her "relaxation" by means of her grumpy chin. Even in those warmer lighter moments with her best pal, she is Miss Grumpy Chin. She is a gifted if partially trained doctor having learned by watching her father, but invariably her interactions with every patient is dominated by Grumpy Chin and perhaps Loomy Eyebrows as well.
The character she plays - a young unmarried daughter of a one-time aristocrat - should have been married off by the age of perhaps even 13, certainly by 16, but most of her styling convinces me she is in her late 20s or even mid 30s. In fact all the young male characters should be in their late teens or early 20s and they also look much older - late 20s/ or 30s. Sadly GAR looks about twice the age she should be, and that's how she behaves too. In addition, the acting has none of the charm the character should have and mostly none of the spirit.
She spends elaborate amounts of time dawdling around being grumpy, or actively whining and weeping - she is transformed from a girl with agency and creativity to a wet rag. These more attractive characteristics do emerge later but only ever very briefly. Most of the time they are invisible, dominated by a passivity and that ever-present grump.
For me, one result is that, with the best will in the world, I fail to find any chemistry between her and the ML or 2ML. I find that deeply annoying, and a huge wasted opportunity : two of the most beautiful males on the planet, both doing a damn fine job of being sexy with a sword or a horse, and demonstrably trying to fall for her, but nearly every interaction is ...limp. Even in the context of conservative Korean standards, this is pathetic.
This is a drama sadly let down by poor directing and the pathetic miscasting of the monochrome and miserable role of A-Ro.
There are other flaws, of course, other reviewers have responded to those, and up to a point I agree at least with some of those. However, all of those weaknesses have been bearable. None has made the drama as nearly unwatchable as has poor old (and old is the right word for it) A-Ro, as caricatured by Go Ara.
My Stars/Scores are awarded mostly for every other actor or aspect of this drama - if I focussed only on the real issue here, I'd only find 2 stars at most.
Clearly she was doing what the writer/director wanted from the role. They should be shot by one of the used arrows that they wasted on Dog Bird,
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Large Pinch of salt
Disclaimer: this response is very partial because I could only bear to watch 1.5 episodes. The show is supposed for 13years + but I felt it would struggle even there.First - the good - based on what I saw. ML and his side-kick the dry-cleaner were great and great chemistry. The idea of am effectively pro bono law office is very appealing too. Sadly, the execution of a pro bono idea, not so much.
FL was so badly written with all the Kd tropes of incompetence and an inability to move in high heels, so she face plants in front of the ML. ML is much older and more experienced and is shown running absolute rings round her leaving her speechless and breathless. Honestly, that's so unoriginal and tired, and BORING. Her styling is pretty awful too - presented with a cut-glass hairstyle that has never had a hard-working hand run through it in frustration, shows up for her first day at her harappoje's law firm in a salmon pink suit like an overpriced Legally Blonde - it works in that show because it's a fundamental of her personality; here, it's not, and it's awful. As to her acting, I can't really comment because I disliked what we saw of her personality too much to offer a fair assessment. I did find NO evidence of chemistry between her and ML which was also very off-putting
NGM is absolutely marvellous, as he always is, but sadly ML is insufferably smug and patronising, and frankly NGM enjoys it a bit too much, which is for me a real turnoff. I fear he was over-playing those moments - like, a lot. I believe that later on there are flashbacks which explain the premise of the ODL "brand", and they may explain why he is such a pain in the neck too, but I couldn't bear it any more.
I've been generous in marking the acting, because most actors were pretty competent, and most (except the leads) were very watchable - but I blame the poor writing/directing for any poor acting.
I'm so sorry I couldn't like this more: I had hoped for something on the lines of Lawless Lawyer, albeit with slightly less 'adult' content, but this failed me so badly! And I love NGM usually, too, so I feel let down on two fronts ...?
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Inventive remix of Mrs Christie's mind set against a sinister and violent background.
Miss Ma, Nemesis Viki SK Episodes: 32 Duration: 30 min. 15+Screenwriter: Park Jin Woo Director: Min Yeon Hong, Lee Jung Hoon
Ms. Ma was falsely accused of killing her daughter. After she escapes from prison, she tries to clear her name and reveal the truth about her daughter’s death. She is later unexpectedly joined by a "niece" who's reasons for appearing are revealed only slowly. A small team of unlikely allies gradually materialises, and they become a family sharing an apparently impossible goal. This is a dark story, very complex plotting, not always bearable to be honest, but there is a form of humour offered by the warmth of many of the supporting characters. Thank goodness.
Mostly set in a small community, Rainbow Town, affluent, very pretty, some backbiting gossipy women, but little real malice. Appears to be inhabited almost exclusively by women and police officers, which is quite funny.
In episodes only 27 minutes long a significant amount of time is given to repetitive flashbacks – they add nothing much though in later episodes there is more point to them. Slightly frustrating that the eps are so short but that means 32 eps = 16 which is bearable
The main story follows the apparently hopeless efforts of the heroine to clear her name and get revenge, That plot is dark, twisted, violent and very involved. It is interspersed with life in the town, which becomes a hub for a series of apparently unrelated murders which are based on Agatha Christie. Like Christie, they are fun and intriguing, but not as well written and the 'solutions' offered get minimal explanation as to how she reached them. She is however clearly extremely observant. In most of the cases, the alterations of Christie's plots is intriguing – others are more straightforward. That said, I recognised most very quickly, though the solutions were not always identical to the original, which is good.
Lots of interesting supporting cast, and characters – though they can be slightly charicaturey... Nice to see some of them cast against type, if only slightly ... Jung Wong Un as the policeman who originally put Ms Ma away, has doubts after her escape, and steps back from pursuing her, even after he believes he has found her.
I warn you though, the Christie connection is a bit of a red herring – though if you like the dame, you'll enjoy them. The main story is much much darker and more violent, though the worst of it is pixelated ... it's more involved, sinister and hard to see how it can be resolved, as characters are targeted and eliminated. It does happen: though I spotted the culprits early on, it was hard to see how it would sort out. At the end, the sleepy warmth of Rainbow Town and the unexpected friendships there are waiting for our heroes to come home. As you knew they would be, so telling you this is not really a spoiler at all.
Viki's reviews give this a great score, but I never altogether trust them. Reviews on MDL are only two - one is for 10.0 the other for 1.0, so - very mixed! The lowball one is fixated on the lack of logic for a woman on the run getting involved to solve multiple murders instead of keeping out of the eye of the police – though in fact the story gives a perfectly clear explanation for this. On this occasion the Viki reviews are much fairer than MDL. I give this a healthy 8.5/10.
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Having watched this at a fairly sprightly manner which kinda speaks for itself, I'm now giving a moment to my thoughts on it. Frankly I'm trying to be objective (translator's note-to work out if there ws anything wrong with it and try not to gush).
Of course it wasn't perfect. Absolutely certain it wasn't a realistic depiction of office politics or the work of an advertising agency for example, but that was actually fine. Sometimes I want realism, sometimes the story is strong enough to be less realistic. I suppose that at times it was toooo sentimental for me, but those moments were pretty fleeting.
On the whole this was an enjoyable drama with interesting stories and many engaging characters. Also (grrrr) some smarmy smug, and over-the-top infuriating baddies too.
Sometimes funny, sometimes very moving, sometimes a little too tense, but very well written, directed, and of course acted. Some of our stalwart character actors in evidence too, and even though they were small parts, they were just lovely to see.
Scores on the doors – 9.5/10 I'd say...
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First - it turns out to be 50 eps long (I never thought to check first, bottoms!) If it were condensed to about 16 eps it might be a much stronger story, ditching many of the crap characters and focussing instead on the real dilemmas faced by ML and FL.
Second after 4 eps, Every. Single. Character - apart from about 4 of them - is apparently toxic, manipulative, weak, selfish or a narcissist - or a combination of all of the above. Faced with the prospect of 46 more episodes of this, I am absconding.
Third - already I am FF through all those sections not directly involving the ML or FL.
Fourth - I'm not usually affected by poor production values, but most of this looks like it has been done on the very-very-cheap. Not saying that sets actually wobble, but some of them look very close to that.
Fifth - even though I really like the ML, FL and some of the individual characters close to them who display anomalous traits of emotional maturity and honesty, I can't see me putting up with this cliched and trite writing for much longer.
Sixth - There is humour, but it all seems to hang on the atrocious behaviour of those toxic and conniving characters, and as a result I find it deeply unfunny.
Seven - it occurs to me that perhaps the reason this has been all over my FB feed is that it is just rubbish. I feel desperately bad for the actors - many of whom are just great!
So ... NO. I really don't think that with this drama the Real HAS come at all, and nor do I think it will arrive any time soon. Unless you have a particularly masochistic streak, just don't.
Of course, if it's your cup of tea, then that's OK. We're all different.
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A cast of toxic women - a drama that hates nearly every woman on the planet.
After leaving home in frustration that her step mother and her step-brother have yet again lost a lot of money, meaning they will be homeless, a 26-year old woman takes a job as a live in tutor for a 41 year old widowed CEO with 3 kids. You of course realise we can expect them to fall for each other.Not as straightforward as that tho – lots of other business which is frankly annoying. His female 'butler' has designs on him for marriage as she is also the mother of his third child who he and his wife adopted. She 'loves' the CEO (perhaps?) but dotes on the kid, while discriminating against the other two. She is very limiting with all the kids and only when the tutor moves in do they feel understood and life improves.
So far, so predictable – you might think "Edelweiss" any minute, but no.
There are a whole raft of other characters – the CEO's father's mistress and her spoiled princess daughter, the butler, her mother and her mother's friend, the tutor's impoverished family. Somehow, in a city the size of Seoul, they all end up meeting, having relationships, and getting under each other's flesh, sometimes innocently and sometimes (naturally, the richer ones) in order to try to protect what they think they deserve.
I found the behaviour of nearly every single female apart from the FL, the CEO's cook and the child, incredibly toxic. Narcissism and greed abound. They behave like toddlers throwing tantrums and punches. Eventually I realised this is meant to be funny. It wasn't.
I speed watched from Ep18 to 25 and when I checked the episode count to find it was less than half way through, I dropped it.
How can I possibly give this crazy lazy plotting a mark? I did my best to be fair. There are some rather lovely characters but the good ones are weak, living in a cloud cuckoo land where they don't realise they are the only ones who are kind, and the rest, horrendous.
I struggle to give it more than 3/10
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Mostly strong, but fizzles from ep14 on
This is a very strong drama but had several flaws which really undermined the quality and – most damning of all – the writing of certain characters. Based on the experiences of children studying to prepare for college entrance, their teachers, and their parents. The romance is enjoyed by an elite maths teacher with an apparent inability to tolerate food, and the humble mother of one of his students: after he realises that the food from her side dish shop does not make him vomit he wants to know her better. Understandable.Let me talk first about some of all the things that were good. Of course the acting was wonderful. It is beautifully shot in attractive locations. Characters are for the most part well rounded, and mostly the plot is character driven. The plot is engaging and charismatic, and some of the people are just lovely.
The pushy mum's are all witches though which is a bit lazy. Dads are almost universally invisible.
School work and pressures seem mostly realistic, and teachers are shown as genuinely caring – though the schools' administration and leaders are much less so.
The murder sub-plot was OK : well presented, and an interesting concept. We start to catch onto it though, and once that happens, the culprit and motive are fairly quickly identified, though the way it is resolved is rather sad.
The relationship between ML and FL is fine – I enjoyed it, but sadly the excellent writing of both characters was hugely undermined by the absymal styling for the FL. This was a major flaw and it persistently spoiled most of the drama.
It's by no means the case that a hot teacher like him could not have fallen for a frumpy, badly dressed, badly aged wee woman from a food shop, but I could not believe that, even with the responsibility of raising a child perhaps ten years younger than her, an elite athlete from a national team would have resented herself to the world like this - none of the other mums did that.
That was absolutely and damningly confirmed by the fact that once a certain part of the plot is reached, she tidies herself up, gets some decent clothes, sorts out her hair and looks hot!
Good for her, and at LAST, but pathetic styling. Shoddy. And don't blame the stylists - they are following Directors' demands.
And I think the other main failing here is that the drama could easily have ended a couple of episodes earlier.
The FL's sister turns up out of the blue. Expecting open arms. Despite the fact that ten years ago she abandoned her daughter with her "mum", and has never been in contact since. The reason for her appearing is never made fully clear, but when her daughter made a fuss saying she will return with her to Japan ... she promptly absconds again. So that worked!
I found this whole sub-plot entirely unnecessary. I make no apology for mentioning it here, because it is SO OBVIOUS from the very start. I expected it from the point at which she dumps the child in ep1.
The only reason I could see for these 2 redundant episodes was the chance to tie up the few remaining 'loose ends' for some of the characters – with better writing, that could have been done by ep14.
Overall, I expected to give this drama at least a 9 but it limps in at a mildly weak 7.5 /10 for me ... especially since waiting for new episodes was torture! Disappointing
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Slow starter but worth staying with
Enjoyable, if very quiet drama. Nothing over-done, everything quite low key, but an intelligent treatment of a number of issues, sometimes with great sensitivity.This is a quiet, undramatic drama, following mainly LSW of Prosecution Team 2, but involves all the other team members.
It's a close-knit team until CMJ joins them – she is highly competent, but cold and a bit distant. It is clear that she feels superior to all the others, and she and LSW clash quite a bit. She starts off by immediately asking to have half of all new cases assigned to her and states she will clear the large backlog of unresolved cases for which the other team members are regularly berated. At the same time she makes sure that the rookie prosecutor and one of the investigators is assigned to her and that the support worker will work half time for her and half time for the others, but she will be stationed in her office. Empire-building, and aiming to get back to Seoul.
The drama covers mostly professional life, with a varying amount of office politics – when it's an issue it's usually pretty toxic. There are moments of personal life as well. Between all these areas, a number of sensitive issues are touched on.. They dealt with issues of working mothers very deftly in one of the most sensitive treatments I have seen. Another issue that stood out was a matter of school violence and verbal bullying : two different cases were included, and both were handled very well.
There are a number of deeply frustrating things about this drama : the most significant is probably the level of poor management, toadying and in-house bullying which vary throughout the drama, but when it occurs, staff are helpless.
Collusion with influential offenders was shown as deeply entrenched in the prosecution system, with no will on the part of the executive to address it and bring charges against corrupt prosecutors. I think this more or less seems to reflect what most people in Korea feel about the system, which they have good reasons to think is rigged.
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Step away ...
Excuse my rant. I'll try to keep it brief. A remake of a Japanese story.This seems more appropriate for 9 year-olds than for anyone who has achieved double digits.
Supposed to be the story of an inexperienced lawyer who is naively trying to be conscientious and ethical, but is roundly abused by everyone, and a mercilessly money-grasping lawyer who never loses a case. Perhaps she's supposed to rub off on him, I dunno. We follow them as they undertake a number of 'hopeless' cases and somehow sweep all logic before them. How? By using emotional appeals, lies, and manipulation that even a three year old would see through.
There's a pretty unbelievable back-story which we are supposed to feel explains the boss's narcissism, but nah.
Our rookie lawyer, who had supposedly decided she would stand up for herself and stop being walked all over, well, to be fair, she sort of does a bit, but is rendered completely speechless by her boss's behaviour which often resembles that of a toddler - actually many toddlers are more mature.
There is also an underlining "thriller" plot, involving an apparently random guy trotting around knifing people almost on a casual basis.
The acting is frankly pretty hammy, the writing is very poor indeed (in my view). I tried to give it a really GOOD chance, because it is clear it's not written for anyone with more than one brain cell. Now, if you like that humour, great, and it may be better written than I can say, and that's fine. But it's just too blunt for me and trying far too hard to stretch what I can bear...
If you like THAT kind of humour, then it might be worth a watch for a laugh, but it is completely unfunny for me.
Oh and the music - not bad in itself, but too loud, too prominent, not fitting the scenes, or else trying too hard to make me cry at fake "emotional" scenes, overall very irritating.
So - no - certainly not for me. Find this really hard to mark because it is so grim: but some of the actors are good actors doing their best with dross - so, I'll stretch this to 3/10 Honestly if I could have given 0 stars in some categories I would have ...
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Loved this, loved everyone by the end
I loved this drama. It's overtly feminist in its message, but manages to be so without obliterating or being unfair to men. There are a LOT of hunky blokes in this, and many lovely personalities. There are many men behaving badly, certainly, that's almost unavoidable, and they are common in any drama. But even the cheating ex-boyfriend redeems himself by the end.There are annoying women, too, but no one is treated cruelly by this drama and we learn about the human side of even the rotters.
I found this drama predictably annoying in parts. That was inevitable because it is - as well as being engaging and witty and well made - something of an expose of the double standards applied to men and women in Korea (though it's just as true elsewhere). Some of that was hard for me to watch.
Despite all of that, this was a very satisfying watch. It's extremely well written ,with snappy dialogue and great chemistry between pretty much all the actors. Love that sort of thing.
This was as near as I can recall to giving a 10/10 for me.
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This is genuinely feel-good series. There is conflict and people fight, there are jealousies and malice at times, but issues are usually resolved very easily and quite quickly. For me, they young ML, supposed to be something of a romantic lead did not work as such: he was very moody and crap at communicating - with anyone - but was supposed to be a great songwriter. Well, that happens sometimes. The House mother was efficient and cheerful - in fact she was determined to be cheerful and supportive at all times. People would downright insult her, or try to, and she accepted their words and promised to do better. A little hard to stomach, but it was well handled.
I enjoyed this series. Most of the characters were well written and pretty well-rounded, even f a lot of the writing seemed saccharine sometimes. The storyline did a good job of approximating a believable idol experience, though it was a little too smooth sailing in my view. But it made an enjoyable easy watch.
One disappointment was the music and performance levels of the band. They didn't work for me - the music production values were much too soft and lacked any impact and as a result, the choreo and dance skills (which were a bit stronger) didn't match the songs.
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Broadcast in 2010 and it shows ...
This is incredibly dated and perhaps suffers as a result. Are all the drawbacks due to when it was made?This ob/gyn dpt in a branch of a Seoul hospital manages to attract all the most rare and difficult conditions you have never heard about, and even though they are only found in perhaps one of thousands of births or pregnancies, they are always recognised/diagnosed with no delays. Medical staff have ALL. DAY. LONG to lurk about gossiping about each other and discussing confidential patient information in the full hearing of random strangers which really irritated me. OK it's a drama, lets just play it just like kids in the playground. A bit lazy.
Either the writing or the direction made the acting sadly wooden or what I call "broad" - almost like in a not very funny farce. These actors are capable of much better than this - and Song Joon Ki in particular was clearly following instructions to behave like an immature, naive and sulky young man - as was his love interest lady. The two romance threads were absolutely a waste of time - zero chemistry and incredibly immature refusal to communicate at ALL!
There were some ugly attitudes on display too which I sometimes found hard to stomach. I continued to watch to see how they would be "resolved" and it was mostly worth that. There were also some instances of subtle and courageous handling of some difficult issues, including teenage pregnancy, abortion, attitudes to adoption, organ donation, sex education, HIV/AIDS, and child abandonment.
Although at times I wanted to throw this drama against the wall, I did watch it to the end, probably for the cast of characters, who were mostly engaging, supportive and benign. Would I re-watch - not if you held a gun to my right eyeball!
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Cliched Writing failed to live up to my hopes
I could not MAKE myself like the FL – despite having certain "strengths" (damn good in a fist fight, good at interrogation – so long as she can use illegal tactics, successful prosecutor working on her wits – but merrily taking bribes), she is crude, insensitive, corrupt and I can't particularly see how she is supposed to be 'elite'. Even though she is beautiful, I started to even find her face annoying because she used a lot of overly animated expressions – but repeated the same ones all the time. Frankly she was a bit of a slapstick character for me. And unfunny. She has friends who have been nothing but loyal, but – without being abusive – she mostly just uses them, including her colleague and old college pal and her 'uncles' from her dad's old gang.ML was engaging enough, but a bit dull. We know he is here (from the states) to try to clear up his doubts about his father's death, and that he has some business nouse (and money), but we don't really get to see much personality. In fact perhaps that's the crux of this drama's weakness for me: if a character can't be played really broad almost like a panto character, they seem to be very bland. It's too much focussed on the FL who is herself rather one-dimensional. Even though we get her backstory and motivation, there's not much to her character except self-interest and a pretty hefty dose of selfishness as well.
The writing is full of cliches and thus pretty poor. Poor-but-driven (and deeply smug) prosecutor, conglomerate exile back-to-make-good, toxic family and in-laws, thug gangs running round in crap clothes beating people up with big sticks, underlings either passively allowing or actively supporting wrongdoing, Hanju using underlings' family to keep them in line, police routinely arresting no one or the wrong one, and either making no investigation or total incompetence, corrupt officials openly accepting bribes and doing no work in the pay of the super rich. Also too many apparent debacles for the 'good guys' later revealed as actually strategies they have set up so that the 'triumph' is overturned ... but even after that the Hanju group drop another bombshell, etc etc etc.
I managed to finish this, but the ending was a bit odd. The FL, at first feisty, has to modify her feisty half way through in order to seem to conform a bit, but at around that point (which is also when she and ML start to get closer) the plot gets a little odd, with lots of what I can only call filler because it doesn't move things forward very much. And it's a bit boring. Eventually everything comes more or less right, but the decision of ML to go back to the states, and the FL to follow him leaves me a bit flat. And the final scene of the whole shebang quite frankly confused my last brain cell quite a lot. But also I didn't really care by that point.
By half way through I had to use the Netflix speedup button to take me through this – still, that is a better result than having to abandon it outright.
Most of the cast acted very competently, with some tried and trusted familiar faces doing sterling work. Sadly I was disappointed with the FL though I suspect she was doing what she could with the material and the direction
Sadly, for me, only a 6.5 out f 10
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