ShortCircuit

I never watched said actor in said scandal, in any of his dramas (that I know of) and I didn't even comment on his own page or on any of his dramas' pages. I asked about THIS drama's airing schedule since it has been rumoured to air this year and the dates keep getting pushed back. The connection between the two dramas might or might not have an impact on the airing dates. I was hoping for someone more informed than I to post a reply, and that already happened.

Attacking someone who just asked a question re: this precise drama on the page of said drama makes me wonder why you are taking it so personally. But I don't actually care to learn the answer to that.

Don't bother replying to this comment, since I'll be using the block button. Have a nice life.

The twin on the shore is supposed to be SSH, because of the message and the diamond spear/arrow he's holding. But then, it was HWS who had the thing in the first place, and the one who has all the reasons to try and bring down Haesong and HyeSoo's new reign.

Sadly, SSH is most probably gone. But he was always kind of reckless, so it's not actually all that surprising. And TBH the manner the SIH killed Mr Lee's brother was atrocious and SSH did play a part in it, and at the time he wasn't even too much involved yet.

The most cerebral one was always WooShin, who started the whole thing and now gets to inherit and re-live all the guilt, and add to it all the dead people his actions caused, and the death of bio-dad and worse, his own twin. I think he's trying hard to plan ahead (that quip about a book - yeah, that wasn't all there is to it.) HyeSoo kind of lost impulse once she got what she wanted - she never wanted Haesong, she just wanted to keep it from HyunJo. What now? LOL. She doesn't have what it takes to keep it, and there's no more Team A. WooShin might have the willpower now, since he's being spurred on by the guilt.

IF. And that's a big IF. IF there's a certain secret organisation - not the SIH, not Team A, some other one, because why not? - that would have come into play... Then yes, there might be some way to deus-ex-machina SSH into a coma (because why not?) and play HWS's feelings against him in order to manipulate Haesong or somebody/something else. But I don't hold much hope for another season, so we're going probably to be left off with a Vagabond-style ending. Oh well.

At least it's not WooShin who died, and Dongrim has a happy ending (he's too happy for his dad not to be alright.)

Taesung, on being happy of not actually killing Mr Lee - CTS, dammit, you shot Mr Kwon point blank three times!!! Shut the heck up and sit down.

For myself, I liked this drama - mostly for WooShin. It's almost a origin story for him: the quiet brainiac who used to write books, got too certain things would move along legal lines in the real world, lost his twin and father(s) to it, and now gets to plan his revenge.

If it happens, I'll watch it. As long as there's Ji Sung playing HWS.

She's not going to hold it for long. And no, he's not.

I don't really remember that part - I was caught in the twins' problems oops. I kind of think they weren't allowed to leave that compound before the party (and the elections) because of the danger of either of them revealing the plot relating to the gun laws HaeSong would support. But I do also kind of remember him asking about going to the hospital - it's just too unclear ATM for me WHEN exactly that came. I've had a couple of really exhausting weeks :(

Still, I think it was about moving Dongrim's dad from the hospital where he's basically a hostage (and where he immediately had a lapse of health when Dongrim and WooShin learned about the gun laws and told Chairman Kwon), and not Dongrim actually getting leave to go and see him. Just that they were able to move him (maybe with HyeSoo's help, when WooShin thought she was helping?)

I haven't had a chance to watch the final episode, I hope they at least mention Dongrim and his family and how it all turned out.

Last year's The Devil Judge was an extremely hot BL romance between the leads, buried under a police female officer acting as a huge beard, LOL. Nobody can convince me otherwise.

If you've watched it, you know - Ji Sung totally owns it. And sure, you can call it good bromance, or even go as far as calling it queer-baiting... but in the end, Ji Sung and JinYoung's respective characters spark off each other blindingly. I liked the female leads' characters (SunAh and SooHyun did their best), but there's just no comparison, LOL.

I'd watch Ji Sung leading a romance, (even a straight one, not that he ever acted in any other kind, OFFICIALLY, LOL) in a hot second. In fact, sign me up right now LOL.

I think she always knew, or at least was suspicious, but she fooled herself into rationalising it as pure coincidence.

But she isn't stupid, just strong-willed. When WooShin put it in front of her in the open, she couldn't continue to lie to herself and finally took action.

HyeSoo only helped her remain alive in prison and offered her the opportunity to kill Kwon with her own hands, which she promptly did.

I don't think her rage is spent, though. I wonder if she'll be satisfied with Kwon or find new targets to hunt down for faults real or imagined...

She didn't flip out of nowhere - WooShin made her realise her son's heart ended up transplanted to the chairman when her son VERY probably didn't try to commit suicide after all, and might not even had been brain-dead at the time of the transplant, but just in a coma, with chances of recovery.

And she OFFERED his heart to the chairman herself. Basically she was manipulated into killing her own son by someone else's hands.

She picked his retirement to attack him, and when she was in prison he tried to have her killed. Her flip is seriously well grounded.

HBC's part of the story is related to the laws to arm people HaeSong tried to pass, and the jail murder is also related to that. HBC would have ended up a terrorist attack victim too, if SSH hadn't stopped it. What SeoHee is trying to do now, last-minute, isn't clear yet. I hope there'll be some loop closing in tomorrow's finale.

Team A and the SIH are dumb and dumber, LOL. SIH always act like they're a CIA Black Ops team and the laws are more like (extremely flexible) guidelines :D Good thing Team A aren't any brighter, what with their bosses' personal agendas that take a lot of energy from them just doing their jobs competently :D

I even know why WooShin would do it - he's trying to give SooHyun closure and maybe a chance to bring down Mr. Lee. But this won't work. It can't work, because HyeSoo was never on their team and Mr. Lee isn't THAT stupid.

Everything WooShin did, from the very beginning, was to get some closure for SooHyun, nothing else. And now there are countless people dead, their real father exposed as a murderer, TOO (they already knew he was a thief), no real chance to win (much), and a high chance at least one of the twins ends up dead. I have to say it though - I was even more afraid they'd try to do the switch with WooShin going to the funeral house ahead of time to get Mr. Lee by himself, and protect SooHyun from any danger possible. I guess WS respects his older twin enough not to make a clown of him at this time.

So, I wonder if HyeSoo made Sun an offer she couldn't refuse and turned her from HyunJo's side to her own. She (HS) has a chance to really come out the King Rat in this story.

The SIH are really way too stupid to exist. I mean... Why the heck would you break down the door to the last room people are hiding in, if you guess they're your own people, but desperate and armed?! Call the f*ck's sake out to them, let them know you're coming to the rescue, so that they won't shoot you on sight! Then again, they're being led by KHP, he really is the standard of SIH stupidity.

I can't yet understand what's the purpose of exposing the jail mass murder thing at this time. Maybe we'll learn tomorrow.

Peeve one: Why the heck does SeoHee need that Panzer Tank of a car, and would she actually be able to afford it?! Her family wasn't exactly well off, did someone else give it to her? (like SH, though I don't remember it being his either.)

Peeve two: Show, we talked about this. Do NOT hurt WooShin anymore. It aches. I don't want to see him scared, hurt, in psychological pain again. This one has to be the most frail (but still humongously brave despite that) character I've ever seen Ji Sung play. I didn't watch any BTS from this drama, but I kind of think this character made him commit to acting in it.

One more ep - I want both twins alive, Show, or we'll have WORDS.

Edit: and if the drama forgets about Dongrim and his father's operation, I'll also want to have words.

I KNEW the two idiots will try to pull this off, dammit, dammit, dammit.

The serial killer dad died on the rocks under the cliff - it's not explained but IMHO HeeSung hit him over the head and threw him down there. The police just wanted to end the case ASAP and probably just labeled it suicide to stop the media frenzy.

It's also unexplained what happened to the mother - BUT. Despite MiSook NOT being a serial victim... the box had the correct number of trophy fingernails. And HyunSoo lost his childhood memories when she disappeared - I think his father killed his mother first, and maybe DHS was there to witness it and that's why he forgot everything.

HaeSoo didn't want to kill that village master, she was defending herself. It was in the heat of the moment, and she and her brother were definitely already psychologically marked from their father's actions. She spends her life hiding, she's wearing form-masking clothes all the time, the rape attempt must have left a deep scar - that and her brother disappearing forever.

The amnesia was actually well-done, IMHO. He approached JiWon under a fake identity, their whole life together was filled with him showing her only what he thought she'd want to see from him... Now the slate is blank and they still are attracted to each other - this time they can do it with complete sincerity.

Can Li Yi Feng's prostitution scandal (for which I hope he gets his just comeuppance) affect the airing of THIS drama?

Are the other actors from MATOTC possibly affected from their association (even if just professionally) with LYF?

How is this drama related to Mirror: A Tale of Two Cities?

More questions under the spoiler.

I rate and appreciate a drama only according to the enjoyment I get from it. If other people do no enjoy it as much (or as little) as myself, I call it a difference in tastes and move on. MDL ratings included, BTW.

That aside, considering IMDB ratings is hilarious. Just look at LOTR: ROP and the manipulation of IMDB ratings for it, and you'll know why.

As for if this is appreciated or not in its home country... For its timeslot, on tvN, Eve (before it) averaged around 3.5-4% audience, The Killer's Shopping List averaged 3%, Kill Heel averaged also around 3, 3+%, etc, so if Adamas, which is completely different from Eve (with its roots in highlife reality) is averaging almost 3%, I'd say it's pretty normal.

It's not a runaway hit, yes, but who cares? It's doing fairly in its country for its timeslot and its network. I don't think they're losing money.

And I AM enjoying it, and I guess I'm not the only one. Such is life :)

EDIT: I see now there's a whole bunch of disatisfied comments under this one, LOL, I hope this doesn't turn into a flame war just because. Anyway, I'm out of these kind of comments, everyone have a good day!

MDZS (the webnovel The Untamed is based on) is authored by a now-famous writer who's pen-name is Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (webnovel authors usually go by pen-names rather than real names, for obvious reasons when they're writing BL, for example :D)

MXTX wrote a number of novels, other than MDZS, and the very best hilarious one that I can think of right now is her Scum Villain's Self-Saving System.

So, a bit of context. Danmei is Chinese BL. A stallion novel is what we'd call a hetero harem novel (overpowered MC who conquers half the female population of the globe, LOL). Transmigration is what happens when a person either dies and their soul is moved to another world, or is sent to the past (so they get to revisit and correct their past lives), or even in a novel they'd been reading. As a matter of fact, TROTR is a transmigration story, where CQQ got transmigrated into her own drama script and Han Shuo also got pulled into it, LOL. So you're a bit familiar with the concept already :D There usually is a System that controls the world and that can interract with the person who moved there, so that certain plot points are definitely reached. As you can see, transmigration is definitely sci/fan though there are some rebirth stories where there's no other world and are set in the modern world. Cultivation is what people do in ancient settings in order to achieve higher inner power, be better fighters and live longer lives.

In SVSSS, a stallion-novel reader gets so involved in criticizing the novel and its author that he chokes and wakes up... as the novel's most villainous character, who abused and tormented the overpowered MC throughout his whole life and ended up terribly defeated, made into a human stick (limbs removed, planted in a large ceramic urn, eventually killed), Shen QingQiu. The newly awakened SQQ knows all that is about to happen and definitely does NOT want to die like that, or at all. The trick is that there's a System (SQQ and the System's side comments on anything happening are to die for, LOL) and the System won't let SQQ go too much OOC (out of character) to change the plot too fast.

Luo BingHe, the original overpowered MC, is SQQ's disciple, and initially he worshipped SQQ... but things have to happen mainly ACCORDING TO THE PLOT, or SQQ would lose too many OOC points and die for real.

You can see the dilemma :D

This would be the novel I'd recommend to anyone who wants to try crack Chinese danmei, hillarious interractions, some almost tragedies (but don't worry, 'cause SQQ is sneaky :D), set in a fantasy historical-like world, and where most of the tropes are clearly delineated for everyone to see... and then dealt with :)

Let me tell you that the stallion novel author's pen name is Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky (and yes, it's a peen joke, LOL), and SQQ at a time has to get a different name so he goes for Peerless Cucumber. Yes. That's the kind of name he went for. Because whenever he tries to right some things... other things happen. Like when he tried not to die because the OG character abused the stallion-novel MC, and while doing it, turned the whole story... into a danmei novel instead :D

The novel (actually, all 3 of MXTX's novels, including MDZS) is being officially translated and published already (last volume of SVSSS comes in November), but there's a pretty good fan-TL still floating around the internet. And there's the first season of the donghua (the Chinese animation) for this story, second season already approved and in production.

Here's a few bits of the donghua to illustrate its tone :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc181MPOwak

(Sorry, I get a bit enthusiastic over this topic LOL.)

Where it comes to Thai dramas, for me it's definitely selection bias, as I like BL and I like Gun (ML of Not Me, among others), and I don't really like romance (despite my watched list and top labels, LOL, which would make one think I'm all in for romance... it just happens that most dramas I watch include SOME romance). Usually lakorns (mainstream Thai dramas) are inclined heavily romantic so I'm not interested... There definitely are some that are pretty good, but I just don't know which ones.

The Chinese really did turn a new leaf sometime in the mid 2010s. For me, the immediate immersion happened with The Untamed - which, also if you like historical/costume dramas, and plenty of humour but also heartbreak AND bromance (that is actually censored BL), is definitely one not to miss. It's also among the top 10 even in MDL (which leans heavily in favour of kdramas; Reset is there, pretty close, too) so if you want an almost universally acknowledged masterpiece of the genre, that one would be it.

Other than TROTR, if you want humour... The Sleuth of Ming Dynasty is lots of fun, and also Young Blood. They're both costume dramas, and I wouldn't say they're the apex of the genre, but they're hilarious.

There are amazing webnovels (and a lot of them are at least fan TL-ed, if not officially TL-ed already) where you can read all about that Chinese humour and start familiarising yourself with their idioms and turns of phrase. It's a long rabbit's hole, welcome to a whole new world of drama and different stories :)

Cdramas to keep you coming back for more: Reset, Under the Skin, Ever Night, Joy of Life.

Thai dramas to get hooked on (and help you get past the language barrier): Not Me, I Told Sunset About You, A Tale of Thousand Stars. I've only watched BL Thai dramas, though, so if it's not your genre... it'll be tough.

Stay with it, if you will, this is a slow-burner. You'll end up loving everything about Park DongHoon in the end. He's one of the purest souls I've ever watched in a drama.

And so far, this is the only drama I actually ended up liking IU's character.

Shin HyeSun played the Queen, and did an amazing job of it, but the main romance is between the King and his Queen's body which is inhabited by a man's transmigrated soul.

So one would say this is actually preeetty close to BL without being BL at all. I guess SK isn't ready for a full-on BL HEA, though, despite the many mini-series that sprung up lately. This was a long full-time series, on tvN, so kind of mainstream.

I just wish they'd have bit the bullet for the final eps and just... went with it :D

Yes.

I liked how nobody wanted to try Boss ChunSik's food. Come on guys, what's the worst that could happen? Food poisoning?

Mayor Choi is kind of crazy. He seemed to be the avenging type, but the manic laughter and his pleasure in watching PCH's staged execution... well, he's been kookoo for a while, then.

WTH, I like Park YoonGab now?! He was slimy as the Chief Warden, but he can play a part if he wants to, and not betray his organisation either. What do you know?...

PCH turning to politics to improve the lives of citizens while KMH dies of sudden onset leukemia would be the worst ending, IMHO, I hope they don't go that way.

Which reminds me - it sure looks like the psycho's siblings took the money he got from betraying PCH and spent it on themselves instead of trying to save their mother. Which if true... I hope karma finds a way.

PS PCH should retire and let Jerry in his place. He wanted the job anyway LOL.