Sinasina

This drama is about 50% sweet romance, which I would rate at about 9/10 and 50% is about working at a publishing house, which is at most a 5/10. I realize that the end result being 8/10 doesn't really compute, but ultimately it comes down to me enjoying the romcom parts a lot & tolerating the business related things.

The romcom part is close enough to realistic cdrama perfection, I guess I would have loved a bit more comedy and faster progress in the OTP's relationship. The production team did a good job maxing out fluff & sugar, no complaints there. It's really nice how the bromance/weak live triangle thing was handled.
The leads are a match made in heaven, I found them a pleasure to watch throughout the entire drama. Also their love story is nicely written and even their short mini breakup felt well executed & timely. I'm extremely happy they did not do that in the final episodes, I hate that!
I did not like the second couple's story very much, there was too much push-pulling. I liked the characters & the actors though..
The cast in this drama is very good overall, right now I cannot recall a single weakly cast supporting character.
Also there was a crazed bitch character trying to take away ML from FL, she appeared nearing the end of the drama. I think that plotline was completely unnecessary, but it was still tolerable, she was rebuffed at 100% efficiency every time.

As for the life at a publishing house, it's easy to criticize many work related happenings, the story is not all that interesting and there are all kinds of villainous, or semi villainous characters. If I look at this having seen many carrier oriented dramas before, then it's still pretty okay. Corporate scheming & infighting are almost always total garbage in other cdramas, here it's not so bad. The biggest issue is that the adversaries had weird & meaningless motivations and they have often done really arbitrary illogical things. The characters themselves are okay, we don't quite reach the cartoon villain territory. The largest annoyance I've had is the biggest crisis plot in the drama, involving ghost writing claims & lots of unreasonableness. I think it would not have been very difficult to come up with a better, more realistic plot involving Asian cancel culture.

I think people criticizing Esther Yu's voice are in the wrong. However around episode 9-11 perhaps there were too many scenes involving childish temper tantrums & fake baby talk :p I don't think it's fair to blame the actress for that though!

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It's much better than Abyss!

This show is a little bit of a nice surprise, based on the comments i thought it would be terrible, nearly as bad as Abyss. Luckily nothing in the show annoyed me in a major way. Doom is a nice fluffy drama with some slight melodramatic vibe. I had a pretty good time overall, I enjoyed even some of the most criticized episodes.
I mean sure, the storytelling is a bit arbitrary and abrupt at times and the second leads do form a love triangle, but the (Beauty Inside) screenwriter has redeemed herself with giving me a nice, easily digestible ending and the second leads were a lot more entertaining than I thought they would be. The triangle did not devolve into a makjang-ish mess and it almost made sense, almost. it goes without saying that I found great that the main leads had no secondary romantic interests.

The two biggest problems I've found with the drama were the somewhat lacking chemistry between Park Bo Young and Seo In Guk and the lack of impact. The chemistry issue somewhat resolved itself by the time we reached the ending credits, it's obvious that the actors have grown used to each other. As for impact, let me explain. The theme of the show and the events that happened between the leads should've felt extremely impactful. Perhaps the writer failed with buildup a little & perhaps there were some acting hiccups in the delivery too, I don't know. The slow pace and all the gazing did not bother me at all, but I cannot help but feel that there was more than enough time to properly build up to those dramatic plot developments & make them less arbitrary, less immersion breaking.

As I have mentioned already the writing is less than flawless, but the frame of the story is really sound. It's properly written, it's not a cliche fest. The one big cliche plot the show had, the memory loss thing was well executed. Then again I always liked it when lovers reconnect after an amnesia situation. it's commendable that no third party with ulterior motives tried to take advantage of their amnesia.

The cast on the whole was really on point. Everyone was pretty great at their respective roles, except Kevin. Not the actor's fault, but good God they should have given him less screen time, nobody involved knew what to do with his character..
I loved the deity. Her difficult to explain decisions notwithstanding the actress did an absolutely phenomenal job, I enjoyed every second of her being shown on screen. (and she did have some great lines as well)

This drama has many similarities with Angel's Last Mission. That drama is better due to Shin Hye Sun's acting & the OST, but that's pretty much it, though that's admittedly quite a lot! Doom has a hugely better ending & a more balanced cast.
Another point this brings up how strong an effect music can have, when it comes to enjoyment of a drama and there Doom certainly falls a bit short.

The line about "writers being technicians" amused me to no end . It could be a fitting motto for the screenwriter. (especially if we consider The Beauty Inside too..)

TLDR: Doom is not the best drama I have ever seen, not even close, but it's been entertaining during the show's entire run and it has wrapped up in a nice way, so I'll go with 8/10.

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It's normal for fluffy romcoms to be weak in the story department, but in good fluffs the plot should just quietly get out of the way. However here it has gotten increasingly frustrating before we reached the final episode. Even the OTP relationship is not that great. I mean sure the leads were real pretty, the FL is especially super cute, but all the push-pulling up until the last two episodes was just too much for me to completely enjoy their romance.

Outside of the OTP stuff there is not a whole lot to like in this drama. She is an alien, but her powers are terribly useless most of the time, her powers even failed at providing consistent comedic relief. Her status as an alien does not really come into play up until the last 5? episodes (excluding the hormone thing) & even at that time it's only used for some real stupid stuff and mainly as a tool for the typical 2 years separation plot. The triangle may not be the be the most annoying I have ever seen, but it takes FOREVER to resolve and Xiao Qi even pretends to hesitate up until like the penultimate episode. The plot should've just focused on comedy and the cultural differences between the alien FL & ML, instead we have not only gotten the usual corporate bullshit plot, but it was even presented in a really juvenile way, with the evil stepmom & uncle acting like cartoon villains, then again there are much better Disney cartoon villains out there.. The father character was also just the typical controlling chairman type, fast forward buttoning all his scenes would have certainly improved my viewing pleasure.

The reason why I still ended up rating the drama above 5 is that the comedy in the early episodes was real nice. The alien FL going all handsy after getting high on his hormones was a pretty fun gimmick.

My Lover from the Star and My Amazing Boyfriend 1-2 are hugely better dramas in the same genre, there is no contest whatsoever.

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This drama is a simple, but fluffy romcom. It's entertaining enough, but a couple weeks from now I don't think I'll be able to recall much of the plot, then again is there really a plot?

There are two sets of subtitles for this drama, the machine translated ones on YouTube are unintelligible, the fan made subs are better, however even those are suspect, especially for the first 10-12 episodes. Some of the dialog does not make sense. Either the writer really tried to insult my intelligence, or the subber made up some lines..
The romantic progress of the OTP in the early episodes felt strange, almost jittery to me. That's why I brought up the issue of subtitles, because in Chinese the romance might just flow much more smoothly, at least in those early episodes, it was fine later on.

I think the leads had okay-ish chemistry, nothing extraordinary, but it was fine. In the comments the issue of age gap has been brought up. I don't see what the fuss is about it, in fact the actress is 2 years older than Eden Zhao. Yeah they made the FL appear juvenile here and there, but it's not like Eden Zhao looks like a mature individual or anything. I thought that they were pretty cute together, I enjoyed their fluff and I can easily digest this much sugar. It's nice that there was no breakup, nor did the secondary love interests have any chance, but I wouldn't necessarily call the triangle weak, see evil side bitch below..

The biggest problem in this drama is the evil side bitch and her minions. Her plots & schemes were ignored for way too long and her plotline is like 30% of the drama. Instead of the usual "FL wins these skirmishes & then the face slapping commences" situation, the characters just ignored her and "turned the other cheek" for like 15 episodes.

In a drama like this expecting realism is a stretch, so it's not surprising that they completely misrepresented how real voice acting work is produced, but I wasn't bothered too much. (I could be wrong too, since Chinese dubbing is typically so horrifyingly bad that who knows, they might just really do it like this)

ˇ^
Overall I just turned off my brain and I have been sufficiently entertained. It's best not too think to much while watching this drama, because once you do you will realize how toxic and weird these relationships are and then suddenly it's like 2/10 trash.

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Verona Park iyeo

Sung Hoon is the same kind of actor as Lee Minho. His looks are inversely proportional with his acting skills. I already knew this when I decided to watch this drama, because of that I did not expect much from this drama & to be honest the drama did not fall short of my already low expectations too much.

The saving grace of this show is that it's only 5 hours long. So despite there being A LOT of stupid in the drama, there is just no time to expand on those things. So yeah - weird second love interest, weird brother, hysteric mom - in a 16 episode long mini series I would have not been able to bear with all this old school 2005-2010 era crap. However due to the short running time, most of the problems were dealt with in minutes and the love triangle was weak too, because there was just no time for the second lead to amount to anything.

Ultimately I was entertained enough. Veronica Park did carry the show, despite her obviously being a less experienced actress at the time this show has been made. Everyone is right about their relationship starting out as a really toxic one, bully CEO yada yada, but I was pretty much unfazed about that. I just wish they had more chemistry and the writing could have been just a little better. I would have appreciated it, if the relationship progressing moments were less random and arbitrary.

I liked the cat, I wonder how many breeders have that breed in Korea, could it be a product placement? ^

TLDR: If you must watch this, because you are really bored, make sure to watch "The Secret Life of My Secretary" first. It's a much better drama & knowing it makes this one 200% more entertaining.

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With a few exceptions all the older dramas I've watched sucked. This one is pretty good for its age. Park Shinhye + Jung Yonghwa combo worked out quite great, which came as a surprise, since I did not like Yonghwa before, but as it turns out he is a much more talented singer than I thought & his acting was okay too.
The story with the big play & the villains doing things to make things harder just isn't good, the writers did not try real hard to make it interesting and relatable, luckily in this genre this isn't a major issue. There is a love square, but it's very weak, the second leads don't cause many issues, this is very applaudable for a 2011 drama really. The secondary characters could have been more interesting, but there were a few rather funny ones, so it's okay.
I liked the music, my only gripe is that it was quite repetitive at times.

I wanted to watch a lighthearted romcom, this mostly delivered, if not for the 40 minutes of forced separation makjang in the last episode, I would have probably rated it a 9.

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This is a great show. The first half reminded me of the american TV-show Lois&Clark, for obvious reasons. I loved that show as a kid, Healer's take on this theme was good enough to keep me entertained as an adult. The second male lead was also a bit similar to Lex Luthor early on. The second half is not as good, but it is still head and shoulders above the average Korean action/thriller flick. I always felt that Hallyu cannot compare to american thriller shows like The Americans, or Person of Interest. The action/thriller part of Healer doesn't quite match up to them either, but it's certainly interesting enough. Thanks to some kdrama tropes & the pretty romance this can be considered a different genre though, something the American shows cannot really match either. It's certainly lightyears ahead of Descendants of the Sun, to the point that all the action/thriller scenes in DoTs can be considered a joke in comparison. It's nice that there was no triangle, or other relationship shapes, that was a pleasant surprise. The main actors were all very good, there is some surprisingly good acting from Park Min-young, this is probably her peak as an actress. I loved her in Secretary Kim, but she is MUCH MUCH better here. This is the first time I've seen Ji Chang-wook on screen, but he seems like a very good actor too, he did very well with his fake personality and everything. Obviously there was sizzling chemistry, no surprise there.
To mention some negatives, I really did not like the "tense music track" that was playing all the time, it's a pretty bad earworm too. Also there were some cartoon-ish villains that we could've done without, there were some moments that felt pretty fake too. Also the last episode felt pretty rushed.

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I liked the romance & the main leads, the second leads and many misc characters as well. The OST was also okay. I liked it that they didn't overdo the triangle in this one. The reason why it's not 10/10 is because the surrounding story is just not very interesting. This whole delivery business vs. big evil corp thing was extremely typical & for the most part boring and 50%+ of the drama was about this. Other reviewers mentioned that they could empathize with the problems that these youths had to face in "helljoseon", but I found many of these outlandish and unfathomable, it's a bit too much drama logics for me. It's not really slice life, but fantasy, which is fine, but they tried to sell it as slice of life.. The ending was also a bit unsatisfying & although it was a happy ending, it was extremely rushed.

For comparison's sake SooBin's most recent drama "Where Stars Land" is very similar in structure & the level of the comedy & flaws in general are also similar, but the life at the Inchineon Airport was WAY more interesting, I liked that show a lot more for that reason.

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I watched My Girl (2005) for the first time just now in 2018. I've seen a lot of rave reviews & people were claiming that this was an important work that contributed to the start of the Korean Wave, have I watched this in 2005 I would have probably liked it too, but now having seen so many amazing dramas it just didn't work for me that well. There are good things naturally, the main pair have good chemistry & their interactions are fun throughout the drama. Lee Da-hae was awesome, even with that hair. I've seen most of the other Hong Sisters dramas & this is probably their least polished work. In the early episodes the pacing is extremely slow by 2010+ standards & even though there were some extremely funny moments I have felt bored about half the time. Later on as the melodrama kicks in everything goes to shit, as usual with the Hongs, but this time it was even more frustrating than what happened in Jealousy Incarnate. This drama has the most annoying side characters ever. Both second leads were the worst, the Father was acting like a certified retard throughout the series & this Grandfather character once again caused a 2 years long forced separation plot that was way more dragged out and was way more annoying than in Pinocchio. In some of the other works by the Hongs they had some pretty decent endings, here the last episode is a super frustrating and meaningless cliche-melodrama fest up until 15 minutes to the end, then one of the shortest happy endings happen in kdrama history, not satisfying at all.

The OST had some pretty great tracks though, so thumbs up for that!

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The first few episodes were excellent & I really got into it, but shortly after that the the story progression crawled to complete halt, I did not feel the comedy anymore & in each episode I kept asking myself when will he find out, when will all this pain end? There is a reasonable happy ending, but as many have said there are unanswered questions and overall it does not make me forget all the frustrations I've had before, nor is it satisfying enough to give the drama a very high score. I'm not surprised that the ratings tanked in Korea.
I watched this over the course of 2 days, I strongly believe had I watched only 2-3 episodes a day I would have enjoyed it a lot more. I guess there is a limit how much frustration one can deal with in a day.

I feel that this show was a huge missed opportunity. They had a great story to tell & a truly outstanding cast, but there were problems with writing & directing. Chae Soo Bin could clearly act like the perfect Robot, but for some reason, when she was only pretending to be one it felt so unconvincing. It should have been convincing at times and then going out of character for comedic or dramatic effect, but this did not really happen. They could have expanded more on the genuine Aji3, her escape was one of the highlights of the show, but she barely had any screen time. I was waiting for a necklace related scene during the ending, also a big disappointment.

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It's enjoyable, but surely overrated!?

The Good:
✅ The top acting by almost* everyone (including the child actor, but seriously there are some amazing performances)
✅ The high budget of the show really shows, it's really a dazzling production.
✅ The romance is quite good (other than the noble idiocy bit, but even that is not the worst)
✅ Top tier bickering
✅ The super weak love triangle
✅ There is no forced separation or breakups.
✅ The setting is quite well thought out.
✅ The lack of in laws is refreshing.

The Average:
🟡 IU's acting.* (it's still good objectively, but not up to her usual very high standard, though I cannot really blame her for not taking this script too seriously.)
🟡 The secretary couple
🟡 The usual shy teenager act..

The Bad:
❌ The non-romantic plot is just awful.
❌ There are intelligence insulting contradictions too.
❌ While contract marriages are often a lot of fun, the guaranteed leak of the contract is the worst & most predictable cliche in this genre.
❌ Dad, QM & maybe even the FL got a full character rewrite near the end, jarringly so
❌ This is subjective, but I don't like the idea of abolishing the monarchy like this. It goes against the romance of the show, I mean in the classical sense, there is this whole semi-glamor concept & then they just flip the table, I never liked it when an extraordinary character dreams of or just becoming ordinary.

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It's a bit funny how in the drama 'Touch Your Heart' Inna was basically playing actress Oh Yeon Seo, someone who has been criticized for her bad acting a lot over the years. In this drama however Inna has a very similar character that Oh Yeon Seo herself portrayed before in the same author's work 'Mad for Each Other & Oh Yeon Seo was a much better fit for this I think, so we have kind of gone full circle in a sense.. Don't misunderstand she has done a decent enough job, but it's just a bit weird and ill fitting. Of course -unlike Yoo Inna- Hwang Chan Sung was a massive weak link in the drama overall. So to summarize, the drama is AT BEST average in the acting department.

The writing & the pacing of the script are objectively bad. There is no way around this, there really are a lot of problems & some astonishingly bad lines in the earlier episodes. Although I suppose the drama's saving grace are also lines, because here and there there was some brilliant dialog that really resonated with me. (a very smart intern writer's work perhaps?) Looking at the plot delivery It's not hard to see why it's more than a little bad. The first 5 episodes are completely about FL's mental breakdown/breakup, after that we get a relatively average, but serviceable romcom & then following that there is a rushed weird mess in the final two episodes that culminate in a 15 minute long, substance-less happy ending.
The characterization is also a hit and miss. Bora and Lee Soo Hyuk's characters are okay, but there are quite a few side characters that are just horrible, weird or just extremely two dimensional. (Uri, Yu Jung etc..)
Also the obsession with confessions is a weird theme for a drama to have, I don't really know what to think about this..

Can Love Triangle haters watch this? Maybe, though the previous love interests do stick around..

People like bashing the drama for that one admittedly very insensitive Auschwitz comment. While this is fair, I think it's more of an ill researched analogy that came from ignorance rather than anything else.

Overall the drama is a weird amalgamation of multiple genres. I don't really understand who the target audience is suppose to be. Sad-melo enjoyers will like the first 5 episodes, but will probably be very disappointed with what comes after, romcom lovers might not even hold out long enough to reach the 5-7 romcom episodes & then either of those groups would be at least somewhat disappointed due to the final two episodes.
Maybe the problem is just me, since the 10/10 reviews just keep on coming..

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I'm giving this a 10/10, because I loved watching this from beginning to end, perhaps with the exception of e13.
With that said objectively this is quite bad. We could give it an award for "the most cheesy lines ever", I mean really it's insane how bad the script is. I guess you could say that this is the ultimate guilty pleasure, because I know that it's bad and yet I couldn't hate it for a second. As a huge fan of Goblin I love Inna & Dong Wook, but their acting in TYH is the worst it has ever been. Inna is an amazing actress, she's been awesome in everything before, including variety TV, but I think this cheesy character was too far outside her comfort zone. Their chemistry wasn't nearly as good as in Goblin either, I don't know, it just felt off. Honestly I don't even understand myself why I liked this so much, I mean it's so cheesy at times that it causes physical pain. I guess the feeling is not entirely dissimilar, when I listen to that "We Built This City" cover that came on in Grey's Anatomy that one time. Perhaps I'm just shallow & I just enjoy everything my favorite idols appear in??? (this would be a first for me)
They had to drop the stalker ark prematurely, because of real events in Korea, but I did not mind really. I mean sure it's sad that they had to scrap the script from episode 13 onward, but it might have turned out more entertaining this way. I imagine that originally the second lead couple was meant to fight alongside JungRok vs. the stalker guy and that was the whole point of their story, to make the legal proceedings more interesting and fun in the last episodes, but I think the melodrama all of this meant to cause could have ruined the show for me, I don't know. I liked the ending a lot, the last episode was especially nice, despite the heavy product placements. (eating Subway sandwiches, while charging a Samsung phone with yet another Samsung phone!)

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Oddly fatiguing

The Good:
✅ The extraordinarily good acting performances by everyone in the important roles
✅ The leads & the second couple (FL's brother + wife) too had good chemistry.
✅ There were a few really fun episodes. (e7 especially)
✅ The fluffy & bickery parts were good & briefly excellent even.
✅ Yoon Bomi is still amazing.

The Average:
🟡 Beom Ja & her beau
🟡 The elderly
🟡 The ending (could have been worse, but I'm not amazed)
🟡 While the character rewrites made the drama more enjoyable, it's never good when the writer is unwilling to do characterization sanely.
🟡 The OST is really on the boring side.

The Bad:
❌ The drama is much too long. (the average episode length is 1h25m & getting through some of the episodes really had been a slog)
❌ The second ML is a 2005 era cartoon villain. (you know those teary eyed Makjang roaches)
❌ "That" woman is also a 2005 era cartoon villainess.
❌ The triangle (at least FL rejected most of the advances, so could've been worse)
❌ The worst kind of amnesia trope (second ML takes advantage)
❌ All the corporate plots..
❌ .. and the plot in general (There is an immersion breaking amount of unhinged in the final 3rd of the show)
❌ Both leads were really bad apples early on before their character rewrites. (ML's actions are positively awful)
❌ I felt relieved when it was finally over.

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This drama is doing many things right, the leads have good chemistry with each other & their endless bickering is plenty amusing. Some annoying saeguk things are absent (awful hats for example) & in many ways this is closer to a Chinese xianhuan show than a saeguk. Instead of clans like the fox clan, fairy clan etc we have mage clans, but their interactions with each other are pretty similar to what we see in those Chinese shows. Overall it's a really well produced drama with a decently interesting premise & world building.

So then why is my rating so low? To summarize I just don't like the plot, there is so much I don't like about it really. Sure the final 2-3 episodes were incredibly bad, quite possibly due to the team scrambling to deal with their actress switching shenanigans, but it's more than that. I don't like the plot device that is the "alchemy of souls", I don't like how the FL does not much else for 19 episodes other than being a maid doing chores and I don't like the love triangle, though admittedly I've seen far worse triangles. I already implied that the lead actors were great fit for their roles, however their romance is flowing rather strangely. Live filming is not great when it comes to consistency & the writers were really not on top of their game here, despite a couple rather epic scenes in the show, the buildup often failed in my eyes. Almost forgot the main point I wanted to make, excuse my ramblings! What I think is the worst here is that this is supposed to be power fantasy. A master who lost their powers meets a disciple who is unable to cultivate powers & then at the very least one of them is supposed to grow strong, right? Despite all the time spent on training, not in this show, no! Our hero born under the king's star remains a weakling throughout the entire time and then the crappy final episodes come ruining everything even more.

Could have given a lower score, but decided not to, since at least the comedy is pretty good most of the time..

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