Sinasina

This special "episode" is only 10 minutes long. I don't know whether these scenes were scrapped from the final cut, or if they were filmed after the rest, my bet is for the former, then again the scene with the kid here is way better than the one in the final episode. I don't really understand why that would've gotten cut.

There is 0 reason not to watch this, if you followed the original run. It's a gift for the fans, a nice one at that. It's way more relevant to the story, than the Mr Queen special. In fact that is probably the most fun/relevant special I have ever seen, the only problem with it that it's way too short.

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I was sufficiently entertained so I would feel bad for giving it less than 8 stars, however the story is pretty bad at times. As a romantic comedy it's pretty great really, even the second pair has a good chemistry. There was no real love triangle, which I always appreciate. The actors were great for the most part too. Personally I didn't mind the casting changes, if I look at the entire series as a whole (with the novel as the basis) perhaps the ML in the second series was more fitting for the role. With My Amazing Boyfriend 1 the chinese wanted to copy the success of My Love from the Star and they've picked a lead that's extremely similar to Kim Soohyon both in looks and mannerisms & I don't think that would have worked for the story in the second season. I prefer Janice Wu over Yu Esther for the female lead role, but thanks to the long time between the two shows the change did not bother me too much. For a replacement Yu Esther was quite outstanding.
I hated how the first show has ended & I'm grateful that they've given me a satisfying conclusion, at last.

So I mentioned above that I had problems with the story. First and foremost the show is really long, the 38 episodes translate into the length of a 19 episodes long kdrama, which I'm normally fine with, but there was a lot of time wasted with the (really stupid, a normal person would have seen it from a mile away) child kidnapping plot, followed by a second kidnapping plot, so yep that wasn't great. Tian Jing Zhi's character is also written in a weird, inconsistent way. In the first show she practically threw herself at Xue Ling Qiao, but in the second show even after they've gotten engaged the woman decided to practice abstinence for quite a whole for ehm reasons and once all the major troubles were resolved she decided to develop a marriage phobia, I mean come on webnovel writer you could have done better..

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I watched the Reply series in the recommended order (97>94>88), I was still very surprised, this was not at all what I was expecting. Looking at 97 & 94, while they are very special kdramas with lots of nostalgia, especially 97, they are nonetheless quite typical in many ways, they have many of the usual kdrama tropes & have typical love lines with very strong triangles with heavy emphasis on them, and all the flashforward scenes teasing the husbands make them that much worse. I accepted in advance that 88 will be the same & also checked who the husband will be in advance, having read that ppl were upset about the final outcome. I couldn't have been more wrong, I didn't feel sorry for Junghwan at all. I did not feel for a second that he was the main character, also there was no conflict between the male leads at all. I think this is the first time that the "love triangle" trope did not annoy me at all. Doksun is supposed to be the main character, but everyone had a lot of screen time & Bora kind of stole the show. This drama is mainly not about romance, but rather family, friendship and nostalgia. There were many touching sub-stories, there were so many heartwarming scenes. They just don't make shows like this anymore in the west, I don't think. The cast is outstanding, everyone was amazing. I usually don't like the Ajumma characters in most dramas, but here even they were awesome. I think over the course of the 20 episodes (about 25-30 hours) nothing overly melodramatic happened & yet I still felt quite emotional when it ended. (one of the best 4 hour long endings I've seen) In conclusion this show is extremely special. Goblin is still my favorite kdrama, but this one is on the same level, 88 is nearly perfect, this apples oranges comparison is pointless anyway. Even the OST is outstanding, it wasn't jaw dropping, but at the important moments the songs had strong emotional impact. The cinematography & the sets were also perfection, no surprise there though.

~~One flaw I found is that Tek remained Tek 6dan for many years, despite beating 9dan players left & right, I don't think that's how ELO works.

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I'm genuinely surprised by the raving reviews!

This is not a drama, but a sitcom, that should've been fine, I generally like the sitcom genre, but this one is way too average. Jo Sok+Ae Bong moments were great & lee GwangSoo's solo scenes were quite alright too, but these are like half of the drama. The parents are played by my least favorite veteran actors ever & the brother's character is just bland. There is a lot of cheap humor that feels almost insulting to the viewers intelligence, there were poop & fart jokes everywhere and those weren't even the worst part.
I looked at the webtoon, that's all over the place too, but it feels slightly more interesting, not that I'm going be following it.

(Kim Jong Kook apparently sucks at acting...)

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It's massively overrated, people are mesmerized by the cute ML!?

The romance is kind of fun in this show, but it's excruciatingly slow. The drama is filmed beautifully & the actors did a great job, but the plot is super weak from relatively early on & if I wanted to be a bit mean I could call the final episodes simply trash. Sure the ending is not quite as disrespectful as in `Who Rules the World `, but it's not that far off, it's a random mess.

I like the enemies to lovers trope, but the delivery felt jittery to me & it does not help that the ML has gotten some complete character rewrites without dealing with some of the deeper issues their relationship had.

I could go into more detail & talk about some other things such as some of the social messaging the show has, but ultimately I feel like I have wasted my time & don't want to spend more than 3 minutes writing this review.

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Not bad, but overrated!

The Good
⌲ The brilliant episode that is E10 (It's one of the best kdrama episodes I've seen in quite a while)
⌲ Jung So Min's coolness (though she too did not try very hard early on, but improved later)
⌲ Mo Eum
⌲ The final episodes were -mostly- rather entertaining
⌲ The good comedy when not in sad melo mode
⌲ The endless fun bickering
⌲ ML's ex, mostly
⌲ There is no stupid elementary school level dating in this show & everyone has good and relatively immediate relationship goals.

The Average
⌲The acting (Jung Hae In is an excellent actor, but he did not try very hard in this one and some other supporting actors neither)
⌲ There is too much focus on the elders, very much like in a family drama. (then again their plots are not all that bad)
⌲ The chemistry between the leads
⌲ Mo Eum's romantic plot
⌲ Could have said `friends to lovers` done somewhat right, but the flashback content & ML's everlasting love are just so wrong.

The Bad
⌲ The dimwitted and insane mom
⌲ Before E10 the show has been increasingly less and less entertaining as time went on, felt like dropping it at one point.
⌲ The sad melodrama parts felt off to me early on.
⌲ The ex (despite his graceful exit I disliked almost everything about him & his plot )
⌲ The bracelet product placement (though admittedly Cleopatra could have worn that thing)
⌲ The North Pole. (good god)
⌲ Uncle!

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This is basically the cdrama version diluted with a lot of drama cliches.

Some top upvoted reviews are claiming that this is based on the novel not the Chinese drama, but as someone who has actually read the novel I can tell you that is false. This is 100% based on the cdrama, but sadly the new writer diluted the plot with a great many cliches & highlighted the competing love interests a lot, like gosh it's horseflies everywhere. Basically the original drama often sidestepping cliches is its strongest point, here other than the livelier characters & overall more emotional presentation everything else is worse.
Worse not really meaning bad though, it has just fallen down to mediocrity, but compared to the typical lakorn it's still great.

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To talk about the novel a bit, there the 2 main characters have very significantly different personalities, as opposed them being fairly close to the cdrama characters in the Thai show.. Yes the second ML is a hint closer to the novel here than in the cdrama, but it's a very small difference, he is still far worse there as far as I can recall.

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I'm not impressed.

The first half of the show is quite good, maybe just barely a 7-7.5, but it's increasingly bad later on. It's honestly quite difficult for me to understand how the director and the writer of the amazing `My Fated Boy` could produce a drama of such low quality. Sure the leads had acceptable chemistry, but the whole model business is not that well researched or interesting to begin with. While the genetic eye disease thing could have been worse, it's still pretty damn bad. Chinese TV cannot deal with stuff like this. Then there is also the awful aunt/mom, they spent 5 episodes on making her -basically- Cruella & then another 5 on her redemption ark, It's needless to say I'm quite displeased with that. It's a shame, because normally I like noona romances, but it's difficult to enjoy the second couple? here, when I did not like either of the two characters.

At the end of the day this show is mostly ruined by the bad writing in the second half. I wish I had stopped watching around e18, but alas..

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The best makjang I have ever seen!

Well, usually when I start watching a makjang drama by accident, then I end up dropping it almost immediately. Opposed to that not only have I managed to complete this, but also more often than not I found it entertaining. While watching this drama it made me wonder what a "perfect" makjang drama would be like & what are the things that I would change to make that happen if I were the writer. My conclusion is that outside of fixing some of the most glaring plotholes, there isn't really anything that I could change to make this better & still keep it a yelly/slappy/soapy authentic makjang. While on this topic I have to mention `Marry My Husband`, that drama at its core has the same basic plot, but it has fewer plotholes & less overall craziness, so I think it's alright to say that is the somewhat perfected version that came later, BUT it's not a makjang anymore. Makjangs are popular for a reason & this one is the least offensive of the lot, so the high rating on MDL is almost justified. There are plentiful makjang tropes of course, lots of shouting, crying, unexpected family relations and all that jazz, but the most annoying ones are wonderfully absent. Though I'm not claiming that this is objectively good, but the fact that it's a makjang that triangle haters can safely watch is a miracle in on itself.

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I have seen Sung Hoon in several dramas before & I always thought that he is a pretty and hardworking oppa with very little acting talent. I have to admit though that in this drama he's produced the performance of his life. While I wouldn't go quite as far as to call his acting awesome, especially in the final 2 episodes, but this is decent. Hard work does pay off, at least sometimes!

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Grinch has arrived with a less than positive review..

Where do I even start, alright so about the writing. I think the writer had enough well thought out material up to about maybe 8-10 episodes. Come filming they bloated that up to 18-19 episodes & oh boy there is an incredible amount of super boring filler in this one. Of course this drama is getting an incredible amount of praise & all that is not -completely- unfounded, some of the scenes in the aforementioned first half or rather 60% are borderline brilliant, it's just that as a viewer I expect my attention held to some degree throughout the show or at least most of the show & to me 1 minute of brilliance per episode is not enough to forgive how boring the rest of it was. Moving on, come episode 20 the writer has ran out of the good stuff & then decided to just very abruptly transform the drama into a basic romcom with some tragedy baked in, I would have been okay with this had it been a good basic romcom, but it's very light on the com & the rom does not work all that well for me in this one & the filler plots, secondary semi-couples were really not great still. The dialog here and there had some shining moments even in the later episodes, but overall BORING is what I kept feeling most of the time.

Basically I said everything important already, just to add a few more things, I think this show had a great cast, it's a bit of a waste really. I like both Shen Yue and Lin Yi, but together I think they were not the best, though admittedly their chemistry was not terrible or anything. Mei Xia is a great character, her final ehm appearance was certainly very surprising and impactful, though I still cannot tell how I feel about it, on one hand I could call it almost trashy storytelling, on another it certainly carried a surprising amount of punch, I don't know, I have never seen anything like this before.

ML's illness is not very well explained & his behavior is not really consistent with what explanations we do get about his mental condition. I think if I try to look at this drama as a show largely about portraying mental illness as its main conflict there are several problems with the concept, though admittedly in the earliest episodes (1-5), the directly related scenes were quite interesting. Anyway coincidentally this drama is almost exactly the same genre as `It's Okay, That's Love`, which would be romance+mental illness+ comedy, but to me that drama is a real 10 out of 10 & this is so much worse in almost every aspect that I feel bad about even mentioning them in the same paragraph.

The standup comedy in the show is awful & most people probably agree with me just on that one point, I want to add that it's not just awful because the humor is lost in translation, it's just awful period. I speak a wee bit of Chinese & oh my god It's so bad. Throughout the entire time I felt that Shen Yue agrees with me on this one, she was so awkward in some of those super cringy standup? scenes, that must have been a torture for her too. Sure censorship is a difficulty, but decently funny stuff still passes it sometimes, there are countless safe topics to ridicule etc..

TLDR: Of 25? hours maybe 14 is extremely boring & the rest is barely 7 out of 10 on average. (yes there is 10 minutes that's 15 out of 10 brilliant, but that's hardly enough in a 25 hour show)

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I have conflicted feelings about this movie. While I -a fan of the drama- have somewhat enjoyed watching it, it did feel redundant & a bit messy. In all honestly I have extreme doubts that someone who has not seen drama could even understand let alone enjoy this. The plot is about as complicated, if not a bit more so than the original drama's main plot (it's the same with complications basically), but all that is presented in 100 minutes, It's a bit like imagine Back to the Future 1-2-3 as one 100 minute long movie, would we even root for our heroes with that little buildup to the various time travel events that happen there.

Oh well, Wu Bai is still a legend & Last Dance is still one of the best songs I have ever heard!

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This is mostly a very satisfying watch.

Generally I don't like revenge-makjang stories, but I like Park Min Young. I thought, let's just give this a go, worst case scenario I'll just drop it after a while. Overall this is a very pleasant surprise. The whole plot works a lot better than anything else I've seen in this genre before, mostly because villainous transgressions get quick -and smart- paybacks almost every single time and these are very satisfying & overall well written. Outside of Boa's questionable acting the cast did a phenomenal job as well and the whole thing is just very decently done, the production values are really up there with the best. So why is it not a 10 you might ask? In the second half there were 2-3 weak, messy episodes where the plot fell apart a little bit, though the drama managed to recover from these & wrapped up nicely too.

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This show is of course quite good, there are literally no love triangles, misunderstandings or angst, but there is still fun content that's enough to fill up about 25 episodes, unfortunately we had 33. Still the filler is not so bad either, overall it's full of chill swoony stuff. The couples were all great pairings with excellent chemistry. I just feel a bit annoyed how little -meaningful- screentime the side couples had. (especially considering how much filler their scenes could've replaced) One thing this drama did exceptionally well is portraying new couple awkwardness & progress into becoming comfortable with each other. (but then they just had to make several "sleep together in our day clothes prim and proper" scenes to annoy us with)

I've said this before in other cdrama reviews, but saying it again, it felt like I watched an amazing show twice in a row, that's why the rewatch value is low, because I feel I already did it..

Also there were quite a few epic moment opportunities that were intentionally missed. I was really looking forward to some of them too, so that stings a bit. (for example ML meeting FL's cousins, I mean could they have made that any tamer?) Censorship makes dramas like this possible so here it could be considered a net positive, but the blunting effect on the excitement is a bit too much for my taste.

(Also we could talk about how incredibly offensive to women some of these acts of "classic" chivalry are, but hey what else is new? This is still a Chinese drama)

I really liked the proposal scene in this one. I usually cringe whenever I have to suffer through proposal scenes, not here...
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Overall this is one of the better Asian dramas I've seen this year, but it's very far off from the best ones in the chill-conflictless genre. (in fact 'Meet Yourself' is a 2023 cdrama as well that I think is much better)

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A simple and warm show

So basically this is an extremely warm, but at the same time very simple show, which is quite remarkable, when considering the CEO + Cinderella setting. In fact I cannot recall a single other cdrama that was this chill & conflict free during its entire run. (despite the the semi corporate setting)

So why is it not 10/10?
It's true that there are no major flaws, but at the same time the show feels way too lacking in complexity, like a Hallmark romance flick and I'm saying this is an avid Asian drama watcher, without expecting any significant mental exercise. Also it's not just the simplicity, while there were some decent humorous moments, the comedy is not exactly top tier. While the leads do look good together, I've not been entirely sold on the chemistry either.

Well I lied, there is one major annoyance & that is the OST. The "You are part of my life" song is rather horrible & they kept playing it seemingly all the time..

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