I loved IU in this, she was great, Yeo Jin-goo on the other hand not so much. As for the other characters it's a mixed bag really, there were some great ones & some really weak casting choices. I loved the audiovisual experience, whenever beautiful cinematography meets music this amazing is always a treat.
I did not feel the chemistry between the leads, Yeo Jin-goo's bad acting perhaps? To me it feels like the Hongs tried to recreate the goblin experience, but their writing just did not live up to the task. This is their worst work so far I think. Don't misunderstand it's not bad by any means, but it's like an empty shell compared to Goblin. Even though I think the last episode was pretty good, I just wasn't emotionally invested enough in the characters to really feel the melo, so to say.

Read More

I have conflicting feelings about this one. Obviously the drama is great, there is no denying that, but I'm a bit disappointed how predictable & cliche the 2 main elements of conflict/drama were and how much time they've wasted on them. (Oh no your mom, oh no my mom .. & reverse love triangle with autistic brother) Ultimately I'm happy how they resolved these things, but it was somewhat draggy both times. The first 4-5 episodes were absolutely top tier, it had one of the best openings that I've ever seen, but then the ball dropped quite a bit. I've heard the production team received many complaints about two scenes in episode 3 (what a great episode it was btw). They could have dialed things down a bit to avoid further controversy, oh well live filming is the worst :-)
The drama received praise for the authentic portrayal of Autism Spectrum Disorder. Yeah sure, the actor did a phenomenal job, way beyond what I have expected of him. (I did not like the actor before) The main problem is I don't like how every time a person with a major disability shows up on korean TV, they would make the actor keep bowing down perpetually. It's like they want to convey a message to the Korean audience, he has a disability, but he is extremely sorry, forgive him, he is bowing down so politely, all the time. Sure, people with this disorder would not meet your eyes in a conversation, but this whole bowing thing is at best stereotypical.

The acting performances were great, the leads were incredible. I have never thought that one day Kim Soohyun would show off the charts chemistry with any actress, but he was really awesome. I think the military did him good, his acting improved a lot, his performance in emotional scenes especially was hugely more convincing than before. I did not really know Seo Yeji before, but I have only praises for the actress. She reminded me of Jennifer Lawrence's best performances. (not Hunger Games). The supporting characters were all extraordinarily good as well, at first I was a bit miffed about seeing 2 out of 5 of my least favorite senior actors in the show, but I guess the casting was spot on, since I got used to them pretty quickly, as opposed to being being super annoyed seeing them in every other drama.

The story despite being a bit draggy at times is certainly above average, the writer successfully delivers on wholesomeness, healing & romance. Sure there are quite a few problems, such as the show could have deserved a lot more depth, it absolutely sucks if I try to judge it as a medical drama.
The comedy is off the charts good, although there was a lot less of it nearing the finale. I have been feeling a bit down lately and I had hard time laughing, I started to doubt whether I can still appreciate humor as I had before, but in this drama there were quite a few moments, when I ended up laughing out loud, or spitting tea onto the carpet, it was sensational and still bittersweet at times. The last episode was great too, thank God it was a sufficiently long happy ending, the kind that I like best, long, but not too long. There was even a major plot twist, that I should've seen coming, but ended up surprised.

Product placements have been becoming increasingly immersion breaking in recent years. This drama has many very clever barely noticeable placements, kudos for that writing interns, but good God those car ads were just too much. There are several scenes specifically purpose written, where we are shown how incredibly good the brakes are on that specific car brand & to top it off all the older unbranded cars kept breaking down.

The deer! The first time I heard the deer making that sound I was like OMG, what the hell is that, but after going on Youtube I had that TIL moment, yep deer can really make a sound almost identical to that. I've seen thousands of deer in my life, but I have never heard them making any crying sound like that, but it seems to be real. For more information check out this YT video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAkgkyeHpOc

The audiovisuals were spot on of course. The OST had quite numerous tracks, it's nice when we don't hear the same song playing 6 times in every episode. There were some really cool lens flare effects, perhaps they used vintage lenses to film some of those bike riding scenes?

Overall 8.5/10 seems fair. This is the best 2020 drama that I've watched so far. I'm sure I will eventually watch it again and I might end up adjusting the score too, who knows. (I liked it a lot more than Crash Landing)

edit: 2020 is over, but thinking about it now I think Hospital Playlist is the better drama, though it's not nearly as fun..

edit2: I decided to up the score a little, nitpicking is fine and all, but this is really a great drama.. :-)

Read More

So I was really hyped about this drama. I couldn't wait for it to start airing. What a letdown..
It started out a bit interesting, but as the plot progressed the entire story turned into a mess. (not that virtual-real interactions were realistic from ep1 onward) Almost nothing makes sense in any way. It reminds me a bit of the disappointment I felt, when I watched The Matrix Revolutions, it has similar, but more pronounced problems. To summarize the script is just bad. People criticize Park Shin Hye for bad acting, but honestly I think she was fine here, it's not her fault that the writer made her character a 2d persona with very little substance, sure I admit that she isn't the best when it comes to crying in kdramaland, but come on .. Technically this is a tragedy/melodrama, but it's difficult to take it seriously, so the melodramatic moments lack impact for that reason. As I said the story is a jumbled mess and I cannot take it seriously despite me being rather tolerant for nonsense, I loved SaO season1 for example.

Read More

I wanted to watch something without love triangles & forced melodrama, so picked up this drama having read comments & reviews about SA1%. I ended up being mildly disappointed, the light romcom part lasts for the first 10-11 episodes, but the comedy isn't very strong, nor is the romance that interesting by itself. The leads have chemistry, but the whole dating situation felt, for a lack of a better word odd. The contract kept generating unnecessary tension all "Sword of Damocles" like and following the inevitable breakup we had 90 minutes of pointless melodrama, I'm sure the writers wanted to conjure some onion ninjas there, but I just wasn't invested enough in the characters for that to work. At least the ending was nice, although grandpa giving away his fortune like that made the entire plot semi pointless.

Read More

This drama was quite excellent, 10/10. Yes there are issues such as quite a few dumb decisions by our MCs and some semi obvious plotholes, but still I find that it's much better than dramas such as Master's sun & DoTS, maybe even slightly better than Pinocchio. Honestly I did not feel that the ending was rushed at all, it had everything that's important. I especially liked that every 2-3 episodes there was a little breather from the melodrama. Probably this is the most underrated drama that i've seen thus far. Shin Mina was even prettier than usual, it seems like she gets prettier every year, her figure especially is quite something, if real...

Normally I don't like watching melodramas, but I don't regret watching Tomorrow with You for a second, I'll just need to watch a couple of Running Man episodes to get over it.
edit: Now I'm a lot more experienced with kdramas than at the time of writing this review, this is definitely not a melodrama, it just has a little melo flavor.

Read More

Loose ends, loose ends.. *sigh*

The second season is still relatively close to kdrama perfection, while maintaining the Reply writer's unique style. Also there is nothing that aired since It's Okay to Not Be Okay that comes anywhere near HP2 in terms of raw production value, it's nice to see that Korean television can still do it :-)

The recurring cast members were still brilliant, however compared to the first season there were a few sub par supporting actors cast as patients and their relatives. Then again it's not realistic to expect that a show could get 5+ new AWESOME supporting actors for minor 2-5 minute roles every single episode, so I'm okay with that.

I'm happy how everyone that should've gotten together has gotten together and that nothing particularly annoying has happened in the 12 episodes. The second season is full of funny and extremely touching scenes, I may hate shows that want to drag things out for as many seasons as possible, but I could keep watching HP for 10 years in a more episodic format, no problem. Hospital Playlist is still a strong medical drama, even without all the romance, but I do realize that some people that don't like this genre felt bored during surgery scenes etc.

So why is it not a 10/10?
Something is off with the story pacing. It took way too long to for the 3 new couples to get together & the final episode is extremely rushed & lacking for a series finale. I have the impression that the production team is expecting a season3, or they were at the time of producing most of the episodes. So yes, while I'm happy see Jae Hak's storyline has gotten a closure, but I would have rather had the Chuchu couple resolve the evil mother in law issue, or SongHwa to become a family to Ikjun's son. IkSun deserved a lot more camera time as well. There were so many things I've been looking forward to & almost none of them ended up happening. Admittedly I'm not a fan of open endings, or loose ends, especially loose ends that had a tremendous amount of buildup as is the case with HP2.

So yes, the production team may have done most of the filming with a third season in mind, but the final episode is full of red flags for that. So I no longer hold much hope for s3. With that said I've read in the comment section how people think that the last subtitle line "Thank you for watching Hospital Playlist" means exactly that, but that's probably a minor inaccuracy, because the Korean text may have had "Thank you for watching Hospital Playlist++", so "+++" could still in in the cards, but only time will well.

Read More

Adults probably shouldn't waste their time with this!

This is one of the worst cdramas I have ever watched. Truth to be told I wanted to drop it after ep5, but I had nothing else lined up & I needed something to watch during my 5 hour workout session. Naturally I have had my fair share of high school & college romance cdramas, but this is perhaps the first time that I felt this bored. People talk about liking slow burn romances & I usually like slow burn romances as well, but there has to be a hook, such as good comedy, or interesting characters, or sometimes even just the audiovisuals. In this show there is nothing like that. Uninteresting characters go about their school lives in a really boring & dragged out way, at least that's what happens in the first 25 or so episodes. (out of 36 episodes) The OST is weird, the visuals are nothing to write home about and even the actors are bad. I don't really blame them though, I mean how well can a 15-16 year old girl act in a supposed college romance story? (and FL is still far better, than the at the time 16-17 years old idol ML)

The last 10 episodes are much better, if I consider those a separate drama that's probably a 6/10, though it's quite difficult to forgive the extremely bad separation plot.

As for the second ML, for the first 25+ episodes he doesn't do anything beyond misunderstanding FL's every little action for FL liking her. After the fifth time I started smashing my fastforward button. His other love line is bad as well. The actor is an adult, but he is no acting genius , that's for sure.

The writers that wrote this worked on Put Your Head on My Shoulder & A Love so Beautiful before. I find it baffling how could those people come up with a script this bad. My disappointment is comparable to when I tried watching Start Up.

Just to say something good about the drama, I found that FL's gradual transformation process was really great. It's not jarring like in Ugly Betty, or other soaps that follow this trope. Another thing that comes to mind is that FL really looks like her mother in this drama. The mom was a phenomenal casting decision & she is probably my favorite character in the drama.
edit: I thought of another good thing! The drama has one "real" kiss scene and I think the way they hid the touching lips was relatively good. A hundred times this over cheek & forehead kisses. (or stupidly playing with angles)

Honestly I don't understand why this drama has an MDL score of 8.3. It's not funny, it only has a little fluff near the final episodes & as I said it's badly acted as well. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I mean sure there are many that get mesmerized by beauty & then proceed to watch whatever happily, but we are watching literal kids here. I'm not sure what the average age on MDL is, but I have some uncomfortable thoughts about this.

Read More

I picked this up, because someone in the comments mentioned that this drama's poster is the most misleading one she has ever seen. It's indeed a little misleading, but I wouldn't say that this drama is completely free of triangle makjang.

Jung Kyung Ho is without a doubt the best thing in this drama. However seeing him in Hospital Playlist being a much better version of himself, also having much better chemistry with another actress makes his performance a little disappointing to me. I like Kim So Yeon, but her character was somewhere between bad weird, and two dimensional, if that makes any sense. The rest of the cast were not worth mentioning, even the second couple's story is short and bland..

The main romance in this drama just doesn't do it for me. I'm alright with the supernatural element of the story, but due to the sequencing of events & the absurdity of the whole premise it is just too much for me to accept these two being happily together, at least not so soon.

The romance may not be great, but it's not even the drama's greatest problem. The majority of the plot revolves around corporate infighting, scheming and other similar stuff. It's not only that these things are almost always boring and annoying to watch, but the corporate plot in this drama is a new kind of low I have not yet seen before. (or maybe I have in the cdrama "Love is Sweet") So yes, the writing is just teribad.

It's worth mentioning that despite this drama not being that old, it feels really old school.(98-2005 era) There is a lot of shouting, throwing things around, flipping tables etc that modern dramas fortunately don't have anymore. The second ML is also a very old school villain character.

The ending is weak. Important things are left unexplained and we just get a completely random 5 minute long happy ending.

Ultimately the drama has very little going for it. There is no hook that would make me forgive all the stupid, or annoying things. The melo does not work, the romance does not work, the chaebol procedural part of the drama is just trash and thus the rating of 4.5 seems overly generous already.

Read More

This show is an odd animal. It's like Veep meets Brooklyn99 with a little (very little) kdrama romance added in. The problem is if I look at this show comparing it to those american works it falls short. Sure it's supposed to be a political/crime comedy, but it's not really that funny most of the time. If I look at it expecting intricate plots & interesting procedural proceedings it just doesn't deliver, that said korean political thriller? shows almost always suck. The story is really bad, with so many plotholes that you could drain the ocean with them. When a comedy show doesn't take itself very seriously & it's really funny I can ignore the bad plot, but that's not the case here and it does try take itself quite seriously at times, in an inconsistent manner. They've spent the entire first episode setting up the main leads & then their joint life kind of fades into the background, bad rewrites perhaps?
It's not all bad though, like there is a little "Catch Me If You Can" vibe at times and both female leads were quite good. I couldn't help but notice that Lee Yoo-young's eyes are very unique looking! I kind of liked the ending too, normally I prefer long happy endings, but in this genre this 10 seconds long ending was okay, it reminded me of the endings of classic heist movies, such as Entrapment for example.

Read More

Reading the overview & reviews I've expected that this would be a semi episodic drama where every couple of episodes an alter ego would be resolved. I thought it would be like a medical drama that that briefly touches upon some serious topics, with some romantic comedy added in, very much like what I've experienced in "It's Okay, That's Love". That's not it, the medical things are just fluff with no consequences, the FL does not do anything that a doctor should do with a mental patient. Despite this show being a fairly recent 2015 title it feels old, it's very much like a 2005 drama. It has several cliches that have been retired long ago, also at certain points in the drama I felt that it's overflowing with makjang. The second FL did not have a lot of screen time, but whenever she was on I found her character to be completely unnecessary and annoying. I like Park Sojoon as an actor, but oh my god his character was annoying me to no end, he portrayed a very oldschool second ML. The chaebol infighting wasn't interesting at all, even though this topic has been done to death, I've seen MUCH better written and more interesting iterations, both in older and newer dramas. There are also some serious problems with the pacing, there is a lot of filler in the first 17 episodes, the story becomes quite draggy in the middle. This could have been acceptable, but after all that time they only delivered a 10 minutes long happy ending & many of the story threads aren't really resolved in a satisfying way. (like what happens with mom, dad, second FL etc etc) The last 90 minutes are really rushed and I'm not entirely happy with the conclusion. I feel that there were some missed opportunities, imagine an alternate ending where Segi & Dohyon join hands to navigate both their personal & professional lives with great success. Also our villains were dealt with under a minute, it's not as bad as their entire family dying, because they get hit by a meteor, but it's a nearly as random of a conclusion to their story.

Despite all of the above this drama has some outstanding qualities. The main actors were an awesome pair, they've had good chemistry. I have liked Hwang Jongeum already and she did not disappoint. Ji Sung delivered some genuinely impressive acting, maybe the best acting I've seen in the alter ego genre thus far. If I look at the story as a romcom & ignore everything else then it is a very good romcom, there were some exceptionally funny moments. Even though many of the supporting characters were not very well written, the actors playing them were quite good, especially Kim SeulGi, it would be nice to see her as a main lead someday.
The OST is also a bit oldschool, but it's really good, especially the title track.

8/10 seems a bit too high of a rating, but I was entertained enough I suppose..

Read More

One of the strangest cdramas I've seen.

When earlier today I was watching episode 25 of this drama I was wholly prepared to rate it at 6, write a few perfunctory lines & move on to the next drama. If I want to be entirely honest, up until that point we have not gotten anything special, ignoring how unusually pretty the leads were in the drama that is. I mean sure over time the chemistry between Xiao Zhan & Yang Zhi has improved tremendously to the point that I could barely believe it, but there was not much else going on. The leads shared an extremely shallow, borderline juvenile relationship that followed the the usual cdrama templates, involving a really stupid breakup due to ehm reasons. The secondary love interests were annoying in the early episodes, but they have not overstayed their welcome, so actually love triangle haters can safely watch this show, but I digress. The point is that basically up until the last 3-4 episodes I perceived this drama as kind of a shallow idol drama with no value beyond the fluff and oh boy there sure was quite a bit of fluff, were there like what 30 kisses before the rolling credits? Then suddenly things have turned real... Cdramas simply don't get happy endings like this one, since the fans will watch the final episodes anyway, there is no reason to upset the template. (proposal>meeting of the parents>pre wedding group fight>wedding>kid>credits) This is the first time in a long time (or perhaps ever?), when the ending of a cdrama has really surprised me. It was so well acted, so full of heart, so touching & so beautiful. I did not even really notice that the drama had an OST in the early episodes, but even that was so impactful during the final moments of the drama, I'm speechless.

Normally I wouldn't rewatch something like this, but I've started to doubt my own perception, were the early episodes REALLY that bad? Perhaps I'll find out and soon at that :-)

Read More

It's not nearly as good as the best family dramas! (Once Again, Father is Strange etc)

In "It's Beautiful Now" the story revolves around three couples & two families. This is a fairly basic family drama setup, there is also a big mystery connection between these two families. It's a textbook setting for this genre, really. In good old family drama fashion the production team tried to please all age groups, so no one will feel this is the best thing ever, but everyone will find something to enjoy. The reason why this is inferior to Once Again is because the couples are just not nearly as entertaining, I guess for me this is what it usually comes down to, when judging how good a family drama is, because the other things are usually fairly similar across all family dramas & that is certainly the case with this drama as well. To iterate on this more I absolutely adored the Hae Jun couple & that is what kept me going for 50 episodes. However the other two couples are very problematic, the Hyun Jae couple goes from super boring to makjang-ish and the Soo Jae couple is so difficult to empathize with that I skipped most of their scenes. It's normal for family dramas to have unlikable characters, but in this one they're far more numerous than usual, though many of them received minor character adjustments making them more bearable in the later episodes.

If I disregard everything else other than the Hae Jun couple, then this is a 10/10 romcom. However if I do the reverse, looking at everything else, this drama is rather mediocre, with quite a bit of makjang. I'm not sure anymore, but If memory serves, then there were like 10 rather bad episodes in a row (maybe from 32 to 41 ~) Also the ending is a bit disappointing, I love long happy endings and this is one thing family dramas usually do extremely well, since out of 50 episodes there is more than enough time to finish up with 3-5 fluffy episodes giving everyone perfect closure. In this drama though two out of three couples had EARLY weddings, so instead the writer went with a little medical emergency type of thing, which was not horrible or anything, but maybe a little out of place!? Though admittedly I liked the early weddings & the newlywed banter a lot..

So is this drama worth watching? If you have seen the best family dramas already, such as Once Again, My Father is Strange, Five Enough and you noticed that you like this genre, then you should be able to enjoy this, otherwise I would stay away.

Read More

Before picking this up I saw many reviewers mention how they preferred this over Goblin, but unfortunately that comparison does not make any sense. At first I thought that it could be the nostalgia, but GFB is not that old. This drama came out in 2013, 3 years after Secret Garden.. Maybe it could be popular because of Seunggi's fangirls?

I like Suzy, she seems to be always typecast to act as the same character she is portraying here. At the time of filming this, she's been 19 years old and to me her acting seemed pretty amateurish compared to her later works, but she is still probably the best thing about this drama. She was pretty cute & had some funny moments. I never liked Seunggi and I especially did not like his character here, nor did he have great chemistry with Suzy. (that could be hugely different in Vagaband, I don't know, yet)
Despite all their issues I guess they had their moments, their romance is the reason why I managed to somehow suffer through these 24 episodes. That's right this is one of the longest kdramas ever.

The main problem here is the absolutely terrible writing. In a cheesy a romcom the terrible writing is excusable, but I have the impression, that this was meant to be some sort of epic Sageuk saga and considering how much effort/cost was spent on the sets & the costumes, calling this an ambitious production should be fair, right?! Frankly the romcom parts are just too infrequent and flawed to carry the rest of the drama along. So yeah the terrible writing, it's just difficult to put into words how many problems the writing has and it's not even just the ubiquitous eyeroll inducing scenes. The pacing is off, it takes far to long for the actual plot to start rolling, considering that the first 2 episodes were the best part of the story, while only being a sort of a prequel is saying something. It's often praiseworthy when writers deviate from the typical kdrama plot progression. (kiss in ep6-8>>happiness till ep13-14>> conflict >>finale) However what we had here is far worse, it took absolutely forever for the romance to get anywhere, but forget happiness, they never even had a shred of hope really.
So much time is spent on the gisaeng house and yes initially I thought those gisaeng related happenings were rather interesting, but ultimately what did those women amount to in this show? It feels like a plot device that was nicely set up, but never used in a meaningful way. Let's not even get me started on Yubi's character, sister crazyeyes. All the scheming & war related subplots were really poorly executed. The fighting scenes are badly choreographed, but that hardly put a dent in my impression of this drama. (hypnosis, illusions, ninjas)

I don't like it, when the main force driving the plot is the main characters wanting to lose their cool magical powers. I also strongly dislike it, when the mundane wins over the magical in general. I really shouldn't have started this..

I could go on and on about the aimless writing, one big thing I noticed is that one moment the drama takes itself very seriously and in another it devolves into some sort of slapstick comedy show. Comedic relief is fine after some tearjerking melo, but this just doesn't work here all that well..

TLDR: Don't bother watching this, it's a mess.

~~
Watch Goblin if you haven't watched it yet.
If you want a cheesy historical drama that's actually good, I can recommend Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms, Eternal Love instead. That cdrama is nearly as cheesy as this one, but EVERYTHING about it is hugely better.

Read More

I did not expect a good and coherent story with this premise, but this was below my already low expectations.
The drama The Beauty Inside was an attempt to replicate the success of the fantastic Another Oh Haeyong and Perfume seems like an attempt to make another Beauty Inside (which was quite entertaining still), the story is very similar, but the drop in quality is just too much. Lee Minky is not a good actor, he can only play one thing, which is essentially himself, but that character was a good fit in This is My first Life & The Beauty Inside as well. Now in Perfume Shin Sung Rok was trying to be Lee Minky essentially, even though it was not terrible, but it wasn't really enough. For reference this actor played the main villain from the classic drama My Lover From the Star, which was actually a great fit for him.. I was already kind of a fan of Go Won Hee, after seeing Welcome to Waikiki 1, but I think she shouldn't have been cast for this. Make no mistake she did pretty well, I just think that this role was miles outside of her comfort zone. A 40 something woman, who wanted to commit suicide, because of all the atrocities life has given her gets to opportunity to become young and beautiful again, sure fine, but the end result shouldn't have been a perky, go lucky Go Woon Hee, I don't think.
Now about the story, it's pretty typical in some ways. We have the dumb puppy second lead type, who just keeps pushing, pushing & pushing. Basically the writers just added the most typical classic kdrama triangle possible. Some common tropes were blatantly copied from famous dramas, for example they've taken the mysterious liquid thing from The Secret Garden (even the set and the music are super similar for those perfume related scenes), then there is the love triangle cohabitation from Jealousy Incarnate and some others.. Also I don't believe that the abusive (ex)husband character needed so much screen time in a romcom like this.

Had the show been really funny I could have ignored most of the above, however it wasn't. The physical gags involving the ajumma form's obesity were almost offensive. I'm fine with watching fat/obese ppl on screen really, but this path of trying to make fun of them isn't very nice, though I do understand that in Korea fat women are shunned quite a bit more than in the west. Overall there were very few really funny moments, which is such a shame with an actress like this, who is basically a comedy goddess, or something along those lines.

Had the romance been good I could still have enjoyed this quite a bit, but the chemistry between the leads was at best average. There are also major problems with how their relationship progressed, or rather regressed at times. There is just so much push pulling. From "I have decided that I love you, even though you are not Her" we go to "I just realized it was Her all along whom I've loved" then rinse and repeat. For those that watched the episodes as they aired this might not have been as annoying, but I watched the entire thing over the course of 2 days.

TLDR: I don't exactly regret watching the drama, but I don't feel that I've had quality entertainment, will never consider rewatching.

Read More

Good, but overrated!

I'm quite shocked that almost everyone is rating this at 10/10. I mean sure it's a drama that is worth watching, but it's not overwhelmingly great. I'm fine with romantic comedies having absurd nonsense stories, but CLoY is not supposed to be just a romcom, there are times when the the show takes itself very seriously and there is supposed to be quite a bit of impactful melodrama. I feel that it does not quite work.(the serious melo parts) Maybe it's because of the cartoon villain style adversaries, or because of the 4 idiots in the second half I just cannot take the sad bits seriously. Also the drama was much better in the first half, I think there was no need for the idiotic plot that commenced once Seri has returned to the South. I have seen people discussing how many details they've gotten right about the North, there were even some real north koreans refugees interviewed. I'm sure they've gotten many minor details right and that's laudable, but there are just so many absurd things, let's not even get me started about product placements..

Anyway I enjoyed the comedy, especially before they've gone to the South. The romance between the leads was so so, I don't think that the Hyun Bin+Son Ye Jin coupling was a particularly good choice. I think Hyon Bin was a lot better in Secret Garden and Son YeJin also did much better in Something in the Rain. Don't misunderstand I do think that they did a decent job at their characters, I just did not feel the same authenticity, or the chemistry that they've had with other actors in the past. I must admit that Seo Ji-hye was incredible as Seo Dan, I'm looking forward to seeing more of her in the future. As for Alberto Gu, well I'm not sure what was the deal with him. For starters he did not have a lot of screen time, nor did him dying serve any meaningful purpose. I mean sure I did enjoy the ~20 minutes he spent with Dan, but it feels like he was the redshirt that the writers used to make a bigger impact for the ending. Ah yes, the ending, they just had to go with the forced separation for 2 years formula, not the worst, but not great.

The production quality was on an extremely high level, they had a really high budget & used it well for the most part. I found it incredible that they've even used anamorphic lenses in the pilot episode. The anamorphic look really worked too with establishing that authentic war movie vibe.
The music is a mixed bag, on one hand they've made some amazing OST tracks for this show, on the other though the director did not do an amazing job at arranging those tracks to fit the scenes particularly well.

edit: Hyun Bin and Son Ye Jin as of now are supposedly dating in real life. Despite me not liking this pairing in this drama too much, I gotta admit their behind the scenes videos/bloopers showcased hugely more chemistry than their actual scenes shown in the final edit..

Read More