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Turtle Stomper

Seattle (USA)

Turtle Stomper

Seattle (USA)
My Roommate Is a Gumiho korean drama review
Completed
My Roommate Is a Gumiho
20 people found this review helpful
by Turtle Stomper
Aug 2, 2021
16 of 16 episodes seen
Completed 3
Overall 5.0
Story 4.0
Acting/Cast 6.0
Music 4.0
Rewatch Value 1.0
This review may contain spoilers

Boring teen angst drama with limited fantasy elements.

This drama had an amazing cast with lots of fun bits...what it did not have, however, was any real depth of story beyond your typical high school love story. In fact, SO MUCH of the drama's time is consumed with the ins and outs of college life social drama. I would have liked it 10 times better if they focused more on the supernatural and way way way less on the cringe interactions between what were basically shallow teenagers. It's also the first Kdrama I've watched where parents/adults were essentially written out of the story for convenience purposes. They never mention the female lead's father, and her mother is flown in for all of 5 seconds to catch her living with the dude, approve, and then vanish forever. They didn't actually need the mother for anything more than setting up the reason behind the female lead's invulnerability to memory wipe.

Apart from the shallow, trite, and boring teenager 1st world problems dominant script, the story of the Gumiho itself (both of them) was so brief and barely got touched on at all. That was a huge disappointment to me. they basically had 2-3 short flashback scenes they would play frequently throughout the show and it made their whole history more like an afterthought than a plot point. The whole Gumiho thing in general is treated like an afterthought, TBH. The evil Gumiho that threatens them early on is dealt with so quickly, having served its purpose to set up the future calamity the male lead would face....except he didn't. Like make up your mind, does the failure of hitting your 1000yr ECD to turn human turn you evil, or does it make you dissipate. Why even have the evil Gumiho as a plot point if you're gonna abandon it later on in favor of dissipation?

The actors did a relatively good job with such a poorly contrived plot. They were bright when they needed to be, and dark when they needed to be. There are tiny tiny bits of comedy interspersed throughout, which is a shame cause those actors did comedy really well when it was available to them, there should have been more of that and less of this back and forth bickering/gossiping teenagers BS. The writers also drop a lot when it comes to fleshing out the characters' personalities. Like the female lead who is supposed to be heavily into history and has it as a major but never gets the chance to showcase it, always having to act a silly, a bit dumb, and either lovesick or sulky...never smart or knowledgeable.

All in all, super disappointed in this drama. The subject was interesting enough, but the writing was too weak to make it anything special. Definitely would not recommend watching again.

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