Turtle Stomper
Seattle (USA)
This review may contain spoilers
Can I please be reborn in my next life as a kid this adorable?
Ima be straight with you....there is not, anywhere on the entire planet, a kid as cute as the one that plays the daughter in this drama. Her expressions, tone of voice, emotions, and mannerisms were all exceptionally well done. She was a joy to watch every single time she was on the screen.
This was a solid, well executed drama. The premise makes it sound a lot more shallow than it actually is. The description makes it pretty difficult to tell how they'd fit romance into a secret serial killer husband plotline without it being trite and cliche, so I avoided watching it for a good while. I'm glad I finally gave it a chance though! The actors are engaging (even with pretty limited side character development) and well cast, the dialog is clever without trying to be pretentious, and the plot has enough twists and turns to keep you engaged. The focus of the story is clearly the male/female lead and everyone else gets pretty light treatment in terms of development, but it's enough. They did such a good job with the two lead roles and their interactions that it didn't matter much to me the side characters were pale shadows in comparison.
I will say, from a purely plotline perspective they do manage to hit on pretty much all the classic soap opera style tropes. Like...coma patient, amnesia, evil meddling parents, spouse hiding a dark past.... it was all a bit overkill. But in the writers' defense, they pulled it all off really well in spite of itself. It also doesn't fall into the trap of trying to be "too clever", everything felt realistically flawed.
There were only two things I didn't like about this drama....the coma dude....like he's good later on mostly, but initially he's trying to play someone who just woke up from a 14 year coma and somehow in his pretty boy actor's brain this is equal to talking like a mentally handicapped drunk toddler. The facial expressions during that phase of his character story arc were horrifically overexaggerated to the point of appearing like a caricature of what the character should have been. He gets better later on...sort of...they really didn't give him too much in terms of character development, he's honestly just a beautiful man with beautiful hair and some weird facial expressions. The role was so shallow it could have been filled by literally anyone.
The other thing that annoyed me was this chick that's been in a mental hospital for 14 years and can barely function but somehow has on perfectly executed thick winged eyeliner...it seemed pretty out of place, especially because none of the other characters on the show had anything close to that degree of makeup.
This was a solid, well executed drama. The premise makes it sound a lot more shallow than it actually is. The description makes it pretty difficult to tell how they'd fit romance into a secret serial killer husband plotline without it being trite and cliche, so I avoided watching it for a good while. I'm glad I finally gave it a chance though! The actors are engaging (even with pretty limited side character development) and well cast, the dialog is clever without trying to be pretentious, and the plot has enough twists and turns to keep you engaged. The focus of the story is clearly the male/female lead and everyone else gets pretty light treatment in terms of development, but it's enough. They did such a good job with the two lead roles and their interactions that it didn't matter much to me the side characters were pale shadows in comparison.
I will say, from a purely plotline perspective they do manage to hit on pretty much all the classic soap opera style tropes. Like...coma patient, amnesia, evil meddling parents, spouse hiding a dark past.... it was all a bit overkill. But in the writers' defense, they pulled it all off really well in spite of itself. It also doesn't fall into the trap of trying to be "too clever", everything felt realistically flawed.
There were only two things I didn't like about this drama....the coma dude....like he's good later on mostly, but initially he's trying to play someone who just woke up from a 14 year coma and somehow in his pretty boy actor's brain this is equal to talking like a mentally handicapped drunk toddler. The facial expressions during that phase of his character story arc were horrifically overexaggerated to the point of appearing like a caricature of what the character should have been. He gets better later on...sort of...they really didn't give him too much in terms of character development, he's honestly just a beautiful man with beautiful hair and some weird facial expressions. The role was so shallow it could have been filled by literally anyone.
The other thing that annoyed me was this chick that's been in a mental hospital for 14 years and can barely function but somehow has on perfectly executed thick winged eyeliner...it seemed pretty out of place, especially because none of the other characters on the show had anything close to that degree of makeup.
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