Outstanding comedy performance by the female lead!

I'll be honest, it took me a few passes to even want to give this drama a try...I'm not big on period pieces. I'm SO GLAD I eventually watched this. The female lead is outstanding at playing a man trying to behave like a woman. Her facial expressions and body language make for some really satisfying comedy. The other actors were fine, the male lead was fine, but the female lead is where this show really really shines. She carries the entire drama and I was super impressed by her performance.

The storyline itself is pretty good, the comedy is spot-on, but it's not like it's a new or innovative story, so the acting and set really made this show stand out as exceptional. The music selections were also very memorable and they did a great job fitting the music to the activities in the drama. As soon as you hear Bong Hwan's theme song (easy to identify cause it shouts his name several times at the start) you instantly know the Queen is about to get up to some badass mischief. The costumes were gorgeous, everything is bright and colorful and clean which really helped to avoid distractions from the comedy performances.

This drama is in my top10 K-Dramas list for sure! I'd watch it again 100%.

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The Hunger Games Without Substance...like eating a cake shaped piece of cardboard.

I struggle to rate this drama highly. On one hand, it was well done with beautiful cinematography....on the other hand it is a pretty overdone genre across all countries. Sick, demented, rich people playing a game with less fortunate people's lives. I didn't really see anything new or innovative in this tale, it's the same old story dredged up again with blood spouts sprinkled in for effect. It's one of the single most overdone themes in horror. And, while the backstories and human character development made it tolerable, I still struggle to understand why this sort of show still draws viewers.

Recently, I watched Alice in Borderland, which is a similarly themed violent games survival drama. Alice in Borderland was much more effectively done, however, and added in the mystery element of who was controlling the game much more effectively along multiple other story arcs. Squid Game, on the other hand, focused more on trying to force parallels between the players' poverty lifestyles and the lifestyles of the game creators/betters. Simultaneously trying to convince you that all people are vile while also fighting to convince you of the opposite through various redemption arcs. The main theme that a select few characters seem to be fighting against is that all human beings are morally depraved monsters when their life/money is on the line.

In the end, I think the drama tried to be deeper than it was. It spent too much time forcing the viewer's opinions of people/situations into trite knotholes and ended up limiting itself with its inane rhetoric, especially at the end. Usually, I'm a fan of dramas with dark themes and ambiguous, unhappy endings...but this one I didn't like much. It's just another regurgitation of depraved humanity with nothing new or insightful to add to the existing backlog of dialog from exactly the same story.

That said, the lead actor was great in this drama. He did an incredible job realistically depicting a wide variety of emotional states. His reactions were on point in almost every case. Unfortunately, he was pretty much the only one who produced that range of emotions, so the viewer is forced to interpret situations based almost entirely on his reactions.

One of the best elements of a good Kdrama is how intensely they develop even minor characters. This drama had only 5 or so developed characters out of hundreds, the rest were just fodder for the blood cannon. Even characters that seemed initially well developed, actually end up being just cheap tools to reiterate the drama's main theme. Like the police officer looking for his brother, you eventually realize his only purpose in the drama is to get a peek at behind the scenes horror. His story didn't matter, all that mattered was that the audience had another set of disposable eyes to look through. The North Korean defector's story ended up being the same, pointless and just tossed in to provide a single tear jerk moment and a generic plot device for the lead to rebound off of. The characters, apart from the lead, had zero depth, the entire thing was intensely superficial.

Overall, I wouldn't watch this show again. A season 2 where the lead (minus that horrible red hair) fights against the game creators would be interesting, but a season 2 with the same exact show and a different cast I wouldn't go near. It was vile, but vile without the usual Kdrama depth of philosophy/morality exploration. I can't see myself ever recommending it. Out of every Kdrama I've ever watched I can only think of a small handful that I gained nothing from watching, this is down there in the heap with those few. Challenge my ideas, make me think about the world in a different way, or at the very least entertain me...if you can't do any of that, gtfo.

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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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Starring Ok Taec Yeon & Ok Taec Yeon's ears.

I mean....it wasn't terrible, LOTS of plot holes. The dude that plays the main bad guy is really good at playing bad guys...pretty much I hate him in everything he's in, but that's 100% because he's so good at being bad, and you're probably supposed to hate the bad guys right? The dude that plays the male lead I was ready to hate, because his character is SO TERRIBLY EVIL in Vincenzo, it took me a few episodes to get over that and I ended up liking him a lot. This dude's ears amaze the shit out of me every time, they're MASSIVE but he wears them so well. The entire premise of the romance in this story is incredibly shallow. Like others have said, I get why the ML is into her but I 100% can't figure out why she falls for him, other than his being relatively hot. The mystery/thriller arc of the story is ok, it's pretty shallow as well but the actors help elevate it beyond its flawed capabilities.

Every side character is pretty shallowly written apart from the old dude in the wheelchair, and even him I had a difficult time believing his motivations were grounded in logical plot. Like ok, he's the typical closed lipped kdrama old dude who doesn't talk a lot about knowledge he has, I get that, but I struggle with how much he apparently did over the course of the lead's lives compared to how little he did in present day. It just didn't seem very realistic. The cop side characters are all excessively ineffective at doing anything. Like why weren't they guarding that girl's room better? Why weren't they guarding the ML's room when the bad guy was still on the loose? IDK, just a bunch of poorly developed and inconsistent characters. Like what was the point of the team leader cop's tiny romance arc...it was so out of place and poorly developed that I can't see what it even added to the story.

All 3 leads are great at acting and the 2 male leads had moderately developed storylines...the FL's storyline got sort of dropped along the way, so there's a lot of linkage with the MLs at the beginning but halfway through she just gets ignored. Even still, she did a great job working with what she had. There was chemistry between her and the ML, but it didn't seem like a "die for you" / "wait for you" type chemistry. They also switch pretty rapidly from portraying her as a badass to portraying her as a weakling damsel in distress. Her character was really poorly written with almost no personality, so any personality came from the FLs acting skills.

There is zero comedy in this show, and maybe that's the missing element here. If there had been more comedy and less baseless romance this might have been a really stellar show. The fantasy elements would have been better if they weren't so variable. Like sometimes they show you what the dude sees with people's deaths, sometimes they don't show you, and I can't figure out why. There's lots of people making random decisions with zero context.

Overall, I don't regret watching it, but it's not clever or funny enough to have such a shallow underdeveloped plot. With this sort of storyline you have to either get super intricate with the plot and character development, or you have to be funny. Otherwise you've just got people saying lines on the screen and it does nothing to draw you in. I wouldn't rewatch this, but it was good for a few hours of entertainment (though a true slog toward the end).

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Watch it like a long movie, not like a short Kdrama.

Wow there sure are a lot of bad reviews here. It's true that is this an awfully short format for a Kdrama, and that impacted the sort of character development we're used to. What you get here is longer than a movie, but shorter than the vast majority of Kdramas, and for that shortened format I thought it was exceptionally well done. In movies, you often see unexplained plot points and less developed characters, this is more like a long movie than a short Kdrama. The CG heavy baby was a little weird to watch, but the overall story was pretty impressive. Maybe it's the world we live in these days, but it seemed super realistic to me that people would just blindly accept a new faith because they are so desperate for any answer, regardless of whether or not that answer makes logical sense.

The part of this that seemed unrealistic to me was not having the military getting involved at all. Like weird alien assholes saying they're from god show up and melt people and no one even tries to nuke them? For sure if something like this happened IRL it would be more like the people who were given the decree would be taken to a military base and all sorts of testing would be done to see whether the decree can be thwarted or the fat ropey alien golem things killed. Mostly because if this were a decree from god against bad people, all the wealthy people in power would find themselves first on the chopping block and thus eager to learn how to protect themselves. That part of it I really had to suspend logic to get through. Maybe that's coming in season 2 idk.

The acting was pretty good, the visuals were good, and the story was compelling and would have been probably more appropriately set either in the distant future post-apocalypse or in the distant past....someplace with out technology. If it were set in modern day you'd have every scientist in the global community trying to snip off a piece of the aliens to see what they're made of and how they might be destroyed.

If you suspend your belief through all that and just take the story as it is, I think it's pretty compelling to watch how quickly people turn on each other, even their own friends and family, if they believe it will afford them more personal safety. That, I think, is the real message of this show. People are sheep and will flock to whatever group or religion that affords them the highest level of safety. People will greedily grasp at power to achieve some illusion of control. People will judge and condemn others in a heartbeat, if it means not ending up on the losing side.

Overall, this is entertaining, has a poignant message, and is worth a watch. If the plot seems confused, it's because you are watching a world in which all the participants are also confused. You don't have a single main lead guide who stays with you the entire show to fit the pieces together for you, you're abandoned and alone and trying to make sense of it all just like every character in this drama. And I think that's pretty poetic.

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Impressive array of emotion and depth, exceptional music.

My favorite Kdrama song so far has come from this series. I am a bird, yo, now cook me some fries! How you make a song with such weirdly shallow lyrics so beautiful I will never know, but it's absolutely stunning to my rock-beaten eardrums.

The Kdrama itself has such a deep, expansive, and compelling storyline. The lead actor is exactly perfect for this role, he's basically a world-wise older brother who quietly, slowly, but persistently moves through life past every failure to success. The lead actress, at first I thought she was a side-character. Her character is both fun and annoying, she's a legit shallow brat at the start. But her character arc is exceptionally well executed and she ends up being the anchor for the entire drama. The actress delivers an absolutely masterful performance that has such a broad range from child to brat to growth to powerhouse. Both the main leads have such growth and intelligent story arcs that you feel like you are watching people actually progress through life. The whole thing was really well done.

I went into this drama like...wtf Itaewon Class?? I don't want to watch a school drama...I don't want to watch a cooking drama...meh this sounds boring. But it got such good ratings I decided to give it a shot. Boy is it nothing like its title. It's not a story about cooking, and definitely not a story about cooking, it's an inspirational story of overcoming absolutely devastating life challenges. Not by supernatural ability or even astounding talent...they overcome every challenge by sheer force of will and dogged persistence. It feels like it's a story about actual people that could actually exist.

The best part about this drama is watching the growth of the lead and side characters. You're anchored by the male lead and you watch as the other leads and side characters like water moving around a rock in the river. They are often so far from where he is at every step, and yet he brings them all into his gravitational pull and they end up with such a deep cohesion that you literally want to be one of the planets orbiting the sun that is the lead.

Dude does have the worst haircut of all time. Couldn't avoid mentioning that. Someone at some point needed to take this dude to a barber in the show so we'd all get to stop looking at that truly disastrous fringe. I didn't knock any points off for the bad hair though, since clearly it fit with the character's personality....but come on...

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The ambiance and music in this show is exceptional

It took me awhile to decide to watch this show because...IDK....it sounded so boring. Mental health themes are kind of meh. But I'm super glad I finally watched it! The lead actor and actress were really well suited to their roles. That actress has such a deep and sultry tone to her voice that a dark and jaded but beautiful character really fit her well. And the lead actor is for sure an android because no one's skin is that perfect even with 500 pounds of makeup piled on top. That kid is legit gorgeous...how is it mouth even formed like that, is it plastic surgery? He looks like a doll. They both look like dolls. But that sort of added to the aesthetic and gave the whole thing a live action Tim Burton type feel.

The story itself ended up actually being really engaging and meaningful. Although I wasn't super thrilled with the "love cures mental illness" eventual ending. I liked that the female lead character was broken and that the dude loved her in spite of it. I didn't really want her to be "fixed". But I'm aware happy-everything's-resolved endings are super typical in Kdramas, so I didn't expect much else. The two leads play so well off each other and every side-character was so well defined and engaging even down to the minor hospital patient characters. The whole thing was like some beautiful fever dream with gorgeous sets and costume design, really really exceptionally well done music, and almost dance-like flow from one scene to the next.

I would absolutely watch this show again and have added all of the soundtrack to my favorite K-Drama songs playlist (which is pretty rare for me, I usually find one or two I like in a K-drama but this one had SUCH well done themed music).

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Featuring Baek Hyun Jin's insanely dramatic shrieks

Before I talk about the show, let's talk about Baek Hyun Jin and his screams/hollers/shrieks... that little dude is part Velociraptor, right? He makes noises I have never heard a human make on screen or off. It's massively entertaining and only sometimes obnoxious. I've seen him do it a few times in other dramas, but Happiness provided him with a great many opportunities to implement his raptor shriek, and it fit very well with his character's cowardly evil personality.

Happiness was ok. It was, for me, just a tad over acceptable but not epic. As other reviewers have pointed out, there are a lot of minor inconsistencies, plot holes, and confusing logic leaps. There are some elements I just cannot wrap my head around the logic of....like why was this apparently government boss dude the literally only guy in charge of the whole outbreak. I can't think of any government that would work that way, there would be lots of officials involved in an operation of this scale. Also why did the relationship develop between the detective and this military boss dude, that part really seemed to stretch the bounds of logic for me. Why too, if the side character brother also had antibodies was his wound purple and diseased looking where the FL's wound was not, where they multiple times in the script bring up the color of the wound's surrounding area as an indicator of infection.

The direction crew did a really terrible job with consistency, so many shots will have the actors holding a prop in their hand from on angle, but when it cuts over to the next angle the prop is gone or in the wrong hand or different. It's pretty jarring and there are multiple examples of this in every single episode. The attention to detail in this Kdrama was pretty bad, and those things break immersion which definitely reduces my impression of a drama.

The acting was pretty good, there were a few sort of one-note bland characters and it was a little disappointing that they didn't delve into any of the backstory on side characters at all, which made it difficult to connect with them emotionally. The ML and FL had good synergy. The FL especially did an awesome job representing her character's personality consistently, so you truly believed her as a character. The action scenes were pretty well done for the most part, though there seemed to be some inconsistency around when a lead could attack a gun holding person vs when they just stood there at gun/knife point. There was a really awesome scene the ML does (or his stunt double probably) where he in one swift move drops to the ground and grapples the preacher zombie's leg, spinning around it to take him down, it was pretty badass.

Overall, it was a pretty good show, though the lack of consistency in the script and directing limited the potential of the actors. Even so, 90% of this drama takes place in hallways, and it's pretty impressive that you can keep people immersed well enough that they remain watching with such dull scenery.

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Fun ghost stories but the romance was superfluous not vital.

I love ghost Kdramas. I like the romance ones, the scary ones, the funny ones...all of them. This particular drama gets a lot of good reviews and it was definitely fun to watch. However, unlike most people I really felt like the romance leads were not well matched at all. Maybe it was his weird asymmetrical haircut, but dude just didn't really seem to logically click with the chick. They made it work, but I think that was 100% her own chemistry and he just sort of existed next to her.

The ghost stories in this drama were a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the way the female lead interacted with each of the side characters. Her energy was really great in this drama...though the initial premise of her needing to cling to the lead dude was a little shallow, it definitely provided some comedy and a little romantic tension.

My biggest complaint about this otherwise light and fun watch is the ending. Some of these Kdramas seem to do this weird trope where initially the chick is super clingy but once she wins the dude she's like peace-out for a good year or two while he sits around lamenting his loss and then eventually she comes back. It's a weird interlude that makes no logical sense to me at all. She still comes back...always...but I just can't figure out why it's even necessary. Like...bitch you WON why you running away now? I also really really struggled with the accent of the dude she ran away with at the end. He talks through his teeth and it was super unattractive to me and difficult to watch. What's the point of being pretty if your jaw is apparently wired shut? I've tried to replicate it (because I was for sure high) talking through my own teeth, but it's really awkward and difficult and I just can't wrap my brain around it. Dude was a snake with a weird, shallow, unnecessary story arc and I didn't like him at all.

I MIGHT rewatch this again someday just to see all the fun ghosts and their storylines again.

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Worth the dirty bloody ride.

I generally get sad about shorter format kdramas, because I'm always disappointed when they end because it feels like losing all my friends whose lives I was super invested in. My Name, however, was exactly the perfect length for the story. They could have made it a 16 episode drama, expanded on the cops' lives, expanded on the romance, played with our emotions more...but that would have detracted from the core story they were trying to tell. I appreciate that they chose to do this in fewer episodes, and I think they accomplished the storytelling in those 8 episodes very well.

That said, the story isn't exactly original or unique, it's interesting enough that it doesn't feel super derivative, but overall it's a pretty pedestrian story we've all seen retold many many times. The actors were exceptional though, especially the female lead. The determination and desperation she baked into every interaction the character had was expertly done.

I can't say I expected parts of the ending, it was pretty dark, but I think it was also appropriate for the story. The overall ending and twists you could guess from episode 1, but some of the ways it played out were unexpected. The OST was also really well put together and timed perfectly for the scenes and events.

Overall, it's definitely worth a watch. It's excellent...it didn't resonate with me on an epic level, but it was still quite exceptional.

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Don't let the SUPRISE MAN BUN hit you in the ass on the way out

I watched The Devil Judge and I liked the main actor so much I wanted to watch something else he was in, so I picked this drama. At first...if I'm honest...I was pretty put off. They do all this hokey weird crap early on, with like laser beam eyeballs and magically appearing tattoos, to represent the switching personalities. It was pretty cringe, but probably more acceptable in 2015 than in 2021, so I stuck with it. There are also a lot of "love cures mental illness" themes that are a pretty far stretch. As long as you go into it with the view that really it's a fantasy romance drama, and not representative of reality, it's not half bad.

The standout in this drama is for sure the acting. All the leads and even the side characters did a great job portraying their characters. The amount of tears the two main leads shed is insane...like the lead dude for sure needed to recharge his electrolytes to get through scene after scene after scene of him bawling his eyeballs out. IDK if they used fake tears or if little dude really can just cry like that on cue, he definitely pulled the tears out in The Devil Judge as well, so maybe dude is just a good crier. He did really well at giving each personality its own, well, personality. It was almost always super obvious which personality was active, the weird hokey visual clues were probably not necessary. The costume/makeup/hair team did a great job styling each personality to feel like an entirely different person, so when you add in the decent acting on top of that, you almost did feel like you were watching a completely different actor at times.

The story/script was ok. It wasn't great. They spend a lot of time developing certain story arcs that they just drop in the last 10 episodes. There are also some generic inconsistencies...like at one point they show Yo Na running through a crowd with her pink blazer on...but then they cut away to everyone else's view and it's still dude in a suit. So you think...oh, the visual changes are more about how he sees himself than how everyone else sees him. But then they proceed to repeatedly contradict that seemingly clever point by intermixing the two lenses to the point where you're honestly never really sure how dude looks to everyone else vs how he looks to himself. At the end they show Yo Na's blazer on it's own, so then you're like...wait so the blazer crowd scene was or wasn't in his head.... It's like the writers/director couldn't decide what their vision was so just tossed a little bit of everything in and hoped no one would look too closely. It was pretty distracting for me.

There were also a few EXCEPTIONALLY cringey lines from Shin Se Gi early on....like I get he's a personality that's sort of forever stunted in the teenage male angst stage, he perceives everything as dramatic and intense, waiting for his lost love to return. But come on....the initial watch scene was hardcore like walk away level cringe to the degree I felt embarrassed for the actor lol. Some of the costume choices were cringe to the max as well, like the secretary dude having a man-bun at the end, I visibly shuddered.

The music was ok for 2015...though there are some scenes with this wildly mismatched sort of full orchestra elevator music early in the drama. The cinematography was pretty standard for 2015....but man those random weird special effects kept popping up here and there as the drama went on. In the beginning dude had glowy laser eyes every time he changed, with the color of the laser matching the personality that appeared...then they stopped doing it for awhile....then they did it again....then stopped for awhile...dude, it went on like that the whole drama. Zero consistency. At the end, instead of laser eyeballs they'd change the color tone of the shot to indicate a personality was coming out. Like...ok...you've READ the script right, and you have a concept going in, IS HALFWAY THROUGH THE DRAMA REALLY THE RIGHT TIME TO EXPIRIMENT WITH OTHER CONCEPTS??

Overall, it was an ok drama with a sub-par script and very well done acting. I watched it through to the end basically only for the acting. It was a bit of a chore, and I wasn't chomping at the bit to get to the next episode, but I made it through and I don't regret the time I spent. I would never be able to sit through it again, but it was decent enough if there's nothing else you're interested in watching at the moment.

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Why they let a toddler film this IDK.

More than any other part of this drama, the cinematography annoyed the crap out of me. Multiple times an episode there are scenes with this intentionally shaky camera and it made me a little seasick. It was so hard to watch. Like...ok you're trying to add drama so you shake the camera all the time? Or did you let the intern film it? Did you hand the camera to a toddler who was constantly bouncing from excitement? Once you notice it you can't unnotice it.

The comedy was also woefully lacking, I think if they had done a better job pulling off the comedy elements I would have rated it higher. In the end, it just ended up being really sad the majority of the time. The acting was ok for the most part. I wish they had used some of the side characters for more effective comedy, especially the lead dude's sister who could have really been hilarious but ended up just sort of being a dud most of the time because she was so limited by the boundaries of the script/direction.

IDK, for me this drama wasn't that great at all. I gave it 5 stars because there were some moments that made me chuckle and some I could relate to, and the concept wasn't terrible...but not more than 5 stars because the execution was not well done. It's always sad to me when it seems like the actors gave it their all but either in script or direction the whole thing just flops sideways. I wouldn't rewatch this and probably wouldn't recommend it to friends either.

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This show's romance arc pissed me off

Ok so...full discloser I think Jang Hyuk is one of the best Korean actors that ever lived and I like him in every single thing he's ever been in. I also came into this show fresh off watching A Beautiful Mind, Shine or Go Crazy, and Tell Me What You Saw...specifically because I wanted to watch literally everything with Jang Hyuk in it. So I was definitely jaded from the start. It's also definitely not a genre I typically enjoy or seek out...boring romance dramas...meh. So my review is super super one-sided and unfair. I'm 100% aware of that.

Basically, I hated this show. I hated that the lead actress ended up with the shallow young pretty boy instead of the much more interesting and (in my opinion) attractive secondary male lead (Jang Hyuk). I was super mad at her for making such a shallow and uninteresting love choice. She was a decently written character with a decent amount of depth and she went for the eye candy. The eye candy lead actor's character was so lame and shallow and undeveloped. He's basically this crybaby brat who in other dramas would easily have been the failed third point of the typical love triangle. He's basically the guy who's around usually to show you what a great and desirable person the lead is. I hated this character. The actor is fine in other dramas, but this character in this drama was literal trash.

Almost certainly I would have had a different opinion about this drama if the lead actress' character wasn't such a predictable boy-toy chasing idiot (aka if she had fallen for the bad boy gangster (Jang Hyuk) instead. But as it stands, it was a STRUGGLE to get through this entire thing and I hated every minute of it beyond episode 3 or 4. I would literally never watch this again.

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If this were 100% less pedo it would be a 10.

This drama gets MASSIVELY great reviews and for good reason, it's incredibly well done with a compelling story and great acting. It is, however, at its core a story about a super old dude in love with a minor at various stages of her life. In some of those stages she's for sure an adult...but in most of them she's a minor. I'm gonna be honest, I found it super hard to enjoy the really fun story this show depicts because I was so completely cringed out by the pedo aspects in probably 10/16 of the episodes. If you can get past that part, it's a really great watch.

I wouldn't be able to rewatch this ever, because the pedo thing is super icky and I think I can only make myself overlook it the one time.

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For the record, I'm American and most Americans I know take their shoes off at the door.

Only in a Kdrama would you ever hear a line like, "I'm sorry, for being handsome in the midst of everything." That's some first class comedy right there. How Kdrama male leads always make you want to slap them while you're right in the middle of liking them. Every time. You be like..."omg this little guy is such a misunderstood sweetheart I hope everything works out for him and...WTF YOU JUST SAID YO, IMA SLAP YOU UPSIDE THE HEAD HOLD MY BEER." You tears might be streaming down your face and suddenly now you're chuckling while crying and rolling your eyes with a cringed out groan. How they do that to a person?

This drama, I'll be honest, it's not the best. It's a good light summer watch in the way that most light Kdramas are also full of immense tragedy and dark moral/social commentary. The story itself is pretty straightforward, there's not a lot to keep you guessing or really anything you have to think too hard about and it's packed full of Kdrama tropes. It's a decent prop for the romance, but it's pretty trite. The romance itself was a little awkward between the lead characters, sometimes you could feel the chemistry and sometimes not...but I think that's sort of the feeling they were going for.

The lead actress is always fun to watch in shows because she's so good with her emotional range and facial expressions and her massive eyes might as well come straight out of an anime. She's pretty much the cutest Kdrama actress out there. I also really like anything with Jeong Ji So (God program) in it, she's so good at dark roles. I can't wait to see her in The Cursed 2. In this role she did a great job with her alternative morality character, she dominated every scene she was in with her quiet intensity.

Definitely the most chemistry came from the side character love story with the writer chick and the pale vampire looking rich dude. Those two felt like instant chemistry to me and it was fun watching their story progress...although there were a few points when I wondered if vampire dude was actually into his male flatmate and wouldn't have been surprised if it had turned out that way. I should have known better though, homophobia still pretty big in Korea I think. The vampire dude (not actually a vampire in the story just sort of a gaunt pale dude) seems like he's got a really good handle on chemistry in general, I hope he ends up in more dramas because he's been great in the ones I've watched so far.

Overall, I don't regret watching it. I think the story was mishandled a little and could have been really epic, but the actors really saved this drama from total mediocrity with their passionate portrayals of their characters. I did feel bad for poor Kevin though, he sure did a good job intently staring at people when they were talking, like he was interested and listening, when they made it very clear his character could barely understand a word of Korean.

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