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Once Upon a Small Town korean drama review
Completed
Once Upon a Small Town
11 people found this review helpful
by cwinterbrisk
Oct 2, 2022
12 of 12 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 6.0
Story 6.0
Acting/Cast 8.0
Music 8.0
Rewatch Value 3.0
This review may contain spoilers

Once Upon a Cliche

Love Joy and Choo Yeong-woo but not really this show. It's not unwatchable, but I found myself tuning out most of the time and didn't really feel the characters. The cast did okay in their roles, although it was difficult to really feel the relationship between the leads since it was very cliche. I feel like almost every scene in this show is a cliche.

I can see the similarities between this show and Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha, although I don't think either of them are a copy of the other, just happen to have similar plots and characters. This show is definitely not as good as Hometown though. The story is average and progresses how you'd expect a cheesy countryside rom-com to play out. I'm usually okay with seeing some cringey, cliche scenes in dramas but there were a few scenes in this show where I physically cringed and rolled my eyes (like the scene where the peaches fall on top of Ahn Jae-young and Han Ji-yul shields her).

The side characters and townsfolk were kind of annoying, especially the loud and aggressive women who were constantly fighting and screaming at each other. I'm not a fan of love triangles, and this show has one of the most annoying love triangles I've seen in a while. I can't really see how anyone could have 2nd male lead syndrome for this show, as Lee Sang-hyeon frustrated me to no end and I constantly found myself tuning out whenever he was on screen. No hate towards the actor, but his character was incredibly annoying. Typical 2nd ML who does nothing but chase after the FL, but he does so by being blatantly passive-aggressive and rude towards the ML for no reason at all other than that the FL might be interested in him. The whole jealous 2nd ML and ML thing was overly played out, and there were points in the show where the FL and ML wouldn't be able to interact with each other for almost the entire episode, only to have the 2nd ML swoop in every chance he could get. There were also so many instances when the FL and ML would finally get a chance to talk with each other and progress their relationship, and then some cliche interruption happens that disrupts everything just to drag it on further (like a phone ringing, someone calling one of them over, etc.)

Some people may find this show enjoyable, especially if you're not picky with good plots or well-established characters. If you're looking for something simple to put on in the background or to waste time then maybe this show is for you. I was literally watching as the credits started playing on the last episode and was like "wait... is this the last episode?" The conclusion wasn't completely satisfying and caught me off guard.
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