displacedmoon

tearjerker for sure, but could have done without the accident bit at the end. she had already gone through so much as a kid, did she really have to lose her adoptive father as well? also, am i missing something? i don't understand how they weren't able to contact his family after he had the accident. 1) he apparently had a bankbook on him, so the bank would have had his contact info. 2) his motorbike would have also been registered, so another place for contact info. 3) his pager which he always carried with him, couldn't they trace that?

Love your 2022 recap! Agree that there were definitely some gems last year.
1. 41
2. SK
3. dramas mixed w/romance, fantasy, mystery, comedy, life
4. favs listed above: through the darkness, alchemy of souls, imawa no kuni no alice, reset
5. favs not listed: one dollar lawyer, sound of magic, gaus electronics, my liberation notes, tomorrow, mystery to iunakare
6. in 2022 i became pickier w/what i watched
7. in 2023 looking forward to some great dramas hopefully!

Great article! thanks for highlighting the OSTs BTS has participated in. Hopefully in the future they'll do more.

yeah not sure what the hate is about. at no point has he been anything but supportive and a good friend to YD. plus YD cared for him when he was just a fish in a pond in the heavenly realm, so of course it's natural that he feels protective and affection for her.

yeah...that didn't make sense to me. when the 4 sea lords are standing together giving speeches before they go into the throne room for the fight scene, yingden is literally on luiming's immediate left. 🤣

not sure what i just watched. lol.

i like that this drama shows that no one is perfect. Woong, Babi & Yumi all have baggage they inevitably bring into their relationships. they're not bad people, just that they make decisions based on their emotions, past conditioning & thought sets. in the end it boils down to communication. woong was terrible at it, babi is better communicating, but lately not so much, and yumi is kind of in between. glad we still have the cells to keep us entertained, b/c some episodes that's all that's keeping me watching. would still welcome a S3 if it means seeing the soonrok arc.

agree. you may not know exactly how much they make, but you'd have to be pretty clueless not to have a general idea of your significant other's financial situation after two years of dating. there are so many clues...the clothes and accessories they wear, the type of vehicle they own (or don't own), what level of restaurant they prefer to eat at (cheap vs expensive), where they live and the furnishings of the home, their profession....and the list goes on.

i actually really enjoyed grid, but some of the writing got really confusing especially in that last episode. so thanks for this comment section explaining it. i also could have done without the cliffhanger ending, as it's likely we won't get a second season...but i suppose there is always hope.

bittersweet. not entirely happy, but not completely sad either.

some of the characters could have been better constructed/fleshed out, and sure, some of the pacing was slow, but with our shorter attention spans nowadays, which drama doesn't suffer from this? nearly every comment section on MDL always has viewers (myself included), stating how a particular drama dragged, no matter how good the drama is. that's probably why networks like netflix have been trending the shorter 8-12 episode format, because a lot of dramas really don't need a full 16 episodes to effectively tell a story.

that said, the flaws weren't enough to stop me from thoroughly enjoying bulgasal....especially any moments when lee joon was on screen. i've always liked his acting, but wow, he was a scene stealer here. i also really liked the non-linear narrative, which fed us bits and pieces every episode, and kept us guessing at the mystery of how everyone was connected in their past lives. going into the last episode, i already knew there would be no easy way for everyone to be happy and together at the end, so the finale was as expected, even if bittersweet.

you're the best! thanks for subbing.

i chalk it up to the girl being a young and scared college student who didn't know what to do in that situation, plus her mother and the negative internet comments didn't help, so i don't really hate or blame her.

what i don't understand is if the daughter was too scared to speak up when she was being molested, why she didn't just move to another part of the bus, or when she was frantically making a scene with the bus driver, why she couldn't have just told him there was a pervert molesting her, and that's why she wanted to get off? plus it makes absolutely no sense the bus driver wouldn't have at least pulled over to the farthest lane before opening the door.

it's not really a love story though. and if it were, it's not between MinHwal. i find it ironic how the family he has "loved" for over 600 years, is the one that tried to kill him 1000 years ago. i now get why ok eul tae kept saying hwal's relationship with all of the characters was an ill-fated and tenacious union. lol.

dang...the drama has done a great job of making ok eul tae a villain i root for more than the leads. lol.

try father is strange. really good weekend drama with good characters that make it a fun watch.

agree. i feel like she's TOO nice/self-sacrificing/trusting for someone who saw their mother and sister killed, and has been living in hiding for fear of getting killed most of her life. had she been written to be more tsundere/cynical/badass, i think i would have related to/understood her character better. the other thing is that she seems to have eul tae's soul, who wasn't the nicest of people 1000 years ago. from what i've gathered, the monsters in past lives have rotten souls, so they reincarnate to be evil/murderers. if we apply this reasoning to sang un, shouldn't she also have reincarnated to be a bad person? or maybe this rule doesn't apply to bulgasal and they keep their inherent natures no matter which soul is inside of them.

if they didn't sprinkle in flashbacks into the present, we'd have linear storytelling which would take the mystery out of it. there's nothing wrong with a linear narrative (if that's what you prefer), but personally, i think skipping around to different points in time is what has allowed this drama to be more interesting and complex. they flashback just enough to keep us guessing how the characters are connected, and now that we are in the final few episodes, the bits and pieces are all coming together nicely.

overall I enjoyed the drama...the action scenes were decent, the zombie special effect makeup was done well, and a few of the characters really stood out for me. what I didn't like as much was the plot repetitiveness -- zombie chase >> find a classroom/area to hide >> arguments or conversations until the new area becomes compromised >> attempt to move to another location >> repeat the sequence over and over again. this format works for 2 hour movies, but for a 12 hour drama, not so much. fewer episodes would have been better, or keep the length, but have better characterization -- ie, delving more into back stories via pre-zombie flashbacks. they did this for a few of the characters, but it would have made the story stronger and more interesting had they done this with more of the roles.

i'm too lazy to hate-watch and analyze everything that's wrong about a drama. it's just easier to drop and pour my energy into a drama that i really like. it's also gotten to a point that i rarely comment in or bother reading the MDL comments section of a drama anymore. it can get so toxic sometimes between the hate-watchers and the love-watchers going at it, that it just ruins it for me.