HIGHLY underrated!
I honestly don't know why this show gets such a bad rap. I almost didn't watch it because there were so many mixed feelings about it from people. I'm glad I just jumped right into the story to see how good it was for myself.
Things I really liked about this show:
Comedy:
Some parts were really friggin' hilarious.
Social Commentary:
Nothing better than pointing out how difficult it can be to come from a lower-class upbringing. I dig seeing this in storytelling a lot, never gets old. Most of all, I relate.
Mental Illness:
As a psych. student, I enjoy psych. stuff incorporated into the things I watch. It's not always accurate, but I like it nonetheless (there are conditions, of course). But the obsessive-compulsive disorder/phobia in this drama was well portrayed, I would say. It showed how extreme and how mild symptoms can get. I also liked the fact that it didn't just disappear because of plot reasons (it still had a plot element to it but not overdone, imo). Even at the end of the drama, Sun Gyeol was still trying to recover from it. To me, this was just really refreshing to see in the storytelling.
Morality:
The whole conflict wasn't anything original, honestly, but it just fit into the story and I liked how it was depicted with this theme in mind.
Relationships:
I'm not going to lie, this part will frustrate the hell out of you before the show ends, but at the same time I found it realistic. People don't always know what they want and go back and forth on how they re/act toward something or may have internal struggles about a person/place/thing: it's a normal part of life. This is what I loved most because each character had their own story and you really feel for them. Sometimes that empathy simply comes from how they interact with other characters. Good writing.
Sure, there are hundreds of dramas that cover these topics/themes, but I just really enjoyed how this particular drama handled them. Was the story perfect? No. Were the characters perfect? No. Could some things have been done in the story differently? Of course. But at the end of the day, I loved the show for what it was.
Things I really liked about this show:
Comedy:
Some parts were really friggin' hilarious.
Social Commentary:
Nothing better than pointing out how difficult it can be to come from a lower-class upbringing. I dig seeing this in storytelling a lot, never gets old. Most of all, I relate.
Mental Illness:
As a psych. student, I enjoy psych. stuff incorporated into the things I watch. It's not always accurate, but I like it nonetheless (there are conditions, of course). But the obsessive-compulsive disorder/phobia in this drama was well portrayed, I would say. It showed how extreme and how mild symptoms can get. I also liked the fact that it didn't just disappear because of plot reasons (it still had a plot element to it but not overdone, imo). Even at the end of the drama, Sun Gyeol was still trying to recover from it. To me, this was just really refreshing to see in the storytelling.
Morality:
The whole conflict wasn't anything original, honestly, but it just fit into the story and I liked how it was depicted with this theme in mind.
Relationships:
I'm not going to lie, this part will frustrate the hell out of you before the show ends, but at the same time I found it realistic. People don't always know what they want and go back and forth on how they re/act toward something or may have internal struggles about a person/place/thing: it's a normal part of life. This is what I loved most because each character had their own story and you really feel for them. Sometimes that empathy simply comes from how they interact with other characters. Good writing.
Sure, there are hundreds of dramas that cover these topics/themes, but I just really enjoyed how this particular drama handled them. Was the story perfect? No. Were the characters perfect? No. Could some things have been done in the story differently? Of course. But at the end of the day, I loved the show for what it was.
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