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Beautiful Gong Shim korean drama review
Completed
Beautiful Gong Shim
21 people found this review helpful
by manicmuse
Jul 18, 2016
20 of 20 episodes seen
Completed 2
Overall 5.0
Story 4.0
Acting/Cast 7.0
Music 8.0
Rewatch Value 3.0
Watching this drama is like boarding a luxury cruise ship, and thinking you you are going to have a fabulous vacation, then right when you start having the best time ever you hear Celine Dion start to sing about her heart and you realize the ship is about to crash into an iceberg, and you want to get off, or turn back, but it's too late. Honestly, I sensed early on that this show would be a disaster, but I loved the main 3 characters so much that I didn't want to believe it. The best part of this story is the relationship between Gong Shim, Joon Soo, and Ahn Dan Tae (I don't know why the sister is even in the promo pic). The bromance, the romance, even the rivalry works. Together they are hilarious and heartwarming. I loved weird Gong Shim, in her wig. I think Min Ah was a strong leading lady. I loved sweet Joon Soo with his perpetual smile. Ohn Joo Wan is adorable. I loved seeing Nam Gung Min not play a sinister bad guy, but instead play a strangely adorable character with a random super power. The early episodes, where we get to know these characters, and they get to know each other, are the best episodes. It's like a completely different show compared to the rest of the drama. As soon as they started getting more into the missing kid storyline, the show went from fun romcom to the stupidest mystery thriller ever. I am so angry at the writing that I actually had to google the writer. Apparently she wrote for some dramas that I liked, so I don't get it. I am giving the story a 4 only because of those early moments between the 3 characters, but honestly the cast deserves the credit for that. The story itself deserves maybe a 2.5 at best. The worst part of the story is that everything is obvious from the very beginning. EVERYTHING. We watch the whole show waiting for the characters to figure out what we already know, and watch them frustratingly misunderstand each other in the process. What also doesn't help is that our main characters suddenly start acting completely different. Ahn Dan Tae starts to literally seem like he has multiple personality disorder. He always retains at least a small part of his charm, because Nam Gung Min is a great actor, but once he started to change the show became less interesting. His booty is consistent though, and deserves an honorable mention. The rest of the cast is pretty mediocre, and stereotypical, while some have some really horrible overacting moments. I liked Gong Shim' parents, but her sister is a useless character. If they wanted to make her a serious rival that we cared about, then she should have been much more involved in the story. The grandmother was another character that I honestly didn't care about, and some of her crying scenes were laughably bad. I liked the dude from the convenience store, but when a minor convenience store character outshines other major characters, you know something is very very wrong. The soundtrack is good though. I really liked a lot of the songs, but some lost their charm when the show started to. Overall, this is a drama of wasted potential. It didn't know if it wanted to be a romcom, or a melodrama, or a thriller, so it just tried to sloppily integrate the them all. All that did was water down what they could have done well. As much as I want to recommend watching the 3 main leads, I have to recommend skipping this one. The story goes nowhere. It's longer than it should be, and felt like it. It desperately clings to drama clichés to fill in the time. The last two episodes are embarrassingly bad. Not only do they pretty much identical to another drama that aired around the same time, but the closure for the characters felt so forced that I could't take it seriously. I hope someone takes the best moments between the three leads and edits this show to be the length it's supposed to be (10 episodes max!). I would recommend watching that video in a heartbeat. Otherwise watching 20 episodes of this is not worth hitting the iceberg. And if you already started it, don't listen to rose, it's ok to let go.
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