I'm angry that they made a second season!

I loved AOS #1 up through episode 19. Then they had to go the historic tragedy cliffhanger route to justify another season. So, I'll admit my review is based upon my feelings. PLUS, I felt the script really diminished Uk's love to "love the one you're with" and that irritated me no end.

As with #1, AOS#2 was well-filmed, though granted, a lot darker than the first one. Great CGI, beautiful music.

STORY: Repetitive, with more of the same from #1. How the evil guy, that everyone KNEW was evil, continued to get away with his evilness was just frustrating. My biggest beef was the way the romance was written. Uk fell in love with Cho Yeong before knowing that she was Naksu. That might have been fine if we had some sense that he was struggling with his feelings, considering that he was supposedly so in love with Naksu. I didn't get that impression at all, though. Also, I didn't particularly care for the way that Cho Yeong/Naksu was written. Her personality was just so completely different than Naksu, I didn't get a feeling for Naksu's strength at all. She just seemed clingy to me, coming up with excuses to be with and touch Uk.

ACTING: So good.
Lee Jae Wook as Uk. I was believing his mourning until he met Cho Yeong and then that went out the window. I don't know if he lost weight since the first season or if it was makeup, but his jawline was so sharp it could have cut glass. It was a good look for him. I also liked him wearing black throughout the drama. It was like he had "graduated" from colors to being serious in black.
Go Youn Jung as Naksu/Cho Yeong. She did a good job with the writing that she was given. She is absolutely gorgeous. I've not seen her in anything else I don't think, I'm going to need to check her filmography and watch her in something else.
Hwang Min as Seol Yul. He, again, was my favorite character in this show. He figured out she was Naksu pretty early on, and you really got the sense that he could just FEEL that it was her. He did such a wonderful job with his longing for her.
Shin Seung Ho as Go Won. We got to see a little more understated comedy from him this time around.

CHEMISTRY: The kisses were so good, but I didn't feel the chemistry between them. How is that possible?

I have to say, I'm not particularly caring for the current trend of making multiple seasons of a show, unless it's an exceptional show like Hospital Playlist. Otherwise, it feels like they are just milking the drama, causing a lot of draggy parts to extend the drama length.

Bottom line: If you like darkly filmed dramas with multiple good fight scenes, good CGI, and you really don't care about the romance anyway, give it a try.

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Way too long

What is it with Chinese dramas? They tend to be, for the most part, twice as long as they need to be. I will be upfront and say that my rating is based upon my enjoyment of the whole thing. I found myself getting bored (a lot) and I left it for two weeks and finally went back to finish it up, because I can't leave a show unfinished.

The main couple? I loved both of them. I really enjoyed her in Love Me If You Dare and I was so glad that their own voices were used. Dubbing makes the whole thing even worse. They were very cute together, the kind of cute that you just have to smile when watching them. I felt that toward the beginning she had some entitlement going on, which irritated me. She kept breaking rules and then didn't understand why he wanted her to leave the program she was in. She felt it was better to apologize than to ask for permission, apparently.

Second couple - if a woman continues to chase a man and he keeps shutting her down, my opinion of her lowers. It's like she has no self-esteem. His reason for shutting her down, when he obviously liked her, was missing so he irritated me as well.

The older couple - had an interesting back story, but I didn't feel overly invested in them, either.

A lot of the medical stuff was incorrect, as it tends to be in these dramas. Do you not have a medical consultant? That takes away from the story as well.

There is quite a bit of action, some bromance, and it's low on angst, so if you are patient and your expectations aren't too high, you might enjoy this show.

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Please, for the love of all that is holy, pick a genre and stick with it!

I'll start with what I liked:
-the kisses. Let's call them for what they were, "fire"! After watching multiple shows with open-eyed, slack arms, dead fish kisses, these were exactly on point. These are the scenes that I rewatched, and the only reason I actually gave this a rating of 5.
-the acting was good, for what it was. I loved Park Gu Young in Dali and the Cocky Prince, and I liked her in this as well, though I didn't really love her character that much. When she kept trying to get him drunk (I'm so tired of drunk scenes), I found her to be irritating. Cha Eun Woo was basically like he's been in everything I've seen him in. Quiet whispery voice, serious. You could play this show and True Beauty side by side and get what I mean. Everyone else did an okay job.
-family and friendships
-happy ending

Then the stuff that I didn't like.
-Thankfully, I waited for all the episodes to be released before I tried watching this. If I hadn't, I would have given up early on. I think the programmers did a disservice to this show by making it so long to be finished, between an episode once a week, to pre-empted episodes. That being said, this show was entirely TOOOOO long and very repetitive. My Viki showed it as having episodes 0-15. Episode 0 and episode 15 were the same, basically a recap of what the show was about. After watching episode 0, I kept having feelings of Deja vu while watching episodes 1-4. Then there was the recap at the beginning of every episode, and the mini recaps throughout to remind us of what has been going on.
-This show shifted and lost its footing halfway through. Started out as a comedy, with the potential to be cute and quirky. Then it shifted to bullying and its effects, then it went to revenge melodrama with the mountain god. It should have been either a comedy or a melodrama but should not have tried to mix the two. I don't think it was successful.
-The whole mountain god storyline was completely unnecessary. It seemed so over the top melo after watching funny scenes. This storyline took up a lot of screen time, and I didn't enjoy it, especially since he had cursed this family and done terrible things and there were no consequences for him. That REALLY irritated me!
-This scene really stuck out to me, and I had a hard time getting past it - whenever the woman turns into a dog, her clothes drop and she has to have friends get her clothes to her because she's naked when she turns human again. In the scene where he kisses her and lifts the curse, she turns human and is completely dressed. Why?! This would have been a great opportunity to throw in some comedy by having her be naked as usual.

Normally, if I like a show less than others, I'm usually in the minority and say give it a try, you might like it. I have reservations here, unless you make the FF button your friend. I can't remember the last time I watched a show that was so repetitive.

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This one got to me!

This is a slow (in a good way), simple and beautiful story. I'll start with the bottom line - it's been quite a while since I've cried watching something, and I cried a couple of times during this movie. I was swept into the story and could feel the nervousness of the female lead, but she wasn't portrayed as a loser at all. The meeting of the leads was shown in a good way, and I was rooting for them from the start. Wu Nien Hsuan as Yi Bin and Zhou Yi Ram as Tong Zhi Liao were perfectly cast. I could feel sparks between the two from the beginning. I was torn, I wanted to find out what happened, but I also wanted it to go on and on. It was a lovely journey of discovery and spoke to lost chances and regrets. The story line of the old lady and her regrets mirrored the lead couple perfectly.

Normally, I struggle with Chinese dramas, the episodic ones are normally too drawn out for me, and the movies often don't give me enough time to invest in the characters. add to that my problems with dubbing and overacting, you'll see my dilemma. This movie was, quite simply, a hidden gem. I happened upon it quite by accident. The script is good, and the acting is understated. There are no over-the-top characters, and they are all likeable in their own way. No love triangles, and there wasn't much time spent on any of the secondary characters, other than the old lady, so we really got to know the main couple.

I might watch it again, if only to get lost in the story once again. The ending is ambiguous, and I think that's for the viewer to decide what they want to happen. I choose to go the happily-ever-after route.

I can happily and unapologetically recommend this movie!

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Lovely

There are spoilers interspersed throughout my review, because some of them were things I liked, some I didn't.

LOVED:
1) Zhao Lu Si as Sang Zhi. She is so beautiful and bubbly, I felt she was perfectly cast for this. Finally, a show in which they didn't put her in a lot of oversized outfits.
2) Chen Zhe Yuan as Duan Jia Xu. I've not seen him in anything before and I loved him in this. First, he's gorgeous. Second, the character was a warm and caring person.
3) Romance chemistry - just wow! The ML said things that most women would love to hear from their man. The way he looks at her, sigh. Good kisses.
4) Story - knowing someone for a long time and developing a relationship. For the most part, this was handled well.
5) Victor Ma as Sang Yan. He was a terrific character. The dynamic between him and his sister, and him and his friends was such fun to watch.
6) SPOILER: It seems like most romances have a secondary female that used to be a girlfriend that comes back after years and wants to pick up where they left off. She thinks she's entitled to him because she wants him. FINALLY, this show portrays the female the way I feel about the secondary women in other dramas. She's a stalker and not-just-a-little unhinged. And I love how the FL told the stalker's friend to go with her to get some counseling! END SPOILER.
7) Ending - I cried.
8) The voices weren't too terrible and the roommates weren't stupid and irritating.
9) The focus was on the romance of the main couple. Not a lot of wasted time.
10) She met him when she was in middle school. The way they handled her crush, her youth, and how he felt about her was handled well. This could have been kind of creepy if he liked her too soon. And the progression of how his feelings changed made sense.
11) The brother's reaction to finding out his friend was dating his sister.
12) The fact that the ML didn't drink alcohol.
13) I know it's not realistic, but I love when the people haven't had relationships before. When he came out and said he'd never dated...he got me!

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: (SPOILERS THROUGHOUT)
1) Sang Zhi acted in a very immature fashion when she was younger. I get that she was young, but when a girl has a crush on a guy, especially an older guy, she does everything she can to demonstrate how mature she is.
2) She's had a crush on him for literally years. She grows up, he confesses his feelings, and she says she needs to think about whether she likes him. I wanted to smack her upside the head. I felt so bad for him, but thank goodness he was patient. I think he knew, even if she didn't say anything. I was mad for a couple of episodes.
3) Her friends saying she needed to "test" him, and her doing it. Game playing in a relationship isn't a good thing, and it, again, made her look really immature.
4) Her making herself cry (when she was younger) to get her way. Once she grew up, I felt that she was still trying to manipulate people.
5) Them saying they would be there for each other, but then keeping things from the other because they didn't want to bother/overwhelm them.
6) One of the last episodes, he's alone in the living room drinking. She comes out and asks him about it, and he never opens up about what the problem is. AND, I really had a problem with the fact that the first time they were intimate he was drunk.
7) Parents, especially, complaining about the age difference. It was five years, people!

Kudos to the writers for not making this a long and drawn out story. My fast forward button got a good rest while I was watching this. It's low angst, light, fluffy, cute, and all the other things when you don't want something heavy. It's one of those shows that I put off, thinking it couldn't possibly be that good, and then I was disappointed when it was over. I will definitely be re-watching it at some point in time.

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Just my opinion...

Apparently, I watched a different show than everyone else. I'll put the sadly necessary disclaimer - this is my own personal opinion, so don't come after me.

For me, the show had a lot of style, and not much substance. Beautifully filmed and beautifully dressed beautiful people, so much of the time I felt like I was a spectator watching a fashion show runway catwalk. Lots of walking from here to there, "look at what I'm wearing now", models with no expression.

I just didn't like anyone in this show. For me, there has to be something likeable about someone to make me care about what happens to them. Both the ML and the FL had personality issues. FL in particular was unlikeable, she was such a cold person. Kim Ji Won tends to play the same type of character, and her lack of facial expressions just doesn't endear her to me. The ML's reaction when he found out she was sick was just wrong. And the sequence, with the overabundance of flashbacks, was out of synch and made it hard for me to like them. I didn't believe in their story and was never able to feel their love for one another, even at the end.

And can we talk about tropes? In this drama, the tropes were piled high, one after another. When they got to the amnesia part, I laughed out loud - my trope bingo card was complete!

Should you watch it? Don't go by me, because apparently, I'm an outlier. Give it a try and come to your own conclusion.

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Blown Away!

Some shows you wonder if you should continue wasting your time watching them, hoping they'll get better. Some shows you are anxious to finish all your chores so you can watch them. I kept vacillating back and forth between wanting to forego my life just so I could watch one more episode, but then being sad in advance, knowing this wonderful ride was coming to an end. I was so thoroughly invested in this show, now that I've finished it, I have to say I'm really sad it's over.

STORY: A new village and a new set of people for our leads to get to know and come to care about. I'll admit, the long hair on Wook in the first few episodes really drove me crazy. But then I realized it really suited his kind of quirky personality. There were some new twists in this season, which brings me to the reasons that I gave this a 9 rather than a 10 - and here are the spoilers:
- Really, the whole thing is a suspension of disbelief, which is what I loved about it, but the reason (or lack thereof) for the captain not being able to leave her village didn't make any sense.
- Too many loose ends at the end. Which is fine, if there ends up being a season 3 (though PLEASE don't make us wait two years!)
- Mentions of other villages. Great concept but again, I didn't like that it was just setting up for another season. Because if it doesn't happen, then we're all just disappointed.
- Main bad guy - he was able to get away?! Please, don't have him in the next season. I don't ever like to feel like the bad guys are untouchable and that nothing can stop them. Plus, one of the things that I appreciated about this show was that the police knew what they were doing - I'd like to feel that they'd plan for any eventuality.
- You had BETTER NOT kill off Detective Shin. A mine field, really!?!
But other than that, I thought that this season was just as good as the first. I'll say again, what I said in my review for season 1, I love found family. Again, it was in the village, with the team, with the detectives, and I loved the addition of Bo Ra, and when Wook was explaining to her what it means to be a family, that summed it up perfectly.
The Oh Il Yong storyline - it was brilliant. I didn't get a good vibe from him in the beginning, which is what was supposed to happen, but his storyline was powerful and surprising. And I loved the relationship between him and Wook.
I loved that Jong A played a more integral role, as well as the fact that she stepped up to make herself more indispensable and figured out how to find more missing children. Gotta be honest, the potential for her to see ghosts is exciting, but there is something to be said for having someone on the team that is a little bit out of the loop. You lose some of the elements of surprise if everyone knows what's going on.
This season, the detectives were starting to figure out that there was something different about this team. I like that Detective Shin knows, but the others don't, but they know that there is absolutely something strange going on. That, to me, was amusing.

ACTING/CAST: Stellar. I was glad to see Thomas, even though it was too brief. I continued to be impressed with everyone in the cast, but this time around I have to give a shout out to Lee Jung Eun as the Captain. She's one of those actresses that I love her in everything she is in. That sweet/beautiful face and smile, her short, round body (I mean that in the best possible way - don't you think that she would give the best hugs?), I'd love her to be my grandma, but then I remember I'm old and she'd have to be my sister, but still. I liked the clothes that the costume designer put her in, Peter Pan collars, knit comfy sweaters, long loose skirts and sensible shoes. She just seemed so approachable. And to have her be the first person you see when you enter the village and have her say that she's made food, come in and she'll explain what's going on - she was the heart of the village. Jung Eun's acting is normally understated, but there were times in this show that her pain, anger and loneliness were almost palpable.

And that was the conundrum for these villagers, especially those that had been there for a long time. You want the children to be able to move on, but it's heartbreaking when they do.

MUSIC: I especially loved the theme song, I found myself humming it - I loved hearing it at the beginning of each episode, but at the end I didn't like it so much because that meant the episode was over.

REWATCH: For me, this isn't the type of show I would rewatch again, because I know what is going to happen.

However, if someone asks me for suggestions for well-written shows, with good character development, excellent chemistry between all actors and that have sucked me completely in, to the detriment of my "real" life, I'd definitely suggest Missing: The Other Side, Both Seasons one and two. You could probably watch only season two and figure out what is going on, but season one really does a good job of laying the groundwork for season two. Really, to be honest, I'm afraid that this show has set a bar so high for me that I'm doomed to be disappointed in other shows, especially since, as a romance lover, there has been so little good to choose from.

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How is it possible to get bored with only 10 episodes!?!?

The first few episodes rushed the whole story along and then they had to backtrack and add problems to fill in the rest of the episodes. I couldn't wait to finish this one. For me, this fell in the camp of "that's time I'll never get back."
Here are some of the problems that I had: 1) why did he like her? From just seeing her? 2) the ML was very one-dimensional, showed absolutely no emotion whatsoever throughout the show; 3) the FL starts out somewhat strong and has career goals for herself, and ended up just giving everything up for him; 4) Look up stalker in the dictionary - ML's picture will be there; 5) the show was unbalanced, it tried to go from ROMCOM to farce and then started to take itself seriously; 6) Almost every man in this show liked the FL. Why? 7) Large cast with inadequate development of characters. Grandmother was the cliche "bad guy" and the brother seemed to be thrown in to try to further the story and that whole storyline was not addressed in a way that made any sense; 8) No chemistry between the leads; 9) she spends a lot of time, in essence telling him to go away and not be a stalker, but then she's in love with him. Again, why?

This is a show that was actually irritating me as I watched it. For one reason, I think I've only ever dropped one drama and I felt compelled to complete this one, and that made me mad. As I was watching it, I just felt that, the leads especially, were just going through the motions. I couldn't relate to them and I didn't care about them.

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It didn't deliver for me

This show had a lot of good moments, but for me they were few and far between. Go Kyung-pyo (Kung-soo) and Chae Soo-bin (Dan-ah) played their parts well, but the script fell short, mostly because of how irritating and unlikeable the character of Dan-ah was. I did, however, love the character of Kung-soo. I was impressed by his strong feeling of right and wrong. I also loved the community he built with all the drivers he'd worked with over the years. That was the strong point of this show, the friendships. The demonstration of how people that are enemies can become friends, how friendships remain even after your geography changes. It was a testament to Kung-soo that he had all the friends he had, because he was genuinely a good and nice person.

Dan-ah was kind of the polar opposite. She was not a nice person, and because of that, didn't really have friends. Everyone was either in awe of her or feared her. She apparently was never taught to use her words, because she is forever hitting or kicking someone, which sometimes worked for the sake of comedy, but certainly didn't endear her to me.

The ending tied things up neatly but wasn't especially memorable.

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Not much to see here...

What I liked:
1) The main actors were excellent.
2) Original storyline.
3) She got over being a doormat quickly.
4) Mix of the old and new.
5) They didn't harp on the fact that she was older than him.
6) Some cute moments between them.
7) Some cute cultural difference exchanges.

Not so much:
1) Lacking in the romance department. Lots of ancillary stuff going on.
2) Even at the end, he was still calling her "teacher".
3) Too many episodes.
4) Not a lot of emotional feelings between the couple. I felt like they were telling me they were in love, rather than showing me.
4) The killer for me was the ending. What the heck!?! Neither one of them seemed very upset about going their separate ways. Obligatory (stupid) one year time jump, and he shows up in Paris out the blue. The fact that he was in traditional clothes led me to believe that he was just visiting and would go back to his own life. Nothing drops a rating faster for me than an ending that sucks.

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Must suspend disbelief

What I liked: DO. I don't need to say more than that, but I will. He is excellent. Intense, focused, with just a little "crazy". His hair is wild, his eyes are wild, you never know what he's going to do next. I've always appreciated his acting, and his acting in this role didn't disappoint. Lee Se Hee as Shin Ah Ra - her character was a joy. She was a hard-working, somewhat hard prosecutor, always in control, until she got involved with DO's character Jin Jung, then she was out of her element. Her facial expressions were priceless and her frustration with Jin Jung was so fun to watch. I really liked that they didn't try to make a romance here.

What I didn't like: The storyline was extremely convoluted and the fact that everyone was corrupt was just too much. I felt like they were just trying to fill time. Bad guy A gets caught, then here comes bad guy B, he gets taken care of and here comes bad guy C. Then there were the situations in which they found themselves. I just found the storyline too implausible.

I'm glad I watched this for DO and Lee Se Hee.

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I wanted to like this one, I really did

However, after reading all the good reviews, maybe it's just me, but this show really fell short. The script was all over the place and nothing was delved in too deeply. Even considering that, I still fast-forwarded through a lot. Multiple cases in a law drama can work very well, but here they didn't. I didn't find the cases interesting enough to begin with and the stories felt like they were just to get us to the next episode.

I didn't care for the main characters. Lee Seung Gi - I don't believe I've seen him in anything else and I'm going to find something else to watch him in, but here I didn't find him attractive at all, especially in all of the unfortunate "squid games" track suits. His character wasn't especially likeable throughout the first part of the show. I love the idea of having liked someone for years, but you couldn't really tell, he was terrible to her.

Lee Se Young's character yelled and screamed a lot. I found that very off-putting. I did like how they tried to show her growing through the cases she took on, but she continued to be the "damsel in distress". Then there was the "sex contract". Give me a break!

Jo Han Chul, who I LOVE as an actor, WAY overplayed his part. Was he supposed to be crazy, funny, farcical, sociopathic? I don't know, but I couldn't stand to watch him.

Top all that off with the fact that I didn't feel chemistry between the leads. Now I feel like I need to re-watch something I've already loved to cleanse my K-drama palate!

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My personal opinion only

Acting: Seo Kang Joon as Jin Ho was excellent. He didn't say much, but then he doesn't have to. He just has to BE. What he said in the voice overs was beautiful, but I kept wondering why he never verbalized any of his thoughts. Park Min Young as Hae Won - in my opinion, she can do no wrong, she's that good in everything she does. However -
Characters: Jin Ho kept everything bottled up inside. Hae Won reminded me of Eeyore, she was so morose all the time. There were some other interesting characters in this show as well. I loved the scenes with the book club meetings.
Music: The music was wonderful and went perfectly with the show.
Cinematography: There is no question that this show was beautifully filmed. The camera angles, the scenes in nature, the close ups.
Story: Here's where it goes wrong for me. The story itself might have been really good, but this was one of the slowest shows I've ever seen. I like a good story as much as the next person, but when you show scenes again and again of making coffee and tea (are we in a Folger's commercial?) or take five minutes showing the female lead walking up a road dragging her suitcase behind her, that's just too tedious for me. There was so much quietness in this that I felt like no one was talking to each other.
I would, however, say to give it a try for yourself, since I am definitely in the minority on this one.

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Time I will never get back

I decided to watch this C-drama because it only had 24 episode (which is short for C-dramas), but once I got started, I quickly realized that this could have been completed in half the episodes, and it would have made the whole thing more interesting. I felt that this show REALLY needed a different editor, there were some episodes that, once I got to the end, I realized that the entire episode was a complete waste of time. I really felt that a lot of it was like watching paint dry - boring as all get out.

I suppose the actors did a good job with what they had to work with. The problem was the script. The main character of Tu Mo was so irritating. First, she'd been liking a boy for years, and that boy was one of the most irritating characters I've seen in a show recently. Then, I couldn't actually see what Gu Wei Yi saw in her. Then, she always seemed to be mad at the male lead for something, but rather than talk to him about it, she did a lot of clomping out of the room, slamming doors, and generally not being very nice to him. She was very immature.

Overall, no chemistry between the leads, too many irritating characters, too much dog and cat sound effects, fish kisses, and multiple unnecessary scenes/storylines.

It was sad for me to realize, after watching this, that most of the C-dramas are along these lines and not, for me, overly enjoyable. Love Me If You Dare and Dating in the Kitchen are the gold standard for me, and I will continue to hope that I happen upon other C-dramas that live up to them.

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