Terrible, but also enjoyable if you skip a lot

I enjoyed this, probably because I binged the whole thing in one shot, with frequent use of the skip button until around #22. It is terrible, but it's addictively and entertainingly terrible. The costume and sets - and hair, omg the hair - reminded me more of the 1970s than the early 2000s: it is a testament to the ML's good looks that he still managed to be so attractive with that disaster on his head. I thought he pulled off the tortured tsundere role pretty well, but by gum it is a tedious trope and here it's dragged out for far too long, although we do get a very satisfying kiss scene in #23! - so you might want to skip to that. FL did a good job too: likable despite the terrible material and ten zillion crying scenes. I liked her family, her best friend who had a few little good bits and the grandma/Great Queen Mama, who most definitely deserved an award for dignity in the face of Extreme Hair Pain and having to speak in a quavery voice for the whole 24 episodes.

Finale was, alas, flat as a pancake. All of that build-up (and the forced marital bedchamber scene earlier, and that really enthusiastic kiss) left me hoping for some good romantic action at the end, but I was out of luck bigtime. They don't even close the bedroom door and fade to black! - she just pukes, and oh! she's pregnant. Aaaargh the WTF expression on my face. BAD DRAMA. NO BISCUIT FOR YOU. It will be interesting to see what they do with the remake: is it salvageable? Guess we'll see.

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Great start, boring end

The first half of this was excellent - very funny and well-paced, solid, attractive cast, lots of cuteness and interesting plot-threads, and I was enjoying it so much I stayed up well past my bedtime. But then it started to sink in the middle, the chemistry drained away, and after the mystery resolution came out of the oven the whole thing fell flat with still a bunch of episodes to watch. I skimmed through to the end, but was very bored. Still sweet, I guess, but not the tasty cake I was expecting.

As with a lot of dramas in this format, there just wasn't enough engaging dramatic content to last for 16 episodes here. I found the rest of the cast likable enough, but I wasn't invested in any of them. And even though the love scenes in the latter half were probably fairly 'racy' for a kdrama, they were also strangely unexciting! - possibly down to the way the FL was written? - and it felt like they were there as fanservice to fill up the boring space between the end of the mystery and the wedding. Disappointing, after such a fun start.

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Good start

This started out well, with a stylish opening sequence, a less common take on a monster theme, and a cool FL (Han Hyo Joo, who I almost didn't recognize - I didn't like her much in W, but she's great here), who continues to be cool all the way through! - and doesn't turn into a crying fainting jelly, as so many of them do. It is a fairly silly plot with many holes, but hey, it's a monster show, I can hand-wave that if the pace is good enough to glide me over them. Unfortunately, the storytelling in the middle fell rather flat. There are a lot of side-characters - naturally, as it's the story of the apartment block - but none of them felt compelling: no solid arcs, just randomness and dead ends, and too much time given to the least interesting and most annoying of them. (actually that was almost all of them! and they killed off 15th floor guy, who I kinda liked) The spurious melodrama with these unappealing goons messed with the momentum enough for me to get bored and abandon it on-hold for months before finally finishing it. It does pick up towards the end: the last two eps were better, and the finale tied up some of the essentials, including the romance arc, but that felt unsatisfying to me and I would have liked to have known what happened to other characters.

Still worth watching, but I'd keep the skip button handy.

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Hmmm.

This was both very good and intensely annoying. I loved the premise. I liked both leads, once they acquired depth beyond his snootiness, her whiny clinginess and their two different kinds of bad hair. I enjoyed the ghost stories, several of which had really touching moments. The second couple grew on me (especially the second male lead when he took down those guys in the alley! oof), the secretary and the uncle were great, the apartment kids were adorable, and the whole thing had me totally gripped for the first half.

But: as others have said, it lagged after that. The amnesia was irritating. The romance felt...constipated: those frozen unmoving kisses, and too many moments where they should have at least hugged passionately, and didn't. The kidnap resolution was a damp squib (and Evil Twin's face was supremely irritating); the stuck-on side-plot with the female lead suddenly meeting Other Ghost-Seeing Guy with his weird brochure did nothing for me, and the finale was okay, but felt disappointingly passionless. Still good overall, but I'm left wishing the writers had made different choices. Curious to see what their other dramas are like.

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A perfect cup of coffee

I liked this a lot. On the surface it's a gentle, quietly humorous little slice of life with small, simple 25-minute stories set around a backstreet coffeeshop, its charming owner and his new apprentice, and their customers. It embodies that coffeeshop vibe to perfection: slow, peaceful rainy days filmed beautifully in coffee tones to a lo-fi soundtrack that soothes and comforts. But it's also about how surfaces can be misleading, how nothing is as simple or as easy as it seems, and a whole heap of other things, like change and growth and failure and how we deal with them; and it deftly uses the production of the perfect cup of coffee as an analogy for all of this in a delightfully interesting way. It was a treat for the eyes and the ears, and heartwarming without being sugary. I savored it, felt better after having it and really wanted more of it.

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Decent drama, terrible romances

Title says it all, really. This is a good slice-of-life with good acting, good leads and a great backup cast, and a lot of interesting things going on in it. It's staged around a fake-romance trope which it subverts by not having the stock happy ending. This is believable, due to what happens to the FL, but the problem with setting up that particular trope is that viewers are led into wanting a happy ending! - and it feels disappointing when we don't get it. I came out of it feeling very sorry for the musician - and the SFL - thinking how sad it is when people unwisely invest such a lot of time in loving people who don't love them back, and how I would much rather watch something where they do. There were some heartwarming relationships in it - the 'house mother' of the children's home, the nice deaf friend - and it was well-made and had some pertinent things to say about hearing loss (if this is why you're watching, Silent does that better imo), but if you're looking for a comforting romance to watch, this probably isn't going to satisfy.

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Great idea, confused execution

This was a really fun and exciting idea, but although the first few episodes were good and got me hooked, I lost interest after it became clear that it was all style and no substance or solid plot - like a cool dream: feels like you've got a great story going on, until you try to write it down and realize it doesn't make sense. As others have said more eloquently, rules kept being set that were full of great potential, but then were broken or just fizzled away. The FL was kind of a limp noodle: she was given all this agency - like being able to draw new scenes and being invulnerable to bullets! - but instead of kicking ass with that, she just... fainted a lot and sighed and cried. And the ML wasn't much better. I liked him in a few scenes - when he discovers she wasn't lying about the cartoon, and when he meets Dad for the first time and rails against that - but he didn't really work for me as an action hero. He does this cute little corner-smile, because apparently that's the only part of his face that can actually move! - appropriately cartoony, but I wasn't buying why he was so keen to come out of the cartoon world, where he got to be a CEO with a nice car, and live with boring noodle-girl on no money. His secretary pal/almost-love-interest was a lot more attractive, and probably would have given him Option 4 instead of grocery shopping. I wish the side-characters had been developed more: they deserved more airtime than the romance. Overall, full marks for the idea and the general feel of it, but downvotes for the incoherency.

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Pretty, but that's about it.

City life is stressful, folks, so let's move to a beautiful village in China! It's by a glorious lake backed by glorious mountains. Sample its delights in a gorgeously photogenic homestay full of vintage and artisanal charm, where you can sit peacefully sipping tea in a flower-filled courtyard with tinkling windchimes, friendly cats, no litter and not one single bug even though there aren't any screens. While you are here, you will be gently encouraged into wholesome activities by adorable grandmas in cute cultural costumes, while random people impart wisdom to you in not-at-all-clichéd epigrams and show you the True Meaning of Life! (tm)

Unfortunately, the promotional postcard was just that; much surface, little actual dramatic content. It was vaguely soothing to watch for a while just because it is so pretty and nicely shot, and all the points I am giving it are for that. But it didn't deliver anything else, for me: some cute photogenic moments but no real depth to anyone, and definitely not enough story to fill 40 episodes. The romance left me not only cold but actually feelIng lIke kIcking the ML's cheesy white grin - he was annoying and kinda preachy, and after far too long waiting for something interesting to happen I came to my senses and dropped it. I love a thoughtful slice of life, but it has to not bore me, and sadly, this did.

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A miserable, broke piano teacher who can no longer afford to teach meets an attractive boy running a food stall, who notices her sadness and is kind. They have some shy adventures in pretty places which make her feel better, and then, he forgets who she is, because AMNESIA. But it's not the usual amnesia trope: he's been like this for a long time, in fact, he's forgotten his own mother. There's a parallel, with a young girl who also lost her memory after a suicide attempt; there's Piano Girl's cousin the doctor, who treats both patients; there are their two, very different mothers and Amnesia Boy's neighbour, a girl who's always cared for him.

It's a quiet family drama, so if you want a passionate romance, look elsewhere: it's probably going to be too quiet for viewers who saw Hagiwara in 美しい彼. But the people, the scenery and the music were pleasant, the plot's fairly okay and the actors, imo, did a good job: I especially liked the final scene, carefully carried off by the main duo with no dialogue.

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Frustrating

I totally loved the first few episodes of this. Best friends teaming up to sabotage the rich one's terrible parentally-arranged blind dates by being outrageously undateable: sold! Fast-paced and poking fun at its tropes and clichés: sold! FL with an interesting, fairly unusual job: sold! And there was sismance and nice eye-candy and a good backing cast, and it all worked well for a while: great silly fun in the best silly way. I was actually howling with laughter at several scenes, which doesn't happen that much, but then it's not often you find the hot male lead getting compared to an archaeopteryx. Sadly, it fell off the track after ML decided he was smitten, dropped the pace and the trope-twisting, made too many stops at Cringeland and got a lot less fun. It probably didn't help that FL suddenly started dressing like an ajumma on her way to the fish market (as illustrated in the episode guide photo for #6), which kind of blew the romance for me. It did pick up a little later on, but... ehhh.

It wasn't a bad watch and it's fairly short for a kdrama, so yeah, probably worth a try. But given the shorter length it could have been a lot tighter, and I wish it had all been as good as its promising beginning.

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SO MUCH FUN

I didn't expect to laugh out loud this much. I nearly bounced off it after the first ep - thought it was mildly amusing, but it didn't hook me - but from #2 onwards I couldn't stop watching it. All of the characters are ridiculously great, and the writing is really tight: there's a whole lot of clever in with the stupid, a ton of sly references, trope-twisting (especially loved how they twisted the Candy set-up) and fun surprises. If it hooks you I guarantee you will not be bored and you will wish it was longer. It isn't deep and meaningful, but it is thoroughly enjoyable, and it's the first drama I've watched that left me really hoping for a Season 2, because I need more of the second couple for sure! - and we never got to see how Aziz gets on in the office! - or what happens to Power! - aaaa so many possibilities. And it has high rewatch value for many reasons, not least that it will be fun going back and spotting Mr Anonymous. In short: YES! WATCH IT! and vote it up to increase the chances of more of it.

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Brilliant. Deserved all of its awards and more.

I read somewhere that the scriptwriters said that when this came together, it was like it had 'come from god'. I can see why, because it is utterly magic. And somehow they magically got lead actors who were also utterly magic. I found it lovable and heartbreaking and unforgettable. Technically it's incredibly well put-together - the cast in general, the music, the cinematography, the amazing job they did with keeping the complicated timelines straight - but it's the emotional impact that puts it into top-grade for me. I would never have expected a time-travel drama to feel this real, especially when portraying grief, which is very easy to do badly. YES, you should watch it.

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Not what I was expecting, but enjoyable anyway

It's less about fangirling - although there's a lot of that in the beginning and it's pretty funny - and more about the mystery of the ML's parentage, which becomes the focus of the plot and takes some unexpected and fairly heavy (and slightly implausible) twists in the last half. I liked the way it all linked up, but it was very different to the fun fannish shenanigans in the first half, which kind of fizzled out. Nicely played by the whole cast though: they're all pretty likable and the romance is sweet and refreshingly angst-free, with no breaks or noble sacrifice or any of that nonsense - although gotta say that from recs I expected it to be steamy and it really isn't, just adults kissing in a normal, non-frozen way. I liked that the rival fangirl got a little redemption arc and some independence from her weirdo mother! - her final scene with the 'brother' was great. Watch it if you're looking for a peaceful romance with niceness, and no angst or fish kisses.

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1000 crying emojis BECAUSE IT IS OVER WAAAH

I loathe snobby people. I generally dislike overwrought cheesy ballads. I could list so many things that annoyed me about SG when I first watched it; I nearly dropped it after ep 3 with the bag scene, and did drop it (temporarily) after ep 11 because I found the ML so loathsome, and could not see why FL didn't get together with her action school bros to slice and dice him, his appalling mother, and probably SFL too as she was irritating af at that point. BUT IT OVERRODE ALL OF THAT AND TURNED ME INTO MARSHMALLOW and now I am sat here with my eyes full of dorky hearts, singing all the ballads and giving it ten stars for everything, because it was so good it has wiped out all of my critical faculties and totally battered my brain into a mushy mess of love. I really have no idea why. All I know for sure is that I'm not alone, so give it a try, it could work for you too.

If you are watching it and are as annoyed by the ML as I was - stick with it to ep 12, because it gets a whole lot better, all the annoying things cease to matter and it has a really great happy ending.

(Since I wrote this I've rewatched it many times. Yep, still with the heart eyes, still love them all, still love all the tunes. It's probably just as well I didn't see it when it came out as I'd probably have a drawerful of Oska socks.)

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Some good bits, but gets very slow in the middle

Like probably everyone else I saw this, liked the title, and figured that the two Gongs in a comedy could not be a totally bad thing. And this turned out to be true: it's not bad. They are both very watchable and lovable actors, and I found the show pretty entertaining for the first seven episodes. In these, Biscuit Teacher GHJ has artistically enhanced kick-ass fighting abilities (amusingly debunked in clips in the episode outros). My fav of her demonstrations of that was an awesomely silly Gokusen- tribute warehouse rescue scene with her flying girl gang, who really should have had a spinoff series (Powerpuff Ajummas?). I enjoyed that a lot. I liked that she had a weird dad who's gone off to be a shaven-headed monk in the mountains and who she escapes to pray with when things get tough. And I liked that Star Candy Cute Brat Boy GY recognizes her good qualities in the first few episodes, and they don't drag out the battle between them for too long: by ep 7 he's wildly and hilariously confessing to her in an airport at the top of his lungs! - bless him.

But after that the speed got slooow like uncooked biscuit slurry. The kids were good, but the kick-ass stuff died down, the angst and suffering and crying scenes increased woefully and the love triangle with Boringest Teacher Ever got way too much airtime. I'm guessing he was written that way to make the main romance more palatable, but by that point every time his face appeared it was Hello Skip Button for me. It does have a good ending: definitely worth skipping to that if you also get bored in the middle. And it is fun seeing young versions of so many actors, although imo they don't actually look all that different - yay for the power of Korean skincare.

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