scenophile

I feel like this had a lot of potential for good bromance, backstory, and personal character growth — but the thing they zoned in on was the love triangle. We spent so much time with the guys jostling each other and the girl debating who to pick, we didn't spend time on other topics I were really interested in: the guy who ran away from home, the ramen shop, ML's relationship with his dad, etc...I know tvN's Flower Boy series sort of always goes for that type of subtlety, but it also always seems to fall short of satisfactory closure.

There was also a lot of humor at the start, which I appreciated even though it wasn't my type of comedy and because I felt like the FL was acting so ditzy when she was supposed to be the more mature one. Even as someone who's not a huge fan of age gap romances, I really missed the power dynamic in that I liked how the teacher was in a position of power at school. I'm also a sucker for the school setting and kind of liked that part of the drama the best.

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Loved the second ship, hated the mains

The second ship really saved this for me. From the start I knew I would love them so much better — the playful, teasing relationship that they had is my favorite type of ship. And I really watched the drama for them, even though the plot went OFF THE RAILS for them. The second female lead had the personality that I loved — outgoing, bubbly, straightforward with her feelings.

I also had really terrible SLS for this drama honestly, I felt like second lead had so much more character and backstory to him, whereas you barely knew anything about the main lead and the development with the FL was absent as well. My stars are also for second lead, who I feel like got the short end of the stick, as second leads in cdramas often do.

With that being said, I basically could not stand either main lead.

The guy was unlikable. I'm just not a fan of cheaters and he did it multiple times, and always seemed to blame it on the other person.

The female lead was the worst part. The acting for the female lead was not only bad, I think it was simply a terrible character who couldn't hold a conversation for more than two minutes, NEVER learned to stand up for herself or be herself for that matter, and also maintained the same facial expression throughout all 16 episodes. I couldn't, for the life of me, see what was so interesting about her, and as the drama went on it felt like she only got worse — more dependent on her partner, more selfish in what she asked of him, and more delusional in the idea that nobody should change and that she was for some reason owed a relationship.

In fact, the entire drama seemed to put such an emphasis on "how dare you change?" for each character. They fought over promises they made years ago that don't make sense to keep considering the obstacles that life threw in their way, and it was like only the second ship managed to learn how to navigate new situations.

Ultimately though, the pacing was done pretty well with their coming of age being evenly spread out; I'm obviously a larger fan of the high school days, before things haywire, but I'm super glad the second lead got their ending.

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DAMN. This plot had everything I'd ever dreamt of, as a fangirl who'd spent late nights reading fanfiction and dreaming about fictional characters. Except it was a thousand times better because there were so many twists and turns that I didn't see coming. As the title says, the plot was absolute genius and I loved how the plot twists actually built upon one another.

To be honest, though, I might have enjoyed the first half better than the second, mainly because of one huge plot twist that broke my heart and never really got resolved the way I wanted it to. Still, it was hard to stop watching.

Soo Bong was probably my favorite character. Though he was so minor, the character development was there, and he was ALWAYS relatable.

Last thing: I swear this drama has like the longest and slowest car rides ever?? ESPECIALLY when the characters are in a rush...

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The aesthetic of Playlist Global is still so sweet and adorable, but I feel even less invested in the characters and plot than I did in Season 1. Just like in the first season, though, I really loved the friendships between the characters, and it was interesting to see new characters get introduced.

The main ship is starting to get a little on my nerves because of how wishy-washy they were being, and I actually liked the new character better. Other than that, I still had quite a good time watching this, and the fact that the episodes are short and updated frequently makes it easy to get addicted.

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Fun but unsubstantive

There was something quite charming and enjoyable about this drama, crazy visual effects and all — it's the kind of show you can watch without using any part of your brain. Once you did, however, you find that there's a lot lacking especially when it comes to plot and substance.

As much as it pains me to say this, the humor is almost on par with that of Melting Me Softly — it's loud, obnoxious, and zany, and most of the time it misses the spot. A few characters seemed to exist just for the laughs, but they really just ended up annoying and one-dimensional and seemed to serve no purpose. The worst culprit was DH's sister.

There are a lot of things that definitely made me uncomfortable, especially how race was handled. I understand that the people behind the drama said the webtoon artist was supposed to represent how people can come together around love for a culture, but his personality had not much to it other than being dirty and liking to draw x-rated cartoons. It also just felt incoherent at times, especially if it was used for humor which, as I previously mentioned, often fell flat.

I'm a fan of any romance that shows people slowly falling in love with one another in everyday situations, but I really just didn't FEEL it in Backstreet Rookie — honestly, I much preferred the dongsaeng-style relationship that SB and DH had, for multiple reasons. They dragged on the ex-girlfriend plot for far too long, and they also added in a "childhood" connection that made any sort of romantic plot seem even weirder with the age gap.

I also didn't like SB's sister, Eun-byul, who I felt like made so many bad decisions and never owned up to them, instead having SB run after her apologizing. I felt like I just really wanted more substantive conversation between the characters.

With all that being said, one thing that I did love about this drama was the theme of family (which may be why I preferred DH and SB being that). SB and DH's mother had the most heart-warming scenes together and the most touching conversations, and it was definitely something I wanted to see more of.

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Peaceful but uneventful

A very nice slice-of-life show that was mostly refreshing because of the FL's personality; I always love watching dramas where the female lead is really practical, down-to-earth, and genuinely good at what she does.

I did, however, find it really hard to get into and stay invested in the overall plot. I cared about the main character and her healing journey, but I didn't care about the side characters at all and didn't connect to the location enough to be invested in the plot about improving tourism in the area.

This is ultimately just a peaceful and calming watch, and I know lots of people will enjoy it for that, but I think it was just too slow for me.

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Cool fight scenes

Very cool swordplay choreography and engaging political intrigue. I will always love a fight-to-the-death survival genre, and the production quality and set design are really good

I do think, however, that this didn't turn out to be as interesting as I hoped? There are a LOT of characters, some of which I cared more about than others, and even though there are only 6 episodes, the pacing actually feels pretty slow; between fight scenes there's some long conversations and aimless walking to the next place.

I'll still be tuning into season 2 though, and I hope we have a big confrontation and more political mystery.

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A lesser adaptation, but great at doing its own thing

If you were comparing this to the original, this does some things better and some things worse.

What this one did do better than the original I think, was setting up the romance much earlier. It's there in the original but so subtle I think a lot of people had trouble adjusting to it (not me though, I loved it lol). Here, they make the relationship much more obvious from the beginning, and while I wish we had the longer screentime for their development, I liked the clarity of it. The little bout of the SML "liking" the FL is also removed, which I thought was a relief, as it both gave the second relationship more time to develop, but also strengthened the main relationship by setting the FL's relationship with the two MLs apart.

The shorter runtime means they cut out a lot of slice-of-life moments that really brought the friendships and familial relationships to life. The third friends, while technically unnecessary, really rounded out the group and show's commentary on motherhood. A few things feel just a bit watered down, like the ML going to Seoul instead of actually abroad, or the SML's childhood backstory of almost having to give up school and work in the fields, leading to the FL's father taking him in.

Now, all comparisons aside, I think this drama was pretty great! The pacing and time jump feel natural, and it's really good at giving all the leads equal weight with their emotional stories. The family is by far the best part of the story, especially the dad; there are lot of scenes that will tug at your heartstrings, and the conclusion is sweet and satisfying.

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Less "second-chance romance" and more about "closure"

I really liked the slow and quiet vibes of this drama, but it does it so much at the cost of stagnating the plot, and I think I ended up being really confused.

The first few episodes were really great; I think the leads have great chemistry and were really cute in the high school scenes. They were both quiet characters but had distinct personalities, so it was nice to see two little introverts fall in love. I also just liked that none of their family situations were spelled out for us — we learned about them, slowly, through dialogue.

After the leads met again, I still really liked their chemistry. They both did yearning really well, and once again, the quiet vibes really let us just wallow in their lingering feelings.

As the episodes went on, I STILL really liked the quietness, but it became pretty obvious that the plot was missing movement, and the vagueness started working against the drama's favor — it became really confusing what events had happened in the past for the leads to get to this point, and when they were fighting or upset I wasn't really sure why.

I'd gone into this one thinking it was going to be a second-chance romance, and I kept thinking that once they promised that they would try to be more accommodating and not let distance and timing be an obstacle. But then, in the last two episodes, the leads barely have ANY screentime together, and it became pretty obvious the show was going, instead, for the lesson "sometimes people just can't be together even if they love each other, but it's important to end things warmly."

So, spoilers for those who haven't seen this yet: it's NOT a happy ending. I don't mind this, honestly, but I think the show took far too long to decide what it was trying to do.

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Well-written but slow

It's objectively well-written but I'm not sure if I really connected to the characters on an emotional level.

The pilot episode is fantastic and the overarching plot is really interesting, and it's supported by characters that are very layered. The show is supported by extremely strong performances — especially Lee Seung-gi's.

While I think the premise is interesting, the pacing did feel a little slow at times. There are some good twists, but the big whodunnit seems pretty obvious from the start, and we're just waiting to get there. I'm not sure if the show needed to be stretched into 20 episodes. Perhaps it would've worked better as a weekly watch, but there wasn't quite the "race against time" tension that I wanted.

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