Big yikes...

Just from watching the first 5 episodes the story was too thin and I was wondering how this will keep going for 103 episodes. It seemed impossible. The answer became apparent 20 episodes later.

These relationships were seriously fucked up and what made them frustrating is that the characters over complicated everything on themselves to create "the" story. That's one of the worst ways to write a story. Everyone is fucking everyone, everyone is pregnant, everyone is lying, everyone is swapping DNA tests, everyone is swapping partners back and forth, everyone got a baby, everyone is the father and everyone is a sociopath. At the end, everyone hanging around with each other like nothing happened after all the vile acts against humanity and the nastiness they went through. I can't even!! Both the writing and the actors failed to show remorse.

Finished the drama and the frustration and disgust didn't wash off. To get through this, you'll need a strong stomach.

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Uhh...

Oh god! It's an amnesia drama, the most intense kind too. It feels like the humans who worked on this dram come from an alternate reality or a parallel universe. This drama by far had the highest concentration of "buffoonery" in any makjang out there. Zero chill, ridiculous over the top and a "bruh moment" every other scene. All in all, not in a good way because this is the only thing the drama had going on for it, that is to throw as much makjang elements as fast as possible. The writer/director were speed running any% no-loot the human brain tolerance to "bullshit receptivity". Anyway, wouldn't recommend.

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NAH.....

The drama must have a big identity crises since it couldn't decide between being a family drama or makjang, constantly switching even within the same episode. Right from the beginning, EPISODE 1, when one of the family members took picture of Ji Na's necklace and, for absolutely no logical reason, put it on the internet, I could already smell the fuming hot garbage the writers are about to create. Guess what? I was 100% correct. This drama tips heavily on the baboonish side of the makjang scale.

Although Uhm Jung Hwa did a great job, but it's impossible for me to view her as an evil character. I didn't like how she suddenly became evil for no reason from episode 12. We were initially presented by a strong independent Yoo Ji Na (Uhm Jung Hwa) but 15-20 episodes later the writers made her turn to a bag of dirt and completely ruined any build up she had.

The drama had a strange pacing, it changes weirdly every handful of episodes with the biggest change came from switch between episodes 30 & 31 which created a big gap and disconnect in the story. Speaking of switching and change, I think the switch of the female lead ruined the drama.
Jang Hee Jin is absolutely a great actress but she just didn't fit well in this case. They even went on to replace/recreate all of the flashback scenes.

Another form of change/switching came with the love interest which shamelessly switched three times. It was straight up disgusting watching Hae Dang being with one man while sobbing/begging/crying/caring/dreaming/lusting/bitching/loving/chasing/pitying/thirsting/craving/running around for another man. Despicable and uncomfortable to watch! On the other spectrum, Jung Hae Jin was absolutely the only "good" part about this drama and nothing else.

After being the nastiest humans ever to walk the earth, suddenly everyone became angelic and have the highest morale of any other human for the ending. Great writing! It feels like their budget was small, it was mostly filmed indoor between 2-3 family houses with very limited number of outdoor scenes. I feel sorry for this cast to be involved in this atrocious project. The drama that followed it after finishing serializing "Man in the Kitchen (2017)" was much better than this. Can't recommend this, barely 3/10 for the cast's sake.

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Bad...

This is the worst long-running drama I've seen from SBS usually they are serviceable, no wonder they canceled the time slot. It's really unfortunate that Choi Jung Yoon came back from 7 years hiatus for this awful project. This is one of the most brainsmooth stories in kdrama I've seen, absolutely mind numbing. This is the writer's first drama and it's showing big time. Amateur writing, cheap production, bad stylists and horrendous cast performance. There are kids shows better written than this, it's hard to believe a human wrote this. A production value from 20 years ago, awful lighting and sound design. These stylists need to be fired, look at the characters' faces, a thick mask of whatever make up they have is about to fall off. Finally the cast, which consists of 85% of unknowns who can't act and are always awkward. For the same reason, the few side stories we had were uninteresting and lacked and characterization. I think what contributed to the death of this drama the most is the lack of familiar faces, the size of the cast and the side stories.

Misleading poster, the redhead was only there for the first 25 episodes then turned to brunette/dark.

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Kinda watchable...

Don't watch it for the romance, this is 90% politics/business/drama and 10% romance. Most of the couples don't get together until around the ending. Speaking of the ending, last 15 episodes was a one big event that got stretched for way too goddamn long. The ending itself was really lame, this weak-ass ending isn't fitting for a 64 eps drama. Many characters didn't get a follow up or update at the end, like Soo Hyuk's mother and her love interest.

The drama also lacked consistency, its pace is all over the place especially the writing quality, as if there are more than one writer going against each other. Episodes 30 to 50 felt like a dry batch. The excessive time skips were another weak part of the drama and a prime example for how not to do a time-skip. Every time there was a skip the drama created a jarring big disconnect with its content and flow. The action/fighting scenes look too staged and artificial. The dramatic thunder clap sound effect radiates extreme cringe energy.

It's weird for Jung Hye's father to feel this entitled for a daughter he didn't raise for 30+ years. He was introduced around the end and his sole purpose was to create some tension with the baddies, another reason why this drama should have been only 50 eps. Speaking of female leads, imagine if the writers gave both female leads more than 1 singular brain cell! That would make the drama a bit more tolerable.

Cha Soo Hyuk (Lee Pil Mo) is the worst part about this drama, this pathetic leech of sub-human with severe inferiority complex and victim complex. He deserves a worse ending, how he ended up wasn't enough.

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Passable, I guess?

The opening scene is a teaser from episode 17, I hate when a drama pull this kind of stuff. It's okay to tease a couple of episodes in advance but not a teaser from the ending. Speaking of the ending, the last two episodes were bad, they were leaning to heavily on old melodrama themes/cliches that doesn't work in the context of this drama. Most of the cast did a half-assed job, their performance came out as awkward and immature, especially from those who work in the campaign. The candidate's son Jang Sung Min was the worst character/actor in the dram, replace him with a stranger might be better.

Regarding the story and its events, there was no real big escalations that you might expect in a political focused drama, it was mostly the known generic jabs in a political context. They forced "In Yeong" and "Min Ki" plot line but then proceeded to brush it off aside without much regard. Their screen time appearance was very limited after that. The drama was passable at best.

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The Slipperiest Time Slip!

This drama turned out to be a reverse harem in disguise. A handful of princes with varied flavors happened to meet a mentally handicapped girl to start their quest of hunting this wild female from a different timeline. All of these princes have the edgiest troubled teens behaviors with a mix of daddy/mommy issues. Out of all of them, the male lead took the edge in being the ultimate dark and mysterious bad boy, literally. Zooming out, all of this was done for a trail of pathetic emotional baits with no substance, they were begging the viewers for pity points. The moment the female lead knew about them, she approached every single one with the mentality of "I can fix him". While the princes were intentionally irrecoverably broken by the writer to serve a purpose for the female lead, she equally had her own set of problems. Within the span of a few episodes she became weirdly too attached to all of them and going even further to offer sacrifices, while neglecting her brief arrival and the fact that she was transferred to the past, but I guess shirtless bois are irresistible. The romantic entanglements in general were agonizing to tolerate, it kept you wishing the worse for all of them. Although it was bad as is, but why did they decide to make it worse with each passing episode in the second half? It's just too painful knowing the writer is making fun of us. At least the cinematography was okay and I watched it on BluRay.

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Decent

It's a decent drama but a few things held it back. Inconsistent pacing was too obvious to ignore. The inconsistency carries on with the writing, sometimes they are strategic and smart while other times they throw themselves as a human shield, this is coming from the same army and the same leadership. I liked the leading cast they did a good job but I wish they put more effort into writing the character Yi Hyun. While the romance is a side thing, they could have given it more attention to let it mature and develop more appropriately or remove the romance altogether. Their encounters were scarce which made the high moments less impactful due to the lack of investment in their relationship. Anyway, the drama is one of the better historical ones.

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Lazy writing

The insane amount of plot conveniences ruined the drama and killed even the slightest potential it might had which made the writing seems abysmal. Not only it was stupid with every step along the way but it also removed the tension with any serious scene. Moreover, we were over fed the same repeated information like babies. Even if we were to disregard all of that, the pacing was terrible with a big empty gap of nothingness in the middle parts. None of the side cast were interesting enough to make the middle parts worthwhile. Aside from the first episode, there wasn't much appeal left.

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Interesting concept but fails to deliver

That was kinda boring. We are barely given information about the mystery, it's mostly a slice of life with loads of repeated scenes. The actually story is no bigger than a 2-3 hours movie. Almost nothing happens in the first 5 episodes, the story starts at episode 6 with tiny bits of small teasers every now and then. Most of the "previous life" story is condensed in episode 15 and half 16. At least it was nice visually.

On another note, I prefer to see Yoo Ah In in movies rather than long format dramas. He was also the main and the only highlight of this drama.

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Messy

It started with a lousy introduction that was too ambitious on paper and then began to jump between one plot after another until the end. There was a desperate need for a better coherent structure and pacing. The characters were more or less fine but, despite being one of the most important characters, the ghost lacked a better characterization to make her role more impactful. The last 1-2 episodes were fundamentally bad, their main purpose was to lay down a handful of new elements for an imaginary sequel. This is a bad common practice streaming services have been pulling since forever to keep hold of the viewers attention regardless if they were planning for a sequel or not. The only acceptable scenario for such a practice is to have a direct sequel to follow it. Anyway, the drama was very mediocre Sci-Fi with a handful of failures.

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To polish a turd

They tried to sprinkle in some fake scripted bland romance in the beginning but they forgot to add the chemistry to the mix and develop it gradually, so it ended up being too delayed to care about. The same thing can be said about the mystery once it dwindled, like it lost its mojo in a heartbeat. The trend continued until the end without ever recovering. To put it simply, the story was dead on arrival from all angles and salvaging it was near impossible. As if that wasn't enough, we had to endure it for 18 episodes. Which leaves us with the saddest part, the cast, specifically the leads. What a fine collection of disappointing soulless performances. I guess FL was kinda passable to a certain degree but the other trio boys were a lost cause.

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The Red Death

Some soundtracks were brilliant and went hard while other ones were pure rehashed garbage picked up from your local free-licensed store. However, the drama itself suffered from being painfully long-winded, with excessive and unnecessary long shots that reflected negatively on the cinematography. Especially when the chemistry was average at best. Plot-wise, it fell into the trap of being extremely formulaic, treading familiar ground seen in many dramas with the girl/prince trope. It didn't dare to try anything new or to spin its own twist. The male lead made the whole experience significantly uncomfortable and challenging, his personality didn't exude any attractive qualities in the slightest; in fact, I found his behavior to be quite repulsive, appalling and off-putting, catered exclusively to the fan-fic obsessed mindset, which may explains its ratings.

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Vampire Diaries

The poorly written prologue wasn't a good sign going into this drama. The leads didn't develop their relationship naturally, most of what we got to signify their romance was long dreamy stares. That's pure lazy writing. This what their romance was based off which made it hard to care about their romance, let alone their unmatched chemistry. If we were to ignore the romance, then we are left with the vampires which were equally lacking. The pacing of the storyline seemed uneven, resulting in moments of sluggishness followed by rushed progress. The bad guy barely showed up in the first half. Although I didn't expect much but the ending was just too boring.

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