I liked some of this a lot, the characters the ML's acting which was more nuanced, the colour grading but the plot what there was of it was episodic, and the script a bit like a 1960's French film where people talk a lot, pose a lot and little happens that you can remember. All the other characters on this almost static road journey where just time fillers and most of what they said and did didn't add anything to the narrative, they were just there. The main characters were interesting but watching two people bicker in an out a relationship like a stream of consciousness, needs a decent plot to hang it on. In food terms the plate looked lovely but it was half empty and not filling. My favourite character,Ern the grumpy princess.
The problem is you trying to find realism in fiction.
I think a lot has to do with changing work patterns for women. I managed to have a professional job and have children but the expectations of society are that women should be able everything especially is Asian societies, where as in UK at least most women will not put up with the in laws telling them how they should run their lives. My mother and MIL never worked outside the home, their role was home and children, my grandmother had eight children and was exhausted by the time she was sixty and retired to her couch. I have decided that you have to either have lots of money then you can buy in child care, or be so used to having little money that having children makes no difference to your lifestyle. The squeeze is the middle where people want a lifestyle with choice and maintain an image but can not afford it with children.
I used to work in a private school and we often got Asian students who had come with 'problems' most of the time once they settled in the problem disappeared, because there was just less stress about academic results and they could have a social life within the school.
I think I am lucky because my husband and I have the same attitude to life, we work together and are not in to buying new things. If people are judged by their cars we are definitely paupers.
The problem is you trying to find realism in fiction.
In the UK so we are used to drama introducing social issues through drama, from school age, it can still be entertaining with social realism. As K and C drama is not my culture I have sought information about why certain story lines are repeated, and the marriage 'industry' in Korea and the obsession on status and money to form a basis of a relationship seems to be normal. In Japan there are also fake couples who live together as house mates just to stop their parents from match making, which seems extreme.
The problem is you trying to find realism in fiction.
I think when drama addresses something like MH or just general health it has a some responsibility to depict in a fairly realistic way. When my daughter was admitted to hospital, she was about eight, she wasn't frightened because even children's drama depicts health settings in a realistic way. I have worked in MH and I have had friends and family with MH issues and one of greatest barriers to treatment is the not seeking treatment because it seen as failure, that you can not cope Korea has one of the highest suicide rates and death from alcoholic liver disease, in the world, because MH problems. Drama has started to tackle bullying, and made it a talking point. This drama was just really lazy writing and lack research. It is perhaps of it's time.
TBH most of K and C drama is not realistic because in reality no one wants to get married, just to expensive emotionally and financially.
One of my favourites because it is realistic about relationships and how people change over time. You could argue that one character is self centred , covered by charm or he did not realise that what he wanted was not what he needed. The other ML learns his own value and he can not change the other ML. It is so well acted you see every emotion in both their faces.
I watched the first two minutes and realised that it was just cr!p. Should perhaps have been a vertical where the dodgy sets and acting are at least not so obvious. The question is why did they buy the rights/make it?
I used to work somewhere were all the staff would chatter after lunch in a huge lounge, and I would zone out with my eyes shut and listen to peoples conversation.s If you were lucky you hear the fully story or someone else would fill you in the bits you had missed, the other side of the story and sometimes it was just which supermarket was cheaper. So in a way this is more like real life, that you never get a whole story in one chunk, there is a lot of filler. A Winter Sun Wakes the Wind IMO also has that quality but I think the OST in that holds it together in a theme. If must have been difficult to adapt from the novel.
I liked this a lot,. Male relationships are often built on competition and one up man ship , even if they are friends and it's mainly explored in aggressive way in drama. I think it was one of the few dramas where their past, I completely so done with school life, explained how competition became their language. It is just a shame they had to fall back on the office tropes, but one of the better ones.
I just think there may be a hint of a proper story line, and then it's gone. I am watching it like background music, I like the general look, sometimes you think that bit was good, and then it wanders somewhere else, a bit like a jazz rife that doesn't hold the tune. I think I understand the characters, I like them, there are adult emotions there, its just lacks focused direction IMO.
In the end you didn't care about any of them, and I think that is the reason for the MDL rating, is it failed…
When I give a review score I always look at the whole production, and take in to account my bias. I watched this with my husband, so there are things that I found lacking but as a male viewer he was more interested in the doing, I am perhaps more interested in motivation.
The production, and acting were excellent, but the plot was simplistic, but most action movies have simple plots, what makes them engaging is often a character you find or you can see some glimmer of humanity or is just likeable.For my taste it didn't have it, but it, but that didn't completely out weigh it;s merits. Saying just because I didn't like something has no value or of poor quality is like saying because you do not like chocolate cake the whole cake is terrible, when someone else likes chocolate. As for giving marks, everyone has there own system, because I used to dressage competition score that is always in my mind, and use a full range. Basically in drama terms you get marks that IMO for things that you have completed. If I am undecided perhaps plus or minus .5 FEI For each movement, the respective marking scale looks something like this: 0 = not performed 1 = very bad 2 = bad 3 = fairly bad 4 = insufficient 5 = sufficient 6 = satisfactory 7 = quite good 8 = good 9 = very good 10 = excellent Basically for just turning up and completing the task you get a 5, but you are aiming for 8's plus.
Again something that started off really well, was funny, characters that you could understand, and then it literally lost the plot. It was about 4 eps too long so to fill time the script wandered and strung it out to fill time. The actors were all great, the basic idea was interesting and yet by over explaining, elaborating to squeeze at much time out of it as possible they managed to remove any excitement which was in the first episodes had from the last 5 eps.
Not read the source, but it feels like they made it bland for regular consumption and didn't replace what they took out with anything else, so it ended up beige. The only funny bit I found was Kaji Akihiro mental gymnastics over wanting some who looks like a dork.
Liked it, and the ideas that were behind it, it was all just a bit maudlin, and self centred. In the scale of life's woes they would be lucky if the got a 6/10 but like a man with man flu they were intent on making the most of it, not terrible people but stuck like Pigpen in Charlie Brown under permanent cloud of grey from their own inertia.
I wanted to rate this so much higher because I can see the effort that went in to it but the script and direction were just too clunky for me. I would see something that worked and then it just didn't again. The last episode ended you are a bit of a tourist travelogue, literally pedestrian. I also think when you have a fantasy drama, if you explain too much and try and explain something as if it has a basis in fact critical thinking takes over and completely destroys what ever suspension of disbelief you have. I think cutting and editing 2 eps out would have made it much less wandery. As usaul the actors did their best with what they were given.
Its a bit of a comfort watch for me, nothing to extreme although the ex, the friend and the mother should be shut in a room and let them shout at each other, so they can vent their spleen and no one else has to listen. Its shot like a cheap soap, the sets look generic , the balcony you expect someone to walk past, and the camera work mainly many flat. I think the actors are getting the most out of the script and doing a good job. It reminds me of Perfect Marriage Revenge in that if it is a basically solid script with good actors it will find an audience.
I was having trouble with this until I accepted this has no real plot, Its like a stream in real time of a relationship where you see just about every bit of nonsense that people do to each other at the start of a relationship that makes no sense at all to anyone else because they are living in their own eco system and anything or one outside of that bubble is back round noise.
I often complain that writers seem to think that love is like crossing a sofa, that you way up your options, will this person fit in to your life, this is the first time I have actually seen writing and direction that tries to show the complete obsession that you have at the start of a relationship. That everything about the person consumes you, the bickering and making up are a part of development that can make a couple last, until you know how the person breathes, and the air around them tells you what they are thinking. From the outside it looks like a mess or at least improbable it will work, but often does.
I liked for once that we had a FL who had different sides to her character, but why does the women always have to be seen as smarty groomed , and almost emotionless all the time to be seen as competent or worthy of respect. For a women to appear competent it doesn't mean all the male characters have to be bad, silly or shades of grey. They stripped every vestige of masculinity from the ML, the excuse he was trained by three sister and his mother, which in an Asian household is probably unlikely but added the trope that women are loud, over bearing, and interfering. In the end the ML was like a blank page, where arguments about temperature seemed his main opinion. Usually if you work in the same company as your partner you are transferred to another branch especially if it has anything to do with money. I was just disappointed because of lot of it was good actors wasted, with what was the basis of a good idea. Competent, but forgettable.
7 
1 
2 
All the other characters on this almost static road journey where just time fillers and most of what they said and did didn't add anything to the narrative, they were just there.
The main characters were interesting but watching two people bicker in an out a relationship like a stream of consciousness, needs a decent plot to hang it on. In food terms the plate looked lovely but it was half empty and not filling.
My favourite character,Ern the grumpy princess.
My mother and MIL never worked outside the home, their role was home and children, my grandmother had eight children and was exhausted by the time she was sixty and retired to her couch.
I have decided that you have to either have lots of money then you can buy in child care, or be so used to having little money that having children makes no difference to your lifestyle. The squeeze is the middle where people want a lifestyle with choice and maintain an image but can not afford it with children.
I used to work in a private school and we often got Asian students who had come with 'problems' most of the time once they settled in the problem disappeared, because there was just less stress about academic results and they could have a social life within the school.
I think I am lucky because my husband and I have the same attitude to life, we work together and are not in to buying new things. If people are judged by their cars we are definitely paupers.
As K and C drama is not my culture I have sought information about why certain story lines are repeated, and the marriage 'industry' in Korea and the obsession on status and money to form a basis of a relationship seems to be normal.
In Japan there are also fake couples who live together as house mates just to stop their parents from match making, which seems extreme.
When my daughter was admitted to hospital, she was about eight, she wasn't frightened because even children's drama depicts health settings in a realistic way.
I have worked in MH and I have had friends and family with MH issues and one of greatest barriers to treatment is the not seeking treatment because it seen as failure, that you can not cope
Korea has one of the highest suicide rates and death from alcoholic liver disease, in the world, because MH problems.
Drama has started to tackle bullying, and made it a talking point. This drama was just really lazy writing and lack research. It is perhaps of it's time.
TBH most of K and C drama is not realistic because in reality no one wants to get married, just to expensive emotionally and financially.
You could argue that one character is self centred , covered by charm or he did not realise that what he wanted was not what he needed. The other ML learns his own value and he can not change the other ML.
It is so well acted you see every emotion in both their faces.
So in a way this is more like real life, that you never get a whole story in one chunk, there is a lot of filler. A Winter Sun Wakes the Wind IMO also has that quality but I think the OST in that holds it together in a theme.
If must have been difficult to adapt from the novel.
I think it was one of the few dramas where their past, I completely so done with school life, explained how competition became their language.
It is just a shame they had to fall back on the office tropes, but one of the better ones.
I am watching it like background music, I like the general look, sometimes you think that bit was good, and then it wanders somewhere else, a bit like a jazz rife that doesn't hold the tune.
I think I understand the characters, I like them, there are adult emotions there, its just lacks focused direction IMO.
The production, and acting were excellent, but the plot was simplistic, but most action movies have simple plots, what makes them engaging is often a character you find or you can see some glimmer of humanity or is just likeable.For my taste it didn't have it, but it, but that didn't completely out weigh it;s merits.
Saying just because I didn't like something has no value or of poor quality is like
saying because you do not like chocolate cake the whole cake is terrible, when someone else likes chocolate.
As for giving marks, everyone has there own system, because I used to dressage competition score that is always in my mind, and use a full range. Basically in drama terms you get marks that IMO for things that you have completed. If I am undecided perhaps plus or minus .5
FEI
For each movement, the respective marking scale looks something like this:
0 = not performed
1 = very bad
2 = bad
3 = fairly bad
4 = insufficient
5 = sufficient
6 = satisfactory
7 = quite good
8 = good
9 = very good
10 = excellent
Basically for just turning up and completing the task you get a 5, but you are aiming for 8's plus.
It was about 4 eps too long so to fill time the script wandered and strung it out to fill time. The actors were all great, the basic idea was interesting and yet by over explaining, elaborating to squeeze at much time out of it as possible they managed to remove any excitement which was in the first episodes had from the last 5 eps.
The last episode ended you are a bit of a tourist travelogue, literally pedestrian. I also think when you have a fantasy drama, if you explain too much and try and explain something as if it has a basis in fact critical thinking takes over and completely destroys what ever suspension of disbelief you have.
I think cutting and editing 2 eps out would have made it much less wandery. As usaul the actors did their best with what they were given.
Its shot like a cheap soap, the sets look generic , the balcony you expect someone to walk past, and the camera work mainly many flat. I think the actors are getting the most out of the script and doing a good job. It reminds me of Perfect Marriage Revenge in that if it is a basically solid script with good actors it will find an audience.
Its like a stream in real time of a relationship where you see just about every bit of nonsense that people do to each other at the start of a relationship that makes no sense at all to anyone else because they are living in their own eco system and anything or one outside of that bubble is back round noise.
I often complain that writers seem to think that love is like crossing a sofa, that you way up your options, will this person fit in to your life, this is the first time I have actually seen writing and direction that tries to show the complete obsession that you have at the start of a relationship. That everything about the person consumes you, the bickering and making up are a part of development that can make a couple last, until you know how the person breathes, and the air around them tells you what they are thinking. From the outside it looks like a mess or at least improbable it will work, but often does.
For a women to appear competent it doesn't mean all the male characters have to be bad, silly or shades of grey. They stripped every vestige of masculinity from the ML, the excuse he was trained by three sister and his mother, which in an Asian household is probably unlikely but added the trope that women are loud, over bearing, and interfering.
In the end the ML was like a blank page, where arguments about temperature seemed his main opinion. Usually if you work in the same company as your partner you are transferred to another branch especially if it has anything to do with money.
I was just disappointed because of lot of it was good actors wasted, with what was the basis of a good idea.
Competent, but forgettable.