Reviews

We should all be entitled to an Arthur Chen and his big snake watching over us. (it's ok if you don't get it)

It's hard to ignore the limited special effects, to put it diplomatically.
You have to be really into celestial palace intrigues between millennial beings in an bad RPG landscape. I lasted until halfway through. 17 out of 33 episodes, no less. The cardboard sets, the ridiculous superpowers, the scheming between clans I didn't know existed five minutes ago, death but actually no I'm coming back as a spirit and I'm alive again (are you elves, actually ?), all of that got the better of my patience.

Wang Yinglu is exceptional, naturally. In 'Twelve Letters', that same year, she played a completely different character with great intensity. She's a superb actress. And she undoubtedly deserves better roles than that of a servant to a capricious god.

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(Service message : Not a binge-watching series, there's too little action. You can even skip an episode or two without any problem)

I'm not sure I agree with the whole parallel between being a fan of an idol and being a lesbian. If you want to talk about coming out, do it, for real. What's with these jokes about colleagues judging her for being a fan of this singer ? I imagine it's well-intentioned, but it doesn't have the right effect at all. Anyway, let's move on. At least the character who 'discovers' it, Ryan Gold, has no problem with two women being in a relationship. (Thank goodness. Expectations are so low, we're easily satisfied.)

Other than that, it's funny and cute, thanks to Park Min-young. How could it be otherwise ? But everyone is adorable. Kim Bo-ra and her little surprised grimaces, her futile pouts, her sweetness. The judo brother at the beginning embodies a gentle and benevolent masculinity, which we love here at the editorial office. (me) But he becomes unbearable and jealous after. I choose to ignore this whole "we're not family" thing, which I don't understand. The editorial team approves of the shots of him in the shower, even if their usefulness in the story remains to be seen. Well done, judo.
Kim Jae-wook, always too handsome to be honest. I'm wary of men like him. He kisses his girlfriend on the nose, just look at how indecent this man is !
Cha Si-an, what a shame, such a kind character, it's scandalous. A pure, innocent little kitten. I am outraged. His place is in a museum among the Greco-Roman sculptures.

Every episode I watched was under codeine, due to the frequency of my migraines. It passes the time. In the dark with the sound turned down low, religiously, tinnitus at its worst. Occasional dizziness.

PS: The fortune teller who speaks French, as a good French person who respects himself (and therefore hates other French people), I can say that this person is talking nonsense. Random words.

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"For the rich, mistakes are just bad memories. For us, they're our downfall."

At first, it's hard to warm to this erratic inspector... one minute he's threatening a forensic colleague with a knife, the next he's being attentive to a victim. A truly detestable cop, in other words. (pleonasm)
Then, the cop and the judge agree to sentence a starving man to death, justice in action.
Anyway, what an incredible coincidence that all these people find themselves 20 years later in the same place, at the same trial. Chance works in mysterious ways. Chance, of course. *wink wink* Like the fact that everyone is wearing exactly the same black raincoat. (at least six different people !)

Despite this incredible start, the suspense in this series is phenomenal. You just can't stop watching ; you want to know what happens next. It's really well done. But as usual, it's pure police propaganda and a plea to abolish laws that supposedly protect criminals too much. Classic right-wing scam.

More than once I thought I had figured out who did what (no spoilers), but no ! my immense cosmic brain did not foresee that right after that, they would do the magical twist of these Korean series. And then another. And another. Hold on tight, it's going to twist. The more obvious it seems, the more it will be turned upside down. Like in Mouse, it throws out bits and pieces of events, continues, then comes back, adds an element, and calls everything into question. Only evil geniuses write scripts like this.

It may sound amusing when put like that, but ultimately it isn't. There is suspense, but not for our amusement. It is a terrible story that echoes many true stories about adoption, orphanages and abuse. It is notable that revenge is not glorified. No one emerges victorious from this plot. Strangely the series ends on a hopeful note : caring for the victims before punishing the perpetrators.

Ps : Memories that come back after being repressed by the subconscious are certainly very useful when telling a story with multiple layers, but they are above all scientifically questionable. First of all, the so called subconscious is psy nonsense. Secondly, memory is not a hard drive with videos ready to play ; it is information that we gather and organise according to our personal logic, constantly reconstructing or forgetting. That's my nitpicky or annoying side, sorry.

In no particular order :
-Taecyeon can wear a cap and a mask, but his big protruding ears will always give him away. Poor guy.
-All the phone conversations sound like a voiceover from heaven, which is a disturbing choice.
-Let's salute the work of Park Ji-bin, the vampire who manages to pass himself off as a K-drama actor with brio. Anne Rice has gone too far.
-The little song during the flashbacks : very annoying. Never again.

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It starts with characters who are immediately endearing, situations with potential, beautiful pastel-toned photography, truly a sight to behold. Even though it's visually stunning, even though the two lead actresses are excellent, I have to say that a polite boredom crept over me with each passing episode. Kim Da-mi, always in gentle roles, and Shin Ye-eun, always with natural authority, explore their friendship. At first, I imagined it would be more, but our expectations are quickly dampened : they are good friends, period.

When you see all these subplots piling up without being developed, it's a very bad sign. Pure filler masquerading as a slice of life. From episode 3 onwards, I skipped scenes that seemed of dubious interest to me. We have two main female characters, and their friendship or relationship with each other should be at the heart of the story. Not some stupid love triangle with a guy who isn't interested.
The show takes the viewers' time for granted far too much. Between The Murky Stream and this, it's definitely not a great year for Shin Ye-eun.

Also, the pop version of Bach's music, played on the piano, may have its charm for some people, no doubt, and good for them, but not for me. I prefer to listen to Bach himself, if you don't mind, dear composer.

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2 AM Regrets and Social Media Scares......

As someone who loves horror, I feel terrified watching this series. Not because of the story, but I guess because I watched it around 2 a.m. every single night, which turned out to be a very bad time to enjoy this series...

The story was actually good; now I have to remove my birthdate from my social media to hide it. It's actually scary knowing the day you were born can become a black magic advantage for some rituals.

My problem with this series is Thup's character. I watched Pooh for the first time in Pit Babe, but for some reason, I still feel like he is acting as Charlie rather than being Thup for this series.

Another thing is the way they wrapped up the series, which made me fast-forward through as many scenes as possible. There are thousands of ways to wrap up this series, but they chose the same way over and over again.

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To tell the truth, I don't think I'm particularly fond of the police. This series reminds me of that with a certain acuity. Cops are detestable. We don't talk to them, we have nothing to say to them, we don't let them in, we haven't done anything wrong. They will always find something to make our lives miserable, so let's not make it easy for them. I was absolutely, totally, entirely on the side of this mother and her falsely mysterious sidekick. What poverty drives people to do, though... The theme is less about drugs than about the injustice of this world where being poor condemns you to death, where being honest makes you lose your job, where family only exists when everything is going well. The cycle of economic and social violence ensures that those at the bottom stay at the bottom.
The war on drugs is above all a war on the poor and minorities. And doctors who snitch to the police are no better. And come on, Eun-soo's boss goes in the bin with the rest. We give you a little power, you abuse it, you filthy bosses.

A solid series, albeit a little slow. Some scenes beat around the bush too much, and there's an overuse of the trick of cutting a scene dishonestly to make us believe something else. (I know what I mean)
The ending leaves a bitter taste. Punishing a character once was clearly not enough, they had to insist because, you see, drugs are bad, oh so bad, not good ! Bring on season 2, quickly. I'm in.

However, it's nice to see a male-female duo without any romantic tension. If you see one, you're part of the problem. (What nonsense I can spout)

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The song "danse avec moi, jusqu'à la fin du jour, dis-moi je t'aime" (in English : dance with me until the end of the day, tell me you love me) during the operation at the beginning, the discomfort !

The staging, the sterile atmosphere, the rain, it's beautiful. They're not messing with us. Shoulder-mounted cameras, wide shots, transitions from one character to another with a simple movement, they know what they're doing here.
But they need to stop slapping the main character around, it's not acceptable. At the beginning, she spends all her time screaming and exploding with rage, then gets slapped once or twice, we can't keep writing and filming that.
Getting fired because you're infamous is not very credible in this environment. There's no shortage of nasty, self-important doctors. Okay, she kills bad guys on the side, in her spare time... But who hasn't [deleted by moderator] ? Those two are a perfect match. Unfortunately for me, I don't really understand the nature of their relationship: mentor-protégée, enemies-allies. It's too implicit for my little autistic brain. (It wouldn't be the first time.) In the end, I really don't understand why they're doing all this ; the reasons given don't seem coherent.

In terms of storytelling, this series could have been a film. It's obvious. There's too much repetition when everything is already well established in the first episode. It only lasts eight episodes, yet it feels too long. We're stuck at the same stage instead of bringing in new elements or developing the characters.

There's far too much shouting in this series. And I also hate it when we're shown a scene and then the next second it's all cancelled out because it was just a character's imagination. Stop doing that.

Ps : The policeman bears a resemblance to gérald darmanin (writing his name disgusts me), the French Minister of Justice, who admitted in an interview that he exchanged sex with poor women for social housing, using his position as an elected official. We call him "il ne faut pas dire: le sale vi*leur" (in english : don't say: the dirty r*pist). Never bothered by the law, of course, that's France for you, a country where the parties that lose elections stay in power and criminals become ministers. He also makes disgusting mouth noises in interviews, by the way ! like the policeman. This man quotes fascists in his speeches and admires Napoleon's anti-Semitic laws, but strangely enough, no journalist ever asks him about it.
Sorry, I had to get that off my chest. I hate him. A small brain tumour wouldn't hurt him, with all due respect.

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The old CEO has a magnificent Mondrian above his bed, one of his trees, grey, blue and black. Sublime. And a very, very beautiful Soulages in the living room, one of his lithographs, I believe.

Eat the Rich, the series. And on the side of the poor, unlike unbearable series like Succession. Here, it's enjoyable. Often funny. (Except for the strawberry guy's friend, he was never funny. I don't know if it's the actor, but you need to stop that right now, sir, there's only one Johnny Lever.) We love it when a poor girl that no one respects or notices finds herself at the centre of everything and shows all those jerks what she's capable of.

An excellent comedy thriller series, sometimes pushing the boundaries of what is morally acceptable (in episode 4, the heroine goes too far), but Baek Hye-ji is irresistible, like a cat playing with its prey.
When you're going through a rough patch, this kind of short series does you a world of good.

Nevertheless, we are once again faced with the trope of the only rich person in the world who does good around them. If these people really did that, they would make sure they no longer existed.
The police spend all their time following the news and coming to the homes of the rich to arrest them.
Psychiatry is shown for what it is : a tool at the service of the powerful. The slightest problem and quickly : it's my mental health, I'm not responsible. The poor don't get this preferential treatment. On the contrary, we are locked up with this same scam. (As a disabled person, I maybe have a little history with psychiatry)

The series surprised me with some beautiful framing at crucial moments ; the director knows what they're doing. In terms of plot twists, it was always entertaining and surprising. A fine piece of work. Well done, Korean craftsmanship ! Finally, the music wasn't bad at all, composed entirely using Spitfire Audio VSTi, I recognised it, nothing escapes me.
The editorial team (me) solemnly approves a potential season 2.

PS: As for the grandpa, I understood right away, thanks to my cosmic brain : the clues were so subtle that there was no doubt even without paying close attention.

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I wanted to see this series for Lee Ho-Jung because the two times I've come across her this year, she's played roles that were sacrificed or rather sabotaged by the plot. And here I am again with the same cast as the very (very) good ‘As You Stood by’ (2025), incredible. That Kim Nam-gil, what a man.

Here is a western set against the backdrop of the Japanese occupation of Gando/Jiandao, a historically significant place. Joseon and China were fighting over the region when Korea was annexed by Japan, which encouraged many Korean migrants to settle there. The Chinese saw them as cheap labour, while the Japanese wanted to take control of the region and then Manchuria. In defiance of their own treaty imposed on China, they decreed that the Koreans were under their ‘protection’ and logically sent in their police and then their army to ‘protect’ them. Fascists always lie. The Japanese claimed to be victims, notably of an attack (in Hunchun), and ordered their soldiers to destroy the Korean independence army (led by the anarchist Jwa-jin Kim and the communists of the future DPRK led by Hong Beom-do). And so came the Gando massacre. Twenty-seven days.
Twenty-seven days of killing civilians only, at least 5,000, certainly more, and every horror imaginable. A crime against humanity. In fact, revenge against the armed resistance fighters who had won the battle of Qingshanli a few days earlier. (October 1920, 1500 japanese soldiers defeated)
This is the context chosen by this K-drama.

So... The tone of the series, half comedy, half action, disarms me. I don't understand. All the reviews talk about the chemistry between Seohyun and Hojung. Such a heavy and serious subject, and that's all there is to say about it ? We're missing something somewhere. The context is virtually non-existent, just a backdrop. We're treating the premices of a war crime like this as a playground ? Playing cowboys ? With his guitar and whistling ? Robbing stagecoaches ? Excuse me ? Is that the story they want to tell us ?
In fact, the plot is very basic and unsurprising. The first episode (boring as hell but taking malicious pleasure in showing shocking scenes) gives everything away, we know everything. And the action scenes spice up this utterly uninteresting storyline.

In reality, we should see poor people working themselves to death, resistance movements organising themselves, but here we don't see anyone lacking food or even just working... it's almost like a holiday ! We are shown, of course, a few farmers in their small fields, with their children playing happily. Gando is still a bit like Korea surviving despite everything, isn't it ? But, excuse me, it was a region in the midst of industrialisation. They choose to show us the love of the land, the work of the land. It's not innocent. The Koreans who were sent there, they worked in factories and lived in Japanese colonies.

The series say that what precipitates the events leading to the massacres is the personal vendetta of a Korean enlisted in the Japanese army against his former slave, who has become a bandit. He led the Japanese to the scene to take revenge on one man. It was almost against his will that he provoked the deadly escalation. He just loves law and order. At one time he rebelled because the Japanese did not consider him their equal in the army... That was his problem in life. (episode 7)
This rewriting of history, which relegates the fake Hunchun attack to the background (mentioned in passing in the middle of the last episode) and completely erases the left-wing (anarchist and communist) and Protestant (Shinminhoe) guerrilla movements, as well as the Chinese presence, leaves me speechless.

I know why one made that choice, that rewrite. Out of nationalism, we prefer to see a band of merry bandits who love their country and kill Japanese people, rather than the reality : the Korean resistance on the ground was not led by nationalists, and that will never be said or shown ; we talk about "seditious Joseon". True apoliticals. An apolitical revolution, but still quite far to the right of the spectrum...
The nationalist government, that of the Korean elites, the one that would effortlessly take power in 1945 and imprison some resistance fighters, was in Washington, not in Gando. They were rich people organised around the future dictator of Korea, Syngman Rhee. (A quick look at his Wikipedia page is enough to see what kind of nasty piece of work he was).

This is a tale where those who head to Gando, a land of lawlessness, unite as one to protect the homeland of the Koreans. The story is a prelude to the Gando massacre.
We can try to protect ourselves from criticism by saying that it's a fairy tale, but it bears all the ideological hallmarks of nationalist propaganda and has a name : revisionism.

Ps : I'm not just giving my opinion, I'm adding verified historical facts.
And as a pre-emptive response : no, I am not a fan of North Korea. It is an authoritarian and dangerous regime where people literally disappear. I am simply recalling proven and verifiable events relating to the struggles for independence.

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Should be a psychological thriller

It’s a fun series, the actors have excellent chemistry, and the story flows well enough, despite the first few episodes being a bit stiff.

The problem is that the narrative becomes somewhat repetitive and even forgettable, which is a shame because episode 7 is incredible.

And this shows that the series would be amazing if it were a suspense BL. The entire plotline of the obsessed fan who wants to destroy their relationship at all costs is simply perfect.

It would be a much more interesting and unique story within the BL universe. The series desperately needed a more original plot that actually explored these points better.

Because unfortunately, Gi Haneul's amnesia isn't strong enough to drive the narrative, and the series tries to fill that gap with excellent kiss scenes and a Yeo Sae Byeok desperate to win him back.

But something is missing, and that something is the madness, the mystery, and the flavor of a psychological thriller.

It's a good series to pass the time, but the script is shaky, the characters are a bit shallow, the motivations are poorly presented, and the technical aspects—direction, cinematography, and acting—though decent, aren't surprising.

A little more courage would have made this series catch fire.

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Power corrupts : an illustration. If there was any doubt, the very ending confirms it.

A masterfully crafted political and spy thriller. And above all, a work of great literary quality : the author, Chung Seo-kyung, has written the screenplays for five films by Park Chan-wook. All the elements come together beautifully, keeping us hooked from start to finish. And we navigate grey areas, the ideal decision for these themes. Several times, our protagonists are faced with choices where only the lesser evil seems to be the solution, and all the suspense lies in how they find another way.

The two main characters already have a whole life behind them and strong personalities. It's nice to see people who are solid and know how to set their boundaries. Whether you agree with their decisions or not, you want to see what happens next, to see how they evolve. Some reversals border on grandiloquence, but we accept that. There's constant talk of reunification, given the number of spies in your country, it looks like it's already happened, guys.

"Do you like Proust, madam ?" The most beautiful question in the world. "Ah yes, the madeleine." The worst answer in the world.

Damn the chaebols.

Ps : Episode 3 shows an attack in Paris in 2008, which is pure fiction. Two attacks took place that year, but not here. (the work of pathetic fascists, by the way)
Ps2 : For those with a phobia of telephones, this series is a nightmare, as the phones never stop ringing and vibrating. It stressed me out.
Ps3 : In the last episode, at 41 minutes 29 seconds, the music is a quote from ‘Camille’, Georges Delerue's score for Godard's Contempt. My question is : why ?

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