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Could have been better
The trailer promised a feel-good story -A rich heir asks his struggling actress best friend to marry him so that his grandfather cannot have things in his way. Enters the good-looking, bit childish younger brother who falls head over heels for his to-be sister-in-law.
Enemies to lovers ...check
Good-looking hero, good-looking heroine...check
Girl in rags and a rich hero....check
It is like watching a Lee Min Ho drama served in a new bowl. The plot is the narrative of Korean dramas released this year are losing the plotline with the seventh episode. The narrative is going haywire and the director is forcefully dragging the story. Adapted from the webtoon of the same name, the story had a promising premise, but a loose adaptation format.
It is again fairy tale coincidences, excessive hardship running to a smooth life, and an impossible love enveloped with denial.
After historical fiction, Under the Queen's Umbrella, and the zombie story After School Duty, Moon Sang Min is back with a romantic comedy. His portrayal of Ji Han is careless and would have been better if he had been more focused. Jeon Jong Seo as Na Ah Jeong is an unnecessary flower girl. Her struggle is real as she is entangled in a triangle where the third angle does not exist. Kim Do Wan gave a warm performance in last year's Doona. His Lee Do Han is the only logical in the entire mess. His subtle yet confident delivery put sense into this fiasco. Park Ah In, Kwan Hae Hyo, and Bae Yoon Kyung add the needed motion to this story. The director could have used them better to make the storyline strong and entertaining.
The cameos in every alternate episode are only fun. You can not miss that out.
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Not impossible but they need to try harder
The FL has a breakout role in the film Burning. I jumped at the chance to see her in a proper drama series.The initial set up of her character was encouraging. Her character is hard working, resourceful and has a laser focus on her career. She might be down on her luck, but she has a backbone of steel. The potential for growth is writ large. So much so that I can overlook the tropey contract marriage/cohabitation plot if she is allowed to play to her strengths. Unfortunately, it is where the engine kinda stalled.
To wit, once the show simple premise is lay out for us, the FL's role actually diminished. She has flashes of brilliance but soon her role is overshadowed by the male lead aka Moon Sang-min. For half the series, she is the "meek" fiancée of the 2ML. At one stage, her character was forced to go into hiding and lay low. Not exactly the ideal setting for scene stealing performances.
To be fair, I don't have a problem with the acting of Moon. He is handsome and charismatic as ever. The show is pretty much his starrer. Our leads do have good chemistry and their on/off romance is what sustained my interest. However, the paper-thin plot needs more to make it work. So far, it is not much more than a cavalcade of tired tropes.
Alas, that memo didn't land on the right desk. Most characters are straight out of central casting. Side plots are tropey and boring. Antagonists are more meddling than evil. It is all so samey and predictable. Even the writer-nim recognised this. There are multiple references to "trashy drama” plots in dialogues. Self awareness . . I get it! Ha ha . . indeed.
Even when we are served a sugar hit just after the 3/4 mark. It was immediately followed by the ubiquitous breakup with not 1, not 2 but 3 lots of Noble Idiocy. Predictably, that send our leads straight to purgatory but served little other purpose.
This is further confirmed in the last EP when after a mandatory 1-year time skip, our leads threw themselves at each other within hours of a chance meeting. What is the point of the breakup? This leads to 15 mins of decent fan service and HEA endings for all concerned whether they are good, bad or just silly.
I am not saying the show is bad. It is quite watchable and entertaining at times but the wasted potentials just irks me.
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It a drama with whole lot of drama in it and it is uncessary
No Wonder this drama's rating went from 8.5 to 8.0 I think it'll go down further.The last 2 eps was really not needed, the break up doesn't even make sense. They did it after Ji Han's press conference and even after Do Han's press conference? So what they both did was useless in the end since it didn't solve anything between the leads. And after one year all of sudden ML realized everything and went back? I found it absurd. a whole lot of drama towards the end.
I don't know where was the boyfriend of Dohan. he was just a ghost in the entire drama? not being shown
The chemistry between the 2 brothers and the chemistry between ML and FL was ridiculous and I couldn't feel the friendship between DH and AJ . There were only two kiss scenes and in both there wasn't any chemistry and wasn't expressed well. The actors didn't do a good job.
what's with their costumes?? and FL's hair? her hairdo finally suited her in last eps. The bangs really didn't suit her. At least that could have been better.
This drama had more potential. It was great until half of the eps but later that it dragged too much without anything in it. The only thing that was great was OST. I loved it
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Increasingly awful nearing the final episode
The Good⌲ The FL actress is incredible. (11/10 pretty, 11/10 chic, 11/10 acting ability)
⌲ The cast overall is quite good. (though the ML seems outclassed to me)
⌲ In the early episodes, despite the makjang premise It's been a pretty chill drama with a lot of fun bickering between the leads.
⌲ No -meaningful- love triangles
The Neutral
⌲ The chemistry between the leads is not bad, not amazing.
⌲ Lee Do Han (the actor did a good job, but it's a weird character & the whole premise of coming home from America makes no sense, if I were gay I would have never done that.)
⌲ The romantic progress between the leads is not very natural, it's like the writer decided to follow the episode 8 formula & then just kind of made it happen with a sledgehammer.
⌲ While the writer obviously did not do a good job, some of the dialog -especially early on- is quite amazing.
The Bad
⌲ The makjang-ish setting
⌲ E11 is one of the worst kdrama episodes I have ever watched.
⌲The finale is just a kindergarten tier fanfic fantasy. (normally I wouldn't mind so much, but following E11 it's straight up jarring)
⌲ The writing is really random in the second half, to the point that it's intelligence insulting.(I heard the comic is far better & more consistent)
⌲ The grandpa character (though I never really liked this senior actor in anything, but that could be on me)
⌲ The cartoon villain half siblings
⌲ The awful and I mean AWFUL seperation/breakup plots
⌲ The random time skip
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Not rom enough for its genre
Started out great with a spunky FL and cute ML, enjoyable despite the cliches. But once they started developing feelings for each other it all became too serious and melodramatic. The main story got side tracked with side stories - car accident secrets, business power dynamics, dysfunctional family dynamics and so on. Although a lot was going on, it felt like nothing much was happening to the main story. The important secret of the SML never got handled with grace but just conveniently announced in the end with him all of a sudden developing a spine after years of running. There was no character growth to be experienced along the show. The ML also became way too serious and sad, only a handful of the same expressions till the end of the show. All in all, something that started out so entertaining but fizzled out somewhere around ep9 and then was just a chore to watch till completion.Was this review helpful to you?
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More sinister that the outwardly homophophic dramas, the love story was okay
You can't advertise your drama as having as gay protagonist when you make him completely irrelevant to the story!STORY: there are actually two stories that the show fails to connect meaningfully
1. a closeted gay chaebol hires his actress friend to be his pretend wife so that the society and his family won't cast him out
2. a man falls in love with his brother's fiancee, and in trying to seduce her to leave the brother, he falls for her.
PROBLEM: while storyline 2 was adequate, and often cute, n.1 was competely erased, serving only to up the stakes of the illicit love. a skilled writer would have taken this amazing opportunity to compare and contrast the two kinds of forbidden relationships: brother x sister in law vs two gay men, pulling out heartstrings and teaching us about love in the process.
MY POINT: but Korean TV is not willing to earnestly explore what's wrong with korean society, they have no interest in looking inward, showing WHY the brother needed to be quiet and closeted, so they added a hetero love story to placate us like we're children. The gay man was used solely for PR, to pat their backs over being so liberal, while he was treated as less than in the whole show. if that's not a microcosm of korean society, i don't know what is
WORTH THE WATCH? barely
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Lost potential in this drama
I watched the first 4 episodes, got so excited, then decided to wait for all episodes to release and started watching it again.Boy - what a disappointment!!
The fact is that this story had an interesting premise, a slightly different take on the rich greedy conglomerate family and very promising actors.
It could have even become a romcom cult classic like A Business Proposal......but Alas, Alas.
Not enough attention was paid to details.
The friendship between the FL and her high school pal dwindles, the sizzling chemistry between the FL and brother in law becomes tepid, luke warm, tasteless tea. The second couple romance is actually irritating.
The story line is regurgitated and poorly served.
You know, with all the hard work that goes into producing these dramas, there should be a tighter grip on the story and detailed screen writing.
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If you are going to watch, do it for Jeon Jong-Seo!
The story of a younger brother who falls in love with his future sister-in-law... without knowing that her fiancé is gay.Yes, the plot seems interesting although not innovative.
However, while the first half is enjoyable and I liked it a lot, the second half is a letdown. It feels like the screenwriters lost themselves and resorted to gaudy drama.
On the other hand, I must say that the leads relationship is cute and adorable to see (although it was painful to watch the final eps filled with overdone drama). Also Jeon Jong-Seo acting is superb, I'm expecting a lot of her future roles as I became a big fan! Moon Sang-Min shined a lot as well and since he's still pretty young we'll probably see a lot of him in the future, mainly with ML roles.
Back to the plot, they wasted a lot of potential by not exploring Do-Han, the gay brother. Almost all the time the character is put on standby, unconscious about what happens despite his life being on the line. My biggest disappointment is that his development is literally non-existent – he enters into a fake marriage with his best friend to hide his sexual orientation from his family, and as the story progresses there is no moment where he understands the burden he has placed on Ah-Jung, as well as that coming out of the closet is the only way to have peace with himself.
There are many other flaws consisting of not exploring a character and their drama, while a lot of screentime is wasted with Ji-Han and Ah-Jung denying their feelings instead of accepting and fighting for their happiness together.
TL;DR
If you don't mind overdone drama, go ahead and watch it, but do know that it fails by not developing some characters.
If you do mind, it's still worth watching, especially because of Jeon Jong-Seo – I hope you fall in love with her acting skills as I did. However, prepare yourself to see quality dropping in the second half.
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wasted potential
The drama had an amazingly strong start but loses its plot midway and gets insanely dramatic for no reason.The only enjoyable aspect is the strong chemistry between Moon Sangmin and Jeong Jongseo as their romance was main thing that was consistent in the drama and even took half of the drama.
The plot had A LOT of potential and it showed with the first few episodes but then it just becomes an enemies to lovers for MSM and JJS with the actual plot being a side story.
My biggest gripe is the fact that the story revolves around creating a marriage contract to hide that Dohan was gay, but it barely gets touched upon. Its almost as if they were scared to mention the word “gay” as the only mentions of it is seen once. He has zero story aside from being gay. Everything surrounding the sexuality is insanely subtle - which is the typical mainstream treatment. Every aspect of the gay story is so EMPTY and has no concrete story its frustrating.
Last few episodes were so hard to push through as it just gets more and more frustrating - which is hilarious to say because its a 12 episode drama.
All characters are poorly built and the lack of depth is wild to me.
The actors and actress nailed their parts and the acting was amazing! Too bad for the lacklustre writing.
They tried to add in every possible awful scenario just to finish the drama.
Truly wasted potential.
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Started out unique ended up average
When this drama had initially started airing i thought they would ruin it by making the gay character the ml (fl made him straight or something ridiculous like that) but i was pleasantly surprised when they not only openly mentioned that he was gay but also ensured that he was not the fl's love interest, regardless i was hoping he and his future lover could be the second couple which did not happen.From the beginning i felt there was something off with the drama, i cant pinpoint exactly what it was but the line delivery felt too stiff and serious and it felt more like i was watching a melodrama like call it love rather than watching a rom-com..I could never feel the attachment between ah-jung and do-han for those who claim to have been best friends for over 15 years and they felt more like acquaintances rather than close friends (but ig you could attribute that to their seperation but even in the flashbacks they dont look close to each other)
MY BIGGEST ISSUE THOUGH IS NONE OF THIS ITS THE FACT THAT THIS SHOW CLEARLY USES THE LGBTQ+ TAG TO ATTRACT VIEWERS
lee do han is clearly a tool to bring the two leads together and the lgbtq tag is literally just to make it so that there is absolutely no reason why there would be a love triangle because lets be honest if he was straight there would be a love triangle and his younger brother having feelings for his fiancee would be plain creepy and her actions in a way, could be seen as cheating...They completely throw him away after he admits his sexuality and they dont really talk about his love life which makes me realise that his sexuality is not even an aspect of the story but rather a way to distinguish the plot from an average plot....I also could not feel the chemistry between the leads and it felt more like temporary attraction rather than 'true love'
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Meh
I was debating on what to title this review.I usually work some snarky bit in, but with this one all I have is MEH.
A generic, lackluster, non emotional response to a mediocre experience.
"Expressing a lack of interest" is the actual definition.
There were a few laugh out loud moments, but those were few and far between.
Very few and very far.
The characters were mediocre, the writing was lackluster (and that is being kind), the chemistry was not there, and plastic surgery reigned supreme on the screen.
I had a hard time caring about any of the characters, their stories, or who they ended up with.
Everyone just looked odd to me and some scenes were a little too over the top to take seriously.
I get that the FL was supposed to be strong and have a fiery temper, but my interest for her dropped to zero when she hit the ML in the face, breaking his nose or whatever that was all about.
If the roles were reversed, we never would say a man was strong for hitting a woman in the face over her behavior.
It just fell very short and the longer I watched, the worse it became.
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Messy and mindless, but still fun enough
This drama was so messy. It started out pretty good and I was interested enough to see how it all unfolded, but the further along it got the worse the pacing was. Not only that, but it was a little hard to like any of the characters completely when they were all pretty selfish in their own ways...and then didn't seem to really develop in any meaningful way (because I felt like we didn't see any development on screen).That isn't to say that I didn't enjoy parts of this and I did finish it. I just think that it could've been so much better if they just developed the characters and their relationships better and then worked on the pacing overall.
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