intriguing start - confusing middle - unispired ending

Storyline:

this one started promising with the lead actress being a special kind of introvert autist forced extrovert if needed, being beautiful and highly intelligent in the field of programming. The idea of the new chatbot she invents fits the current times and often hopelessly automatized behaviours of modern humans.
She herself uses her chatbot and one evening decides to meet the creepy chat match instead of the normal nice guy she is talking to at the same time.
Meeting that obviously creepy guy is weird and intense for her, the cinematography and music in the first episodes is really good, artsy and fitting the entire mood it wants to transport.
So while we find out the very first episode that the creepy looking guy is indeed a creep and crazy serial killer for that, we undertand that somehow he likes our female lead too and does not intend to kill her (or at least most of the time I guess).

So the pictures, the tension and the music are really well done in the first few episodes. The side characters are - ok.
The shaman friend seems interesting but her story isn't well explored, sadly she remains pale because that lack of background.
The other friend of our progammer lady is a female detective who, after an accident, is wheelchair bound.

Our serial killer seeks the cop lady out specifically on the chat bot luring her in with pretending he is in a wheel chair too. (how he is able to do that we don't know) For some unknown reason he does not kill her though, but leaves her out in the wild without her wheelchair. I did wonder though why did he not kill her as she could have easiyl intentified him? Also, why did she not check the police records for his face she being a police woman?

By the middle of the show it gets all rather slow and several things that happen seemed forced and incoherent to me and I started feeling a little annoyed.

It seemed like the creators wanted to put certain things into the story no matter what and how.
So the shaman woman is into women and it seems kind of forced that they almost artificially create a situation for her to meet a woman and get it going with her. No problem with that if it fits the story and you feel a connection to the character. That chance was missed in my opinion and so it just seems like they wanted this to somehow happen in that show.

Same thing goes for the handicapped cop lady. So she is a cop but although being in a wheelchair and thus comparably helpless she goes to a blind date with an unknown guy she just talked to per chat for a bit, and she doesn't meet him in public but is gullibly being lured into the wild to a forsaken swimmingpool sowewhere in the great nowhere? Would a cop, let alone a handicapped cop do such dumb thing really?

So then you have to just accept that quite accidentally, in a multi million city like Seoul, the serial killer gets involved with programmer girl and at the same time with her disabled cop friend. Not enough accidental things, he is even able to orchestrate a kind of rape game in a vacant industry hall at night, where programmer girl unknowingly meets a group of men who where made to believe she is meeting them for that rape role play. She doesn't know of course and despite being a very petite, untrained small woman she is not only able to escape all of them (unlikely) but even kills one of the with just one strike of a razor blade (very unlikely).
Meanwhile Mr. serial killer goes on killing while the police... hm, well it seems he can just go around killing in Seoul, the CCTV extreme city, and not only not being caught, but not even being sought after. (very, very unlikely).

it starts on dragging then, feeling like the creators couldn't decided what to do with the characters.
All of a sudden our autistic programmer girl is obsessively in love with the serial killer, but we don't really get to know why that happens all of a sudden.
The handicapped cop lad is out for revenge and instead of this time being wiser and getting backup when she wants to confront the serial killer, she - again - is dumb enough to be lured to a remote place, this time a whole vacant housing estate that is about to be demolished when she is there. And she really goes there alone again, with her wheelchair, into uneven demolishing ground, where this time she almost dies and is just being rescued the very last second. That was when I was annoyed because I thought how could someone with the police be that idiotic two times in a row? How did she even get to the police with that lack of intelligence in the first place?

Anyways, it then gets more artsy and abysmal, serial killer killing, programmer girl acting like a 12-year old obsessively in love with him ignoring all sensibility, and in the end deciding to kill the killer. That, sadly, wasn't done in any realistic way.
She still just has that small razor blade, and with it is able to make a slash through one eyeball, the nose including bone and the other eyeball. For this she would have neede something else, a mere small razor blade is not able to do that. But again, the creators wanted that effect of cut eyeballs, physics out the window. And again, no police while in a few weeks there are brutally murdered people everwhere and programmer girl happily celebrated with her friends.

Conclusion:

I did not know this was an adaption of a book and I do not know that book so I can't say if the adaption went well or not.
As mentioned in the beginning, this was promising and it could have been rather good, but somewhere in the middle the creators somehow lost their own plot. it got more and more confusing and the characters acting unlogical or plain dumb.

Creating a good storyline with this content is probably comparably difficult, but the downward tendency was just too steep for me from the middle of the show.

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beautiful start into a melancholic love story but then...

after finishing this drama today I'm sad to say it jut get's a shaky 6 in the end - when it was almost a 9 for the first few episodes.

Why is that?


-this drama started sooo promising, good story with some kind of a fresh twist I like -
a male lead character who is handsome, rather rich but still very unhappy and lonely in his life. As a counterpart, a female lead character who is stubborn, painfully straight forward, but rather strong willed.
This is a mix I have rarely seenin K-dramas yet, and I feel it's refreshing and realistic to show that men, also handsome, rather successful men, can be unhappy and lonely and hurt.

The story was progressing rather slowly from the beginning and I did like that pace as the main characters neeed the time to find ways to reach each other, it only makes sense in all the story context.
I found the pace and development perfect until episode 7. From episode 8 on and I was a little worried that due to the fact this has 16 episodes, it suddenly started to drag.

The lead characters both around at least 30 or even 40, first needed some very understandable time to become aware of their feelings for each other, given they are both shy people when it comes to personal emotions, and given the difficult circumstances.
But from episodes 8 on we got more and more if these dragging scenes, the characters just standing around in slo-mo forever looking sad, or walking along a street in slo-mo. looking sad etc. It felt like time fillers to me from a certain point

We had the lead characters confessing their feelings for / to each other from episodes 8 to 10, they go camping together sleeping in the same small tent and spending the night there (the writers just completely leaving out what happened there? What did they talk about? how did they say good night? how did they interact? how was the next morning waking up togther etc. etc?)
We even have them spending a real night together as lovers, the fl openly confessing her love to the ml and then? Nothing, the next day these two people, who are not teenagers but between 30 and 40 years old and very good looking both of them, act like 13- year old teeagers, awkward, cold, distanced, even like they don't know each other personally? I didn't find that convincing.

(In reality: These two lead characters have been drawn to each other for what feels like forever. They finally spend the night together. Yeah, you know what would happen after that? If you ever had that situation yourself with such a prolonged...'forepaly', you know exactly that hormones are in crazy mode after spending such first night finally, and there is no way these two people would act like strangers and all cold the next day. Normally, after all that and confessing to each other, you search the next possible time window to spend more time together and you definitely interact differently, even when it's small things, and you look at each other differently.)

After epsiode 12 the dragging gets worse. There are so many silent scenes in slow motion repeating themselves, where you see either the ml or the fl walking down any street suuuperslowly (especially the fl), looking dazed and sad, or the ml sitting somewhere (either his appartment, a noodle shop or his office) looking blank and sad.
It was just too much of that slow motion walking and looking sad for me. You can use that to accentuate important moments, or moments of real daze and sadness, but when it is used like here the effect wears off and it feels artficial and annoying.

So, the story unfolds, the ml finally hears that the fl is the daughter of his dead stepdad and one of the siblings who got thrown out of their house because of his bitchy, nasty mother. He tries everything to clear the situation, even gets them the house back.
His mother, remaining the nastiest person, gets forgiveness from everyone (which I find HIGHLY unbelievable, especially because she did not change one bit and was just a bit softer for a short moment because she felt pity for herself for having been caught.) What happens to her in the end? We don't really get to know.

I found the last two episodes even worse to be honest. Apart from lots more dragging slow-mo scenes, we suddenly see the pharmacy guy getting together with the fl's older sister - which felt forced to me. I didn't feel like that could have really happened like it did, simply because the pharmacy guy had strong feelings for the fl for years. Suddenly switching to her sister felt strange to me.

So, back to the leads; after all is cleared, surprisingly everyone forgave the ml's awful mother, the siblings get back the house etc - and our leads? - still do a supertragic ' we have to seperate, goodbye forever' - ending of their relationship at a point when it's not necessary anymore? Oo (All of it by the way with both of them having almost robotic blank and sad facial expressions all the time, even when they are alone with each other in the woods.) Ok, even if so, and although I don't get why at that point, they don't do it the way most probably would, by particularly _not_ meeting again to not make it even more hurtful, but istead send a message or talk on the phone to say goodbye, - our leads? They go the extra painful length of driving out of Seoul two hours to go to the favourite wooden trail of the ml, walking together in the sunshine at the most romantic place to then really, expresionlessly, saying goodbye in front of the fl's house? No way!

Then, a time jump all of a sudden, one year later. So for some unknown reason the leads really haven't seen each other for a full year. Then, for further unknown reasons, the older sister suddenly tells the flthat their mother kind of forgave the ml already a year ago (which makes me wonder why the mother wouldn't have told the fl herself a long time ago knowing perfectly well how much her daughter is in love with the guy), the brother sets up a meeting of the leads at a rooftop concert, they both get there, the ml has a bunch of flowers, (endless slow motion again Oo) - they smile at each other and?.....THE END?

I was just annoyed at the end, thinking like what? Why? Why didn't the mother tell her way before she forgave the ml? Why didn't they get together after it was all cleared up a year earlier and instead do this reall weird break up scene with the wooden trail? Why all of a sudden can they now meet exactly a year later, why the flowers, why now? What then?

And I just couldn't get past this unchanged behaviour of the leads after they had spent that night together, I felt like I just saw they were actors acting, and that these two people have not spent a night together. You know, when you are in love like that, when there is such longing, and after you have finally spent a night together, knowing the other person intimately, their body, their scent, etc, you just look at each other differently, you act differently etc. It was just obvious it was an artificial script with two actors who played their roles like it was written down, but these two characters didn't really exist and they were not in love or had spend a night a after a long time of longing for each other.

All in all, almost the whole second half of the episodes was rather disappointing and it got worse with every episode. If the writers would have kept the good tension and realistic vibe they had from episode 1-7, It could have been one of the best and most touching stories in a long time then.

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surprising twists for a change

This one surprised me and in a positive way.
I watched it because I am a longtime fan of Park Hee-soon and was glad to see a new drama with him in the lead role.

What is it about? Well, secrets, lies, denial and the ever same muddy downpath of politics.

We get to see a rather shy female lead character who is married to an obviously really nice and considerate husband. He started in politics and for her personal reasons the fl asks her husband for him to keep her out of it and the limelight. He believably promises to do so.

The rather idyllic family picture gets first scratches when their student son is suddenly found dead. We just get clues what could have happened to him but can't be sure. Then, out of nowhere for the couple, the gilrfriend of the son shows up at their doorstep claiming to be pregnant from the deceased. Unwillingly they take her in, also to prevent any image damaging scandal to get out.
Rather slowly, step by further step we find out about the fl's past and what is haunting her, and understandably why she is shy and wants to stay out of the limelight.
Around episode six I was fully sold to the ml being a nice and caring husband and even felt angry towards the fl for not just talking to him and telling him her problem. At that point I couldn't understand why she would not confide in this caring husband of hers. I fully fell for his ways and believed him.

But slowly things start to feel uncertain concerning the ml. Is he really that caring and trustworthy husband? Until epsidode12 I started to feel torn, just like the fl, I was sure he was dishonsest, (and in many ways, especailly _EXcluding_ being unfaithful to her!) I got angry with him and when she confronts him once and again he is so convincingly sad, sounds so truthful and gives such heartfelt explanations that I doubted the feeling of mistrust again Oo

Only in the last four episodes things become clear about the motives and background ties several people have, and it was a first in a long time that I sat in front of the screen being so surprised about the story twists and revelations that come up I even said 'no way! No he did not!' out loud.

Like most I am used to knowing rather fast into a drama who did what, who lies, who betrayed whom. But here I felt so unsure and I was genuinly suprised what happened in the late episodes of this drama, especially concerning the ml who succeeded in luring me in and making be doubt my momentary impression again and again. I just wanted to believe him.

The whole story is also about how rather often women and girls experience vioelence, especially sexual violence and assault, and the rather sad fact that still in many countries the victims are made the guilty ones by society and even police and courts.
The name of the drama 'trolley' is explained quite in the beginning, and in the end makes perfect sense, showing you can only do one good for the cost of another, but never save everyone without losing someone else.
It's a bitter ending with lots of pain, and hurt feelings and some sparks of hope at least.

I highly recommend this if you like dramas that are not obvious and where you won't get everything spoonfed with a verbal explanation. If you are patient enough this drama gets very tense and at least I was not able to pause watching the last 5 episodes, I just had to know what happens next.

I also was (once again, but I might be biased ;) impressed by Park Hee-soon. I first saw him in a movie called 'the scent' many years ago, where, in a completely different setting and mood, he had that ability that although he betrays and does questionable things, I am willing to forgive his character. Same, in a starkly different setting again in 'my name' where in his role as Choi Mu-jin I defintely know he is dangerous and brutal, he still drew me in and I felt sorry for him. This was now the third time, here in a setting as believably caring and loving husband where I just wanted to believe him and even in the very end, after knowing what he did, still felt sorry for him and kind of liked him.
Seems like he as a special psychological thing going and working on me to fall for this and throw my rightly warning ratio overboard.

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a good show with a weak ending

I really enjoyed watching 'little women'.
I was hooked from the first episode and watched until the end as the story was interesting, several of my favourite actresses were in it and I liked the general vibe.
It was mysterious with all the orchid business, you could easily empathise with the three sisters, with some more and some less though - and tension built up nicely for the final episodes. There where some storyline weaknesses before but I was able to ignore them, sadly not so in the final episode.
So whatever happened then? Was this another drama that was short cut from 16 to 12 episodes? Was there not enough time left to write a good final episode?
This final episode had severe logic weaknesses and they were just left unsolved to give the show some kind of happy end.
So what bothered me was:

1. So what was all that satisfactory scene when reporter Oh In-Kyung could finally prove that Won Sang-A is a devilsih murderder? She has CCTV matierial showing Won Sang-A brutally mudering a person. And after that? No police goes immediately to arrest Won Sang-A, instead she can joyfully go to the hospital and kill that old man who gave her away, in front of a nurse witnessing this? Still no police. Time passes and she then has time to stage all that final scene under the orchid tree in her cellar. Still no one arresting her while the incriminating material of her being a murderer was on live TV probably two days earlier?
So she can manage to abduct Jin Hwa-Young, and lure Oh In-joo into that cellar too, still no police at her house arresting her?
That was so nonsensical and made that reporting and proof of Oh In Kyung totally useless.

2. So Won Sang-A then had enough time to prepare the sprinklers with acid. Ok. So she turns on the sprinklers and the acid dircetly hits Jin Hwa-Young being bound to that chair, and the pure acid drops hit her for quite some time, she is screaming on and on, but nothing really happens to her, she is not really hurt by the pure acid drops.
Then in a twist of actions Won Sang-A falls into the pond under the orchid tree and - suddenly burns completely in huge blisters from the acid? How?
If the pure drops of acid did not harm Jin Hwa-Young for quite some time, why would the water, only containing a few drops of acid totally burn Won Sang-A if she falls in there?
That was even more nonsensical as nothing would have happened to Won Sang-A falling into that pond, it would just have been water with acid so thinned out that nothing would have happened to her.

3. I'm always in for a happy end but also that was questionable. So the youngest sister gives a lot of money to her older sisters out of gratitude. That is a nice gesture and I would have loved to just see it as that.
But, Oh In-Joo was just convicted with serious money matters and is on probation for the next years. Does anyone really think the authorities would not check on her if she suddenly had 23 million Dollars in her account? No way would they have left her untouched and the whole trouble would have begun again, her youngest sister then being a suspect and internationally sought for.
Also the two young girls were travelling with their real passports and real names, it would be very easy to track them down as long as they wouldn't have fake identities. (and they didn't as Park Hyo-rin needed to use her real name to achive all that money at her becoming aif age)

4. And what happened to Go Su-Im? Is she also still roaming free? If so, wouldn't she try to harm the three sisters still?

I found this to be such a good show until this final episode which seemed hushed and not thought through. The focus was on creating this final scene under the orchid tree without considering the rest of the before given circumstances and the fact that Won Sang-A would never have had the chance to do all that because shortly after the live TV airing of her mudering someone the police would have taken her.

So, this annoyed me so much that my rating weng down from 8,5 to 7.0.
I wish the producers of the dramas could manage to not hush the last episode and storyline like that (and it's not the first time this is happening) for the sake of logic and common sense that totally goes overboard in this final episode here.

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if you want to watch a female toxic character draging everyone down in slow motion...

this one started of so promising actually. I could relate to pretty much every character up to episode 9 or 10.
Yes, the class system in Korea is harsh, very rich can't marry very poor people, true mostly.
Yes, a kind of traumatic childhood can give you trouble in your relationships as an adult, I can relate to that too.
And the writers played it out nicely for a while, with the fl and ml doing that 'wanting but can't dance' - although the 'wanting' side was 95% the ml, and the 'can't' side 99% the fl.

I did wonder a little why the fl was quite overreacting for the ml to shortly hesitate when he was late for their first restaurant date. I understood her first angry reaction. But given that she liked him too at that point I did not understand why she would not, at least some days later, and when he apologised for about a thousand times, - why she then would not even consider it could have had many different reasons why he shortly hesitated. Did he forget to lock something important in the office maybe? Did he feel really unwell or hey, was he maybe scared too? She gives him no credit, won't let him explain and drags this offended diva behaviour to the max. I found her character difficult at that point and my understanding her slowly vanished from that point.

But it gets worse. Every single time the ml has enough of her escapades - which are fueled with her steady looking angry blankly and simply not answering any understandable questions, just leaving people standing there like idiots - it's her luring him in again, giving him some spark of hope with her controversial behaviour. And every single time he bites the bait like a fish, she - vanishes again, or suddenly doesn't talk to him without any explanation.

She meanwhile starts some kind of alibi realtionship with the young guardsman who obviously likes her, while she, doesn't really like him but feels reminded of her dead young brother and lives out some trauma coping - I'll give her she might not actively realise it, but it's what she does.

This misery gets even topped when the fl stunts a fake fling with another co-worker, to put everyone off of her. Well, that is rather short sighted as she could instead just have had the courage to break up with the guardsman (who has his own palette of troubles by the way), instead of so deeply hurting and humiliating him with this strange plan. Also to blame is the co-worker of course, a friend of the ml, who easily destroys his friendship with this stupid stunt.

And after that stunt where most of the bank's employees and employers do believe it took place, it gets toxic to the max. So our fl does this stunt to also put off our ml from her - fine. But the next thing she does when he is hurt, and angry, and doesn't want anything to do with her -she leads him on again, making a scene, with tears and telling him'everybody is badmouthing and hating me and asking me questions and YOU don't even care and don't ask me about it?' Excuse me, WHAT?

This is borderline narcissistic behaviour par excellence from her, she wants him away, even pulls this destructive stunt and when he stars hating her - understandably, she blames him for not caring to know why she did all that shit?

He falls for it again, follows her home (pretty much every night by the way, which, once again, has this creepy stalking vibe I disliked and criticised in other dramas before), we get an ultracheesy, her sitting in the rain crying, and him bringing the umbrella, both staring at each other quite silly in the pouring rain for an hour. Of course she doesn't only get a sniffle for being in the rain, she gets ill being on the brink of death (or so it seems) with a fever the very next day. Our ml drives to her house again, finds her ill, and totally overdoes it. So he is in Seoul, with a car in front of her house. She of course has no cold meds at home (why ever that is), and he runs like a madman through the city at night to find all pharmacies closed (surprise) until he finds one that is open. Sorry, but why didn't he go by car? And why did he not take ten seconds to use his phone and simply look up which pharmacy near that place has emergency opening that night? This is all pretty nonsensical. So well, he gets about 50 different meds for a sniffle and a little fever, cooks her the expected sick porridge and leaves. She is funnily enough, completely well the nex day and at work and doesn't even care to believably thank him for his caretaking. But, all of a sudden, she gives him high hopes again, asking him out for dinner at the weekend. He bites the bait - once again, already knowing she will leave the company for another branch soon.

So, it really happens, they meet for that weekend dinner, he is carefully happy, longingly staring at her, trying to say only the right things, ( he is never really angry even at that point which is very unbelievable) and she is still rather friendly cold towards him, leaving him in his car saying goodbye from outside.

And then, it's not even surprising, after all this verbally giving him new hope by saying from now on she will prioritise her luck and her feelings, she - completely vanishes the very next day, her place is empty (however she managed that over night so shortly) she changed her phone number, has resigned from the company and is gone without a trace.

So, wow, she is so very toxic, it's almost unbelievable. And I can't excuse all of this because she has some childhood trauma, as many people have and don't act out like that steadily.
I wouldn't even mind that much if she would just be cold towards everyone including our ml, because she is just not able to have any relationship. But she plays it out once and again, everytime he starts getting away from her for being hurt yet another time, she drags him in again, and even asking him to give her compliments, to tell her once again how much he likes her etc. it's quite unbearable to watch it.

But don't get me wrong, the ml is not any better. Although being at least 40 or older, he is using another woman too who really likes him, almost marrying her although he knows he simply has no feelings for her. I also understood that to some point but shortly after he was just a coward not breaking up with her completely as he obviously knows how painful it is for her that she can't do anything for him to like her.
As mentioned before I do ask myself with some male drama characters why they always have to have these stalking tendencies. It is not normal to follow a woman home pretty much every night, standing in front of her house, spying from corners on what she is doing and whom she is talking to. I also aks myself does he not have any other things in life? Does he not have friends, family meetings, hobbies? All we see is him at work drooling after the FL and watching her every step, and after work following her home like a stalker. Also thinking about his age, experience in life, and looks, I simply don't believe he would be lead on like a 15 year old hormone-ridden school boy after all the things the fl does through the episodes. I just don't believe it.

And on top of that, since episode 10, everything is dragging in total slow motion. I don't know why, but it seems like the writers simply couldn't find a way to sensibly fill 16 episodes, so especially ep 13 and 14 are a total drag, with scenes drawn to the max and nothing happening, flashbacks we've seen 5 times before or even scenes that kind of took place before (our ml and the other woman breaking up with her crying for what feels like the 10th time).

Altogether I have the problem I had several times with other dramas which started promising: I don't like any of the characters.

So, as I have watched 14 episodes already, I will watch the last two episodes too, maybe fast forwarding, just to see what kind of unbelievable end the writers have thought about.


Result: good idea, good start and development and then it goes down the drain.

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This is what they sent to international film festivals?

I think I can say with total conviction that this was probably the worst 80s revival splatter movie I have seen, well since the 80s.
What was that? And even more important, why did several really fine Korean actors take part in this? And most important: there is tons of really fantastic Korean movies that could represent the unique quality of storytelling and actors abilities to the world to be send to international film festival and of all the great stuff that is there coming from Korea they chose this movie? Why?
But let me sum up why I am saying this:

Storyline:

well, there is none really, and I mean none. A short glimpse back to 2017 where some severe criminals should have been transported back from the Philipines to Korea. And there it starts to get funny. So they plan to transport the most severe criminals fom one country to another and do what? They showcase them like on a red carpet in front of non-checked audience and one of the audience members has a bomb? Ok, totally unrealistic.

Cut, it's 2019, they make another try to transport the criminals back to Korea. And what would you do if you would plan this? I tell you what you would not do. You would not just put some little handcuffs around their wrists, leave them all together on that ship with no restrictions? If you would plan to move so many of the most dangerous cirminals you would, in the year 2019, not 1959, of course have them heavily restricted, not only with handcuffs. You would have single closed cells on that ship where every single one of them is confined for the whole trip, just a small box opening to get them food. But no, here we see how they are just let them onto the ship, they can all sit together on the ground just their hands cuffed, and waiting to get loose. How ridiculous is that?

The police staff, I really had to laugh at some point. Most of them don't have guns to start with (very unlikely again on such trip) and those who have them, esepcially Jung So min, an actress I normally adore, is probably doing the most senseless and unable things imaginable. She is a times standing around like a deer in the spotlight, awkwardly holing a gun and - not shooting it when all hell breaks loose =D

The movie has no real dialogue except for foul mouthed slang and cursing and hissing all the time, very chliche, and the movie very soon turns into the most ridiculous splatter festival. And not even that is good! They totally overdid it for the sake of being supercrass which I found totally annoying. So there is like single blows to body parts and the next moments around 200 liters of blood spread like heavy rain through the whole room=D And very soon there is nothing else anymore in that movie, just lots of unrealistic 'i want to be so crass' splatter nonsense.

I started fast forwarding at some point and all of a sudden some super human blood covered 'thing' shows up and simply kills everyone in the most gory way, I didn't even get why but I really started laughing.

conclusion:

there is at least four actors and actresses in this movie I normally really like a lot and all of them are excellent actors in other productions. What made them think to say yes to such a trashy scipts is beyond me, I really can't understand it.

I seriously hope I can see all of them in better productions in the future, where they can show the quality acting they are all able to deliver easily under other circumstances.

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Could have been good if it had any message

when I had watched the first two episodes I was hopeful that, given the sheer absurdity of so called 'influencers' this drama would have a message like 'poeple, look, we show you how utterly moronic the whole 'social' media and 'influencer' industry is.
Something like 'look, it's all fake, these people are all fake (it did show that to some extend in the beginning) and that whole system is nothing else but a very modern, modified form of prostitution. Stop consuming this nonsense, stop spendig your precious lifetime in front of screens following and unfollowing artifical product -'people' who would tell you to buy anything as long as they get free loads and tons of money for it, yes, they would even advertise fresh poop to you.'
But no, sadly it was just a simple revenge story taking all this nonsense very serious instead of understanding this is not only not real life, it's actually not life at all, it's morally and spiritually dead, artificial things coming from deeply corrupted, greedy, spiritually dead people who don't give an ef about you except for you making them rich and feeding their ego with a totally absurd admiration of complete strangers.

Missed chance, could have been great had it shown the absurdity of our times regarding this topic.

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a good try with some major flaws

I quite liked this drama, and had it stayed on course like it started with the first 2 episodes, my rating would have been much higher.
I liked the focus on mental health issues, especially as it is such an important topic in South Korea for known reasons.
They did well in the start, and I enjoyed the visual creations of different disorders, to make it tangible for people who don't know much about it.

Sadly it also had several flaws in the later episodes. First I have to admit that I was more interested in the side lovestory than the that of the main characters - I really like Chang Ryul, he was brilliant in 'my name' and it such a versatile actor.

The main flaws for me were different ones though:
the drama wanted to show different mental health issues with example stories. One of the first stories was a 43-year-old woman who was so opressed by her highly intrusive and invasive mother that she totally lost it and was in the closed ward of the psychiatry now. Very realistic example so far. But the drama wanted to show solutions veeery simplified. We hear that the woman hates grapes, a food her mother constantly brings her and says she'd always loved gapes. This is the peg for the problematic situation, the woman screams at her mother that she always hated grapes and because of that overboarding behaviour of the mother she 'wasn't even able to order a cup of coffee somewhere herself at the age of 43'.

The drama solves this over 40-year old problem situation with deeply ingrained toxic behaviours with just telling the mother once, so she brings other fruits for her next visit, and soon later mother and daughter happily leave the hospital, like best friends.
Erm, nope, this is not how things are in reality. People don't change like that and longlastig toxic relationship patterns don't change from one day to the other, just because someone says 'bring different fruits.'
The show oversimplified complicated issues that need lots of work (and the willingness of all people involved - that is where most things fail before they even started) and time to get any change, and often even with lots of effort this change never comes. That's reality, the drama wanted to show good endings of most cases, but that's just far from reality obviously.

Same with the ML and his panic attacks. Those are severe too and he had them for many years. Again, it just takes one or two people talking to him with some few friendly words, and yippie, he says 'oh yes, right, I have to address this, I go to the doc, get this treated with meds and my life will be fine.' Again, naaah, if you have severe panic disorder for sucha a long time, you do not just listen to a few friendly words from a friend and then go and solve this. If you have severe anxiety, you are also afraid of things like medication, of doctors who will 'judge' you, of others hearing from your problem etc. It just doesn't work that easy in reality sadly.

Another unrealistic thing was that our main FL, who works as a psychiatric nurse, suddenly has severe depression herself.
Well, that can of course happen, as depression can hit pretty much everyone.
Her depression is major though, so major that she walks in front of a truck to die. She ends up in the closed ward herself and is deep down the depression spiral for a while.

She finally gets out of it and...the older main nurse then begs her to come back and work again in the psychriatic ward. That's of course nice but at least in my country and others I lived in, it would be impossible. If you have a history of attempted suicide and major mental health issues yourself, there would be no way then that you could work again in such position - for your own safety and those of your patients.

Back to the lovestory of the side characters. It was a nice story, wealthy man falls in love with a very poor nurse. The drama left out major issues in Korea, like, what would his wealthy parents say to this choice? We do not get any information about his family, only some few things he says which imply the 'golden spoon' (so does his super spacious and very expensive appartment)

So, after fighting to gain her trust for quite a while, she finally is willing to date him, awkwardly though, but still. He even supports her abandoning her supertoxic 'person who accidentally gave birth to her' (I don't want to call such people mothers) - which is a good idea. But then, things speed up in a totally different direction, obviously trying to make the young woman, now free of her money problems and the toxic mother, a happy, independent person. She quits her nurse job all of a sudden, and wants to become a dancer on a cruise ship and leave the nice guy, who, of course, is also super willing to let her go away for a full year? I didn't find that credible at all. It often happens that K-dramas want to show this kind of 'woman does what she wants'-thing- but rarely have I seen cases where this went believable and smooth instead of doggerel and unrealistic like here.

All in all, it was a good start, it's good K-dramas try to openly focus on mental health issues, but they just don't get it right in the details yet.

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a bit flat but...

not entirely happy with this...I really liked 'my liberation notes' (same director) and I normally like both leads, Lee Min-ki particularly.
That said, this one has some weaknesses for me. Han Ji-min not only has the same haircut as in 'the light in your eyes', she also plays the exact infantile way . While it made sense in the mentioned other drama due to her just looking much older than she was, it doesn't make sense to me here.

So the character here lost her mum at a young age, had a tough time then, still managed to become a vet which must have been tough, very adult environments to get through, her character is now 35 and steadily acts like a 6 year-old girl, why? With her history there is no room for her being like that. Also her character being steadily dressed like a toddler (really, it looks like toddler's clothes adult size) - It's bearable, but at times just too much.

Main problem is, the main characters stay quite flat. The vet is childish and rather annyoing, and there is not any other sides to her. Lee Min-ki's role is a broody, upfront officer who is pissed he was transfered to that little weirdo town. His acting is good as always, but also his character is thin yet.
I don't care for any of the side characters. And it's just a lot of slapstick that is not to everyone's taste.

I'll keep on watching after having seen episode 3, where the story improved a bit and got more substance, and Lee Min-ki is enough to keep watching anyways - at least for me =D

(and I couldn't disagree more with another reviewer here: yes, it's the same director as 'my liberation notes' - if you liked 'my liberation notes' for its rather philosophical and melancholic storytelling, you might particularly NOT like this new drama, which is the total opposite.)

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not again

I liked the first season of this show for several reasons. It was an important topic to show the partly awful circumstances in the Korean military. It's a topic that was still taboo and it was important to show the (for the show probably) worst sides of the system and what consequences it has on individuals who had to endure all of it, and what non-consequences it had on those responsible for it.
Also it had great acting from several actors, the soundtrack was good, the background story of Jung Hae-in's charcater made sense, it all climaxed in a horrible finale in the last episode of season one - great.

Soooo, as with so many formats, they smelled money when the first season was extremely successful and popular - and effed it up with the second season. Everything just goes on, the bullying starts again in the first minutes of the first epsiode of season 2, - sorry, I am not masochistic, I really do not want to watch another several episodes again seeing people being the nastiest and lowest of the low to each other - I got that message that this is an extreme problem in the Korean military, and the tragedy behind this IN FULL in the first season. I'm not into torture porn.

The story and script are getting weird and unlogical in sesaon two, time jumps back and forth, conspiracy stuff, some severe plot holes, oh, and as some icing on top at least Hae-in without a shirt - sorry, not enough.

It seems like (as in so many other cases where a first season of a show was great) that they just wanted to milk the success no matter what and the second season just lacks in every aspect.

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not Brussels, not the procedure for refugees

I'm not really sure what the intention of this movie was.
First, for anyone located in Europe who has been in and knows different major cities, it's immediately visible that they did not shoot this movie in Brussels. I meanwhile found out it was Budapest. Very different city and vibes, it's just weird. I guess it would be like Euopreans would shoot a movie that is supposed to take place in Seoul and they instead shoot it in Thailand? Why?

Next thing, apart from me just knowing that (as basic general knowledge) I even rechecked it: if you arrive as a refugee in Brussels, yes, then you have to fill in an applications, you will get an interpreter who helps you through these paper basics and then? - you will not just get send out to the streets to live rough, eat mouldy food out of dustbins, sleep in dirty public toilets and as the interpreter said in the movie you 'just have to hang in there for a year' until any kind of decison is made. That's just nonsense. I will quote this now from the official website, it says there: 'when the applicant has made his application for international protection, he can ask Fedasil for accomodation in a reception center, material help, as well as social, legal and medical guidance. There are about 50 reception centers in Belgium. They are run either by Fedasil or partners like the Red Cross.These centers are open centers and each of them offers the same service for new arrivals: accomodation, guidance, support in daily life.'

So what exactly was all that storyline of the main character stumbling wet and hurt and hungry and dirty through suppossed (but not) Brussels, only meeting criminals who beat him up, steal from him and that's it? And the movie is visibly set in the year 2023?

Also the female lead character was totally unrealistic. If you live a rough and drug-ridden life in these kind of circles, you do not have full shiny wavy fresh washed hair and a clear-skinned flawless face. People who (have to) live like that look veeeery different. Also there is no way she is totally addcited to h and whatever else from that pimp guy, and then all of a sudden she isn't and works at a nice beach resort in the last scene. And I could list at least 10 more rather nonsensical things, I don't even know where to start and end here.

So, wow, I was actually looking forward to this movie as the story sounded interesting but whoever made ths movie totally ruined it.

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good start, good visuals, mediocre plot, unrealistic fight scenes

-this one started out promising. I was impressed by the boxing scenes in the first episode which were (both, the training scenens and the actual tournament scenes) rather realistic and well done. I was hoping the drama would stick to the idea of keeping the fight scenes realistic to some degree. Sadly that was not the case. The further the drama progressed, the worse the rather elongated fight scenes got.
Let me put it like this: yes, a real boxer can take a certain amount of rather strong blows to the head and take it. But also this is limited. Someone who is particularly not a professional boxer, like the main villain Kim Myeong-Gil for example? It is rather ridiculous that he gets full force blows to the head coming from a professional boxer about 20 times in a row, and he just gets up and hits back and even runs away. Plus the villain is in his 50s. Someone not used to these blows and that age? Gets one, maybe two strong blows and is knocked out cold - or actually dead.

- similar unrealistic scenes sadly with one of the main characters - Hong Woo-Jin. In the really brutal attack he suffers in the middle of the drama? He is beaten, he has a severe heavily bleeding wound (or several) in his abdomen, stomach etc. , he is left there in a burning building with heavy smoke he inhaled given he was still breathing. He would have been dead there. He gets to a hospital nonetheless, again is bleeding so heavily no one could survive it, - and survives. And even more unrealistic is that someone who had suffered these severe, extremely damaging injuries, can get as flexible, fit and strong again as shown later. Even if, by a total miracle, he would have survived these catastrophic injuries he would not have been able to stand multiple super strong opponents fights like shown afterwards. In fact, if he really had survived he could have been happy if he after a longer while would have been able to walk straight, to go to the loo normaly, to use the parts of his body (muslces, tendons etc.) that were actually crashed and destroyed to a decent degree. Never would he have been able to train like a bodybuilding maniac with full power and flexibility.
(and to add that too: none of both main characters would have any teeth left, neither their small, straight beautiful noses. Their faces would have visible and lasting heavy damage, Woo Do-hwan's character already after the extreme face headbutt he receieved from that troll guy in the beginning. If happened as shown, all teeth would be broken out, nose would be broken)

- the plot started out ok, showing the mean business of loan sharks and how they terrorize people which actually really happens in South Korea. It later got a bit confusing as to why certain things happen or don't happen, which was gilded with even more rather violent action scenens and fights. I have to mentione 'my name' once again, which had heavy fight scenes as well, but they were comparably brilliant, stayed at least realistic to some degree most of the time and didn't need to be so excessive to overshadow weaknesses in the plot as there, the plot was strong and intelligent.

-Woo Do-hwans character Kim Gun-Woo...oh well, someone who has witnessed the sheer evil of what happened to his mother, then to the granddad and his then best friend? Someone like that is not still like a naive puppy most of the time, it doesn't really make sense to me. f you have seen such things, survived them and decided to take up the fight against highest organised crime,you simply can't be like a 5-year-old good boy most of the time, it wouldn't work.

- I personally didn't feel any real chemistry between the characters, especially the girl, Kim Hyeon-Ju, seemed strangely artificial and 'created' to me.

I was waiting for this drama eagerly as I really liked Woo Do-Hwan in 'the king, eternal monarch'. In 'bloodhounds' now he got an impressive body for the drama, and it's obvious he had real boxing training. Sadly I didn't feel his character was real, due to the rather mediocre plot, and rather artificial connection between all the characters.

-I also thought it was just too much violence at some points hiding the weak plot, - all in all, it couldn't convince me, I didn't like the whole 'mood' in the drama and wouldn't feel like watching it again.

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Thank you for this at the end of the year

Did the K-drama god finally hear my prayers, me steadily asking for at least one good drama in 2024 after this total fail and lack of anything decent? Yes!
I don't even want to spoil too much for those who haven't watched this yet, but let me say this much:

-Woo Do-Hwan - finally someone cast him for a role really fitting him and his abilities. I think actingwise this was one of his best performances yet. He seems more mature in delivering emotions of any kind, (episode 8, the scene on the couch with them crying and then kissing? really good) and I did believe he was the character he played here

- Did something change with the K-drama producers? Did they finally realise that characters seem more believable if they act like they probably really would if they were real people? I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw Woo Do-Hwan smoking in this drama - yes, real cigarrettes, like a character like his actually would smoke in real life. I also felt like these things happened more often lately, and have the hope that maybe some actors finally had enough of this 100% clean babyboy image they are supposed to fulfill 24/7 no matter how unrealistic it is. I really enjoy seeing actors in their 30s acting like real men in their 30s instead of 12-year-old naive babies, - they might curse when they are angry, they might smoke cigarettes, they might not be perfectly nice all the time, they kiss their girlfriends passionately for real and not stop frame - how refreshing.

-the storyline was a pleasant mix of serious and philosophical thoughts concering life itself, mixed with some fun and (all new so called feminitst please don't watch this!) a story of a bad boy boyfriend who kidnapps his ex-girlfriend on her messed-up wedding day. Is that politically correct these days? No - do I love it? YES! There are people with messed-up on and off relationships like that, I've been there, I can relate, I like it.

-do all things have happy ends in life? no, and that's how things are sometimes too, or maybe more like what one might consider a happy end I guess.

- I loved the cinematographic elements, some of which reminded me of classics like ' The Fabulous World of Amélie'

-the soundtrack was nice too, plus some classic hits like 'California dreaming'

_I also thought Lee You-mi did a very good job here, the interaction, especially the serious ones between her and Woo Do-Hwan felt quite realistic and well done

- and yes, Woo Do-Hwan gets more attractive as he gets a little older, that's the icing on the cake ;)


In short, I really liked this, I liked the story and the general mood in this, the philosophical input, it's just well done, and comparably fantastic to pretty much everything K-Drama that was released this year, which was yet a big disappointment at least for me.

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reality though...

aw, it was a good idea to address the problem of heavy school bullying - but sadly not the way it was done here -
here is why:

what is good about it:

1. some few actors are good (especially some older side characters), the younger leads are ok - at best.
2. the storyline sounded promising
3. the soundtrack is rather good and fitting the topic

what is bad:

1. well, the main problem for me is reality. So the female lead shows us in 2022 what she does when she gives extra tuition to a bratty youngster. He verbally gets quite offensive, she listenes to it and then - tada - gets out her cellphone and tells him it's all been recorded, his mum heard it and this was his last lesson with her. So in the very first or second episode she shows us what anyone with half a brain cell would do in such situations.

So, we then get to see our female lead as a teenager at school and some really awful torture scenes of school bullying,

(that is my point 2 by the way, there was no need to show these scenes so excessivley, it had quite a touch of torture p0 rn which addresses the very wrong audience...to get over the message what happened to the poor girl a third of the scenes would have been way enough)

we fast forward to the year 2022 again, when our female lead has forged her revenge plans for years and finally gets to be the teacher of her arch enemie's little daughter. (I here do ask myself though how would a girl coming from her background with no parents, bodily heavily disfigured and traumatised, with no money and no connections get into college alone and study to become a teacher?) But I see the point that this is supposed to be a revenge story so let's get on.... all that happens then is nonsense. Her former torturer is now obviously very rich, (which lets me question by the way why a very rich person would send her daughter to the same school she was in together with our female lead, a very poor kid? Wouldn't a rich woman send her precious daughter to a private school, especially in South Korea?), our lead becomes the teacher of her little daughter and then - threatenes her verbally several, many, many times openly? Why would her enemy not simply tape all of the open threats ('you need to be punished and I will punish you' etc). She is rich and certainly has influential connections, so why would she let this go on for a single minute? Also our female lead tells her she should 'not dare to take her daughter out of this school' - well, why would she not do that? as she simply can?

So this whole revenge thing gets absurd as in the way it's shown it simply would be impossible. What would happen in reality is the rich woman, espcially one as cold blooded as this one is shown, would tape her threats, go to the cops, use her connections and either get our female lead arrested or even worse.
Also, if the police would find her room with aboot a thousand photos and news articles about the woman, they would certainly call her insane and obsessed and would take claims of threat against the woman and her child even more serious. Even if our female lead would then claim all the wounds on her body were inflicted by that woman in their teeager time? She would have no proof, and with the obsessive photo room the police would declare her dangerous and insane and claim she is just obsessed with the beautiful weather forecaster on TV because she herself didn't make it far in life, and she probably always has been jealous about the other woman, even back in their teenage years.

3. the dialouges were mediocre at best. The whole 'romantic' storyline with the young doctor? Didn't work for me. No chemistry, and the dialogues were horrid and seemed artifical and forced many times. (Especially in that scene in the park, where he asks her a concrete question and she suddenly starts to talk pseudo-poem stuff about the snow and whatever else) Also the whole storyline with these two seems so 'created' and not real to me.

4. Compared to other dramas with heavy content I found the acting ability of the leads rather bad to be honest. The bullies as adults were too overdrawn, they didn't seem like real people to me. Same reasons, artificial dialoges, speaking too loud or even screaming, some scenes looked like rather bad school theatre to me.


Conclusion:

a good idea to address the topic of school bullying - but not like that? You simply couldn't take revenge like it's shown here for at least 5 different reasons, most importantly because the possibility of taping and nipping all the great revenge plan in the bud.
It's more like a juvenile revenge fantasy, not thought through to any end. having immature fanatsies about revenge is just that - immature and far from intelligent. But as least for me, it has to be an intelligent, thought through story, otherwise it's more like playing ego shooters, no brains but what a satisfaction with brains off Oo
Disappointing.

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A nice watch for a change

after I've been ranting about the bad quality of newer dramas lately, a big yaayyy, 'good partner' is really nice to watch.
Yes, it's a typcial law drama, but a good one.
I had it on my watch list as I watch anything with Nam Ji-hyun. She was the lead of the first drama I ever watched ('suspicious partner' - another partner-title and she was a lawyer too) and no matter what I've seen her in yet, she is a great actress, I really like her vibes, I like that she also chooses non-vain roles, and same goes for her social media - I can't put into words how refreshing it is to see any Korean actor or actress on Instagramm who posts non-filtered, normal human pictures for a change. She does often, she has two normal cats (not the typical tiny white dog), well, in short, I really like her.

This drama started interesting, the actors are all quite good, the cases are interesting concerning emotional aspects as well as showing some specific tricky sides of the Korean law system. It also shows how difficult it is wanting professional success in your field on the one hand, and your conscience intercepting on the other.
Each case has been interesting enough for me to watch the whole episode without ff-skipping or just leaving for five minutes because it wouldn't matter if I missed them - as I sadly do often these days with other dramas that lack quality.

This is for you if you like this kind of law-setting in general and if you like to use your brain a little as it requires you actually listening, thinking and just having a love for the beauty of special field language. As I like all these things if they are delivered through good acting and storytelling, I really enjoyed every episode so far.

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