Great Representation - Mediocre Story (and some annoying characters)

WOOO REPRESENTATION! Not just a black character but a trans woman!?! And their stories/characters are done pretty well and respectfully? I'm impressed.

Apart from that, the acting and production were solid though the story left room for improvement. The strongest aspect of this show was how each side characters differences lead to different challenges to overcome. Toni experiencing racism and struggling to deal with his citizenship, Hyun-yi's journey as a trans woman (including overcoming being outed without her consent), Seung-Kwon overcoming his past as an ex-con and even Geun-Soo and his relationship with his family as the child of a mistress. All these are pretty unique perspectives, especially from a k-drama, and allowed for unique stories and relationships to develop between characters. It's a shame we didn't get more of that as we saw these characters less and less as the series went on.

The main characters felt lacking and stale in comparison. Despite the story taking place over the span of 15 years Sae-Ro-Yi never changes and his beliefs are never really challenged. His relationship with Yi-Seo feels forced along with a lot of the typical k-drama clichés in the latter half (the kidnapping really came out of nowhere lol). Yi-Seo's character is grating - despite harassing Sae-Ro-Yi (even when he says he isn't interested and is uncomfortable from her advances), taking advantage of Geun-Soo's feelings (and leaving him for dead as she runs away from the kidnappers), and her consistent disrespect and bigotry towards other characters - she never really changes or faces any consequences.

There was a lot of potential with this show and it's a shame that it fell into mediocre writing reliant on tropes and forced romance.

Overall an enjoyable drama for the first like 1/2, falls into some of the typical k-drama pitfalls, and I'll admit I began to lose interest towards the end, especially as I got frustrated between Yi-seo and Saeroyi's relationship. Despite this, it has some of the best representation I've seen in k-drama to date. I love Toni and Hyun-yi so much. We're they perfect? No. Ideally Hyun-yi could have been played by an actual trans woman but I know that may be difficult in SK and a cis female actress is a lot better than a male actor in drag. Other series could learn a lot from these characters.

A solid 6.5/10

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Decent show. Great action. Hilariously blatant advertising

The show itself was pretty enjoyable. The acting and action is the stand out by far.

The story was more compelling at the beginning, particularly when the focus was on individual cases. The main plot was wrapped up with a couple episodes of the season left so the extra plot felt like it came out of nowhere, was rushed and didn't have the same impact as the main plots or even some of the one-off plots earlier on in the series.

I appreciate the attempt to shine a light on where the system fails in supporting victims and protecting those who are guilty, including excessive force used by authorities to force confession or statutes of limitations. I don't think I've seen that tackled in a show before - especially with the post-credit real life stories of those affected.

Also I've never seen such blatant advertising in a show - I genuinely burst out laughing in the final episode with how many ads were back to back.

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