Good-ish, but overrated
This show has been getting a lot praise, "drama of the year" etc, well It's certainly not bad, but I don't really see what all the fuss is about. Typically I avoid Korean thriller/crime dramas like a plague, because there are just too many immersion breaking plots & sloppy scenes involving death and serious injuries in them. This one is no different. There are a lot of tiny little immersion breaking things in it, to me it's very difficult to take the drama seriously. The usual live filming character adjustments were not missed either. I binge watched the drama over the course of 3 days, so the character micro (or macro!) adjustments were blatantly obvious. The crime plot on the whole was not that great either & there were many cliche elements. It's easy to forgive cliche things in a light romantic comedy, but not in a thriller. To summarize this is no Dexter..
Also early on I almost dropped the drama out of boredom, the buildup in the first 4 episodes felt draggy to say the least and episodes 13-15 were just not that enjoyable for me.
So why the relatively high score of 7.5? Well naturally there are a lot of good things in this drama. I really liked how JiWon dealt with "finding out", that was very un-kdrama like and very entertaining to watch. Also the writing team had plenty of opportunities to shove confucianist crap down our throats & they went the other more wholesome direction every single time. The music was great & overall more thrilling than the drama itself & of course as usual we had great visuals. Finally the most important point is the romance, they did a really good job with that. There are many low key unique and touching moments in the drama. I felt pretty satisfied with the ending too..
Let me reiterate again, I very strongly believe that Hallyu does not know how to produce a believable thriller drama, but if I don't try to compare it to the greatest (or even mediocre) western works, within the genre of "Korean thriller drama", this is probably one of the best works so far.
Also early on I almost dropped the drama out of boredom, the buildup in the first 4 episodes felt draggy to say the least and episodes 13-15 were just not that enjoyable for me.
So why the relatively high score of 7.5? Well naturally there are a lot of good things in this drama. I really liked how JiWon dealt with "finding out", that was very un-kdrama like and very entertaining to watch. Also the writing team had plenty of opportunities to shove confucianist crap down our throats & they went the other more wholesome direction every single time. The music was great & overall more thrilling than the drama itself & of course as usual we had great visuals. Finally the most important point is the romance, they did a really good job with that. There are many low key unique and touching moments in the drama. I felt pretty satisfied with the ending too..
Let me reiterate again, I very strongly believe that Hallyu does not know how to produce a believable thriller drama, but if I don't try to compare it to the greatest (or even mediocre) western works, within the genre of "Korean thriller drama", this is probably one of the best works so far.
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