I enjoyed watching the first 1/3 A LOT, enjoyed the second 1/3 moderately & I found the last 1/3 (before the one hour long ending) boring & predictable. The truly amazing acting performances are semi ruined by the script. There isn't any writer's creativity here. It's like they took the procedural story from "I Can Hear Your Voice" & they added the plot twist from Healer, but unlike in Healer they tried their best to ruin all the good that they've built, milking the stupid twist to the max. Others have mentioned that they could only finish watching the show, because of the interesting villain figure, well I did not find him interesting at all, by the time I reached the later episodes I only continued watching to see the inevitable happy ending. The procedural parts weren't interesting, I did not feel very engaged with any of the miscellaneous cases. The mental problems of the villain just made me yawn.

Despite all the negatives I'm still giving it a 7.5, because the acting performances were really spot on, the romance despite the retarded separation was quite awesome. The humor deserves some praise as well, I did spit out my tea that one time.. I liked the ending double episode too, liked it a lot in fact. It's nice that there was no triangle, I really hate triangles.
I Can Hear Your Voice & Healer are MUCH MUCH MUCH better than this one, but nonetheless this is still entertaining enough & I felt that it was mostly worth my time.

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I don't like the Saeguk genre. I started watching this due to the extreme hype & Shin Hye Sun. At first I was pleasantly surprised, the first 9 episodes were perhaps the best saeguk experience I've ever had. Despite the nonsense story I just felt an incredible amount of joy watching this. It was like 95% high quality humor & 5% political bullshit/scheming. Unfortunately the ratio completely flips around after episode 9. The humor is not enough the carry the story anymore. In fact if I ignore the comedy & look at this as a political romance the writing is on the weaker side of mediocre. The second half of the story has a lot of makjang with a really sloppy love story & a weird love triangle situation. I found the second lead to be the really really annoying, cartoon villain type, but the other villains had really unclear & unreasonable motivations as well. In general having characters that have teary eyes in every single one of their scenes is just a terrible chliche and this drama has 3 of them, yep.. (prince, drug addict assassin guy & second ML) The second FL's story is also kind of like something one would see in a lakorn, what a wasted bromance opportunity. (or more?!) Also about the guy with the scar on his face, it's just intelligence insulting that someone would have such a distinct scar on their face, but use a mask that doesn't cover that area. Even in the mask shop scene there were suitable masks on the wall.
Every moment with the OTP on screen was entertaining to watch, but the writers just couldn't commit to handling the whole genderbender, semi BL situation and this concluded in what I consider one of the worst endings I've seen in a kdrama. (typically I don't even start a kdrama, if the ending is bad) I'm sure that the fear of conservative housewives bombarding them with letters is part of it, perhaps even KCSC could have been considered, but good God there were so many ways to turn the situation tame in a more wholesome, happy manner. (there are some great ideas in the comment section)
While I was watching the drama I was thinking that perhaps the main writer wrote all the political stuff & the main storyline, while a group of writing interns were responsible for the comedy. Imagine my surprise, when I saw later that this drama has been written by a duo. I guess that could explain everything.


Despite the bad story I decided to give the drama a 8/10 rating. Partly because it's been an extremely memorable experience, partly because the comedy is just so on point and also because EVERY actor was trying so hard. Korean actors are almost always professional enough, but in this show nearly the entire cast has shown near tangible enthusiasm, even more so than in Crash Landing. As I said the saeguk makjang writing was bad, but thanks to the extraordinary acting performances - at least compared to other saeguk makjangs - it felt quite polished to me.
If Shin Hye Sun doesn't win a Daesang for this, then the award show season of 2021 would hold no meaning. (She is way more deserving than Jun Ji Hyun ever were) This is not the first time for her to carry a show on her back almost singlehandedly (not even the second time), but she was just too brilliant.

The production quality is very high, the sets, the OST, the cinematography were all up to standard. That "Bong Hwan-A" song is just perfection..

Shoutout to court maid Hong Yeon, I'd be more than willing to watch her in a leading role.

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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.

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After having watched the first 2 episodes I feel that this drama has a lot of potential. The show has a great vibe, there was a lot of wholesomeness in these two hours. I came in expecting something along the lines of WWWSK and Her Private Life, but this is a way more realistic story, with more down to earth characters. In my opinion Park Min Young's best performance was in Healer and in this drama she plays a similar, but somewhat darker character.
About that melodrama tag, yes it makes sense, but it's pretty chill for melo, kind of like how it was in Encounter.
To sum it up it's an easy 10/10 based on 2 episodes, I have high hopes for this one.

And here are my (spoilery) thoughts after seeing the rest of the show:

The things that I wrote about the first two episodes hold up pretty well up to about episode 12-13. From there things do go downhill some. The story shifts focus to the main mystery & in all seriousness I was not all that interested about that whole situation & they could have gotten the explanations over with in 20 minutes, if they really wanted to. From this show I wanted wholesomeness and warmth, but we got some real Melo in episodes 14-15 and I did not feel the emotional impact all that much, nor did things get resolved in a satisfactory ending in the final episode. Make no mistake episode 16 was pretty nice, but it led to the kind of mildly hopeful unending that I don't particularly like. It's possible that the subtitles contributed too, the last sentence that EunSop said slowly over the course of the last 3 minutes felt strange..(VIU) Also I'm curious about how the original novel ended, I have a suspicion that it was not like this.
The low rewatch score is the result of the ending, I don't like rewatching shows that don't offer a reasonable closure.

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After watching the first 6 episodes I thought this was like a teen version of While You Were Sleeping, but as the story progressed I felt that the show has lost its charm. Early on the drama had a great balance between romance/comedy & procedural, but after episode 10 all we are left with is the procedural part & honestly it's not that good. Sure the direction of the plot was a bit unexpected, but ultimately it was a mediocre crime drama by the time we reached the conclusion. If I think about it the show kind of reminded me of Inspector Rex, Ahn's ability & the way he used it is not quite unlike what Rex (or any police dog) could do. I'm wondering who is the target audience for this show, early on I thought it was a YA romance that I'm sure made many bored that are into procedural/crime specifically & the second half made me bored, I still think that Hallyu isn't comparable to the west, when it comes to procedural/crime dramas, if I wanted to watch something good in that genre, I wouldn't have gone for a korean show.
I think Jinyoung should've stuck with singing, his performance is less than convincing to put it bluntly, almost everyone else did an exceptionally good job acting though.
Still I don't regret watching He is Psychometric, there were some memorable moments, the OST was great (albeit a bit repetitive), the photography is also exceptional.

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Just when I started watching this show I asked the comment section for spoilers, "when do they get together?" "Will the annoying bosses ever go away?" I've gotten confusing answers to both of these questions. Now that I've seen the whole drama, I know why. You An's former bosses really do keep popping up like jackrabbits -when they really shouldn't anymore- wasting screen time & the answer to "when do they get together" is just really confusing. Is it ep21, 26 or 30? And what has happened in the episodes in between? I'm still confused about which episode they really get together in, but I do know that between these key episodes pretty much nothing romantic has happened. I think maybe the writer kind of hoped we would forget about progress, so they could get together again, twice. (or a lot of filmed scenes have gotten axed ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

The drama starts really slow, the first 10 or so episodes are rather draggy. You could call it super slow burn of course, but it's not like the romance is really slow, it's just there is so much focus on sports that the padding kind of makes it feel like it is slow burn, when it's actually quite fast based on the OTP's scenes & their actual progress in relation to what has been shown to us. This wouldn't be a big problem, if the show was a strong sports drama, but it's really not. As many other reviewers have claimed before me, I have also played -some- badminton, tennis & I'm still following the ATP tennis scene. In my opinion this was not very good. Talking about 190km serves & then showing me a 130km serve, or showing me how the racket hits the ball & then showing me how the ball lands, with flying balls rarely shown is something I've found rather jarring. I understand the difficulty & the actors really did a reasonable job mimicking professional tennis player mannerisms, but the action itself is either not shown, or is at a very low level. (by low level I mean far worse than me after 6 months of playing tennis at age 19, forget professional..) Even if we ignore the lack of immersion during tennis games, there are plenty of other problems that are difficult to gloss over, at least on the sports front. (for example I agree with the coach etc that switching from Badminton to Tennis, especially at 22 is a fool's errand, though I can easily accept this much fantasy in a cdrama romcom)

I talked about FL's bosses being super annoying before, but the whole wildcard plot dominating the final episodes is utter garbage. The sudden appearance of an intelligence insulting contract & the events that follow, including, but not limited to a 2 year separation plot, are just not good. This is not the "intelligent adult romance" I've signed up for.

The noona romance itself, apart from the pacing issues was quite enjoyable for me, the fluffy scenes in the second half were all great, my need for sugar has been completely satisfied. I wouldn't say that the actors had earth shattering chemistry, but they did a reasonably good job overall.

TLDR: The show had it's good moments, but Meet Yourself is a far better mature romance & Falling Into You is a far better noona-sport romance. (the romance is only a wee bit better in Falling Into You, but the sports part is leagues ahead)

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It tries to educate as if it were a TVING drama, otherwise it's quite good.

How do I even get started? Okay, so this drama has a so called omnibus style storytelling, which means that there are a bunch of very loosely connected storylines. It's almost like a family drama without all the family relations, but darker & at times far more serious and raw. The other reviewers have made a lot of great points. Our Blues is incredibly heartwarming, borderline magical at times, has a decent dose of romance, while bringing up topics that you typically don't see on Korean TV. The setting is great, the fish market of Jeju & those diving women were rather novel. The acting is absolutely top notch, probably the best you can ever expect in a kdrama.

So why is it not 10/10?
Well, the problem is that some characters & storylines are just plain bad, there were quite a few episodes that had nothing I was interested in. Some of the controversial topics in the drama are presented in a very fake, inorganic way. I guess the educational intent is just too blatant.

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Lovely show, but it has barely anything to do with "Something in the Rain"!

People in the comments keep saying, "It's better than the original", "It's not as exciting as the original" etc. In my opinion these comparisons are a bit senseless, because the setting & the plot are fundamentally different. I don't mind too much though, let's hop on the meta train!
Something in the Rain had like 8 brilliant episodes, 2 mediocre episodes & 5 horribly bad episodes. Opposed to that, Love the Way You Are produced 20 good episodes & 1 bad episode(just about) & 9 almost good (the above mediocre tier) episodes, well that's pretty much the end of this comparison. There are two important things that they've taken from the "original", namely the red umbrella & the iconic hand holding scene. The first one doesn't really work, because with the completely different cinematography the original artistic intent is completely lost. The hand holding scene felt a bit whelming, perhaps it should've been re-shot, but that's not all, they completely changed the aftermath of it, I was mildly disappointed about that if I want to be completely honest.
So as I said, makes little sense to compare these, moving on...

China has been killing it lately with Noona romances, this one may not be nearly as good as "My Fated Boy", but the drama holds its own, the overall impression is very positive. We could call it a generic low-stress noona romance, but the execution is mostly great. The leads looks fantastic together, have good chemistry, that has become extraordinary nearing the later episodes. The fluff is top tier. There is some angst here and there, but things are resolved relatively quickly. I liked the side couples as well, there is nothing bad I can say about them, perhaps Xiao Mian could've gotten more screen time..
Triangle haters can safely watch this show, the ex gets dealt with relatively early on & as stupid as his redemption ark is, he's been bearable.

FL's father is a rather horrible character, but whenever I started feeling too angry about him, the writers adjusted his stance, or his behavior. I'm not a fan of character adjustments in general, but in the grand scheme of things this is not too bad. (Compared to Pretty Noona's mom he's a dorky angel)

The corporate plotlines have never gotten too annoying, which is unusual in itself, since cdramas that have corporate plotlines can rarely avoid ridiculous happenings. Here we had one plagiarism plot that just fizzled out, the rest is not too bad.
Of course, these work life things are not very well written, the plot involving the semi villainous characters just meanders. One episode she is the devil, in the next "It's fine, it's just a minor test, I don't feel like destroying them" okay Karen, thanks for appearing in this show. Also YiKe's former boss could have gotten dealt with in a more serious way. I would have preferred the cdrama specials over what we've gotten, which is one scene in which YiKe lightly shames him.

The last 6 or so episodes get a bit draggy, not because of excess fluff, but rather the focus shifts onto meaningless work related things that can be fast-forward buttoned without penalty. The ending may not be the closure of the decade, but it's fine.

9/10 may be a bit of an over-exaggeration, but I enjoyed this drama a lot, so it is what it is.

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Very entertaining across the board, especially the first 10 episodes..

This show is about the people that clean up after the messes of stars, so I guess what the title really is about can be put to rest.

The biggest criticism this show gets is about digging wells in "Africa". As stupid as that was, please bear in mind that Sh**ting Stars -first and foremost- has been made for domestic Korean audiences. The average Kim & Park won't be able to name more than two African countries & going with a specific one could have potentially ruffled even more feathers. From the slightly backward Korean perspective this was probably alright!? Personally what I find more intelligence insulting is the act of digging wells. Even the poorest African communities can manage digging wells at places where water can be actually found, the people there can certainly use shovels better than a random Hallyu star.
ML's interactions with that kid were beyond cringy, though admittedly I FF buttoned the *** out of it.


With that out of the way, as a fluffy a romcom this is pretty great across the board, sure it's overly cringy at times & the leads are just way too juvenile, but it's cute enough with acceptable chemistry. This is mostly what I was in the mood for. Triangle haters can safely watch this, it's fine. The side couples were also fun to watch, though everyone is way too two dimensional. This is the least complicated kdrama romcom you'll ever watch.

The plot outside of the romance -what little there is- is about the life at an entertainment agency. Mostly about solving scandals & the work of the PR department in general. As far as borderline procedural kdramas go, this is fairly good. Not awesome objectively, but considering how bad most K-entertainment industry related procedurals are, It's certainly above average in this regard.

The second biggest thing that can be criticized is that episodes 12 & 13 are quite boring. The plot in those is supposed to be the BIG crisis of the show, luckily this is way tamer than usual, but nonetheless it's boring. These crises have ruined dramas for me many times before, though I suppose boring is always better than horrible.

Perhaps rating this 8/10 is a bit too much, but the ending is nice & wholesome. I did not want any complications & the production team has delivered on that 100%. It was very entertaining across the board, especially the first 10 episodes.
A Business Proposal is a far better drama, but shows like these are few and far between...

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I have always liked Lee Song Gyong, but she should eat more, she looked borderline malnourished in this one.

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More than a little overrated

The Good:
- The beautiful (though highly unrealistic) romance
- The "scandals" did not lead to predictable relationship problems.
- The strong child actors
- The lack of a love triangle (the step brother was not nearly as bad I thought he would be)

The Neutral:
- The leads could have had better chemistry.
- Took too long to get officially together.
- The villain dad
- The stepbrother

The Bad:
- The ridiculously incompetent police
- All the "scandals", reporters, victim shaming plots
- The crime related plot is sloppy & mostly uninteresting.
- The story and even the dialog is excruciatingly slow. (this should've been a 3 hour long movie)
- The random side villains serving no purpose, other than wasting screen time
- The emotional impact completely died after the half way point.
- The redemption ark for reporter 1

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I'm not a huge fan of Flower of Evil, but that is a much better drama than this. Compared to Just Between Lovers, or I can Hear Your Voice this one is pretty weak, 6.5/10.

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It's a noona romance masterpiece!

The Good:
- The noona dynamics
- It has a truly beautiful romantic story.
- It has an outstanding cast.
- It has a bucketload of wholesomeness.
- It has great boss characters.
- The great sismances
- It has short, but impactful flashbacks.
- I did not feel the 29 episodes being too stretched out.
- Best parents!
- The love triangles are relatively weak.

The Neutral:
-The show is a bit silly, no one will mistake this for reality :-)
-The 7 year age gap is over-dramatized.

The Bad:
-The forced semi breakup after a kiss that lasted for 3 episodes(those episodes were pretty bad 11-12-13)
-The plot involving the evil sponsor woman made very little sense.

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Not bad not great!

I liked the main actors, all 3 of them did a great job. The production quality had been quite excellent as well. 8 episodes to tell a proper story forgoing cliche twists could have been great. Naturally the biggest weak point is the writing. It's really strange, I must once again question the qualifications needed to become a kdrama writer. The writer is certainly not lacking in creativity. There are some outstanding ideas in the drama, the bare bones frame of the story is pretty good. It's nice that the magic is not over explained, I think this is the reason why the original Star Wars films were so good and what followed later so much worse.. The reason why the writing is ultimately weak is that the pacing is just plain bad and the first 2 episodes were pretty boring as well, focusing on things that are not fun to watch and very Korean in a bad way.. So yes, the pacing. The drama only has 8 episodes, but the first 6 were extremely slow. In episodes 3-6 the drama followed a one wish a week format, but unfortunately the individual backstories of the applicants were not all that interesting, or well acted out really. With that in mind, why just why are the last 2 episodes so rushed and so lacking in impact and emotion. I did not feel much of anything upon finishing the last episode. *shrugs*

Mystic Pop Up bar is a fairly similar drama, but it's hugely better. The writing is much superior, it's much easier to empathize with the characters. That show caters to the Kdrama genre's strengths much more.
Then again Witch's Diner is worth watching just for Song Ji Hyo. Her clothes and her significantly different looks were quite a sight.. (her acting skill too, I guess :P)

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This special "episode" is only 10 minutes long. I don't know whether these scenes were scrapped from the final cut, or if they were filmed after the rest, my bet is for the former, then again the scene with the kid here is way better than the one in the final episode. I don't really understand why that would've gotten cut.

There is 0 reason not to watch this, if you followed the original run. It's a gift for the fans, a nice one at that. It's way more relevant to the story, than the Mr Queen special. In fact that is probably the most fun/relevant special I have ever seen, the only problem with it that it's way too short.

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I watched the Reply series in the recommended order (97>94>88), I was still very surprised, this was not at all what I was expecting. Looking at 97 & 94, while they are very special kdramas with lots of nostalgia, especially 97, they are nonetheless quite typical in many ways, they have many of the usual kdrama tropes & have typical love lines with very strong triangles with heavy emphasis on them, and all the flashforward scenes teasing the husbands make them that much worse. I accepted in advance that 88 will be the same & also checked who the husband will be in advance, having read that ppl were upset about the final outcome. I couldn't have been more wrong, I didn't feel sorry for Junghwan at all. I did not feel for a second that he was the main character, also there was no conflict between the male leads at all. I think this is the first time that the "love triangle" trope did not annoy me at all. Doksun is supposed to be the main character, but everyone had a lot of screen time & Bora kind of stole the show. This drama is mainly not about romance, but rather family, friendship and nostalgia. There were many touching sub-stories, there were so many heartwarming scenes. They just don't make shows like this anymore in the west, I don't think. The cast is outstanding, everyone was amazing. I usually don't like the Ajumma characters in most dramas, but here even they were awesome. I think over the course of the 20 episodes (about 25-30 hours) nothing overly melodramatic happened & yet I still felt quite emotional when it ended. (one of the best 4 hour long endings I've seen) In conclusion this show is extremely special. Goblin is still my favorite kdrama, but this one is on the same level, 88 is nearly perfect, this apples oranges comparison is pointless anyway. Even the OST is outstanding, it wasn't jaw dropping, but at the important moments the songs had strong emotional impact. The cinematography & the sets were also perfection, no surprise there though.

~~One flaw I found is that Tek remained Tek 6dan for many years, despite beating 9dan players left & right, I don't think that's how ELO works.

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