Turtle Stomper
Seattle (USA)
This review may contain spoilers
Starring Ok Taec Yeon & Ok Taec Yeon's ears.
I mean....it wasn't terrible, LOTS of plot holes. The dude that plays the main bad guy is really good at playing bad guys...pretty much I hate him in everything he's in, but that's 100% because he's so good at being bad, and you're probably supposed to hate the bad guys right? The dude that plays the male lead I was ready to hate, because his character is SO TERRIBLY EVIL in Vincenzo, it took me a few episodes to get over that and I ended up liking him a lot. This dude's ears amaze the shit out of me every time, they're MASSIVE but he wears them so well. The entire premise of the romance in this story is incredibly shallow. Like others have said, I get why the ML is into her but I 100% can't figure out why she falls for him, other than his being relatively hot. The mystery/thriller arc of the story is ok, it's pretty shallow as well but the actors help elevate it beyond its flawed capabilities.
Every side character is pretty shallowly written apart from the old dude in the wheelchair, and even him I had a difficult time believing his motivations were grounded in logical plot. Like ok, he's the typical closed lipped kdrama old dude who doesn't talk a lot about knowledge he has, I get that, but I struggle with how much he apparently did over the course of the lead's lives compared to how little he did in present day. It just didn't seem very realistic. The cop side characters are all excessively ineffective at doing anything. Like why weren't they guarding that girl's room better? Why weren't they guarding the ML's room when the bad guy was still on the loose? IDK, just a bunch of poorly developed and inconsistent characters. Like what was the point of the team leader cop's tiny romance arc...it was so out of place and poorly developed that I can't see what it even added to the story.
All 3 leads are great at acting and the 2 male leads had moderately developed storylines...the FL's storyline got sort of dropped along the way, so there's a lot of linkage with the MLs at the beginning but halfway through she just gets ignored. Even still, she did a great job working with what she had. There was chemistry between her and the ML, but it didn't seem like a "die for you" / "wait for you" type chemistry. They also switch pretty rapidly from portraying her as a badass to portraying her as a weakling damsel in distress. Her character was really poorly written with almost no personality, so any personality came from the FLs acting skills.
There is zero comedy in this show, and maybe that's the missing element here. If there had been more comedy and less baseless romance this might have been a really stellar show. The fantasy elements would have been better if they weren't so variable. Like sometimes they show you what the dude sees with people's deaths, sometimes they don't show you, and I can't figure out why. There's lots of people making random decisions with zero context.
Overall, I don't regret watching it, but it's not clever or funny enough to have such a shallow underdeveloped plot. With this sort of storyline you have to either get super intricate with the plot and character development, or you have to be funny. Otherwise you've just got people saying lines on the screen and it does nothing to draw you in. I wouldn't rewatch this, but it was good for a few hours of entertainment (though a true slog toward the end).
Every side character is pretty shallowly written apart from the old dude in the wheelchair, and even him I had a difficult time believing his motivations were grounded in logical plot. Like ok, he's the typical closed lipped kdrama old dude who doesn't talk a lot about knowledge he has, I get that, but I struggle with how much he apparently did over the course of the lead's lives compared to how little he did in present day. It just didn't seem very realistic. The cop side characters are all excessively ineffective at doing anything. Like why weren't they guarding that girl's room better? Why weren't they guarding the ML's room when the bad guy was still on the loose? IDK, just a bunch of poorly developed and inconsistent characters. Like what was the point of the team leader cop's tiny romance arc...it was so out of place and poorly developed that I can't see what it even added to the story.
All 3 leads are great at acting and the 2 male leads had moderately developed storylines...the FL's storyline got sort of dropped along the way, so there's a lot of linkage with the MLs at the beginning but halfway through she just gets ignored. Even still, she did a great job working with what she had. There was chemistry between her and the ML, but it didn't seem like a "die for you" / "wait for you" type chemistry. They also switch pretty rapidly from portraying her as a badass to portraying her as a weakling damsel in distress. Her character was really poorly written with almost no personality, so any personality came from the FLs acting skills.
There is zero comedy in this show, and maybe that's the missing element here. If there had been more comedy and less baseless romance this might have been a really stellar show. The fantasy elements would have been better if they weren't so variable. Like sometimes they show you what the dude sees with people's deaths, sometimes they don't show you, and I can't figure out why. There's lots of people making random decisions with zero context.
Overall, I don't regret watching it, but it's not clever or funny enough to have such a shallow underdeveloped plot. With this sort of storyline you have to either get super intricate with the plot and character development, or you have to be funny. Otherwise you've just got people saying lines on the screen and it does nothing to draw you in. I wouldn't rewatch this, but it was good for a few hours of entertainment (though a true slog toward the end).
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