A Cell Phone With Butterfly Wings That Can Reach Into the Past

This drama explores the butterfly wings effect and how changing past choices in one life influences present reality for all of Korea. I've read many of the reviews on this title after I finished watching the show, and I get how some people were disappointed when the theme of the drama switched from fast paced action to more of a political commentary. For me, the change was welcome. I got a little exhausted with the constant "save my dad" segments and was worried the drama wouldn't progress beyond that point. However, they did an excellent job transitioning at pretty much exactly the point where I was completely over them constantly trying to rewrite history to create the best possible outcome for themselves. I liked the moral conflicts of whether what they were doing was right or if they should stop trying and be satisfied with the present state of their world.

The story tackles multiple themes, including political corruption, but also the underlying current of how people change based on circumstance or new information. The suggestion seemed to be that everyone has the potential in them to either be great or corrupt and that no one is immune to the influence of power on their lives. It also really heavily tackles the topic of press freedom and why it's so important to have an independent press system, sheltered from the external influences of the powerful.

The interactions between the two main leads were really well done, made sense, and were filled with chemistry. I felt like they spent a good amount of time developing both characters and I liked that they characters had moments of uncertainty and confusion, where they seemed opposed rather than united. The side characters were pretty well developed as well, and it was interesting to see how different their lives were in each iteration of the timeline. However, toward the end there were for sure moments where I felt like different developing side stories were lost in the fray and not fully resolved.

The actors, in general, did a great job portraying sometimes vastly different versions of their characters in different timelines. The wardrobe and sets were also really well done to add an extra dimension to the timeline differences. The casting was really well done too, the characters you're meant to empathize with you find yourself becoming really attached to, and the villain characters are sufficiently horrible that you feel genuinely pleased whenever they get their just rewards in various timelines.

The ending was weird, I hope there's a second season so I can get some explanations. Initially the alternate timeline calls were linked to the specific phones used, but at the end a different phone comes into play and I want to know the situation that made that possible.

Overall, this drama was worth a watch and I rated it very highly. There were some slow points and a few plot holes that bugged me, so I didn't give it a higher rating. Basically, it was high quality, but not epic. I was satisfied with how the story progressed, in spite of these minor inconsistencies and sometimes dry and bland segments. I wouldn't watch it again because I do not feel like there are additional insights to unpack, but I would for sure watch a season 2, especially since the ending left the story open for one.

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The Matrix, Reimagined As A Courtroom Drama.

This drama took me a lot longer to finish than I expected. Usually, I will wait till a drama is fully aired and then marathon watch it. This drama was different. I took my time and paused for a day or two after each episode because there was so much to unpack and I wanted to draw it out and really savor every scene and revelation. The story is so well written, the cast does an amazing job, the emotions were a lot more raw and realistic than I usually see in Kdramas.

I was fully immersed in their world and the overarching theme of judgement. It was not lost on me that the main characters are judges and every moment of every episode is about the judgements we form in every interaction with people. We perceive this world through the eyes of Kim Ga On, a young and impressionable judge. He is thrust into situations constantly where he is surrounded by his own impulse to judge others and influenced by other people's judgements in turn. Seeing things through his eyes allows the audience to naively fall into the same traps Ga On also falls into, casting judgement on things he doesn't fully understand and later regretting his actions.

The whole world is blindfolded, and the main protagonist is the unwelcome devil who removes the blindfolds so that we can look past the illusion that surrounds us and see the world, and ourselves, for what it really is. This drama was really cleverly done. As the show and episodes progress each pivotal clue scene gets replayed and shuffled to show how each situation, each action, each piece of information can be read differently based on the information you have. Like tarot cards being reorganized to support a different verdict from the same cards.

I've read a lot of the reviews here that talk about the drama being about social injustice, but I think that's a pretty superficial observation. The social injustice isn't there to highlight the unfairness of the world or to make a political/social point, it's there to help us understand how willing we are to be fooled, led into judgements that end up being the essence of the injustice we are trying so hard to overcome. Every single character gets misunderstood, every single character misunderstands others, every single character is guilty of acting on a judgement based on an incomplete assumption. The drama holds a mirror up to us and asks us to assess our own judgements of others, to examine them instead with the understanding that our experience and information is only a small piece of the puzzle and not the complete picture.

I've also read reviews talking about the character Kim Ga On being unrealistically naive and impressionable. But to me, having lived in this world a decent amount of time, it seemed very realistic. People, in general, seem to be happy to accept the blue pill, content in their ignorance. People, to me, seem to want to be fooled, not force fed a red pill by some shady hot dude in a black robe. Ga On being naive is a representation of the entire world's population, throughout every time and every culture, willing to believe the easy lie, fighting against incursion from the ugly reality. Ga On had to be naive for the story to make its point. He had to be force fed the reality he wanted to overcome, fighting his innate urge to accept assumptions and lies. He had to be naive because we are naive, because there isn't a human alive who is not guilty of falling for a pretty lie, because he needed to be a reflection of who we are as humans.

This show for me was easily a 10, the story was masterfully crafted, the directing was expertly done, the acting was across the board incredible, the music was perfectly timed and themed to the show. I would 100% watch this drama again, and that's rare for me.

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In My Top 10... Worst Kdramas of All Time.

This drama was a total slog and frustrating to watch. Basically every petty obnoxious romance trope is packed into one laborious story that is fills the viewer with frustration at every twist and turn of the trite, unoriginal plotline. You can put this drama squarely into the "why didn't they just talk to each other" category. Not just the main characters either, even the side characters. No one talks to anyone about anything relevant and it leads to mass confusion that is so lamentably avoidable you have to completely suspend your sense of logic and reality to believe any of the scenarios.

What's even more difficult to swallow is how many times the different characters have the epiphany "maybe I should be honest and just talk it out" only to go back to hiding things two minutes later. Countless times they promise each other that they'll lean on each other and be transparent and supportive, but they never follow through. Because the drama repeats that miscommunication theme endlessly throughout every character and every moment of every episode, they spice things up at some point with a completely left field action kidnapping sequence. None of it made even an ounce of sense, they basically needed to implement a Deus Ex Machina scenario to get the leads to overcome their unwillingness to speak honestly.

In a normal Kdrama romance, you feel at least a little bit excited when the two leads finally get together. This drama didn't even give you the chance to be happy for them at any point because they are constantly messing things up for themselves the moment after they reconcile. By the end of the drama when (and this isn't a spoiler cause this is 99% of every romance kdrama ever) the leads finally get back together, it's brief and anti-climactic and you're annoyed with how idiotic the whole situation is.

It's pretty rare for me to end a drama, having gone through all the ups and downs, hating almost every single character...but this drama somehow managed to pull that off. The only characters I didn't hate at the end were the kids (because they're kids) the bar owner, and the mobster. Everyone else annoyed the crap out of me with their stupid choices and consistently illogical behavior.

This is one of the few dramas I regret wasting my time on. I would not rewatch it, I would not recommend it, it's very bad, watch literally anything else.

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I haven't got enough disbelief to suspend to make this thing enjoyable.

SO...clearly a lot of people put a lot of effort into making this drama, and I fully respect that effort. However, this drama was pretty poorly executed. The story was long and drawn out with lots of inconsistencies and super slow parts. I think the flaw though was the role written for the female lead. It's pretty incompatible with the role written for the male lead. There didn't seem to be a lot of chemistry between the female and male lead, I believe the issue is primarily in the way the script depicted them both.

While the story is standard enough, a spy who falls in love and wants to give up the spy life to pursue love, it's the love part that is its downfall. The spy is pretty clever and does all sorts of clever spy things....but the female lead is portrayed as a complete simpering idiot.....not in a loveable way, in a pretty obnoxious way. She seems to have a few skills and they could have made her pretty clever too, but instead they have her be an obnoxious, judgy, lovesick, bimbo...and it's pretty annoying to watch. There doesn't really seem to be anything in her personality or appearance that the spy would be able to fall in love with, especially not in the represented timeframe. She's basic as shit.

When you start with a flawed premise, the things that follow become flawed as well...the viewer is expected to suspend disbelief not only with the normal spy never dies and overcomes all odds shit, but also with the main love premise of the show, it's too much. I don't think casting a different female lead would have made a difference, I think the material she was given to work with was inherently flawed.

The side characters were actually pretty well written. Dark Death and his long lost love were both very fun to watch and their interactions were stellar....though her suddenly being accepted and taken into confidence by her estraned bad guy husband was a little hard to believe. The male spy handler dude was pretty well written as well and provided the only highly limited comic relief in this dry inconsistent drama.

Overall, I would not recommend this drama over most of the dramas I've seen and I for sure would never force myself to slog through it again. 5-stars might be too high, but I wanted to at least respect the effort that went into makingit.

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Dude, UR screwed. No, UR screwed. UR even more screwed! UR INFINITYx1000 SCREWED NO BACKS!

50% of this drama is "all opposing groups meet coincidentally in a hallway and stare each other down for 5 minutes". The other 50% is split between them bragging to each other about their forthcoming actions/upper hand and political strategizing. With that sort of script, it's pretty difficult to pull off an epic drama. Still, the actors were at least marginally not terrible and the plot line is interesting enough to follow even if there are slow points where you read Buzzfeed instead of the subtitles. I rated it as a 6, but I don't know what sort of person I'd recommend it to.

The male lead is really good at looking sullen, sulky, pissed off, and occasionally sad...but most of the time he's an unreadable blank wall. That's sort of his style though, and it seems to work for him with this character. The two female leads did fairly well at their respective roles, even with not much script support. There was a heck of a lot of gloating from every one of the main players, it got a little old to watch at some point. Sometimes it made sense, they would gloat to force their opponent to take action that would create a vulnerability, but more often than not the gloating just caused their own party pain in the end. They basically shit talk at each other constantly for 16 episodes. The rapey premise for the two leads working together was a little difficult to justify, it seemed like a pretty long stretch and I think they could have found a better plot gimmick to fix the two together.

The story seems to switch back and forth between three basic groups of people, each one having the upper hand at times. They all seem pretty hell bent on mutual destruction. It bothered me a lot that they were willing to kill off people that got in their way...but not the two main leads. That made zero sense to me...like these two righteous shit heads keep messing up your plans and you...just sit back and watch it happen? Idk...if you're gonna murder anyhow why not murder the people actually in your way? I did, however, like that the male and female leads were opposed for the first many episodes, each basically forcing the other to behave as they needed, it was a fun dynamic. But then...that's what everyone in this drama does...the entire thing is people forcing other people to do shitty things. I think that made it a bit overkill...like it worked for the two main leads, but when everyone else is doing it constantly too it just loses its impact.

Overall, I don't exactly regret watching it, I managed to eek a few moments of enjoyment out of it...but it's not something I would ever be able to make it through again. It tried to be much smarter than it was capable of being. Also, I'd like to know wtf kind of fishing poles they have in Korea that you can stab a person through the middle with them.

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Amazing performance by lead actor!

This k-drama has a non-typical lead actor. He's not unrealistically attractive, he's sort of short, and he's awfully understated in his movements/speech. I absolutely fell in love with the weird little dude after watching this drama. There's a presence and force that he has when acting that is really fascinating to watch and this character really played to those strengths. His character in this drama is almost mousey; he's shy, reserved, bowing, almost like background noise. But hiding behind his unassuming presence is a masterful powerhouse of skilled orchestration. It was utterly compelling to watch this character navigate the events and complications throughout this drama.

The female lead is similar, she's not your typical k-drama female lead; she doesn't look like a fashion doll came to life to spit lines out on the screen. She is perfectly paired with the male lead, they have such an understated but powerful chemistry together. Her impetuous forcefulness plays so well against his composed reservation. Her character's idiosyncrasies and lone wolf tendencies really fit well with the male character's personality, they feel like they are different representations of the same person, like they just GET each other, like soul mates. Whoever cast this show is a genius.

Apart from the characters/acting, this show actually did a really great job intertwining the various mysteries, bleeding discoveries out slowly and tying everything together at the end in a way that made every single part of the story suddenly even more relevant than you'd previously realized. It was all super masterfully done.

I'd for sure watch this show again because I feel like in all of the various plot threads there were probably little things here and there that I missed or that would play out differently if I watched them with knowledge of the ending in mind.

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If you watch nothing else, watch the first 5 minutes of this show

So I came to this drama a little late, I've seen the lead actor in lots of other shows and think he's incredible so I pulled this drama off his acting credits and decided to give it a shot even though it didn't sound appealing at all from the synopsis. Everything prior I'd seen this guy in was more recent, in my mind he's a hot middle aged intelligent actor, not a thirst trap. In this show he's 100% a thirst trap. Holy god is he a thirst trap. Like I can't even believe it's the same actor level of thirst. The scene he does at the start of the first episode should just be a standalone movie by itself. /drool

Apart from the first scene, the drama went along fairly well and had lots of good comedy. The lead actress is fine, the supporting characters are fine, but the male lead really carries the entire show. He brings such intelligence and depth to his comedy, even when depicting someone shallow and superficial. It's like there's an inside joke he has with himself and it makes his performance really seem like he's a dude that has life figured out and is in on the cosmic joke of it all.

I don't think I'd rewatch this (apart from the first 5 minutes cause wtf a girl's gotta live life somewhere) simply because the story is sort of 1-and-done with not a lot of nuance to glean from future viewings. But I'm definitely glad I watched it.

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The Art of War meets The Office

After hearing so many references to Misaeng in other Kdramas, I decided I'd better give it a go. The synopsis sounded so boring, but my watch list was getting slim anyhow so it's not like I had options. Boy was I surprised by how much I liked this drama! It's SO well done! Every single character is well written, consistent, and interesting. The acting of the male lead was a privilege to watch, little dude expressed the emotions of his character so well you could feel everything the character was supposed to be feeling.

I related a lot to some of the plot points, though the job market is different here in the US, it's definitely difficult without enough education (or education from the right schools), so I've gone through similar experiences and thought the emotions and ideas represented were rather consistent with my own experiences. The interactions between the characters, more than anything else, made this drama exceptional. From their facial expressions to their petty disputes, every single one of them did such a great job playing the roles they were given. I especially liked how random things they'd say would help the other person solve a tough problem, they all felt like they had such solid synergy.

I will say, my one disappointment with this drama (and it's something a whole lot of kdramas are guilty of) is that they start with one plot device and then drop it toward the end. In this case, it was the male lead's tendency to strategize and relate everything back to baduk. In the earlier and middle episodes everything the little dude did had some grand strategy behind it, sometimes he won, sometimes he lost, but it was all part of his strategy. Toward the end, though, they really drop that piece out entirely and suddenly nothing is defined and explained in terms of baduk anymore really. Like...I get that it was part of his growth to learn how his strategies result in sometimes devastatingly negative situations and that thinking about people as humans rather than opponents is the point of his progression...but I don't see any reason why he would pretty much completely drop his in-depth analysis of his endless strategies after getting burned a few times. In the beginning he was always trying to learn and improve his strategies, but toward the end he just let everything wash over him without much impact or growth. I didn't feel like that fit in with his character very well.

The ending is rather predictable because that particular company's office situation was not sustainable, which they mention frequently....but I still liked the ending. It got a bit obscure, but I liked the outcomes for the characters.

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Another taboo romance...this time with a cat!

Straight up I have no idea what I was thinking when I clicked play on this Kdrama. Like...it was ok, I enjoyed it well enough....but holy crap is it weird. The entire time I was watching this (and for some time after) I was like...how weird would it be if my cat could turn human cause like he's seen EVERY side of me...I can't even go to the bathroom without this little turd.

That said, this drama is pretty shallow easy entertainment. I didn't hate it. I wouldn't watch it again, but I don't regret watching it. The storyline isn't terrible. The acting is average. The whole thing is average.

But seriously....the basic theme is that she loves the dude whether he's a cat or a human. DO YOU ROMANTICALLY LOVE YOUR CAT? CAUSE I SURE DON'T. I really tried to justify the theme like...ok I mean I've watched dramas with 9-tailed foxes that are in human form and how is that different. But it definitely FEELS different. It's a housecat. She's in love with her housecat.

They did make a few good jokes about themselves in this drama's script, I especially like the one about the litter box cause for sure that was a question I had rolling around in my head as well. Those sorts of logistical issues were basically all I thought about when watching this drama. Like...is there a cool down period between when dude was a cat, used the litter box, and cleaned himself off and when he is a human and you kissed him. Like...when he turns human does it also wipe away any residue that might be left on his tongue?

Overall, I'd recommend this drama if you're high and want to contemplate the bigger mysteries of life (like whether or not you'd swap spit with a cat). But otherwise...idk, there are probably better drama options out there.

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The story is great...but the wrong male lead was selected for this role

I'm rating this show super high because the story was so masterfully done. Every single plot thread mixes into this gorgeous tapestry of mystery and suspense. The story plays like a well written sci-fi novel and it's amazing. The lead actress is incredible in this role, she does an exceptional job navigating her character and is a 100% badass. I absolutely loved her in this and loved the role they wrote her into.

That said, the male lead was not the right choice for this role I think. His performance felt awkward and out of place. It felt like his character from Stranger straining to be something grander and more extroverted and there were many times I felt like his character absolutely did not belong in the story at all. I've seen the guy in other things from before Stranger, and basically I think Stranger ruined him. Like he's 100% the right guy for Stranger and I love him so much in that role...but now every other role kind of feels like the character from Stranger. IDK how he breaks away from that, but I hope he does cause it's painfully awkward to watch the guy in some of the scenes. It's almost like he's a semi-retarded child being led around by goddess. I'm 100% the guy's fan, but I would have enjoyed this drama a lot more with a different nerdy engineer male lead.

I would, even so, watch this drama again because the story was so exceptional and it's always fun to watch a chick kick butt.

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Relatable female life comedy.

I should start by saying the fake freckles on this actress are a little distracting in some scenes. The actress I've liked since Queen of Mystery, she's got a really unique look and voice. She did really well in this role, and the comedy was totally on-point for female-specific life experiences. The male lead...I can't even remember his face and I only watched this show a few weeks ago. He was very forgettable, but I guess that's ok because this story is mostly about the woman and her experiences as she traverses a life that really didn't live up to her own expectations of herself.

That being said, this was not as fun or as memorable as I had hoped it would be. The lead actress often just comes off as whiny and ditzy. I would have liked to see something other than a panic induced high-pitched whine session from the main character in every single episode. It was CONSTANT episode after episode two chicks bickering. SO MUCH BICKERING. And 90% of the bickering wasn't comedy. There was plenty of lol moments, but definitely a lot more whiny bickering.

I think it's still a good watch when you're out of other things to watch, but I definitely would never rewatch this drama. I got all I'm going to get out of it...which is disappointing because I was really looking forward to it.

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They got me....over and over....

Man....the first time they really got me in this show was in like episode 4. It's really hard to get me, usually I am like 500 miles in front of any plot twist. But, they are suuuuper mean in this drama and intentionally mislead you at the end of almost every episode, so you spend like 80% of your time watching the drama like WTF IS EVEN HAPPENING OMFG I AM SO LOST. There are a lot of moving players in this drama, so it's difficult at first to keep track of everything. Those mean suckers use it to their advantage and at the end of Episode 4 they make you think Ba Reum has the little boy hostage. OMFG...I was SO PISSED. I was like...nooo why you take this sweetheart and turn him into the bad guy in episode MF 4?!!? I should have known then that I was in for a bumpy ride. They bring it all together as the drama progresses....but everything gets a lot more sci-fi than I had expected.

Its still taking me some effort to get past the major gimmick of this drama. I won't spoiler it for you, but I was like....this some serious sci-fi BS right here. Except... nothing else in the drama is sci-fi at all. So like...it doesn't mesh well in my brain to only have that one weird "technological advancement" that the entire drama is centered around when it's so far outside the realm of possibility in the modern world setting. I think fantasy/sci-fi dramas work best when they have multiple outside-of-reality plot points.

I will say this....maybe skip this drama if you are soft hearted about pets being brutally murdered. Like ok, they put a disclaimer that it's not real and the pets are fine...but you can only watch so many puppies and kittens and birds and mice be slaughtered and still be ok, even knowing they're CG. I had to cover my eyes a few times so only the subtitles showed because I just didn't want another dead puppy in my brain. It's weird right? Like you could show me piles of dead bodies on TV and I'll be like...oh so it's a murder show. But show me one dead puppy and I'm like... YOU GD MF BASTARDS HOW TF YOU KILL A CUTE LITTLE PUPPY WTF. Aside from the general human gore, the only other disturbing thing I saw in this drama is that Lee Hee-Jun (older detective lead) has one nostril like SIGNIFICANTLY larger than the other. ....there were a lot of up-nose shots of the poor dude.

Overall, if you can tolerate the gore, this was an exceptionally well done crime thriller drama. The acting was across the board well done (except that one weird scene from the past with english speaking actors who were all so bad it made me physically cringe...the valley girl they had in the wheelchair who was supposed to have CP delivered some of the worst acting I have seen in my entire life...that whole segment should just be axed it was so hard to watch). The writers and directors did a super great job stitching together such a compelling twist filled narrative that managed to keep multiple plot threads all woven together without any significant plot holes or tangles. Definitely one of the better detective crime thriller K-dramas I've watched. Masterfully coordinated.

I'll probably rewatch this at some point, in a year or two after I've forgotten most of the finer plot points so that I can relive some of the anxiety induced WTF IS GOING ON HERE moments.

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Don’t play with your food, just eat it.

This drama was so so good. The production values are high, the actors are great, the special effects are great, and even the music is exceptionally well done! There’s comedy, light romance, action, big brain strats, lots of plot, and plenty of gimmicks. It’s one of the most well produced dramas I’ve seen.

However...two things bother me.

1) the lead actor is incredibly hot but how TF he sometimes looks like a 15 year old kid wearing his daddy’s suit while others he def looks mid 30s?? And I’m not talking flashbacks to teen years, it’s every episode and sometimes it alternates like several times a minute. IS HE A MAN OR IS HE A BOY??? Did they CG his face to look like a child angel sometimes for lols??

2) how TF does he keep getting his lighter back. Dude throws his keepsake lighter away constantly and yet somehow he always has it five minutes later when he needs to flip it open and closed to look slightly more badass.

Seriously though, the acting in this drama is so well done. The lead chick is hilarious, the lead devil chick is so full of personality, all the actors were so good. And of course the leading dude is really well done. Tiiiny pet peeve with him sometimes seeming to drop character, acting in a way that seems slightly out of character for his role, but tbh I think that’s the writers’ error. Like sometimes they make him do/say things that don’t actually fit with his established personality, but not often enough to define the variances as parts of his core personality...so they seem out of place.

The lead antagonist (and dude there are a LOT of antagonists in this show, it has a HUGE cast) was perfectly cast into his role. He speaks in English a lot and thank you god they went with an actor who has actually lived in America and can talk without a thick accent. It bothered me a lot in other dramas (like Mr. Sunshine) where the character supposedly grew up in America but his accent was so thick and his pronunciation so bad it totally broke immersion. In Vincenzo, however, they did it right and the lead antagonist’s English is perfectly pronounced and sexy as shit.

Overall, this drama is definitely worth watching and rewatching, it has so much depth you’re sure to see something new every time you watch it. ...and let’s be real, there’s never gonna be a situation where you’ve had enough of Song Joong-Ki’s angelic eyes.

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The only redeeming quality of this drama is Kim Seon Ho's laugh talking.

I was pretty hopeful going into this drama, and it started off ok, but for me the entire script was weighed down by really gross and unclean feeling behavior by almost every character. That's no reflection on the actors, who clearly tried their best...but the script is actual trash. I will say though, Kim Seon Ho is really fun to watch in almost every show. Little dude does this really pleasant laugh/talk combination that just makes him super likeable even when he's playing a dick or, like in this drama, a whiny entitled little crybaby.

My biggest issue with this drama, apart from the arguably weak plot hooks, is the cringe behavior of most of the characters. You've got the rich whiny dude, the rich rapey hyper-agressive immature chick (probably the best character in the show tbh, from a comedy perspective), the physically abusive FL, and the domineering-under-the-guise-of-being-helpful ML. Of them all the ML got the worst character in the script. It was gross how he forced his own personal beliefs on how people should live onto literally everyone he met. It was gross when his interactions with the FL lead turned from sweet to controlling. It was gross when he forced people to behave in ways he deemed appropriate, even when they asked him to stop. It was gross when he was allowed to behave poorly and get mad but chastised the FL lead for doing the same. The whole thing got super cringe super fast, which was disappointing because the interactions in the first part of the show seemed so healthy.

I couldn't get into this show...I almost stopped multiple times, but I have a disease where I want to finish whatever I've started...so I dropped several more hours into the frustrating and honestly offensive world these poor characters had to exist in. And I'm not talking about oppression and poverty, I'm talking about unhealthy, unsustainable behaviors that are morally questionable but try to force viewers to accept these same behaviors as some sort of pinnacle of humanity.

In the end, I regret wasting my time a little bit. I can appreciate the effort from the cast and crew, but the script was pretty banal and cringe, so what's the even point.

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Nose whistles, bird chirps, this drama has it all!

Dude....the emotional parlor tricks at the end of the last episode...why do kdrama directors hate us so much. Like dude, I've already watched 31.5 episodes, do you really need to plant your hook so deep to ensure I watch the last 15 minutes? IDK, it was a dark but reasonably well done drama. The actors were all so pretty, so it was fun to watch. There was nothing super innovative about it, it's a pretty cliche topic. But I guess that's not a bad thing, it felt familiar while still being just different enough that it was worth watching.

The acting was decent, although some of the bad guys were pretty one-note stoic, which was a little weird. The Police Team Leader chick was pretty killer. Her emotional range is really broad and her brisk but assertive tonality in her line delivery really makes me believe the character she's trying to sell. They did an exceptional job with the casting, outside of those few I mentioned before.

Some parts genuinely bother me. Like if you spend 29 episodes making these heroes seem like geniuses, how in the last 3 episodes do they suddenly become ineffective half-waits that suddenly can't solve simple problems. Did they all take idiot pills at the end of episode 29 and I just missed it? Lazy lazy writing to end a story using an easy excuse. Really annoyed with that. The other thing that bothered me is that some of the soundscape noises just aren't right. The birds outside from inside the church were one of the worst offenders. They did, however, manage to catch every inhale, exhale, and nose whistle. This is probably the only show I've ever seen where I hear one of the main leads nose whistle faintly a lot when they breathe. I think I should have used less sensitive speaker settings.

One thing that stood out impressively in this drama was the OST. Some of those songs really stick in your head and the action scene songs really set the stage and pull you into the excitement.

Overall, it's pretty good, worth a watch, not excellent but not every drama needs to be excellent.

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