Nothing mattered at the end.

The show lingers way too long on scenes where nothing is happening or something that should have been over after a few seconds and relies on jarring attempts of surreal behavior for attempted humor that always falls flat among other editing and writing issues.

Within all of that, the series depicted Guy and Jing who has fundamental differences in expectations for their relationship that neither could meet and were unable to resolve yet wouldn't let go of one another. Guy is a dedicated nurse and Jing is a university student who needs more attention than Guy has the time to provide. Jing knows that Guy has responsibilities that keep him, but he just can't handle it. Guy loves Jing so much that he's willing to leave an unconscious woman on the ground when Jing insisted they leave. They are clearly not in a good place to continue dating any longer and should break up. Jing of course breaks up magically with the last candy wish to make it so they never dated. Guy is now a doctor having not spent his school years dating Jing and Jing is happy with his classmates. They are still within each other's circles but no longer holding each other back. But none of that mattered because it was just the plot of Jing's student film project. The real Jing and Guy are still together and will be into their old age. The film is implied to have their be based on their real issues, but we don't see how the key ones were resolved, just that it did and back to the never ending fanservice fluff scenes.

This show is a mess to say the least, but Kana and Jing's plotline did stand out as being very competently done. Being childhood friends and Kana is Jing's refuge when he feels down and needs comfort. Kana is clearly in love with Jing, while Jing knows. Earth and Copter's chemistry really shines in their character interactions as Kana and Jing. The ease of their closeness and the palpable tension of the possibility of something more which is sadly unexplored, but the scene where they do finally address the feelings in the room is very well directed, easily the strongest scene in the entire series on all fronts, though the very messy editing with the mismatch expressions and an extra clip that should have been deleted while transitioning to the scene of Guy showing up distracts from the mood sadly. This particular director (and the writers he works with) is so selectively good at either only certain plot lines or a certain series in his entire body of work. I hope to see him nail being consistently good. I feel like he has a knack for complicated friendships type narratives in particular. This series is one of the misses alas.

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A light easy to watch coming of age romance

The core of this show is two young teenage university freshman dealing with their respective struggles that stems from previous trauma and how their actions and words or lack thereof affect other people. I found the conflicts that arose very understandable and true to character and importantly it's dealt with within the narrative for character growth. Daonuea is the art student and extrovert of the two whose cuteness and charm stems from how friendly he is and gets along with everyone. Kluen who plays sports is the introvert and the show progresses, he's shown to genuinely not understand certain kinds of social communication. He reads as socially awkward but is not outwardly noticeable because he's handsome and surrounded by outgoing people, so they just assume he's cool. The story starts off with Daonuea whose primary experience with love is being seemingly rejected by Kluen so he wants to avoid him. I really like that he easily becomes himself around Kluen once it's clear their scholastic activities keep them together for a while. This leads him to not want to hurt others as he himself was hurt so this causes complications when he has to deal with rejecting his own suitors. Kluen does everything he can to spend time with Daonuea coming from the school of thought of actions speak louder than words though he learns that words is also important to speak along with the actions. I quite enjoy the acting of Dunk who plays Daonuea. It's his first role and quite close to his real life personality. He's very natural and effervescent on camera. Joong who plays Kluen does well in communicating with his eyes and little detailed actions. The music is pleasant and the show overall is easy to watch.

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Cinderella in shining armor for a few seconds

It's a trend nowadays where the age difference is downplayed by either the younger actor playing a lot older or the older actor playing a lot younger so the gap is actually so close it's negligible. The difference here is focused on job status, with the female lead as the team leader and the male lead as initially an intern. It was actually pretty cool to see from his memories how she guided him as the responsible boss, the Cinderella in shining armor. It would have been great to see more of that. Their dating days were also cute and I really liked how the first two episodes had subversions like Yun Seo learning from Ju Won's brother that he didn't like horror movies, but went for her and learned to like something new. It would have also been nice if the rest of the show had them learning more about each other, but it quickly slipped into bog standard romcom cliches with the most odious being the faux love triangle with Ju Won always having a jealousy stand off with the painter guy Seong Min, who almost committed suicide, but then his mental health was magically fine afterwards. Yun Seo's storyline with escaping her abusive household and not buckling to her mother's pressure to take on her father's debts was really powerful. Sometimes the people you need to cut out of your life are your blood relatives and to keep them far away for your own well being. I feel it's especially important for Asian audiences to see that it's okay to do so. I like how Yun Seo wanted to break off the relationship because she knows that Seong Min's family would not be accepting of him. I feel like the show could have better connected the fact that it would be yet another parental figure treating her terribly. Yun Seo and Mi Jin's short friendship at the end was really short, I rather they have started their sisterhood sooner and less of Mi Jin and her husband's shenanigans. Yun Seo deserves more supportive friends and family. It would have been nice for Yun Seo to have one more scene with her mother in law, finally in acceptance and support of her, one big happy family.

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Erase it all

The series opened with such meaty angst with Lee Gun driven to deep mental unwellness by his family treating him as a second class citizen after his tragic tennis accident from when he was just a kid. His pain when he finally snapped and let his family have a piece of his mind was so palpable. It all goes down hill after the extremely ethically questionable procedure done to his brain to take away the bad memories and his personality turns into an annoying, obnoxious cartoon character. The actor can't bring any grounded nuance to balance Lee Gun out. Ju Yeon also just becomes annoying whenever she's with Lee Gun and gets worse as she falls in love with him. The chemistry for the two main couples are all mismatched. Lee Gun is actually way more interesting with his Sae Yan whose wacky personality actually levels out his cartoonish over the top behavior to something bearable. Lee Shin and Ju Yeon are also more interesting together with him having his own mental health issues that are more on the level that Ju Yeon can help with without lies and they can relate to each other better. 16 episode is way too long for this show as well, it might have been slightly more tolerable if it was maybe 10. The twist that Ju Yeon was the actual first love all along is extremely uninspired.

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Another no kiss, exploitative fanservice drama

I didn't know anything about this drama or the actors, so I gave it a fair objective watch and it's so disappointing. If the actors cannot commit to fully playing gay characters that includes even one plain kissing scene, then they should not be playing the leads of a gay romance. If they did at least commit to that minimal professional extent, then it would at least give the drama some sort of legitimate artistic grounding, but since they didn't it just makes it so many meta layers of bad, undermining any possible critique of the hypocritical kpop industry of making money off the the appearance of a gay romantic actions without any support for any actual gay rights or artists by literally embodying the hypocrisy.

The premise itself is a very real issue of using gay as concept to attract attention which the character Ji Hoon plays lip service to being against. Using skin ship and other actions as fanservice to pander to real people shipper fans that many idols are forced to do that have now gone from the once ubiquitous homophobia laced pocky game to non committed queer roles with no kissing. The in drama company so clearly is using the "Business gay" concept but also having their artists staunchly deny and have to avoid the media questioning their shady tactics like the media is wrong to question them. This is playing into the delusional fantasies of real people shippers that idols that are denying relationships are lying to them.

The in drama ceo is also quick to sell her artists to J who wants to work with his first love, and Hyun Bin who has roofied both Ji Hoon and Eden and had them both assaulted by an actress. He took photos of it happening to Ji Hoon and almost tanked his whole career. That's a huge criminal deal and the drama just brushes past it just like it has with everything else that's also a disturbing very real thing that kpop idols have to contend with, their management selling them for sexual favors. There are so many heavy industry things that the drama is lamp shading but does nothing with.

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Weirdly transphobic

The first episode is the strongest being very atmospheric with nice cinematography and color grading that isn't a lazy gray tone that the other episodes do. The isolation and growing fear is very palpable and the vibes is a mix of psychological and supernatural. It reminds me of a Junji Ito story that also had to do with peeping eyes and being spied on.

The final episode is straight up Backrooms: Korea with the newbie security guard getting lost in ASync and everything. That other security guy working there didn't try very hard to warn her, though she most definitely wouldn't have believed him anyways. Poor newbie. Kdramas don't do backdoor pilots, but this certainly looks like a backdoor pilot of a kdrama if such a thing existed lol.

The home shopping story and the convenience store stories were about not taking weird jobs no matter how much money is offered. Besides that as a common theme, multiple times the episode monster is a guy wearing women's clothes and make up. That transphobia is really outdated and really telling of the prejudice from the production.

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C grade

The adults act so childish while the teenagers get all the emotional heavy stakes and interesting plot developments. The best parts of the drama were actually the teenagers and their struggle to meet these physically and mentally taxing educational standards and expectations of their parents and society as well as the mother daughter relationship between the aunt and niece. The wildness of the the hagwon institutions like how the parents have to line up everyday to get the best seating for their children was interesting as well. The murder mystery part of the drama was okay, but it was dragged on for like 3 or 4 episodes too long. When it was revealed that the brother is a red herring and assistant guy is the murderer, that's when they should have wrapped it up.

I quite enjoy seeing pairings where both grown consenting adult characters have the female lead as older than the male lead and the corresponding actors, but the casting here is really distractingly off with the actress not looking anywhere near believable as the character age range she is portraying. It didn't really need to be a noticeable issue except for the drama itself making it awkward by throwing lines like "she doesn't look old enough to be a mom to a teenager" and showing that only a decade has elapsed between the past and the present the story takes place in. It's compounded by the fact that the costume department didn't make a single effort to at least style her to look like she's in her 30s or even 40s and always put her in clothes and hair styling that made her look very middle aged.

Her character is also like an emotionally volatile doormat, it would have been nice to see her have some smarts and effectively save or stand up for herself and her loved ones from time to time. Her version of acting cute was really off putting as well with the over the top laughing as she covers her face and violently hits whoever is in front of her. The romance plots of all of the adults were the least interesting parts of the story. None of them had chemistry and it would have been better to keep those as brief as possible. The teenagers were more interesting, I like how the two boys actually developed a friendship despite being love rivals.

For a single mom with younger man romance that also includes a serial killer plot, I recommend watching When the Camellia Blooms instead of this drama.

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Moth to an ex-flame

This production company really loves to name their messy gays Tae Ha. Poor Ji Eun is completely powerless against his incredibly selfish ex-boyfriend Tae Ha who becomes a trauma to both Ji Eun and Soo Hee. While I felt bad for Ji Eun being the one getting threatened by the scorned woman, he also isn't completely free from the blame, but she definitely should have been aiming all that vitriol at Tae Ha. If only Ji Eun had any self control, he would not choose to be with Tae Ha, but alas he has no such thing. This is such a toxic soap storyline, but executed in a compelling way.

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From chilly blue winter to warm blue spring skies

The series basically feels like what it would like to watch only the parts focused on the main couple without any of the subplots of a usual full length show or like back in the day when gay characters did not have their own series. I love that Jae Min and Nam Yi started off so direct with each other, but in verbalizing how they feel and expressing it physically as well. They establish that Nam Yi probably does love Jae Min a bit more and has experience dating other people albeit not seriously. Jae Min doesn't mention dating anyone before and now that he has that happy relationship glow is attracting other people too like Tae Ha, who really used his pretty privilege to get away with sniffing someone without the cops being called on him. Jae Min was lonely and he's very tempted by probably the attractive and second ever guy to confess to him, but he did immediately tell Tae Ha he's already dating someone once Tae Ha kissed him. I'm glad that Nam Yi expressed fully how hurtful that Jae Min didn't just tell him the truth of what happened instead of him having to stumble upon this. I hope this lesson is settled for both of them and Nam Yi doesn't have to feel insecure every time Jae Min puts on a cute outfit and will be working around other guys because it's really just Jae Min in regular clothes, the cuteness is just how he is lol.

The Soo Ri subplot of her manipulating Jae Min by threatening to spread rumors outing him to every company she has connections to was already evil, but then her recounting it to Nam Yi who rebuffs her love confession like it's something to be proud of is extra evil. This also brings up the economic divide between Jae Min and Nam Yi that I don't feel like got much exploration. When they reunited that first night since high school, Jae Min hadn't had money to pay the gas for two months. It looks like Nam Yi semi-moved in, did he help pay the bills? Even after Jae Min goes to see Nam Yi's nicer place the night they broke up and later made up, they still are just staying at Jae Min's place. Soo Ri also points out the fact that it's harder for Jae Min to find a job than Nam Yi with the outing. The missing part that the short run time can't cover is Jae Min finally successfully landing a job that he likes. Despite that, overall it's still a interesting portrait of a new relationship going through the growing pains to become stronger. The main couple is lovely and I hope even Tae Ha will figure his messy self out, that he shouldn't just go around kissing people who are already dating someone else just because they look lonely and smell amazing.

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Killer economics

There are many kdramas that try to be cool and gritty with often cringy results, but A Shop for Killers is the rare one that has done it. The standout of the show is Lee Dong Wook as the stoic but softie at heart Jung Jin Man. We learn who he is alongside his clueless but quick thinking niece Jung Ji Ahn, picking up new information while trying to survive the hordes of professional mercenaries. I like that 7 year old Jung Ji Ahn wasn't a sitting duck and had excellent assassin-dar, learning from her mistake of walking towards the strange man that broke into her house. As soon as she went to hide in the morgue, I just knew she was going to have to go through the additional trauma of hiding with one of her murdered parent's corpse.

Jin Man's morality is firmly in the grey and it's so fascinating to see how the show can keep navigating it. He's not okay with murdering civilians, particularly the murder of sex trafficking victims that his mercenary cohorts either perpetuated or enabled, but his market is definitely sells weapons to terrible people. It's so ridiculous of Babylon to go after him who just wants to quietly be with his family, instead of Bale who is a trigger happy psycho who goes off mission to commit atrocities that gets the local government's attention. Jin Man saves Min Hye who the only trafficking victim that survived and becomes part of his inner circle, but she has never met Ji Ahn and needed to scan her green code to even be sure who she is. Both ladies are trained by Pasin, another former mercenary, who turns talent into sharpened skill. Ji Ahn has been calling her unnie, but it should really be sunbae.

I cheered so hard when it's revealed at the end that Jung Jin Man faked his death, because of course he did! Towards the end, it just felt like a waste Jin Man was dead, but the show didn't let that happen, good for them. Although the season was enjoyable, the conclusion or any continuation without him felt less satisfying without him because he was the heart of the show. All the best parts revolve around Jung Jin Man, either it's his relationship with his niece, protecting her and giving her as regular a childhood as possible in their situation while training her on the sly without her even knowing she's learning integral survival knowledge or the glimpses of his friendships and business partners. I hope if there is a season 2, we could see more of his business acumen because he set up a very intricate black market shopping mall for professional killers. I want to see how he set up his business and how he runs it. I could see how the drama could show us through him finally properly training Ji Ahn to be the successor to the bloody family business.

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Dare to love, missed the transitions, but mostly gets there

The show does eventually have a cute romance between the lead couple Hong Do and Yoon Bok at the end of the tunnel, but it's jarringly dropped in out of nowhere like it had been setting it up all along when it hasn't been at all. Throughout the entire beginning it's always been just Hong Do being the only one interpreting his every action to be romantically driven towards her in an over the top way, whereas it's not shown from his point of view during the period when he's clearly dealing with a lot of trauma regarding his abandonment issues from his mother and sister leaving him. She herself is later revealed to have also been abandoned by her father yet doesn't empathize or connect with him about this issue. On the other hand he never showed any short of romantic attraction to her, but rather looking for familial comfort in a trusted mentor. There was one moment that could be argued and it's so vague it needs to be, and it's when she returns to him with a drink for him when he has given up the idea of her coming back. There is nothing on his face and demeanor that specifically indicates burgeoning romance though. If the actor cannot express it, then the director needed to do something about it.

This show has many lack of transitions for many different character plots starting with the main couple. Although it's literally like a flip of a switch once he quits his life as an successor to Seongsan village, it so nice when he finally turns on the romance mode because it means Hong Do as a character can ironically stop obsessing over him for once and actually start her career proper as a designer because she hardly did any designing. It was always weird that she didn't have a sense of style either despite being a designer and even later she just wore clothes from her Camille company closet. Meanwhile Yoon Bok is always nicely dressed though it seemed like the first time in normal clothes is when Hong Hak dressed him for the club, he suddenly has a tasteful closet. Their dates and life as a couple is really sweet. It took way too long to get here. The end where she makes a unilateral decision for them to choose one place or another and to break up is so ridiculous though. There is such a thing as long distance relationship and even Seongsan Village has wifi reception. Even when he shows up in Paris to see her after her successful debut, it doesn't feel very complete.

Yoon Bok's sister Yi Bok makes a awful rookie mistake like talking extremely loudly on the phone without even being aware of the people walking around her at the very place she's undercover and tailing suspects even though it looks like she's already been a detective for a long while. She just as quickly quits her job too and doesn't seem to take up any role related to it when she returns to the Seongsan village, she suddenly takes up the chief position so her brother can go to Paris for the finale. What's her dream job? Leadership skills? But she never showed any even while she was a detective. It's also a big deal her grandfather is now switching to training a woman as a leader of the village when the entire ruling class has been old men like himself, but that's all skipped over. The Hyang Gi character makes the most random turn. She was crappy co-worker happy to date a two timing guy and steal designs, but she suddenly she's an advice barista with her own business that has nothing to do with fashion even though she's a designer. It's like two entirely different characters just to keep the actress on the show. The cultural heritage administration director Bum Gyo is the ultimate random bad guy just to have a bad guy to not commit to completely vilifying the one guy (Jun Ho) that had a point to be mad's sake. He has no personality other than wanting money. The show didn't bother to give him any meaty motive and it's so dissatisfying.

Although she is a lead character, Hong Do is the third most done wrong character. The show would give her a moment like she's standing up for herself but always undercuts it with her getting steamrolled every single time. She NEVER gets to properly take agency to save herself while she is constantly damseled throughout the entire show. The second most wronged character is Jun Ho, the former child servant of Yoon Bok's family. The idea of Seongsan village presents an immediate problem that the show glosses over that Jun Ho represents. It can be one thing to preserve the culture for the people who are lords and ladies, but there are also the servant class and children who can be treated brutally like in the feudal era. Can human rights violation be consented to? Jun Ho is such a wasted character and he deserved to be part of the imitation and execution for change. The number one character that was the most done wrong is Hye Won, Yoon Bok's mother. She is a victim of the old school views of the grandfather and a bit of her tragic could have been majorly alleviated by her daughter Yi Bok, a whole detective actually telling Yoon Bok the whole truth sooner. Her mom was already in hospice in the last days and she couldn't have at least cleared the air on her behalf to her brother BEFORE she's dead? She's literally dying and not going to benefit from the deal with the grandfather anytime soon. Yoon Bok's misplaced anger while she dies is the result which is double trauma for her little brother too.

Some odds and ends, Camille is an independent queen who is always dressed to kill. It's a bummer we never see Frankie's lover. The two older couples of Camille and the grandfather and Chil Bok and Joo Daek are cute. Yoon Ah and Hong Hak got surprisingly saucy with their one night stand. All of these couples create interesting familial interconnections but the show NEVER capitalizes on it, instead using up half the show on endless chase scenes to catch Jun Ho. There's so much potential heart and humor just left on the floor. Even Joo Daek as Yoon Bok's mother figure wasn't played up enough. Chil Bok's immense financial losses also caused Hong Do and Hong Hak to be homeless as well, how did they survive that? There are missed opportunities and holes in the narrative everywhere and very slow to get into the meat of the story, but the romance when it happens is lovely and mature until it's messed up at the end.

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Psychological warfare game

It's interesting that the drama posits Soo Ji who is middleclass be the one that successfully fights back against the heiress bully Ha Rin. Ha Rin hand selected her to be in her class because of her background, mistaking her for easy to control. Soo Ji's sole familial connection actually doesn't have any thing that can be used against her aside from some easily disproven rumors. Soo Ji is financially stable, has good grades, and her largely absent military father has pushed her to be the utmost versatile independent problem solver for everything other than physical self defense. I don't think this guy will ever understand how neglectful he's been even after seeing what kind of bully she's actually been dealing with all on her own. I really like that Soo Ji is no saint, she just wants to stay in the middle, strategically forming surface level friendships until she can safely move onto whichever new school in the city her dad moves them to next. Even facing the violence that she'll be complicit in enabling in the pyramid game, she just wants to stay in the middle as well, but her conscience is challenged by Ja Eun, and finally uses her brain power for the greater good.

Soo Ji's cleverness and Ha Rin's cunning is a great match throughout the show. Everyone is involved in the plot in an interesting way and I like how there are moments where it shows the light of true friendship in between all the darkness that envelops the class because of the pyramid game. I quite enjoyed the paintball scene where they broke the prisoner game by turning the paintball shots on themselves, but it's not quite realistic that they were shooting each other for fun. Those paint pellets really hurt, especially at such close distance. One of them is for real all kinds of freaky though lol. I like how Woo Ri has her own storyline that goes beyond just being the first victim, but she gets to be a hero too. She tracked Ye Lim's stalking behavior albeit when she was doing her own borderline stalking behavior and broke through her agoraphobia to save her former classmate and later spoke out publicly about the pyramid game. Her brother is nice, supporting his sister and also Soo Ji and the other students as one of the rare adults who care.

Some weak parts of the show is definitely how conveniently Ja Eun gets interrupted every single time she's about to tell Soo Ji what happened between her and Ha Rin that makes her hate her so much. It's so inorganic and obvious of the show to stretch out that plot point. That's very sloppy writing indeed. It turned out that it wasn't even the only reason, so they still had something to reveal at the end. Instead it always looked like Soo Ji is missing some crucial information whenever she formulated her plans. There was no need for the principle to be so cartoony when no one else acts like that. Ha Rin's final play to make Ja Eun watch her die was pretty weak, as is her comeuppance having her adoption dissolved. Da Yun continuing to be abused by her dad who gets to comeuppances like that is the punishment she deserves for being abusive to others. Perhaps that is part of the story where the ones at the very top continue to have their way and new ones like the rich twins that move into the class arrive to replace the top of the pyramid. Soo Ji is ready to take them down though.

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Despairsm

There is a constant change up in the status quo through out the series that keep up the pace of the episodes. The portrayal of the endless pit of poverty is brutal, where everyone is subjected to the fires of desperation in this morally complex and ethically ambiguous exploration and study of characters. The supernatural entity in the form of an halmoni selling magical golden spoons to people desperate enough to see her, (though Joo Hee seems to be the exception to carry out an errand for her) is no guardian angel, but rather an agent of chaos offering opportunities to sew discord and mayhem to any type of person, regardless of their intentions. All the customers receive and cast the fates that they forge for themselves and their victims. It is pretty convenient of her to forget to give out all the rules at once, so everyone only knows more if they revisit her or someone who knows informs them.

Seung Cheon gave up his family in order to satisfy his ambitions with the excuse to help them in the way that money only can but though he loves them, he loves being elevated from being poor more. Tayeong who is the unwitting victim of the non-consenting life swap chose to stay as Seung Cheon to be with the "best parents in the world" but a lot of his choice is also colored by him not retaining direct memories of his life as Tayeong which are supplanted to those of Seung Cheon's and can't even parlay the skills he retains into a way out of poverty until the far future where it's also because of the years of monetary help set up by Seung Cheon for their parents to have a business and residence with cheap rent.

I like how the show kept it ambiguous as to whether Tayeong killed Joo Hee's father or not because although he held on to Seung Cheon's hands until the latter slipped into the river, but he did leave him for dead before changing his mind mid being driven away by his driver Moon Gi. Tayeong could have had a moment of weakness or even a mere accident that he had forgotten. I never thought he was the school shooter though, which turns out to be his step uncle Jun Tae who is Yo Han's biological son. It's strange that Yo Han/ new Hyeon Do didn't do the math and figure out that one at all though he knew that Jun Tae is his second wife Sun Hye's son and not brother. Her never acknowledging Jun Tae as his mother even when he already knows the truth was pretty cruel though he's a murderous sociopath.

There is a loud omission to how Joo Hee survived with just a few bills in her pocket. She is an idealistic, naive heiress who worked at a convenience store for fun and believed that money is not important until all she had to inherit was her murdered father's debts and 500,000 in leftover slush funds that her selfish brothers gave her that was quickly stolen from her and she kept looking for in the 10 years time skip when she already has her own apartment and is employed full time as a journalist. What did she do for money and housing as a high school senior and college student? Did Seung Cheon secretly help her from afar as well? She also doesn't really challenge Seung Cheon on ethics of his choices which seemed like she was a character that was set up to do. Even though she gives some lip service to Yu Jin, insisting Seung Cheon will go back to his own life.

In the end, Seung Cheon cannot escape the cycle of greed that the golden spoon enables, barely escaping death when the gardener switches lives with him and dies in his stead. He no longer has his own memories and becomes a different person until Joo Hee found him. She continues to love him for the person he was when they first met, ignoring the greedy, selfish person he became that throws friends under the bus, rationalizing everything along the way. Seung Cheon's mother and sister should have been able to know the truth as well and make their own decisions as to how they feel about his and Tayeong's choices. He deserves a thrashing by his sister for sure. His father who always felt guilty for not being able to monetarily support his family and apologetic for being Seung Cheon's father still felt rightful anger at Seung Cheon for abandoning his identity to be a rich kid with different parents though in the end accepted his decision that Tayeong chooses to be his son and his birth son doesn't.

It's fun that both of the To My Star leads had supporting roles in this show as the bully Jang Goon and the driver Moon Ki. They both make it to the end with Jang Goon as Yu Jin's husband and Moon Ki as Seung Ah's husband who watches along with the rest of the family of Tayeong's rise as an successful webtoon author writing about The Golden Spoon, which seems awfully dangerous to give an how to guide for a very real supernatural object that the granny entity continues to sling to anyone willing to ditch their parents and steal someone else's life.

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The season of terrible writing/acting for one of the two leads

The show is dragged out way too long at 16 episodes, especially with all the interesting plot points that are wasted and goes nowhere and terrible ones that go on for ever. Kim Jung Hyun is doing a herculean job trying his best to act his way through this atrocious writing for Kokdu the character who has grown petty whims and tantrums during his long supernatural punishment after losing his memory or original personality to time. The worst part of his character is still anything to do with the forced romance between him and Gye Joel, both before and after they fall for each other. There's no spark between these two characters, it's just double the annoying scenes. There is no proper communication for most of the series either, with important information force revealed to one or both of them. His curse/promise to do literally anything she asks being used for comedic effect falls extremely flat to say the least and it cuts short the fascinating aspect of the other curse from the deity for him to hear the cries of victims to kill a specific person. He's shown to kill the scum of the earth that evade legal persecution, but he's also shown to hear the calls for the death of someone that's just based on made up hearsay by Gye Joel who he may more may not have killed if it wasn't the body he was currently occupying. He really is a serial killer with voices in his head telling him to kill and the plot where Gye Jeol's brother detective Han Chul tracks him down is way more interesting than romance storyline. There's also the storyline point where Kokdu's power was on the fritz and suddenly that's forgotten about and it was just fine. The part where he found the reincarnation of his younger brother who turns out to be ex-boyfriend Yi Deun who brutally dumped Gye Jeol albeit with a reason, was more exciting than anything with her. I wanted to see their new brotherly relationship explored more. More of Kokdu's original personality is scene in from the past with their reunion. It was actually sad seeing Kokdu's pain at being unable to protect Yi Deun from getting shanked whereas there is no feeling or stakes with anything between Kokdu and Gye Jeol. Unlike her Kokdu actually has his sentient moments and sees through people and makes interesting plans. It was clever of him to use his own end time in the mortal realm to set up his enemy as a murderer. Again it was a frustratingly dumb moment to see Gye Jeol just crying instead of using any of her ER doctor skills to even attempt to help him. She suddenly just wants to kill the guy like she's possessed by her past life instead of sticking to her morals about not killing.

Do Jin Woo's character feels like a wasted opportunity. He was trying to expose corruption and the killing of his birth mom before he was surreptitiously murdered and his corpse possessed by a supernatural entity. He's really sharp and immediately figured out the supernatural situation he's in and wants to live. Exploring the dichotomy between doing what's right and playing it safe to live longer while going against both the earthly forces pursuing him as well as Kokdu could have been interesting, but the show dropped it like a hot potato. It's such a relief to see his level headedness shut down and not enable Gye Jeol's ridiculously childish behavior. It would have been fascinating to see his story play out, but instead he just dies again at the end of his 49 days after death.

The biggest weak point is both the writing and acting for the female lead character Gye Joel who pretty unsufferable the entire time. There was a moment of hope when she stood up for herself to block one hit from an unreasonable patient, the first and last point I wanted to root for her, but then it's just a series of her being a clumsy, man obsessed, childish, whiny, immature overreactions to everything, literally tripping over her own feet charicature. She literally trips down the stairs multiple times. The worst part is the drama points this out as a point of pride, she's intentionally made this way because they think it's cute. It's not. The worst is that she can never advocate for herself or for her patients. There is no point to her as a doctor characer. She does use her status as a doctor to threaten her brother to sabotage the witness's testimony if he ever brings witness who saw her boyfriend murder someone to trial. She's always the fool. Again the drama does it on purpose like they are doing something great. The acting doesn't do anything to elevate this kind of grating character. She's comparatively fine as Seol Hui who for the most part is allowed to act like a human being, actively taking agency for herself her entire life , but as the reincarnation of the character she drags down the story every time she appears and she half of the lead pairing. She's a pretty awful doctor too, not questioning how Do Jin Woo who is severely injured by falling off a whole highrise onto a car is just fine with some amnesia, taking advantage of an amnesiac to lie for her in a hearing, telling people she's his accomplished doctor boyfriend, the extremely irresponsible way she treats Do Jin Woo even though she thought Kokdu personality was a result of a disorder, etc. She doesn't notice all the weird powers he has, even when it's shown to her face while she believes things she has no proof for. She doesn't figure it out for TWELVE out of the 16 episodes when he literally had to teleport her and heal in front of her face. She some how managed to become a doctor, but her brother detective Han Chul got the brains of the family even though he supposedly has double digit IQ. Her forcing him to not take bigger cases is pretty selfish too, it's his job to investigate. Ahn Woo Yeon as Han Chul carries all the sibling scenes they have together and Han Chul can be professional at his job, but she can't handle it. Gye Jeol's must be in the negatives. His romance storyline is leagues better and more mature than hers as well, the difference better acting and strangely better writing as well. The writing lampshades her terrible traits, but that's not the same as breaking through them.

The costuming is also very garish for all the characters from lead to supporting. They literally give Han Chul a leather jacket with spikes during the scene he first meets Kokdu as his sister's boyfriend. It would be fine if it looked cool, how did they manage to find the worst cheap looking one. There are so many lower budget productions that do better in dressing the characters both for the story and just aesthetic wise. All of the jewlery looks so fake like toys except for the bog laurel ring and hair stick. The pink jeweled tiara and the matching necklace are the worst after the big ruby ring. It makes no sense because Ok Shin chaebol underling is filthy rich and could afford real jewels for her.

There is one thing the series surprisingly does right and that's actually planting the seeds for a plausible reason for the disappeared forever character to reappear again. Kokdu had his contract with Gye Jeol and also the prayers from her kokdu cult of patients that she makes pray for him in lieu of payment. Kokdu remains a entity with his underworld job and Gye Jeol continues her cycle of death and rebirth without the tragic death in this timeline like she has in every life. They just dropped that nugget last second without having established that info anytime in the 16 episodes. It's also a bummer there's no final reunion between Yi Deun who survived the stabbings but no line about whether he's in remission or not which he hopefully is after five years.

If you skipped to the end here, just skip this whole drama. There's better ones out there.

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Ms. Park and her husbands

Yeon Woo's opening section in Joseon is pretty fun with her being a woman that is too far ahead of her time, using her training in embroidery to sell avant garde hanbok designs and supporting fellow women artists. Her connection with the doomed Joseon Tae Ha is sweet as well, it was really sad to see him pass so soon. Her confusion being in modern times was only amusing up until after the point she meets reincarnated Tae Ha's nephew and learns the joys of a convivence store. After that it was pretty grating even though it would be realistic to need time to adjust, the schtick was just old. It was great to see Sa Wol take to the modern world like fish in water. She turned out to be even more of a woman ahead of her time than her agashi. Their sisterhood is really sweet as well.

I like how even though Yeon Woo is surrounded by dopplegangers with similar goals as those in Joseon, they're nuanced and different than those past versions of themselves like Hye Sook the step mother. I feel like the role of Tae Min could have been a very interesting wild card red herring had he been played by a stronger actor. It's a wasted opportunity that the writing didn't put some effort into fostering a brotherly bond between Tae Ha and Tae Min because the latter was on his brother's side, looking up to him the whole time.

While I do like that the drama portrays the two reincarnations are two entirely different people when other dramas stick the surviving lead with a reincarnation like it's the same person, it's also so sad that Yeon Woo kept Joseon Tae Ha at arms length after she manages to tip him off with enough of a head start that he survives their wedding night. It would have been lovely if she would have opened her heart to him too, just loving him as his own person different than reincarnated Tae Ha. He didn't have that long to live anyways with the medical abilities of the era no way being able to treat his lifelong heart issues. It's also weird that reincarnated Tae Ha's lifelong heart issue magically disappears and isn't an issue anymore.

Tae Ha's grandfather being the manipulative villain all along was nicely done, it seems to be a new trope having a seemingly loving parental figure who wants their child figure to be married to have been the one who is responsible for the death of the character's original parents. His ending of being just a happy guy all the time due to his head injury is anticlimactic though.

I really like how Yeon Woo and Tae Ha actually have a good physical intimacy, lots of kisses and they even have sex. I was half wondering if she'll be pregnant after going back to Joseon, passing off the kid as Joseon Tae Ha's, but they never went there, which is good. She and reincarnated Tae Ha used protection well.

The ending was okay, a vague connection of her jumping off a cliff and ending up in the modern day, although it looks like she just materialized by the tree all dry this time. Slightly better than just appearing again like a lot of other supernatural dramas where one character magically reappears with no explanation. They get officially married, but it's weirdly without any of their family like Sa Wol or Tae Min. It would have been a nice reversal from the fake one that only had his evil grandfather in attendance.

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