One weakness that too many Kdramas have is at least one episode where the writting gets lazy, scenes get lazy. In this episode the Queen escapes the Palace to search for the King. However, she has no idea where he is and the bad guys know ahe has left. So she is just wandering around aimlessly with the Court Lady and her personal maid. They have a time limit in order to find the King but they have no plan, strategy or even know where they are going. It is an entirely ridiculously scenes. Then they run into the bad guys who are also looking for the King. And 8 military men are unable to catch 2 women, one of whom is trying to advance and the other is trying to pull her in the opposite direction to escape. They are 10 yards from eachother and yet the next scene the two women are half way running awsy and the military guards are nowhere to be seen.
Are Korean writers really this economically stupid?
Let me review episodes 13 & 14. A guy hired to play Santa is caught stealing from a store but adding a popular and expensive backpack to the gift bags that he was handing out to his son. He is a repeat offender having been caught stealing prior from another store. There were some who wanted to let him go and not turn him over to the police, but the store owner decides to turn him over apparently ignoring the sad story being told about the theif.Then the reports investigate and turn their attention to the bad that the Santa stole and gace to his son. They learn that the bags are very expensive. And that the parents of school kids who buy the bags have assigned names to the bags as Grase 1 or 2 or 3 etc matching the relative price of the bags. Any the parents and students have done the naming but that is really meanless too, however, because of the "naming" the bags have become the source of bullying or shoukd I say the lack of a bag or those with a higher grade bag look down on and bully those with no bag or lesser grade bags. The reports turn this into an issue of the store. Why or how exactly is not clear, just that the bags are very expensive even a grade 1. The reporters then do a live report from the store reporting on the fact that the bags are expensive and have become the source of kids being bullied. The reports intention is to damage the stores reputation, again why they want yo do this is not clear. They seem to be suggesting that a store ahould not be selling such an expensive bag and that some how the store is responsible for the bullying that has occurred because the bags are popular. Later that evening one reporter Dal Po is in the administrative part of the store where just outside the store's President's office, which is private and not open to the public. Why he is there is not explained. But while waiting for the elevator he spots a bag filled with shredded paper. Early in the drama he and other newbie reports were tasked with doing the virtual impossible to recreating the orginal documents from the shredded pieces of paper. So he decides to take the shredded paper stuff them into his back pack and take them back to reassemble them. He completes his task by recreating a single document from and entire garage bag filled with shredded paper. But lets skip over that ridiculous part of the story and go directly to what the document is and what it is claimed to represent.The document is a Purchase Order for the very bags that the reporters claim are the reason why kids are being bullied and that reason is tied to how expensive the bags are. Got all that. So now this shredded PO which was picked out of the garage by Dal Po is used by him to claim that the store has used the media reports to sell even more bags, oh NO the horror of it. But there is a problem here. NO business in the world would destroy a purchase order for an item they just purchased that day. No one. If they truely didn't want to have a paper trail of there own legal business practices the why creat a purchase order at all, at least create a paper copy of it. It is absolutely nonsense.And the next day when the store is filled with people wanting to buy that evil expensive bag that the parents are buying for there kids even knowing that if they dont buy the most expensive one their child maybe bullied, and the kids ate still wsnting then even knowing that. So the reporters bias irresponsible reporting framed to make the store the bad guy failed. The reporter here who claims to want to be the virtue of truth continues to fail to blame the people really responsible, those who are buying the bags, the children actually doing the bullying. This seems to be a reoccurring theme in kdrama's. That being that the people who are actually responsible for any bad behavior or wrong doing are never given or take responsibility. Some other person(s) is accused of wrong doing and suffers. But the methods and situations created to cause these situations are often either poorly written or so illogical as to be ridiculous and make some of these dramas unwatchable. But then to overcome what I will call lazy writing they create additional situations where the supposed right person is then caught or outed. But too many times the ridiculous stroy line becomes increasingly ridiculous in order to get to the finish where the writer can wrap everything up in a nice little package and hoping that no one remembers all of the other ridiculous nonsensical writing that as come before. I love good kdramas. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to find them.
Uncanny Counters 2 has step off into the abyss. It has become super silly and annoying. The powers they have and shoukd have all time are not even used in situations where they must be used, but they aren't in order to create additional drama, but end up creating laughable silliness. One example, in a fight scene in the Museum Mun gains control over Mr Hywang using his power he lifts Mr Hywang into the air pinning his arms out to the side and then has rope from opposite sides of the gallery wrap his wrist with the result that Mr Hwang is suspened in mid air stretched out spread eagle, so apparently he is unable to fight back. But them he spots his gun laying on the floor as one of Mun injured associates comes stumbling into the gallery, why he is even going there is unknown and how he is totally unaware of the fight taking place are different topics. But Mr Hwang is able to use his power into draw the gun to him where he then plans on shooting the injured Associate. Now we have already seen how Mun can force a persons body to do things against that person's will. He has even done it to Mr Hwang. But now all of a sudden Mr Hwang's arm and hand holding the gun is free to move, so what does Mun do. Well he is still in control of the rest of Mr Hwang's body. He could have forced Hwang to aim away from the associate, he could have made the rope binding his arm tighten forcing him back into a full spread eagle to name a few of the more obvious yhings. But instead the writers decide for Mun to forget about controling Hwang and instead to turn and run towards his associates apparently to take the bullet for him. This scene was so ridiculous I am not sure how the actors kept a serious face. Mun also has the power to call the territory, at will, which renders the powers of the evil spirits useless. But he rarely uses the power, even though there are no apparent side effects of doing so.I mean season 2 is a major disappointment bordering on being a joke.
This remains one of the worst kdrama's I have seem to date. Unless your 13 year old brain dead boy who gets off on bad and predictable fight scenes, then this drama might be entertaining. But out side that group there is no way this drama has actually earned the rating that is posted. The writing is terrible and nonsensical. Some of the acting is ok although so predictable that the actors have trouble making their characters believable in any context.The description of this drama claims it is about bullying. This isn't bullying this is about a stupid thug who thinks he is a major organized crime boss, but is more along the lines of Bad News Bears go rouge and is just as laughable. This drama is based on a webtoon, which again explains the 13 year old boy target audience, but surely it was/is much better written.My advice is, life is to short and there are too many other dramas worthy of your time.
I am afraid that this drama, so highly rated and supported by Korean's, is difficult to follow and kerp up with bc of the nimber of people in the cast. When having to read subtitled (which I don't mind at all) if there are a lot of characters engaged in dialogue at the same time it is extremely difficult to keep up with who is saying what and when and beginning able to take in the scene see reactions etc not to mention read all the dialogue. After 5 episodes neither my wife (a very fast reader) nor myself (a very slow reader) were able to connect with the characters or the story line. This was also the case with Reply 1988, which we were able to only get through 3 episodes before finding something else.
Solid 1st episode in introducing the characters and setting the stage. Even the car accident, which is a way too much over used method off killing people off in kdramas, worked well especially after finding out the complete details.
The Sheriff's acting is so bad that it ruins whatever remains of this episode that could be called good. And there is much. Not only do you have the very bad acting of the Sheriff, who's expression NEVER changes, I mean Bigfoot, ET and an armynof Zombie's could magical appear before him and his expression woukd not change, but the story line take a bizarre twist. Seo Hwa doesn't deserve to be saved. You have a guy who has done nothing but good for he, protected her, put himself at risk to becoming a Demon for a 1,000 years in order to save her from being a sex slave and after he has to use is magic powers to save her again, she turns on him in a New York minute. Then leads the Sheriff back to his Den because he protector her from knowing about the deaths of her brother and her maid both of whom she is actually responsible for their deaths. This is a nonsensical story line.
The show has potential and a potential interesting story line. However, the first episode had some weakness in details and weak acting among some of the supporting cast that are distracting at best and potentially harmful to the entire series if they continue.The weakness in details and supporting acting falls into the category I call lazy. For example if you are tying someone up to a post or pole as punishment tie them up for crying out loud. Wrapping a rope around a person at the waist or chest isn't going to secure anyone. That is lazy direction. An example of lazy acting is how many times can a man look at the ground with a stern thoughtful look on his face before he just looks stupid and confused?
It was a little slow getting started. Understandable…
It was a little slow getting started. Understandable as being introduced to characters can take some time especially if they are more complex. The last few minutes however were enough to make me wanting to check the next episode.