6
Park Min
Lands Between
A 5 episodes story turned into a full 16 episodes drama!
Ha Ji Won is one of my favorite actresses, on the contrary, both male leads (Lee Jin Wook & Yoon Kyun Sang) are amongst actors I hate. Both of which I've seen most of their filmography, they always put up artificial expressions, borderline cringe and overact.This drama was quite disappointing, lackluster writing full of incoherent and jarring flashbacks, plus a sleazy shitty love triangle. The drama was heavily reliant on the ML's secret (why he can't love FL) to construct a story and this is its biggest downfall. The secret wasn't even that grandiose, it was just some insignificant bullshit from the teenage days. What a way to fucking blueballs the viewers.
I would say 3.5/10 and I'm being generous. By the end I wanted a miserable ending just for a final fuck you to the viewers.
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The bullshit starts after the first 1 year time-skip. It's impossible for Se Kyung hair to grow this long in a year lol. The drama hit the shitter after episode 32. It's impossible for someone as rich as Pil Mo to be this dunce, the dude got a single digit IQ. Kang Ha Ri is a main character but she almost doesn't show up in the second half, 5 episodes can pass without seeing her.
Worst time-skip ending in a long running drama ever, I'm not satisfied with this half-assed outcome. This 6-years time skip was awful, none of the stories ended up as I hoped. Not a single pair ended up together "officially". The pairings were awful altogether anyway. Dal Hee didn't get punished enough.
Random remarks:
Hong Shi smile will resolve any conflict in a second. Since I saw Byun Jung Soo in "Manny (2011)", I can only remember her as Janice as she screams "I'm Janice!". Lee Yoo Ri cameo around the ending was superb.
Some serious illogical assery in spoilers:
- Dal Hee/Sera Park, Miss Lee and Tae Soo all were alive and barely punished at the end but Se Kyung is dead. In what absurd logic does this make sense!!
- They built up Ha Ri and Gi Chan to be together for +50 episodes, they confessed their feelings to each other, their parents in law agreed to give them their blessings, yet somehow for whatever bullshit reason the love interest shifted towards Se Joon in the last 5 episodes. They didn't even have that many scenes together, let alone the none existent chemistry. Kang Ha Ri got robbed, barely any screen time and shitty love path.
- Eun Hyang and Hwan Seung not ending up together is another random bullshit. Oh Yoon Ah put 200% in her performance.
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Problematic
This is the first (I think) and worst mental-illness/psychiatrists focused drama! It's common for the patient to crush over their psychiatrist and fall in love, because they are mentally unstable and vulnerable, but once the roles are flipped and the psychiatrist is the one imposing their feelings on the patient then there's a big problem at hand.The first obvious problem is for a psychiatrist to fall in love with his patient. It would probably be less of a problem for a doctor in another field but not a psychiatrist, a professional dealing with mentally vulnerable people. With all that being said, I could easily turn a blind eye to the whole ordeal if the drama was comedic/light/romance and never took the serious and professional route, of which this drama tried so hard to go for. The second big problem, there was a blatant attempt to stir the narrative in that direction while disregarding any coherency at the same time. We can clearly see an example of that right from the beginning in episode 1 with everything happened with the cop incident.
This drama had nothing to offer other than a pretty cast. Anyway, they failed miserably in handling the concept and ended up producing a very poor product. A disgrace to real professional psychiatrists!
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...
No one will give you the tune of despair like Jang Hyuk does. If you're expecting a father-daughter focused drama then don't even bother because that was less than 5% of the drama. Even the sport theme felt secondary. There need to be a supernatural tag/genre instead of adventure. It's about an evil pharmaceutical company making a drug that gives superpowers. Not even Jang Hyuk heavy lifting the entire drama on his back could've saved it. I wish this was only family/boxing themed, it would've been great.Was this review helpful to you?
High potentials, fails to deliver!
Let's state the obvious, the comedic moments weren't good, it always felt forced. I assume they wanted to do that to lighten the mode? It took what felt like an eternity to kick start the story. Teasing the viewers constantly about the "tape" for the entire series was kinda annoying. How many times you can save Ha Ram's life became a personality trait for the male characters in the drama lol.When you over complicate a story, things get out of hand real quick really fast. Maybe dedicate some of the budget to hire a team of skilled veteran writers instead? Many convoluted plotlines were brushed off eventually. Half of the death cases weren't interesting. The last 2 episodes in general contain some serious unsalvageable nonsense. The writer turned off her brain and started writing willy-nilly. Starting from the beginning of episode 13 there was a big disconnect with the story and the momentum.
Abysmal ending. The ending goes into my list of "I'm a special quirky little writer so I'mma pull an ending out the depths of my ass". They tried to make it "poetic" but ended up shooting themselves in the foot. The writing department was really lacking and barely functional that by the end it leaves you with nothing but pretty visuals. This is a real case of a drama that had high potentials but fails to deliver.
In conclusion, it got a visually appealing atmosphere, good enough cast, and it's entertaining enough to be passable. Definitely doesn't deserve the hype. The series was from Netflix I should have known better. This is a 5.75/10 on a good day.
P.S. Kim Won Hae is always a treat to watch.
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There was an attempt, I guess...
It seems the drama excuses itself way too much and too often under the umbrella of "real life events" which denotes for a lazy writing. Moreover, the antagonist in the drama is portrayed as an omnipotent being who possesses an uncanny awareness, insight, and control over everything and everyone. Practically a god! It undermines the believability of the story and weakens the conflict by eliminating any sense of balance or potential for meaningful character growth and development. This kind of characterization is only passable for makjang shenanigans, mindless action or goofy adventure flicks. Instead of crafting a compelling tragedy, it turned into an extensive series of self-inflicted misery, unreasonable maneuvers and forceful entanglements. This is not how to make a tragedy!The brothers playing the big turning point for the climax were only brought to attention in the last 2-3 episodes. How do you expect the viewers to care? While some of the support characters may receive attention initially (or eventually like the brothers) but they ended up being underdeveloped and lacking depth. Their presence feels inconsequential and fails to contribute meaningfully to the overall story. Either give them a proper investment or don't waste unnecessary scenes. The 12 episodes run already feels too long! Despite dealing with potentially emotional and poignant themes, the drama fails to delve deeply into the emotional lives of its characters. Instead, we got a superficial, quick and dry cuts that were barely sufficient to progress the story.
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Not that good!
It's 10 episodes too long, cut it in half! Feels like a copy from every other time-travel joseon era drama, especially "Queen In Hyun's Man (2012)" which shares great similarities. In comparison, "Queen In Hyun's Man (2012)" was better than this thin lukewarm copycat.A lot of things are thrown at you and you are meant to accept them without questioning or whatsoever. Se Na is a generic pitiful villain with no character. Diluted story, poorly executed. The chemistry is often too awkward between them. Don't get me started on the script/romance/characters/editing, all of which were distasteful. It's a shame, these kind of drama are the ones that get popular. 4.75/10
Don't watch it from NETFLIX, they cut scenes from every episodes. Watch the TV or Blu-ray version.
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It's just good
Excruciatingly long and pointlessly slow until the last two episodes where they speed up everything, yet the last 2 eps were underwhelming for an ending, especially the last 30 minutes wtf was that! It's full of fillers and mundane conversation. These conversations don't contribute in any meaningful way other than prolonging the series, if they were to serve a comedic purpose or to further develop the characters then sure keep them going. Also, 25+ hours of workplace abuse/politics is utterly exhausting and mind numbing. Massive missed opportunity to utilize this "empty" time to present a better story. Most of the drama is focused on Geu Rae & Sang Shik while the side stories are brushed off and barely given any attention.Nonetheless, it's a good package but not as good as I was expecting. Looking at ratings/reviews my expectations were too damn high.
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Sexless Tea Party
You'd think there was room for this deep dive into human desires and the messiness of relationships, but the drama just stumbled into this predictable mess of melodrama and characters you could barely see through. The characters were supposedly torn apart by the whole moral dilemma of their sneaky affairs but they did the bare minimum in that regard. Even the romantic tension felt somewhat forced and lacking. The drama would've benefited from only focusing on the main infidelity but here everyone was cheating on one another. Too much noise. In comparison, all the previous points also applied to the JP version except that they were even more drastic and detached in that one.Was this review helpful to you?
Oof...
Within less than 3 minutes going into the first episode we were presented with these goofy and silly sound effects for every motion and laughter. My expectations were nullified immediately which definitely helped to endure it. The interactions between the characters were painfully artificial and static, which made the dreadful cheesiness even worse than it already was. This is how it seems from the surface but the content is much more revolting and ugly. Highly not recommended!Was this review helpful to you?
YIKES!
It's exactly as bad as the synopsis made it sound and its execution was 10 folds worse. I feel sorry for older cast such as Ahn Nae Sang and Kim Hee Jung to have this drama in their resume. The entire drama was disastrous enough but the leading cast was the worst part of it. The actors/actresses themselves and their respective characters were failing and stumbling every step of the way with no chance of recovery.Was this review helpful to you?
Dissapointment!
Interesting premise but horrible execution. Unfortunately it ended up being disappointing especially with how they handled both leads' characters. Aside from the main story, the side cases, investigations, and side villains all were mediocre anyway. The team doesn't matter, they were rarely shown, they had no existing persona, everything was led by and from the perspective of Tae Seok and they don't have any meaningful contribution even for the small cases. Which is why you can't consider this drama as one of those team investigation ones. Dare I say the drama was "less than average"!Was this review helpful to you?
Mid...
Very light family drama. No heavy long conflicts, no bad blood, no soap opera cliche and no evil characters lingering around for too long. It doesn't do anything interesting/special nor it is offensive. Generic smooth sailing family drama. The last 40 episodes felt like an extreme stretch. I wanted the leads' relationship to have a stronger presence, it was a bit on the weaker and tamer side. I also wanted a slightly better ending overall.Was this review helpful to you?
The Slipperiest Time Slip!
This drama turned out to be a reverse harem in disguise. A handful of princes with varied flavors happened to meet a mentally handicapped girl to start their quest of hunting this wild female from a different timeline. All of these princes have the edgiest troubled teens behaviors with a mix of daddy/mommy issues. Out of all of them, the male lead took the edge in being the ultimate dark and mysterious bad boy, literally. Zooming out, all of this was done for a trail of pathetic emotional baits with no substance, they were begging the viewers for pity points. The moment the female lead knew about them, she approached every single one with the mentality of "I can fix him". While the princes were intentionally irrecoverably broken by the writer to serve a purpose for the female lead, she equally had her own set of problems. Within the span of a few episodes she became weirdly too attached to all of them and going even further to offer sacrifices, while neglecting her brief arrival and the fact that she was transferred to the past, but I guess shirtless bois are irresistible. The romantic entanglements in general were agonizing to tolerate, it kept you wishing the worse for all of them. Although it was bad as is, but why did they decide to make it worse with each passing episode in the second half? It's just too painful knowing the writer is making fun of us. At least the cinematography was okay and I watched it on BluRay.Was this review helpful to you?
Failure is an option
For a slow drama to work you need a tight and controlled storytelling otherwise it will turn into a tasteless picture of which this drama fell into constantly. This notion was only amplified further by poor character writing, poor plot devices, and poor attention to details. The writer must have been utterly delusional thinking she was writing something "good". The final blow was delivered with cutting down the number of episodes. On the bright side, it ended early!Was this review helpful to you?
