6
Park Min
Lands Between
Dry
As dry as they could come, lacking creativity in the silliness and diversity in the cast. There was no appeal or whatsoever in both leads right from the very beginning. More often than not, it felt like a bunch of cosplayers fooling around the set.Was this review helpful to you?
Lazy!
This entire drama was like babysitting children. The amount of fights and ear piercing screams was mind numbing. Having a loud fight for every other scene is one of the worst ways to create tension. Its weight and impact diminish and become redundant the more they result to the same tactics.Was this review helpful to you?
Another one...
The first episode was remarkably bad and dull, how did they expect to pull in the viewers with that? This drama is a strong contender for the worst high-class society themed drama. It's as bad-ugly as the architecture of the house they are living in. Not only that, the mystery element was utterly garbage and redundant which also led to a weak climax and reveal. Poor attempt to throw in teasers of the big event at the end of every episode. Everyone turned to a softy and no one went too far for the sake of this artificial sismance moments everyone was having. Any subplot the drama tried to throw in ended up being as sloppy and underdeveloped as you can imagine. The cast was fine but that wasn't enough to make the drama serviceable.Was this review helpful to you?
Eh...
The same rancid formula we love to hate from these daily dramas except this one stinks more than the others like a swimming pool full of expired milk. Scummy through and through. That 10 years time skip ending had me sighing in agony.Was this review helpful to you?
A bag of air
The first 2 episodes were good enough for an introduction but the rest didn't hold up and ended up being a boring slice of life. The plot may seems interesting on the surface but they ended up being more like a mother-daughter relationship defying its original premise. They simply neglected the unique situation we were presented at the beginning. Regardless, it still didn't do a good job carrying its message despite having a very relaxed 16 episodes. It's still watchable, Yoo Hyun and his father were the most appealing part.Was this review helpful to you?
Disappointing
The production seems to be as bare-bones as they could come from the 2000s. A drama can still be functional even with the roughest cuts if other aspects held up which, unfortunately, isn't the case here. The writing was a big sloppy mess, incoherent, disconnected from reality and unbelievably corny, especially the older cast. The drama ended up with too many loose ends, these plot threads left untouched despite constantly building them up throughout the drama. For example, the story constantly hinted that Yoon Young and her husband were going to have marital problems and that was going to be their story but we never got to that point, making all the scenes including them leading up to that moment completely redundant. The writing definitely affected the cast's performance. You may have been excited to see the leads to be different from the typical young-blood dolled up faces but they don't bring much to this specific project, in fact, it's embarrassing to watch them here when you they're definitely more capable than that. They were in their 50s at the time but were acting like the typical shy 20s boy-girl for their romantic scenes. Speaking of cast members, I ALWAYS hated how Kim Hye Ok sounds when she screams or cries but this drama turned it up to 11. You may or may not develop tinnitus from the unbelievable intense screeching.There was a transgender subplot and let's just say that the drama handled it as you would imagine Korean writers would do. The drama may seems promising from the surface but it's a big let down.
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Poor mystery
The first episode won't encourage anyone to continue, it started off everything on the wrong foot. It relies heavily on flashbacks which makes the story continuity poor and loose since the writer can stir the mystery in any direction without much consideration on it being coherent or whatsoever. It's too long for such an insignificant piece of mystery. Things didn't get any better once all the mystery was revealed because of poor build up and a joke of an antagonist. I wouldn't label it as a mystery drama anyway, the majority of the drama seems preoccupied with portraying arrogance and high-class lifestyles, leaving only a minimal portion of the actual story and mystery. Even then, we didn't start to get much information until episode 9-10 which is too late. They made the FL's kid narrate most of the last episode like an adult which was weird. Cha Do Young was an utterly useless character, her character was meant to be a comedic relief and a filler but she was nothing but a horny bait. It's probably the weakest drama I've seen from Cho Yeo Jung.Was this review helpful to you?
Meh
It started off weak with the most generic start of a time altering media. It got better for a short time once the time shenanigans started until things became really sloppy and predictable. There was too much focus on the butterfly element which left no room to work on the characters. Then for the last 1/3 there was no more time shenanigans and it became purely lukewarm politics while trying poorly to figure out how to stir it towards the end. I didn't expect anything from the ending anyway. Lee Seo Jin was alright I guess.Was this review helpful to you?
Could've been better....
It took forever before the story started progressing. It could've been easily condensed down to 7-8 episodes without sacrificing anything. The amount of plot convinces was unbelievable. A common example is whenever a piece of information is about to be revealed, it magically get sabotaged in the most blatant way there is. Throughout the entire drama it felt it was building towards something big but it never got there and the resolution of the culprits was underwhelming anyway. The drama in general was riddled with all kind of problems but the big cast was pulling it up so damn hard.Was this review helpful to you?
Okay...
It started off good until we had the first trial involving the first student. The drama didn't do a good job laying out the information in an effective way, but rather delivered it in monotonous big chunks. I didn't find the cases appealing. The pattern became clear after the second case. Cycling through the students while revealing more of the main case along the way. Somehow they made everything and everyone very conveniently connected to the main case. This resulted in an over-complicated mess for the sake of building something grand and complicated. Despite of their attempt, they also created too many plot conveniences because they had no clue how to progress otherwise. The students' personal stories weren't good to begin with and cliche at best. There were just too many shortcomings in the writing department to count. The cast was okay but there was a lot of overacting going around, exaggerated expressions, motions, phrases and unnecessary edge-lord-like quirkiness. You may think the professor was the main character but shortly after, he became a support one. Some episodes passed while barely saying any lines. The director was trying his damn hardest to patch up this hot mess. If he were to be replaced, the drama would flop so damn hard. Thanks to him we got something kinda watchable.Was this review helpful to you?
Weak
It had a promising start but ended up being another incoherent and illogical mess just like its predecessors from the same genre. It would have been somewhat fine if they didn't go the sci-fi route and kept it pure mystery/horror with a strong emphasis on escaping the horrors instead of trying to explain it. Even with 12 episodes only it felt long because they didn't do a good job handling the mystery. The cast was fine but nothing special.Was this review helpful to you?
Not even trying
This was a bad Sci-Fi! Lousy plot, weak writing and unbearable characters. It progressively kept getting worse with every passing minute. It shamelessly tries to be serious but came out as nothing but goofy. The cast performance was meh and the visual effects were passable enough not to look cheap. There were no redeeming qualities to be seen here, nothing but a downward spiral.Was this review helpful to you?
Shameless
This is a classic example of what I like to call a waste of carbon emission. It's impressive how a drama can fail on every metric there is and still get to finish its full run. It's fundamentally dysfunctional even if we were to disregard the epilogue. Yikes! On another note, Nana needs to figure out how to turn on her facial muscles appropriately with the scene.Was this review helpful to you?
Poor
Seemed attractive at first but it fell apart shortly after. Shamelessly poor narrative and storytelling all the way through. Egregious amount of twists and turns that always backfired. Most of the characters weren't appealing especially the baddies. The last 1/4 was painfully rough to get through, mostly because the drama didn't do a good job building up the story.Was this review helpful to you?
Not even trying
It seems impossible for writers to do a decent reverse harem drama without relying on awful tropes and this drama was no exception. Well, at least I didn't have any expectations going into it so that definitely helped. The entire story was built around a single misunderstanding which is nothing but lazy writing, instead of building a proper story. Out of the four men, Yun Woo was the worst addition, he always felt out of place and doesn't contribute much. None of the pairings were appealing, not even the non-romantic ones. The drama was so dry and empty that they didn't know what to do for the last episode so made up something just for the last episode. The cast members may be decent individually elsewhere but not here. This drama was as bad as "Three Dads One Mom (2008)" and "To All The Guys Who Loved Me (2020)", they even share the same flaws!Was this review helpful to you?
