I am going to stick with talking about the stuff I had expected to like, & what actually happened. Because otherwise this show has way too many problems & this would turn into an essay so long that I myself won’t have the energy to read it again.
1) The Romance/ML: Ah! We are starting out strong already. Ahn Min Hyuk Ahn Min Hyuk Ahn Min Hyuk. I remember everyone swooning over him back when this show was airing. There were all these posts & articles about how he is one of the best MLs ever, how you should get yourself someone like him in real life – someone who accepts you for who you are. And I am sitting here thinking,
I had hope when I first saw him be awestruck by her strength & whisper “she is so sexy” to his secretary. But that was an ominous dialogue. He found her strength attractive only when she used it for his entertainment. But whenever she had to really use her strength in serious situations, he would pressure her to not do it & to instead, “leave it to him” & that “he will protect her”. Now, haha, I am sorry. I am actually laughing while I type this. Not because I think this is funny, but out of ludicrousness. I honestly spent time on this you know. I wondered why someone who could flip cars like they were nothing, & who was trained too, was thought to be less equipped to deal with dangerous situations, as compared to someone who can’t even defeat the pinky finger of said person. And the only conclusion I could draw was that it was because of the sheer reason of the former being a woman, & the latter a MAN. In fact, the truly thrilling & cool game-type confrontation we get in ep 14 between our protagonists & antagonist, happens between the men. While our superhuman FL is chained & locked up. The only reason our ML doesn’t throw a fit (again) at Bongsoon wanting to bring the villain down herself in ep 15, is cause she asks for his help & permission first. And even then, Bongsoon hardly does anything in catching him, apart from being bait. We didn’t even get to see her punching the villain’s brains out after everything he had done to her best friend. She just hit him with a few walnuts (because, of course, she is a woman. Real tools can only be wielded by MEN) &…that’s it. I was also the most flabbergasted by the ML’s behavior in ep 13. The ML pretty much stays the same throughout the series, no real character growth whatsoever, & then we get this absolutely regressive arc where Bongsoon is extremely scared & traumatized over her childhood best friend’s kidnapping, & the ML decides to give her more grief because she did not cater to his Very Important Male Hero-Complex when she decided to save the victims, something no woman should ever do (thank you for the life lesson show!). This was the time when she needed emotional support. She felt all alone & was scared. She had also seen the psychopath beating her best friend up & she didn’t even know whether she was still alive. But all the ML could see were his own feelings, & that is not the kind of development I want to see from my heroes when the show is approaching its finale. Take a back-fucking-seat Minhyuk. This is not about you. And guess what, we never get to see him apologize for his utterly selfish & disgusting hissy fit. Instead, it is the FL that apologizes. Figures. I was also taken aback when Minhyuk insulted his secretary for following his own previous orders, just because he had a fight with his love interest, when we had never seen him do that to his employees before. The secretary was also a really nice guy & didn’t deserve it AT ALL.
The romance would be cute, they said. The leads together would make you happy, they said. FALSE. ALL FALSE. Well ok, maybe this is just me, but the romance never really did anything for me. It was light as air. There was no conflict between them whatsoever, apart from the fact that they hadn’t fallen in love yet. I didn’t feel any connection between them & neither did I feel like their relationship was significant enough to last. It all felt like a flighty crush to me. I don’t even know why the second lead, Guk-doo, was even there. He never felt like a threat to their relationship & he hardly had any moments with Bongsoon. I don’t know why they would advertise the love triangle so much when it doesn’t even exist. The rivalry between Minhyuk & Gukdoo also felt contrived, there just because the kdrama bible says that people contending for an FL’s heart MUST hate each other. And, because of the lack of conflict in the love department, the dialogues about always staying together, & the whole dying part, felt seriously out of place, right down to the saaaad obligatory kdrama ballad used during these moments. They belong in a different, heavier drama. Not this one.
The infamous gazes that made everyone, even Park Bo Young, swoon over Park Hyung Sik, weren’t visible to me. I just couldn’t see it.
2) The Characters: I liked most of the characters well enough, but there was a lack of depth & proper character build up where it was needed. For example, I was surprised when Do Bong Soon designed a lonely prince locked up prince for her to save in her game, fashioned after Ahn Min-Hyuk. I hadn’t thought he was supposed to be that. We were, very fleetingly, told about The Unhappy Childhood, but we didn’t really see any effects of that on him, apart from maybe two or three shots that were nearly not enough to build a Lonely Prince character. The whole blackmail sub-plot was also wrapped up pretty soon & easily, same with the family. So again I ask, WHERE.
Do Bong Soon was adorable! Absolutely ADORABLE. And all the credit goes to Park Bo Young. She portrayed her very well & I don’t think I would have been able to get through this show without her. Special shoutout to how CUUUUTE she was here. And it came so naturally. I am not really a fan of Korea’s standard for “cute”, but PBY here? OMG fully up my ally. She was right up there, below puppies. I just wanted to squish her, pet her, & bother her all day long.
Ahn Min Hyuk was cute whenever he had heart attacks over Do Bong Soon, & showed it too! And I wish I didn’t, but there was one time I found him very hot….at the aforementioned chase sequence in ep 14. It all started with this shot, with the open cuffs of his casual black shirt & that watch on his wrist,
& then just…
Yeah…you get it.
What even was the point of that sub-plot between Bong-Ki (Bongsoon’s brother) & Guk-doo’s ex. It literally did nothing for the story, & neither does it end up going anywhere in the end. Ah right. They did serve the purpose of Increase The Episode Duration. So that was good. But in all seriousness, I wish we had spent more time with Kyungshim. Her trauma from the kidnapping wasn’t even brushed upon. It was non-existent. She seemed to have existed just to get Bongsoon personally invested in the kidnappings. Which is sad because I liked her & wouldn’t have minded spending more time with her. I wished that we had cut down on the unnecessary moments between our leads & given a love line to Kyungshim. Either with Gukdoo, or with Bongki. Sigh. The possibilities.
3) The Gangsters: They get a special mention because BWAHAHAHAHA they made me laugh out loud throughout the show. Even now, when I think of some of their scenes, I laugh until my knees go weak. They were just so ridiculous & pathetic, not to mention the cast pulled it off phenomenally. It also doesn’t hurt that I knew the comedians & also knew how they were using their special features or techniques to full-effect. Like Kim Min-Kyu using his signature blank, wide-eyed expression, which really blossomed when his fingers broke & had to be put in a cast that very conveniently, & strategically, gave him a perpetual middle-finger. It was hilarious because you really couldn’t tell if all the times his fingers were in frame, were just a coincidence, or whether he was purposely doing it. It seemed like he was constantly inwardly swearing at the other people, & then again like he was not. HAHAHA I can go on & on about all of them, & even the kid gangsters, whose head Bongsoon unwittingly became. It figures that I liked something that nobody else did, but they really helped me in finishing the series honestly.
4) I am really not going to go into the domestic violence & everything else that was wrong with this show because this post is long enough already, I had also been warned about it so I was not expecting to like it anyways, & because everyone already knows it. But I still wanted to say how shocked I was when they showed Bongsoon’s Dad crying after an altercation with his wife, his face all bruised up & hair in disarray, taking comfort in the book written by Guk-doo’s mother, the only thing that makes him smile sadly through his tears. It was absolutely heartbreaking & shook me to see this being played up for comedy. Even if we do find out that the FL’s mom didn’t beat dad up that day, she could still have at least helped him with his wounds. And she also doesn’t end up seeing any wrong in her use of harsh words, other than with Bongsoon. Like when she commented on the body of her shop’s employee. None of this, & more, were ok, but I will end this here. I must say, I still never really could hate the mother though, for reasons that currently escape my grasp.
5) Bye Bongsoon! I am never revisiting you again! 😊
Like I have always said, live-watching, especially along with a community, is a completely different experience from binge-watching, and can elevate a very mediocre drama, or ruin a decent one. There might be an endless debate on the fan walls over that one significant glance for a week, building higher and higher anticipation for next episode and more gazes and afermath. Then when you binge-watch it is a fleeting split second glance with no follow-up whatsoever!
😄😄
yet people that this is the drama of a lifetime. some can people see the problem, majority dont. we hate that wrist grab trope so much but if what @Kaleidoscopic said about domestic violence is truth, why did people brush it under the rug?
Majority of kdrama fan in the whole world treat this drama as high as Healer and even i found that subpar. weird.
I watched this whole thing with mounting confusion because I couldn’t understand why they put thing out there in the first half and then dropped them in the second. I can only assume the writer responded too much to audience feedback. It’s the only explanation I have.
Ahn Min Hyuk’s character, for example, had some issues in how paternalistic he could be and the show clearly meant to do something with that. But I guess people loved the OTP so much they shifted to just being outright shippers.
I’ve also written essays on this show and won’t do it again. Suffice it to say, it could have been the best show ever – but wasn’t.
She was right up there, below puppies.
Girl, how dare you, she is at the same level as- OH, look, a Samoyed, kyaaa~*got distracted *cough* right, where were we?
Reading this post feels like a slap to me because I did overlook the stuffs that you’ve mentioned, I mean I was clouded with the romance but thinking back yeah he did patronize and control her instead of giving full support to her, he did at the end but it sort of too late. Btw, a small point to him, I appreciate that he supports her career and doesn’t give her easy path just because she is his gf.
Im with you Noo! I literally don’t remember any of this. I didnt get to binge it though, I watched thr episodes in bits and pieces during the week when it aired, so I dont remember the plot or the overall dynamic of their relationship, only some scenes. There were very cute scenes.
I wish when writers would write a beta male they would commit to it fully. I think the writer wanted to make some good points but after setting things up she just forgot about it. And went the exact opposite way.
And yeah, I was disappointed with the way writer wrote the ML, he’s great at the beginning, he was attracted to BS because of her strength but then it became an obstacle in their relationship, like why though, sigh.
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Kaleidoscopic
January 17, 2019 at 8:19 AM
Strong Woman Do Bong-Soon:-
I am going to stick with talking about the stuff I had expected to like, & what actually happened. Because otherwise this show has way too many problems & this would turn into an essay so long that I myself won’t have the energy to read it again.
1) The Romance/ML: Ah! We are starting out strong already. Ahn Min Hyuk Ahn Min Hyuk Ahn Min Hyuk. I remember everyone swooning over him back when this show was airing. There were all these posts & articles about how he is one of the best MLs ever, how you should get yourself someone like him in real life – someone who accepts you for who you are. And I am sitting here thinking,
I had hope when I first saw him be awestruck by her strength & whisper “she is so sexy” to his secretary. But that was an ominous dialogue. He found her strength attractive only when she used it for his entertainment. But whenever she had to really use her strength in serious situations, he would pressure her to not do it & to instead, “leave it to him” & that “he will protect her”. Now, haha, I am sorry. I am actually laughing while I type this. Not because I think this is funny, but out of ludicrousness. I honestly spent time on this you know. I wondered why someone who could flip cars like they were nothing, & who was trained too, was thought to be less equipped to deal with dangerous situations, as compared to someone who can’t even defeat the pinky finger of said person. And the only conclusion I could draw was that it was because of the sheer reason of the former being a woman, & the latter a MAN. In fact, the truly thrilling & cool game-type confrontation we get in ep 14 between our protagonists & antagonist, happens between the men. While our superhuman FL is chained & locked up. The only reason our ML doesn’t throw a fit (again) at Bongsoon wanting to bring the villain down herself in ep 15, is cause she asks for his help & permission first. And even then, Bongsoon hardly does anything in catching him, apart from being bait. We didn’t even get to see her punching the villain’s brains out after everything he had done to her best friend. She just hit him with a few walnuts (because, of course, she is a woman. Real tools can only be wielded by MEN) &…that’s it. I was also the most flabbergasted by the ML’s behavior in ep 13. The ML pretty much stays the same throughout the series, no real character growth whatsoever, & then we get this absolutely regressive arc where Bongsoon is extremely scared & traumatized over her childhood best friend’s kidnapping, & the ML decides to give her more grief because she did not cater to his Very Important Male Hero-Complex when she decided to save the victims, something no woman should ever do (thank you for the life lesson show!). This was the time when she needed emotional support. She felt all alone & was scared. She had also seen the psychopath beating her best friend up & she didn’t even know whether she was still alive. But all the ML could see were his own feelings, & that is not the kind of development I want to see from my heroes when the show is approaching its finale. Take a back-fucking-seat Minhyuk. This is not about you. And guess what, we never get to see him apologize for his utterly selfish & disgusting hissy fit. Instead, it is the FL that apologizes. Figures. I was also taken aback when Minhyuk insulted his secretary for following his own previous orders, just because he had a fight with his love interest, when we had never seen him do that to his employees before. The secretary was also a really nice guy & didn’t deserve it AT ALL.
The romance would be cute, they said. The leads together would make you happy, they said. FALSE. ALL FALSE. Well ok, maybe this is just me, but the romance never really did anything for me. It was light as air. There was no conflict between them whatsoever, apart from the fact that they hadn’t fallen in love yet. I didn’t feel any connection between them & neither did I feel like their relationship was significant enough to last. It all felt like a flighty crush to me. I don’t even know why the second lead, Guk-doo, was even there. He never felt like a threat to their relationship & he hardly had any moments with Bongsoon. I don’t know why they would advertise the love triangle so much when it doesn’t even exist. The rivalry between Minhyuk & Gukdoo also felt contrived, there just because the kdrama bible says that people contending for an FL’s heart MUST hate each other. And, because of the lack of conflict in the love department, the dialogues about always staying together, & the whole dying part, felt seriously out of place, right down to the saaaad obligatory kdrama ballad used during these moments. They belong in a different, heavier drama. Not this one.
The infamous gazes that made everyone, even Park Bo Young, swoon over Park Hyung Sik, weren’t visible to me. I just couldn’t see it.
2) The Characters: I liked most of the characters well enough, but there was a lack of depth & proper character build up where it was needed. For example, I was surprised when Do Bong Soon designed a lonely prince locked up prince for her to save in her game, fashioned after Ahn Min-Hyuk. I hadn’t thought he was supposed to be that. We were, very fleetingly, told about The Unhappy Childhood, but we didn’t really see any effects of that on him, apart from maybe two or three shots that were nearly not enough to build a Lonely Prince character. The whole blackmail sub-plot was also wrapped up pretty soon & easily, same with the family. So again I ask, WHERE.
Do Bong Soon was adorable! Absolutely ADORABLE. And all the credit goes to Park Bo Young. She portrayed her very well & I don’t think I would have been able to get through this show without her. Special shoutout to how CUUUUTE she was here. And it came so naturally. I am not really a fan of Korea’s standard for “cute”, but PBY here? OMG fully up my ally. She was right up there, below puppies. I just wanted to squish her, pet her, & bother her all day long.
Ahn Min Hyuk was cute whenever he had heart attacks over Do Bong Soon, & showed it too! And I wish I didn’t, but there was one time I found him very hot….at the aforementioned chase sequence in ep 14. It all started with this shot, with the open cuffs of his casual black shirt & that watch on his wrist,
& then just…
Yeah…you get it.
What even was the point of that sub-plot between Bong-Ki (Bongsoon’s brother) & Guk-doo’s ex. It literally did nothing for the story, & neither does it end up going anywhere in the end. Ah right. They did serve the purpose of Increase The Episode Duration. So that was good. But in all seriousness, I wish we had spent more time with Kyungshim. Her trauma from the kidnapping wasn’t even brushed upon. It was non-existent. She seemed to have existed just to get Bongsoon personally invested in the kidnappings. Which is sad because I liked her & wouldn’t have minded spending more time with her. I wished that we had cut down on the unnecessary moments between our leads & given a love line to Kyungshim. Either with Gukdoo, or with Bongki. Sigh. The possibilities.
3) The Gangsters: They get a special mention because BWAHAHAHAHA they made me laugh out loud throughout the show. Even now, when I think of some of their scenes, I laugh until my knees go weak. They were just so ridiculous & pathetic, not to mention the cast pulled it off phenomenally. It also doesn’t hurt that I knew the comedians & also knew how they were using their special features or techniques to full-effect. Like Kim Min-Kyu using his signature blank, wide-eyed expression, which really blossomed when his fingers broke & had to be put in a cast that very conveniently, & strategically, gave him a perpetual middle-finger. It was hilarious because you really couldn’t tell if all the times his fingers were in frame, were just a coincidence, or whether he was purposely doing it. It seemed like he was constantly inwardly swearing at the other people, & then again like he was not. HAHAHA I can go on & on about all of them, & even the kid gangsters, whose head Bongsoon unwittingly became. It figures that I liked something that nobody else did, but they really helped me in finishing the series honestly.
4) I am really not going to go into the domestic violence & everything else that was wrong with this show because this post is long enough already, I had also been warned about it so I was not expecting to like it anyways, & because everyone already knows it. But I still wanted to say how shocked I was when they showed Bongsoon’s Dad crying after an altercation with his wife, his face all bruised up & hair in disarray, taking comfort in the book written by Guk-doo’s mother, the only thing that makes him smile sadly through his tears. It was absolutely heartbreaking & shook me to see this being played up for comedy. Even if we do find out that the FL’s mom didn’t beat dad up that day, she could still have at least helped him with his wounds. And she also doesn’t end up seeing any wrong in her use of harsh words, other than with Bongsoon. Like when she commented on the body of her shop’s employee. None of this, & more, were ok, but I will end this here. I must say, I still never really could hate the mother though, for reasons that currently escape my grasp.
5) Bye Bongsoon! I am never revisiting you again! 😊
Midnight
January 17, 2019 at 8:44 AM
Like I have always said, live-watching, especially along with a community, is a completely different experience from binge-watching, and can elevate a very mediocre drama, or ruin a decent one. There might be an endless debate on the fan walls over that one significant glance for a week, building higher and higher anticipation for next episode and more gazes and afermath. Then when you binge-watch it is a fleeting split second glance with no follow-up whatsoever!
😄😄
LT is Irresistibly Indifferent, Dame Judi
January 17, 2019 at 10:34 AM
Shorter version – fantastic ideas, awful execution.
Broken is Bidulgi OTP trash all the way 🕊 🕊 🕊
January 17, 2019 at 10:45 AM
yet people that this is the drama of a lifetime. some can people see the problem, majority dont. we hate that wrist grab trope so much but if what @Kaleidoscopic said about domestic violence is truth, why did people brush it under the rug?
Majority of kdrama fan in the whole world treat this drama as high as Healer and even i found that subpar. weird.
LT is Irresistibly Indifferent, Dame Judi
January 17, 2019 at 11:02 AM
I watched this whole thing with mounting confusion because I couldn’t understand why they put thing out there in the first half and then dropped them in the second. I can only assume the writer responded too much to audience feedback. It’s the only explanation I have.
Ahn Min Hyuk’s character, for example, had some issues in how paternalistic he could be and the show clearly meant to do something with that. But I guess people loved the OTP so much they shifted to just being outright shippers.
I’ve also written essays on this show and won’t do it again. Suffice it to say, it could have been the best show ever – but wasn’t.
yayabean
January 17, 2019 at 8:03 PM
Is this your dissertation?
🍃noobita🍃
January 17, 2019 at 11:36 PM
She was right up there, below puppies.
Girl, how dare you, she is at the same level as- OH, look, a Samoyed, kyaaa~*got distracted *cough* right, where were we?
Reading this post feels like a slap to me because I did overlook the stuffs that you’ve mentioned, I mean I was clouded with the romance but thinking back yeah he did patronize and control her instead of giving full support to her, he did at the end but it sort of too late. Btw, a small point to him, I appreciate that he supports her career and doesn’t give her easy path just because she is his gf.
Great write-up, Kale!😆
saturtledaisy
January 18, 2019 at 12:53 AM
Im with you Noo! I literally don’t remember any of this. I didnt get to binge it though, I watched thr episodes in bits and pieces during the week when it aired, so I dont remember the plot or the overall dynamic of their relationship, only some scenes. There were very cute scenes.
I wish when writers would write a beta male they would commit to it fully. I think the writer wanted to make some good points but after setting things up she just forgot about it. And went the exact opposite way.
🍃noobita🍃
January 18, 2019 at 1:40 AM
Yes Dais, the cute scenes were VERY CUTE, gosh.
And yeah, I was disappointed with the way writer wrote the ML, he’s great at the beginning, he was attracted to BS because of her strength but then it became an obstacle in their relationship, like why though, sigh.