A better quality daily
I have to start this review with a confession: As with every daily I've ever watched, I doownloaded it and watched with MASSIVE amounts of FF. It's the only way I can get through 120 30 -minute episodes without wanting to make my quietus.That said, as dailies go, this was a good one. I ended up giving it 7/10 because I decided to judge it on its merits AS A DAILY, not scoring it down for the glacial pace and excess filler of the first 50-60 episodes.
The core storyline was predictable, but one of the reasons I scored it as high as 7 was for the several occasions when the Drama surprised me not going where I expected. It dodged some of the tropes and clichés I was expecting, and did so right to the end, when the arc of the second couple did not end as I thought it would.
The acting was better than expected too. I'd not seen either of the female leads before and both did well. I was particularly impressed by Cha Min Ji, who did very well with a character that very typically 1-dimensional for the first 100 or so episodes. I'll be looking out for her work in future. And as the brony that I am, I'm mildly pleased that both female leads still follow each other on Instagram at the time of writing, 10 months after the Drama ended. Another happy ending to wahat was really not a bad daily at all.
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Wholesome, Heartwarming, and Everything In Between
One of the best dailies out there. It has a great premise and does an amazing job at setting up all of the character relationships and the potential drama and conflicts down the line. The first three weeks worth of episodes (1-15) are easy to binge as the prologue paces itself very well.Some characters are absolutely hilarious and others are downright admirable and respectable. Like most dailies, it will occasionally have characters explain what they are thinking out loud to the audience. However, it also does a good job at showing character and personality through their actions, and the main characters rarely elaborate on the things they do (unless it's absolutely important for the other characters to know). This is very rare to see in most dailies and one of the greatest strengths of this show.
Like most dailies, you have to love the characters to get the most out of it and enjoy the seemingly absurd situations they find themselves get in. Despite the ridiculousness, however, this one is much more wholesome with its themes on family and forgiveness. I highly recommend you give this one a chance if you're looking for a daily to check out!
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This review may contain spoilers
"Bravo, My Life" is a family drama about Dong Hee, a young woman whose life is completely transformed when her brother dies in a car accident and on the same day her grandmother also dies, leaving her alone in the world to raise her nephew.Dong Hee is a fantastic character, not just anyone would become a mother like she did. It's true that Him Chan is her nephew, but Dong Hee endured all the obstacles, prejudice and difficulties of raising him as a single mother, she never told the truth to anyone and that is an incredible attitude. The scene where Him Chan finds out the truth, Dong Hee's expression was impressive, the pain she was feeling seeing her son heartbroken and she even lied that Seung Joo didn't abandon him, just so that Him Chan wouldn't be hurt again. Now that's a real mother.
The romance between Dong Hee and Cha Yeol is so cute, the two are a great match and the connection that Cha Yeol had with Him Chan made everything even more beautiful, since they instantly became a family. They went through a lot of problems, especially when Dong Hee found out that Cha Yeol was involved in her brother's accident. I really thought that maybe she would never forgive him, since even though he wanted to help, Cha Yeol left her brother to die. After all, she realized that Cha Yeol and Sung Wook regretted what happened and lived with the guilt of what they did.
Seung Joo didn't seem bad at first, just a woman who made the wrong decision to abandon her son for her career, but over time we realize her true colors, she's a real bitch. She used Him Chan as a reason to almost get Dong Hee fired, just because she wanted to keep her away from Cha Yeol. Then she decided that she wanted Him Chan back just because she's sterile and she won't be able to have any more children.
A simply adorable drama, a delight to watch. It reminded me a lot of "Person Who Gives Happiness" and "Jang Bo Ri Is Here".
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Bravo, My Patience! A Lesson in How to Desecrate a Decent Premise.
This is going to be a bit lengthy but please bear with me. Bravo, My Life is a textbook example of a decent story idea that was ultimately desecrated by poor execution and a total lack of common sense. The premise, a 19 year old girl (Seo Dong-hee) becoming a single mother to her nephew after her brother is killed in a hit and run had massive potential. This is especially true when you consider she was forced into this life after her brother’s wife, Baek Seung-joo (if she even qualifies as a "wife") abandoned her newborn for a teenager to raise.However the actual experience of watching this was a chore as the writing was riddled with massive plot holes that made the 120 episode journey irritating to endure. That isn't to say there weren't bits I enjoyed, I particularly liked the early stage bickering between Dong-hee and Cha-yeol when they first started working together.
The next issue I couldn't stand was the caricature like acting. This story required deep emotional resonance but the performances were overwhelmingly stale or just plain bad. While the actress playing Dong-hee is decent, her character was written poorly, it felt like a relic from an early 2000s K-drama. If you dropped her into Boys Over Flowers or Playful Kiss, she would fit right in. She made one dumb decision after another reaching a point where it felt like it went beyond "I’m kind or forgiving" to "I’m mentally retarded and like to be walked over." Tell me why she kept smiling at Baek Seung-joo after the lady told her to her face she didn't like her and that she purposely threw away the gift Dong-hee bought for her? Or when Baek Seung-joo was jealous and kept being mean and malicious to her at work because of Cha-yeol, why are you still acting nice to this lady? She tried to get you fired for goodness sake! Her "goody-two-shoes" persona went beyond virtue into pure stupidity like when she allowed a coworker to steal her mood board and take credit for work she had spent all night completing.
Now unto the person responsible for this hot mess: the director. The director is arguably the person most responsible for this "hot pile of trash." With a competent director this could have been a fun watch. The first thing I noticed was the sets, my goodness they were bad! The house for the wealthy family who owned a fashion business made no sense, I tried but couldn't make sense of what their home was supposed to be. I know budget plays a role but this was the worst house set I have ever seen. It would have been better if they had just replicated an IKEA showroom. Nearly 80% of the locations were obviously cheap sets that stripped away any sense of realism making the drama feel like a low budget stage play. (I will give them credit though the cars the wealthy characters drove were actually nice.) I even blame the director for the flat characters, a little direction could have added nuance to these two dimensional caricatures turning them into actual human beings because the core characterization was good but the execution was bad. The writers had potential but stupidity from them and everyone else in charge of creative decisions ruined it.
Then the acting from everyone was subpar with the exception of Cha-yeol, Bang Hye-ran and Baek Seung-joo and maybe Dong-hee and Choi Mi-kyung. Kang Sung-wook however was arguably the worst. I couldn't understand why the right corner of his lips was always lifted, the man literally smiled his way through his own divorce and through the entire film. No matter the gravity of the situation at hand you could trust him to smile it away.
The wardrobe department was another disaster and a dunce was in charge of dressing the actors. Why was it that only the men were well dressed, along with Baek Seung-Joo’s mother, Bang Hye-Ran who in my opinion was the best dressed in the show. At the beginning Dong-Hee was supposed to be a struggling single mother who did not go to university and worked a minimum wage job yet she and her son Him-chan wore pristine, newly minted clothing. So tell me how could she afford these clothes not only herself but Him-Chan (her son) too. And why were their pajamas perfectly ironed? Why was Him-chan dressed like a "little young master" instead of a child of a struggling mother living in a one room at the restaurant backroom? If she earns minimum wage this shouldn't be possible. It would have made more sense for their clothes to look cheap or rumpled at first then slowly improving as their situation did.
Baek Seung-Joo was another person whose wardrobe I couldn't stand looking at. She was supposed to be the team leader in a fashion company but I couldn't understand what was going on with her wardrobe. Sometimes she was well dressed and other times she looked like an ordinary office worker. Isn't she supposed to look to the nines? Aren't they creating some of the best clothing in the fashion industry in Korea? And she is in charge of this but doesn't dress the part? Even after marrying the owner's son her wardrobe never received the "rich daughter-in-law" upgrade you’d expect. Her mother was better dressed than her, they gave the woman even better color combos.
Then there was the hair. Never in my over 15 years of K-drama watching have I seen a drama this long not change a single person’s hair throughout its 120 episodes. Oh wait, the writer lady had a slight glow-up but everyone else? The same way you met them is the way they stayed until the end. Not one person had their hair cut or color changed or their hairstyles switched up. Baek Seung-Joo had her hair packed up from the beginning, to her wedding (yes, I’m serious her wedding hairstyle was the exact same as every other day) to the very end of the show. No straightening, curling, perming or anything happened to any character despite the show supposedly spanning 9 years!
Finally, I have to mention Him-chan. I didn't want to do this but I did not like Him-Chan’s acting and I think this could be attributed back to the director. This boy is still a child and needs proper direction especially when displaying emotions however all through the drama we got the exact same expressions. All he ever did was smile. When his future stepfather was in a coma, he was smiling while praying. You scold Him Chan, he smiles. He meets strangers who by the way he shouldn't be talking to and he's smiling again. His character was also poorly written. He was the picture of a perfect child, kinda like a miniature version of Dong-Hee. He only acted out once when he broke his hand but aside from that one time he never misbehaved or acted out. Frankly, I'm not sure the writer has ever been around a child that age because even the most well mannered child has their hair pulling moments, the only difference is that it's not often. Ironically Him-Chan’s constant smiling made me think he should have been cast as Kang Sung-wook’s son instead.
If you read till this stage, thank you that couldn't have been easy as this took me quite a while to write. I don't know if you agree with everything I said or if you see my point. Please note I did not hate the drama as I watched it till the very end, I just hate how a really good drama was handled poorly and lost its potential to be a really good show. If you are looking for family oriented dramas that are better executed try “Father is Strange” (my personal best, there wasn't a single plot hole here and yes it's a long form series as well) and “Stars Falling from the Sky” this one is what Bravo, My Life wished it could've been, it's also about a struggling single mother who was forced to take of children that aren't hers.
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the highest number of irritating characters in a show
the female main lead dong hee is incredibly incompetent and not exactly likeable. despite being written as a selfless heroine who takes on the burden of her brothers "abandoned" baby, all she does is cause unnecessary problems. for example against all the advice from her own family to give the baby up for adoption she stubbornly refused to and choose to run from home. she literally had no money and hadn't yet completed her education. this could have turned out disastrously and in turn endangered the poor baby. dong hee constantly makes rash decisions and does ridiculous things that end up endangering others. the male main lead cha yeol is similarly portrayed in a charismatic light that quickly turns sour. in just the first few episodes he abandons the drunk passed out seung joo in a restaurant and just right after she confided her struggles to him. are we supposed to like him despite seeing how he treats his friends? he's also incredibly ungrateful to his adoptive father who has been nothing but supportive and loving towards him. that is just the tip of the iceberg. 90% of the characters in this show are completely irrational and worst of all irritating. would never recommend this show. the script is honestly subpar but the acting is fine. so many better options out there don't waste your time watching this nonsense.Was this review helpful to you?
Hidden gem & actors!
Looking for a drama to fill in whilst waiting for Liberation & My Blues. So glad I found Bravo my Life! Literally, I wait daily for new epi & would save it to watch end of week as a reward.Why I like it?
Mostly these 2 actors- am Sang Ji & Byeong Yeol. They're so compatible, so relatable, so PositioningCrew ve, handsome & pretty.
Sang Ji deserves more recognition! She's pretty & acts well. So natural. Saw Byeong Yeol in a few dramas but like him most in this- as an upright, strong young man of character.
Tho storyline's predictable, it's, to me, one of the best long dramas. Cos supporting casts ate each good & good looking. Like the auntie & the love rival too. Check it out!
Pls directors, cast Sang Ji in more shows.
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Other shows with similar plots were better than this one
Did not finish this drama. The FL was just way too good to be true and it is hard to get invested in someone without flaws. She is considered socially unacceptable because she is a single mother. Apart from the fact that the social stigma of single parenting doesn't resonate easily with a non-Korean, she is actually raising her nephew as her own child, so it's really just selfless virtue. I enjoy shows where people deal with moral gray areas, and experience emotional growth. I thought the character development was very inconsistent here. People were evil, then not evil, then evil again, with no clear reason why.
In many instances the situations reminded me of other dramas where the plot and character development was so much better. Some examples:
1) A divorced couple with irresponsible husband seemed more like filler material than a separate story here - as opposed to the kdrama Once Again. In that drama, you could see why the ex-wife wants nothing to do with the ex-husband, and their relationship goes through a lot of ups and downs until you are really rooting for them to get back together.
2) The main couple here are both affected by the same tragic incident in their past. This was also a major plot device in Beautiful Love, Wonderful Life. In that drama, their lives are turned upside down by a tragedy and neither of them can get past it. Here, the consequences of the tragedy will tie things together eventually but the characters don't seem too burdened with emotional scars.
3) The love triangle of the older characters in Once Again is much more entertaining than the one in this show. But I will say the trio in this one was one of the bright spots for me.
4) In My Father is Strange, the father commits a crime in his youth that eventually comes back to haunt him, and it is the main arc of the story. In Bravo, My Life, there are a lot of criminal acts, but very few consequences.
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EP 2 what kind of inhuman left his friend(female) in drunken state like that in middle of night and you want me to believe he is ML, i understand he doesn't like her romantically but what he did was inhuman
You cant like Main couple if director show you 2nd FL story first and you can understand her more then FL
EP 5 Great ML kill a innocent man then at the end of the drama he will Screw sister of the man he killed and she will enjoy that bloody hands on her body, her own brothers blood
ML kill the real father of a child then adopted that child
Sister was so loving toward her brother until ep70 when she lecture other woman about it but then when she see an 8 inch she forgot that she even had a brother in this life
FL is a HOE who sleep with her brothers killer because he has 8 inch
nobody goes to jail for murder it was not accident but murder and this murder is going to be father of kid whose real father was killed by him because he has 8inch that hOE like so much
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ML you will not root for!
I wanted to continue watching this so bad but the ML is highly immature, inconsiderate, and has no saving grace. The plot is also so full of that bullshit redemption arc for criminals and people far too selfish to deserve it.> 1 is a hit and run driver,
> others complacent in hiding this (ML is included in that list) so liking him was very difficult from the get go,
> then there is a SFL who abandons a baby at a college students doorstep and continues to live her life pursuing the ML as if that's the only thing that matters in life.
> In the first 20 episodes, he just randomly steals her scooter and then scolds the FL for calling the cops on him. She then apologizes for it. And even after that he continues to be immature and act like a highschooler throwing a tantrum. Watching him was on screen was such a chore.
> I kept telling myself okay, you can overlook it, since the cinematography and setting is nice but it just kept getting worse.
> Things go alright for 5-6 minutes but you know ML will be there to spoil it somehow.
> I am 38 episodes in and the ML finds out that the FL has a child, his first reaction is to get angry and throw a tantrum. That's why his confession about liking her is so irksome. Anyone can like her, she is a stunning woman with an amazing personality, what does he have to offer? Something that only the SFL likes.
> The SFL, SML, and ML should just get together at this point.
I feel that I wasted my time on these few episodes I watched. Once i get over this dislike for most of the characters, I might consider skipping to the end, just to watch the FL live a good life.
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