being a chaebol isn't a piece of cake
Baek Hyun Woo, a "normal" guy, is the pride of the village of Yongduri, and the legal director of the conglomerate Queens Group. Chaebol heiress Hong Hae In is the “queen” of Queens Group’s department stores. They 2 married together due to an intertwined fate. We'll get to know how things change between them while they go trough the hardship of life. Why they love each other, why they hate each other and how they reconcile. This is also the story of a chaebol's family which face scammers who want to steal everything from them, and how they defend themselves.the prior thing I really like about this drama is that it puts you in the position to rethink the way you analyzed the situation earlier. the same scenes viewed from someone else's perspective and everything shifts. I like this because life is so often like that. that's the closest it can be for me to a real story. We always end up seeing "abusive" RICH mothers who throw water and then a big envelope to the head of the shameless girlfriend of their son. This drama explain fully why these scenes are understandable.
this drama is the first for me where the description of a chaebol's life isn't romanced. the description of the chaebol's family too. and the way everything is described is damned logical and full of sens. you'll be hearing unforgettable sentences like "if someone leaves you don't bid him farewell, stab him in the back." (this definitely will stay in my mind....) and the way the story will unfold before your eyes will definitely explain why they all think this way. yes, a chaebol's family is a scary thing to encounter.
there is a lot of twist in this story, and I don't want to spoil your pleasure, so I'll just say this: the game will change at least 3 times, so if you don't really like the story be patient at least until the half of it. I want to share one scene I loved the most: the 2 families meet together while the children are mad at each other, and they are confused as if they are on the same team or not despite the circumstances, and one of them has this precious answer: we are like north and south korea. we are on the same team in the Olympics even though we fight against each other. we are together if we face the same enemy.
the chemistry between the leads is so good, and they are cute together. the writer made a very good job with cute scenes and touching dialogues. on each episode there is a 1 minute epilogue after the ending ost, don't miss it, it's very important to understand the characters.
what I didn't like:
there is some non sens (like taking a plane to the US with a real gold buddha 30cm high and holding it with one hand.... yeah).
there was no head lines about the narcissism of the villain. I'd really appreciate that writers fully explain the mental illness of the villains.
we also didn't get to know how everything began: it began with the mother of the villain, but we don't know what happened. how did she meet the family and why did she target that family among all.
the last episode was disappointing. the writer should have focused on the way to wrap things nicely, but he pushed the leads in an other complicated situation, so the last episode isn't as comforting as it's used to be.
that's a very good show though and I definitely recommend it.
when to watch: after work if you need to focus on someone else's problems.
audience: there is too much violence for under 15 people.
have fun!
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This review may contain spoilers
So much potential, but utterly wasted by trying to do too much
If there is one phrase to describe the show, it would be "wasted potential". Honestly, up until episode 12 or 13, i was planning to give the show a solid 9/10. The writing crew and director clearly knew how to tug on the audience heart strings and watching Hyunwoo and Haein come to terms with the very real possibility of Haein dying just as they finally reconcile brought tears to my eyes. Kim Soo-Hyun and Kim Ji-won have such amazing chemistry and Kim Soo-Hyun continues to prove he is one of the best actors at subtly showing how the character is feeling with microexpressions.BUT. There is a MASSIVE but here. The show throws any potential out the window the second we hit episode 14. For reasons that I can't even begin to guess at, the writer team seems absolutely married to keeping the character of Yoon Eung-Seung involved until the very end. Up until episode 14, it felt like he was an omnipresent threat lurking in the background. He gave stakes to the relationship between Hyunwoo and Haein, because it meant Hyunwoo didn't have infinite time to win back Haein. If he waited too long or screwed up too many times, she would fall for Eung-Seung. But once it became clear the Haein will always choose Hyunwoo every time, the bit got old. MASSIVE spoilers head - having a murder framed on Hyunwoo, and then sending him to the hospital TWICE after he gets out of prison in the span of two episodes was just too much. We spend more time trying to unspin the various webs of lies that Eung-Seung has spun for Hae-in and dealing with the drama of the murder case and all the "random" accident Hyunwoo has at Eung-Seung's hands that the relationship between Hyunwoo and Haein is left to the side. It ends up being very hastily cleaned up at the end of episode 16 and you can feel how rushed it was. The writing team needed to realize that once you wipe a character's memory, it becomes incredibly important to have them build back those memories over a decent time span so the audience can experience the highs and lows of how confusing and terrifying it is to not even know who you are. But instead, because of this weird Eung-Seung second plot, Hae-in basically magically recovers most of her memory after reading her journal and a few random interactions with Hyunwoo.
And just to put the "missed or mishandled plot hooks" cherry on top of this cake, there is an entire subplot about how the traumatic event that started their spiral into divorce was due to a miscarriage, and it's never addressed. Both characters independently seem to want to address the hurtful things they did or said to cope, but not once do they have a face-to-face conversation about it. It doesn't help that by the end, Hae-in doesn't even remember what she did because of the stupid memory loss plot line.
TL;DR - fantastic first 2/3rds of a series, only for it to come crashing into a brick wall right at the finish line. It truly feels like had they just rewritten the final 3 episodes to avoid Eung-Seung, the show would have been an easy 9 or 10 out of 10.
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This review may contain spoilers
did not live up to expectations...
When I first watched episodes 1 to 4 I was shocked because based on the budget and story expectations I had, the plot was cliche and there was nothing engaging...given the deep plots introduced early in the drama I thought those will be the focus point for the drama. But eventually the plot just became messy because they added every single plot possible inside without giving proper closure to some open plots.Plenty of loopholes, still dont understand how not a single family member went with her to germany for such an important surgery. The car crash and the kidnap and the getting s**t and stuff was so redundant to be honest. The villain's story just ended abruptly after dragging it for 16 episodes....the main plots were barely discussed, why did he want to divorce, why was she so cold to him.
Yes needless to say the acting and the osts are really good, but sometimes if the plot is so obviously not linking, it removes the relatability from the drama making it harder to understand the characters. For example, first half of the drama even though she had few months to live she focused so hard on getting into the trillion group (disregarding her health), the minute she just lost her company overnight suddenly all her desires disappeared??? literally the only person who was fighting back was the aunt. Even the family, how can a director and CEO of such a big company know nothing on how to handle the situation and they just dumped everything on hyunwoo to solve....
anyway i really tried to find why this was so hyped but really it is way too overrated and overhyped.
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This review may contain spoilers
It didn't really impressed me
I thought this drama will go to my favourite list at first. I really liked the first episodes but later it just kept adding more clichés to the plot. I felt like they added those on purpose to made the episodes longer. I also didn't vibe with the episodes length I just mentioned. Hour and half just seems too much to me and it easily gets boring.This show isn't anything new. Rich female lead that have it all because of her parents and her husband that can't stand for himself and is stomped on by his wife. Like I do enjoy strong female leads in drama but this just wasn't it.
Also the fake illness? Was it really necessary? They couldn't think about something more realistic so they just put a fake one there. That made me really ask myself how dumb is this going to be in later episodes.
The only great thing on this was the visuals of actors and camera angles, nothing more.
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Carried by the actors/actresses
The show was enjoyable to watch but i dont know.. a lot of people said "oh it took over crash landing!"but in terms of story.. left a lot to be desired, and even when it gave bits and pieces of certain resolutions or things coming together.. i was always like "ok, thats it?" lol this drama could have been a heavy hitter if the writing was better
I really gotta say that it's just enjoyable to watch due to the actors/actresses..
but i usually re-watch dramas that i truly love.. and this one.. i'll gladly be just leaving behind
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Starpower shines, while storytelling stagnates
What worked for the show:Major starpower across the board. Even outside of Kim Soo Hyun and Kim Ji Won, Park Sung Hoon and Kwak Dong Yeon are budding stars of their own and provide reason to tune in.
Strong middle episodes. Once the FL's family moved in with the ML's family in the rural town I was sure it was going to follow the trope of them being arrogant, rude etc, but actually the budding relationships among the family members on each side was the major positive driving force of the show.
Inverting the gender trope of the tsundre male CEO to female CEO. The drama industry needs more badass FLs.
What didn't work:
Over-focus on the antagonist in later episodes when the screentime could have been focused on the main couple overcomming the FL's memory loss. Like many kdramas this one included someone with psychopathy/sociopathy playing an overbearing evil character.
Childhood reunion trope. In this drama we find out that the ML not only saved the FL's life, but also kept her ipod as she was his first crush. I don't think this trope is natural, although extremely common in kdramas with the idea of fated love, but felt completely unnessary and forced.
Poor writing at times and overly convient plot devices. There are several issues with the plot in general, how are we supposed to support a character who actively feels relief when he finds out his partner is dying in a few months. Everything medical is spoken as a matter of fact and that medical science for experimental procedures is exact. The show treats her surgery which is a supposed rare technique with a few academic papers as a 100 percent success rate on curing her terminal cancer and highly likely to affect her memory. Medical procedures, even those not used for dramatic effect, have risk involved and uncertainty.
The certainty of how the medical side was handled made the show feel less realistic. How are the parents not following their daughter who is getting an experimental treatment in a foreign country with likely memory side effects?
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Boring and overrated !!!
A bit tired of these absurd stories about these "poor" rich chaebol.A poor script, a drama that relies only on the couple FL and ML A disastrous casting choice, with the father looks as old as the grandfather (Hong family) and the son (ML's brother) as old as the father (Baek family). Useless characters to fill out an empty story. Everything in this drama sounds fake (how can such wealthy people be so naive and stupid?), and due to the lack of content, we're force-fed with repetitive crying scenes, where we are not even able to see the tears roll down on the protagonists' cheeks...
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Monotonous
My opinion of this series.- Quick plot: The villians, their relationship, their intentions, are exposed in the early episodes (1 - 4) Thereafter, it seems the screenwriter ran out of ideas and thumb sucked the rest of the episodes. This is what makes the rest of the episodes monotonous.
Even the villians were drinking tea out of boredom, because they already achieved their goal.
The series should be named "Kings of tears." The male actors are crying in every episode.
The FL should have been made the villian - she is skilled at it, hence her role in the series "The Heirs "
She is not good at being affectionate or showing emotions.
The ML was behaving as if it's "HIS" last days on earth. Viewers should be informed that the ML has swallowed a river.
The aunt of the FL is an "overacto"r
The rest of the acting was partially okay.
The music was nice.
Rewatching is not worth it, unless I feel like irritating myself.
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This review may contain spoilers
My Opinion
If you want to waste your brain cells by watching something with lazy writing, plot holes, bad transitions and extremely overrated romance than go ahead and watch Queen of Tears. This show was so bad I do not know where to begin.The first episode actually did grab my interest. I was very much interested to know why these two people who were in love had begun to hate each other. To say I was utterly disappointed would be an understatement. They lost a baby and they fell out of love? There were so many potential problems that the couple could have had which would give more depth to their marital problems. But as a viewer you are left with nothing. Ok great I am just going to imagine the missing bits myself I guess
Now the chemistry between these two actors. Either I am blind or the people out there who endlessly spoke about their chemistry are delusional. I saw nothing, not saying the chemistry was horrid, but it wasn’t anything special. I have seen this actress have excellent chemistry with actors and he isn’t one of them. They are supposed to be a married couple who have known each other for years and their romance was more awkward than shy high schoolers. There was absolutely no spark between them. I failed to understand why they fell out of love just like I failed to understand why they were back in love. I saw no reason for either scenario
Now moving on to the side characters. Let’s begin with her crappy family. Why did her mother hate her for so many years? Seems extremely petty. You supposedly love your daughter but it feels like you almost wish she would have died instead of your son. I wont even mention the ludicrous reconciliation between her and her mother. And the brother that everyone on the internet called “golden retriever” is anything but. He is whiny, a loser, pathetic till the end and extremely annoying. Everyone else is so boring they aren’t even worth mentioning.
You sell us on the most ridiculous excuse of a terminal disease that she suffers with in the trailer and turns out it’s not really that important or terminal even. It barely disrupted her life. I will be honest, I did not watch the last few episodes. By episode 9 the show had gotten intolerable but I did try to watch some of it. And then I just gave up, skipped to last episode and watched the last 5 minutes. So go ahead and waste your time with the most overrated show of 2024. Bet nothing can surpass this shit.
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I had high expectations but was let down by the story
Where do I even begin?Let's start with the ML. He's so desperate for a divorce that when he finds out the FL is supposedly dying, he practically celebrates and is ready to spread his wings and fly out of the marriage. But then, suddenly he does a complete 180 and can't live without her. What exactly happened in between? That part is vague but I can still accept since he’s softhearted and he use to love her but I can’t fill in the blank as to why he stopped loving her in the 1st place?? Her family was insane yeah but she wasn’t like them !!
And the FL has a terminal illness with absolutely no cure anywhere in the world. Doctors have given up, science has given up... and then, a miracle cure suddenly appears out of thin air. One surgery later and she's completely fine.
And don't even get me started on the surgery. She has major brain surgery and somehow comes out looking like she just got a fresh haircut. No shaved head, no scar, not even a tiny bandage.i know it's a rom-com, but at some point the writers started asking us to abandon common sense altogether.
I couldn’t stand it post episode 8 but still watched hoping the story will take off but it become more and more lame and absurd .
Acting was great as both of the lead actors are amazing actors though their characters weren’t evolving that much. Baek hyun woo and Hae in will be remembered as a popular couple as their chemistry was amazing . Can’t say same about the story thou.
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Glossy romcom
It's a glossy rom com with very little to cherish tbh so far. The power tripping Fam is just crazy. Enjoying terminal illness of spouse is like a new Kdrama genre or something & that dreaded TRIANGLE whether it's love or hate. ARGH!!!That Soo Hyun scene saying why am I cute when I drink was the best thing about this drama so far. The wedding scene was Binjin coded so much so that they even called it wedding of the century too.
The outfits that Kim Ji won is wearing is absolutely stunning 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 so far.
Let's see how it goes later on. So far I won't rate it extraordinarily for what I have seen.
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Overhyped average show
The show had great potential with great cast but it was wasted by a average storyline..the show was carried by the high promotion doone by tvn and visual attraction of the lead couple. The beginning was good and the middle and later pats were soo boring and included so much unnecessary plot twists..The story was very average and yes Overrated.. Nothing new & interesting..Was this review helpful to you?
