Bitter Sweet Hell (2024)

Gripping story til the end

I thought this would be the same story as cheating husband - wife finds out - mistress tries to kill wife.

But it’s not.

It’s actually brilliant. I love the mother in law who uses clever techniques to catch the culprits. But it’s the meanings behind the story that really caught me thinking. There are some things I also noticed that this kdrama would addresses. For one, looks like Korea isn’t as openly accepting of queers. Another is how they treat their pets - it was clearly snowing but they kept the dog out in its house plus the dog is mostly tethered during the show.

Also made me wonder - what happened to the cat who went into where Do Hyun was held? Did it ger out? Was it the ghost of the cat Les Se Na killed long ago? That would’ve been a creepy twist. But the mother in law never mentioned the cat.

Lastly, I like how they ended the show. While the wife visited the mother in law in the snowy mountain villa, she slipped in the snow and fell facing up the sky. She said “it’s not bad to slip once in a while.” I find that very clever… when she slipped, she was facing up and saw the beautiful blue sky with the snowy branches of trees in the foreground, and it was a beautiful sight. Meaning it’s not bad to slip once in a while because while you're down there facing up, you’ll realize there is a beautiful sky up there and that made falling down not so bad. If she hadn’t fall, she wouldn’t have seen the beautiful snowy sky/landscape.

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Good Enough

Korean Drama '' Bittersweet Hell '' is a family melodrama with a dark comedy note.

The drama has a pretty basic storyline, which can be found in almost every makjang. Still, what sets it apart from the others was the cinematography which was brilliant, with nice contrasts between light and darkness and sharp camera work.

The relationship between mother in law and daughter in law was another perk of this drama. It got strong and stronger as the drama progressed and it was nice to watch girl power as the two of them worked together.

On the other hand, the drama got boring in the final episodes.

Finally, the performances were all great by everyone in the cast.

So, overall, five out of ten.

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True to it's name this show gives you a bitter sweet aftertaste at the end of it all

I am a huge fan of Kim Hee Sun's shows (ever since I watched her in Faith) so my review and rating could be a bit biased. I started watching this expecting a melodrama but boy it took a violent and thriller turn too soon (glad I didn't check any spoilers). Both Kim Hee Sun and Lee Hye-Yong delivered amazing performances and complemented each other's characters so well. I loved the quirky MIL character from the very beginning.
How does it feel to live in a carefully constructed, masterfully manipulated fairy tale life for so long, only for it to come crashing down on you? How would it feel when. you realize that your very identity is tied to these lies and facing them means facing yourself? Sometimes life is not black and white and there is just too much grey. Ultimately you need to make the choice of pursuing truth vs protecting what matters to you. Also despite their differences, the family comes together to protect their definition of what's important. That's why it's bitter sweet. I do feel a bit conflicted about Hong Sa Gang's actions regarding her son but ultimately her son was all left to her to. However I don't have as much of a patience for her son (Jae In). He seems irresponsible and spineless for the most part.
The villain is so OP that I am flabbergasted. She is a master manipulator and gaslights so many characters and all her victims remain loyal to her for the most part. That's some fantasy level skills there. But the show stays true to her narcissistic and obsessive behavior. She was so good that it would have been impossible for either NYW and HSG to respond to her by themselves. The show definitely nails down the idea that in the face of a common and powerful enemy most personal differences become irrelevant.

Overall this show is a great watch and I think the pacing is just right.

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Watch me reap the consequences of my own actions

I always say that I can look past bad acting, cinematography or editing, the one thing I can't look past is bad writing. On the off chance, I can look past those two plotholes or insane storylines in scripts that are mostly airtight, but when they are gaping enough for you to fall through, that's where I draw the line.

Let me clarify, the writing isn't abysmal here, there were a few amazing twists but the story either needed to be way crisper or way more fleshed out than it was. I still don't have answers to some of the biggest mysteries they introduced and it just felt sloppy at points. I won't fault it for starting off slow and then picking up the pace, some of my favourite dramas are that way. What I will say though is that the change in pace was so abrupt, it took me a second, because after pretty much nothing happening, there was way too much going on.

The character writing.. was a little better. I couldn't really root for any of them except for Do Hyun, because really, he was the only character who didn't do something absolutely deranged, horrifying or hypocritical. You can obviously root for imperfect characters but they either need to be immediately likeable or have some character development. The development also came much too late for my liking, so there goes that.

The acting was what impressed me the most. While I did not understand the reasoning behind writing the characters to be the way they were, I genuinely felt like all the actors carried out the brief to the tee, maybe even better.
I did want a bit more of the development on interpersonal relationships between the characters, they did drive the family theme hard on this one, so I see no reason why they couldn't have done that.

Psychological thrillers aren't my favourite, sure, but I do enjoy them once in a while. Unfortunately, the thrill never really arrived for me and the psychological aspect was much too mild to make anyone uncomfortable like I usually see people say they expect. It was a decent watch with it's moments, but personally, nothing really clicked enough for me to be completely invested.

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