Idol I

Idol & Inconsistency

Good chemistry. Fake premise. A lawyer drama that forgot the law, a murder mystery that ran in circles, and a finale that wasted its last shot. The romance carried this harder than it should have had to.

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I signed up for the ultimate Seong-deok fanfic, saving your bias from a murder charge. The cards were on the table. Se-na is an ace attorney. Ra-ik is an idol in handcuffs. Idol I did not bait and switch me. It promised a lawyer with a murder to solve and then spent eleven episodes refusing to actually show her being a lawyer. Every single beat of potential legal tension evaporates into nothing. Her profession is decorative, it is a typo, it is a fanfic device to justify proximity to her crush. You could have swapped her law background for a barista apron or florist shears or a sushi chef hat or walking dogs and nothing would have changed. Same scenes. Same dialogue. Same total absence of stakes. The script treats her profession like it was a typo that slipped past casting. Watching her do literally anything legal is like staring into an empty room waiting for fireworks. Nothing happens. Court scnes? nah?. Not an investigation she drives. Not a clever legal pivot. Nothing. Nada. Ugh.

The murder mystery is limp. Toxic substances in Ra-ik’s and his friend’s blood appear and then vanish. Who gave it to them? Why? Was it overlooked by sloppy investigators? Did someone cover it up? The show doesn’t care. Eleven episodes of circling the same evidence, pretending it counts as tension. They even run away to a cabin right after Ra-ik is indicted like being officially charged means nothing. Cozy romantic fantasy replaces stakes. I am furious.

Se-na dating her client? Ethics evaporated. Prosecutor Jung Jae-kwang suddenly grows a conscience after one conversation with Se-na. His father Kim Min-sang is cartoonish. Obstruction of justice is a casual hobby. These are not plot choices, they are insults to anyone who knows how justice works. The whole thing is nonsense. The story pretends consequences exist while actively ignoring them.

Romance is infuriatingly effective. Confessions, letter in the morning, Se-na running out late at night to deliver a hat. Cute, impulsive, human. The lawyer-suspect tension should create stakes, danger, stress, legal fireworks. Instead, it is proximity to justify romance. Chemistry doing the emotional labor the story refuses to do. I am charmed and furious at the same time.

The ML and 2FL conversations are pointless. One episode he’s in love, next episode he’s not. Watching it feels like staring into a void while someone waves their hands. Surface-level, invisible, whatever their contribution is, it is nothing. 2ML, the prosecutor, is vapid, and his one personality pivot is laughable. Watching actors try to make sense of this vacuum is maddening.

Han Do-hee as the ex-girlfriend does good work. She acts bitter, brittle, dangerous. But the writing refuses to earn it. Accidental harm escalates to premeditated murder mechanically. I believed her rage, her resentment, her self-pity wrapped in cruelty. I wish the writing cared as much as her acting.

Kim Jae-young and Sooyoung are the only reason this drama limps along. They give weight, pulse, emotional grounding. Without them, it is rubble. With them, it drags itself to the finish line. They fight the script with everything they have. Watching them is thrilling and enraging because everything else refuses to exist.

Park Chung Jae, played by Kim Hyun-jin, exists to pine and hand over evidence. It is infuriating watching him fight a script that cannot write him a single proper motivation. Side characters barely have motivations. I have seen cardboard targets with more interior life.

Idol/fandom moments land sometimes. Goldys waving flags, obsessive fans, parasocial ugliness, constant pressure, glimpses of real fandom intelligence, morse code in a song that makes me laugh and groan at the same time. It is absurd, ridiculous, but it works in the narrow context of fan energy. Still, it is another reminder of how lazy the rest of the writing is.

The finale is such a waste. Her father’s case barely matters, shoved into a single episode, literally a five-second footnote. Se-na finally functions as a lawyer and it barely matters. Romantic awkwardness happens after the relationship is established, which creates weird timing. The rest of the finale should have been ten minutes tacked onto episode eleven. Everything else is random fan-survival footage.

Idol I flashes brilliance constantly and then immediately smothers it. Se-na could have been a powerhouse lawyer. Ra-ik’s suspense could have carried fire. The investigation could have delivered tension. But the show chooses fanfic logistics over stakes, romance over logic, chemistry over plot, flashes of fandom insight over coherent procedural. It teases you, riles you, makes you believe something might happen, and then refuses to be anything other than padded, sloppy, frustrating nonsense.

It is maddening. It is infuriating. It is exhausting. It could have been sharp, biting, thrilling. Instead, it is chaos wrapped in cute gestures, fan service, and actors refusing to let the nonsense collapse entirely. I am furious and I cannot stop thinking about it.

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One time watch

I had big hopes for this drama. But the execution failed and in some places so did the acting.
For an idol who has a murder charge on him and is facing jail time, I found him more like a prince throwing a tantrum left right and center.
The first couple of episodes where you feel any sympathy for him soon turns into frustration and annoyance.
The romance felt forced and more like a noona romance which should not be the case going by the childhood memory they share.
It a strange one, I could bring myself to watch this one back to back, but rather one episode a couple of days. Still can recommend for a binge watch.

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