Aramintai

But did they have to subvert the established genre of this drama for his backstory so much? It just clashes too much with the rest of the series.

Well, his actor does frequently play villains. But he's not a politician and was away to US for several years after what happened to ML. The main villain has to be someone close to the world of politics, he's gotta be able to pull the strings and gather ill gotten slush funds from corrupt chaebols. His father fits the bill more. But maybe it's some random dude yet to be revealed.

I agree, in itself his backstory wasn't bad, but it's like it was taken from a different script altogether, didn't feel like it fit tonally at all. And yea, too much time wasted on it, we've got only 6 episodes left now.

And why did they have to go that cliche route? This type of premise is in every second crime drama out there. They could have just made him a lawyer that fights for the little guy, with no terrible overarching plot dragging from his past.

This contrived mess with boys identities is a total headache to solve. I'm getting tired of lies, misdirections and unreliable narration that only complicates it more. Hopefully ML will confront his brother about what he knows soon so that we can get a clearer picture.

Why do you think that? I think his father is more sus.

Yea, it's not clear what it's about after the first episode. It's about a ragtag group of small fry noob investors who are fumbling with stocks. FL is especially hilarious with her epic fails. The only expert among them is ML, but he has a phobia of stocks after an incident and hides his expertise from the group.

The only good thing about Umbrella that AoS part 2 is coming after it.

It is supposed to be a comedy too, but really it's just your typical historical drama about palace's inner politics and intrigues where the queen is mother henning her unruly brats, that keep ruining the reputation of her side of the family. It's very far from fresh and entertaining Mr. Queen. I watched two aired episodes, got bored to tears and dropped it.

Those historical dramas about palace life are all the same - people invent plots against each other out of boredom and in the end they all get what's coming to them. At least put some zombies in it for fun or something, like they did in Kingdom 😆

Yea, it's hilarious. Also, if you haven't watched it already, there's a similar type of short funny drama with romance called Stock Struck that aired this year.

So does the villain.
But Master Lee has even less reasons to steal her body. First, he didn't even know about FL's existence prior meeting her as a soul shifter later. Second, he hunts and kills soul shifters by default. Why would he take dead body of a soul shifter for keeping?

Doubtful, he returned to the city after the events. And also, why?

I didn't form my perception of this drama from tags. I formed it by watching first 5 episodes, which were completely different tonally and promised a funny, lighthearted drama about unconventional solving of legal cases by an eccentric lawyer and his ragtag team of sidekicks. And then the plot made a sharp turn into ML's backstory and now I'm not sure what this is about really. Yet another beaten to death story about taking down a cabal of corrupt villains in places of power? Such narrative inconsistency doesn't say anything good about the writers.

Also, it's not me who's way too personal here. Don't take comments that you don't like as a personal offense, everybody has the right to their opinions.

Well, it's another one of the crazy theories and it's your right to believe in it. Personally, I think no way in hell. It's somewhere at the very bottom of possible "resurrection" options for FL for me. I'm more inclined to believe that if anybody still has it, it would be the main villain, though he really has no reason to.

I don't believe it. He's too much of a stickler for rules. Stealing a body of a known criminal is not something he'd ever do, even if he was acquantained with her in childhood. Furthermore, if he had it, he'd have lead FL to it eventually and then dealt with her, instead of sitting on it. After all, she took an innocent person's body as a vessel - and it's a grave crime and he can't abide to crimes. In reality, he had no practical ideas how to deal with FL and her being a danger as a shapeshifter.
Also, her body was shown up close on the pyre, burning. So unless it's some sort of trick from the villains, which they had no reason to do (they really wanted her perma dead), her og body is ash.

Totally agree. Should have left that subplot for a separate melodrama. Ruined my initial interest quite a bit.

This drama has almost no dumbassery and the plot stays consistent. Nothing outstanding, just a good legal/murder mystery drama.

While Blind is all over the place. ML is a reckless dumbass and characters in general only loosely follow the procedures when they feel like it. And some things there feel very contrived and annoying. But it's still a good enough "whodunit" type of detective fiction.

Also, for some reason ML here reminds me of Cowboy Bebop's protagonist (anime, not crap Netflix's live adaptation). ML there too had a similar company doing various jobs, cheerful on the surface but was not actually living, but merely existing in torpor because of his past love life. Another similar example - Gintama manga/anime.

Obligatory cliche tropes:
-Corrupt chaebols/civil servants/politicians pretending to be righteous;
-Useless corrupt superiors at work who are kissing ass to anyone above them and are always hindering main lead's job;
-Fearless, reckless and overconfident main lead who's got fiery justice up his ass;
-Senior mentor figure who's secretly corrupt as hell;
Nothing new here 🥱

As for ML's lady love - neither of us bought her character. Too unrealistic and perfect. Law Firm Baek is your typical unscrupulous large law company that became so big and successful because it puts money above all else. They specialize in bailing corrupt chaebols out of jail for obscene amounts of money. Only sharks who buried their conscience long ago can survive long enough in such a workplace to become top ace lawyers and be offered partnership. And yet here we have a compassionate top ace lawyer with a conscience (dissonance!), who later even resigns to work as a defender for the little guy for symbolic pay. Yea, right 🙄 . Unicorns also exist then. I guess it's your typical idealized depiction of a perfect love that died. Good luck any future contenders for ML's heart - can't ever beat what was painted here.
The only thing I believed here is that she liked ML, actress did her job right.
If you want to see practically the same type of character but realistic - go watch ongoing May It Please The Court - FL there is it.

As for ML, there are still lots of questions that remain:
-Why is he so rich when his father was a prosecutor and in his late years went into politics? Are they old money or something?
-Is he an illegitimate son? His surname was different and he never fit in with the rest of the family and spend his childhood in other countries.
-Why did he change his appearance when he became a lawyer? Aside from glasses it's still unclear. Is he imitating someone?

Also, both of us found his big change of behaviour after he became a lawyer to be weird. He was shown as quiet, introverted and aloof as a prosecutor. But as a lawyer he's sarcastic, talkative and playful. Usually after such hard hitting tragedies personality turns the other way around. It's weird.
Also, personally, I didn't buy his love for that lady lawyer. It looked like a reenactment of Goblin's interactions between the leads - ML blankly stares at FL who's blabbering whatever comes to her mind. And such "cuteness" is supposed to convince the audience. Was it real love? Looked more like FL just agressively wore him down and his was just an affection for her kindness and for sticking with him when no one else would.

Anyway, if you watched the preview of episode 9 after this extremely detailed sad backstory and are wondering whether it's for the same drama and not a completely different one with same actors for some reason, know that you're not alone.

I watched episodes 7 and 8 with a friend again to catch him up to speed and we both agreed in the end that it was like watching a completely different drama and it's not a compliment.
Aside from good acting from ML's actor, definitely not seeing what other people here found to be outstanding.
This drama established itself first as something funny, eccentric and fresh - that was what got us hooked. But ML's backstory, that for some reason took whooping 2.5 episodes to cover, was a completely tonally different cliche melodrama sprinkled with soap we've seen a dozen times over in other legal/crime dramas.