MilicaB

The drama setup up to about ep 20 was great, really fun. We got to meet the characters and learn about their faults, strengths, and challenges.
THEN .... the plot froze. The characters stopped growing. And the actions shown to fill in the time were just .... without any luster or life. It just went on automatic pilot. There was small character growth in some characters, but the main love stories, taking most screen time, were absolutely BLAND LIFELESS, WITHOUT ANY FEELING OR CHEMISTRY. Esp FL totally ruind it. She was obviously lukewarm cold to ML and honestly they should have not gotten married at the end. The second love story between SR and BS as well. The third love story between CS and MS is soooooo bland and suitable only for feeble seniors, ... "just friends who happened to marry"
and Dancer and Hairdresser love story was .... well... killed by the prejudice of the audience, who was all stuck on serious people in business suits, and also lack of acting ability of the Dancer actor, who can act only scenes of his regular idol life. The Hairdresser actress is great but the script killed her character.

I WATCHED THIS AS A FILLER WHILE I STRETCH, WAITING FOR SOMETHING TO HAPPEN, BUT IT NEVER DID

and the cold FL is the trait of all KBS family dramas i have seen since 2020 except Beauty and Mr Romantic. When I think about it, all KBS family dramas since 2020 when I started watching them have cold and aloof and totally uninterested and selfishly self centered FL actress who could care less for the ML actor. All but Beauty and Mr Romantic, bc FL there has more experience and more expression, she was most complex FL of them all. So, WHY is KBS promoting these frigid egoistical FL actresses? .
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This is what I wrote after ep 24:
A very very nice kdrama. The story is real, the people are real, acting is good, so you get sucked into the story. This is a long drama with many many characters and stories so that is why it is slower and more complex than 16 episodes series.
===> You really get to see the characters struggle and grow

Bc it is a family drama with so many different people, ages, stories, and interactions, it is incredibly interesting. There are 5-7 love stories going on in parallel, plus exes, babies, etc.
You get to see disfunctional relationships versus functional relationships :) Bad communication, no communication, and good communication... different styles...
and self reflection and improvement...

I like the positive vibe of this kdrama

It helps that the main ML and FL are down-to-earth people with common sense and brave enough to speak their mind, take action when necessary, be gentle and respectful about it and communicate well.

It is helpful that FL is not an abused / helpless clutz / loser but a capable and warm, brave woman trying to make her late husband's dreams come true and at the same time save herself from the grief of his death and successfully run her late husband's business. She has goals and she makes it happen. Running that business was healing for her.

This is NOT an "anio!!!!" drama with idiotic (mis)communication, hiding, cheating, and psychotic losers. There are villains and drama queens and questionable women, but this is not a drama with car chases, kidnapping, shootings, hot steam, etc.

This kdrama is about "normal" people with 'normal" range of issues, like .. getting out from under your parent's tight hand, dating your professor, leaving babies behind, trying to destroy competition with bad business moves, selling kids off to marriage, fighting to save a business in debt, falling in love later in life, surviving in the entertainment industry, etc.

How it is solved and resolved is interesting to watch. How different people come together to make a goal happen. How they saved their tiny brewery together.

Some of the best love scenes are between the two people who lost their spouses (ML and FL), you get to see high school love at the age of 50, and it is so cute. If you can watch ep 23 with ML and FL in the hospital, that is one of the most charming things, how an older reserved male opens his heart and turns into a high school boy but even better :) he is calmer and warmer than a young boy, and a lot more considerate and appreciative.
He is THE BEST good boy charmer out there, really. He courts her so well. He is honest, undercover, steady and very clever to always be there and be nice and ENJOY her company but never come onto her, bc she is not ready yet, she recently lost her husband, so he is catching her into his net without she even realizing. He is very very genuine and vulnerable and naive on one hand but on the other hand, a very shrewd adult male who knows where he is going with this. He is careful to protect himself yet advancing very fast to go get her. A great hunter and scout :) He is a very endearing character and that actor portrays him so well.

I and many others wish that it was subbed faster. We have to wait a whole day for eng sub.

The OST music is not really something I would remember :) After I wrote this I was humming the main song "when will I learn life" or whatever that is, and yeah, that is a catchy song and actually can be a very popular song. OK I give 9 on music. THe rest of the music is not really noticeable too much, It gives nice effects with actions and it is rather discrete, whcih I think is APPROPRIATE for this kdrama. So .. absence of flashy music is ok. I do think a little bit more ... well... I dontknow which word to use... zappy? emotional? stronger? passionate? alive? vibrant? music would be good.
Iron Family had such catchy main song but Iron Family kdrama had more comical and drama and thriller elements so that music fit perfectly for it. This drama is more even keel so this mellow music is ok, it FITS.
This kdrama has nice "background" music that matches the acting, but it is nothing special. But yeah that is the feel of this drama, regular life without too much spiking.

There are younger and older people in the drama. There is only one elder and she is a dame LOL There is one baby. There are business people, "idols" :) etc There are cold hearted corporate styles and the immature dancer and everything in between. So I think many people will find someone of their age and their interest in this kdrama and will find it interesting.

I like the filming close up of their faces. There are many comical moments. There are some tough moments, but never disgusting tough, only tough... THere are some sad moments but there is also that feel of overcoming and moving on and being nice about it.

It is like ... put your slippers on, relax, and watch the story

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******* After ep 25, CHARACTERS STAY THE SAME AND DRAMA TURNS INTO BLAH BORING . ******
Chairman is chasing reluctant Gwang Sook, who politely and coldly treats him as a old geezer sugar daddy she cannot piss off, bc he helps her.... She just has that generic frozen smile on her face.... she likes to spend time alone in the brewery and to act as Mother Theresa .... but ... her romantic interest in DS is about ZERO,
so he keeps dragging her around like a reluctant cow on a leash...
all other couples also stay rather distant and in "friend zone"

THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO CHEMISTRY ANYWHERE
except between minor characters FL's mom and her lover (older couple dancing tango, eating together, he feeding her, etc)
except literally a few seconds between Kang Su and Bom maybe 2 times

and it is just BORING!!!!!! the characters do not grow AT ALL. They are just frozen in that one moment. There are some events that happen but nothing really moves forward.

By Ep 50 we see maybe 2 minutes of Kwang Soo and Bom in flirting action, and THAT is the only truly romantic scenes, besides a few futile attempts by the Chairman (sitting on the same bench in the hospital, playing the card game in the hospital and touching her bare arm when he wins. That was cute and flirty but she was AS COLD AS ICE).

GWANG SOOK STAYED 100% COLD.
Once or maybe twice she tried kissing him but then he said to stop bc it is too much. An impotent old man, stiff and stuffy, by script.
So ... dead end relationship but they will get married like that.

When ML and FL got married, the FL actress tried to be politically correct and fake chemistry but it was only in nurse capacity, there was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ROMANTIC BETWEEN THEM THE ENTIRE TIME, SHE WAS TOTALLY LUKEWARM COLD and it is not just bc of the script, it is felt as a personal barrier that was just unprofessionally not overcome

Seems like the audience is all old and impotent people bc they didnt find anything wrong with the FL never calling ML to ask him how he is doing, to run to greet him, to hug him, to hold his hand, to talk to him, to invite him on dates and doing things together.
I was flabbergasted.

I more or less stopped watching. The drama is RUINED by a script that plays it safe to keep high ratings so characters are just ... bland blah frozen closed characters. NOTHING HAPPENS.

The VERY END SCENE when they all sit around family table and FL and ML hold babies, he leans to kiss her and she just leans back and I think even with her hand tells him to go away. THIS IS FILMED. Look at ep 54 very very very last scene, at the end of their speeches.

For some reason, FL was totally hostile towards the ML, her personal dislike for him was just oozing out and it was just ... UGLY to watch.

Actress who acted Se Ri is awful actress and has not changed her facial expression for 50 episodes, she had 3 facial expressions - cry, look confused and in pain, or rarely smile.

The most masterful actor there was Dog Tak actor, every scene with him was memorable especially the end when he was acting emotional, he is a MASTER ACTOR

Kang Su actor came out as a decent actor. I bet he had no experience when he started and he was just a model. That is my educated guess. But he learned to act and is pretty good at it by now.

ML actor is ok for this one role but he is the same all the time, in this kdrama he was THE SAME acting and character as in Five Enough. THE EXACT same.

Overall, I learned how to ruin a perfectly nice drama.
YOU JUST STOP CHARACTER GROWTH. THAT KILLS ANY DRAMA.

many movies will try to fill the void by action scenes, violence or sex scenes, but that is trashy and without content, western media is famous for this AND THAT IS WHY WE DO NOT WATCH IT. It is contentless. meaningless.

Kdramas are famous because of CREATIVE AND MEANINGFUL CONTENT

And as for KBS family dramas, I started watching them in 2020 and all were extremely trashy boring except Iron Family, which was great until the end when the mama boy stuck to his criminal mommy instead of his love, and now For Eagle Brothers, which was fun in the first 20 episodes out of 54, but then died a premature creative death because NOTHING REALLY HAPPENED, they all just lived without changing too much,

In some ways this drama is about stable and functional people and that is cool but their stable level is just ... mediocre superficial stability, nothing MAJOR changes in them. ML and FL just ... never melted. Well FL never melted and that ruined it.

Chun Soo changed in terms of ditching his old life being a slave to his wife and kid in the US. Mi Soo changed in being less shy and more assertive.
Kang Su changed in terms of being less shy and more outgoing and "normal" civilian. Bom became less shy.
Dancer and Hairdresser changed some too, became more mature.

So yeah there WERE changes and they were subtle and organic changes so it is unfair to say there was no change

but once CS and MS got together, there was NO change, they were like a senior impotent couple or a pair of roommates, we never saw them with any FEELING for each other that was beyond friends

FEMALE LEAD DID NOT CHANGE *** AT ALL ****, SHE STAYED LUKEWARM COLD IN EVERY SINGLE SCENE UNTIL THE VERY VERY END. and ML and FL "romance" took so much time so this was the dominant tone of the series

That actress just botched it. Even if the script made her act coy and reserved, there was NOTHING that indicated that she likes the guy. NOTHING. He was just dragging her around like a reluctant cow on a leash. Her level of enthusiasm for him was ZERO. ZERO. ZERO. that was actually abusive to us the audience. She never even called him to wish him good night.

Also, the second most important love story that took TONS of screen time, Se Ri and Boon Su, DID NOT CHANGE.
THEY ALWAYS LOOKED AWKWARD AND SHE WAS A LITTLE GIRL TALKING TO HER PROFESSOR... THERE WAS NOTHING ROMANTIC. He hugged her a few times when she cried and that's it. There was no facial expressions, or holding hands, or anything like that. HE the actor tried to act with his eyes but she the actress was just hostile. Her acting was pathetically inadequate.

So the major love stories with the most screen time were just BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAND ***** without any feeling of enthusism whatsoever , nothing that conveyed "I like you, I want to spend time with you, I am curious about you" ***** AND THAT RUINED THE DRAMA
ML and Boon Su actor tried to save it but it was impossible because their female partners were UNRESPONSIVELY COLD.

the overall feeling is that characters are stuck in an asleep state, not really vibrant or loving, more like ... zombies in rote living

IT IS JUST BORING