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HE? Not really.... not black and white.

You are confusing me because you've said no spoilers at the end so I'm not sure what to say. Also, who is "she"? Xu Banxia? I will answer the first question in a spoiler below and await your response for the second question.

Just keep going, because just like season 1 it continues to crescendo in the second half right to the end.

I want at least 5 seasons.

MOAR.

Please add a spoiler tag this is blatant.

Is that a brand of noodles?

Why do some people become lunatics about sex and nudity but are fine with vulgar violence or bullying in general in dramas? These things are a part of the plots of dramas. Sadly, violence and bullying does happen in life... and so does sex, and sex is one of the most natural things in life and much more harmless than watching gratuitous violence. Why should these folks be so desperate to excise such a staple reality of life?

I haven't watched yet but this doesn't make much sense. If sex is abhorrent, then what of all the violence and blood and gore and guts of so many of these sageuks? Should we only at most imply sex, imply violence, imply bullying etc. Compared to violence or bullying or any sordid plot, sex is harmless.

Much higher quality production than any other C-drama I've watched this year, other than The Long Night which was also clean work. Even the music is decent, and the sound engineering isn't full of the weird lazy cuts that infest so many C-dramas. The aesthetics are vibrant and splendid. The structure makes the show really easy to manage, watching it case by case, arc by arc — neat and tidy! The characters are highly memorable, including so many who only feature in a specific case. The honour and valour on display is truly awe-inspiring. The concept could run for plenty more than just 3 seasons and in the end I'll watch as many seasons as they desire to pump out. Piecing together the clues and the dialogue which doesn't pass the sniff test to solve these mysteries is extremely engaging! — a credit to the writers and the super direction.

Keep it rollin'.

This is how 99% take it, because that's what it is. It's the short format way also that people differentiate between C-drama or J-drama... terms that basically denote the country of origin of the drama. That doesn't mean that every Korean drama is a "Korean-drama" as it still depends on the production involvement being Korean in the vast majority. If you don't like series format K-dramas then cool - they've existed for a very long time. I do wonder what you'd call them seeing as they are obviously Korean dramas with Korean ideas - seems to me it would be quite awkward to come up with an appropriate term? There's no way on Earth I could consider My Dearest as anything other than K-drama, yet it was split into 2 seasons — though sure, it wasn't split in the sense of not knowing if there would be a follow-up season or not having the story already completely mapped out. But that's also the case for say, The Glory (Netflix). Formats come and go. Ever watched a sageuk epic? Well now they are pretty much obselete...: Queen Seondeok, Jewel in the Palace, Jumong, Dong Yi. RIP to that format of historical drama, more or less.

And how about Alchemy of Souls - is that a K-drama for you? New form, new ideas, which apparently stirred arguments of cultural appropriation (Korea vs China), split into seasons. Always amuses me though, seeing as nobody brings up the constant brazen fact of K-drama OSTs being "non-oriental" now for decades (C-dramas tend to maintain a lot more of their cultural and aesthetic signatures in their OSTs by comparison). Yet when it came to Korea vs China there was a massive poopstorm for that drama, although instigated by a small minority, I suppose.

If, in theory, K-drama is some exceptionally limited and finite term which excludes a mere architectonic such as structural form, then what new name would you propose? Simply: Korean drama, with "K-drama" being the biggest type of Korean drama? The problem here is that K-drama has been a long-known and long-used shorthand for "Korean drama".

Well anyway, interesting discussion. I'll leave it there matey.

These analogies simply don't work. From the beginning, the notion of K-drama has been far more expansive than a limerick, a haiku or a sonnet. Your arguments smack of saying something like a new Japanese video game is not a Japanese video game because it's too long (taking advantage, for example, of the evolution of tech from cartridges to capacious CDs), even should the project be "Japanese" in every way, in the vast majority of creative aspects. It's somewhat like saying that metal is not a genre of rock music, except this is a far more profound change than some additional formats being introduced more commonly to K-dramas. It would be like saying that the various new styles that seeped into K-pop over the years "corrupts" expectations and cannot be called K-pop — but this makes very little sense.

Korean dramas are... Korean dramas. It's the broadest term under which subgenres may continually split or speciate, as happens with EVERY broad term, every genre of any epistemic or expressive venture. Expectations and conventions always change and expand, where subgenres enumerate within them, and that's simply the story of history.

So no, K-drama is not of a (tightly) limited format and frankly it never was. Dividing dramas into series didn't start with Netflix, and there have always been numerous formats anyway within K-drama whether it's series based, short series, or very very long family shows.

Late edit here: I mean splitting dramas into seasons, not series.

Hang on a second - who exactly got snubbed in acting awards and which actors didn't deserve their awards? There's no way, for example, that I'm going to take seriously the idea that actors like Kim Hee-ae,, Yeom Jung-ah or Namkoong Min didn't deserve their awards. The only big actor I recall constantly overracting (and being loved for it) is Yoo Ah In.

Well Netflix K-dramas clearly are K-dramas. And it's ok for the "genre" to expand its strategies and ways of presenting drama. Netflix is a small overall part of the whole K-drama industry in terms of volume of releases. There's no strange need to not have multicultural exchange of approach in the production and formatting of dramas. Trying to box in what K-dramas precisely are or must be seems like a fruitless exercise? K-drama is a very broad term under which productions can develop, evolve, devolve, change. Anyway, how would you even begin to argue that Squid Game, for example, isn't a K-drama? It's a Korean production in every critical role, is it not? What would you then call it? There's no need to complicate this matter just because the division of structure within K-drama is undergoing changes.

I dropped it hard. Catastrophic nosedive in the second half, though more palatable than something like Big Mouth at least. A lot of K-dramas die in the second half.... I wonder why, though.

Why was this the golden era exactly, and is this like a genuinely widely accepted opinion or consensus or just a view you feel should be obvious to others?

Effective ruination of essence of what L is actually like. Difficult to forget this one but for all the wrong reasons.

What do you mean by "excitement" though? Because for me, no type of drama has continuously contrived drama and makjang elements more than Kdrama. That's just what they do. It's funny watching the end of many episodes in Cdramas by comparison where they often end in the most mundane ways.

Big reality.

It's pretty good but I feel like it never hits big peaks. It's consistent all the way through but not particularly mysterious (as you might be led to believe with the slowly pieced together end-of-episode photograph) and I guessed what the real deal was early on. You can't really get your teeth into this as a sort of crime mystery but it's a solidly told story anyway which never really hits the heights. In terms of character building it's strong, and I guess in the end that was the main thrust of this show.

What ep it takes a good turn?