BaldFerrets

Yeah, that's a fair assessment. I agree with that.

Cheers

I wouldn't recommend this to fans of basically all the genres of what the series is under (mystery, psychological, and thriller). This is closer to an action movie with thrilling elements. Closest thing I'd say this series reminds me of are the K-films: Midnight (2021) and Following (2024). If you watched and enjoyed either movies, you will probably enjoy this too.

Also, I agree with your comment below (had to read it in incognito because they are blocked lol). Anyone is willing to write why they disagree and I will do my best to respond as I have with rubeole, but the vast vast majority just resort to ad hominems. It's really sad and pathetic.

I explain what I mean in my review, but it's a long read. To make it short, I did not agree with the decision making of the characters because it usually doesn't make sense and it's to drive tension and artificially create thrilling moments, which I would argue is lazy.
Yes, I see where you are coming from but I would also say Kim Ki Duk's thrillers weren't really his strong suit. There are also some circumstances where they served as an allegory (Pieta and Time, for example) and then I'll weigh whether compromising the realism was worth it.

For this series, I don't see any way the unnatural writing had a deeper purpose and so the writer could have definitely went with more realistic alternatives. Or, just avoid making psychological thriller / mystery genre series where logical coherence is a bigger deal for its storytelling.

Agreed on the The Wailing!
Glad it was helpful

I respectfully disagree about the women. I would argue Squid Game is feminism rooted in realism.
We know that Squid Game is allegorical. It's why people who take storytelling seriously praise SG when for many people it's just a death game and why many will put a shallow series like AiB above it. SG covers a wide range of commentaries and allegories about the working class, capitalism, xenophobia, etc. but we will focus on just the women.
There are two types of women in SG: those who show subservience or those who show autonomy. Mi Nyeo submits herself to the patriarchy. She is rewarded when she pleases him, but ultimately is discarded when she is no longer useful. But even then, Mi Nyeo chooses vengeance and succeeds when the right opportunity comes. It takes her life, but she overcomes and collapses the man she was once afraid and powerless over.
On the flip side, we have Ji Yeong and Sae Byeok. Both female participants never give up in a world that is distrustful of women. SG doesn't just make its world hate women like caricatures. No, it resembles the cold, "logical" world that discriminates based on reasoning. Here, women are physically weaker therefore unworthy. But SG subverts that expectation. While everyone kept thinking future games would require physical strength, there was only one. No only that, the team with the two girls and an elderly man won against a group of young men in a tug of war using knowledge and proper teamwork. Of course, this wouldn't have been possible if the women didn't believe in their strengths.
Indeed, whatever skill-based games are involved, the two autonomous women succeed until the very end. Then, both Ji Yeong and Sae Byeok get fucked over by the gamemakers and are pitted against each other. But unlike any other character, Ji Yeong is the only one who willingly gives up her own life. She basically gives the finger to the gamemakers and chooses not to participate in a system where she can't win. She dies, but by her own accord.
And finally, Sae Byeok pushes through, but it's pure chance she gets injured and rather than cowering, she keeps moving forward and doesn't blame herself, anyone, or anything. She simply accepts the situation and doesn't give up. Then, a cowardly man, who has a clear physical advantage over, has to kill the already wounded woman in her sleep. Yes, one might call it fridging but it also works as an allegory especially because the guy who did it represented the white collar class (remember, he also fucks over Ali who represented the marginalized oversea workers).
Ultimately the winner of SG is a man, but the winner of our heart is a woman. It's why people were so pissed and why SG gets misconstrued as misogynistic. That is because people forgot why we were rooting for the woman in the first place, and how well she was crafted even when everything was against her.

These "trolls" have to be the same person. Anyways, once I block them the comments become less congested.

I am chill? I am literally just explaining.

Yeah, tell me about it. I was shocked that you can theoretically get 1 year of prison time after killing someone while drunk driving in some states and usually for first time offenders it's a MAXIMUM of 4-6 years... Then, people wonder why we have so much drunk drivers: the law is literally on their side!

The guy who pushed his girlfriend was drunk and that's why it became involuntary manslaughter + rape. Unfortunately, that's how the law works here as well (America).
The Yonsei student seems to have become famous for being a murderer who scored perfectly on the CSAT. Am I missing something?
Finally, the Reddit post. This is from the victim's sister's perspective so I can't really gauge what happened but it reminds me of a similar event that I had witnessed. When I was in highschool, two boys in another school fought at a party. Drinking was involved but also the guy who started it was the victim of constant bullying and he got fed up. Long story short, everything was recorded, the victim was hospitalized, and the bully was fine. Over night, the victim underwent emergency surgery for cerebral hemorrhage (same thing as the Reddit post). It was successful, but a month later he died of a heart attack. Everyone knew they were related because what kind of 16 year old dies from a heart attack? But that's what the autopsy said and nothing happened to the bully. His family and he just packed up and left. The reason the cops didn't do anything is because the fight was an isolated event with drinking involved and video evidence showed the victim "started" it even though people testified HE was the victim of bullying. But most importantly, the cause of death didn't align. This is the limit of our justice system. I am curious though why the cops couldn't detain and arrest the boyfriend for assault???

I never said you were defending anyone? You assumed I forgot about the father and I gave an explanation why that wouldn't work. You are shifting the goalpost. I never said fiction had to 100% align with reality... I gave the unrealistic example of the entire police station being paid off. A 3 minute scene of Young Ha giving info to the cops, Seung Ah getting bailed, and a scene of a letter from the prosecution's office saying they didn't find any evidence would have been tenable.

The point is the writer did not put in any effort to justify the ridiculous situations he put his characters in, which might work for action fans but not fans of psychological thrillers or mystery. We are asked to suspend our disbelief, not shut off our brains. Maybe the writer should switch genres

Nope, I haven't forgotten. I responded in the comment section for my review. Even if her father got involved, police still need to get a victim's statement and investigate. Then, they need to submit their findings to prosecution. Prosecutor in charge can either drop or proceed with the charges depending on the evidence. And if the prosecutor drops the charge due to corruption, the father can still submit an appeal.

The only way for this not to reach prosecution is if the victim drops all charges and the legal circumstances allow it. First, I don't think Young Ha ever drops it. Second, I'm guessing a maniac zooming her car onto another car near a crosswalk in front of a police station, as police are directly watching the incident, will most likely disbar any legal provisions. I suppose if the father bought out the entire police force and the police contributed in hiding evidence like some other dramas, then sure, unbelievable but better than nothing. However this series did not make any efforts to do any of that and the incident is just lazily swept under the rug without explanation.

Put simply, money and power won't make problems vanish out of thin air. They still require a processs to corrupt.

Thank you for reading!

Speaking for myself, I found it to be boring because the action sequence was mindless and the characters were all dumb, not because I didn't understand the show.

I wrote a negative review on The Frog and dropped Lovely Runner in the first episode. If you think I missed something or didn't understand the show, feel free to point it out exactly.

or not have the two cops stare at the whole thing from beginning to end! If memory serves correct, they literally approach the car before the accident even occurs.

I never heard of these cases before. Do you have names of the perps or sources so that I can take a closer look?

First this deals with NEGLIGENT driving or typical car ACCIDENTS. This isn't describing the case where a psychopath rams her car into yours at full speed incapacitating you. She'd be hit with reckless endangerment if you can't find intentionality. And if you can, she'd be hit with aggravated assault or attempted murder.

But even for negligent driving, she violated various traffic rules such as going 20km above the speedlimit and driving too fast near a pedestrian crosswalk (as he's literally hit a few feet away from a crosswalk infront of a police station; normally people are already easing on the brakes) violating the second stipulation of the example. And I'm just going to assume Young Ha didn't agree to having her compensate him and just dropped all charges.

If this were reality, it would be attempted murder or aggravated assault; she'd face criminal charges and get arrested on the spot. Maybe no one saw that it was intentional? Due to the severity of the accident, it would still be reckless endangerment and she would at least have been arraigned, even if she pulls some strings and isn't arrested on the spot. The only situation where she leaves scot-free is if both Young Ha and the prosecutor drop all charges, which would make even less sense.