Just started. A very engrossing drama. Performances are great all round definitely helped by a fantastic script. It is a fascinating character study of a man who has very complex relationship with various women in his life. However in the vernacular Cheng Gong is a scumbag. He used his position. He set her up. He took advantage of a vulnerable young woman. A man of integrity would have taken her home in the state she was in. Or better still, had someone else take her home after they left the banquet. The fact that he acted inappropriately before they entered the bedroom is enough for me to deem him untrustworthy. He put himself in a precarious position. It is interesting that one of the old fogeys who sit on the board made a joke about Cheng Gong's philandering and brushed it off as being irrelevant to his capacity to lead the company. I can't agree with that. A man who is this indiscrete is bound to be a problem sooner or later.
Overall, not a bad watch. But I still think You Are My Hero is the better show if we're to compare like with like. For me the highlight was really the firefighting and the medical side of things. I loved the male camaraderie and the depiction of healthy masculinity in particular. The romance was okay but the Romeo and Juliet stuff got a bit old after a while. Like a lot of others, I think Mummy Dearest got away with a mere rap on the knuckles after building her up to be an absolute monster. It's embarrassing to watch them all hold hands and sing kumbaya at the end. Snobbery is one thing but she went so far as to try and destroy another person's life. Forgiveness is fine on his part but the woman committed actual crimes.
I think 30 - 35 episodes would have made this a better show.
P.S. It's hilarious that boiling water is now a euphemism for sex.
Re: Episodes 1-2 I get it. I can see why mother and daughter are why they are what they are. They've had to look after themselves all of Jin-hee's life and that aggression and combativeness is a natural result. Obviously a lot of that is exaggerated for humor but it's not hard to see why the two women see the world as a battleground.
But I also agree with Jae-won as to why Jin-hee isn't cut out to be a cop. At this point at least. It's not difficult to see just from the transfer arc how she jumps to conclusion far too readily but more importantly, she's not a team player. The police are fundamentally civil service and by extension highly bureaucratic. There are plenty of procedures in place. Too many. Due to lots of backside covering. As a result it's often gets very political. For people to survive in such places long-term they have to be politically savvy. It isn't enough to want to do the right thing by the "clients", you have to be smart about it. For mavericks and individualists, the public service is a difficult place to work in because the culture requires you to conform. There are plenty of things that don't make sense in terms of procedures but people in those settings have to "suck it up" if they want to hang on to their jobs. However, if you play it smart and don't mind having the maneuver a bit, play the game of accommodation, you can sometimes get what you want. Ironically, what Jin-hee did is what terrifies bureaucrats the most. And nervous bureaucrats respond by putting more regulations and procedures in place rather than overhauling the reporting system.
When Jae-won poses the question about why there was no response in the child abuse case... Her answer is a reflection of her naivete. "There can be no excuse." It isn't about excuses. It is about the inherent systemic issues about the organization. The worst part is that it the people who get into trouble are those at the bottom of the food chain who have to work within the rules. Usually all that happens is that politicians come out and make a lot of noise about doing better. Then bureaucrats scramble to find a scapegoat and of course management is almost never going to sack themselves. Nothing changes. All that happens is musical chairs. The organization only has to be seen to have done something.
This is not to say that no good can ever be achieved within the public service. But it's not achieved by running roughshod over one's colleagues.
I liked episode 1, with one glaring exception; the daughter's transfer. Everything about it, the cause, the execution,…
Frankly I thought the entire transfer story was actually quite good because it reveals the character's personality in an interesting way. She jumps to conclusions and she's not much of a team player.
I'm starting to get a little annoyed by Fang Duobing. Like I completely understood LLH telling him something like…
This is something that has bothered me from the beginning. I don't think the character is that well written. In some ways he's the archetypal rookie but then they're trying to add some colour into him by giving him some smarts while completely lacking in common sense. But then they overreach by using him as the primary butt of jokes and all the dramatic irony. It's clumsy writing.
Great show, fantastic cast and a very decent wrap. Lee Seung-min's face as it contorted from jubilation to tears -- fantastic acting.
At the start (S1) I thought that this was a character study of one man but really it's of two men. Two very different men... driven by very different motives. Overall it was a good allegory of Lord Acton's famous saying "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Unpopular opinion maybe, but I feel a lack of momentum and connected tissue between the random cases unlike TBOY…
I don't have problems seeing the connections especially in the more recent episodes. I like the show but my criticism is that it lacks discipline. In the early episodes especially there's a lot of bickering just for laughs (maybe) and to fill up air time. I also don't think the character of Fan Duobing is as well written as the others. He feels more like a plot device and a caricature. I agree that it's not quite on par with The Blood of Youth or Ancient Detective but I'm still enjoying it.
I think I enjoyed the tomb robbers arc the most. Some things were obvious. Some less so. It had multiple layers of complexity brought on by multiple agendas. The show is much better when it's not trying to overuse red herrings or rely on people hurling accusations with no foundations to fill up air time because there is a good script at work with good ideas at play which actually adds to the world building. In this case the tomb robbers who are a subset of wulin, they have their own "speak" and by the very nature of what they do, their skill sets are all potential suspects in the crime(s).
It is amusing to see Fan Duobing switch all his hostility from Li Lianhua to Di Feisheng. It's as if all that youthful energy requires an object of hostility to prove something.
4 
I think 30 - 35 episodes would have made this a better show.
P.S. It's hilarious that boiling water is now a euphemism for sex.
I get it. I can see why mother and daughter are why they are what they are. They've had to look after themselves all of Jin-hee's life and that aggression and combativeness is a natural result. Obviously a lot of that is exaggerated for humor but it's not hard to see why the two women see the world as a battleground.
But I also agree with Jae-won as to why Jin-hee isn't cut out to be a cop. At this point at least. It's not difficult to see just from the transfer arc how she jumps to conclusion far too readily but more importantly, she's not a team player. The police are fundamentally civil service and by extension highly bureaucratic. There are plenty of procedures in place. Too many. Due to lots of backside covering. As a result it's often gets very political. For people to survive in such places long-term they have to be politically savvy. It isn't enough to want to do the right thing by the "clients", you have to be smart about it. For mavericks and individualists, the public service is a difficult place to work in because the culture requires you to conform. There are plenty of things that don't make sense in terms of procedures but people in those settings have to "suck it up" if they want to hang on to their jobs. However, if you play it smart and don't mind having the maneuver a bit, play the game of accommodation, you can sometimes get what you want. Ironically, what Jin-hee did is what terrifies bureaucrats the most. And nervous bureaucrats respond by putting more regulations and procedures in place rather than overhauling the reporting system.
When Jae-won poses the question about why there was no response in the child abuse case... Her answer is a reflection of her naivete. "There can be no excuse." It isn't about excuses. It is about the inherent systemic issues about the organization. The worst part is that it the people who get into trouble are those at the bottom of the food chain who have to work within the rules. Usually all that happens is that politicians come out and make a lot of noise about doing better. Then bureaucrats scramble to find a scapegoat and of course management is almost never going to sack themselves. Nothing changes. All that happens is musical chairs. The organization only has to be seen to have done something.
This is not to say that no good can ever be achieved within the public service. But it's not achieved by running roughshod over one's colleagues.
It's clumsy writing.
At the start (S1) I thought that this was a character study of one man but really it's of two men. Two very different men... driven by very different motives. Overall it was a good allegory of Lord Acton's famous saying "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
I agree that it's not quite on par with The Blood of Youth or Ancient Detective but I'm still enjoying it.
It is amusing to see Fan Duobing switch all his hostility from Li Lianhua to Di Feisheng. It's as if all that youthful energy requires an object of hostility to prove something.