Eleison

Haha, I'm glad! And just know, the first two episodes have a quirky feel to them, but by Episode 3, once I got more information, I was fully invested.

What about The King's Affection? That's pretty recent?

For MLs somewhat close to this one (there aren't many, haha), try When The Camellia Blooms (with Kang Ha Neul) and Hogu's Love (Choi Woo Shik, who's absolutely ADORABLE as Hogu).

I thought of Healer, too, but the "childish," bumbling, slightly dim persona is an alias for the ML, but it's still a fairly significant portion of the drama, so you might enjoy it. 🤷‍♀️

Yes, being young and a teenager is so overrated! 😂 So many more perks to being an adult.

Yes, for sure!

Haha, YES. You only have to watch like two or three rom-coms to figure out it's the ironclad rule that no Kdrama creator ever breaks.

I think almost every girl feels like pre-makover Im Ju Gyeong in middle school/high school, bare face. 😂 She's definitely very relatable in her self-consciousness!

Yes, I also get so stumped by people who ship the leads with second leads and root for them. 🤔 It's not like there's any surprise that they won't--not even won't, they CAN'T--end up together because, well, it's a Kdrama. 😂

Love the gentle, but still very intentional, pace. It suits the setting and characters perfectly. We get long moments with characters gazing, thinking and wandering without talking and the drama gives space for those moments without rushing past them. It also doesn't glamorize life, which I also like. For some reason, it keeps reminding me a bit of Because Of Winn-Dixie and Secondhand Lions. They have a similar gentle pace, heartwarming characters who live "mundane" lives, with simple yet interesting plots that give themselves lots of room to breathe. :)

Like the phrasing of your last sentence. Well-put!

There is a considerable amount of over acting in this drama, and I skipped through a decent amount of the second half, but I think the storyline that intrigued me most by the end was Lee Jin Sang and Park Soo Kyung's love line. It was hard to watch them at first because everything between them was initially so cringey and painful, but I ended up really rooting for Jin Sang to get his act together and become a good human (rather than a charismatic, inert playboy) who takes responsibility for his choices.

*MILD SPOILER HINTS BELOW*

There's not a lot of entertainment that shows a man taking responsibility for a woman put into a life-altering position when both get mutually carried away with their sexual decisions, and one ends up with a consequence which changes the course of their future while the other does not. Morally, BOTH should share the load of the fallout from their choices, and I love that not only does Jin Sang try to do that in the most basic sense, but he even tries to go a step further, sacrificing his precious masculine independence and freedom to devote himself to the woman whose life he changed forever. 👏 He's not quite there by the end of the drama, but he makes magnificent strides in the right direction.

This drama is just great fun! I love how spunky and good-hearted the FL is, and while it takes a while for the ML to come around, he has dreamy visuals from the start. 😂

It feels more like a "School" drama than some of the "Schools" (such as School 2015 or School 2021), complete with the witch-y school administrators who are incompetent and corrupt alongside awful parents; I think I even like this drama's teacher, Yang Tae Beom (which the Schools also have, a featured teacher who's on the students' side and against admin.), better than any of the teachers featured in the Schools, except for maybe School 2013. He's adorable in this.

Right? 😂

So, no cameo from our face genius Cha Eun Woo after all? 🤭 I was hoping, cause I thought it'd be hilarious.

He's also great in Search and Tale of Nokdu. :)

Well, at least it showed that drinking is usually just used as a coping mechanism that does nothing to help one heal. A loving community and support from people did that, as coping mechanisms are just bandaids for deeper struggles that usually need things more akin to (figurative) surgery.

I also just learned that many East Asians have alcohol intolerance. You would never know it from the way dramas portray drinking, though. And yikes, pair that with the drinking culture and it sounds like hangovers on steroids. 😬 What a dangerous (more dangerous than usual) coping mechanism!

It does feel Persuasion-esque!

For a few hours 😭

Yes, she's lovely!!

If I generally like law(ish) Kdramas (Stranger, While You Were Sleeping, I Can Hear Your Voice, Law School, etc.) but struggle to finish office dramas (like The Good Manager, Search WWW, Hot Stove League, etc.) is there a better chance I'll like or dislike this drama? 😂

I've never seen Misaeng because of my bad track record with office dramas (the acting can be great, as I don't deny that it is in the dramas I listed above, but I just get bored by the office jargon), which is why I ask since this drama is about prosecutors and law but is being compared frequently in the comments to an office drama...