FreshKicks

*raises hand*

Me. I expected to like it a lot more.

I like Noona romance and I really like Hwang In Youp, but the thought of this current mystery taking up the entire season is already exhausting.

To take a break from my usual griping about this series I will speculate as to the revelation that will explain Ji Woo's behavior.

I think he unexpectedly heard from his ex while he was still with Seo Joon and realized that she was still very needy and planned to approach him for a reconciliation. He didn't want to put Seo Joon through that or reveal that he was in a gay relationship, so he chose to disappear for enough time to establish himself back at the hometown that he shared with the ex. This way, the ex would have no clue to his relationship with Seo Joon and Ji Woo would be able to deal with her away from any emotional entanglements over his new relationship.

(In this regard, the "Waiting for You" of the restaurant name was referring to the ex, not Seo Joon.)

Seo Joon showing up in the rural town was an unexpected complication, so Ji Woo did everything he could to make him go away so that Ji Woo could deal with his ex on his own. Ji Woo had no intention of getting back with his ex, but he cared about her enough to sacrifice one year of his own happiness to put her on track to find her own.

He is trying to let her down easy. In the last two episodes he will put a rest to any notion of him reuniting with her. Or, maybe she'll figure it out and do the classy thing and pull back from trying so hard at winning Ji Woo.

To see what lack of rehearsal gives you, check out "Check Out". If you can stay awake.

This question is the only reason I will keep watching. I think it will be a happy ending, but it will be completely unbelievable and will end up being the only joke in the whole season.

This will probably be my biggest disappointment of 2022. You're right, they should have just adapted the script for new characters and hired different actors.

It's time to say last rites for "To My Star" as a franchise. And, ironically, it's the people who gave it life in Season One who have killed it. Oh, to be a fly on the wall in those story conferences.

Before I watched today I saw comments on twitter along the lines of "I can't believe Ji Woo did that," and it made me expect to see him sleeping with his college ex by the end of Episode Six. Who knows ... maybe they don't get together until the next one. She's doing well on her campaign to win him back and at this point Seo Joon would be wise to let them have each other.

The biggest mistake here was in re-envisioning the Ji Woo character. In Season One his grumpiness was funny and lovable because he skewered the idea of celebrity, and we could all relate to that in some way. In Season Two he's just an a&&hole who none of us would want to spend one evening with, let alone date.

If some people are loving all this, who am I to say they're wrong? But I'll never be convinced that this season is a believable followup to the first one, or that there's any pleasure to be had in slogging through these episodes. There's been a lot of declarations here about how brilliant it all is, but nobody has been able to explain why.

There's nothing profound or insightful in the story they're telling. This whole thing is just a game to see how much misery they can pile up before miraculously reuniting the estranged lovers. (Yes, I do anticipate a happy ending, but I expect it to be laughably untrue to all the dark despair, just as this dark despair has been laughably untrue to the delightful first season.)

It's so good. I hope it's a big success that will make them want to remake the other couples' stories too.

I agree that recasting Gun was not only good, it was essential. But Bar in the original series was hilariously sassy, and he had a hot body. It's not unforgivable that he got recast for this version but I don't want to lump him in with Gun either.

Thank you, boyyent, for shirtless Bear.

I don't want to be greedy, but Mek next, please?

Yes, I have to believe he's planning something sweet for his bf.

Same here. This is a notch or two below "Cupcake" but enjoyable nonetheless.

I had to google "uncanny valley effect" ... I'd never heard the term. Very interesting!

Now, I wish there was a term for the way production designers always seem to think that an empty coffee cup will easily pass for a full one. In this episode the cups that Jun was carrying were so blatantly empty it was ridiculous. And from the way he carried them real coffee would been flying everywhere. The actor didn't even try. :)

You bring up a question about translation that I've faced myself. There's the "hyper-literal" school and the "resonant, local vernacular" school.

I contributed to an English translation of the novel "My Gear and Your Gown", where my job was to take the hyper-literal English translation and make it over in English vernacular. I wouldn't have it any other way. I think it makes the reading experience much more enjoyable. It also avoids having the reader of the translated text chuckle to themselves thinking that the original text must be similarly awkward and disjointed.

Which I guess means it also does better service to the original author.

Played hooky from work and watched again today. It really is all that!

Surprisingly a ghost town over here.

By recycling the movie edition did IdeaFirst finally have a bad idea?

There will be inevitable comparisons to that *other* series (or should I say "franchise") based around online gaming but this has a simple charm of its own.

Watch the first three episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSMm93_HtiY

I thought Tin had died at the end of Episode 8 but he miraculously survived. That's one of the reasons I think we're now headed toward the finish line. There's a lot of conspiracy to unravel, plus Sing and Gap need some continuous unlooped screen time or their ship will never sail.

Included in a 100% translation on Viki would be all the signs, text on menus and phones, etc. -- i.e., all the non-dialog that's in Japanese. I believe the "segmenters" on the subtitle team create the spots for the translators to insert the subtitles. If they happen to include segments for non-spoken text then that will count toward the 100%, and if any of that gets skipped by the translators the episode will never reach 100%.

So, don't sweat the 89% too much. I just watched the 89% Episode 2 and there wasn't a single line of spoken dialog that went un-subbed.

Talk about a sneak attack! Seemed to come from out of nowhere and it's brilliant, absolutely brilliant. I felt giddy the whole time I watched.

ikr!

I can imagine a cliffhanger toward the end where someone like Rit or even Tol is on the operating table, about to get a kidney harvested by Dr. BallSak, as Dr. Tin races against time to stop it.