Hanatoko

I don't think I've ever been quite as frustrated with a FL as I have been with this one. Her decisions are constantly questionable and stupid. The drama is enjoyable overall, but she certainly made the journey far more annoying than it needed to be.

It's a weekend drama, and right now there are so many notable dramas airing on the weekend so it has a ton of competition.

A lot of these commenters have never seen a musical outside of a Disney movie and it shows.

Pretty sure it's intentional so that it can be read both ways. Note that the drama is about the people who "clean up" after the messes (shit) celebrities (stars) get into.

The original Korean title is also a joke because while it literally translates to "Shooting Star", the word 별똥별 has 똥 in it (which translates to poop).

I wouldn't call this anything close to a perfect ending, but not because they didn't live "happily ever after" together. While I would've enjoyed a Baekdo ending, I appreciate that the writer stuck to the story and theme they wanted to tell. I just don't think they did it as seamlessly as they could have and have shown themselves capable of.

For one thing, given how they made use of it, I don't feel we needed the 2020 timeline. It added very little to the story, and if anything undermined their decision by expressing her regrets. The entire ending basically takes place in 2009, and it should've stayed there. You could argue future Hee Do's lines solidify the message/theme, but at that point it's just beating viewers over the head because they're all pretty clearly noted in the prevalent timeline already through the events of the story and monologue. This timeline either needed to be fleshed out more or dropped entirely.

I think the most glaring issue for me though is that the Baekdo breakup felt logical but was undercut by her husband having... seemingly the same problem? It made total sense for Hee Do to break off their relationship because she had already lived her entire childhood having to put up with constant absences. She was traumatized by her mother's neglect. She didn't want that life for herself in the future, and their jobs would've resulted in just that. But then... we see in the present that the father is abroad and never around, and Min Chae was clearly invested in her mother's relationship with a past love so it doesn't seem like their relationship is going all that well. Further, we never see this husband in 2009 even when she wins her medal, and he's never mentioned even in passing. He's just completely absent. Hee Do also makes a fairly pessimistic comment at the funeral about how it's easier to break an engagement than to divorce, and that seems pretty odd for someone who is newly-wed.

I don't care that we don't know who the husband is. He's not really important in terms of identity. But for all we know he's just as absent as her mother and Yi Jin are/were, so what did she really gain in the end? It's extremely unsatisfying and just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Am I supposed to believe that she's happy? The drama certainly didn't give me that impression.

WHY DID I START THIS BEFORE IT FINISHED 😭

I can only blame myself for watching yet another Mame drama.

Because Leo and Fiat first appeared in Tharntype 2 and that's where their story began.

Not surprising at this point. Mame has a habit of rewriting and/or retconning established narrative to make bank on another season or series. Just look at how much of a mess Love by Chance 2 was.

They're all valid criticisms. It's one thing to spew pointless and directionless hate in a comment section, and another to point out evident flaws. This falls under the latter.

I never said anything about not having a right to comment. I suggested maybe it was unfair to judge an entire plot's progression from beginning to end without having seen even half of it.

I'm not discarding the obvious association with Tae Kyung's inevitable journey of learning about friendship and love. He is the one looking back in that scene, after all. It just so happens that his first experience with both happens through Da On, and Da On's story alongside Tae Kyung's is a prominent fixture in this drama regardless of the endgame or whatever trope the main loveline follows. When I said it was "about" Da On, I meant the line or the person he's talking about, not the entire scene's reason for existence exclusively.

I specifically mentioned the last 2 years of popular mini dramas in terms of Korean BLs for a reason, and I’m not arguing with you about criticism so there's really no need to keep defending yourself there as if it was my intention to stifle freedom of opinion or something. I really don't care/mind whether or not you're attacking the show or expressing disappointment nor am I claiming this drama to be some sort of masterpiece shining beacon of originality.

He hasn't really ignored the bait, though. If anything one of his defining character traits is that he leads people on so that he doesn't have to say no or reject them in fear of being disliked.

(Not to defend So Hee of course. Just saying...)

"It presented itself as almost a mystery, and gave us three likely candidates for Tae Kyung’s first love. ~ I knew exactly who it was based on who treated Tae Kyung poorly."

You originally wrote that you questioned why they used the first scene, because it was obvious who would end up with who and was pointlessly acting as if the ending would be "different". I see that scene as setting up for Da On's own eventual arc among other things. The prominent information from that scene is that one of them was his FIRST love, which creates the distinction that they might not have ended up together. The person in question is not Shin Woo. It's about Da On.

I'm not against your criticism of trope usage. I commented originally because Da On is just as important to this story as Tae Kyung, and writing off the plot as predictable from the get go because of said trope discards Da On's importance and journey within it, which I felt wasn't necessarily fair. We've gotten many Korean BL dramas over the past 2 years or so, but this is the first of these releases to actually address what being LGBT in Korea is like, and I thought Da On's story in particular was an important addition for both the drama and Tae Kyung's growth as a person confronting society.

But it's aight. We're arguing two different things here.

I'm against that label here mainly because both their story and the drama overall has little to do with Shin Woo disliking Tae Kyung, and Shin Woo never really "disliked" him to begin with. Most "dislike to like" romances have that gradual progression as a primary feature of the love-line, but there is no real gradual shift here for Shin Woo and there is at best an arguably insignificant one for Tae Kyung.

It's just so minimally relevant to the story that summing up this entire drama as a predictable and cliche enemies to lovers BL plot seems misplaced to me, especially as I consider this drama to be about more than just who Tae Kyung ends up with. Da On's story is as integral and important as Tae Kyung's, but his story gets dismissed if you think of him as irrelevant because he's not the one involved in a trope. Regardless, if you still feel that way it's fine. No one made me an arbiter of tropes.

I mean, it's not really "dislike to like" either IMO. At least not in any conventional sense, nor is it the focal point of the plot or romance at all. I'm also not sure it's fair to discredit or comment on the entire plot's journey (as a whole) if you're still on episode 6.

A story is more than its ending, though. The journey matters just as much, and in this case I'd say that's true. I also wouldn't really call this an enemy to lovers plotline, though I can see why someone would think it is in the first few episodes.

Taekyung seems to be a person experiencing everything for the first time, and he doesn't care all that much what people think of him unless it gets in the way of something. His mindset and the way he approaches situations is always very simplistic and straightforward. He doesn't want friends? He tells them that. He now wants to join the student council? He pursues that. People don't like him? He asks why. He doesn't understand something? He just outright asks regardless of the social etiquette.

I don't think liking a boy or a girl is even really on his mind. He likes someone, so he pursued them and confessed.

He's a sharp contrast to Da On who is ALWAYS aware of the social etiquette, always overthinks his situations, always cares how people see him, and is always thinking of how his parents will get involved.

Despite the stupidly unnecessary conflict with the main couple at the end, I still ended up happy with everyone else's conclusions and I was happy the drama stayed true to its theme of home ownership and what having a home means. So regardless of the unsatisfying main romance, I think this drama still succeeded at something and I leave moderately content.

I will forever appreciate Jae Jin being a soft, genuine, sentimental, emotional, prone to crying male character completely unbothered by others' perceptions of his "weakness".