Holorence

Love Scout starts decently, peaks halfway through the show and fizzles out somewhat towards the end.

Love Scout is an interesting one. At one point during my watching I was fully convinced I'd give the show an 8.5 or a 9 score. The middle section was very strong and had quite a few powerful moments. Not to mention it showcases female lead's character the best and showed some really progressive writing decisions but at some point after the leads get together that strength just kind of fades away and we're left with a decent but unremarkable romance story. Don't get me wrong, the leads were lovely and the chemistry was undoubtedly there but the show was clearly trying to do more but fumbled a lot of it in my opion.

For starters Byeol, male lead's daughter, carries with her a mountain of plotholes. If you watch this show through the lens of being a single parent you start to realize many of the things that are happening should not be happening. Male lead is perpetually at work untill it's dark outside which means he's staying ATLEAST untill 6 pm, many times much later than that. The show tries to cover this up by making a single mom look after Byeol because she brings her to kindergarten and also takes her home. But if we actually try and take a moment to process that if this were real life, Byeol would be spending FAR more time with this person than her actual dad. The amount of times I was thinking; please dude, just go home you have a daughter. Was far too often for me to ignore. Byeol as a character is also empty. Has nothing to her other than being in love with her dad and is written the exact same way as every single child in a kdrama. Meaning unnatural dialogue and acting twice, if not thrice her age. I seriously hope kdrama's start figuring out how to write children because the dialogue they come up with is always laughable and unfortunately Love Scout is no different. A perfect example of how disposable her character was and how she creates plotholes by existing is when in the final episode male lead and all the company employees are at female leads house for dinner, including Byeol. After the dinner we transition to a scene of male and female lead on the couch together while it's pitch dark outside with Byeol nowhere to be seen, nor sleeping in female leads house somewhere. So... where did Byeol go? Did one of the employees take her home even though they don't really know her and DEFINITELY don't know where male lead lives? Even if I were to stomach that extremely flimsy logic why is male lead staying? His daughter goes home but he stays? AND he sleeps over? Where is Byeol? Did a 6 year old just get left behind at home alone for the entire evening and following night? What a baffling sequence of events.

Byeol is such a perfect example of a character included for the sake of having the audience go Awhh, she's so cute! whenever she's on screen. The show doesn't even really explore what being a single father is like whatsoever so why does Byeol exist?
We only hear verbally that it's hard but we see none of it. For the record, I don't doubt that it's incredibly hard to be a single father but I want to SEE this and experience it with the male lead. If you're going to include this story beat then do something with it. It just exists to immediately make you sympathetic towards the male lead but it's honestly just a cheap trick. He does everything flawlessly yet we're meant to believe he thinks he might be a bad father? Alright sure, impostor syndrome is a thing, but this also isn't explored whatsoever so can I really use that to defend it?

Why did we need to do a redemption for Jeong Hun's father at the very end? It falls flat completely as I don't believe for one second this man would act like that. Why was Hye Jin's downfall so incredibly unsatisfying? She got betrayed by the guy who was obviously going to betray her? Just... ugh, so lame. This entire Hye Jin/Ji Yun backstory thing was flimsy as well honestly. It just existed so Hye Jin's character could exist but as with many things in this show it only exists but is not utilised all that much.
Why the whole firefighter thing with male and female lead? It was resolved so easily and quickly. If anything, I was happy about that. If we did the whole breakup arc in this one I'd have lowered the score by another 0.5. That aside if we're just going to resolve it super quickly and effortlessly why even bother to include it to begin with? Love Scout does this multiple times where seemingly important things just get resolved rapidly and moved on from leaving you left to wonder what purpose it served.

If my review seems overly negative for what is ultimately a passing grade then you'd be very correct. I'm always far more negative in reviews for shows that disappointed me than the ones that surprised me positively because a show that goes from great to average is more frustrating than one that goes from average to great. Progression and regression basically.

For the sake of not having this review be mostly negative I'll quickly summarize what I did like.
The lead's romance. It was acted well, they had clear chemistry and I enjoyed this thoroughly.
Ji Yun's character writing. The line that really sold me on her character is when male lead steps inbetween her and the director, sensing her discomfort. It's the classic ''saving the damsel in distress'' scene. After they leave together Ji Yun asks male lead if he looks down on her and whether he doesn't trust her to handle it. I thought this scene perfectly showcases why I liked her character so much. This definitely wasn't a situation where he needed to butt in. If you wanted to show comfort do it afterwards but this only paints her to be weaker. Her character is strong but not impenetrable. She's jaded and pessimistic due to her past and this was acted out fantastically. Han Ji Min is not an actress I look out for particularly but while her acting was good and serviceable in all the other drama's I saw her in she really came into her own for this one.
Side characters were cool. None of them were really annoying. Although it's definitely a drama cliche to have your quirky office squad this was a decent one. Although their switch in attitude towards female lead and the company was a little jarring it wasn't overly egregious so I won't really make an issue out of it.
Lastly, Seo Mi Ae, Ji Yun's friend. Lovely character and the frustration in not knowing how to deal with early Ji Yun was well acted out and very convincing. You could tell she cared but was mostly at her wit's end. You can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped after all.

All in all Love Scout was a show I don't regret watching as it had it's moments but unfortunately had far too many issues to be considered anything but slightly above average.

Read More

The anticipation of greatness ended with a bafflingly horrendous sequence of episodes at the end.

*MAJOR SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW*

I'm not even sure where to begin with this one. I just finished the show and felt the need to write down my thoughts, especially considering the very high MDL rating of 8.7 this show has.

Who rules the world certainly had potential to be a fantastic show. It gradually builds up the story untill around the 30th episode mark where everything starts going downhill. Really, really fast. It's a sequence of episodes where everything happens super fast. People are dying left and right and sometimes even within minutes of eachother despite being in entirely different situations. Timetables that aren't kept to whatsoever, promises that aren't kept for no real reason. Imagine being the king of whatever the hell ML's place is called ( I'm sorry I'm horrendous with the names of everything in this show it all kinda blurred together ). You watch your sons and even your wife fighting for the throne. You order your wife to forcibly commit suicide and one of your sons goes proper insane. You finally abdicate the throne to a trustworthy son who promises you to take great care of his nation..... Only for him to ditch that entirely two days later because love conquers all. Now mind you I didn't actually dislike the ending. I'm talking about the final 10 minutes of the last episode that is. It's fitting for both of them to bow out of the world of royalty and politics and live as they always wanted to live, freely. Not only that but entrusting their once enemy to be the emperor because they have a shared worldview was great. This worked very well, the road to get there not so much but hey, atleast the ending was alright.

Speaking about living freely, why the hell did the female lead have to be a princess? How in the living hell was she ever allowed to just roam the lands as a commoner? this was never explained. This kind of inconsistency happens all throughout the show. The rules of the royalty were used at the whim of the writer, whenever it was necessary to be flexible or not.
The entire character of the female lead is about being free and adventurous. Yet she didn't bat so much as an eye when she was forced by circumstances to rule her nation. Her brother dies, a minute later her father dies to illness despite having been projected to still have a month left to live by the court physician. The father somehow knew the brother died despite the female lead being the only person to have received that news and soon after the female lead ends up leading the nation instead. Perfectly of course, despite having zero court experience and knowledge of ruling. Which gets me to another issue of the show.

The leads were way too perfect. They had absolutely zero flaws. They were kind, smart, calculative, gorgeous, witty, you name it and it's probably one of their character traits. We follow them because they're the leads but why we actually should root for them is beyond me. There's never a single doubt that they're going to end up victorious or excell in their respective fields.

Lastly, to reference the title of this review; ''greatness ended with a bafflingly horrendous sequence of episodes at the end''.

This war that started happening around the 32nd episode mark was horrendously displayed. The following sequence of events happened nearly 10 times in a row with only the ever so slightest of deviation to the point it might aswell not be relevant.

- Forces stare eachother down on a fat barren wasteland.
- A tiny percent of the forces end up fighting while the rest looks on.
- Random comments from either side about some impenetrable famous formation
- Retreat
- Cue the night time encampment talks
- Back to the first point.

This was actually just horrific writing. I've never quite witnessed a sequence of events in any show that was this bad.
To go from an okay show in the first 30 episodes to the last 10 episodes being so disproportionally bad shows that the writers had no clue how to end this story. Baffling, really.

Some minor points about the show that didn't sit well with me;

- Female lead dies twice but not really because of some random shit that can revive her, okay why not I guess.
- Antagonist thinks he's won when hes being confronted 1v3 by the world's strongest fighters while having no basis for that confidence whatsoever.
- Tianshung Sect's Lanhua stabbing female lead for suspicion of having killed her father despite them having a very close relationship and her obviously not being that kind of person. Doesn't think it through whatsoever just stabs the sword through. her heart.Just lmao... And all is forgiven because she was revived by a deux ex machina flower. Why not.
- Oldest prince becomes injured to the point where he isn't in contention for the throne anymore and male lead just completely forgets about him. After this happens there isn't a single scene of them together anymore. I thought they were so close? I guess not.
- Non existant OST.
- The same static pictures to transition between city states for the entirety of the show. Trees don't move, birds don't fly. It's literally just a picture. How boring and immersion breaking.
- Why did we need a childhood connection between male and female lead? Nothing was even done with it.

For the sake of having SOMETHING positive to say about the show here's the things I DID like;

- Female lead up untill episode 30 ish. Her character was well acted out and very charming.
- Female lead and Qi Wu's relationship. I was dreading the love triangle but this never happened and they pretty much became best friends. Some of the show's best scenes are them just interacting while male lead is a sidekick.
- The early episodes of Hei Fengxi and Bei Fengxi running into eachother while adventuring and slowly falling in love.

Read More

A show with clear strengths and weaknesses both taking turns overtaking eachother per episode.

My Roommate is a Gumiho is quite the predictable show. You can figure out the ending after a couple episodes and even the lessons it's trying to teach you are quite... shallow may not be the right word but it's so simple. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing it does mean that what will define the quality of the show is in it's execution above all else. Which was lacking, at times.

The first episode was great. Awesome setup for the rest of the story.

Then the second and to a lesser extent third episode came and the writers decided to add in terrible comedy. Like, I get that comedy/humour is subjective but this is that typical ''We're playing funny music and even though nothing funny has happened yet we want you to know it's funny and it's going to be funny''. More drama's do this. It's a cheap trick to lure you into a false sense of comedy, like setting the mood similar to the ''now sad music plays and we want you to know what's going on is sad'. It's like dividing parts of the episode into sections that scream some forced inclusion of comedy rather than letting the viewers themselves decide whether something is funny or sad. Except that seriously just went on for half the episodes if not longer. The female lead making over the top faces or eating disgustingly on purpose. I'm sorry it just doesn't work whatsoever. Luckily the show tones down on this a lot after the first couple of episodes because holy hell I was on the verge of quitting the show right there.

With that out of the way the rest of the show was a mixed bag but it did have more positive moments than negative moments as the show went on.
BY FAR the biggest strength of this show is in the two leads. But for me that's also where part of the weakness was.
Allow me to elaborate on the strengths.

The lead's relationship progressed quite nicely. Yeah some predictable breakup/misunderstandings we've all seen a hundred times before happened but I think what truly made it greater than the show itself is the way the female lead was written.
Most of the reviews mention the realism of the female lead and I would have to agree.
Have you ever watched a relationship in a kdrama and got really annoyed that the characters weren't talking?
Yeah, that doesn't really happen in this one. Conflicts are resolved incredibly quickly in a natural way; ''hey, this is going on and I want to know why/what's going on''.
Very refreshing. This is by far the greatest strength of the show. The female lead was in character untill the very end and because of this the show was a lot more enjoyable to watch.

I didn't however really feel the chemistry between the two leads, I felt it a lot more with the second leads.
Chemistry, however, is subjective. I think many people will be able to feel it and therefore enjoy their relationship a lot more. While I think the feeling of love was acted well by both leads I didn't feel a spark. It felt like they were desperately trying to create that chemistry and the acting certainly wasn't at fault it just... I just didn't feel it, you know? Ultimately just a subjective observation that will be different for other people.

Regarding the story it was quite bare bones. Though it didn't have to be very detailed to begin with. The whole gumiho plot wasn't really explored at all. It just existed because that's what the show was about. Perhaps It's just my lack of knowledge of gumiho's and for koreans it will all make sense but I would've liked a bit more exposition and world building.

Lastly, there's an age gap. The male lead is about a thousand years old but his character is in his thirties while the female lead is early to mid twenties? Do with that information as you will. Age gaps quite literally never bother me if it's between two consenting adults because I've got better things to do than spend my time judging why people should or shouldn't love based on some arbitrary reasoning. The reason I bring it up is simply because many people do care. So be warned/informed.

Some smaller things about the show;

Soundtrack was non existant. Nothing memorable to the point where I can't even remember a single melody despite finishing the show only 10 minutes ago.

Production quality was up to standards. Mind you I've got 0 experience about directing or cinematography but if nothing stands out as poor to me then I will consider it a job well done.

TLDR: Average show. Strengths are in it's characters and relationships while it's flaws lie in the very mixed comedy, non existant world building and barebones predictable plot .

Read More

A show with a decent first half and a phenomenal second half.

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS AND IS MOSTLY AIMED AT PEOPLE WHO'VE ALREADY SEEN THE SHOW.

No other drama compelled me to write a review as much as Dinner Mate did, especially so after I read all the other reviews which seem to be very big opposites of what I liked about the drama. This won't be much of a coherent review but rather writing down my thoughts after just finishing the show 3 minutes ago.

A big thing I read in other people's reviews is that they felt the first half was good but soon after the quality went down and the show started dragging. For me it was the complete opposite where I felt the 2nd half to be vastly superior in both quality and storytelling (though not flawless). The main things I want to talk about are the characters Woo Do Hee and Jung Jae Hyuk for I felt that this drama did an amazing job of creating an ex boyfriend turned stalker/obsessive personality disorder and secondly Do Hee is a very intelligently written character and played to near perfection by the lovely Seo Ji Hye.

Jae Hyuk and Do Hee made this show for me. While I liked the romance of Do Hee and Hae Kyung I didn't particularly feel connected to Hae Kyung's character and as a male lead he was majorly outshined by Do Hee.

I felt that Jae Hyuk's gradual change from an ex boyfriend who felt that he had a chance to fix his old relationship to a stalker with an obsessive personality disorder was done very well. This is the part of the show that fascinated me the most. Yeah there have been stalker plots in other drama's but this is the first time I felt sympathetic towards them, which makes this a good moment to shout out the actor Lee JI Hoon who played Jae Hyuk. God my heart genuinely ached during his breakdowns after the second half. The pain I could see in his eyes and face was done amazingly well. During the first half of the show I didn't like his character at all and I think that probably goes for many people but during the second half I started to sympathize with him. Not because I think his behaviour was okay or should be accepted but because at some point in the show I started asking myself; What did he do to deserve all this misfortune? Yeah, he absolutely broke into Do Hee's home and trashed the place to look for a picture while being in his delusion. He took the wrong approach in trying to gain back her love by focussing too much on what they had in the past rather than how Do Hee feels in the present but the key thing to me is that unlike other stalker plots not once did he become violent or started to entertain dangerous thoughts towards Do Hee. He did not try to kidnap her because ''SHE'S MINE!!''. He never became violent towards her or threatened to be and only ever wanted the best for her, that which was the best in his own warped delusional way but what matters to me is intent. I think that the writers did a splendid job of creating a character who treaded so dangerously close to the line throughout the entire show and even passed that line at points but never to an extent where you felt indifferent towards him or weren't able to feel his pain. The scene where he entered Do Hee's home to look for a picture is a prime example of that. Yeah, he broke in. He committed a crime. He saw her door. Started getting delusions about their past where they were happy and proceeded to use her passcode which still worked because it was never changed. For a man to escape their delusions they must be faced with reality and that's what happened in that scene. Like he said during that scene ''There's nothing here that shows our love'' while sobbing hysterically and being totally out of reality. Rather than be angry at him, or call him a loser I just wanted him to become happy. I wanted Jae Hyuk to heal, to become better. He has made mistakes in his life but I never once felt like he should've been denied the opportunity to become happy himself.

I mentioned that it was both Jae Hyuk and Do Hee who made the show for me.

Do Hee's character was phenomenal, for the most part. I will say that during the first half I felt that her decisions didn't always
make that much sense to me but I'm not going to talk about that because that's not what I'm writing down my thoughts for. These moments weren't nearly egregious enough to ruin what I felt like her character was. They were still in line with what I thougth her character was but I did feel like she could've gone about it differently. That aside I'm going to focus on her character near the second half.

Jae Hyuk was gradually getting worse in his obsession with Do Hee. Became more aggressive towards her ( in a non violent way ) to get back together and was naturally shot down each time. I'm so glad that Do Hee never considered getting back to him a single time. Firmly rejected his advances every time. She was over him, you could see that and I'm glad the writers agreed that this is how her character should be. Before I started this show I read about the ex's coming back part and I was hoping it wouldn't be like your typical; ex's come back, female lead is happy to see them and become friendly with them but in the end the male lead wins. It wasn't like that at all. I will say this for No Eul and Hae Kyung as well. I hated No Eul's character at many points in the show but their relationship was very similar in the sense that Hae Kyung also never budged or considered getting back together, not even once. Now the reason I am happy about this is not because I think ex's should never be given a second chance. Sometimes things don't work out you know, sometimes many years without seeing eachother and forgetting eachother can mature a person to where a relationship could suddenly work out. But this wasn't that kind of show. Do Hee didn't want to get back with him whatsoever so there was nothing to fix.

A key thing about Do Hee, something that complicated her relationship with Hae Kyung, was that every time Jae Hyuk would pull something to get back with her or try to win her heart but made mistakes in the process Do Hee felt so small and embarassed. At first I didn't quite get why. I feel like if I was in Do Hee's shoes I would detach my own self and worth from him and rather than feel embarassed I would feel annoyed but not be impacted on how I would interact with a love interest. After watching more of Do Hee and these moments I realized that what she really wanted was a normal relationship and to a lesser extent a normal life. She mentioned multiple times how her relationships had gotten to be such a mess. I think she was probably scared for a repeat of that, because it happened twice already and Jae Hyuk was well on his way to ruin it all.

A particular scene that really stood out to me and will probably remain with me for a while was when Do Hee took Jae Hyuk to the police station by taxi to report him for stalking and breaking in. She was incredibly cold unlike what we've seen of her in the show. She felt dead inside and so jaded by Jae Hyuk. After they stepped out of the taxi Jae Hyuk walked behind her and just said his typical ''mianhae'' after which she lost it and collapsed on her knees while screaming out of frustration. Rather than Jae Hyuk coming over to her to console or try to take advantage of this situation he just stood there, with a slightly shocked but stoic face. At that point he probably realized what he's doing to Do Hee and what an effect everything has on him. It was after this scene that he slowly started to entertain the thought of being ill, though being dismissive of it at first but later coming to terms with it. I felt that this scene was incredibly well done. The softer side of Do Hee came back and rather than actually report him for stalking and breaking in she called Geon u to take him away to a psychiatrist. I felt that this moment really showed what Do Hee deep down wanted. She wanted nothing to do anymore with Jae Hyuk but deep down wanted him to heal and find his own happiness for the sake of both of them.

Jae Hyuk and Do Hee had an incredibly toxic relationship during the entire show. But for me personally it was written in such a way that you could really see the gradual change from ''annoying ex boyfriend'' to someone who was a danger to himself and in complete delusion of where he stands.

Dinner mate absolutely has it's flaws but amidst scenes of mediocrity the complexity of two characters really elevated parts of this show to be something really special. Many people will not agree with me but that's the beauty about media and more specifically a show like this. People with different values and tolerance levels will enjoy different parts about this show.

Read More