ItsAMe

Haha, no worries. I've read your entire wall of text. XD

Regarding Yeo Jin-goo, I don't know if he's better than Jang Keun-suk because I watched only one drama with the latter while I saw the former in a variety of roles in the recent years. I really LOVE "The Crowned Clown", and Yeo Jin-goo was phenomenal in it. However, since I don't know any of Jang Keun-suk's other dramas, it would be unfair to call him worse just because I didn't enjoy Decoy as much as I enjoyed "The Crowned Clown". It might also be that Jang Keun-suk practiced and is better nowadays than 10+ years ago when he was super popular. I don't know enough to form a general opinion on his acting skills. :/

Regarding Jang Keun-suk's performance in Decoy, I don't judge an actor's performance based on the role itself. Heo Sung-tae's character was definitely way more interesting than his but that's the writers' "fault", not the actors'. In my opinion, Jang Keun-suk's performance felt natural. He showed lots of different facial expressions to convey different emotions, which is why I found his performance solid. He did a good job portraying the detective. That's all I care about.

I hope my own wall of text made somewhat sense. It's after midnight here, and I should be in bed sleeping.

That being said, I've just added "Switch" to my list. Maybe I'll watch it next year. Thanks for the advertisement. :)

I only saw him in Decoy but I thought his performance was fairly solid. I hope he'll appear in more dramas in the future.

Well, he hasn't been online in months, so maybe your wish came true.

Just ignore that user. Apparently, he's a troll. He spammed the same comments below a few dramas and profiles of actors like Namkoon Min, Kim Nam Gil, Kim Jae Wook, Lee Joon Gi and Jang Hyuk, of course.

A typical trope in Kdramas. At least, the separation made sense in this drama because it would have been odd if they became a couple right after her husband died. They met again in a different context, so there is hope that they'll become a couple without the burden of the past.

No romance. But there is a certain chemistry between ML and FL.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who felt this way. The aunt and her bf were the only people I was invested in. Finally, some character development! And then the writers decided to kill him in a rather underwhelming scene, and his death is quickly forgotten. So disappointing!!!!! :(

The premise of this drama was interesting but the writing was lacking. During the first 6-8 episodes, they basically repeated the same information over and over again. There was barely any progress in regards to the story, basically no character development, or let's say: any character development was basically irrelevant.
The whole time, I was like "oh, it's some kind of a thriller/mystery drama, so there is surely a riddle somewhere". Well, no, there wasn't any. This drama didn't offer anything to guess along. And then it ended ... somehow.

This is really disappointing because the actors did a great job portraying their respective characters. There was a promising story, and there were a lot of good ideas. With better writers, this drama could have been phenomenal.

I thought the same while watching Gannibal. Interestingly, he doesn't even resemble her in his profile picture. ^^

Yes, it would have been nice if they had explored their friendship a bit more. :)

Looks do matter for me, though, especially since the industry is known for making minors adults and vice versa. I'd rather have no romance than feeling I might accidentally be supporting hebephilia, be it fictional or actual.

This particular actress portrayed a child in a movie a couple of years ago. She still looks very young today AND portrays this adult role like her child role back then. It's difficult for me to distinguish between roles if the actors look the same and act the same way in all their movies and dramas. If she hadn't displayed the same behaviour like in her child role, my opinion regarding romance in this drama probably would have been different. :/

A couple of years ago, I read that Korean politicians tried to increase the birthrate by promoting couples with huge age gaps, ideally veeeery young women with 30+ years old men. 30+ yo means that the men have stable jobs and want to start a family.

If I remember correctly, there was quite a backlash because it is quite clear why they were targeting minors. A teenager being busy with a newborn child usually cannot pursue a higher education, so she'll remain dependant on her older husband and her only skills are doing the housework, caring for the existing children (and the husband) and producing more babies.

Unsurprisingly, this drama and other dramas with with this constellation were released during that time, so I suspect that it was more or less a political decision. This story would have been possible with an adult FL (attending university) instead of a minor.

Since the backlash, I haven't seen these questionable age gaps in dramas anymore.

This drama was a good watch because it didn't have any lenghty fillers. The characters were interesting, the acting good. It looked good.

However, for avid mystery/thriller fans (like me), the writing was quite lacking because one usually expects that the main characters solve the big riddle, figure out how the killer killed people and eventually who the killer is. While watching the drama, I expected this patiently because the writers made it look as if the big revelation were just around the corner.

In hindsight, it was rather disappointing. The riddle is no riddle, and the murder cases are rather random like "ok, let's attach a puzzle piece to this case to make people feel hooked, then reveal the backstory which has nothing to do with the puzzle". We never learn how the culprit did it, and the police don't have any evidence. The culprit has to reveal themself, and that's it. I'm very willing to suspend disbelief to a degree but you'll never be able to make me believe that a murder case, especially one involving a serial killer, is solved without any solid evidence.

If it had met the aforementioned expectations, this drama would have been one of the best.

This drama has got 20 episodes. There is also "Mouse: The Predator" (2 episodes) and "Mouse: Last" (1 episode). See the "Related Content" above. Viki makes it look as if "Mouse" had 23 episodes.

You aren't dumb. The drama did make it look as if the pictures had a deeper meaning which should give us a hint and show the deeper connection, especially since one puzzle piece was marked. While I think that the connection itself was fine albeit typical for revenge stories, the writing felt lacking because the main characters didn't figure anything relevant out. We just suddenly got to see "the past", and then the culprit was like "it was me" even though the police didn't have any evidence. In my opinion as an avid thriller reader, that's just bad writing. ^^

When the characters said that there must be someone within the police because they had told only 1-3 colleagues, I immediately thought about the therapist because the main characters constantly told her everything about their investigation. The actress,
Park Gyu-young, also tends to play crazy roles, so she was a bit like a walking spoiler. I would have been surprised if she had been a random support character only.

I'm glad they didn't. She looks like a cute teenager while he looks his age. In my opinion, the friendship was a wise decision.

I don't think that this drama (unlike other stories) glorifies cheating. She doesn't find happiness because the "new" guy is just exploiting her.

Season 1 and 2 had interesting characters. This season was just "watchable" for me because I could not care less about the characters. If one doesn't care for them, one doesn't care if they die, which renders the games irrelevant. The ending implies that the US-Americans need their own Alice in Borderland like they needed their own Squid Game. The last season of Squid Game the K-drama was also underwhelming. Let's hope this is not a pattern.

This is a drama with a fairly unusual story. I can see what it is not that popular on MDL. The main characters are fairly unlikeable and surprisingly complex, and there are only a few somewhat happy moments. I liked this drama but I found it a bit draggy. If it had been 10-12 episodes long, I probably would have found it perfect.

No, one doesn't have to agree with the topics in a story or root for the main leads to be able to enjoy a story and give it a good rating.

In some scenes, Jin Kyung looks like the female Uhm Ki-joon.

An old drama that aged quite well. Nice story, good acting, funny and lovely moments, good soundtrack. Yoon Eun-hye was so cute. Just the last episodes felt fairly draggy.