itwillneverbefar

I was iffy after the first ep, but the second was so much fun, I find Hui Ju really engaging and refreshing, I loved their chemistry, and I am intrigued by the reveal of the King wanting to step down before he died in the fire and seeing how that plays out.

I'm starting to understand the prince a lot better after this ep. I don't have any particular attachment to BWS but he is 100% building a layered character that will be revealed to us more and more and I really saw in this episode how much is going on for him behind his very carefully curated facade. He is much more strategic than he appeared at first, and his decision to agree to marry her seems quite multi-layered. I think he is genuinely intrigued by Hui Ju from their HS days and sympathizes with her plight, feels uneasy making her take the fall for the scandal, but also saw how capable she was at handling him being sick (despite all her silliness in pursuing him when it came down to a serious matter she was generous, quick-thinking, and discreet), and he sees her as someone who could genuinely battle with the Queen Mother AND who would be the last person the QM would want him to marry and therefore be an unwavering ally against her, which I think is the ultimate reason he decided to say yes.

This makes their engagement so interesting. They both are attracted to each other, both admire each other (grudgingly on Hui Ju's part), but also both have their own self-serving agenda for the engagement that has nothing to do with liking the other which is their biggest motivating factor right now.

The biggest difference is the Prince is invested in general in having a love match for a marriage while she isn't, which will make him more comfortable in actually acting like a couple and growing genuinely closer. She will play along to a point but is gonna resist admitting she has feelings for him for as long as she possibly can. But then when she does finally admit it he is gonna be sooooo gone. That's gonna be fun to watch play out.

And I am so ready to see Hui Ju come in and shake up the entire court, and put the Queen Mother in her place.

So yeah. Seated.

If the wife knows and doesn't care then why not

Man I was already tearing up just at the trailer, this is gonna be a good one.

This plot is WILD and I'm here for it.

There are a hundred super handsome C drama actors (and many that are more handsome than him, tbh) so it has to be something more than that.

So I agree mostly, there was so much said but not enough shown, esp about BWS. But the whole point of IU's character is that she IS very insecure and has this huge facade that she tries to play off, but she's kind of a walking hypocrite. The convo with her brother said it all. When he called her out for owning a luxury brand so she could pretend to be high class you saw how her arrogant facade crumbled for a second. That is part of her character arc. I assume she's going to get a big wake up call about what it really means to be a royal and have a title.

I'm praying that the palace politics plot of the unsolved fire murder of the king or whatever has a lot more depth, because right now it does seem super cliche.

First episodes can be tough, so I am also hoping that it finds its footing in the next episodes. I always give a drama until episode 4. If it hasn't really pulled me in by then it's never going to

I enjoyed IU's character, she seems fun and interesting and they at least did a good job of showing why she acts the way she does and why she wants to prove herself. I genuinely love when FLs take on the arrogant slightly man-child persona of the normal chaebol ML, it's a fun reversal.

I'm concerned about the writing overall tho. There was SO much tell and not show, esp about the prince. Like... everyone says he's so popular and loved and powerful, it's mentioned he's the regent and has royal duties he's doing all the time, but we never actually see him interacting with anyone, or advising the king, or some public appearance, or something similar. Other than a throwaway line about royalty doing nothing, we also don't really get to see what he really wants in life or why he's so unhappy. Cause honestly he seems to seek out solitude and seems pretty content with it at present. I think that's why some people are saying BWS is boring or not acting well, I think he's trying to convey a facade with underlaying emotion that the script hasn't given him enough support for, so we can't really connect with his deeper desires or inner life.

Also I really hate that they have this whole king murder/fire plotline. Mixing romcom with murder mystery rarely turns out well. The show is gonna get messy in the second half. Esp because it's obvious who the villian is when you cast Jo Jae Yun.

Also would it absolutely kill a k drama writer to have two adults meet as adults, like why must they have secretly had a crush on each other in HS? It makes the show feel disjointed to suddenly flash back to HS randomly. And why did he refuse to even meet her 5 times if he supposedly crushed on her in HS? They're just not giving us enough insight into the characters or what they're feeling, so it's falling a bit flat for me as of now. Hopefully that improves.

Yeah BWS hasn't really had much to work with, so far he's doing fine but mostly he's just been stoic. IU is making a character that would normally drive me crazy be fun and charming, so I give her points for that. I'll keep watching at least to see how it develops

Why did he refuse to see her so many times? I don't get it. They haven't really done a good job of connecting us with him tbh

The moment the man's face was on screen I was like "Oh so he's the main villain in this"

So excited for this to start! I am feeling confident in this drama from the teasers, the chemistry is there and it just looks gorgeous. A new scriptwriter is always scary but because IU is careful with her drama choices and BYS would have chosen his comeback drama carefully it feels impossible for the script to suck. Add to that the director is quite consistently good and pretty much has a string of back to back viral k dramas leading into this. So it feels like it simply can't bomb, which is comforting. But I am hoping it's AMAZING versus just good. I need a drama that feels addictive and exciting again!

What made S1 work despite its flaws was two leads with desperate personal stakes and a prickly, organic bromance borne of a couple of kinda broken dudes bad at connecting who felt the connection anyway. S2 has none of that.

First off these guys are now cringy, YA romance-style besties, dropping super sappy lines every few minutes about being family and completing each other. It feels completely inauthentic. What made Geon Woo so compelling in S1 was his noble innocence underlayed with this wild, dark edge. That edge has been all but stripped out, and they maxed out his nobility and preciousness so he just comes across as silly and babyish, like this man is in tears asking someone for a place to stay, come on. Woo Jin lost his edge too, which makes him seem almost like a caricature of some noble hero at this point. And as much as I like Rain, Baek Jeong is just a cliche evil sociopath who feels especially second-rate next to Park Sung Woong's incredible performance last season.

The core problem is that the show needed to establish real conflict between the boys, or real inner conflict within them, right from the start. Instead they're happy go lucky from the getgo, and every conflict comes purely from the outside. That's just boring. esp when the plot is pretty simplistic and predictable. Maybe winning the championship left Geon-woo haunted instead of fulfilled and he wanted out. Maybe Woo Jin got too greedy, not out of selfishness but because he feared being forgotten while Geon-woo got all the glory, and pushed them into getting involved in one last fight in the dark web ring that then made them get in way too deep. Something like that could've organically led them into the Rain storyline with actual stakes attached and still being believable people with flaws and grittiness, and given them a way to become even closer as brothers that felt really earned.

That's just one random idea, but that's the kind of thing this story needed. I'm halfway through and genuinely can't care about either character because they are one dimensionally perfect good guys now and the ending is already obvious. They beat Rain, make all the noble choices as the super good guys they are, and come out even bestier bestie friends cause that's what really good bestie friends do. No real stakes, no real conflict, nothing human or messy. Sadly don't think I'm finishing this one, despite loving the first season and WDH being my GOAT.

It's kinda ridiculous how webtoon readers gatekeep casting like they own the characters. Meanwhile the actual director and producers of the show, who have seen the scripts and auditions, and who are making the actual drama you will see, are called dumb and wrong. The ego is wild in this chat

If it's not about acting, then it's superficial.

I've realized Shin Min Ah brings a certain masculine energy to all her roles that requires a more masculine ML to match. She doesn't seem to ever have great chemistry with more feminine-energy leaning actors like Young Dae. (I'm using feminine and masculine here not as gender-specific terms, but in the psychoanalytic context, and it's not a dig or insult to either of them).

After seeing how terrible this drama was, I can see why he declined.

He can play positive and sweet very well, but you can also see how talented he is showing deeper emotions, so he is going to eat up a darker and more violent role. I cannot wait to see him in the historical.

I liked it because I felt Chan deserved it after everything. To finally have his story be told and to understand, and I liked seeing all the pieces come together. But yeah i'm sure it could have been tightened up a bit and still hit.

Yeah I rolled my eyes at the doctor's complete U turn. Her telling Chan he caused the death of someone isn't just an oopsie that's like a calculated and evil level of cruelty. I much preferred the more nuanced final story of everyone kinda making bad choices but no one being necessarily cruel on purpose, just human.

Tho you can't really say that Haran just stumbled across all the info--they had established that he'd written the full story for her, and her working to fix the tablet showed how intentional she was in righting her wrong and trying to understand the whole story. And it was actually quite fitting for her emotional arc as someone who ran from emotions and dealing with things. She was able to see how damaging that kind of attitude was when all she needed to do was literally give him 10 minutes of time to explain. Her also quickly realizing that all the details didn't matter and she couldn't hate him was a much more mature view than her old black and white view of the world, and felt fitting and realistic as a culmination of chan's genuine impact on her over their time together that was brought out suddenly when faced with losing him.

But yeah, I didn't like that they never really addressed her grief for her real boyfriend. She spent 7 years mourning someone that didn't exist, and that realization would affect her and need to be dealt with, and she didn't seem at all affected by learning her boyfriend had been cheating, or that she had clung onto this fantasy of grief for so long. And Chan's belief that he was on this world just to make others happy, or had to earn his place in someone's heart, wasn't really addressed either. So def some things they could have explored but didn't.

S

I was so thrilled we got justice for Chan, and I found this part of the story the most moving for the main couple, it was refreshing that Haran finally truly understood her mistakes and was able to apologize sincerely and make things right, and I could actually see the point of this type of trope-y plot element when handled well. Sometimes you need time away from someone, and need to really understand what you have to lose, before you appreciate what you have. Both her and Chan got stuck in a place of believing they didn't deserve to be happy or be loved, and thankfully had the other to pull them back out, which I found really lovely in parallel.

The second couple was suuuuch a let down though. His confession was actually quite beautiful in its simplicity, and matched his character, but the setting was so bland just sitting in a car, and the couple of scenes we got after that were also bland and so lazily written. Their scenes throughout had been some of the most romantically longing and full of chemistry, and I don't understand why the writer just gave up on them in the last two weeks. There was plenty of time to give them a more emotionally fulfilling ending, like we didn't even get a kiss! We were robbed.

I'm glad I watched this drama, though. It was worth watching even if it didn't meet all my expectations. I think the best part was Chae Jong Hyeop for me. By the end I felt he gave a really layered and human performance that made me care deeply and want to root for the main couple mostly for Chan, because he truly deserved to be happy.