Knavery

I should have waited for this to finish airing. Damnit.

So this is sort of like Terminator and the male lead is MacGyver? I watched the first couple of minutes of the show and saw the sample trailer on Netflix and that was the vibe I got. I think I'll give it a go.

It's kind of a light-weight in terms of dramas. Does bad stuff happen? Sure. Is it particularly well written and directed? No. But I thought it was fun and light (for a period drama with a bunch of corrupt evil characters as the antagonists).

I enjoyed it even with all the twists.

I think what makes it particularly bad is they cast a different actress to play the teen/child version of her character. So she only somewhat resembles the way she looked as a young teen compared to when she's a young adult but she's going to look identical as a 30 or 40 something mother to teenagers?

It's just silly. Incredibly silly.

I'm a big fan of Kim So Hyun so I forgive a lot when it comes to plot holes and the like but the first episode was legitimately awful. Like King Eternal Monarch bad (and unsurprisingly it shares a similar element to that show regarding chronology).

I'm thinking maybe I'll take a break and start episode 2 next week and pretend that's episode 1. Episode 1 was awful. Just awful.

Having Kim So Hyun playing the main character, the main character's mother and then casting a different actress for the teenage version of the main character has to be the dumbest casting decision of 2020. I don't care if there's a reason as others suggest down below... there is nothing in the story or plot that could ever justify Episode 1 and make it 'good' in my eyes.

Huh. Well I guess the ending was different than all the other ones (novel, the 3 CDrama endings). I feel like it lead to more loose ends though.

This is a tough one to answer without spoilers. I watched the first 8 episodes.

I don't really foresee him being much of a fighter in the physical sense but he is more than capable at other things. He's not an incompetent fool as the trailers might suggest.

His character is obviously funny and out of touch at times but he has real value to the female lead and others in the show within the first 8 episodes. It's not a guy screwing up for laughs. The drama was way more serious than I had anticipated.

I don't mind mistakes and imperfect subs but it's the machine translated stuff that makes no sense that bothers me.

Would you say a large enough number of series have proper subtitles to make it worth it?

How good are the subs these days in general? I watched Episode 1 and I'm not a VIP but they were pretty good. Is IQ generally pretty good at getting actual non-machine translated subs for shows?

Just came across this, looks like it could be fun.

I noticed that as well. I really hope this gets good English subs. It looks funny from the short trailer and photos. It could be really interesting.

I understand there are vibrant colors and some of the choreography of the fights is interesting... but this thing is spinning its tires in the mud even at Episode 30. There has been almost no character growth for the female lead. There are so many tropes, the spitting of blood, the sick characters, the getting sick again characters, the always sick characters, the poison and poison and poison and more poison and oh by the way poison and yeah poison again for the plot and hey there poison, nice to see you again, what a surprise!

It's just not that good in my opinion. It's not horrible and if you like the leads you can easily work your way through this but the female lead was frustrating for me... and you can tell I think certain tropes of Chinese wuxia and TV were repeated one too many times for me to the point where I was rolling my eyes. I left out other tropes because my goal isn't to spoil things but yeah. There are many more tropes played over and over and over again throughout the series.

And that's why I'll be putting this on hold at episode 31 and trying something else.

She was adorable in that, it's too bad she didn't get more screen time in that and more roles generally speaking.

People were put at risk needlessly and it's especially poor planning when you consider how much peer pressure there is in a society like Korean society. There may have been people in that photo who knew it was a risk but participated anyways due to that pressure.

Yes, the actors in scenes took off their masks but this is about risk management. You don't drive without your seatbelt on. You don't drive after you have been drinking. There are many things we do to minimize risk and mask wearing is now one of them. Society has determined they still want TV shows, they still want sports so it will be done in the safest manner possible. A commemorative group photo is not required to produce a TV show. It's a nice extra thing for the people involved in creating it. That's all.

The network apologized but the real test will be if this happens again. Hopefully no one was infected and nobody gets sick or dies.

It's not end of the world stuff but it was a dumb decision.

Let me spell it out since you don't seem to be that smart:

If I need to take off a mask to breathe fresh oxygen it is doing something.

Therefore a mask can't be doing nothing if it is doing something.

This means your opinion is worthless and you should be ignored and that is what I will do going forward. You are entitled to have an opinion. I am not required to respect it or you.

So wait - do masks do nothing or do they do something? In your own comment you contradict yourself. You claim they do nothing and then finish your post with "take them off and breathe fresh air!". So does it stop the spread or not? Do they do nothing or not? If we need to take them off to breathe properly clearly they must be doing something, right?

Sure, you're entitled to an opinion but you can't say the sky is blue and 2 seconds later say the sky is red and pretend your opinion is valid and worth respect. It isn't.

Hard to trust someone who spouts nonsense and contradicts themselves in a couple of sentences.

Nana really did a great job in those last scenes. I still think the ending was a little ridiculous even though I thought the way it ended was appropriate for the characters.

Honestly it's not that good. Pretty boring. I gave up at episode 25. It's a soap opera that's disinteresting even when you factor soap operas more generally are uninteresting.

Judging by what I've ready (haven't watched this week's episodes) it seems they are going for the ending of the novel and staying faithful to that. So yeah, you should probably put a spoiler tag around it but that's basically the ending of the book.