L13

I'm impressed with Lomon's comedic chops here. He's never made a strong impression on me before, but here his acting is natural and engaging. Either he's improved over time or comedy just suits him.

I'm on episode 11 and the psycho parents give me so much stress, man.

Song dynasty era Pride and Prejudice? Oh, I will be seated.

Streets are saying Feb 9.

I watched episode 1, but neither of the leads seems very charming, plus nothing terribly interesting has happened yet. Also the part where everyone's pretending the FL looks like a man is taking me out of the story.

"the very ridiculous way in which a genius student is portrayed here, (a very intelligent person is one that with minimum effort manages the highest grade, so no hard studying! if you have geniuses in your family you know what I am talking about)"

I can't agree with this. There are many different ways high achievers achieve. People are all different, after all. Jeongwoo is portrayed as the kind of perfect student you describe—someone who is carefree and naturally talented—while Haneul is a perfect student through hard work and determination. I went to school and university with a lot of high achievers and Haneul's type is far, far more prevalent in my experience.

Yeah, I was really touched by that part because it was so realistic. To come here and see so many people criticise the FL for being a doctor and not taking care of her health just tells me there are a lot of children who haven't really experienced life yet on MDL.

I love how you put it and I agree. I thought the first episode was really good. It was fun and engaging while paying attention to psychology and characterisation, no flashback to the leads' youth dragged on for too long, and the secondary characters were plentiful and interesting enough to populate the world around the leads with believable human beings. Both characters are likeable too—the ML seems charming and genuinely nice while being a bit ditzy and privileged and the FL may be a bit uptight and indifferent to others at this point, but her modest background and her suffering in the present day are presented very realistically and make her sympathetic.

I enjoyed the first episode! It was all setup and pretty conventional, but it didn't drag; the direction is good and each scene is engaging and to the point. There is a good number of secondary characters too; I hope some of them will have their own storylines.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow's episode for sure.

There's one thing I don't understand. Lee Sungmin is in his 50s. The Japanese occupation ended in 1945. The story clearly takes place in the present day or sometime in the 2010s at the earliest as per the use of smartphones and the fashion/tech/cars in the movie. Even if we accept Piljoo and his targets are all in their mid-80s or above, they would have been 10-15 years old when Japan retreated from Korea. Not old enough to do the things Piljoo accuses them of. Piljoo and his enemies would have to be 100 years old for the story to make sense... how are they all still alive, and so perky to boot?

The chronology is completely messed up. They should have dated Piljoo's grievances to the 1960s at the earliest, or set the movie in the 90s.

Yeah, I think by the end of the show he'll turn into an ally, or be revealed to be an ally. But that doesn't mean he's 100% on Jian's side.

This drama is like a manga, in the best way possible.

I mean, my mother's done that for close people dealing with a death in the family to spare them the emotional strain. But considering Jeongmin and Jian had just met for the first time in ten years, I did think, "This is either the kindest person in the world offering to do something so personal for a stranger or a ploy to destroy evidence."

The Bequeathed is so much better than The Cursed lol

Thank YOU for the kind words!

OK, after finishing the series, I have a few random thoughts:

I clapped in front of my computer when Kim Youngho went berserk in the crooked lawyer's office and was able to beat up all of his thugs running on sheer crazy. At that point KYH seemed like the most victimised character in the drama, and it was particularly frustrating how Yoon Seoha was the person backing him into a corner and bringing misery upon him while fully believing she was the real victim. So I also felt a thrill of perverse satisfaction when Yoon Myunghee slapped Yoon Seoha in the final episode.

Speaking of which, Seoha did not get any more likeable as the show progressed—the opposite, in fact. It was refreshing in a way to follow a protagonist who is truly an average person, as opposed to TV's idealised version of 'average.' Seoha is a little stupid at times, bad at reacting to unexpected situations and good at overreacting, kind of selfish and annoying, and bad at predicting the consequences of her actions, which is how a lot of people end up committing crimes. Still, she isn't evil, and she learned a valuable and enduring lesson in the final episode, I think.

Re. the incest plot twist, I saw it coming a mile away, but it was well done. The sparse flashbacks to Yoon Myunghee and Yoon Myungho's youth showed convincingly how something like that might happen. Myunghee grew up in a poor, remote and brutally patriarchal environment where men, including her father, treated her like an object, and an unwanted one at that because of her physical defect. Myungho was the only man who showed her kindness and care, so she latched on to him, unable as she was to obtain or even imagine a life where she wouldn’t be under some man's authority and having no viable choice of male protector in her village but him. Under those circumstances, it wasn't such a massive leap for her emotional dependence on Myungho and her understanding of the hierarchical relations between men and women and how sex factors into that to get twisted up. (Of course, Myungho was also responsible for their relationship, but I'm talking about Myunghee's thoughts and feelings because we saw her perspective more clearly. As far as Myungho is concerned, the show implies he was sensitive and affectionate to a fault, loved his 'normal' family and was mostly reacting to Myunghee's pain and neediness where their sexual relationship was concerned, but I'm sure that's not the full story.)

Actually, I thought Yoon Myunghee really stole the show for someone who only really appeared in the final hour. Her characterisation and the actress's performance were top notch.

I also liked that there were several antagonists who appeared at different points in the narrative in a way that showed how consequences can snowball when (bad) people make bad decisions, attracting other bad people like flies.

Detective Choi was my favourite of the protagonists and I'm still not sure why he had to quit being a detective. Surely another unit within the police would have loved to snap him up when his station downsized? Everyone knew he was the brains of his team. It's good that he reconnected with his son, at least, though I have absolutely no idea how you repair a relationship like that.

The last 1-2 episodes tied together a lot of themes and brought out the importance of family, whatever that means and however ugly it may look. So the long setup in the first 3-4 episodes definitely paid off for me. (I'm not saying I agree with what the drama has to say or that it's a particularly original message, but it's well made and has a clear dramatic arc, so it will stay with me, which is more than I can say about most kdramas regardless of genre.)

A really good show that kept my attention throughout! I'm glad I watched it.

I'm on ep. 3 and I'm loving it so far, but I have to say Seoha's lack of interest in various very obvious questions (why is everyone obsessed with the burial ground, why is her brother so weird and what does he actually want, why are so many shady entrepreneurs taking an interest in her all of a sudden, why was the atmosphere at her uncle's funeral so inappropriate, etc.) is holding back the plot. It's like they made her totally incurious to ensure the important revelations wouldn't come too early.

Her passivity—her meekness in front of her boss and the building owner, her naive gratitude when strange men like the village head and the detective from the other station show up and start telling her what to do, and her lack of interest in this mysterious and sinister family drama she's at the centre of—is actually pretty believable when you consider how she's lived so far, all the shocking stuff that's happened to her recently and how she's trying to hold her life together, so I hesitate to call it bad characterisation or bad writing, but I'm used to protagonists who are more proactive when people around them start dying.

(The fact that the only person she allows herself to be confrontational toward, out of all the leeches and creeps around her, is a woman she perceives as a rival is also, umm... an interesting choice by the writer... that doesn't endear her to me. But again, maybe the writer did this on purpose to show how small and unpleasant we can be when we lash out at the world, even if we're victims of our circumstances. And it's not like it's unrealistic either, in social contexts where standing up to men is riskier and more unacceptable than standing up to women.)

In any case, I hope she'll wake up soon.

Other than that, as I said, I'm loving it. It's interesting, it's subtle, the direction is good, the soundtrack is really good, we haven't had a gritty crime thriller kdrama about small-town horrors and grim homicide detectives in a while and I love the genre—basically everything is chef's kiss. I like the complicated backstory between the two cops too.

I doubt his expression will change drastically in this one.

I don't think this drama glorifies cheating...

Absolutely goated cast and a genre/type of plot Japan excels in (melancholic romantic mystery/thriller about a crime that occurred many years ago but still holds sway over the protagonists' lives). I will be SEATED.