L13

even if you were right, "heavily implied romantic tension" or "romantic resolution in the future" =/= "romance"

This is a very limited, even arbitrary understanding of romance. I also disagree that Sanyeong appears indifferent to Hongsae, but that's less important.

If you don't want to think about the two of them in a romantic light, no one is forcing you! The romantic subplot is subtle enough that you can ignore it, but the claim that all romance needs explicit declarations of love and physical consummation on screen to qualify is going too far.

I'm on episode 3 now and I'm not sure where the sci-fi tag comes in... Other than that, it's fun so far and Sakaguchi Kentaro is handsome as usual!

Contrary to what other people are saying, the romantic tension is heavily implied and the ending hints at romantic resolution in the future. There are no kissing scenes or love confessions, but it's as obvious as it gets in this genre.

The drama started out well as a slow-paced, adult office romcom, but the final episodes were such a mess they soured me on the whole show, and especially on Kanako, the female protagonist, who acted like a childish person and a terrible mother but was treated with sympathy by the narrative, as if her actions could be excused by her feelings. Additionally, there were three couples in the drama, but none of them received any romantic development until, like, episode 8 or 9 at the earliest; the third couple didn’t get *any* development at all, the second couple didn’t get any opportunities to clarify their actual feelings for each other and were only brought together at the last moment by a cheap plot device, and the main couple kept dicking around with secondary love interests, jealousy and misunderstandings far past the point where that stopped being interesting or tolerable. But despite all this, Kanako’s awful parenting of her son, which caused him unnecessary pain of the kind that leaves a permanent scar, really was the worst part for me. Her ex-husband was written as an irrational and incoherent person too, and only did things to serve the plot; his role in the climax of the final episode was so stupid it kept me angry throughout Toru’s big confession. The implicit condemnation of single-parent households was less progressive than the show was aiming for too.

All in all, Wedding Planner exhibits some of the unique strengths of romantic jdramas but also too many of their weaknesses.

You’re both being delusional…

I think season 2 was more heavy-handed/emotionally manipulative and less detailed and realistic, but I still enjoyed it.

No, that’s the real reason—but it can’t be the pretext because officially they wanted to capture him alive, and indeed they rewarded the DP team after the operation for completing it without casualties. The higher-ups wanted to kill him to cover up the circumstances of the shooting, but they couldn’t say that openly.

I guess the implication is that she was drummed out of the military by General Goo and his faction as punishment for allowing what's-his-name to be captured alive, which opened the door for a public trial that would reveal the systemic bullying he'd been subjected to and make the military look bad. But I didn't catch the exact pretext they used to push her out.

In general there were quite a few moments that didn't add up for me. For example, I refuse to believe Joonho only spent a month in timeout on base after the events of the finale and was subsequently even allowed to rejoin the DP team. He deserted, beat the shit out of like 30 people, including several superiors, escaped from custody, disobeyed many orders, etc.. He should have gone to prison for many years after such a stunt, even if his boss took the fall for the actual whisteblowing.

But it was fun, even if it didn't always make sense.

I do hope Captain Im and Seo Eun got back together in the end... I think that's what we were meant to infer, but it wasn't stated explicitly.

I think there’s still a chance he’s the dad, though… but if he is, I don’t think he knew about the pregnancy. The preview for next episode shows him asking the mother if she remembers him, which would be a weird and even insulting question if he knew. We’ll see!

I'm listening...

Oooh, that's a very good guess.

I think he's her first love for sure, but does that make him Jinhee's father? I guess it has to since the drama is setting up a childish feud between him and Jinhee (which will be used to show how similar they are in comical ways, I'm guessing), but when her mother talked about her first love in today's episode, she didn't explicitly acknowledge that person as JH's father, so I'm still not totally sure.

OMG, thank you so much for doing this!

This is a movie, not a TV show. Korean cinema can be way more transgressive than Korean TV.

The plot description is pretty misleading. As far as I know, their characters are friends who support each other, not lovers. Noh Sanghyun's character is gay.

This is literally incorrect. “Any sort of sexual content” like mentioning masturbation and implying a character was masturbating without showing it directly is literally “teens and above” content. 18+ indicates explicit sex scenes. There’s nothing remotely like that in this drama and if you think it warrants such a rating, you’re a loser and a dumbass, therefore: get a life.

In terms of investigative/crime dramas, Nobody Knows, Through the Darkness, Stranger, King of Pigs, The Lies Within, Children of Nobody, Watcher to some extent. I'd also recommend the cdramas The Long Night and The Bad Kids.

This sounds like a Chinese Republican version of The Americans. Which is pretty cool! But I wonder if there will be actual romance within this fake marriage, since it's not in the tags.

My Wife Is a Thief was supposed to release on iQiyi a year ago…

I'm dropping this for the same reason I dropped 3 Nen A Gumi; I can't stand dramas where people in high-school uniforms sit around in a classroom and give long tearful speeches about how cruel bullying is that somehow make the bullies feel bad or break down in anger. It feels so theatrical in every sense of the word. The scene is static and artificial like in a play and so are the monologues. That's not how bullying gets resolved in the real world. Just take the recordings you made to the principal's office and the drama can end right there.

Korean school dramas tend to be more dynamic and less naive in their treatment of these issues. I want a thriller with some mystery and bite, not a melodrama about some mousy loser somehow browbeating a class of teenage monsters into submission by preaching to them for hours.

Also, like, the protagonist could just quit her job? No one's forcing her to stay there for a year until she gets killed? "Oh, but if a student already wants to kill me, they'll find me wherever I am." One, no they won't. Are your students Jason Bourne? Two, why would anyone already want to kill you when it's your first day teaching this class? Three, murder tends to be highly situational and if you remove yourself from the situation you won't get murdered. A high schooler isn't going to bother chasing you around the globe once you're no longer in direct proximity to them! Ugh, the premise itself is so stupid.