L13

What I love about her character is that sometimes she does cool/admirable things and sometimes she does/says things I don't approve of, but all of her actions seem perfectly in character. She has such a distinctive personality that she remains consistently herself even as she provokes completely different reactions--I'm always thinking, "yep, that's Cha Myung-joo for you," good or bad--which is the case for people in the real world but is pretty rare on TV.

To quote my comment on ep. 15 from elsewhere:

I’m sorry, but Bo-tong’s story was 100x more emotionally affecting than the Jae-hyun/Yoo-ra story arc. My heart broke for him and I don’t think the drama fully reckoned with Ha-neul's personal culpability for him dropping out/the disservice she did him, choosing instead to focus on the character growth she underwent as a result.

Also, Ms Park’s husband is the villain of the drama for me. He’s always pressuring her to work less so she can parent their child more attentively, but a. their child is fine and b. the idea of him making that sacrifice himself never occurs to anyone. When their son was in the hospital and Ms Park’s student was in police custody, this bitch just peaced out because “something came up at work”?! I highly doubt it was a bigger work-related emergency than Ms Park’s, yet it was implicitly assumed by everyone that she had to stay in the hospital with their child while her student was being held by the police without an adult present whereas her husband got to leave to go do paperwork/get drunk with his boss or whatever. The fact she never gets mad at him for being such a sexist wasteman makes ME mad.

(At the same time... when you promise your frightened student to pick him up from the police station and then don't do that... it doesn't matter how good your excuse was! Don't explain your situation and expect him to be understanding. Just apologise unreservedly. Children shouldn't be asked to sympathise with their teachers when their teachers fail them, no matter how valid the reasons might be.)

I wouldn't *entirely* put it past this drama to troll us again by pulling an "oops, this isn't a romance but a subplot about moving past unrequited love/awkward advances in the workplace" after Prosecutor Kim rejected Miran... but for now I choose to believe their relationship will have more romantic development and this initial rejection was just a way to spark some tension between them. I am way too invested to believe otherwise!

I'm on episode 12 now and I have a question. Does Kang Chul ever regain his memories?

No worries! I'm glad you found my comments interesting.

I dropped SKY Castle for several reasons, and the voyeuristic focus on the status games of the rich was one of them. I just don't care about that stuff, and struggled to take it seriously. As you suspect, Black Dog also suffers from this a little bit. It doesn't stop with the fact it takes place in a private school in Gangnam. (Working there is, hilariously, positioned as a noble sacrifice in comparison to working at prep academies and admission consultancies.) In addition, as I said in my first comment, the drama reduces teaching to getting the top students to the most selective universities and preserving their families' privileged status, or elevating them to it. The main character has made it her mission to help the one poor student with good grades in the entire school get into a top university and get rich, but what about the mass of students who have no hope of joining the elite? They are totally irrelevant to what Black Dog has to say about the virtues and responsibilities of teachers, even if it's aware that the game is rigged against them.

That said, the drama is amazingly well done in many other ways and I continue to like it a lot.

I had so many issues with CSW's character in Life that I spent every moment he was onscreen raging, but I also enjoyed other aspects of the drama immensely. But if you didn't like the first four episodes, I don't know if there's a point in persevering, since the sociopolitical analysis doesn't get any better from there.

I'll stop now. Cheers, comrade!

I really appreciate that the drama shines a sympathetic light on the poor working conditions and exploitation short-term teachers are subjected to, but don't go into it expecting too much big-picture analysis. The main character always ends up putting her (top) students' needs above her own legitimate grievances, which the drama portrays as praiseworthy, and so far the condemnation of the school administration has been at the level of "these teachers are dedicated to their students and deserve better support" rather than "it is unjust and unsustainable to treat workers like this," if that makes sense.

The drama's core theme is the selflessness of great teachers in the face of all obstacles, which Ha-neul's origin story also bears out. The drama doesn't do too much to differentiate between the systemic disadvantages they face, which are the result of more powerful people's deliberate actions, and, like, extreme events like natural disasters and random misfortunes that might make their job harder. Which is not to say that Black Dog isn't aware/critical of worker exploitation; it just doesn't offer a sustained and explicit structural analysis of it or seem to prescribe strategies of hostile resistance. I expected more biting social critique based on the setpieces shown in first few episodes, to be honest, and am a little disappointed by the way it's fizzled out in favour of the theme of centring the student at all costs.

In this respect, Black Dog reminds me of Life, which started out as a drama exposing the incompatibility between providing vital social services (in Life's case, healthcare) and serving corporate interests but ended up focusing on the humanity of the CEO privatising the hospital and being way less morally clear and politically coherent than it should have been.

Anyway. There's still some of what you're looking for in Black Dog--more so than in the vast majority of kdramas--but it doesn't go that extra step to piece together a meaningful position, IMO.

Yes, the gaming stuff was very entertaining and fresh. In addition to the epilogue, Ms Sung’s big reveal was hilarious, if heavily foreshadowed. And Prosecutor Kim explaining the lore and virtual economy of the game to a politely uncomprehending LSW killed me, as well as the gameplay sequences. But the funniest moment for me was when LSW engineered a pretext to visit Prosecutor Kim’s room and destroyed his figurines again to cover up his previous break-in. I was literally gaping at the screen.

Shipping notes after watching episode 9:

Can we talk about this drama toying with our expectations of a romance between Lee Sun-woong and Cha Myung-joo by first revealing Prosecutor Lee is happily married and now... kind of suggesting Investigator Lee and Prosecutor Cha might be getting along exceptionally well? He’s leaving supplements on her desk and smiling at her tenderly after executing warrants now? I knew the scene where he was pretending to be her husband would not be the end of it!

Also if we don't get scenes between Prosecutor Kim and Ms Sung in every episode until the end, I'll riot. This is my OTP now.

Other than that, this episode was amazingly funny. Both the gaming fraud and the frivolous lawsuit subplots were hilarious (and complemented each other well), but the gaming stuff was just hysterical. The epilogue, when Prosecutor Kim revealed his action figures had been fake after Prosecutor Lee paid 1M won to replace them, and after Prosecutor Kim spent the entire episode accusing others of peddling fake in-game items, was a masterpiece only rivalled by Ms Sung's big reveal and Prosecutor Kim's reaction to her afterwards.

I can’t wait for him to notice her lol. She’s lowkey a badass, so I have high hopes for their interactions.

I love this drama so far. It's so well made and mature in terms of directing, acting, writing. I'd say it's the best ongoing kdrama right now.

Mr Ji is the most interesting character for me because my reaction to him has changed dramatically more than once. He started out as a cold and unsettling figure, yet I couldn't help but feel for him because of the pressure he was under and his social isolation. I pitied him when he seemingly hit rock bottom, and now that he seems to be getting closer to Ha-neul and Mr Do, it feels good. I'm sure there are more reversals still to come, and the anonymous forum/competition for the permanent position subplot will come back with a vengeance. Whatever happens, though, I hope he gets a good ending.

It would be nice to see some romantic development between Ha-neul and Mr Do, or even a love triangle (I never thought I'd say this!). Even if it doesn't become explicit, I think that's what the drama is hinting at given the way the interactions between them are unfolding.

Yoo-ra and Jae-hyun's rivalry is an interesting sideshow because even though I want to sympathise with Yoo-ra given their respective circumstances, I can't bring myself to like her. I hope we see some character development from her.

Speaking of which, I have kind of made my peace with the fact the drama will spotlight the top students and the teachers' handling of them, but I wish it was more attentive to the ethical implications of an entire school catering to 20 kids out of 300. For example, since the viewers are invited to identify with Ha-neul and she believed so strongly that the top students' banana answer should count, the drama dismissed the counterpoint that the test should not reward mastery of advanced material that the vast majority of students have never encountered, which was presented as a tedious complaint the good guys must deflect rather than a valid concern.

In general, I just don't think getting the most hardworking/privileged students into the most prestigious universities is, you know, the most important or rewarding part of a teacher's job. Helping less accomplished students improve, or find their own path in life, is both more difficult and more important in terms of marginal utility (since the top students will still do well even if they get rejected from the best university in the country). I wonder if that will come up at all.

That said, the iffy politics of the Icarus Club stuff aside, I love how the drama exposes the stress and humiliation of being a short-term teacher. It depicts some really painful details, like the refusal to pay out insurance to the widow of Ha-neul's dead teacher, the 5-month contract trick to avoid paying salaries over break and the kind short-term teacher's sudden disappearance the moment her students learned of her employment status (despite assurances from some permanent staff that it didn't matter and wasn't a big deal). This aspect of the story is relatable to people in many fields of employment all over the world.

Lastly, I wonder how the fact Ha-neul decided to become a teacher because her teacher died saving her life will tie into the plot. I hope she'll share this story with her friends at the school at some point.

If Extraordinary You's rating peaked at like 9.3 while it was ongoing (since dramas that generate a lot of buzz tend to get higher ratings on MDL during their run and drop off a litte as more people outside of their devoted fandom watch them after the fact), then Crash Landing on You certainly deserves 8.9 and more.

Not really, though there are hints at romantic tension between two sets of characters.

MS shouldn’t have pressured a woman who clearly didn’t have feelings for him and ignore her responses until she gave in to his guilt trip if he didn’t want to get broken up with.

I’m not sure what the age gap tag is doing here given that the FL is supposed to be ~31 and the ML is supposed to be 32-33. (I spent way too long thinking about their ages, but it’s not hard to figure them out from context if you pay attention.)

I thought the romantic subplot was cute and would have even liked a couple of extra romantic scenes. That said, the last episode didn’t seem rushed to me. The complaints about the writing seem very nitpicky/overblown. It was a satisfying drama that ended well.

Anyway, do we think Jo Gap-soo was Yi-deum’s biological father? I’m kind of surprised the possibility was never stated explicitly/wasn’t relevant to the plot.

It sounds like the slice of life genre is just not for you, which doesn’t mean it’s bad. I found the first episode very enjoyable, more so than almost all prosecutor dramas I’ve seen.

The first two episodes covered the new GM’s introduction to the team and his first big move on the job. I think that’s pretty good pacing.