MiyamotoMusashi

Yeah i found that weird as well, but would accept it as minor thing if everything else was ok.

They mention several times that he is always dating and quickly changes his girlfriends.
Also why they are surprised that he was so invested in Ik-Sun, how long he was together with her and how heartbroken he was after the breakup.

Ah yeah forgot about it. Well its a joke the writer has done in every show so far, the older idol in 1997 who played a high school student despite being mid 30s, one of the friends in 1994 played a college student despite being in his 30s, and the brother of Hyeri in 1988 was actually older than her.
So yeah its a joke, but overdone at this point.

Agreed with Jun-Wan/the womanizer. We have no idea why this relationship is supposed to be so special, and the break-up did not make much sense.
Regarding the friendship love, i think the gist is, they always had feelings for each other, but did not act upon it. Of course this has been done thousands of times before.

No idea what you mean with the old man playing the son.
If you are talking about suk-hyung and his mother, she is 15 years older than him, which admittedly does not scream mother, but still significantly older.

Just finished this. Before rating it, i have to say generally, i like that K-Dramas (writers), more and more, are going out of their comfort zone and trying new and more risky things, and tvN in particular really supports creativity it seems (within limits of course). I still remember when tvN started airing dramas that seemed more unusual and new compared to network dramas, whether it´s more mature and sexual themes, or the setting of the shows and so forth, and it´s noteworthy how far they have come in a decade.

Having said that, Devil´s Judge rather fails at the end at the topic it tackles because itself and the characters do not have the maturity level and complexity to deal with the moral conundrums the plot challenges them with. As a result you often have the stupidity of characters as driving force of the narrative, and that´s rarely a satisfying watch. Ga On and Soo Hyun in particular suffer from this, they have preconceived ideals that are never explained, but you also never got the feeling that they arrived at their ideals through experience and contemplation, but just adopted them because of their goody goody attitude, and that´s a no-go for a show that pretends to delve into the moral ambiguities of a extreme situation, in this case a dystopian society and the people who created it.
If you want to have a clash of different opinions on what good actions really mean, basically two confronting philosophical concepts, you also need to have the characters be even remotely comparable in their maturity level, unfortunately that´s not the case, especially with Ga On. This problem is even further amplified by his lack of logic in most cases, which was very annoying. Any Action of Yo Han is analyzed and judged in excruciating detail by him, yet other things just pass him by, or he does not doubt words by other people and simply believes them, a very inconsistent character (not the fault of the actor btw, who did a good job). This is the biggest problem of the show, you have a tragic, highly intelligent and experienced protagonist on one side, and basically an annoying child that is highly impressionable on the other side. And this became more and more of a problem after the 8th episode. Until then, Ji Sung´s character and performance, in combination with the awesome and satisfying trials, were able to overshadow that.
I guess not every show can have the intelligent characters of Stranger while dealing with the moral problems maturely like it did.

A few positive things:

- Ji Sung is always awesome. He picks more unusual roles that also have deeper layers , even if the dramas in the end might not be as good as him. His roles the least have all been noteworthy since Protect the Boss in 2011. Devil´s Judge is no different.

- Kim Min-Jung was great, i liked her performance, though i guess it´s polarizing.

- Very interesting setting and clearly inspired by the US with a Korean version of Trump, Korean version of Proud Boys and so forth.

- Half the show until episode 9 was drama at best that left you at the edge of your seat. After that it became too ridiculous.

Overall a 6-7/10 for me.

Watched till the end, yep my initial impression stayed the same, and after episode 11 it got even worse.
The heist crew is not really that likeable, the cases are too overdrawn and almost cartoonish (i know they are inspired by real life events, but the series exaggerated those events endlessly) and how they solve the cases is not logically sound.
For a 8.8 rating i expected a lot more.

5-6/10.

Anyone can do mistakes, especially when they are doing something new.
Both the director and writer admitted that a seasonal show presented new challenges for them and that they had a hard time.

Yes, the overall balance is not there. If you watch weekly, it might not be as obvious, but i binged it from season 1 to season 2 episode 9, and meaningless patient stories overwhelm everything else. It feels like the writer wanted to show as many different and unusual cases to add a lot of medical terms and knowledge,
But the best thing, the character interactions and development, both are pretty slow and stretched out.

As far as i know, three seasons at least were planned, but the director recently said that there are no plans as of yet for season 3.
So it might get wrapped in the last two episodes.

Whether he was sure or not can be debated, she gave him hints several times as well, and by mid show, she was already prefering him over the eye candy, who also still had feelings for his dead girlfriend.
I can understand you having bad experiences but it is still different since you probably completely rejected whoever was hitting on you and also did not.have any feelings or whatever, this case is pretty different.

Well you wrote about her repeating several times she has no feelings for him, which was not true. She just did not like serious relationships, she went for the easy stuff and eye candy, by her own words.

Sorry but from what you wrote at least, i think you missed the point of the whole dynamic between her and Sang-Soo.

It depends on how they going to play it. If they both regret never getting together, i think they deserve to give it a shot.
But they can also play it off like nostalgic feeling, basically fondly remembering their feelings of the past (though technically Ik-Jun already confessed), then i would say ok, they can stay friends.

Most of the patient stories and product placement is for that as well,.only the latter can still be very entertaining due to the group usually being together for that.

Just to be sure, i started to rewatch Live to see whether i was mistaken, since i only watched it when it came out, and just from the first few episodes, i have to say i still disagree.
There is nothing inherently spectacular going on in the first few episodes at least, what you see is the writer cleverly characterizing the main characters, their struggles and their goals, while showing the daily challenges they have to go through from finding a job as a millenial in the first episode, to going through harsh training in the second, to their debut in their units and showing mundane police work, whether it´s cleaning the car from vomit, to standing watch in the freezing cold weather and the list goes on, and the show shows us how they each deal with it. To contrast that, HP only tells us without much characterization at all. Writer Noh walks the balance between showing us what a specific profession feels like and the struggles, emotions and challenges you face, while still going in-depth with her characters.

I think that´s really what it comes down to.
In HP you have the patient cases that just go through without deeper meaning except that they happen for the sake of it, they don´t have much consequence for the usual cast, including main characters, and they also do not serve as much for the characterization as in Live for example (it happens a few times, like Jun-Wan going to the wedding in season 1, but majority of cases simply just happen). And like i said before, this becomes much more apparent if you watch the episodes in succession, because weekly, the warm and funny feeling you get usually when watching HP will overshadow 15-20 minutes of boring patient stories without merit, but in succession, it catches your eye.

Well that´s the problem when your romance writing usually concentrates on "will they won´t they" and then cuts off when they actually get together.
And Jun Wan - Ik Sun got together pretty quickly, so i guess she felt the need to create reasons for them to break up to fit that pattern again, despite there being enough problems within a relationship to keep it interesting.

That´s the really the main fault of the writer, writes beautiful stories about family and friends, and how supportive they are of each other, enough that the audience feels jealous, but she simply can´t write credible romance scenarios of couples.

I was surprised that you might have meant that, hence why i asked to be sure. To be honest a romantic love never entered my mind.

Well, the fact that she has more background info than the main characters is not entirely wrong, and i criticized the lack of that for the MCs myself, but seems stupid to hate another character for that. Seems like the usual mysoginistic stans considering Dr Do got as much or even more screentime this episode.

Sorry for the late reply, the way i understood it (though not agree with it) is that he idolized her so much and put her on a pedestal so much that she felt pressured and constrained in the relationship and thus acted out to be imperfect.
Of course it´s still a shitty thing to do.

But the show is not providing the usual happy endings and life lessons in the first place. In other dramas, he would have gotten together with the single mother and so on, that was a curve ball.

Did people complain? Like i said before, due to having lived through something similar, i may be biased, but i think her story was really done well, and like you said, especially the contrast between the brother´s fiancée calling of the marriage and Jeong-Won´s reaction was apparent.

I don´t think it´s as much a 1994 reference than the writer and director giving cameos to past actors they worked with period. I think HP only had one true reference to past works, and that was 1988 with Sun Woo´s mother and Taek´s father.
On the other hand, Reply usually had cameos from in-verse characters, like the 1997 crew in 1994, and 1994 crew in 1988 like you said.

Watched the first 4 episodes and to be honest, i am not impressed.
The series is certainly stylish, coupled with the noteworthy OST, it really creates atmosphere like the movie Drive, and i think they are purposely going for that, which is admittedly nice for a network drama that usually goes for clichéd stuff, though this has been changing the last couple of years, due to the influence of cable dramas and their success. I also like that they do not shun away from dark stuff like dramas usually do. You do not have to show explicit stuff to still suggest and imply what happened, and they do that pretty well. And the fact that Lee Je-Hoon can act is nothing new.
Having said that, the cases are pure revenge porn so far with creating the most pitiful victims and straight out evil perpetrators while lacking logic, especially how they are getting solved. The entire ploy in the first case did not lead anywhere except stretch the episodes out, because in the end, it was still about beating them up and making them disappear, and getting "paid" with the fish could easily have happened even if they immediately took care of them.
And in the second case, only punishing the students while ignoring the enablers also did not make much sense, while the ploy seemed more about humiliating them as much as possible for the audience to feel satisfied rather than giving them real and appropriate revenge.
And for me personally, the style alone can´t carry a show, and shows like this are made or broken by how logical their schemes are.

I will continue to see if it gets better hopefully.