Ophanin

Not a fan of the young murderer who is necessarily insane and also dresses up as a woman. Surely we can stop with that after a while, can't we ?
And IQ is classist nonsense (invented to keep poor people out of higher education) and racist, to boot. (The famous world map of IQs that fascists love.) Right, let's stop with this crap, shall we ? Come on, let's do it.

I watched this series solely because of Kim Hye-soo, and she really carries it. Unstoppable, funny and poignant.
The irresistible Jung Sung-il is so funny as a jaded character with a keen sense of justice. These two form a dynamic duo that makes this story, full of twists and turns, very engaging. You think it's going to be a comedy with seasoned reporters, but the real theme is the rich's stranglehold on the media. Rich people who made their fortunes under Japanese occupation, no less.
Park Seo-yeon, I wondered where I had seen her before, and it was in a similar series (a mix of investigation and humour) called ‘From Now On, Showtime !’.
The whole team of crazy journalists is endearing. We want a second season. Oh yes, we do !

Eat the rich. Save investigative journalism.

PS: Kang Ho employs the well-known ‘YouTuber strategy'. Namely, behaving like a selfish little shit and pretending to be a victim at the first sign of trouble. All that was missing was for him to equate criticism with harassment, and we'd be all set.

Read More

“The moon is beautiful tonight.”

A series written and scripted by women. It deals with the problems and judgments they face. All in a melancholic atmosphere. Zhang Jingyi plays an ordinary, courageous teenager who carries the weight of the world on her shoulders, following her role as an agile and assertive warrior princess in Legend of Zang Hai. She and Zhou Yiran bring great strength to their characters, who are determined in their own way without being exuberant. Their actions speak for themselves. Overall, this is not a hypocritical series that raises issues without really addressing them.

It is clear how devastating it can be to hide the truth from your children. And how essential education about sexual and emotional health is. This should not be up for debate. Lives are at stake.

The two main characters come from different backgrounds and repeatedly give the adults the opportunity to explain themselves, to make amends for their mistakes and their silence, but to no avail. They consider themselves untouchable and well-meaning. It is not a question of means. The parents do not consider their children to be fully-fledged human beings with needs and rights. Sadly commonplace. With their backs against the wall, forced to reveal the truth, the two protagonists are told that the violence comes from them. Family comes first. Suffer in silence.

Bullying, people distancing themselves, unfair rumors... these are difficult moments to deal with. When you've been through it, it's always a challenge. In the world we live in, there is only one solution : to collectively take responsibility for saying stop. Individual courage doesn't make a difference ; it has to be collective. But the thing is, most people see no point in taking action when they're not directly affected. And so the cycle continues. The series shows this very clearly : there is no excuse for people who saw and knew but said nothing. And if the victim rebels against the injustice they suffer, they are punished. Even our death doesn't satisfy our tormentors ; the harassment continues.

Xiao Beiyu went through so many things that could have been avoided. And there's nothing we can do for her ; we can only watch helplessly as her life is pieced together by her little sister. Some parents have children because they can't have dogs, as they say. Beiyu's video testimony does not excuse them for their behavior and how they treated her while she was alive and killed her a second time by hiding the reasons for her death. Being kind for three days does not make up for a lifetime.

Qingyu's father appears unassuming at first, but the more we get to know him, the more we realize his malicious position as the good family man. Always there to maintain the patriarchal order without taking responsibility for it, hiding behind his wife and family decisions. His honor as patriarch takes precedence over the well-being and dignity of his daughters. You can present it however you want, but that's what remains in the end.
And then, when he tries to confide in his daughter, he talks about himself and himself alone. And we're supposed to offer him redemption because he understands that his daughter is dancing in secret and he doesn't say anything instead of forbidding it... Doing nothing is a small price to pay. The men in this series, my God, they make you want to resort to violence... especially cousin Jinrui.
As for the mother, we're in gray territory. It's hard to forgive her, and yet she does what she can to survive. The actress delivers a phenomenal performance.

The little brother and friends, together, supporting each other, helping each other, and listening to each other, they are the light that this world needs and undoubtedly does not deserve. Ming Sheng, always there, ready to do anything for others without expecting anything in return, he has a kind heart.

In short, exceptional character writing.

Ps : The surgeon father is in a relationship with a nurse who is barely ten years older than his son. Let's talk about that.
Ps2 : All those men waiting for Qingyu outside her high school are embarrassing. Do they think they're Jerry Seinfeld ?
Ps3 : Justice for Mumu !
Ps4 : Thanks to this series, I finally understand why Chinese productions associate couples with the moon.

Read More

Sets, costumes, music. It's standard for Chinese dramas, meaning very high quality. The fights are superb, with all the swirling fabrics and blades slicing through the air. And then killing by piercing the body with wires is inventive and very beautiful visually. (My God, what am I saying ?) The first two episodes follow a frenetic pace, after which things calm down a bit, but it maintains its framing, slow motion, high-energy inserts, mini-flashbacks, etc. (Long-focus close-ups, on the other hand, are still illegal. Forbidden !) The most frenzied conspiracy in history. And the editing doesn't give you a second's respite. Great art.

There is virtually only one woman in this world, the fierce Zhong Xueman, but on the other hand there are many men obsessed with Xiao Beiming, the “wanted detective”. Men who are extremely devoted or willing to do anything to find him and prove that he is not dead, lost as they are in imagining him gone. Lost to the point of dreaming about him, in a friendly way, of course. These Chinese dramas and their queer baiting are trying; we suspect that they can't do any more, but still, it's trying. Do or do not.

Xiang Hanzhi, aka Xueman, looks very young, and it's quite strange to see a character like hers evolve in this world of men as an equal. That said, the actress is very good in her role as an invincible fighter.

The Mission Impossible-style masks are brilliant ! And very practical. They quickly abandon them, too. You never know what to do with them. Apart from that, the humour is sparse but always effective; we would have liked to see more of these scenes.

There are some minor oddities worth noting, such as Xiao Beiming, who is too ill to move in one episode, then jumps in to save his friends in the next ; and at one point he has to hide or risk being identified and put in prison, but ends up walking around freely among the crowd. Quantum camouflage. Then, when he is taken prisoner, he walks around everywhere with his hands cuffed, but he gives instructions to his former fellow inspectors, which is funny. In France, we have a former president (a scumbag) who was sentenced to wear an electronic tag to avoid rotting in prison like everyone else, but because it annoyed him and he didn't respect any of the restrictions (being at home after 10 p.m.), the courts decided to take it away. Take a leaf out of his book, Xiao Beiming.

It's a shame about the slump in the middle, as episodes 17-18 are more like summaries of the story than anything else. After that, it picks up again, at its own pace, with numerous reminders of where we are in the investigation. So this is not a series to binge-watch, as I did. The series loses momentum towards the end. What a shame. I was a huge fan of the first half.

Read More

(TW: this series deals with sexual assault, alcoholism and domestic violence.)

Jeong-woo's courage and patience, though. Everyone condemned him and no one will ever apologise. Then his ‘friends’ don't help him, cowardly and sneaky. It makes me so angry to see their behaviour. The total lack of guilt on the part of the perpetrators is infuriating. I was drawn to the hero's determination. That's the real crux of this series, his determination to prove his innocence, so much so that the background of the characters who take his side is barely mentioned and not exploited at all.
The first episode is exemplary in its abrupt narration; the rest really takes its time, it's too long, far too long. For example, we get a piece of evidence to understand what happened ten years earlier and for an entire episode, it's just there, nothing is done with it, no one studies it. Eight episodes instead of 14 would have worked much better.

Next: the portrayal of autism. Frankly, I'm fed up with it. We're always reduced to circus freaks in perpetual crisis. Here, on top of that, he's some kind of dangerous madman. I'm really sick of it. Maybe one day we'll get a real, honest portrayal, namely a poor, isolated person, nothing spectacular, which is what most of us are, and not a rich kid with his own little painting studio and a dead body in his basement. Pfff.

Kim Bo-ra gives yet another good performance, still with a slight resemblance to Shelley Duval. In episode 7, one inspector asks another if the actress (he calls her by her real acting name, not her character's name) is more popular than Choi Na-gyeom, a character in the series; a strange joke, even sexist... it must have been improvised, I imagine.

Read More

It's not impossible that all the lights in my flat were on and that my cat ended up in my arms during the first two episodes. Me ? scared ? Not at all. When faced with this kind of story, you have to tell yourself one thing : if ghosts existed, there would be hundreds of thousands of them per square meter. We'd spend all our time getting rid of them.

The “ignore them, don't talk to them” thing reminded me of King's The Dark Tower, the Vaadasch, the journey from one world to another. The people around us don't know we're there, but they sense us and can become threatening or even deadly if they spot us. Things are going to go badly.
Anyway.

The discreet, cold music reinforces the emotional impact and this rather original vision of the afterlife. A terribly sad atmosphere. In the bus episode, we know what's going to happen, which makes it even more depressing to watch. Silence also plays a major role.

A very beautiful series, admirably well written, particularly thanks to its twist on fear. The ending is heartbreaking. And the poor dog, we can say, was a good girl.

“You must find the light.”

Read More

Before being a story about letters traveling through time, it is above all a love story between two young people whom life has not spared. They find refuge together. And... no spoilers. It's the saddest of happy endings. I didn't know it would go in that direction. It hits you like a punch in the gut.

However, my little lovebirds (allow me to call you that), you're waiting for a rotten cat to take care of your letters, so of course it's not working out the way you want it to. That filthy beast. Pfft !
It takes a hell of a lot of commitment to a relationship to send love letters from the future. His declaration, "I want to be your family, if you allow me" and her simple, obvious reaction... I'm melting. They're perfect for each other. And the two actors play their characters on the brink of disaster admirably. Wang Yinglu is completely immersed in her role, deeply moving.

When she is the first person in the world to celebrate his birthday and he cries silently... and he eats his cake while crying his eyes out. It's hard not to shed a tear. Don't make sad stories like that, you don't realise, we watch them afterwards ! Besides, the two are ageing in Veer-Zaara years, it's terrible, this disease. A little-known side effect is that it makes the audience burst into tears, and we don't do enough to prevent that.

"If I ever bring you misfortune, you must leave me."

Ps : Why include a chubby character named ‘fat dog’ who eats all the time ? We'll never know. Even if he served a purpose in the story (he doesn't), there was no need for this fatphobia. Chinese productions have a real problem with this.

Read More

"For the rich, mistakes are just bad memories. For us, they're our downfall."

At first, it's hard to warm to this erratic inspector... one minute he's threatening a forensic colleague with a knife, the next he's being attentive to a victim. A truly detestable cop, in other words. (pleonasm)
Then, the cop and the judge agree to sentence a starving man to death, justice in action.
Anyway, what an incredible coincidence that all these people find themselves 20 years later in the same place, at the same trial. Chance works in mysterious ways. Chance, of course. *wink wink* Like the fact that everyone is wearing exactly the same black raincoat. (at least six different people !)

Despite this incredible start, the suspense in this series is phenomenal. You just can't stop watching ; you want to know what happens next. It's really well done. But as usual, it's pure police propaganda and a plea to abolish laws that supposedly protect criminals too much. Classic right-wing scam.

More than once I thought I had figured out who did what (no spoilers), but no ! my immense cosmic brain did not foresee that right after that, they would do the magical twist of these Korean series. And then another. And another. Hold on tight, it's going to twist. The more obvious it seems, the more it will be turned upside down. Like in Mouse, it throws out bits and pieces of events, continues, then comes back, adds an element, and calls everything into question. Only evil geniuses write scripts like this.

It may sound amusing when put like that, but ultimately it isn't. There is suspense, but not for our amusement. It is a terrible story that echoes many true stories about adoption, orphanages and abuse. It is notable that revenge is not glorified. No one emerges victorious from this plot. Strangely the series ends on a hopeful note : caring for the victims before punishing the perpetrators.

Ps : Memories that come back after being repressed by the subconscious are certainly very useful when telling a story with multiple layers, but they are above all scientifically questionable. First of all, the so called subconscious is psy nonsense. Secondly, memory is not a hard drive with videos ready to play ; it is information that we gather and organise according to our personal logic, constantly reconstructing or forgetting. That's my nitpicky or annoying side, sorry.

In no particular order :
-Taecyeon can wear a cap and a mask, but his big protruding ears will always give him away. Poor guy.
-All the phone conversations sound like a voiceover from heaven, which is a disturbing choice.
-Let's salute the work of Park Ji-bin, the vampire who manages to pass himself off as a K-drama actor with brio. Anne Rice has gone too far.
-The little song during the flashbacks : very annoying. Never again.

Read More

It starts with characters who are immediately endearing, situations with potential, beautiful pastel-toned photography, truly a sight to behold. Even though it's visually stunning, even though the two lead actresses are excellent, I have to say that a polite boredom crept over me with each passing episode. Kim Da-mi, always in gentle roles, and Shin Ye-eun, always with natural authority, explore their friendship. At first, I imagined it would be more, but our expectations are quickly dampened : they are good friends, period.

When you see all these subplots piling up without being developed, it's a very bad sign. Pure filler masquerading as a slice of life. From episode 3 onwards, I skipped scenes that seemed of dubious interest to me. We have two main female characters, and their friendship or relationship with each other should be at the heart of the story. Not some stupid love triangle with a guy who isn't interested.
The show takes the viewers' time for granted far too much. Between The Murky Stream and this, it's definitely not a great year for Shin Ye-eun.

Also, the pop version of Bach's music, played on the piano, may have its charm for some people, no doubt, and good for them, but not for me. I prefer to listen to Bach himself, if you don't mind, dear composer.

Read More

The song "danse avec moi, jusqu'à la fin du jour, dis-moi je t'aime" (in English : dance with me until the end of the day, tell me you love me) during the operation at the beginning, the discomfort !

The staging, the sterile atmosphere, the rain, it's beautiful. They're not messing with us. Shoulder-mounted cameras, wide shots, transitions from one character to another with a simple movement, they know what they're doing here.
But they need to stop slapping the main character around, it's not acceptable. At the beginning, she spends all her time screaming and exploding with rage, then gets slapped once or twice, we can't keep writing and filming that.
Getting fired because you're infamous is not very credible in this environment. There's no shortage of nasty, self-important doctors. Okay, she kills bad guys on the side, in her spare time... But who hasn't [deleted by moderator] ? Those two are a perfect match. Unfortunately for me, I don't really understand the nature of their relationship: mentor-protégée, enemies-allies. It's too implicit for my little autistic brain. (It wouldn't be the first time.) In the end, I really don't understand why they're doing all this ; the reasons given don't seem coherent.

In terms of storytelling, this series could have been a film. It's obvious. There's too much repetition when everything is already well established in the first episode. It only lasts eight episodes, yet it feels too long. We're stuck at the same stage instead of bringing in new elements or developing the characters.

There's far too much shouting in this series. And I also hate it when we're shown a scene and then the next second it's all cancelled out because it was just a character's imagination. Stop doing that.

Ps : The policeman bears a resemblance to gérald darmanin (writing his name disgusts me), the French Minister of Justice, who admitted in an interview that he exchanged sex with poor women for social housing, using his position as an elected official. We call him "il ne faut pas dire: le sale vi*leur" (in english : don't say: the dirty r*pist). Never bothered by the law, of course, that's France for you, a country where the parties that lose elections stay in power and criminals become ministers. He also makes disgusting mouth noises in interviews, by the way ! like the policeman. This man quotes fascists in his speeches and admires Napoleon's anti-Semitic laws, but strangely enough, no journalist ever asks him about it.
Sorry, I had to get that off my chest. I hate him. A small brain tumour wouldn't hurt him, with all due respect.

Read More

The old CEO has a magnificent Mondrian above his bed, one of his trees, grey, blue and black. Sublime. And a very, very beautiful Soulages in the living room, one of his lithographs, I believe.

Eat the Rich, the series. And on the side of the poor, unlike unbearable series like Succession. Here, it's enjoyable. Often funny. (Except for the strawberry guy's friend, he was never funny. I don't know if it's the actor, but you need to stop that right now, sir, there's only one Johnny Lever.) We love it when a poor girl that no one respects or notices finds herself at the centre of everything and shows all those jerks what she's capable of.

An excellent comedy thriller series, sometimes pushing the boundaries of what is morally acceptable (in episode 4, the heroine goes too far), but Baek Hye-ji is irresistible, like a cat playing with its prey.
When you're going through a rough patch, this kind of short series does you a world of good.

Nevertheless, we are once again faced with the trope of the only rich person in the world who does good around them. If these people really did that, they would make sure they no longer existed.
The police spend all their time following the news and coming to the homes of the rich to arrest them.
Psychiatry is shown for what it is : a tool at the service of the powerful. The slightest problem and quickly : it's my mental health, I'm not responsible. The poor don't get this preferential treatment. On the contrary, we are locked up with this same scam. (As a disabled person, I maybe have a little history with psychiatry)

The series surprised me with some beautiful framing at crucial moments ; the director knows what they're doing. In terms of plot twists, it was always entertaining and surprising. A fine piece of work. Well done, Korean craftsmanship ! Finally, the music wasn't bad at all, composed entirely using Spitfire Audio VSTi, I recognised it, nothing escapes me.
The editorial team (me) solemnly approves a potential season 2.

PS: As for the grandpa, I understood right away, thanks to my cosmic brain : the clues were so subtle that there was no doubt even without paying close attention.

Read More

I wanted to see this series for Lee Ho-Jung because the two times I've come across her this year, she's played roles that were sacrificed or rather sabotaged by the plot. And here I am again with the same cast as the very (very) good ‘As You Stood by’ (2025), incredible. That Kim Nam-gil, what a man.

Here is a western set against the backdrop of the Japanese occupation of Gando/Jiandao, a historically significant place. Joseon and China were fighting over the region when Korea was annexed by Japan, which encouraged many Korean migrants to settle there. The Chinese saw them as cheap labour, while the Japanese wanted to take control of the region and then Manchuria. In defiance of their own treaty imposed on China, they decreed that the Koreans were under their ‘protection’ and logically sent in their police and then their army to ‘protect’ them. Fascists always lie. The Japanese claimed to be victims, notably of an attack (in Hunchun), and ordered their soldiers to destroy the Korean independence army (led by the anarchist Jwa-jin Kim and the communists of the future DPRK led by Hong Beom-do). And so came the Gando massacre. Twenty-seven days.
Twenty-seven days of killing civilians only, at least 5,000, certainly more, and every horror imaginable. A crime against humanity. In fact, revenge against the armed resistance fighters who had won the battle of Qingshanli a few days earlier. (October 1920, 1500 japanese soldiers defeated)
This is the context chosen by this K-drama.

So... The tone of the series, half comedy, half action, disarms me. I don't understand. All the reviews talk about the chemistry between Seohyun and Hojung. Such a heavy and serious subject, and that's all there is to say about it ? We're missing something somewhere. The context is virtually non-existent, just a backdrop. We're treating the premices of a war crime like this as a playground ? Playing cowboys ? With his guitar and whistling ? Robbing stagecoaches ? Excuse me ? Is that the story they want to tell us ?
In fact, the plot is very basic and unsurprising. The first episode (boring as hell but taking malicious pleasure in showing shocking scenes) gives everything away, we know everything. And the action scenes spice up this utterly uninteresting storyline.

In reality, we should see poor people working themselves to death, resistance movements organising themselves, but here we don't see anyone lacking food or even just working... it's almost like a holiday ! We are shown, of course, a few farmers in their small fields, with their children playing happily. Gando is still a bit like Korea surviving despite everything, isn't it ? But, excuse me, it was a region in the midst of industrialisation. They choose to show us the love of the land, the work of the land. It's not innocent. The Koreans who were sent there, they worked in factories and lived in Japanese colonies.

The series say that what precipitates the events leading to the massacres is the personal vendetta of a Korean enlisted in the Japanese army against his former slave, who has become a bandit. He led the Japanese to the scene to take revenge on one man. It was almost against his will that he provoked the deadly escalation. He just loves law and order. At one time he rebelled because the Japanese did not consider him their equal in the army... That was his problem in life. (episode 7)
This rewriting of history, which relegates the fake Hunchun attack to the background (mentioned in passing in the middle of the last episode) and completely erases the left-wing (anarchist and communist) and Protestant (Shinminhoe) guerrilla movements, as well as the Chinese presence, leaves me speechless.

I know why one made that choice, that rewrite. Out of nationalism, we prefer to see a band of merry bandits who love their country and kill Japanese people, rather than the reality : the Korean resistance on the ground was not led by nationalists, and that will never be said or shown ; we talk about "seditious Joseon". True apoliticals. An apolitical revolution, but still quite far to the right of the spectrum...
The nationalist government, that of the Korean elites, the one that would effortlessly take power in 1945 and imprison some resistance fighters, was in Washington, not in Gando. They were rich people organised around the future dictator of Korea, Syngman Rhee. (A quick look at his Wikipedia page is enough to see what kind of nasty piece of work he was).

This is a tale where those who head to Gando, a land of lawlessness, unite as one to protect the homeland of the Koreans. The story is a prelude to the Gando massacre.
We can try to protect ourselves from criticism by saying that it's a fairy tale, but it bears all the ideological hallmarks of nationalist propaganda and has a name : revisionism.

Ps : I'm not just giving my opinion, I'm adding verified historical facts.
And as a pre-emptive response : no, I am not a fan of North Korea. It is an authoritarian and dangerous regime where people literally disappear. I am simply recalling proven and verifiable events relating to the struggles for independence.

Read More

Power corrupts : an illustration. If there was any doubt, the very ending confirms it.

A masterfully crafted political and spy thriller. And above all, a work of great literary quality : the author, Chung Seo-kyung, has written the screenplays for five films by Park Chan-wook. All the elements come together beautifully, keeping us hooked from start to finish. And we navigate grey areas, the ideal decision for these themes. Several times, our protagonists are faced with choices where only the lesser evil seems to be the solution, and all the suspense lies in how they find another way.

The two main characters already have a whole life behind them and strong personalities. It's nice to see people who are solid and know how to set their boundaries. Whether you agree with their decisions or not, you want to see what happens next, to see how they evolve. Some reversals border on grandiloquence, but we accept that. There's constant talk of reunification, given the number of spies in your country, it looks like it's already happened, guys.

"Do you like Proust, madam ?" The most beautiful question in the world. "Ah yes, the madeleine." The worst answer in the world.

Damn the chaebols.

Ps : Episode 3 shows an attack in Paris in 2008, which is pure fiction. Two attacks took place that year, but not here. (the work of pathetic fascists, by the way)
Ps2 : For those with a phobia of telephones, this series is a nightmare, as the phones never stop ringing and vibrating. It stressed me out.
Ps3 : In the last episode, at 41 minutes 29 seconds, the music is a quote from ‘Camille’, Georges Delerue's score for Godard's Contempt. My question is : why ?

Read More