PowerLN

Look, I hate it that whenever people start criticizing a drama, a whole of army of commenters appear to request people to drop it.

I have no problems with the FL or with how they portray mental health. But rather with the pace. What did we really learn from this episode? The first episode, we learnt about the characters. Last episode, we were gifted with the butterfly and their shared history. But this episode was straight up filler. Normally I would be able to overlook it (it is 16 episodes after all), but this is TVN and Studio Dragon/Story TV. Their recipe is to pull you in with 2-3 stellar episodes, but then they leave a big turd on your head. They did it with When My Love Blooms, Hi Bye Mama etc. But this one seems to have peaked already at episode 2! I will continue to watch it, but jeez... For such a high-budget and well-directed drama, you cannot serve something as episode 3 to us... I think it is okay to vent my frustration right?

You can do whatever you want. I just wanted to make you aware that it has a different, more offensive meaning as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gook It is like the "n-word" to Asians... It is better to use "Guk" instead of "Gook"

Haha... The opposite also does not work... Low viewership ratings do not equal quality either... Ratings are a good gauge for star power and popularity though

Question, totally irrelevant to the whole conversation, but why on hell is your name "Gook". Do you even know what that word means? Yes, it means "country" in Korean, but also something totally different...

My taste is super-Korean, so when I was watching both, I knew Backstreet Rookie would do better (sure it is still cable versus public channels, so technically Psycho is doing better), but BR is getting stronger every episode. I knew the show was resilient, because it managed to survive hell week (episode 1). Psycho saw a meltdown from episode 1 to 2, which made me already suspicious. Predicting viewership ratings and Baeksang winners become easy when you acquire the Korean taste. They have the most uniform taste out there

This show is gaining momentum in terms of viewership ratings. 8.3% today.

Viewership ratings are out, my gut feeling about both Backstreet Rookie and this show is correct. The first one has momentum (8.3%). This one not... It recorded 5.9%.

Look, I am not a big fan of these theatrical long posts, but I agree with you that this story is missing something. Someone mentioned it already that it is a TVN/Studio Dragon-curse. Stellar two or three episodes and then a very so-so part afterwards. Viewership ratings Backstreet Rookie at all time high (8%+) and this show 5.9%. My gut feeling is never lying.

No, I am dead serious

Seo Ye Ji is not a bad actress. From the younger ones (post-1990s), she is one of the better ones, but when she needs to act psycho she definitely misses the subtleness. I think that Kim Hye Soo, Jun Ji Hyun or Son Ye Jin are definitely better actresses and can play a crazy, obsessive character much better. The problem is that when this show ends, people will hype her so much.

Imagine next year's Baeksang nominations for best actresses. She will probably not win (just like Park Seo Joon, IU or Son Ye Jin this year) and people will belittle the other actresses and write stories about how the Baeksang-jury is blind... I can already predict all the "she got robbed"-comments. Just my two cents.

I have the feeling that I am watching a different show than the rest of MDL. Episode 1 was beautiful but boring, episode 2 pulled me back in, but episode 3 was straight up boring with loads of filler (only the ending and the camping van story were good).

The show is okay, but definitely not a masterpiece. My taste is normally very similar with the average Korean, so I expect the ratings to be abysmal this week (certainly for episode 4) as well. I am not sure about episode 3, because episode 2 was quite good. But I found it tough to get through the first part of episode 3, so I would not be surprised if many people turned their TVs off. Not sure if this will be reflected in today's ratings.

It is because you have to look further than only the numbers. This show is heavily criticized and one would expect a freefall in ratings. Sure last week Saturday was 0.1% higher than Friday, but Saturday ratings are always higher. It is like ice cream sales in the winter vs summer. If you can sell equal amounts in the winter as the summer, then you are doing much better than expected. Since the Friday ratings are similar to Saturday, in essence BR manages to sell the same amount of ice cream in the winter than in the summer.

All the hyped shows that opened higher (TKEM, KSH's new show) fell by the second and third episodes. The fact that this show is able to retain it viewership and even score higher for the first episode on Friday vs its previous broadcasts means that it is building momentum. It is following Stove League's, When The Camellia Blooms' patterns.

Also, it is true that there are no other dramas airing, but they are competing with variety shows. These variety shows annihilated TKEM, who for 50% of its broadcasts also did not have competition from other dramas either. BR apparently manages to holds its grounds against variety shows, as it viewership is relatively stable