PrettyCarEye

Wow, that trailer was scary af! .... I'm a tough broad, I don't scare easily ... but damn! Some of those sequences gave me chills! I don't like Song Dong Il ahjussi, but I think I'mma have to watch this (with all the lights turned on and a house full of people). Looks like quality horror.

Regardless of how old the comment is, what is, in fact, presumptuous is you thinking that you have the right to tell anyone what they can and can not respond to on a public forum. If you're going to get offended because someone responds to your public comments, perhaps stop leaving public comments? How about that? As long as your comments are public, they're subjected to people responding to them. Better get used to that idea sooner rather than later.

Furthermore, I completed the drama a few hours ago & just wanted to share some of my immediate impressions with someone. It doesn't matter how old a comment is (as long as the user is still active on MDL). After all, it's not the comment I'm seeking a convo with, but the poster.

Finally, the drama was indeed never a thriller. It was always a mystery. You interpreted the genre wrong (albeit because movies and dramas are often mistagged on this site). Your comment didn't acknowledge your misinterpretation as YOUR mistake, instead you blamed the drama for being a mystery when you expected it to be a thriller.

In my comment to you, I politely pointed out that it was never a thriller & said that the mistagging that often occur on this site have led me astray too. So, again, I wasn't criticizing your mistake, but pointing out that it has happened to me too and how annoying it is. Maybe if you weren't so busy looking for a reason to be offended, you'd have more accurately interpreted what I was saying.

Great review! You summed up all the reasons why I didn't like this show and dropped it after 6 episodes. The female lead rubbed me the wrong way from ep 1. I didn't like the way she intruded on the ML's life -- showing up at his job unannounced, naming his cat etc - then had the audacity to be angry at him when he told her he didn't appreciate her overstepping her boundaries. I mean, she'd literally JUST moved into this man's house & already she was acting like they were in a real relationship. Just because she decided that she liked him, how dare he not like her back immediately & appreciate her 'grand gestures of affection'? I was like, b*t*ch, please! Get your head out of your ass, ffs! She was very entitled and had a victim mentality that made her believe people, esp the ML, owed her something. I seriously can't stand characters (or people irl) like this so I had to drop this drama quick. Glad I did because when I read how she treated him in the end I was even more pissed. I've also blacklisted the actress because she seems to play the same role in every drama.

Ryo's character is a very realistic portrayal of how a lot of men behave. It's also a realistic reflection of how many women behave in dealing with men like Ryo. Ryo was dark, aloof, mysterious and sexy ... your typical bad guy. The women wanted to possess him and nurture him and make him love them.

Maybe most men aren't out here manipulating women into committing murder, but manipulating their emotions, stringing them along and making them (the women) believe they love them, just like Ryo did .... typical male behaviour (for many men). However, in addition to being manipulative, Ryo had a sociopathic component to his personality. Men like him prey on vulnerable women with low self-esteem, and while he never explicitly told either of the women to commit murder, he planted ideas in their heads where violence became the only option they had to be with him.

He was a master manipulator ... some might even call him a psychopath, but the reason why I hesitate to call him that is because psychopaths don't feel emotions AT ALL, under any circumstances. Ryo, as it turned out, had emotions, but his childhood trauma hurt him so badly that his emotions became stunted (as he said in one episode, he stopped feeling & expressing emotions so that he wouldn't get hurt). When he met Yuko he started to awaken emotionally. Sadly, Ryo was a toxic force - death followed all the women who was involved with him - Yuki attempted suicide but was saved, Miwa succeeded in her suicide, the rich woman was murdered (by Ryo) and finally Yuko committed suicide so she can go be with him in death. He was absolutely a force to be reckoned with!

You've probably forgotten all about this, but just wanted to say this wasn't a thriller at all, but a mystery. The 'thriller' tag is often misused & put on pure mysteries without thought ... I know because I've been fooled by it a time or two before. Anyway, seen in the context of a mystery - not a thriller or even a psychological thriller - I think this drama lived up to its rightful genre (mystery). I was mystified by Ryo's character to the very end. Was he a diabolical murderer or wasn't he? I think the writer did a good job of maintaining the enigma that surrounded him very well. It was only at the last few mins of show that we find out that he had in fact never killed anyone before the rich woman (though he was an accessory to the murders the women committed). He was just a master manipulator with sociopathic tendencies.

I just finished it. She did find out that he was her brother. I think Ryo was contemplating suicide, so he wrote a letter to the detective confessing everything (manipulation of the women, covering the crime scenes & murdering that rich woman). He also mentioned that he's lived his life until meeting Yuko without feeling emotions (for anything or anyone), but when Yuko came along, he fell in love for the first time & felt regular human emotions such as sadness and happiness for the first time. However, when he found out that they were blood related, his world went dark again and he didn't know what to do. Yuko read this letter after she shot him, so in the end she did know everything. I don't think she killed herself out of mere guilt, that's probably a part of it but I also think that she still loved him (as a man, not a brother) and didn't want to live without him. So she went to go be with him in death.

It wasn't all of a sudden though. You may have watched it a long time ago and don't remember, but she had seriously considered killing him before, with that same shotgun. It was in an earlier episode, when they were at the gun range practicing skeet shooting. Her finance goes over to a phone booth to take a call, she has the gun in her hand. It's unloaded, but as moments go by and she recalls how he's a nuisance in her life ... she puts two buckshots in the gun and slowly raises it in the direction of her finance. Luckily, her father came up to talk to her before she could pull the trigger.

The killing was definitely Miwa's doing, that previous incident shows that she had at least contemplated it, but Ryo was definitely the ammunition that made her finally do it. Even without Ryo in the picture, Miwa was very clearly emotionally disturbed. She had no control over her own life & felt suffocated in that rich family. She was naive & susceptible to suggestion. Sadly for her manipulative sociopaths like Ryo prey on women like her. And that's exactly what he did - he toyed with and manipulated her emotions, to the point where he didn't even have to explicitly tell her to off her finance. He just had to plant a few nonsense ideas in her head to push her over the edge: "If only Kawagaski-san wasn't in the picture, we could be together forever". Then when she took her own life, he just moved on to the next woman (her BFF) like she never existed at all. Wow!

This is the movie in which LMO actually showed that he can act. No cookie cutter rich chæbol role here, but something raw and visceral .... that forced him out of that comfort zone he's gotten so used to. I had no respect for him as an actor before I saw this movie.

I am not the biggest fan of Lee Min Ho. I am probably not a fan at all. I don't think he challenges himself as an actor. He takes the roles that will line his pockets. The roles where he always plays the sexy rich dreamboat that fangirls go wild over. So I was never convinced that he could really act, and as a result never had much respect for him. But I changed my mind slightly when I saw him in Gangnam 1970. This movie actually showed he had some acting chops hidden behind all the cookie cutter roles he's played so far. He went out of his comfort zone to portray a character that had more than one dimension. It showed me that if he wanted to ... he has the talent to really play a complex character that will make you sit up & take notice. But when your entire image is built on playing one stereotypical character (the arrogant chæbol) after the other, I can imagine his handlers forcing him to conform to being typecast because these roles are 'safe' and they know that it sells. Afterall, why fix a thing if it isn't broken? I hope this drama will allow us to see a 'different' LMH, like Gangnam 1970 did. However, given that writer, Kim Eun Sook, is hardly known to go outside of the mainstream, I'll curb my enthusiasm. She kinda suffers from the same ailment as LMO, in that she creates mainstream projects for a mass audience. This means there's hardly any real substance to her works. But maybe this is the drama that will be different? I won't hold my breath....

Yeah, it's annoying af! But that's K-entertainment for you. I guess this is what local audiences like, and us international viewers just have to suck it up. But yeah man, it annoys me when they totally derail a good concept with unnecessary melodrama.

They did the same thing in Trap. I was so looking forward to watching that drama because the plot sounded so interesting & they had the perfect leading man in Lee Seo Jin because he was literally made for his role, except he turned out not to be the lead but more of a supporting character. And instead of a taut, fast-paced thriller about catching a diabolical killer, what we got was a sappy melodrama about some old, washed up cop and his family drama. Catching the killer almost became a secondary thing, when it should have been the sole focus of the drama, esp with only 7 episodes. I was so mad at how they totally botched the show!

This was the problem I had with The Dude In Me too. They had more than enough material to create a good, funny story ... I mean, how much more funny would it have been, seeing the kid having to navigate a gangster's world & vice versa? They did to a minor extent, but not enough, imo. That would have been way funnier than all the focus that was put on the gangster & his babymama drama.

You must be very young indeed.

It is really the case unfortunately. About 2 - 3 years ago, 2 separate cases of people being run over on roads in China and no one stopping to help went viral in Western media. In the first video a woman was walking on a snow-covered residential road and a car ran her over. People in the surrounding apartments can be seen looking down at her lying in the street, unconscious, hurt & bleeding but no one came out of their apartments to render aid! This woman later died.

In another video, a woman was crossing the street ON A PEDESTRIAN WALK and a van ran her over! Of course, the driver didn't stop, but what was most shocking was that this happened on a busy street with lots of people around. NO ONE went to the woman's aid, in fact she was left lying in the middle of the street so that another vehicle came along & ran over her again!!! The driver of the 2nd vehicle did not stop either. It was later revealed that the woman could have survived the first hit had someone pulled her out of the street and unto the sidewalk for eg. But people walked pass, saw the woman lying in the middle of the street and did not even make an attempt to divert oncoming traffic so she wouldn't get hit a 2nd time. Instead they left her there to be ran over twice! When I saw that video I was shocked to my core!

But I'm not done. Another incident of a little girl walking in a market. A minivan came out of nowhere & ran the child over. She was lying in the middle of the marketplace & people just rode pass on their bicycles and walked pass her as if she wasn't there! No one rendered aid .... TO A CHILD!!! And I didn't see anyone on their cellphones to indicate anyone was calling for help.

If I didn't see the video of these incidents with my own two eyes, I wouldn't have imagined people could be so callous! I'm sure if you google these cases they'll come up. They all happened in China, however, I've heard that people behave the exact same way in Korea and Japan and pretty much in the entire region because there is a culture of not wanting to take on the responsibility for the person whose life you could potentially save so it's better to let them die. Wow, just recalling this raises my blood pressure!

It is extremely typical in Asian societies to turn a blind eye to someone in need. There have been horrendous incidents caught on tape all across the region where people have been hit by buses and cars, and people just walk pass the victim without rendering aid, not even calling police or an ambulance. It's shocking!

I heard that in China, people don't give aid because if the person survives they're responsible for that person's medical bills for as long as the person lives (or something to that effect). It's one of those cultural phenomena that's totally incomprehensible to most people in the Western hemisphere! Not to say that we're any better, but the suggestion that it is better to let someone die rather than help them because you don't want to be straddled with the responsibility of their medical bills is just mindboggling to me! First of all, why does one become responsible for that person forever just for helping to save their life? I don't know who tf comes up with these stupid ass rules, but they're dumb af! Human life should always take precedence!

So what happened to the killer? Did he die? I can't remember them clarifying that at the end?

And what about Pil-gu (Cola), did he survive?

Also who was the woman in the truck that was eventually murdered by the killer? I understood that she had a creepy stalker, who was the fall guy for the murderer. But we never got an explanation about her relation to him. Or was she just a random victim? How did she get into his crosshairs?

Either I totally zoned out parts of this movie or there were a few holes the writer forgot to fill.

Decent psychological thriller about civil responsibility, but I'm left with a few head scratching questions....


P.S.: Watch this on kissasian, the subs are much, much better. The version that's on dramacool, the subs are barely comprehensible.

So what happened to the killer? Did he die? I can't remember them clarifying that at the end?
And what about Pil-gu (Cola), did he survive? Either I totally zoned out parts of this movie or there were a few holes the writer forgot to stop up.

I've seen The Dude In Me .... I didn't particularly care for it because typical for Korean shows it delved off into melodramatic territory pretty quick with the gangster and his backstory, which I found totally BORING. Had it stayed focused on the comedy of the swap, their present lives (without the backstory melodrama) and all the wild situations that could have arisen from that, I personally would have enjoyed it more. But Koreans love their melodrama so I shouldn't have been surprised.

I'll check out your other recs, but I'll probably prioritize TGB. I find these days I'm in the mood for more action/adventure type shows that really suck you in with its narrative and action scenes. When I watch slower, more contemplative shows, like the Japanese love to make, I fall asleep so I'll wait with the other two until my mood shifts again.

Did you watch this drama? Did it have a happy ending? I guess not ...?

I've been eyeing this drama for years, but I just can't bring myself to start it because of Moon Geun Young. Her face is very offputting to me as well, and I've often lamented the fact that another actress wasn't cast. The drama's plot seems interesting, but I've tried to watch MGY in a couple of other shows previously and couldn't get pass my aversion to her so I haven't bothered trying to start this. What a pity .... maybe one day!

Damn!