PrettyCarEye

Checked on YouTube. Looks like they're a few, but not really good ones. :/

So despite being a drama I thoroughly enjoyed, it certainly wasn't without a few head scratching moments! And boy oh boy ... those silly ass cliches!

1. Can somebody tell me how Ping An - who was supposedly in a vegetative state after her accident - woke up from such a life threatening situation to take revenge on Rung? I mean, have the producers ever seen a person in a vegetative state? They're practically brain dead & almost in all cases never recovers. And even if they do recover, the effects of the their brain damage will reduce them to a childlike existence. They're never the same person they were before. They would be totally helpless, reliant upon others for their survival & not aware of the world around them, yet Ping An was not only in command of all her faculties, but she also had enough strength to go out & seek revenge. What??? Oh Taiwan, Taiwan ... you pull all these stupid stunts in your dramas ALL.THE.DAMN.TIME! Why? Do you think your audience is stupid? When are you gonna learn??? At least you had the decency to kill her off in the end ... because you basically took a dead woman out of her grave & expected us to buy that shit! Yes, that's exactly what you did!

2. So not only does Ping An return from being a vegetable, isn't it strange that not once does she ever mentions her daughter or ask to see her one last time? Ok, even if you could buy the BS reason they gave for Ping An not wanting to see her own child, esp when she's knows she's knocking at death's door ... somebody please tell me HOW, on her death bed, when she was saying goodbye to Ping Fan ... she even had kind words for Le Gun whom she did not know personally & in fact were enemies with since she killed his partner & he entered her company to seek vengenance against her ... can somebody tell me HOW she could find words for him but not her own her daughter? I mean, NOT.ONE.WORD about the kid! No "please take care of my baby" ... "please keep her away from this dark world that took away her mother" ... absolutely nothing. Zilch! Unbelievable! This was such an oversight on the part of the director, script supervisor & actors. Somebody should have noticed how glaringly inconsistent this was and put in a few lines to address the oversight, because it seems so unnatural that a mother's top concern on her dying day wouldn't be her only child, esp when it was suggested that Ping An was a loving mother to her daughter, despite her lifestyle.

3. Can somebody tell me how Mafia Boss Rung survived so long in the mafia business with such dumb, can't fight for sh-- lieutenants around him? Shit ... I'm shocked somebody didn't whack his ass ages ago! The only decent fighter he had in his ranks was that Thai boxer guy, and though he tried, Tian Xing totally whooped his scrawny ass! All the other henchmen were total trash! He needed to throw the whole lot of them away!

4. Speaking of Tian Xing ... it's interesting to me that the crime that finally landed him in prison was not directly related to his gangster lifestyle. He got locked up for defending his mother. Yup, according to this crazy ass writer who must have been high on the ganja Boss Rong was peddling ... Tian Xing should have just stood there and let Rung shoot his mother. In shooting Rung, Tian Xing was acting in self-defense! He was protecting his family. Was he suppose to just stand by and let the man kill his mother???? Of all the things to send him to prison for ... y'all chose this??? WTF??? No assault (fighting in public), destruction of property, money laundering, gangbanging ... no, you send him to prison for self defense?! Lawd have mercy ...!!! Oh, and the charges? Illegal discharge of a firearm & attempted murder or maybe it was assault with a deadly weapon. In any case, he only got 10 mths in prison. TEN mf'ing MONTHS ... for attempted murder???? Even if it was the lesser charge of assault with a deadly weapon, 10 mths didn't seem very realistic for someone who was a known gangbanger & already had a criminal record!!! I mean, even if Le Jun had pulled strings for him ... are the sentencing guidelines in Taiwan THAT lenient??? I ain't believing it til I see it!

4. Let's talk about Le Jun going blind in the last few episodes. WTF??? Seriously? You just can't stop with the stupid cliches, can't you, Taiwan? Not only is the WAY he got blind totally nonsensical, Weber Yang's act as a blind man was wholly unconvincing! I mean, dude went around with his eyes squinted shut. Bahaha .... it looked so fake! I was embarrassed for him. Where was the director to tell him to stop that shit! If he can't realistically fake being blind - like Kingone Wang in Someone Like You - give him a pair of dark glasses or something to work with, for peace sake! But to have him go around squinting his eyes like ... heck, I don't even know what to say ... then expect your audience to actually believe he's blind when you can clearly see he's not was so laughable to me! I was glad they gave him back his sight in the end because they reduced a brave, heroic guy like Le Jun to a total chump with this pretending to be blind foolishness . And speaking of giving him back his sight ...

5. This guy had a cornea transplant & was back to normal as if he'd never gone blind in 30 secs tops! WHAT???!!! First, you gave him the eyes of his sworn enemy, Ping An. But not one word about how RISKY and unlikely to succeed such a complicated procedure as a cornea transplant is!!! Moreover WHY was this even necessary at all. Le Jun never should have gone blind in the first place! It's so stupid and adhering to ALL the same old tired cliches! It would have been more realistic if he'd gotten shot & his life was on the line. That would have been way more convincing, but no, you just had to have him go blind in the most idiotic way known to man, then have the actor fail badly at pretending to be blind then resolving the matter with the same weak ass cliche ... I wish I could just slap the sh-- out of the writers! I mean, what the hell are you guys thinking??? Aren't you tired of using these dumb ass troupes! Y'all did the same damn thing in Someone Like You ... with that dumb heart transplant BS. Do you know how risky and life-threatening transplants are, esp very serious ones such as these???? Le Sigh ...

6. The ending scene ... the wedding. Mickey was there, but again no sign of the little girl, who still believes Ping Fan is her real mother. Why would a daughter not be present, at centre stage, in her own mother's wedding??? Why wasn't this little girl's part in the drama executed better. There were several times throughout the drama where she was glaringly missing from scenes she definitely should have been a part of. Bad. Bad.Bad!!!

7. Last but certainly not least because this is something I'm perpetually complaining about when it comes to Asian dramas. Can somebody tell me why in 2018, with only 4 weeks left until 2019, are we still having fake kissing in dramas? Listen, I'm NOT looking for the raunchiness of Western TV, but I feel like this fake kissing plague in Asian dramas never goes away.

When the characters don't act according to type, it totally ruins the drama for me. Here you have this virile, highly sexy & attractive man who is head over heels for this beautiful girl ... who admittedly is probably a virgin by the way she's portrayed but still ... Jing Xiao was also portrayed as virginal but she and Tian Xing totally had sex before he went to prison & had at least one decent kiss throughout the drama. So what the #¤&/"! were the leads doing brushing lips like little kids in kindergarten? I mean, really, Taiwan???? When are you going to grow the heck up? I know culturally you have to thread lightly when it comes to skinship, but come on ... all that dumbass lip brushing/lip pressing nonsense between two grown ass people who supposedly are soooo in love with one another, DOES THAT MAKE SENSE TO YOU????!!!!

Shiiit, even when they did show them having an intimate encounter it looked sooooo unrealistic and FAKE as F....!!! Come on! You can afford to show a real kiss in 2018! And this wasn't just the 1st couple. The 2nd couple's kisses were also terrible (I mean, pursed lip kissing is NOT a notch above lip brush kissing!!! wtf!!!), but at least you gave us 1 decent kissing session and that semi decent 1 of them in the movie theatre. But overall ...??? DISAPPOINTED!!! This type of drama depends on sizzling chemistry between the leads to work well. And REALISTIC intimacy plays a HUGE part in that. When you take it away or leave it out all together, and only depend on non-intimate dynamic between the leads, it's just super unconvincing, esp in that honeymoon stage of love when - if you've ever been in love or a relationship before - you KNOW ain't nobody going around lip brushing! If you ain't raw boning each other like bunnies, you WILL be partaking in some tongue gymnastics daily! So I just can't suspend belief on this sh--! Sorry, not sorry ... I'm all the way too grown! I know other people might be totally fine with no kissing at all, but not me. So I guess as long as Asian dramas keep this madness up, I'll be here complaining! Y'all better get used to it! :p

A few nonsensical occurrences notwithstanding (see spoiler rant below), this was a decent show, one of the better T-dramas with equal amounts of action, drama & romance. It has pseudo crime/gangster elements but this isn't a gangster drama in the same vein as say Cruel City. It's a romantic drama set against the backdrop of the underworld, but without all the dark grittiness. You get two great love story arcs with dashing, protective men who dote on their women. While the drama is not free of the usual cliches (when are they ever?) & lacks enough decent kisses between the couples, esp the leads, (soooo tired of lip touching kisses in 2018, wth!!!), this show felt fresh in some way to me.

I think what made it so watchable was the realistic development of the relationships between the two couples (there's also a 3rd couple who is not as central as the others, but pretty cute as well). Sometimes when I watch dramas, esp T ones, I always feel like they wait unnecessarily long to bring the couples together romantically, but here the romance developed organically & at a realistic pace. The characters fell in love & acted on their feelings at just the right moment you'd expect them to. This made their romance fun to watch rather than frustrating & tedious. I just wished there were some better kisses overall. The sterile physical interactions between the main couple, despite an amazing chemistry between two, caused their romance to be somewhat eclipsed by the 2nd couple (not that their kisses were much better, but their interactions felt more intimate & brought on the feels a lot quicker than the leads). 8/10

I see that many people preferred the 2nd couple, but the girl got on my nerves. Too immature and spoiled for my liking, and her supposed 'feistiness' was more annoying than a positive personality trait from where I sat. IMO, the role was miscast, so that made their romance a tad less enjoyable for me. The 1st couple, on the other hand, I loved them both & I thought they had amazing chemistry, but I agree we didn't really get to see much of it in the latter half of the show (when it should have been burning). I was very disappointed the director had them kissing like they were virginal teenagers ... ::eyeroll:: I think that foolishness contributed to the waning of that great chemistry we saw between them in the beginning. Anyway, regardless of this I still enjoyed watching them. I loved their banter & how they watched out for & took care of each other. They gave me the fuzzies, which is exactly what a show like this is supposed to do. The strawberry couple was cute, but my least favourite. The guy was adorable, but such a goof (how did he get as job as anyone's bodyguard?) lol Mickey was great, tho! A highly watchable show, despite some head scratching plot holes!

The way I interpreted the pleasuring scene ... was that he was just mourning Hye Mi and he conjured up a comforting thought of her comforting him (and of course since he's a young red blooded man ... that comfort she gives him is sexual).

The writing scene ... I didn't really think much of it. But now that I do, from my viewpoint it seems inconsequential. It may be that he finally felt inspired to write a story. That having decided to eliminate Ben he got increased energy to write. I don't know ... you might also be right.

I think the movie tried to show us that Jong Soo is a decent guy, but also that he's a man who, under the right circumstances is capable of murder, if he feels that's the only recourse left to him.

This mysterious situation brought out that deeply buried side of his personality, that he hardly allows anyone to see or that he himself may not have been aware he possessed (which is why he - JS - also looked shocked & appalled at his own actions) ... however, he kept carrying out the murder to avenge Hye Mi and give her justice.

I think your interpretation of Ben is interesting. I had forgotten about that plastic surgery part, but it's plausible because plastic surgery is so prevalent in South Korea and that could very well be how he acquired his wealth & the meaning of what he meant when he said he 'renews' women.

At the same time, though, something stinks about him. And as they say, where there is smoke, there has to be a fire. Ben - in my gut - is a psychopath. You see it in the way he behaves, the way he detaches himself from a roomful of people, there but not ... just observing ... with that odd smirk on his face, a predator hunting prey. I think he is a murderer, even though the evidence is too circumstantial.

I think that's why JS took matters into his own hands and eliminated his ass, because this case would never hold up in court. There's no body, no witnesses, we have no idea if he - Ben - was the last person to see HM alive. Nothing conclusive ties him to Hye Mi's disappearance -- there is just a strong gut feeling, a burning suspicion. Indeed we don't even know that Hye Mi is actually dead. Yes, her cat & her watch are in his place, but so what? From all indications, Hye Mi & Ben were sleeping together so it's only natural that some of her things are in his place. That's what Ben is likely to tell the police, should they start investigating.

Moreover, remember when she & Ben visited JS's farm, JS got mad at her for exposing herself in front of Ben and called her a whore. She was mad at him when she left & may not want to speak to him again for disrespecting her in that way. That's why she changed her number & blocked his calls. I'm thinking that's what the police would say to JS.

What's more, Hye Mi was a free spirited woman who could take off at a moment's notice without telling anyone where she was going (remember not even her family knew that she had gone to Africa or that she had gone missing at all ... they even said that she was always borrowing money from them & disappearing). So the cops will probably dismiss JS if he tried to report it, saying she's probably off traveling somewhere. Adults are allowed to disappear, if they want to.

So JS decides to kill Ben instead.

I agree that Ben appeared genuinely surprised when he was stabbed, but that's because just like us - the audience - he never imagined this quiet, unassuming loser guy who appears to be afraid of his own shadow (as he likely sees JS) has the balls to do anything like this.

And that's why the murder was so shocking & could possibly be so hard to understand. In truth, JS is representative of people who are always underestimated by others because they appear shy and easily pushed over, but these same people can be a force to be reckoned with, when provoked. As Ben found out.
Plus as the saying goes, still waters run deep. Very deep. If you fall into them, you will surely drown ... even if you can swim.

I just finished watching The Masked Lover & the second lead couple had an awesome romance in which this gangster guy fell head over heels for this nurse & pursued her relentlessly (in a sexy, but sometimes laughter inducing manner). I loved the look on his face whenever he tried to woo her, always asking her to be his woman & taking a lot of bad pick up lines & advice from his henchmen on how to win her over. It also helps that he's hot as hell. I didn't really fancy the actress who played his lady love, though. If it were up to me, I'd've chosen a different female lead for him (as I thought the character was too spoiled, self-absorbed & immature for such a charismatic man), but he made up for her shortcomings. By the end she grated less on my nerves, though I still didn't like her. The second male lead, with all his charm & gangster swagger, made it fun to watch their love develop & grow. So for people who are into this particular troupe, this drama is a much watch!

What makes you say that? It felt chillingly real to me. I think while Jong Soo is presented as this pure, quiet guy ... the title of the film is illustrative of his inner workings. A lot about him burns under the surface. Committing such a chilling murder and driving off naked as the day he was born in his truck is not something you'd associate with him just by looking at how he presents himself to the world.

But throughout the film we do see that he's a man that's burning - burning with lust/passion for Hye Mi (hence the reason why we always see him masturbating), burning with curiosity about this mysterious guy who is stealing away the girl he loves right before his eyes & he can't do a goddamn thing about it. Then ... burning with disbelief at what Ben later confesses to him (hence the numerous sequences of shocked running around, trying to find out if he really burned down any of the greenhouses in the area). This burning disbelief culminates into a burning suspicion (that Ben may indeed be an evil monster who killed Hye Mi & possibly others), and then finally a burning rage once he finally convinces himself that ... yeah, this son of bitch did kill her and is likely a serial killer. So in that sense, I definitely think the ending happened for real and that it showed the true nature of Jong Soo (a man capable of murder) ... despite his quiet, unassuming outward persona.

Therefore, what I'm left wondering about is not so much Jong Soo's actions, but Ben's. Aside from the apparent 'throphies' he keeps in his bathroom drawer & a somewhat narcissistic personality ... can we really conclude that he's a cold-blooded murderer? Or is he just a rich, self-absorbed, narcissistic philanderer who simply sees women as objects to be used sexually & discarded (dumped, though not necessarily killed)? That is the question I think the film presents to the audience. It's certainly the question I'm left with.

The amateur sleuth in me says we weren't presented with enough raw, conclusive evidence to indict him of any crime, but the circumstantial evidence was pretty strong ... which is what led Jong Soo to do what he did & why he remained a sympathetic character after committing such a heinous act at the end of the film.

What do you think of my analysis? I read your review and liked it. This is indeed an awesome film to dissect!

Have you ever been married? In real life, there is rarely ever a happy ending! That is why they're needed in dramas. Stop knocking happy endings. You can write your review without throwing shade at what you don't understand (I'm trying to practice what I preach as well).

It's a mystery. You're the detective. You gotta figure sh-- out for yourself cuz the killer isn't just gonna hand himself over to you, you know. It's that kinda movie. And it's fantastically crafted and executed.

This is not a movie for the casual viewer. It's a movie that's well suited for students of film as an art form and/or the connoisseurs of cinema. As I like to say, a typical filmmaker's film. If you also like dabbling in amateur sleuthing, then this is definitely a movie for you too. Most of y'all won't understand, but for those who do ... this is brilliant!

Gurrlll!!!

Dæbak! This drama has more twists and turns than a tornado!

Bahahaha, WTF did I just read?

Ha Jung Woo has that magnetic effect that steals every scene he's in! I remember the same thing happened to me when I first discovered him in 2012. I've loved him since. He has such a charismatic screen presence!

Unfortunately not much. He plays Kim Tan's older brother and has his own romantic arc, but gets very little screen time. Such a disappointment because aside from scenes with him you can basically throw away the rest of that silly ass drama.

You and me both! This drama sounds pure trash!

Thank you for this article! I've been eyeing this drama, wondering if I should watch it. I usually don't like anything that has to do with matrimonial chaos, period. And esp not when it involves cheating, because as a whole adult in my mid 30s (and with some amount of life experience) ... I don't want more of the bitterness of life in my entertainment. I want to escape it for a while, to an extent.

This seemed like an easygoing romcom and something I might've enjoyed, but your article now confirms for me that it is not. In fact, it sounds like everything I avoid in my dramas. I like slice of life, but not when its too heavily focused on super negative, anger inducing things like cheating. I love shows that analyze the hardship of marriage/relationships, but I prefer when the conflict is internal between the couple, rather than external (as in cheating). Interpersonal relationships are hard all on their own. It's hard to get along with other people, esp ones you love. So relationships don't always need outside influences to complicate and/or destroy them. As the saying goes "I/we can do bad all by myself/ourselves".

I like watching the couple struggle to figure stuff out and eventually everything gets better and they move on to live a reasonably happy life together. In real life, I know the majority of relationships will also involve cheating, but this is exactly why I don't want to watch that! Life, as you rightfully noted, can be brutal. Dramas for me are an escape from this brutality. I do want my shows to be realistic, not all sunshine & rainbows, but I'm picky about what they should be realistic about. Anything that stir up too many negative emotions is a no-go. I'm also probably the only person in MDL history who doesn't like noona romances! LOL

So I'm grateful because I hate wasting my time and energy on dramas that don't suit my tastes. Moreover, while I've started to drop a lot more dramas now than I did previously, dropping is still not something I can't do lightly. If I start something, I'm usually compelled to finish it. It's a bad habit I have. Oh, and sorry this got so long-winded! Another bad habit of mine! :)

One of the most epic comments I've read on here in a long time! LOL

The hypocrisy is real!
I don't really care one way or the other, what you like is what you like. It's none of my business, but this is what has always frustrated me about MDL. Most people on here don't seem to have any critical thinking ability. People just fall for anything "in fashion" - hook, line & sinker. Then go crazy at anyone who doesn't think like them. Noona romances, both in real life & in tv shows, are all the rage in Korea right now so people on here swoon over these dramas, but love to bash dramas in which the ML is older. Smdh! Now I'm starting remember why I put this site a hiatus for 2 yrs. I might have to consider doing so again!