PrettyCarEye

Heirs -- what an atrocious pile of horse sh--.
I wouldn't touch the other two dramas with a ten foot pole.

Dongsængi, does she die? I can't watch this if she does, not even for our sexy ahjussi.

Heirs by far is one of her worse dramas, and being familiar with her work I think it's partly because she was not writing for her usual demographic. Heirs was everything I hate about k-dramas: dumb cliches, juvenile character behaviour n development, bad acting from over hyped hallyu stars n the list goes on. It's a pity many people came to know her through that drama. I didnt like Secret Garden. Thought it was only slightly better than Heirs.

Thank you for this! I have a love hate relationship with Kim Eun Sook unnie, but you hit the nail square on the head with all the reasons why she deserves a lot more credit than she often gets. While she doesnt always live up to my expectation in terms of cast and plot, she delivers on creating adult characters who may act a bit silly from time to time, but isnt dumbed down, desexualized and juvenile like 3/4 of other k-dramas. She also uses a lot of standard cliches but not in the usual way that insults your intelligence and makes you feel like a freakin' moron for wasting your life watching trash. She creates logical situations in which the cliches make sense. You dont find this in even half of k-dramas. For that alone I think she deserves huge props.

So I was right, you are not familiar with this writer's work.

I've never understood the tendency for people to watch shows they know they are not likely to enjoy and then whine about it and unfairly down rate the show afterward. Hence the comment. Clearly the products of this writer's imagination are not to your collective liking so what makes you think any drama of hers would be significantly different from another in terms of design and attributes? Identifable patterns and traits are the hallmarks of true artists.

My point wasn't whether she writes romance well or not -- that's subjective and up to each viewer. My point was about her SPECIALTY, which is the rom com / romantic drama genre, NOT the backdrops she sets her stories on. She also creates fairly decent, adult characters whilst other writers have a tendency to infantilize their characters, something this reviewer (unfairly, imo) criticized the writer for. If you can't suspend belief about what you perceive as 'unrealistic backgrounds' and enjoy the romance -- which is always her main focus -- or you don't enjoy the way she does romance, then you have no business watching the shows of this writer. THAT was the point.

"This writer is not well-known for writing interesting or compelling characters. See Heirs for example. This was an exception."

Perhaps not known to YOU, right? I can't see someone who is familiar with Kim Eun Sook's work making such a statement and indeed when I checked your list I see that aside from Heirs and DotS, you have not watched other dramas of hers. Therefore, I find it a bit far reaching to make such a bold statement about her ability or lack thereof when you have such limited experience with her body of work.

I've seen several of her dramas: Lovers (a favourite), A Gentleman's Dignity (liked), City Hall (loved), Secret Garden (disliked), Heirs (hated), Lovers in Prague (disliked). Reasonably well developed characters and a more grown up type of romance (compared to most other K-dramas in the same genre at least) are her hallmarks, even though she doesn't shy away from using well-known cliches -- however, to her credit usage of these cliches are normally more logical, and thus more palatable, than usual.

Another thing that I see people tend to misunderstand about this writer is that she is a writer of romantic drama (genre) and romantic comedy, and she likes setting her love stories against interesting backdrops that strikes her fancy. In Lovers, it was the gangster world, in City Hall it was politics, in Secret Garden it was business, in DotS it's crisis situations & war zones and so on.

When people criticize her for not writing realistically or compellingly enough about these backdrops, it's because they're ignorant of her style. She doesn't have expert knowledge in any of the backdrops she uses, she specializes in writing ROMANCE. As such a lot of creative liberties with how compelling & realistically portrayed the backdrops upon which she presents her love stories are taken. And viewers should suspend their belief accordingly and enjoy the ROMANCE.

This is what many viewers tend not to understand about her shows. People go into her dramas expecting the backdrops to play a more central and realistic role than intended, when in fact they are simply what they are ... backdrops. The focus of her dramas is always the romance. Therefore, if you don't like romance on a whole, you won't like her dramas.

Heirs happens to be the worse of her dramas that I have seen. In that drama she departed from all her usual signatures to accommodate a new demographic of viewers that she doesn't normally writes for. A pity if your first experience with her work was with Heirs, no wonder you made such an unfounded statement about her inability to write good characters, when in fact very practical, grown up & sober characters are one of her most identifiable hallmarks.

You're a real riot. I did not 'attack' anyone in any way. I simply stated an obvious fact, which any mature person knows is the truth. Because, indeed, if I like a show a lot less than you or vice versa that doesn't always translate to either of us being a so-called 'hater'.

The word 'hater' is too often thrown around by whiny, infantile people with self-esteem issues who can't handle that others think their favourite shows suck! Lots of people think one of my all time favourite dramas, Lovers, stinks, but who gives a shit. I only care about MY enjoyment, not what anyone else thinks, so I don\t need to lash out at other people who don\t like it as much as I do and call them haters.

If pointing out that simple truth is an 'attack' in your estimation then that says a lot more about you than me. I stand by the comment. If you or anyone else don't like it, that's your business, not mine. Cheers.

Read the rules. The written language on this site is ENGLISH. Not Chinese.

If you're Jiro Wang, why do you need subs?

Are you kidding me? You call this a review??? smdh

Well said and this is exactly why I'm never a fan of fresh faced boys being paired with mature - looking noonas (if she has a baby face like him, it's not too bad). For me the chemistry is just not there when the woman looks older than the male lead. I don't have a problem with the actors in DOTS separately, but together they look like brother and sister, rather than lovers to be. And this is the main reason why I'm not excited to watch that drama even though I have a love-hate relationship with writernim Kim Eun Sook. On the other hand, the minute Goodbye Mr. Black was announced I knew Moon Chæ Won and lover boy Lee Jin - Wook would have off the charts chemistry. I didn't even need to see them on screen to know that. I saw them in my mind's eye. And they were f******* HAAAWT. Hope this drama doesn't disappoint on 'em kiss scenes! :)

Thank you for your efforts in writing this article. It's a pity you spent most of it insulting people's eyes with Park Shin Hye's horrendous displays of 'affection'.

Just about the only kiss I liked among your favourites was It's Okay, Love. The others... I'd give a pass. Because even those kisses that are not meant to light our fire, but just to be sweet and tender, are often fake looking and stiff as a stallion's dick.

But hey, different strokes for different folks.

I see. Thanks for answering.

It's interesting that you criticize the age gap in this drama, but seem to have a love for noona romances -- wherein for many the age gap is far more noticeable than in this drama. Biased much? I do apologize in advance for being blunt -- it's just my personality, but for your own enjoyment, you should probably drop this drama if you're unable to arrive at more sensible observations.

What's wrong with having multicultural actors in one drama? And where did you read that the drama is about BL? I didn't see anything mentioned in the synopsis. Do you have other information about this series that others don't?

Big up on your earthstrong, oppa!
Aging like a fine wine. Saranghæyo! <3

I can't recommend it because I don't know your taste, but I thought it was great and I'm pretty darn picky. I hate at least 90% of K-dramas I watch, however, I liked this one a lot. I liked the mixture of genres - time travel, mystery, suspense, romance. It kept things interesting and exciting. I'm generally favourable towards K-dramas that engage the intellect in some capacity rather than the ones that require you to turn off your brain. There were some plot holes, but for me it wasn't unreasonable to suspend belief and overlook them since the overarching story was quite engaging. If you like philosophizing about fate, then perhaps you might enjoy this drama. Acting is passable. Lee Jin Wook is gorgeous. :)

I like this pairing. Let's hope it's as good or better than Nine.