Rocklobster

I thought this was just my streaming service. For such an expensive production, something went terribly wrong with their sound crew. I was quite surprised. In shows where the budgets are very tight, like many of K-BLs, you kind of expect it. I did not expect it here. Perhaps if there is a season two it will have been addressed.

This may seem odd, sorry. I watched this about seven or eight months ago. I came to this page today just to see if there was anything about a season two. I ran across your review. You got it perfectly. This goes much deeper than many, if not most, business dramas. One thing that works is that they use the appropriate business vernacular and trust the audience to follow along even if the business-speak might not be directly clear to them. The writers and the director pull it off.

As you say, Lee Je Hoon can carry a show by himself, as in his series Taxi Driver, he does not have to do so. This cast is excellent. They have melded into an acting powerhouse.

If course, as you wrote, Kee's hair is perfect for this role. He pulls off the look in an elegant, yet business professional manner.

Thank you for taking the time to write your review.

PPriyo, thank you for assembling this list. Some I have seen. i am excited about working my way through your suggestions. thank you...

your review has me midway through episode one. i am enjoying it very much. thank you for the review. i did barely read the last paragraphs, I want to experience it as you have described the storline. again, thank you...

based on your review I am watching episode one. you are so right, the acting is superb and production elements, in all departments, are top shelf. the story feels quite real. it is also to have a story where the characters are gay, but that is not the full story. my partner and I are about celebrate 31 years together. yet, we are more than a gay couple. obviously, that is a big part of our lives. yet, we have careers, amazing families and friends.we also had a BL type beginning to this journey. anyway, I am looking forward to getting deeper into this show. thank you for the review.

i am only a few episodes in and I have to agree with this excellent review. i am not into manipulative romance, normally. The thing is that the above review points out so well, the production elements are fully on par with series in any country. The editu g keeos the stiry crisp. The directing is su tle in that our director lets allows the strong cast and script to work into his vision without needing a mallet to do so. I look forward to watching the remaining episodes.

Thank you for taking the time to leave us with such a well written review.

it was everything you wrote. i will be reading your other reviews. thank you...

i watched this a year ago based on your recommendation. thank you. My parents taught us about the eighth sense, all of them actually. Whrn they met my partner 31 years ago they told me that they could feel it flowing between us. It is still present.

thank you for your excellent review.

My favorite line ever: The kisses. I have seen more chemistry between elevator buttons. i cannot laughing. Thank you very much. i am not going into it, but I needed this. Much thank:

beautifully writen review. thank you. seriously, very nice...

Your review is five years old, but it has worked on me. I am only halfway through episode one, and I am having a lot of fun just sitting and feeling good while watching this show. I just finished "After School Doctor," which greatly surprised me. I have the feeling that this series will do the same. Thank you for taking the time to write the review.

you are so right. i never experienced any sort of abuse. Yet, they made feel so real. obviously, abuse haooens everywhere that humans exist. still, it catches me so off guard. i am doing what you did. i took a break from it. it was a lot to take in.

I have to say that your excellent review had me go back and rethink what I scored for this show. I do not agree with all of this and at the same time I AGREE WITH ALL OF IT. I am so confused. For me, sometimes I want to like the show so much that I score it high, then go back a few days later and rescore it. I did find the characters charming and also, all but two of them so into themselves that they were either dislikable and then all of sudden were redeemed with no real fallout, at least that we saw, for their actions.

About the initial horrible thing that the soon to be destroyed almost writer did. That part makes sense if one knows the story behind it, but it does not make sense, as you point out, in this day or in 2022. It is barely, kind of sort of, based on two writers in the United States of 1946. A newly published writer did point out that two famous writers had plagerized (which is different that ghostwritng) from a number of their students when they were professors at a major private University. (In the US that means it is not part of a state school system university.) The writer mentioned this during an interview for Look Magazine. He was on his first press tour. This was a big interview for the writer and the book. He gave no names. Look magazine was no Time magazine, still to the reporter this was news. She did her homework and after nearly 6 weeks of research she wrote her article, which used names and on the record denials from the writers. She had signed letters from the students that it happened.They didn't really understand that they could do much, not if they were to be writers as well. One of the writers named as a plagerist was a war hero, it seems. The publishers got behind the two successful writers. They then broke the law by colluding with other publishing houses to keep our new writer from writing again, unless he said that he had made everything up because it was going to be the idea of his next novel. He would not do that.

The story went away fast. The public did not care that much. The US was grappling with over 407,000 deaths of military personnel. There were over a million men severely injured. The country was trying to get a peace tme footing. It all went away. In 1952 the young writer found a small publishing house to edit and publish his new book. He had good success.

According to Lee Seo Jung, the genisis of this story was that small blip in history. The above story works in 1946, it wouldn't work in 2025. As you point out, he could self publish and use social media to point out the injustice.

All of that said, once I put that out of mind, not an easy thing to do, I enjoyed a couple of the characters. Han Tae Young was over the top, but I did like his smile. (Wow, that is a stupid thing to admit to in writing, but I did.) I guess I like to beleive that those people do exist and that they do not get eaten up by the rest of us,at least by me.

Kang Woo Joo seemed the most plausible of characters. He might have been a bit clueless at times, but he wasn't as daft as the rest of them.

Kim Jung Hyun was way over the top in how evil through his desperation he became. It was no surprise to the viewers that he had help writing his books. His method of trying to save face and not lose everything was so desperate that any of the other characters should have seen it. At that point they could have all worked it out. No one was going to throw him under the bus. What he did was with consent of the character Cha Jung Woo. Again, that skewed the believability of the script.

Still, I pushed on with the show. This is where my emotional state plays a big role. I have shred in a othe race about how this household, my household, is going through more than I thought we could handle, I could handle. My partner of 30 years is fighting a very aggressive cancer. His sister in law is in end stage Alzheimer's. She is incredible. She has lived with us for six years. Right now I am pretty spent emotionally and even more physically. I wanted a feel good series.

The thing is that I am not sure that is what I really got. It was a kind of mess. Not the worst of messes, but having a good script editor could have made a difference. Also, this series needed to be only six episodes. I know, I know, it is tough to sell a six episode streaming series. I have first hand experience with streaming series and producing in Asia. It is tough. I think it might be less tough if the buyer had some input into the scripts before completion. I checked with a producer in Seoul. This was basically done on spec. Usually, well, you do the pot in spec, not an entire series.

So, after reading your excellent review, I best head back and drop my rating to something that is realistic.

I say all of this because I have produced my share of programming that just missed on many fronts. In my case it was when I failed to be a true team leader. I didn't engage with my team. No, I was sure that I knew best.

The entire point of a creative team is to work to tell a story in a believable and honest manner. That holds true for romance - BL, GL, heterosexual. It holds true for horror films. Just look at Train to Busan. Brilliant team effort. It hold true for most anything that goes on screen or stage. This just missed that aspect.

Hi. Four years after your excellent review I am watching this series. I am only on episode 6. Even at this point I can see the quality of the overall production and the talent of the cast and the creative team. Having come from this field, now mostly retired, I know how much effort it takes to pull off a period piece such as this show. To this point, I am enjoying all of it --- oops, other than the point you made about mystery/detective fiction writers at times going overboard on aspects of the mystery elements. Even Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett struggled with with this. When it comes to secondary storyline mysteries often less is more. The mystery that took place at the inn in episodes 3 and 4 illustrate the point you made in your review.

I fully agree with your thoughts on the cast. There is, and I know that this word is overused, it just fits here, chemistry. The three leads, sorry,n the three leads characters, seem to genuinely like each other. The romance is stilted, but I believe I understand why. Tan is protecting his fiance from his alter ego, assuming that is what it is. Again, I have a long way to go in this series. One scene I was pleasantly surprised with was then Tan goes to meet his fiance at the docks. His friend asks Tan, jokingly and in seriousness at the same time, if Tan liked men versus women. There was not a snide comment. Just a look and a confirmation of that he likes women and especially the woman we are about to meet. The scene with her conning some of the passengers had me laughing. She played it as if she had conned people all of her life, yet it was not all that she was.

Again, thank you for your review and also a thank you to those who commented, as well.

Thank you for the recommendations list. I took a look at your ratings of BLs that you had seen to that point. I enjoyed how I could see your rating and then my is right next to for comparison. There were many that I had not seen. I added them to my plan to watch list.

I agree, sometimes leaving something alone is best. I felt that way about The Eighth Sense. Leave it where it lest us. That way, and I enjoy doing this, I can imagine my own sequel.

Again, you say things with such grace. This is one where a sequel produced by the same team could work. It could take place near the end of Fifa's final year at university. That is the time when decisions are both looming and we may be feeling the fear and the awe of being an adult. From that point we, move back to Hem and his life. The storyline would work with Fifa going back to the Nature Reserve or seeing the world for a year or two. Hem, I believe would still love in his silent way.

My assumption, and this is strictly from the series for I have not read the novel, is that this is Hem's first same sex love. Perhaps it is his destiny or perhaps it is Fifa alone that has brought out this love.I am a very big proponent to shouting to the world how incredible friendship is. When I hear someone say, "We are just friends" to someone to explain that the relationship is not a romantic relationship, I sort cringe. I fully understand the phrase and its meaning. For me, well, it doesn't give friendship, that special friendship we may have with only one other person, its due. I happen to be gay. Yet, my close friendships were wonderfully full of love. Yes, a different love than that i have with my partner of thrifty years. No matter, those friendships became a part of who I am. Maybe that is what Fifa and Hem will have. Or, just maybe Fifa will join Hem at the Reserve, along with grandma. If so, I do hope that Fifa would find an outlet for his art.

Anyway, none of that is likely to happen. This was an expensive series. A friend of mine who knows this production well told me the per episode budget. This does not take into account the year-long pre-production costs. While I may not share what that budget was, having produced a good number of various productions in Thailand, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, I understand how they had to get this budget and the stick to it.

All of that said, I can say that if they gave us a crowdfund opportunity I would be right there donating substantially to that fund a sequel to the series.

I almost watched the last episode again later in the day. It was impossible to find that peaceful period of time that you described for your viewing of the episode. I did decide to re-watch the series next week. I want to stop jumping from this show to that show to yet another show in a matter of days. I want to sink into the elegant peace that I know is there even in a re-watch.

Once again, thank you for your original review and your flow up notes. I am going to find other reviews from you. No doubt I will trust the words that you write.

Wonderfully stated. You said near everything I felt and would have said. I have uses some of these same descriptions as I have tried to explain to others how much I enjoyed this series. I did use this hour as an escape. The ending, in no way surprising, was beautifully scripted and elegantly performed and shot. This is a series that I will go back to when my sanity is at the edge some abyss. There are so many scenes that I felt were taken out of my life. Particularly, do we give up what we say we have always wanted when our first love comes around. The maturity of both characters was a bright spot in this already enjoyable premise. Thank you for your review.

Thank you. I look forward to reading them
Sorry for the litany if complaints, except they were not meant as a litany of complaints. Though, it did seem to come off that way. I believe that with any form of media it is easy to beat up others for any number of reasons. Usually to make ourselves feel better about ourselves. Reviews are no different. I have seen people leave reviews that trashed other reviewers for having a different take on something. You swept that stuff away and went to the importance of the written word. You communicated a message. You did so in a fun, enjoyable and insightful manner. You informed amd entertained. That makes it memorable. Pretty cool by any standard. Again, I look forward to reading the reviews. Thank you! 🎬

Excellent. I honestly am looking forward to reading your reviews. Just to give you a sense of the power of your words here is just little of what is going on in this household. I wrapped up cancer treatment two years. It is still present, but doing no damage at this point. So, all good. Then, eight weeks ago my partner of 30 years, on our anniversary, was diagnosed with cancer that is a very tough fight. We are confident, but we also know how to understand odds. On the day I read your review from years ago things were really chaotic here. My partner's sister who is in end-stage Alzheimer's lives with us. She needs 24/7 care. She is a delight and it is an honor to be in her life. She was having a tough day. A decade ago we took in someone who was homeless due to intellectual and mental health issues. He was having a bad week. We had him admitted to get the care he needed and he is back. Anyway, on that craszy day I needed a good laugh. You and your imagination and your talent in writing, not to mention analysis gave that to me. I gave it to my partner and he just kept laughing. He watches BLs with me at times. They are not his favorite type of show. So, instead, I have my 90 year old mom and my two brothers, their wives, my sister, and some of my nephews and nieces watching. At times we do a watch-along. We are on a video call and we all watch the shows. It is hilarious. Of course, I passed on to them your review. They too had fun with it. From all of us here and there to you we give you a big thank you. Now, I have to figure out how to find your reviews. I always figured I could just click the arae where the number of reviews you have given is located. I assumed it was a button. That does not do it. I will find them another way. From us here is the Washington, DC area, the Annapolis, MD area, Victor and Canandaigua, NY areas, London, England area, we all are looking forward to reading more from you. Be well...

I will have to the same. Right now, I am going in a rather odd direction. I am watching the Japanese film, Bullet Train Explosion. It is the kind of title I would expect Sylvester Stallone to be in!