Sinasina

I watched My Girl (2005) for the first time just now in 2018. I've seen a lot of rave reviews & people were claiming that this was an important work that contributed to the start of the Korean Wave, have I watched this in 2005 I would have probably liked it too, but now having seen so many amazing dramas it just didn't work for me that well. There are good things naturally, the main pair have good chemistry & their interactions are fun throughout the drama. Lee Da-hae was awesome, even with that hair. I've seen most of the other Hong Sisters dramas & this is probably their least polished work. In the early episodes the pacing is extremely slow by 2010+ standards & even though there were some extremely funny moments I have felt bored about half the time. Later on as the melodrama kicks in everything goes to shit, as usual with the Hongs, but this time it was even more frustrating than what happened in Jealousy Incarnate. This drama has the most annoying side characters ever. Both second leads were the worst, the Father was acting like a certified retard throughout the series & this Grandfather character once again caused a 2 years long forced separation plot that was way more dragged out and was way more annoying than in Pinocchio. In some of the other works by the Hongs they had some pretty decent endings, here the last episode is a super frustrating and meaningless cliche-melodrama fest up until 15 minutes to the end, then one of the shortest happy endings happen in kdrama history, not satisfying at all.

The OST had some pretty great tracks though, so thumbs up for that!

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The first few episodes were excellent & I really got into it, but shortly after that the the story progression crawled to complete halt, I did not feel the comedy anymore & in each episode I kept asking myself when will he find out, when will all this pain end? There is a reasonable happy ending, but as many have said there are unanswered questions and overall it does not make me forget all the frustrations I've had before, nor is it satisfying enough to give the drama a very high score. I'm not surprised that the ratings tanked in Korea.
I watched this over the course of 2 days, I strongly believe had I watched only 2-3 episodes a day I would have enjoyed it a lot more. I guess there is a limit how much frustration one can deal with in a day.

I feel that this show was a huge missed opportunity. They had a great story to tell & a truly outstanding cast, but there were problems with writing & directing. Chae Soo Bin could clearly act like the perfect Robot, but for some reason, when she was only pretending to be one it felt so unconvincing. It should have been convincing at times and then going out of character for comedic or dramatic effect, but this did not really happen. They could have expanded more on the genuine Aji3, her escape was one of the highlights of the show, but she barely had any screen time. I was waiting for a necklace related scene during the ending, also a big disappointment.

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Oddly fatiguing

The Good:
✅ The extraordinarily good acting performances by everyone in the important roles
✅ The leads & the second couple (FL's brother + wife) too had good chemistry.
✅ There were a few really fun episodes. (e7 especially)
✅ The fluffy & bickery parts were good & briefly excellent even.
✅ Yoon Bomi is still amazing.

The Average:
🟡 Beom Ja & her beau
🟡 The elderly
🟡 The ending (could have been worse, but I'm not amazed)
🟡 While the character rewrites made the drama more enjoyable, it's never good when the writer is unwilling to do characterization sanely.
🟡 The OST is really on the boring side.

The Bad:
❌ The drama is much too long. (the average episode length is 1h25m & getting through some of the episodes really had been a slog)
❌ The second ML is a 2005 era cartoon villain. (you know those teary eyed Makjang roaches)
❌ "That" woman is also a 2005 era cartoon villainess.
❌ The triangle (at least FL rejected most of the advances, so could've been worse)
❌ The worst kind of amnesia trope (second ML takes advantage)
❌ All the corporate plots..
❌ .. and the plot in general (There is an immersion breaking amount of unhinged in the final 3rd of the show)
❌ Both leads were really bad apples early on before their character rewrites. (ML's actions are positively awful)
❌ I felt relieved when it was finally over.

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It's a bit funny how in the drama 'Touch Your Heart' Inna was basically playing actress Oh Yeon Seo, someone who has been criticized for her bad acting a lot over the years. In this drama however Inna has a very similar character that Oh Yeon Seo herself portrayed before in the same author's work 'Mad for Each Other & Oh Yeon Seo was a much better fit for this I think, so we have kind of gone full circle in a sense.. Don't misunderstand she has done a decent enough job, but it's just a bit weird and ill fitting. Of course -unlike Yoo Inna- Hwang Chan Sung was a massive weak link in the drama overall. So to summarize, the drama is AT BEST average in the acting department.

The writing & the pacing of the script are objectively bad. There is no way around this, there really are a lot of problems & some astonishingly bad lines in the earlier episodes. Although I suppose the drama's saving grace are also lines, because here and there there was some brilliant dialog that really resonated with me. (a very smart intern writer's work perhaps?) Looking at the plot delivery It's not hard to see why it's more than a little bad. The first 5 episodes are completely about FL's mental breakdown/breakup, after that we get a relatively average, but serviceable romcom & then following that there is a rushed weird mess in the final two episodes that culminate in a 15 minute long, substance-less happy ending.
The characterization is also a hit and miss. Bora and Lee Soo Hyuk's characters are okay, but there are quite a few side characters that are just horrible, weird or just extremely two dimensional. (Uri, Yu Jung etc..)
Also the obsession with confessions is a weird theme for a drama to have, I don't really know what to think about this..

Can Love Triangle haters watch this? Maybe, though the previous love interests do stick around..

People like bashing the drama for that one admittedly very insensitive Auschwitz comment. While this is fair, I think it's more of an ill researched analogy that came from ignorance rather than anything else.

Overall the drama is a weird amalgamation of multiple genres. I don't really understand who the target audience is suppose to be. Sad-melo enjoyers will like the first 5 episodes, but will probably be very disappointed with what comes after, romcom lovers might not even hold out long enough to reach the 5-7 romcom episodes & then either of those groups would be at least somewhat disappointed due to the final two episodes.
Maybe the problem is just me, since the 10/10 reviews just keep on coming..

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I'm giving this a 10/10, because I loved watching this from beginning to end, perhaps with the exception of e13.
With that said objectively this is quite bad. We could give it an award for "the most cheesy lines ever", I mean really it's insane how bad the script is. I guess you could say that this is the ultimate guilty pleasure, because I know that it's bad and yet I couldn't hate it for a second. As a huge fan of Goblin I love Inna & Dong Wook, but their acting in TYH is the worst it has ever been. Inna is an amazing actress, she's been awesome in everything before, including variety TV, but I think this cheesy character was too far outside her comfort zone. Their chemistry wasn't nearly as good as in Goblin either, I don't know, it just felt off. Honestly I don't even understand myself why I liked this so much, I mean it's so cheesy at times that it causes physical pain. I guess the feeling is not entirely dissimilar, when I listen to that "We Built This City" cover that came on in Grey's Anatomy that one time. Perhaps I'm just shallow & I just enjoy everything my favorite idols appear in??? (this would be a first for me)
They had to drop the stalker ark prematurely, because of real events in Korea, but I did not mind really. I mean sure it's sad that they had to scrap the script from episode 13 onward, but it might have turned out more entertaining this way. I imagine that originally the second lead couple was meant to fight alongside JungRok vs. the stalker guy and that was the whole point of their story, to make the legal proceedings more interesting and fun in the last episodes, but I think the melodrama all of this meant to cause could have ruined the show for me, I don't know. I liked the ending a lot, the last episode was especially nice, despite the heavy product placements. (eating Subway sandwiches, while charging a Samsung phone with yet another Samsung phone!)

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This drama is doing many things right, the leads have good chemistry with each other & their endless bickering is plenty amusing. Some annoying saeguk things are absent (awful hats for example) & in many ways this is closer to a Chinese xianhuan show than a saeguk. Instead of clans like the fox clan, fairy clan etc we have mage clans, but their interactions with each other are pretty similar to what we see in those Chinese shows. Overall it's a really well produced drama with a decently interesting premise & world building.

So then why is my rating so low? To summarize I just don't like the plot, there is so much I don't like about it really. Sure the final 2-3 episodes were incredibly bad, quite possibly due to the team scrambling to deal with their actress switching shenanigans, but it's more than that. I don't like the plot device that is the "alchemy of souls", I don't like how the FL does not much else for 19 episodes other than being a maid doing chores and I don't like the love triangle, though admittedly I've seen far worse triangles. I already implied that the lead actors were great fit for their roles, however their romance is flowing rather strangely. Live filming is not great when it comes to consistency & the writers were really not on top of their game here, despite a couple rather epic scenes in the show, the buildup often failed in my eyes. Almost forgot the main point I wanted to make, excuse my ramblings! What I think is the worst here is that this is supposed to be power fantasy. A master who lost their powers meets a disciple who is unable to cultivate powers & then at the very least one of them is supposed to grow strong, right? Despite all the time spent on training, not in this show, no! Our hero born under the king's star remains a weakling throughout the entire time and then the crappy final episodes come ruining everything even more.

Could have given a lower score, but decided not to, since at least the comedy is pretty good most of the time..

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It's quite good! (maybe a tiny bit overrated, there is less substance here than in Run On)

Kdramas do this thing where they pick a profession or an organization & then over-romanticize it. In this one that is the headhunter profession. I have mixed feelings about that, while this topic seems somewhat decently researched, it's a rather hard sell for me for various reasons.. Anyways,I can look past that with some difficulty. At the very least the show as an office drama -most of the day to day company happenings etc- works rather well. (discounting maybe episode 11 & the big shareholder guy's few scenes)

The romance is pretty good, it's not the best thing ever or anything, but nothing particularly annoying happens and there is quite a bit of fluff & cuteness in the final episodes. The bickering early on & the the minor enemies to lovers thing works well too. Considering the subject matter, the whole single dad + wealthy woman thing, the writers really sidestepped most of the mines that plague pretty much all such kdrama relationships that I've seen thus far.
The triangles are very minimal, so that's obviously pretty great too.

All things considered the writers did an acceptable job, overall more good than bad. However the pacing is a bit weird & some character personalities really shift too suddenly in the early episodes. Kind of like how sometimes in Hollywood there is a Pilot episode shot for the studio & then they change a bunch of things for episode 2 once the whole season is on order. I don't know, could be that kdrama writers are still not very comfortable with the 12 episode format, I cannot help but feel that the sweet spot for this kind of storytelling would be 13-14 episodes. Though at least in this one the final episode is reasonably well done, albeit the preceding `collapse of the company` plot is pretty dumb and sudden.
Also good god, "Peoplez" & "WE Company" are both incredibly stupid names. (sure real life Korean entrepreneurs have come up with countless awful brand names, but Koreans cannot even pronounce that "z" consonant, was there really a need for this?)

The child actor or rather actors are the best in this one. I just cannot believe a 7 year old kid can be this good.

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The drama's okay, but it's not some hidden gem downrated by China haters.

The Good:
⌲ The OTP romance is relatively strong. (but this is only about 30% of the drama)
⌲ There is no triangle worth mentioning.
⌲ The format of getting into various psychological cases is nice. (almost case of the week-like)
⌲ Standing up to a toxic parent is always great to see in a cdrama(, but typically doesn't pass censorship.)
⌲ Overall the drama is a quite well made quality production.
⌲ The interesting symbolism (here and there)

The Average:
⌲ There are a lot of abrupt kisses that felt really strange & awkward.
⌲ The secondary couples are fun, but they barely had any screen time.
⌲ The individual cases are a hit or miss, there is a lot of procedural mediocrity everywhere.
⌲ The varying usage of hypnosis
⌲ Many things are over-explained, though this is the norm in this genre.
⌲ The 10 minute long breakup due to noble reasons
⌲ While the OTP romance is generally good, the writers have pulled the brakes in a very unnatural way to stall the couple's natural progress.

The Bad:
⌲ Second ML's plot is horrible + his cartoon villain persona could not be any more stereotypical.
⌲ The final episode is really underwhelming, in fact this is one of the most boring final episodes I have ever seen.
⌲ Going abroad to study is naturally a must..
⌲ Shao Ning's involvement in his love interest's treatment is a wee bit creepy.

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Skip!

I just cannot believe that this drama has received 10/10 reviews praising the writer for the plot, incredulous. Having a silly, unrealistic setting in romantic comedies is perfectly normal, but to at least some extent the writer should respect the audience. Here not only are there at least 2 completely intolerable plot points, but also in the second half the plot is very jittery with no respect for logic.
In my review of 'Love is Sweet' I wrote that the OTP romance is good and everything else is trash. In 'The Love You Give Me' that statement not only holds up, but also even the romance is not nearly as good, but the annoying things are perhaps even more annoying. The two side couple's stories are also not great..

To say something good about the show, at least the acting is on a high level across the board & the leads were very cute together, with very good chemistry. (and there were many times when I found that both leads had red ears during some of their scenes, I found that to be very cute) However this is not enough to save this drama. There are many fluffy scenes that I have enjoyed, with a decent amount of comedy, however this is not enough to save the drama, not even close. There is just too much push-pulling here, with the progress always stalling due to very arbitrary reasons. Even the final episodes hold some "fantastic" surprises to sour the cake for us.

Ah almost forgot, the child actor playing their kid was amazing..

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I like mature romances & I especially like noona romances, so I had high hopes for this one. While I did enjoy the romance & what little comedy there was, I found the rest quite disappointing. For starters I really dislike the setting, more specifically the whole private school thing, it’s almost as if this drama is -despite the negative things that happen there- an advertisement for that horrible horrible industry. Also if that wasn’t enough, I think the whole mystery killer thing is kind of bad. To me XYZ’s sudden transformation into a cartoon villain is not a well planned whoah moment, but rather a sudden shift in live writing. (yes there is some seemingly clever foreshadowing, but things could have gone in multiple directions nonetheless) Also I think this drama has way too many annoying moms. Just one is too many, but here there seems to be an army of them..

To talk about some positives as well, it’s very nice that FL kind of looks her age, or rather what a hard working 40ish cook/restaurant owner could actually look like. While the chemistry with the ML is not that great, they do look great together! Also there is not really a breakup, nor a love triangle for them. I feel if I used my fastforward button more liberally, then I could have enjoyed the drama a lot more, focusing just on the romance aspect.

I did not like the ending either. Sure the happy endings for the couples were nice, but it's extremely annoying how suddenly all these evil characters got mini redemption arks..

So yes, as of writing this review this stands on 8.6, so the drama is HUGELY overrated in my book. While the romance is good, it’s not even close to good enough to carry the show, so I decided to settle on 6/10 as my final rating.

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Just watch the original T-drama instead!

As everyone probably knows this is the mainland Chinese adaptation of the Taiwanese drama Meet Me @ 1006. Compared to other Chinese adaptations that I've seen, this one is at least genuinely similar to the source material. They may have changed a great many things, but ultimately we can still recognize the story & censorship did not ruin the time travel-ish ending, not this time.

There are three major things that can be considered improved over the original. For starters the cdrama's cinematography is just gorgeous. The plot of the cdrama flows far more smoothly, the writer did a reasonable job of fixing some of the flaws the original script had. For example Jia Lan knows how to use the Internet, so that's a huge plothole dealt with too.
Da Jun's big plot has been completely cut as well, which is HUGE.

Despite the above I cannot recommend this drama at all, I suggest to just watch "Meet Me @ 1006" instead.
So what's wrong with the adaptation? Well lots of things really. It's normal for cdramas to have far less emotional impact than their Korean, or Taiwanese counterparts, but here the difference is just way too jarring. We go from really intense and lively acting to emotionless Vulcan characters, well almost. The leads had strange chemistry, they had some obviously, but the acting was not very believable so the OTP couple did not really work for me. Also FL's voiceover sounded really weird & ill fitting. She was like 18-19 when they filmed this & the makeup artist did not really do a very good job hiding her baby fat. I'm fine with age gaps, but FL's age does not fit this role, it could not have been any more out of place.
I did praise the writer a little for fixing some of the script's flaws, but there are some negative developments as well. Some people tried to imagine a love triangle involving the same person from different timelines, watching the original I thought this was super silly. In the adaptation however the writer went all in with this, there is a real love triangle between the two He Zheng Yus. This is not too bothersome or anything, but feels unnecessary.
And finally the OST of this is perhaps the worst cdrama OST I've heard thus far. It annoyed me immensely, I did find myself turning down the volume a lot, when I could not take it anymore.

So yeah, just skip this one & watch the original Taiwanese show, if you can!

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A less than realistic guide to YA relationships?

Watching this show I felt that it wanted to educate me too much. It's good if teens, or young adults have access to content like this, which is probably a pretty big deal in Korea, however I cannot help but feel that shows like Dawson's Creek have all that and much more & it's done better, the educational intent is conveyed more naturally etc..
Content like this is not what western audiences watch kdramas for & if we look past all the ehm "messages" there is not a whole lot left. Four hours are not enough to warm up to the two and a half mildly fluffy relationships, despite the actors doing a pretty good job across the board. The sismance did not feel that realistic, also it's weird how in the first episode FL2 seemed to have hated FL3, but the writer did her damnedest to make the audience forget that later. (also Chlamydia is not a virus)

Still there were some entertaining moments, 6/10.

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The Good:
⌲ The documentary concept
⌲ The sequencing of the major plot points (first half is more melo, the second half more romcom)
⌲ The docu flashback scenes are the best.
⌲ The romance, mostly (It's way more magical in Hogu's Love)
⌲ The chemistry between the two leads
⌲ The brilliant acting (If ML did variety, he could dethrone YJS in a few weeks & the FL is also incredible)
⌲ FL's cute chubby face
⌲ The bickering
⌲ The weak love triangles
⌲ The last 5 minutes of the drama (Had they spent 1-2 episodes on that 3rd documentary, I would have given the drama a 10/10 rating for sure, flaws be damned.)
⌲ The mild melancholia
⌲ The visuals
⌲ Despite all the stupid foreshadowing the leads stay together after they start dating again.
⌲ The rewatch value should be excellent with some FW buttoning.
⌲ The low key good OST

The Neutral:
⌲ NJ (I'm suspecting the actress was portraying Sulli & that made me quite sad)
⌲ Let's be friends! (Horrible plot device, but the ensuing romcom moments were good)
⌲ There were some well acted, but underutilized supporting characters.

The Bad:
⌲ The writing is not coherent, this is especially obvious if binge watching. (yay live filming)
⌲ The reasons for the initial breakup (I would have accepted "pride", but they just had to put a noble reason spin on it)
⌲ The second ML's character feels misplaced & pointless. (Could have FW buttoned all his scenes for more enjoyment)
⌲ The last 3-4 episodes were sullied by the entire "French Architect School" plot. (Woong of all people is such a genius that he has become an architect/engineer in 2-3 years and then he went back to Korea to continue drawing for galleries and whatnot)
⌲ The story drags in the middle. (The writer pulled the breaks on romantic progress in jarring ways, because 16 episodes..)
⌲ The final episode is weak, sans the last 5 minutes. (It's not ruining anything, it's just whelming)
⌲ The audio quality is trash, don't bother with those planar headphones! (were all microphones bought at the 1$ store, then again even some of the songs sound horrifyingly low-fi, while some others are excellent)



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I strongly recommend watching https://youtu.be/yxGomiIUN8s AFTER you are done with the drama. (it's only 2 minutes long)

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A high school sports/romance drama pretending to take place at a university campus.

The Good:
-The chemistry between the leads
-The reasonably good acting
-The good special effects (I'm assuming Wang An Yu and co. cannot skate at the level shown in the show, but the CG? sure looked believable)
-The high quality production
-The moms ended up being a lot more tolerable than what I initially thought would be possible.
-The weak love triangles
-The fluff (though there could've been much more of it)
-The race in the last episode was pretty exciting and all anime like.

The Neutral:
-It's a sports drama first & romance drama second.
-The second lead couple's problems
-The silly, but still somewhat restrained villains.
-The (happy) ending is only so so. (reasonable for a sports fan, not so much for a romance fan)

The Bad:
-The overall story is extremely juvenile. (13 year old me would've loved it)
-The sports related subplots were really really silly as well. (don't expect an authentic speed skating experience)
-The production team could've picked a taller more athletic looking FL.
-After about 10-15 episodes it started to get boring. (not the fluff, but the skating)
-It's way too long.
-The leads took forever to get together.
-Coach Ulterior Motive
-The whole assist thing (though I've seen something similar in the Olympics in a running competition)
-Redemption arks
-The unreasonable character rewrites
-Snaky Snakewoman

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Why would a Goodie do-Gooder go back to the sloutherhouse?

Normally I don't watch romance-less thriller kdramas, because they almost always suck. They are often full of immersion breaking sloppy writing and have many incredibly silly scenes. I feel that Squid Game certainly has them both. The characterization of the ML and of quite a few other contestants had some major problems. Personally I always hated it, when a random moron wins against smarter, more motivated opponents in a setting like this, however the ML's actions often felt arbitrary, beyond just an idiot's actions. Then again the whole thing is FULL of plotholes on a fundamental level, so the players frequently acting out of character is not even the biggest problem here, although Cho Sang Woo's death is just ridiculously stupid. All that he has sacrificed to win, for THAT to end up happening, well done! (evilME would have just thrown the knife for W45.000.000.000) Also what's the deal with the policeman's plotline, is there really a point beyond giving mental demons to his brother in season2?

The ending is trash of course, the minor cliffhanger is so bad that it's difficult to put into words. The final post-game twist is almost intelligence insulting too, especially considering how I went back and looked at what happened before frame by frame and it just doesn't make any sense. (pink solder raised the gun > the camera moved out of sight > boom > back in sight > man seemingly down) This is a preproduced drama and all the episodes were released on the same day, so the assumption that the audience would just forget about past details is just wrong.

The base ideas behind the show are pretty good, I guess the creator took Liar Game as the main inspiration & borrowed some ideas from Hunger Games and other Battle Royale titles. Mixing all that up with Korean children's games worked a lot better than I thought it possibly could have.
It's rare that a Korean TV show has one person as the director and the screenwriter. Hwang Dong Hyuk may have done a pretty bad job as a writer, but as a director I can only praise him. It's incredible how he succeeded to make the MOST BORING GAMES EVER exciting on TV. I found the tug of war game especially impressive. I have played tug of war many times & also I have seen tug of war on Running Man countless times, I have never thought rope pulling could be this exciting..

The best things about the show are of course the incredible sets, the symbology, the OST and the incredible cinematography.
I think the art director may have contributed more to this show's success than the director/screenwriter himself. I may have disliked many things about this show, but there were moments here and there, when I felt almost astonished at what I was seeing on screen. I do understand why Squid Game has become a worldwide sensation.

People talk about this show being the big hit it is, because of the human side of it, due to all the social interactions the contestants had with each other between the games. I'm not sure if I agree, most characters could not have been more two dimensional. Though certainly the actors did an excellent job showing a wide array of authentic emotions.

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Most English speaking characters were cringeworthy as usual. They could have done much better in that regard, considering it's a Netflix production. The silly dubbed accents were not even the worst part, but rather the whole VIP member commentary in the last 2 episodes could not have been more out of place.
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If we consider kdrama a genre, not just "korean made TV drama", then Squid Game is not a kdrama. It breaks several kdrama taboos, such as it has a Hollywood like explicit sex scene (not counting the gay foreigner thing), a lot of blood & most importantly the main characters are not astonishingly beautiful people. Personally I don't particularly mind, I'm just a little surprised by it all. I guess this is a real Netflix production with the western audiences in mind, perhaps Korea only embraced it, because it has become a huge worldwide sensation.

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