Sinasina

This was really good. I had Dots vibes during the entire show, but I think this is better, because the most annoying things in DoTs aren't present here & what we had instead were pretty fun, plus DoTs had the worst child actors I have ever seen, opposed the top tier child actors in FfmW. Pretty much all the flashbacks were excellent, plus all the MMA fighting scenes were entertaining, it's nice that the fights did not take 15-30 minutes each, like in other dramas/movies. It was also nice that the love triangles & stuff were heavily front-loaded making the pacing of the story much better than usual, the frustration factor was also on the low-ish side. Pyo Yejin was kind of surprising in this half villain role, but it definitely worked. The ending could have been half an hour longer, but it was decent nonetheless, especially the last scene during credits. One negative thing I guess was the breakup scene at the end of E15, it was just a meaningless forced cliffhanger, since nothing changed after the breakup, there was no tension, or drama from it.

The OST was definitely above average, although hearing that instrumental track from Goblin several times felt a bit strange, because the mood of this show is just so different. (ofc that song from DOTS also appeared a lot, but that was perfectly fine for this show)

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Lukewarm romcom with a weak-ish ending

The Good
⌲ It's quite fun early on. (lots of bickering & we get some of the more fun romcom cliches)
⌲ The quick resolution of the breakup
⌲ The lack of triangles and other geometric shapes
⌲ The fact that it's a noona romance

The Average
⌲ The chemistry
⌲ The meh second lead couple
⌲ The final two episodes (not terrible outside of grandma's 2-3 scenes, but on the boring side)
⌲ I'm sure the drama had an OST, but I cannot recall any of it & it's only been minutes since the rolling credits.
⌲ The writing (the plot and the dialog both are really average)

The Bad
⌲ The trash grandma
⌲ Grandma's awful -and predictable- mini redemption ark in the finale (this is disrespectful to the audience considering how important her role & impact is in the drama)
⌲ It is my impression after 4 dramas that this director has the tendency of not calling the NG when woman actors produce awkward lines. (I like Moon Ga Yong, but she is human and she has made some acting hiccups in the show, quite probably not her fault that no reshooting of those scenes has occurred and I recall similar things from Shi*ng Stars etc..)
⌲ It's too shallow. (even for a kdrama romcom)

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I don't regret watching this, but compared to romcoms such as Secretary Kim, Business Proposal, Secret Life of my Secretary it really falls short. (and even those are quite controversial on MDL for understandable reasons)

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Misguided educational program for Korean highschoolers!?

This is basically 3 unrelated short stories bundled up in a 7 episodes long anthology..

Act 1:
You would think that a story that involves porn/masturbation addiction would break kdrama convention, but unfortunately that is not the case. High school dating is still a no & honestly the message that wetdreams are preferred over masturbation is just plain wrong. Also the way how this almost-relationship started is very male fantasy like and unrealistic. 5/10

Act 2:
This one is much better than Act1, but it's not amazing. For starters it was supposed to be a friendship to lovers story, but the friendship is barely shown & it's not even for a lack of time, since there was more than enough time to focus on naked upper bodies and such. I don't even think it was that well acted out really, the chemistry between the leads is not all that great either. Also in one scene FL is worried about her mismatched underwear, fastforward a few minutes & she is not even willing to allow kissing, come on now! 7/10

Act 3:
I'm not exactly sure what this is supposed to be about. It felt aimless and strange to me. I don't think this was worth watching at all. Perhaps the main theme is bullying, but it's not very impactful, even if someone liked watching that kind of thing. 4/10

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It's romance, not a romcom.

This has been a pretty interesting drama. It's quite unusual in many ways. When I reached the half way point I've been thinking that it's the perfect blend of fantasy and reality. We've seen characters & situations that cannot possibly be real, but at the same time I did not find either the realness or the absurdity of the plot immersion breaking. Unfortunately this delicate balance is broken somewhat in the later episodes. There were some unnecessary skits that felt out of place. It's not that the later episodes weren't good, but at times I felt like I'm watching a different drama compared to when I started. I guess to some extent the writing can be blamed too. I've been thinking that perhaps the writer realized around ep9-10 that she has ran out of ideas and a lot of padding's been added instead of content that I wanted to watch. Then again the writing is on a very high level throughout the drama, it's just that there were some recurring themes that I don't really like, such as parents "owning" their children etc. There is a lot of intelligent and wholesome dialog in the drama & also the complete lack of love triangles is extremely praiseworthy. Perhaps the problem is 100% me, because I'm just never satisfied with anything. I could also nitpick about the ending, it reminded me a lot of Be Melodramatic. Objectively it's decent, but I just don't like the idea of open ended kdramas and the characters really shouldn't discuss what a happy ending is in their last scene, that is just too immersion breaking for me, but that seems almost fotm these days. I was prepared to bash the writer for ruining the second couple's story, but considering their last 2-3 scenes their conclusion is up to our imagination..

Everything else is fantastic.

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Had they just dialed down the crazy a tiny bit..

I found the early episodes awesome. It's been such a long time since I felt this way while watching a kdrama. I find the basic concept to be incredibly fun & despite the leads being a bit lacking in chemistry I felt their back and forth refreshing, interesting & even the related mysteries/thriller bits were quite well presented, for a kdrama.

Unfortunately my excitement started to seriously fade around e7-8 & by 10 I felt a tremendous amount of boredom. By e8 I thought that I had most of the plot figured out & that I pretty much know what's what with the villains & how this is going to go down.
Again unfortunately I was surprised, the script really went above and beyond my expectations in a bad way. The writers escalated the makjang to absolutely insane levels, not even a hint of sanity had been left in the show. Then comes e12 & again I thought this is it now we'll just go through the motions & we'll get some kind of a cringy super unrealistic happy ending. We've ultimately gotten that alright, but the forced separation & some of the noble idiocy explanations, the dialog related to that part is again completely insane & if we add in how she ended up "there", that's just too much.
I could talk about intelligence insulting plotholes, but I'm not motivated enough to go back & rewatch some of the earlier parts to be absolutely sure this is right.

When The Phone Rings is really hard for me to rate, because on one hand the early episodes were wonderful, but on another this drama has almost everything I hate about kdramas & Brazilian soaps. The one thing it does not have is a strong love triangle & I'm greatful for that, but good gawd all the makjang classics are present & in incredible abundance at that. Epi 11 of this show is quite possibly the craziest kdrama episode I have ever watched, we really go through all the big soap tropes and more in a super condensed way...

The OST on the whole is not great, I barely felt it most of the time, but there is an instrumental track I really liked, though it only played like 3 times throughout the entire show. It's called `In Your Arms` and it can be easily found on Youtube searching for that + When The Phone Rings.

In the final episode there are some veiled references to events that are going or went down in the Middle East, I did not watch the mistranslated version & I don't really care honestly, but it's strange the production team had to go with stuff that resembles controversial real world events, why would you step on toes like that I don't know. This did not influence my rating though, I just find it strange that this was given the okay, considering the ramifications.
Then again maybe I shouldn't be too surprised, Korean writers/directors rarely care about international success & the opinions of international viewers, Netflix or not. Just look at how often Africa comes up in kdramas & how dumb it is every single time.

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Not bad, but overrated!

The Good
⌲ The brilliant episode that is E10 (It's one of the best kdrama episodes I've seen in quite a while)
⌲ Jung So Min's coolness (though she too did not try very hard early on, but improved later)
⌲ Mo Eum
⌲ The final episodes were -mostly- rather entertaining
⌲ The good comedy when not in sad melo mode
⌲ The endless fun bickering
⌲ ML's ex, mostly
⌲ There is no stupid elementary school level dating in this show & everyone has good and relatively immediate relationship goals.

The Average
⌲The acting (Jung Hae In is an excellent actor, but he did not try very hard in this one and some other supporting actors neither)
⌲ There is too much focus on the elders, very much like in a family drama. (then again their plots are not all that bad)
⌲ The chemistry between the leads
⌲ Mo Eum's romantic plot
⌲ Could have said `friends to lovers` done somewhat right, but the flashback content & ML's everlasting love are just so wrong.

The Bad
⌲ The dimwitted and insane mom
⌲ Before E10 the show has been increasingly less and less entertaining as time went on, felt like dropping it at one point.
⌲ The sad melodrama parts felt off to me early on.
⌲ The ex (despite his graceful exit I disliked almost everything about him & his plot )
⌲ The bracelet product placement (though admittedly Cleopatra could have worn that thing)
⌲ The North Pole. (good god)
⌲ Uncle!

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It's okay, if you are in the mood for some moodiness.

Honestly this is nowhere near as bad as the makjangish and super silly setup would suggest.
I have two big problems with the show.
The first is that the OTP romance is not very believable. I think acting shortfalls are definitely part of this issue & the chemistry was just not enough for me to fully immerse myself in their relationship.
The second is that the ending is extremely low effort. There was all this crying/suffering/hardship & then everything just worked out senselessly, also following the always annoying separation followed by a 1 minute happy ending formula. It's better than people dying I suppose, but not by much. I don't know if this was live filming or not, but it sure feels like it. Then again, it's quite normal for kdrama writers to not give a fork about well thought out endings, so that could be it. (This is pretty much the industry standard now, if anything.) On a positive note a well thought out, reasonable ending would've been exorbitantly difficult with the setting we've had, so perhaps embracing the silly is not the worst thing in the world. I would hugely prefer though if writers made scripts that can be wrapped up in a way that makes sense, instead of making convoluted messes & then just yolo-ing the ending.

As for what I liked.. There is a lot of reasonably well written dialog existing outside of the plot-driving conversations. I liked the moody presentation & the pink filter was part of that too I suppose. I liked the visuals on my color calibrated displays, but I can see why someone would hate this, if watching the show on an LG oled TV or a Galaxy phone..
The OST is pretty good too!

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Great, but the Manhwa is greater.

I'm not gonna waste the time talking about how amazing this is, it's fully deserving of the 9/10 rating, but in this review I'll focus on the things that I did not like so much.

In the early episodes Ahn Hyo Seop tried to copy Park Seo Joon's character from Secretary Kim. I'm not entirely sure why the production team wanted this, I don't think this worked for the actor. As much as I'm not a fan of his, I gotta admit that once he stopped doing that, he was perhaps the best version of himself so far. He had reasonable chemistry with Kim Se Jeong and his acting ability & on screen maturity has seemingly taken a step forward.

Obviously I've read the webtoon and I'm unhappy about a few things. For starters they have removed my favorite part of the webtoon, namely Hari's hilarious attempts at trying to turn fake into real.
In the final two episodes we have deviated quite far from the source material & I disliked pretty much all the changes.
Young Seo's conclusion was perhaps a little cliche in the comics, but it was nice. Instead of that we've gotten this rushed thing with YS cutting his father off. I liked the original plot more, but this was okay too I suppose and they might have made Korean television history with this. I've seen countless kdramas with asshole parents & this is the first time when the parent gets cut off in way that does not conform with the values of Confucianism. I certainly approve of this message!
The scandal about "Hari stalking her crush for 7 years, then dating her CEO right after" is the scriptwriter's invention. Did anyone actually like this? Not me anyway..
The forced 1 year temporary separation was complete bull, I'm sorry. There was 0 need to do this. This is one of the worst kdrama cliches that the Manhwa does not have. Compared to other dramas this is once again not the worst, at least they did not break up, or anything. it's just sad that they wasted what little time they had with the 12 episode limit on something like this. The webtoon has a very long & fluffy happy ending, also it's not boring at all. I understand that there was no time to get all of that in, but the deviations were less than appreciated and that's putting it bluntly.
Also the webtoon has a really funny secondary love interest for Kang Tae Moo, if they wanted to increase tensions in e11-12, they should have gone with her mini ark instead. (not a real love interest, but everyone though so & it was really amusing how Hari needed to defend her territory)


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(There is a love triangle, but I think triangle haters can safely watch this, the secondary love interest had relatively little screen time & has been rejected very strongly in a timely fashion)

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Outstanding, but infuriatingly unfinished

It's a brilliant, incredible yada yada show. The perfect casting meets with with the best creative talents the kdrama genre has to offer. There are plenty of 10/10 reviews very accurately depicting the awesomeness of the show, so I'll keep it short.

The reason why it's not 10/10 for me is because I have gotten into kdramas specifically due to the fact that kdramas tell a somewhat coherent story in 16-20 episodes & usually they are light on the filler and the good ones give the audience closure. This show has been written with a second season in mind & it ends with a cliffhanger. The cliffhanger itself is not that offensive, but two of the three most important storylines are hanging in the air, unfinished. So yeah, the last episode was quite the maddening experience.
I really wish Netflix stopped trying to influence how kdramas are made..

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A truly well executed time travel kdrama, way way above Twinkling Watermelon.

This is the best kdrama I've seen since a very long time. (probably since It's Okay to Not Be Okay)
The only serious problem I have with it is the villain's lack of personality/backstory and how they just dealt with him under 3 minutes in the finale. I could nitpick If I really wanted to, but I fail to see the point.
I always say that explaining the inner workings of time travel always ruins immersion in time travel shows, luckily in this one they have not even tried. (it's better to keep the unexplainable unexplained)

Everything else is pretty good, the cast is great, the chemistries are great. The romance is up there with the best, there are countless very fluffy and or very touching moments. Love triangle haters are safe to enjoy this as well, because the secondary love interest is weak like a straw. The ending is a banger too.

Anyway 9/10 seems fair to me. It's not perfect or anything, for example Someday or One Day is better in this genre, but I'm very happy that Korea can still deliver something of this caliber, since it's been so long..

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enjoyable, but not that great

The Good
⌲ It's decently well researched.
⌲ While this is no Hospital Playlist, in the world of Doctor Romantics, this is still very far above average in the medical kdrama genre.
⌲ The lead actors did great.
⌲ The cool episodic patient related plots
⌲ The supporting actors were also up there.

The Average
⌲ The drama feels quite boring at times.
⌲ The romance (it's alright, but not nearly as interesting as the prospective couples we've had in HP, let alone what's the norm in a decent romance drama)
⌲ The semi-villains of the show
⌲ While I enjoyed the HP cameos, most of the appearances felt rather forced.

The Bad
⌲ The lottery thing is egregious.
⌲ FL survived med school & everything to finally become a resident & all she talks and thinks about is quitting.
⌲ To add to the previous point, the whole plot about the debt is a bit insane too..
⌲ The rubber mannequin surgeries were quite immersion breaking.

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The main romance in this drama is pretty good, so is the chill moody atmosphere, but everything is else is very strange.
Review over, thanks for reading!

Since there is a minimum word count on MDL for reviews, let me elaborate a little bit what I mean by strange. For starters this show has an incredible amount of social engineering / agendas in it. These only become really jarring around e13, but they can be felt from early on. There is also the sister character, she has an incredibly hard to tolerate trashy personality (don't mean to criticize her for being promiscuous or anything like that) in the first half of the show, but then she becomes a much better person out of nowhere & gets together with a young guy, well *inserts shrug emoji* alright. Then there are a bunch of incredibly crappy people at work that also transform, getting "very well deserved" redemption arks.

The writing is also super weird in the sense that the show has several -perhaps even many- brilliantly written and really cool scenes, but these are not integrated very organically into the show, the flow of the story is just really odd. For all I know it could be that actually brilliant writers failed to properly navigate the maze of written and unwritten Chinese censorship rules & my feeling of strong dissonance is a direct result of that, I don't know. I just think that trying to justify -even malicious- authority- with all those redemption arks I mentioned earlier could also be explained by trying to please the censorship body.

Despite these issues, `Fake It Till You Make It` is still quite entertaining & most Chinese dramas with the business tag are usually far far worse than this one, because at least I never felt very annoyed in this one. Had some minor frustrations with Da Wang early on, but even that is nothing compared to what usually happens in this genre.

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I enjoyed the first 6 episodes, sure it's been a bit lukewarm & nothing unique or out of the norm, but at the very least the drama is relatively free of annoyances up to that point & it`s still somewhat funny with acceptable chemistry between the leads & decent-ish acting. The second FL is also really funny, though I always liked Dasom before..

Unfortunately the final 2 episodes are similar to what we usually get in 16ep dramas. Meaning it`s complications leading to an arbitrary separation culminating in a 3 minute long happy ending, if this is even that.. I always hated that formula, here though it's even worse, since having 2 trash episodes out of 8 has twice the impact.

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The low ratings are probably largely due to kdrama lovers watching something that is Alien to them!

This show reminds me of The Matrix quite a bit. As an ancient fossil I still remember my elementary school classmates talking about the meaning of the film & sharing with me their own interpretations, one sillier than the other. Fast-forward to 2022 & reading Glitch's comment section I had a similar feeling even before I decided to actually dive into the drama and it is exactly like the Matrix's non action related content in the sense that it's messy with all this at times seemingly random symbolism that is completely up to interpretation and no two people will think about it same way. (and there are other similarities too, except this show has very few action scenes)

I will of course share my take, but before then let me just say that this is absolutely worth watching and reading my review from this point onward will not be all that useful in deciding whether you give this a shot or not.

In my opinion this show and its characters are incredibly juvenile, but for me that is part of its charm. The early episodes reminded me of Aussie and German children's adventure shows from the nineties & I've got to relive the sense of wonder I felt when I was watching some of them as a kid. (maybe there is a hint of inspiration from Stranger Things as well..) Of course the Glitch remains quite juvenile up until the last episode, but some of the plot gets heavier & more mature as we reach the end.
By juvenile characters what I mean is that many of them are exactly like children with 8th grader syndrome going on an adventure as a group of 2-6 doing batshit crazy things that mature people would never do, but doing all that in a somewhat protected environment, where the adults never interfere too much. (law enforcement) For me this was of course very entertaining & the last episode was absolutely fantastic! Good, well thought out endings do matter & this show has one of the best endings I've seen from a television show. (I raised my final score by an entire point because of the ending) Also the sturgeon conversation at the end is such a simple, but brilliant idea. I can almost see the writer talking about sturgeons with some producer & then deciding to somehow make that the main theme of a new show called Glitch, or not, maybe it's only in my head. (and no, sturgeons are not really a spoiler, since it's impossible to interpret this without context)

TLDR: This is a Korean High Concept show that is not really a Kdrama. If you like high concept shows, give this one a chance. (of course the visuals and visual effects are quite nice & the acting is 10/10 as well)

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