Sinasina

I'm a little surprised about all the 10/10 reviews. Some folks wrote overwhelmingly positive reviews to the point that I've expected that this drama would be even better than Reply 88. For the first 10~ episodes it's pretty close to that level, but at the same time unique and perhaps even more endearing. The problem is that this is a 40 episode long drama and episodes 11 to 18~ are straight up boring. There is nothing much there, none of that wholesome family vibe, or much character or plot progression. After wasting 5 hours on filler like that it cannot possibly be a 10/10.

Around episode 20 the drama slowly becomes interesting again, but it never reaches the initial heights.
I for one am okay with the sister dating the stepbrother thing, I can even begrudgingly accept the blackmail with mental illness issue. What is difficult to gloss over though is that they had very few sweet scenes together after they've properly gotten together. I mean there was so much time for that in 40 episodes..

I could go on and on how much I hated mom A and biological dad B, but It's not necessarily a bad thing for a drama to have hated characters. Human garbage can be portrayed on television too, right? But the redemption arc for mom A in the final episode felt completely unnatural and unnecessary. I would have preferred either a more gradual process involving some mutual healing over the course of like 5 episodes, or they could have just had a clean break. So yeah, the plot had some problems here and there, like how every tragic thing happened simultaneously at ep10ish and how not only did He Mei go to P, but her friend also did 16? years later. Those could've been handled much more naturally.

The ending is not that great either. It's way too open ended for my liking. The potential side couple's story is unfinished and as I said earlier, there was just such a long time available to wrap things up.

I love how they resolved the triangle fast and relatively peacefully.

Overall the drama is worth watching, there are some incredibly touching scenes, really unique family dynamics and it's unlike any other cdrama that I've seen so far, but it's not even close to a 10, lets be real people!

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Good-ish, but overrated

This show has been getting a lot praise, "drama of the year" etc, well It's certainly not bad, but I don't really see what all the fuss is about. Typically I avoid Korean thriller/crime dramas like a plague, because there are just too many immersion breaking plots & sloppy scenes involving death and serious injuries in them. This one is no different. There are a lot of tiny little immersion breaking things in it, to me it's very difficult to take the drama seriously. The usual live filming character adjustments were not missed either. I binge watched the drama over the course of 3 days, so the character micro (or macro!) adjustments were blatantly obvious. The crime plot on the whole was not that great either & there were many cliche elements. It's easy to forgive cliche things in a light romantic comedy, but not in a thriller. To summarize this is no Dexter..
Also early on I almost dropped the drama out of boredom, the buildup in the first 4 episodes felt draggy to say the least and episodes 13-15 were just not that enjoyable for me.

So why the relatively high score of 7.5? Well naturally there are a lot of good things in this drama. I really liked how JiWon dealt with "finding out", that was very un-kdrama like and very entertaining to watch. Also the writing team had plenty of opportunities to shove confucianist crap down our throats & they went the other more wholesome direction every single time. The music was great & overall more thrilling than the drama itself & of course as usual we had great visuals. Finally the most important point is the romance, they did a really good job with that. There are many low key unique and touching moments in the drama. I felt pretty satisfied with the ending too..

Let me reiterate again, I very strongly believe that Hallyu does not know how to produce a believable thriller drama, but if I don't try to compare it to the greatest (or even mediocre) western works, within the genre of "Korean thriller drama", this is probably one of the best works so far.

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After watching the first 6 episodes I thought this was like a teen version of While You Were Sleeping, but as the story progressed I felt that the show has lost its charm. Early on the drama had a great balance between romance/comedy & procedural, but after episode 10 all we are left with is the procedural part & honestly it's not that good. Sure the direction of the plot was a bit unexpected, but ultimately it was a mediocre crime drama by the time we reached the conclusion. If I think about it the show kind of reminded me of Inspector Rex, Ahn's ability & the way he used it is not quite unlike what Rex (or any police dog) could do. I'm wondering who is the target audience for this show, early on I thought it was a YA romance that I'm sure made many bored that are into procedural/crime specifically & the second half made me bored, I still think that Hallyu isn't comparable to the west, when it comes to procedural/crime dramas, if I wanted to watch something good in that genre, I wouldn't have gone for a korean show.
I think Jinyoung should've stuck with singing, his performance is less than convincing to put it bluntly, almost everyone else did an exceptionally good job acting though.
Still I don't regret watching He is Psychometric, there were some memorable moments, the OST was great (albeit a bit repetitive), the photography is also exceptional.

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A new record for interrupted kisses!?

In a sense this is one of the most frustrating dramas I have ever watched, but in another it's rather beautiful, there is a lot of very well written witty dialog in the show. I think the leads had great chemistry both as "friends" & lovers . Why the scare quotes? Well, their friendship is insanity & all the reasons why they did not take that step for so long are insanity squared. The writer really dropped the ball here romantic plot wise, all it would have taken to somewhat plausibly justify the slow burn is to just remove the 10 minutes from the first 14 episodes where they declared their eternal friendship to each other after crazy acts of love. (or god forgive just replace those scenes with some wistful starting, whatever)
Though the show is quite repetitive from e6~ up to episode 15, since every episode has one moment of insane escalation that fizzles out & these are very similar almost every time.

From e15 onward the romance picks up & things start happening at a reasonable rate from then on. I would say that the second half of the show could have had more emotional impact, but cdramas will be cdramas, overall this was quite enjoyable to me.

As for the things outside of the leads' personal world, well the work drama part was okay-ish, mostly because more often than not the work related scenes transitioned back to ML + FL interactions, so I did not have time to become bored, let alone annoyed.
As for the usual political messaging this show is alright, there is some here and there, but it's not too egregious or immersion breaking.

The leads have a married couple for their best friends, but they don't really have a story worth mentioning, they were just a plot device to stall for even more time early on, just to annoy us viewers.

As for the most popular third couple I'm not sure what the fuss is about in the comment section. They were cute, but they only had like 15 minutes together in 30 episodes, so I'm not particularly upset about their acceptable, but admittedly less than satisfying, but still happy enough ending.

There are no love triangles, so triangle haters can safely watch this!

The OST is fantastic, so that did a lot to help me survive the first 14 episodes.

edit: I almost forgot! In other dramas I always hated the sad teary eyed `ge` or `gege` second lead characters. In this one teared eyed `ge` winning completely uncontested was a bit interesting & surreal :-)

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It's a fairly amusing romcom, but that's all.

The Good
⌲ Actress Guo Shu Yao is even more amusing than her MDL page, awesome!
⌲ Michael Zao - Ellie couple up until they started dating (top comedy)
⌲ I really enjoyed the hand drawn anime special effects. (well other than the shiny stars one)
⌲ Up until the final 5-ish episodes the comedy is very decent across the board.
⌲ As unrealistic as this office workplace is, I really enjoyed all the wholesomeness & the plethora of cute characters.
⌲ The liveliness of a Taiwanese production, especially compared to mainland Chinese shows (though it's not outstandingly lively compared to some other Tdrama romcoms I've seen)

The Average
⌲ The chemistry between the leads felt a bit unnatural.
⌲ The Cupcake Couple
⌲ Michael Zao - Ellie couple after they started dating (Too over the top, I had difficulties with second hand embarrassment)
⌲ I'm not completely sold on the main couple concept of the show, especially the hating money bit. That made it very difficult for me to empathize with the ML & accept his supposed `intelligence`.
⌲ Keke's parents (fun early on, but unbelievably weird in the second half, I don't know)
⌲ The plot beyond the romance and fluff is barely anything, to a fault. (I agree with MDL reviewer Chelsea Black, it's "string thin" indeed)

The Bad
⌲ In the final episodes all toxic parents had been very suddenly forgiven. (though I can see how Asian audiences following Confucianist values could maybe!? appreciate this.)
⌲ Adding to the previous point, It's really crazy how Keke pushed ML and his dad into reconciliation, especially considering earlier plots.
⌲ The mandatory & arbitrary breakup (My big problem with this is not how it happened, or that it did, but rather FL's indifference to it made me feel like she planned the whole temporary breakup thing to teach ML a lesson, being confident that she would get him back, not cool!)

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Just when I started watching this show I asked the comment section for spoilers, "when do they get together?" "Will the annoying bosses ever go away?" I've gotten confusing answers to both of these questions. Now that I've seen the whole drama, I know why. You An's former bosses really do keep popping up like jackrabbits -when they really shouldn't anymore- wasting screen time & the answer to "when do they get together" is just really confusing. Is it ep21, 26 or 30? And what has happened in the episodes in between? I'm still confused about which episode they really get together in, but I do know that between these key episodes pretty much nothing romantic has happened. I think maybe the writer kind of hoped we would forget about progress, so they could get together again, twice. (or a lot of filmed scenes have gotten axed ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

The drama starts really slow, the first 10 or so episodes are rather draggy. You could call it super slow burn of course, but it's not like the romance is really slow, it's just there is so much focus on sports that the padding kind of makes it feel like it is slow burn, when it's actually quite fast based on the OTP's scenes & their actual progress in relation to what has been shown to us. This wouldn't be a big problem, if the show was a strong sports drama, but it's really not. As many other reviewers have claimed before me, I have also played -some- badminton, tennis & I'm still following the ATP tennis scene. In my opinion this was not very good. Talking about 190km serves & then showing me a 130km serve, or showing me how the racket hits the ball & then showing me how the ball lands, with flying balls rarely shown is something I've found rather jarring. I understand the difficulty & the actors really did a reasonable job mimicking professional tennis player mannerisms, but the action itself is either not shown, or is at a very low level. (by low level I mean far worse than me after 6 months of playing tennis at age 19, forget professional..) Even if we ignore the lack of immersion during tennis games, there are plenty of other problems that are difficult to gloss over, at least on the sports front. (for example I agree with the coach etc that switching from Badminton to Tennis, especially at 22 is a fool's errand, though I can easily accept this much fantasy in a cdrama romcom)

I talked about FL's bosses being super annoying before, but the whole wildcard plot dominating the final episodes is utter garbage. The sudden appearance of an intelligence insulting contract & the events that follow, including, but not limited to a 2 year separation plot, are just not good. This is not the "intelligent adult romance" I've signed up for.

The noona romance itself, apart from the pacing issues was quite enjoyable for me, the fluffy scenes in the second half were all great, my need for sugar has been completely satisfied. I wouldn't say that the actors had earth shattering chemistry, but they did a reasonably good job overall.

TLDR: The show had it's good moments, but Meet Yourself is a far better mature romance & Falling Into You is a far better noona-sport romance. (the romance is only a wee bit better in Falling Into You, but the sports part is leagues ahead)

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Fantastic, no scifi fan should miss this!

I have read the book & partly because of that I found the early episodes very repetitive and slow, I'm convinced that the book delivered those concepts far more smoothly! This is pretty much the only big negative of the entire show. I mean sure I could nitpick a lot if I wanted to about some silly TV innovations near the final episodes, but I enjoyed those too I suppose. If memory serves the fake science in the book was far more digestible, they have made some things a WEE BIT crazy in the show, but even those were quite fun, adding some action scenes to liven up the experience a little is acceptable to me. ("After a long time, life and civilization will begin again" Right!)

Everything else is pretty great. This is the best scifi show I have watched in a very long time. I have kind of given up on Scifi television, because Hollywood stopped making quality content & no one else had the budget to even try, but somehow China did it & it even passed censorship, which is a miracle in itself. Honestly though, the production values are VERY GOOD. The fact that most CG happens in the game world helps a lot with the magic. The OST is fantastic & so are the non CGI visuals. The main actors also did a more than commendable job.

So while this is obviously not even close to a perfect adaptation, I think it's more faithful to the original than the Lord of the Rings films, just to put things in perspective..

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If I really wanted to attack it from a political perspective, there are some very legitimate points others have brought up, but if you care too much about those things, would it be even possible to peacefully watch ANY scifi show?

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Lovely show, but it has barely anything to do with "Something in the Rain"!

People in the comments keep saying, "It's better than the original", "It's not as exciting as the original" etc. In my opinion these comparisons are a bit senseless, because the setting & the plot are fundamentally different. I don't mind too much though, let's hop on the meta train!
Something in the Rain had like 8 brilliant episodes, 2 mediocre episodes & 5 horribly bad episodes. Opposed to that, Love the Way You Are produced 20 good episodes & 1 bad episode(just about) & 9 almost good (the above mediocre tier) episodes, well that's pretty much the end of this comparison. There are two important things that they've taken from the "original", namely the red umbrella & the iconic hand holding scene. The first one doesn't really work, because with the completely different cinematography the original artistic intent is completely lost. The hand holding scene felt a bit whelming, perhaps it should've been re-shot, but that's not all, they completely changed the aftermath of it, I was mildly disappointed about that if I want to be completely honest.
So as I said, makes little sense to compare these, moving on...

China has been killing it lately with Noona romances, this one may not be nearly as good as "My Fated Boy", but the drama holds its own, the overall impression is very positive. We could call it a generic low-stress noona romance, but the execution is mostly great. The leads looks fantastic together, have good chemistry, that has become extraordinary nearing the later episodes. The fluff is top tier. There is some angst here and there, but things are resolved relatively quickly. I liked the side couples as well, there is nothing bad I can say about them, perhaps Xiao Mian could've gotten more screen time..
Triangle haters can safely watch this show, the ex gets dealt with relatively early on & as stupid as his redemption ark is, he's been bearable.

FL's father is a rather horrible character, but whenever I started feeling too angry about him, the writers adjusted his stance, or his behavior. I'm not a fan of character adjustments in general, but in the grand scheme of things this is not too bad. (Compared to Pretty Noona's mom he's a dorky angel)

The corporate plotlines have never gotten too annoying, which is unusual in itself, since cdramas that have corporate plotlines can rarely avoid ridiculous happenings. Here we had one plagiarism plot that just fizzled out, the rest is not too bad.
Of course, these work life things are not very well written, the plot involving the semi villainous characters just meanders. One episode she is the devil, in the next "It's fine, it's just a minor test, I don't feel like destroying them" okay Karen, thanks for appearing in this show. Also YiKe's former boss could have gotten dealt with in a more serious way. I would have preferred the cdrama specials over what we've gotten, which is one scene in which YiKe lightly shames him.

The last 6 or so episodes get a bit draggy, not because of excess fluff, but rather the focus shifts onto meaningless work related things that can be fast-forward buttoned without penalty. The ending may not be the closure of the decade, but it's fine.

9/10 may be a bit of an over-exaggeration, but I enjoyed this drama a lot, so it is what it is.

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Very entertaining across the board, especially the first 10 episodes..

This show is about the people that clean up after the messes of stars, so I guess what the title really is about can be put to rest.

The biggest criticism this show gets is about digging wells in "Africa". As stupid as that was, please bear in mind that Sh**ting Stars -first and foremost- has been made for domestic Korean audiences. The average Kim & Park won't be able to name more than two African countries & going with a specific one could have potentially ruffled even more feathers. From the slightly backward Korean perspective this was probably alright!? Personally what I find more intelligence insulting is the act of digging wells. Even the poorest African communities can manage digging wells at places where water can be actually found, the people there can certainly use shovels better than a random Hallyu star.
ML's interactions with that kid were beyond cringy, though admittedly I FF buttoned the *** out of it.


With that out of the way, as a fluffy a romcom this is pretty great across the board, sure it's overly cringy at times & the leads are just way too juvenile, but it's cute enough with acceptable chemistry. This is mostly what I was in the mood for. Triangle haters can safely watch this, it's fine. The side couples were also fun to watch, though everyone is way too two dimensional. This is the least complicated kdrama romcom you'll ever watch.

The plot outside of the romance -what little there is- is about the life at an entertainment agency. Mostly about solving scandals & the work of the PR department in general. As far as borderline procedural kdramas go, this is fairly good. Not awesome objectively, but considering how bad most K-entertainment industry related procedurals are, It's certainly above average in this regard.

The second biggest thing that can be criticized is that episodes 12 & 13 are quite boring. The plot in those is supposed to be the BIG crisis of the show, luckily this is way tamer than usual, but nonetheless it's boring. These crises have ruined dramas for me many times before, though I suppose boring is always better than horrible.

Perhaps rating this 8/10 is a bit too much, but the ending is nice & wholesome. I did not want any complications & the production team has delivered on that 100%. It was very entertaining across the board, especially the first 10 episodes.
A Business Proposal is a far better drama, but shows like these are few and far between...

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I have always liked Lee Song Gyong, but she should eat more, she looked borderline malnourished in this one.

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It's a noona romance masterpiece!

The Good:
- The noona dynamics
- It has a truly beautiful romantic story.
- It has an outstanding cast.
- It has a bucketload of wholesomeness.
- It has great boss characters.
- The great sismances
- It has short, but impactful flashbacks.
- I did not feel the 29 episodes being too stretched out.
- Best parents!
- The love triangles are relatively weak.

The Neutral:
-The show is a bit silly, no one will mistake this for reality :-)
-The 7 year age gap is over-dramatized.

The Bad:
-The forced semi breakup after a kiss that lasted for 3 episodes(those episodes were pretty bad 11-12-13)
-The plot involving the evil sponsor woman made very little sense.

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Not bad not great!

I liked the main actors, all 3 of them did a great job. The production quality had been quite excellent as well. 8 episodes to tell a proper story forgoing cliche twists could have been great. Naturally the biggest weak point is the writing. It's really strange, I must once again question the qualifications needed to become a kdrama writer. The writer is certainly not lacking in creativity. There are some outstanding ideas in the drama, the bare bones frame of the story is pretty good. It's nice that the magic is not over explained, I think this is the reason why the original Star Wars films were so good and what followed later so much worse.. The reason why the writing is ultimately weak is that the pacing is just plain bad and the first 2 episodes were pretty boring as well, focusing on things that are not fun to watch and very Korean in a bad way.. So yes, the pacing. The drama only has 8 episodes, but the first 6 were extremely slow. In episodes 3-6 the drama followed a one wish a week format, but unfortunately the individual backstories of the applicants were not all that interesting, or well acted out really. With that in mind, why just why are the last 2 episodes so rushed and so lacking in impact and emotion. I did not feel much of anything upon finishing the last episode. *shrugs*

Mystic Pop Up bar is a fairly similar drama, but it's hugely better. The writing is much superior, it's much easier to empathize with the characters. That show caters to the Kdrama genre's strengths much more.
Then again Witch's Diner is worth watching just for Song Ji Hyo. Her clothes and her significantly different looks were quite a sight.. (her acting skill too, I guess :P)

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This special "episode" is only 10 minutes long. I don't know whether these scenes were scrapped from the final cut, or if they were filmed after the rest, my bet is for the former, then again the scene with the kid here is way better than the one in the final episode. I don't really understand why that would've gotten cut.

There is 0 reason not to watch this, if you followed the original run. It's a gift for the fans, a nice one at that. It's way more relevant to the story, than the Mr Queen special. In fact that is probably the most fun/relevant special I have ever seen, the only problem with it that it's way too short.

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I was sufficiently entertained so I would feel bad for giving it less than 8 stars, however the story is pretty bad at times. As a romantic comedy it's pretty great really, even the second pair has a good chemistry. There was no real love triangle, which I always appreciate. The actors were great for the most part too. Personally I didn't mind the casting changes, if I look at the entire series as a whole (with the novel as the basis) perhaps the ML in the second series was more fitting for the role. With My Amazing Boyfriend 1 the chinese wanted to copy the success of My Love from the Star and they've picked a lead that's extremely similar to Kim Soohyon both in looks and mannerisms & I don't think that would have worked for the story in the second season. I prefer Janice Wu over Yu Esther for the female lead role, but thanks to the long time between the two shows the change did not bother me too much. For a replacement Yu Esther was quite outstanding.
I hated how the first show has ended & I'm grateful that they've given me a satisfying conclusion, at last.

So I mentioned above that I had problems with the story. First and foremost the show is really long, the 38 episodes translate into the length of a 19 episodes long kdrama, which I'm normally fine with, but there was a lot of time wasted with the (really stupid, a normal person would have seen it from a mile away) child kidnapping plot, followed by a second kidnapping plot, so yep that wasn't great. Tian Jing Zhi's character is also written in a weird, inconsistent way. In the first show she practically threw herself at Xue Ling Qiao, but in the second show even after they've gotten engaged the woman decided to practice abstinence for quite a whole for ehm reasons and once all the major troubles were resolved she decided to develop a marriage phobia, I mean come on webnovel writer you could have done better..

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I watched the Reply series in the recommended order (97>94>88), I was still very surprised, this was not at all what I was expecting. Looking at 97 & 94, while they are very special kdramas with lots of nostalgia, especially 97, they are nonetheless quite typical in many ways, they have many of the usual kdrama tropes & have typical love lines with very strong triangles with heavy emphasis on them, and all the flashforward scenes teasing the husbands make them that much worse. I accepted in advance that 88 will be the same & also checked who the husband will be in advance, having read that ppl were upset about the final outcome. I couldn't have been more wrong, I didn't feel sorry for Junghwan at all. I did not feel for a second that he was the main character, also there was no conflict between the male leads at all. I think this is the first time that the "love triangle" trope did not annoy me at all. Doksun is supposed to be the main character, but everyone had a lot of screen time & Bora kind of stole the show. This drama is mainly not about romance, but rather family, friendship and nostalgia. There were many touching sub-stories, there were so many heartwarming scenes. They just don't make shows like this anymore in the west, I don't think. The cast is outstanding, everyone was amazing. I usually don't like the Ajumma characters in most dramas, but here even they were awesome. I think over the course of the 20 episodes (about 25-30 hours) nothing overly melodramatic happened & yet I still felt quite emotional when it ended. (one of the best 4 hour long endings I've seen) In conclusion this show is extremely special. Goblin is still my favorite kdrama, but this one is on the same level, 88 is nearly perfect, this apples oranges comparison is pointless anyway. Even the OST is outstanding, it wasn't jaw dropping, but at the important moments the songs had strong emotional impact. The cinematography & the sets were also perfection, no surprise there though.

~~One flaw I found is that Tek remained Tek 6dan for many years, despite beating 9dan players left & right, I don't think that's how ELO works.

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