UncreativeName

Glad I can live rent free in your mind? What kind of loser goes to these kinds of sites and memorizes people? Lol.

I feel IU is low key typecasted into these kinds of roles - the b**** who secretly harbors a heart of gold but is openly hostile towards a lot of people. Watching her play this character, I felt like I was watching Jang Man Wol from Hotel del Luna, who is almost identical in this way.

I think they underestimate KDrama watchers and how much we hate badly localized titles. The worst one recently was "When Life Gives You Tangerines" - someone thought they were being clever combining the Tangerines of Jeju Island and "When Life Gives You Lemons" but the Korean title had nothing to do with either of these things.

These days, Kdramas are shot in advance. Can this Love Be Translated was shot in the latter half of 2024 and ended on February 2025, well in advance. We Are All Trying Here started in October 2025, so there was at least an 8 month break in between shooting these two, even though we're getting two Go Youn Jung kdramas seemingly in a row.

I felt the same way! There were definitely holes in the story but I found myself tuning in every week for the characters.

I agree that the out-of-universe answer is: the screenwriter needed an excuse to further the plot. Two people just having an honest conversation basically ends a lot of KDramas on episode 1, lol.

I think the in-universe answer is: he seems to have had strong gaps in his memory. It seems like he remembered that Ha Ran saved him from a lonely, depressed life through the instant message conversations they had, and he felt like he owed her. But in a way, he's kind of like a stalker, so it's hard to be like "hey...remember those times you thought you were talking to your BF? Surprise, that was me. [Queue the pepper spray]"

That said...I find the setup of the story to be weak. Here's something so obvious that it's stupid when you think about it: it's clear that video chatting works like how it works in the real world. You're telling me they had a billion conversations as BF and GF, and she was OK with the fact that they never once actually chatted through video? That's weird to me. It's not like internet bandwidth costs a lot these days or things like that. And it's not like they're super tight on money too, seeing as how her grandmother is a famous designer and she ended up taking a flight to the US, lol.

The site has been like this for a while. It's just a race for people to farm engagement and it works. I used to try to write thoughtful reviews, but they just get overshadowed by the first user to hit some kind of unspoken word count which matches the popular opinion of the show (Either love it unconditionally or hate it and it was a waste of time).

I've found MLN is particularly polarizing: I've seen people like me that claim that the kdrama sounds pretentious and I've seen other people say that it was well-crafted and the ideas expressed in a non-pretentious way. I feel like how it is received depends on what kind of life experience you've had, which to a certain extent, is also related to what kind of culture you grew up in and how old you are.

I know we might not agree, but just to share an example of why I find it pretentious: the infamous worship me scene. Mi Jeong is supposed to be representing an average Jane (technically, not even. If we ignore the Kdrama magic of all of the actors being gorgeous human beings, in the beginning of the story, one of her coworkers says she's pretty but boring, so in-universe, she is good looking but people don't want to date her) who is unlucky in love and has dated a bunch of a-holes so she feels frustrated and feels entitled to someone's adoration, transcending love. To me, this is silly: not everyone wants someone to love them, but it's fair to say that of people that want romantic love, everyone wants someone to care about them in a way that makes them feel special. And honestly, I find that that's all this scene breaks down into and I don't find it to be an amazing revelation: everyone is the protagonist of their own story, and I think it's safe to say that everyone doesn't feel like they should be wronged/feels like they deserve someone.

And I find that I end up feeling this way for each of the characters. Mr. Gu is about someone that did bad things, had a clearly bad thing happen to him, and turn into an aimless alcoholic. So when this girl approaches him and says instead of drinking, why not just devote yourself to me, he just kinda agrees. That's not a healthy relationship, regardless of where the story goes.

I just feel like the show had a lot of lost potential. Again, I know I'm not a majority opinion of these things.

I didn't realize this was a Park Hae Young drama. I'm probably in the minority here, but that makes me really nervous because her dramas are hit or miss for me. I loved My Mister, but I kinda hated My Liberation Notes and Another Miss Oh felt unsatisfying to me. In particular, I thought My Liberation Notes was a waste of a good cast:all of them were excellent actors but their characters were all written to sound exactly the same and they sounded too preachy, and even a little bit pretentious. I'm hoping that doesn't come across in this one.

It's very similiar. I would not recommend it if you did not like hospital playlist

Moments I really like:

-Mu Hee nodding her head like a bobbing cat.
-Mu Hee convincing Ho Jin to come to Canada to see the Aurora
-A stolen kiss by the "waterfall"
-Mu Hee realizing her time as Do Ra Mi in Italy and the "we'll break up confession"
-Their first time together in a dingy Italian apartment

Moments I really hate:

-Last-minute Canada breakup
-Last-minute mom-story arc
-Last-episode, last-minute break up

It's clear to me that the Hong Sisters were given super leeway to write the story they wanted and the production had a lot of money to go to Canada and Italy. It's also clear to me that they had tons of sponsorship/money to give Go Youn Jung all the outfits she wore and such. This was a HIGH production value show and the visuals show it. The landscapes and moments are so memorable.

But it needed something more. The story was rushed or didn't make sense at certain points. I feel that we needed maybe ~1-2 more episodes if we were really going to do the whole mom-arc thing, or we should have just left it out entirely. The last episode breakup was just silly: long distance is a real consideration for them. Certain miscommunications were too contrived: I really can't stand how little sense the Canada breakup made - you don't just go from "I'm considering you as a romantic partner" to "how DARE you assume that I still have the hots for my crush. We're so OVER". I went through line by line of that exchange and looked at the original Korean just to make sure there wasn't something weird lost in translation, and there doesn't seem like there was. If I'm Ho Jin, I'm explaining to Mu Hee how I literally just ran out of the cafe/bookstore because I had already realized I was over my first love, and that I didn't understand why she was trying to push me away, especially since she was missing her flight to come see me.

I feel that the Hong sisters just couldn't figure it out at two key points: how to transition from Canada to Italy and how to end the story, and those are the weakest points of an otherwise-amazing show.

I keep re-watching moments from this Kdrama. I feel that it's a show that I WANT to like but there's certain aspects of the story that I feel are too weak. I'll mention them in a spoilered comment reply.

Crazy how quickly she's catapulted to A list stardom. All her dramas have been bangers and/or from famous directors or writers.

I wasn't the biggest fan of Hospital Playlist, but I liked this one a lot more. Solid show.

I didn't personally didn't mind it so much because Kdramas are fantasy, but it's because she needs treatment, not love. If this happened in real life, there's a an argument that she needs to be forced hospitalized: she broke into Ho Jin's home and threatened him verbally and passively with a knife. That could be interpreted as posing a danger to herself and others. Once he learned that she was experiencing a full on psychotic break, he should have found a way to get her medical help rather than playing along with her. It's not normal for people to be walking around with two personalities or just forgetting half their day and just shrugging it off.

Thanks for sharing! I just watched that video and the future seems so bleak: the big giants are going to continue betting on cliche stuff and the production companies struggling are going to push those micro-dramas.

The Canada break up was indeed the stupidest: they just had a car ride where Ho Jin basically confessed in not-so-many words (he said he was open to a relationship/feelings). Then Mu Hui finds out his old flame is single, panics, races to get to Ho Jin before he can find out the truth. Then she gets there, sees them talking, tries to flee, then is ACTUALLY HONEST about her insecurities (she states that he must not like her much, that she thought she had no shot once he found out that his old flame broke off her marriage, etc.), finds out that he already knows, only to have him go "you know what, ya, you are a bi*tch for ASSUMING MY FEELINGS SO EFF YOU TOO." I thought the most logical conclusion of that conversation is that Ho Jin explains that he doesn't really care, he actually does like Mu Hui, then they go make out somewhere or something, because it's pretty clear at this point that they both have some hardcore hots for each other. In my opinion as a man, I think the writers wrote Ho Jin to "act like a girl" in the context of that conversation and it didn't make sense to me.

I did not see the first twist coming that they would make Do Ra Mi manifest herself in real life as a split personality. I'm not sure how I feel about it either - on the one hand, it's really unrealistic how she was treated because if that actually happened in real life, we'd be sending her to the doctor to be treated, but on the other hand, it made the show very Hong Sisters/very unique. But for real, if this happened in real life, we'd call it a psychotic break: stuff like Mu Hui randomly kissing Hiro could be called assault. And even herself, I don't think she would think that her blacking out for hours is something that she can just power through.

Some of the conflicts didn't make sense to me. When Mu Hui pushed Ho Jin away for the second time in Canada, that whole argument didn't make sense to me - I'm not sure if it was bad Netflix translations or something but I felt that from the point of view of Ho Jin, he would not have walked away from her based on what she said - at that point, he had already reached the inflection point on his feelings and realized that actually, maybe he did like her, so for them to straight up burn bridges after that conversation made no sense to me. There's even a point that Ho Jin says "you didn't just skip your plane to tell me this is the end of our relationship" or something like that.

This Kdrama broke my watch slump and I'm not sure how to feel about it. Have to use spoilers to talk about it so I'll reply to my own comment.

OK, that makes so much more sense, thank you!