UncreativeName

Yeah that's fair. I guess it's an exaggeration on my part but I definitely agree it's not underrated

Neither is Imitation, in my opinion. I feel like I see these two dramas mentioned everywhere...

Apparently this is going to be remade into a webtoon. I don't know if there's an good English source, but I found this on a Korean website: https://post.naver.com/viewer/postView.nhn?volumeNo=31488238&memberNo=39541936&vType=VERTICAL

Also found it boring. Because of FOMO, I decided to stick with it the whole way through. The good/bad news is that the rest of the series is exactly the same style as the beginning. It has some cute moments (google the karaoke scene on the youtube Swoon channel), but not for me, either.

I acknowledge though that we're probably the exception to the rule. People LOVE this drama and it's definitely well done if you like that sort of thing.

I'm on Episode 11 and I agree that the age gap isn't done well. It's less about what their ages are and more about the fact that they treat each other like Father-Daughter. It's really weird. Like during her graduation, I felt like he was more like a "dad coming to congratulate his daughter" If you saw the two of them together out in the world, I think that's would you would have assumed. I feel like if they made the Goblin still a 900+ year old entity, but made him "look and act like" a ~20something year old, it would have been better. But maybe they wanted Gong Yoo for the role so they had no choice.

...but at the same time I can't deny that there is just something special about this drama. If you completely ignore the Father-Daughter thing, there are so many funny/special scenes in here. The scene in the past where he was looking into the future at smartphones and describing it like "in the future, people will stroke metal like they stroke a baby" was just hilarious to me. So overall, I don't know how to feel about it...

Main couple: Yes

Two side couples: No

You're not the first person I've heard that took issue with Park Jae Won being an impossibly understanding pushover, but his motivations really resonated with me. I wish I could tell you that I was always a self-confident man myself, but I have DEFINITELY been stuck on girls that didn't deserve my affections and I think his character is meant to be written in the same way. For him, I think his devotion/obsession is slightly justified by his sexual relationship with Eun Oh (it could be just me, but I think for guys, a physical relationship "automatically" increases your "feeling of connection" with a girl) AND the fact that they had a truly, lovey-dovey relationship for a short time, even if it was based on lies -- I don't think you easily forget that, even one year afterwards, and I think if there's a doubt in your mind that "she really loves you", you will pursue it to the end.

I don't think the ending is perfect, but in the way that KDramas are fantasies, this show was kind of a wish fulfillment of a happy ending, so I thought it was OK. I only wish that they had properly resolved Lee Eun Oh's inner conflict with herself, instead of just pulling a 180 in back-to-back episodes. Personally, I think they were meant to be with each other in a non-toxic way, but in the way that the show is written, it casts doubt as to whether their relationship will survive, since it's predicated on whether Jae Won and "real" Eun Oh mesh together and that is unknown.

...but from my viewer point of view, I "want them" to be together, so to speak. Wish fulfillment for my own personal life I guess?

IMO Heirs is like the pinnacle of "trash TV" -- it's got gorgeous actors/actresses, beautiful set pieces/settings, a catchy OST, the most cliche of kdrama cliches, etc. It makes it simultaneously extremely fun to watch and also a terrible "piece of literature" so to speak.

So if you go into Kdrama watching with the expectation that you're going to watch a well-written complex story full of complex characters...then you'll probably hate Heirs. But if you go in with the expectation that you're going to watch pretty people doing "Kdrama things" then it's a lot of fun.

Personally? I agree the story and characters are kind of "terrible" but that doesn't stop me from enjoying it. Heirs is a weird thing.

9 and 10 feel like filler but IMO the story picks up again after 11. I think there is potential this series will end strong but we'll see.

It's a matter of taste, but it's definitely "high up there" if not the best for PSJ IMO. For example, I've also seen What's Wrong with Secretary Kim, but prefer his character in this one compared to that one (I found his rich character more...snobby than funny if that makes sense whereas his Fight My Way character is just a brutally straightforward guy which can be both funny and endearing)

I agree.

....but my problem is (and to be clear, PERSONAL problem, not necessarily anyone else's) is that I am truly looking for an "aggregate" -- the reason is because 1 person's tastes is 1 person's tastes -- so I'm looking for an "objective average to a subjective taste" instead of just relying on 1 person's taste... does that make sense?

Like, I'm a big believer in statistics, so in THEORY if you have an "alright system" it'll inherently account for outliers - like EVERY system will have people giving 0/10 or 10/10 for bogus reasons. Can't stop that. Metacritic, rottentomatoes, etc. seems to do this "pretty well" -- like I can tell if everyone "hates X thing" for some reason (rightly or wrongly) or they "love Y thing" for some reason.

BUT something about MDL inflates the scores. I don't know what it is, but SOMETHING is doing it. Because in a "normal world" I would expect 0s and 10s to average themselves out. But it's not happening. SOMETHING is inflating the scores. And it's specific to MDL. And I also think the design is flawed in some ways that people don't seem to have any issue with (being able to review shows before they're over, etc.)

For whatever reason, ratings in general are just heavily inflated on this site. Some dramas that "everyone seems to hate/critique in reviews" are 7.0+ scores, which I don't understand (IE. If hated, why is it not 5-?). I am sure it is related to the fact that folks will easily give a show 10/10 even if they themselves admit that it has some noticeable flaws -- some folks have a really low bar ("My favorite actor/actress is in it, so 10/10!!!"). It would be interesting for the site administrators to share data about ratings in general but I doubt they will ever do this.

Personally, it makes me sad because I'm looking for an "unbiased" (or at least, low bias in general) way to judge "general people's feelings on whether a drama is good or not" but every method I've tried has some really obvious, clear flaw, with this site's being super rating inflation...

There's another sad possibility that happens: streaming becomes the new cable bundle. In the olden days (and technically even now) you had to subscribe to hbo, starz, espn, whatever. They were "nice enough" to screw us over by bundling these channels together and charging us a sub. But you still needed the individual channels that held your favorite series/movies whatever.

...they are already starting this. Disney owns Hulu so you can pay extra to get Disney+ and Hulu together. It's only going to get worse.

Dramafever showed them that they couldn't make money with a monopoly on dramas. Well, the logical conclusion is all our favorite dramas are now splintered across different channels/streaming services/whatever.

It sucks but what can we do about it. I too wish that all the lesser known stream services would just die but how would you kill AppleTV which is backed by the giant Apple, etc.

This drama is truly a hidden gem. It just hits all the right notes: it has a sensible story, romance, and characters that make you feel good. I only regret not sitting down to watch it earlier.