This review may contain spoilers
Korean Drug Agenda Strikes Again. Making a mistake = Unforgivable.
This review will contain spoilers to the ending of the drama - because I'm clearly upset, disappointed and dissatisfied with how they ended it. Becoming only an agenda piece, allow me to explain why.From the first couple weeks of this drama airing, I knew it wouldn't have a typical happy ending for every character, because Kdramas have to make examples and lessons out of Drugs, that they will never forgive nor give redemption to wrongdoers.
First off we have Eun-soo and her family, with the regular middle class income. Not rich nor poor. When her husband, who has just come up with positive cancer results is in need of treatment, she finds a bag of drugs which a drug dealer has since lost. Her only hope of being able to save her husband and family in times of desperation is to sell the drugs for a heavy profit.
She works multiple jobs to try and make some money, one being at a club where sketchy stuff is happening and surrounding the people there. She runs into a Man named James, who's a drug dealer by night and an art teacher by day, to her own daughter nonetheless. They form a partnership and reluctantly work together to make money in the drug trade. Allow me to point out that neither of these characters ever TOOK any drugs themselves.
They run in circles quite a bit at first, only focusing on building their partnership and making drug runs. Barely any character development happens during the first three quarters of the drama. We get small clues and glimpses but no real backstory to James until about episode 10.
**HUGE SPOILER**
After Eun-soo and James turn themselves in for what they've done wrong, they spend some time on jail, then we have a time skip where they both get out and want to lead better lives now. Happy ending right? Wrong. They put us through a rollercoaster to where a good thing would happen, just when a tragedy would strike the next.
Eun-soo's daughter wants nothing to do with her after getting out of jail, her husband's now dead from the corrupt cop villain and she has nothing left and nobody who cares about her. (Every character in the end is extremely judgemental of their poor situations that led them to having to go to extreme lengths to aquire life saving money.)
Eun-soo and James say one final goodbye and tell each other to be happy, then they part ways.
Now here's the part that really made me mad.
Towards the end it's revealed that James was at a party and his friend took drugs and accidentally died by them, and his death was pinned on James. From what I understood, now he's trying to pay off something (honestly can't remember what) and his family hates him etc.
The final reveal was about how his Father was the one who orchestrated the pinning of his friends death on him for money, which James had been suicidal from years ago but found a reason to keep going because he wanted to prove to his father he could redeem himself and become favorable in his eyes.
The show ends with James finding out about what his father did and breaking down and yelling at him for ruining his life. He then walks out into traffic with no will to live, then walks up to and stands on a building ledge, about to jump off. He holds a pack of drugs and drops it over the side as we see a montage of Eun-soo finding another bag of drugs and being tempted by them to make more money, but she ultimately flushes them down the toilet and makes the decision to be done with that life.
We don't know whether James decides to jump because... The show just ends. No closure, no nothing. He was at his wits end and that's how they end it?!?
Now I don't know if it was the Writers choice to show two sides of the coin, one persons life ruined by Drugs and one persons life who could change from it, but if you look at how each character ended up, they both got the short end of the stick badly. And only to show "Just how terrible people who do drugs, sell drugs and have anything to do with drugs are!!" Even though our main characters are on the sympathetic side, pushed into extreme lengths due to poor circumstances and crappy human beings.
Kdramas can NEVER have a character who has done something morally and lawfully wrong, have a redemption arc or happy ending.
Hateful Agenda saying nobody is ever deserving of redemption, help or is capable of turning their life around. Both characters are now crap human beings and ostracized from everybody that ever cared about them. This kind of agenda is why South Korea has such high suicide rates, no grace or mercy, no forgiveness or showing that we as humans can change for the better even though we make mistakes.
When will they learn that their ideologies they hold are the reason human beings are offing themselves. So tired of this.
As for the quality of the drama, it's good not great. Some wonderful moments, some not so great moments that drag on. Not the worst watch, but after that ending, I wouldn't recommend this to anyone. I suppose if you like one of the actors go for it, just be aware this exists as solely an agenda piece.
Disclaimer: No drugs aren't good and can destroy lives, but don't make it like everyone who gets involved is an unworthy scumbag and can't come back from it. That's just screwed up.
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This review may contain spoilers
Not a bad watch, but has some indefinite issues and tends to favor one gender over the other.
I can't be the only one who noticed over 70% of the cases were basically "Men bad, Women good. A Man is the reason I want to kill myself because they're so terrible!"...?Can't get behind a lot of this shows logic. It was a constant pattern that felt like solely Men bashing for no reason. The first few cases were great, down to earth and problems anyone could face, but then it went downhill from there into the toilet.
**SPOILERS TO SOME DETAILS ABOUT ONE OF THE CASES**
The case about the girl being raped - The siblings fight, say hurtful things to each other because they were scared and felt guilty for what happened, blaming themselves and each other etc. and in the end it's *him* who needs to apologize to *her* and *he's* the one who gets absolutely reamed for it by the grim reaper? I understand she didn't want her name on the news and he was protesting something that could make her feel ashamed, but she acted like he tried to do absolutely nothing for her and partly blamed her incident on him. They both said extremely hurtful things, he's not without fault but neither is she. This drama catered to the idea that Woman can do no wrong and if they did something bad, it was because a Man made them that way.
**END OF SPOILERS**
The grim reapers seemed more compassionate to the Woman victims than the Men. It didn't feel equal.
Due to this, the emotion it's supposed to bring out doesn't hit as deep and made me become disinterested because I knew the next story and the next was going to be a victimized Woman, blaming all her life's problems on a bad Man.
It's an okay show to a certain extent, but Joon woong is barely in it as much as you'd expect and a lot of it is boring and falls flat. Joong gil needed more exploration, sadly a wasted character with great potential.
In the end, the Soundtrack is absolutely on fire. Red light is spectacular.
Worth a watch, but I skipped a lot of filler and backstories to characters I didn't particularly take a liking to. Wasn't aware the lead was the pink haired girl, and she doesn't make that many faces throughout the drama and doesn't do her grim reaper job well at all, with little to no improvement.
Joon woong was a great grim reaper and knew what he was doing, if they'd actually let him handle any of the cases. He barely does anything but stand around. Underutilized great character.
7.5 from me.
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