Beatrice

Sweet first love fantasy romance

I really appreciate the creature design for the ghosts, looking appropriately creepy. That's not an easy thing to pin down for either eastern nor western shows. I also like that Seong A's feelings for Gyeon U is validated as a genuine connection forms between them. His looks got her attention, but his personality and kindness towards others is what made her fall for him. They are both skilled in their respective specialties and save each other. Their romance is formed organically and they're cute together. Speaking of cute, Seong A has a very nice collection of sleepwear that makes her look like a pretty doll. A lot of the edgier outfits Bong Su prefers that seemed to be implied to be tacky looked great on her too. There is a whole implied plotline of Bong Su really connecting with his own fem side there as her look was complete with hair and make up done as well, which is all Bong Su. I like that Seong A learns to find more compassionate ways to deal with exorcisms. Their respective friendships with Ji Ho is mostly nice too. He's the one that helps them connect with the regular world of high school and I'm really glad he learns to let go of his one sided crush for his own sake. I really liked the reveal of Seong A's awful childhood and her wanting to live as a normal student was helped by Ji Ho and Gyeong U deepens his understanding of her through knowing this as well. Seong A's familial relationship with her adopted mother is really lovely as well.

Bong Su turning out to be a younger teen/pre-teen who also has a big ol crush on Seong A was a good twist in turning into a dynamic that's different than usual. He was a child spirit that died a traumatic death and used by Yeom Hwa for her own ends and once he's able to communicate in Gyeon U's body, it's immediately clear he does not have the same objectives as Yeom Hwa. His being unable to recall his name until Gyeon U was able to find it deep in Bong Su's psyche was also trauma based. I'm glad that he's able to move on at the end. That lady is the worst. I understand her grief for her child, but her utterly selfish actions throughout the years was unforgivable. She's straight up a prolific serial killer, but that's entirely ignored at the conclusion of the series. I really hate how she refused to let Gyeon U heal in his own way from her many years of psychologically and physically abusing him by getting to know her in a tiny way as a human being, just to know her real name. She is the worst and needed some bigger karmic punishment or had to do something bigger to make up for her years of evil actions instead of having the consequences of her actions canceled out by the people who cares about her. At least go to jail or something. The shaman Do Ryeong was a chaos agent helping everyone on all sides, but he wasn't doing it out of malice though his actions also enabled a lot of deaths.

Despite the really glaring omission of properly dealing with Yeom Hwa, the overall series was a good watch.

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Dance Challengers

The concept suggested by film trailer is two rival professional dancers falling for each other through teaching each other their respective dance genre specialties, but that's not what it delivers. The film is the most fascinating when exploring the psychology and athleticism of competitive dancers like when Suguki poses Suzuki in the female dancer positions to illustrate the grueling pain of dancing for hours and hours in heels in order to make him understand he needs to be supportive while leading his dance partner and the chilling scene where Suguki who everyone admires as the dancing gentleman cruelly puppets his near catatonic from ptsd shock dance partner by shouting instructions to get her through the competition. The movie fails to deliver on romantic tension or any feelings of yearning and longing outside of Suguki's yearning to finally be champion. Although Suguki is the one that initiates them working together and later to make out on the train, he never shows any kind of attraction or feeling for Suzuki aside from the flashback where it's revealed that he cried from the overwhelming feeling of inspiration when he first saw Suzuki dance. Suguki only loves dancing, he doesn't really care about any human being for themselves. Even his ex girlfriend that left him for another dancer, he just really liked how she danced with him. In the end he embraces his love of dancing for the sake of dancing rather than to be champion where he's not favored by the judges for whatever arbitrary reason by the slimmest margins though he's obviously at the top of the game, with Suzuki that he enjoys dancing with. Like how in Challengers everything is about tennis and tennis is about sex, here everything is about dance and dance is the sex. If this was how it was advertised, then perhaps it would be less disappointing in the romance department.

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Cultural identity, Scars of colonial trauma, and Globalization

It's always refreshing to see horror films that aren't based around the Christian frame work because everyone is influenced by the same Hollywood movies and western colonization. It's an even more impressive feat considering the director himself is Christian also. I really enjoy that the film is rooted in cultural knowledge that specifically the Korean audiences would be familiar with and doesn't do any exposition to handhold international audiences, because it doesn't have to. I see so many reviews that are so entitled to being catered to. There's a lot of cross cultural motifs in the film perhaps alluding to the past unease of forced mixing of cultures during the wartime versus the modern world where there are cultural exchanges through globalization with various soft powers. The cursed rich family hiring the shaman are Korean American, their ancestor unfortunately worked with the colonial Japanese military, and the geomancer's daughter marrying a German husband, even the Christian character Young Geun who assists in the geomancy and the shamanic rituals and does Christian prayers for his cohort who had been attacked by a Japanese curse demon.

The film opens with the shaman Hwa Rim being spoke to in Japanese by an Asian flight attendant on a flight of different ethnicities sitting around them. While Hwa Rim responds to the attendant's question in perfect Japanese, she also clarifies that she's Korean. Her cultural identity is important to her. She and her shaman assistant Bong Gil travel to St. Joseph's hospital to assess baby Joseph who is the latest first born son or remaining son afflicted of the family curse. St. Joseph is the earth father of Jesus, so Joseph carries the theme of the patrilineage. Hwa Rim clocks that the troubles stem from the grandfather who the characters later discovered the big family secret is that he was a high ranking officer who worked for the Colonial Japanese during that era, which is how recent it still is in the historical timeframe. Aside from weapons and atrocities, there was Japanization to force Koreans to remove their culture. The iron stakes refers to an urban legend that the Colonial Japanese installed them in specific places to break the spirit of the Korean people. No matter how loyal the grandfather was to the occupiers, they used him even in death for their scheme to protect the giant demon version of the iron stake made from a big sword and different pieces of bodies. His nameless, abandoned grave, turning him into an aggressive spirt that murders his own bloodline. The sparing visions of the ghost was more effective than dancing his tango loving daughter in law to death which was pretty silly. The ghost learned human technology really fast, using the phone to fool his grandson into ignoring the actual Sang Deok at the door. That's kind of silly, but points for flipping the script on the door banging being from the actual Sang Deok. They make sure to show that they had no choice, but to cremate the body on a rainy day to save baby Joseph, and so the guy who worked for the Japanese Colonial power will not have a good afterlife.

The cgi foxes could have been done better, but the human headed snake that screams was an effective creepy design, as was the reveal there is a vertical grave underneath the grandfather, and the giant demon shogun that feasts on humans that emerges from it. It was clever to have Geomancer Sang Deok's explanation about how his field revolves around the elements of wood, metal, fire, air, and water come back around by using wood and his own blood in place of water to defeat the monster comprised of metal and fire. Hwa Rim's fluent Japanese implied to be possibly related to her shamanism field requiring at least some knowledge of the shamanism from there with Japanese ghosts behaving differently on the danger scale, comes in clutch to understand what the shogun says and wants. Bong Gil manages to survive his encounter with the shogun by being covered mostly in tattoos of the Buddhist script, leaving the demon only being able to stab the liver area which was an unfortunate blank spot. Hwa Rim realizing this leads to a funny scene where she, Sang Deok, and Young Geun are covered in temporary tattoos of the Buddhist script while having to speak to the traffic controller at a stop to go back into the mountain area. The rag tag team defeat the evil, but they are still are still affected by their experiences, similar to how South Korean is still affected by what had happened to the country during the colonial rule. The team is bonded though surviving the trauma and Sang Deok incorporates them into his new blended family along with his German son in law in the the big family photo.

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A fun, at times silly and at times a bit spicy harem drama

The fantasy drama consists of bite sized episodes of well worn tropes that doesn't break the mold, but is done in an entertaining way. The main character who has lived over 1000 loops of life has maxed out his skill tree and becomes the ultimate business strategist, suave fighter guy that women of all ages become attracted to despite his physical body still being a teenager. There is a fine line between confident and cool vs arrogant and annoying, and the actor manages to keep the show in the former which makes it a fun watch as he competence porns his way through most of the situations . The show actually manages some actual spicy chemistry moments between him and certain female leads. The story ends very abruptly though like there would be a next episode even though all the listed episodes has been aired. I hope there is another season to continue and finish out the story.

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Encapsulates the best kind of kdrama feelilngs

I really enjoy the lead characters and their journeys individually and together as friends and as a couple. The conceit of the gaming mechanics guides them to grow their relationship organically. I really like how though there are general goals and issues to resolve, it's still up to Myung Ha how he proceeds and how he treats Yeo Woon and everyone else. It's so refreshing to see the two actually spend time as a couple and that they have the tasteful amount of kisses and physical intimacy. The handholding is always so warm and cute.

The opening episodes while Myung Ha is learning the ropes of his situation are so hilarious and I love how the stakes are tangible and that's what drives the angst rather than ridiculous misunderstandings that a lot of other stories drag out the story with, no matter the run time. I really like how the internal lore explains the situation that Myung Ha is in as well. I love how the ending lets both Yeo Woon and Myung Ha make their own choices, such a lovely ending of second chances to live life with love, romantic, platonic, and familial.

The show has very nice editing, sound, lighting, and cinematography, being cinematic without being distractingly ostentatious. The show definitely makes the best use of it's probably small budget. At 8 episodes and half hour runtime, the show makes use of every second and is streamlined to all the most important parts of the storytelling. This does mean only lightly delving into the side characters and the stalker subplot, but it doesn't detract from the story at all. I'm here for the main characters and there is enough character interactions with the others to build the world.

The pacing is fantastic and the developments makes it very easy to binge like all the best of kdramas are. Definitely worth a watch for anyone in search of a good drama.

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Bait and switch premise

The show has a brilliant visual and romantic chemistry match up with Victoria and Song Wei Long as He Fan Xing and Yuan Song, but their relationship is basically relegated to being an afterthought side story that also has to share time with a litany of various side stories and you wouldn't even know Song Wei Long is the male lead as his screen time is more like that of a supporting role while a whole other character is treated like the male lead and is the one that spends most of the time with the female lead. I hope Victoria and Song Wei Long will star in different drama that
does legitimately feature both of them as the actual leading screen partners throughout the whole show.

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Another exploitative teen drama

This drama has explicit, gratuitous, graphic sex scenes of characters that are supposed to be minors, so it exploits the image of school girls in the guise of illuminating issues that the oppressed students face. Similar to Euphoria, it's pretty unnecessary to show so much, especially what the teacher does to that student. Also, that relationship only ends when the student finds out he has a fiancé rather than because he's a 30 year old teacher and she's a high schooler. The show doesn't draw the line between sexualizing minors and championing the youths be allowed to explore their sexuality. I do find it interesting that the main character challenges the rules of a private school that are not beholden to the government oversight that public schools are. It's basically instituting abstinence only, specifically for cis hetero students under the language of "no dating." The issue is that students will do it any way without any knowledge of contraception or protection against STDs. The ban only makes sex seem even more important in the kid's minds as the ultimate thing they can do to show how they feel about each other, like what happens to the main characters. As well as turning it into a police state making students report each other, even when they are outside of school grounds. Expulsions won't protect the girls. It was unpleasant to see some of the narcs just get away with ruining another classmate's life. The lesbian character should have apologized to both of the gay students she outed just because they weren't expelled due to homophobia excluding them from the abstinence no dating ban. Stalker incel Kanda doesn't even apologize to Ichika. It's not clear if she knows he narced on her as LK. Ryogo knows he narced and that he likes Ichika. Dude just ignores all the red flags of that guy obsessed with his girlfriend. Ms. Shinoda is really, borderline indulging the affections of the high schooler infatuated with her. It's unclear if she quit or got fired for testifying, but it's probably good she left that kid's orbit though she was the best faculty member on that campus. The school is such a messed up situation that Ichika's extortion scheme in a twisted way undermines the narcs that turned people in, and is helpful to the students reported a chance to buy their way out of being reported since Ichicka actually deletes the photos from the report site. Her mom is indeed trying her best and she is also a victim of her ex-husband, but still her daughter is totally also being harassed daily by loansharks, she can't really say she's not raising her daughter in this kind of desperate situation and at least she realizes that she's also a bit part of the problem having her daughter go to a private school when it's difficult to pull together the funds for it to begin with. The loanshark issue kind of just randomly disappeared with the ex popping up to take care of it. Ichika carried so much of it. It's also weird that all the high schoolers would turn over their phone to the faculty to look through. These kids need to learn to put passwords on their phone and passwords that are not fingerprint or face recognition and turn off the phone to be safe too. Also don't admit to anything. The rich kids should have lawyered up.

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Surprise Mother Father

The initial sports and influencer scheme wasn't much interesting until the supernatural conceit kicks in and Klairung has to figure out what is happening to his stiffening hands. This entry really benefits from casting two of the company's more capable actors that also have camera presence as the leads and good supporting roles as well, which importantly comes into play for Klairung's deep insecurities that's preventing him from properly boxing for years and Malai's difficulties from her debt and not receiving any help despite having a magical spirit grandma that grants the wishes of everyone that makes some at her shrine. There's no inherent romantic chemistry between Kairung and Malai, but the growth of the character's relationship with each other makes sense. The rival influencer Sunrise whose schtick is to expose the schemes and facades of various other influencers has a funny catchphrase where he says "Surprise, Mother Father!", but the funniest moments are when the shrine spirit grandma uses her power to show herself to people behaving badly towards her or her granddaughter like when she scares the jerk scamming Malai by endlessly extending her debt and smacking down Sunrise all in her giant form. It was funny too when Klairung is giving her the updates and mentions that Malai is staying at his house and peaces out of the dream before she can say anything. There are also little moments that have that wonderful Parbdee trademark comic timing that's fun too.

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Portrait of a first love

This film that is grounded, if a bit somber, realistic lens into a lgbtq experience of girls that have always been in a religious single sex school and social environment their whole childhood where there aren't a lot of choices for romantic interests. The only choices they have are the school staff and each other. Thank goodness the teacher handles the situation responsibly. The small bit of bittersweet comic relief comes from the first time the couple was busted from a teacher witnessing them kissing as their bus passed bit and their parents were called in for a parent teacher conference. Both their dads are amiable with one another, both agreeing it's no big deal for the girls to be messing around as there would be no pregnancy and laughing that they're only like this because they never been with boys before. Wing Lam's mom is upset at her husband because their daughter takes after him, liking women. Sam Yut who is the sole provider for Sam Yut tells her he doesn't mind that she likes being with girls, so does he, but he has an honest conversation about their family's dire monetary situation and reminds her that she needs to keep her scholarship. Both dads offer and share their kid's snacks and sweets to comfort them. Their economic class difference shapes and diverge their paths. Wing Lam's family has both parents and is middle class, being able to afford a cell phone to sneak into their daughter's backpack though it is banned at school. Sam Yut makes it to University as a film major, but has to drop out to take care of her siblings once her father passes away and she refuses her derelict, estranged mother's offer to take them to the US. It's possible that Sam Yu is bisexual, having married a man before they have to act on their promise to marry each other if they are still single by 30. It's also possible she chooses the safer path of convention. In the end they were an important chapter in each other's lives as they move on in their respective directions.

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Not a cult hit

There is a promising premise beneath the desperately unfunny over the top humor tone to everything with how despite initially joining the cult undercover with clear intention knowing it's a grift, Phu still falls for the charlatan cult leader's snake oil that appeals to his ego and he even takes over the cult in the end along with Ploy who also thought they could have an ethical cult. There is also an undercurrent of the cult being a satirical take on the Idol and fan system and relationship, especially in the second iteration, not unlike GMMTV's Idol events. The overall execution however is a big, long, dragged out dud despite only being 4 episodes. Nani is the lone bright spot in the entire show. He's got an inherently serious vibe that when he has to portray the over the top tone as officer Wutkrai that delusionally believes he has magic skills, there's actually a grounding balance that makes him funny. I think the show would have worked much better if the rest of the characters was cast the same way, with the most serious feeling actors, preferably with gravitas and screen presence. Phu's storyline definitely should have been given to an actor that has stronger acting abilities.

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Sugar Baby & his Stalker

The priorities and pacing of the storyline is all over the place. It chooses over long fan service moments over building momentum to the key mystery or revenge motivations. Most of the so called romantic moments are anything but and grinds the story to a halt. It's also disappointing so much time could have gone to building relationships with other people in Armin's life and also fleshing out his character more.

We never learn if he has any family, why it's only Phat and P'Jeed who he loves as an aunt. He never spends much time with Phat, his best friend at all or see exactly how he's helping P'Jeed live a healthier lifestyle as she treats her illness. We are never shown that Phat wanted to learn to be a chef until Armin randomly enrolls Phat in culinary school. There are moments when the show is so unintentionally funny like when Armin crashes the car from the film set and his neck length hair wig falls off to reveal his even longer neck length hair and then he cuts his hair to reveal a hair cut that's like his wig. The scene where Armin delivers his one line scene as a background actor was supposed to be amazing, but it was pretty lackluster, which made the dissonance of the scene unintentionally bad funny too. Though to be charitable, Armin's first life in his twenties is a truly atrocious actor, so in comparison it would be good, but not to the level of the reactions to all around him. The actual actor for Armin is not that bad throughout the entire show either, but not overly impressive in that scene. Armin didn't need to let Charlie feel him up to set up Sam with Charlie, it's so nonsensical.

Tada is a creepy stalker who stalked Armin for multiple decades. Tada also made his relationship with Narin creepy, exchanging sex for company favors as his boss and didn't stop until he got with the object of his stalking who he sets up a lead role for unbeknownst to Armin even though he could have gotten it on his decades of acting practice and who also ends up working for him. Seeing him him cradle Armin's corpse in the original timeline was very creepy. It's so annoying when one character asks another a direct question and isn't answered. Armin even questions it, but then lets it go for no reason when it's the extremely suspicious behavior he noticed of the guy always knowing what he's doing and where he is all the time, that he KNOWS wasn't a part of his life during that era of his life. There is no reason for him to not have just directly reached out to Armin instead of secretly following him around and manipulating his life, especially after the reveal of how Armin saved Tada from committing suicide when they were teenagers.

It's also ridiculous that Armin couldn't put two and two together that Tada is TD from the name and behavior until getting the watch gift delivered from Weinai. It turns out that Armin is into getting the leg up with Tada's resources anyways. He's not too proud to be have connections and gifts. Tada could have gotten Armin some acting lessons, which would have been helpful. The drama is strongest once Armin stops rampaging and destroying things and pushing over people, which happening more than once is really annoying, and finally settling in using his acting skills, tempering himself to be smarter in situations, while using his foreknowledge to move ahead in the acting career that he's always wanted as well as figuring out who murdered him. But that goes out the window when he starts dating his stalker. The show implies that Armin's stalker obsession was so strong that his will is what brings both his and Armin's consciousness back to the past to live a new life.

There are a few scenes between Arimin and Tada that does work the scenes where Armin takes Tada back to cook him dinner and they switch over to Tada's stalker apartment to utilize the actual kitchen, Armin telling Tada off and putting his hand around his face somehow in loving frustration in the hallway for ruining the filming schedule with Tada having the bodyguards drag off the poor props department guy, the rare actual hilarious scene of Tada's intimidating apology to the props guy, and Armin making a cute bento for Tada which even Weinai wants to try. Weinai, Tada's right hand man has perfect comic timing. The gag of him accidentally saying the actual thing that was told to him or happening in front of him is not over used and he's cute with manager Janine, no notes. Every scene with Thiwthi the step brother is the worst. I get chewing the scenery, but he was just straight up ruining it with horrible over acting.

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Intergenerational Friendship

The drama has deuteragonists 23 year old aspiring ballerino Chae Rok and 70 year old Deok Chul whose love for ballet was re-ignited when he saw the former practice, but it's mostly centered around the journey of the latter. Song Kang's 6 months training really shows in the scenes that fully show his face while gracefully dancing. The dance teacher Ki Seung Joo was smart to assign Deok Chul as Chae Rok's manager exchange for Chae Rok teaching Deok Chul to dance. It intermingles their dynamic which is already complicated by the very age hierarchical culture even more so. Even the teacher had to stop yelling at the students when the newest student of the studio, but the eldest Deok Chul asks him to. Deok Chul is at once a sunbae/teacher and a grandson like figure, even more so after he meets Deok Chul's wife Hae Nam who will always have him sit down for dinner with them and sweetly includes him in the yearly family citron tea gifting. We see Deok Chul as a young man looking upon the aged, hunched back back of his elderly father that he then scrubs in the bath house as his own is being scrubbed by Chae Rok. He's able to give a lot of perspective for Chae Rok as well as Ho Beom, both of whom had suffered misguided abusive punishment from Chae Rok's father who was their soccer coach, a mis step that he had been jailed for. They were both able to make peace with what had happened and the changed person their former coach had become in order to move on with their own life and ambitions. I love that at no point do they push a romance on Chae Rok with Deok Chul's granddaughter Eun Ho who was previously his co-worker at the cafe before she was let go and he quit to focus on ballet. They rather learn from each other how to cope with the difficulties and their shared love for Deok Chul instead. I hope he had saved up enough money to live on because it didn't make any sense for the his teacher Li to get angry for him holding down a part time job when even though he waived any school fees for Chae Rok, he's not housing or feeding him. The guy has been having to pay his own bills since his dad went to jail and his mom passed while he was still in high school.

Both Chae Rok and Deok Chul are outrunning time in their respective points in life. Chae Rok needs to get into a professional ballet company as soon as he can as he already started 10 years later than most ballet dancers, despite being pretty much a natural prodigy quickly picking up ballet in 1 year, he's already 3 years in and ballet dancers retire very early for various reasons. His own teacher was forced to retire early due to a career ending injury. Deok Chul is outrunning his deteriorating mind from Alzheimer's. He had watched his friend decline and die and have attended many funerals of his peers. One of his episodes led him to Chae Rok, which lit the spark in him to finally soar like he had seen his first ballerino when he was a child. Chae Rok refers to Deok Chul as grandfather, which is a way to refer to an elderly man, but he has absolutely taken on the responsibility of a grandson to care for Deok Chul as best as he can once he tearfully finds out through Deok Chul's notebook, even if it breaks him a bit as taking care of a person who suffers from Alzheimer's is intense for anyone. He tries to respect Deok Chul keeping the information to himself until the symptoms become too severe and he reveals it to Deok Chul's youngest, the 40 year old doctor who hasn't recovered from his ptsd from a patient death. All of the adult children's issues are tied back to and resolved with Deok Chul well, strengthening their understanding and relationship with each other and each other. Although his wife and two eldest children were emotionally violent in their refusal to accept his ballet dream, his youngest, his children in-law, and his granddaughter thought were impressed, and everyone else eventually came around to supporting him, especially after his symptoms could not be kept from the others any longer. Deok Chul was able to realize his dream with the support of his entire family and Chae Rok right beside him and Chae Rok is able to leave the airport towards his own dreams with the love of his father, his best friend, his ballet teachers, and Deok Chul plus the family members that tagged along.

The ending is very touching as 3 years later, Chae Rok made top dancer within a year as teacher Ki predicted returns to visit Deok Chul who is fully in Alzheimer's state and Deok Chul remembers ballet through muscle memory as he sees him. It's kind of sad his wish to be living in a nursing home while he was still lucid wasn't respected as he's at home under the care of his also elderly wife who has a hard time keeping an eye on him at all times. His daughter and son in law offered to care for him too, but they're not around. Deok Chul wanders the streets delivering what he thinks are letters to the consternation of the people around the area and it looks dangerous as he walks to a train crossing where he runs into Chae Rok. The writing of the various friendships and familial relationships are good, but the pacing can feel pretty slow and Chae Rok didn't get as much focus, but all the ballet focused sections were fascinating.

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A misunderstood anti-fantasy about success

None of the characters are the pure, impeachable morals type. Tae Oh is the brains, smart and can make things happen, but he's afraid to make any specific type of goal or happiness for himself. He waffles with the women in his life, both his own mother and Hye Won, who he constantly pushes away though he loves them on the inside. Hye Won has a terrible debt ridden gambler mother and with In Ha throwing himself at her, she sees a relationship and eventual marriage with him as a lifeline to a financially stable life though she's also smart and talented at what she does. In Ha was always the insecure bully that Tae Oh first met, lording his connection as an illegitimate child of a rich man over everyone. They find common ground in wanting to climb the ladder to success. I liked the parts where the drama showed how tenuous the friendship was, with In Ha noticing that Tae Oh withholding information from him like Hye Won being Tae Oh's neighbor from across the street. Tae Oh keeping entire shares and assets from In Ha and In Ha having his own minions that Tae Oh didn't know about. Also of course when Hye Won and Tae Oh make out after she's engaged to In Ha. They also should have shown more genuine friendship moments that would give any sense of angst with the betrayals and why they would keep talking to In Ha at the end of the series when he has done the most heinous thing including intentionally getting Tae Oh's stepfather released, directly leading to the death of Tae Oh's mom who was abused and dies from her abuser harassing her.

A huge weakness of the drama is that they have only two characters that have the strategic brains that make the scheming any fun to watch and it's Tae Oh and CEO Kang Joong Mo and they both get taken out of play by jail and heart attacks and the drama goes back to the boring meetings of the other characters. Once Tae Oh is settled in jail and he begins to use his brains to control things from the outside, he doesn't finish that out because he's taken out of jail suddenly. Tae Oh is THE smart guy, but his major blind spot is that he doesn't take In Ha seriously as a psycho. In Ha is not smart, but he he will destroy and harm others. He literally had his own half brother and a random woman killed to frame Tae Oh who doesn't account for that even though he barely escaped a prison hit on his own life before CEO Kang saved him. CEO Kang is a guy who's making his own kingdom and Tae Oh helps him see his vision and eventually becomes a son like figure that In Ha wished he could be to his father and becomes the final heir. They show Tae Oh implementing a children's foundation at the end, but again his ultimate goals was never stated aside from wanting power. It's just power to have power. Neither Tae Oh or Hye Won are together, going toward their ambitions as movers and shakers of the world instead, and In Ha has offed himself in failing spectacularly in his life goals that he could have had if he had just trusted Tae Oh without being jealous and hating Tae Oh for being the person he could never be. It had always been a toxic friendship to it's core, with Tae Oh enabling In Ha fake his way to the top, with Tae Oh puppet-ing him to success. Tae Oh is the perfect successor to CEO Kang because he doesn't have anything else but to put everything into the Kangoh empire.

The sister Hee Joo feels wasted in what she can offer the drama. Her whole point was to be ridiculously obsessed with Tae Oh so that she can find and save her father from drowning in the hot tub. It would have been more interesting if she was an active player helping Tae Oh in his schemes. Same with the rest of the surviving Kang family members. The debt collecting gangsters becoming Tae Oh's cartoony buds felt too silly in tone for what's going on in the rest of the drama. Tae Oh's north korean defector, (Italian?) speaking hacker was pretty fun in just the right amount of wacky and edgy though. Him turning the situation with shooting and schooling his cohort that was bribed by In Ha was fun. The ending is pretty dark, Tae Oh is on the top of the world, but has no family, no love, and no friends. Is it cathartic, no, but it's a pretty interesting route to go for a mainstream drama that requires a bit more contemplation for appreciation, but that's not a popular thing for the mainstream audience to do alas.

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