Beatrice

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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Rainbow of yous

The soulless flirt master con artist Sun finds he has a heart after all when it gets stolen by the ultimate manic pixie dream girl Sairung, who is so quirky that there are five different versions of her. His path to self improvement via encountering true love for the first time in his life is interrupted by an entrapment scheme by that same girl's father coincidentally. Sairung's father Thepphachai is truly the worst of the whole cast of men that lie to women and all of them were liars. Both Sun and De ran a whole business that automatically take the side of the men that hire them to lie to and hurt their ex-girlfriends. Pat got close to and dated Sairung to get to her father and he has the nerve to judge Sun.

People who have DID is often after suffering the most immense trauma, and Thepphachai decides to hire a con artist to con his daughter to fix her. When he's confronted why he thinks that will happen and what's supposed to happen when she is hurt by the truth, he just shurgs. It's just a blind guess and he's doing something so horrible to his own daughter. He also was a coward who hid the truth of his wife's assassination to the point of destroying evidence rather than at least telling his daughter the truth even if he felt he couldn't share it with the world. The information didn't even end up doing anything to the murderer oligarch who realistically gets to go on to do evil. It's also really creepy how he joined in on the meeting about which of Sairung's personality that Sun wants to keep to be his lover from the perspective if he was choosing one to be his lover.

There's a lot of artistic license taken in this fictionalized portrayal of DID, so I'll just talk about how it's presented from within the story. Sun and Sairung have a lot of chemistry and were the first to fall for each other. She has the original name of herself and she may be the original personality before the trauma of finding her mother's corpse. The show seems to present the personalities of choosing one to be "whole", but it's also presented as they did fuse in the end as Sairung can feel the different sides of her in different situations and she can't see them as separate individuals anymore. I was wondering if there would be some different way of portraying Sairung after integration, but it also can make sense if this was always her original self.

Sun apologizing regardless of forgiveness from all the women he scammed is good. He's so lucky they only slapped him and non decided to sue him. It would be nice to see Nanon in some noona romances if he hasn't been in one already, but there can always be more with different genres and stories. De only realizing women are people too after talking to Gudji is so ridiculous, but at least he does come to that conclusion whereas sadly many in real life do not. It even took Sun forever and he's always talking to women. The pacing of the episodes were really good until it fell apart in the end with nothing really happening with the murder mystery side of things. There's no justice or catharsis. It's good that Sairung got to find some peace with her core trauma, but the murder was really half the story and that half got nothing.

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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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Alternate near present issues that are just set dressing

The show takes place a year or two from the air date with some technology that's quite a lot more advanced than what's commercially available presently, both in terms of software/hardware, as well as in biological advancements with artificial food and artificial replacement organs. The core or rather who should have been the core is Blood Free CEO Yun Ja Yu who is under constant threat by people in the meat and fishing industry who feel their livelihoods being threatened by her company. She's wary and shrewd, rightly suspicious of ex-military bodyguard Woo Chae Woon whose constant presence and connection to the recent events is way too many to be coincidental. The tiring romance trope has her brain cells evaporating in his presence with him easily gaslighting this brilliant woman out of her suspicions despite not knowing him at all. The show pays lip service to how she has protocol of switching hotels until her state of the art safe house is finished, but in the end she just chooses to go to Chae Woon's house at his suggestion which was already shown to be easy to be infiltrated with her own Blood Free security team breaching it and waiting for him while petting his cat Minshik. Chae Woon also is gone for long stretches of time with no mention of what arrangements of care made for his cat. Ja Yu is the one who is thinking of the cat's wellbeing more than he does. It's shown in flashback that she went to the same university as her co-founder On San as students of Dr. Kim, but she's never shown participating in the science portions. The show is so unwilling to let her take some kind of forward momentum of her own and when she does, she's instantly punished physically for it and spends the entire finale passed out with her organs exposed.

The show has a problem with giving their characters connection as well. They characters Ja Yu and Chae Woon would be having a conversation and you think they're finally going to get to the core of who the other person is, only to have them only show the audience, but all the pertinent information is just being thought of in the character's head and not being shared with the other character. It was so weird that they show us Ja Yu, Chae Woon, and the late bodyguard Ho Seung having a conversation and bonding in Chae Woon's yard after he's already dead, like the show suddenly remembering oh yeah, we need to form some emotional stakes. If the show doesn't want to explore the characters, it should at least explore and address the concerns that are brought up with the new technology that the farmers are concerned about displace them are protesting, but that's just back drop and everything in the show is basically centered on the characters searching for who bombed the former prime minister. Surprise, it's the current Prime Minister who wants Ja Yu's organs, his political maneuverings. The top secret area where the organs are stored look like a space ship in an unintentionally funny design choice kind of way. The best scene that takes place in there is Dr. Hong strangling the Prime Minister's goon with an intestine. The poor doctor had gotten kidnapped twice by traitor colleagues twice and she became tougher with every violent encounter. Her jumping out of the car that second time was smart too. If only Ja Yu got to do that. Her bodyguard driver did that, but she didn't jump herself. If's pretty sad that despite having a female writer, the female main character still gets the shaft in moments of agency to save herself or to outsmart her oppositions. I hope if there is a second season as it seems to imply, that it will be better.

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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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A powerfully moving, heartfelt, and bittersweet portrait of love, life, and the cycle of poverty

I immediately love the color that permeates the film which are often seen on the clothing of all the characters, especially the debt collector Bo wonderfully played by Bright Vachirawit who disappears into his character that puts on brightly colored shirts to collect the interest due from his debtors. I really like that this story isn't just cut off at 90 minutes, the 2 hour runtime is put to good use really exploring the character dynamics of Bo and his various relationships. Bo and Im played by Yaya have fantastic chemistry as the relationship that's the heart of the film.

Bo is such a fascinating character, he didn't finish high school and he is capable of violence, but he's also creative and can think outside of the box to get his job done in unorthodox ways. He intimidates by his signature move of striking himself bloody on the head and later either finds jobs or gets more business for the people who owes money to pay their dues. He leaves their lives better than he found it. With Im , he tracks her down to her banker job where she gets suspended probably for making a scene that scared all the customers, so he comes up with a interest forgiveness system where he'll use his own money to pay off her interest depending on the scale of activities on dates that he's also using his own money to pay for. All the charm and charisma that Bright brings to Bo is what keeps all of this on the cute funny side that slowly melts Im's understandable initial iciness towards Bo as she sees him take care of her comatose father in addition to the one who was the one who found and got him to the hospital in the first place as well as going viral online for creatively helping his debtors get income to pay him.

Im's life is also really relatable as even an university education still can't get her a job that gives her any financial stability. Her father was too consumed with debt to have been able to help her either and devastatingly is only able to free her from his own debt in death as she's able to get a refund on a cremation fund he had been paying for. She looks dreamily at the Hilton hotel as an idealized place that people like her will never step foot into in her lifetime. She opens herself up to happiness and planning a future together with Bo which is when things go wrong as he tries to take a shortcut to help her with one last job that of course goes awry and his boss screws him over which screws Im over with her life savings completely gone, leaving her being scammed to scammed others by her crush at the bank who also seems to keep her as a side piece, while Bo discovers his worsening health condition that he has no money to treat in prison.

It's so heartbreaking that all of his head trauma both self inflicted and fights with rival gangs took a real physical toll on him, shortening his life as he helped others with theirs intentionally or not. It's truly chills in the scene where Bo faces down his old boss who coldly responds to his sincerely asking her to return Im's money, so he does the only thing that people like her understand which is to put both their lives on the line. Debtors always pay their debt. Just as the injury had built up in his body, so had the karma with the people he had help and they visit him once more to help with setting up Im's shop. He spends a happy time with the love of his life, his family, and his friends. The postmortem letter he leaves Im to cheer her on from the after life is really powerful, moving, and relatable. Treasure yourself, and if you don't know where to go or what to do, just stay still and breath, just get through the day.

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One step forward, two steps back

It's nice to see Chinese bl, especially costume wuxia drama with a reasonable budget find it's way to being made uncensored through international cooperation and online distribution, but it's also going backwards to the time before the complete ban on Chinese bl that had a ton of romanticized domestic assault. I know that this story is already toned down from the original story, it would have been great if it was just removed entirely. Just Huai-en murdering innocent people and chopping hands off in a blind rage got the point that he's messed up just fine. There's already plenty of interesting psychology to explore with all the birth secrets and horrific way Huai-en was raised. The chaotic doctor guy was fun and I think it's good there wasn't too much of him and his childhood lover minion guy, but the scenes that they had could have been better expressed than they were.

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Yes man vs No man

Both lead characters Jin Woo and Ki Sub are very neurodivergent coded with very different coping mechanisms in relation to their respective family members that are directly responsible for raising them. Jin Woo being an isolated regimented perfectionist from his childhood habit of earning perfect scores to hopefully get his father's attention to spend time with him. Somewhere along the line he's shifted to thinking that he will never have his father love him more than his father loves his work, but he continues living life the way he always had with everything precisely planned out. Ki Sub never turns anyone down so as to not disappoint them, but he does so anyways when whatever he agreed to inevitably falls apart because he doesn't care like the other person does, which includes relationships with both women and men. He has a mysterious heart condition that his school doctor or nurse sister has been monitoring him for since he was a child and he never wanted to create conflict with her, so just agreeing to everything asked of him. Whatever it is, the show never goes into, but I truly hope his love is truly the miracle medicine needed for his heart to heal.

Ki Sub went through life sublimating all of his desires, but his subconscious seemed to finally fight back with the timeline of spending time with the person he's been unconsciously crushing on since he started college before he immigrates to the U.S. It's absolutely unhinged the way he barges into Jin Woo's home and life. It's interesting how Ki Sub immediately points out Jin Woo likes him and asks him why he won't confess and Jin Woo has witnessed all of Ki Sub's campus confession acceptances and heartbreaking to know where it goes to not want to confess. Ki Sub going through Jin Woo's things is extremely rude too and not right to do and his contract making can be seen as a desperate move he's doing to stay close to Jin Woo before his brain and heart finally connect the dots as to the reason why. His consistent presence is something Jin Woo actually needed, that Ki Sub isn't just going to accept his confession without any meaning. Thanks to modern technology and the culture of filming people without the consent, which also yikes, Ki Sub can see himself outside of his own body how he looks at Jin Woo. He's so used to seeing how people look at him when they like him, he can finally understand what his own feelings are.

Kim Hye Jin is the bi and self aware queen who becomes besties with her perfectionist habit twin Jin Woo who called Ki Sub out on behalf of her friends and crushes and finally finds someone of her own. No notes. Meanwhile Balg Eum is a self conscious wreck to the point that he lashes out physically and emotionally at In Ho he never deserved being abandoned wordlessly in high school and definitely not being treated so violently when he finds Balg Eum again. With the way Balg Eum was punching In Ho, it was like the latter betrayed him or something, but the poor guy was innocent of everything! Balg Eum was just embarrassed that his family is bankrupt while In Ho's seem to be financially stable enough for him to pursue piano and he can afford to buy an expensive watch as a gift in present day too. Though it's not delved into, he could have just saved up for it too, we don't get to know too much about In Ho except that he truly loves Balg Eum unconditionally. I'm glad Balg Eum became self aware at last that it's his own ego problem and he definitely needs time and distance to be a better person, but he really put In Ho through hell. He wasn't even working so much to pay off debt for his family, it was just to save up money to save face for when he one day meets up with In Ho again.

Although Jin Woo and his father finally come to an understanding that the latter threw himself into work as a coping mechanism for the grief of losing his wife and Jin Woo's mom, it was also such a heartbreaking moment when his father offers going home to spend time with Jin Woo and both understand it's too late and not what either needs anymore. It was so civil and such a crushing blow to the heart. Jin Woo is already all grown up, lives on his own, and now has Ki Sub as his companion to enjoy and experience life with. I hope he and his father figure out a way to connect differently eventually. Although we don't get a meeting scene between Jin Woo and Ki Sub's sister, Ki Sub made it pretty clear who is the one that makes his heart beat and calm, so he's pretty much out to his sister and I'll take his word for it that his family is happy for him to make decisions for his own happiness. Jin Woo and Ki Sub's public New Years celebration kiss and no one making any sort of deal about it is so sweet. The little epilogue that they have crossed paths before in high school as they walked in opposite directions during winter time is a lovely little closer too. They always had a magnetic pull towards one another even with a brief glimpse that probably neither even remembers.

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Dull Paradox

The first four episodes follows Lee Tang bumbling his way into being an accidental vigilante with an uncanny ability to kill people that turn out to be murderers or other vile offenders while leaving no evidence of the kills is the most kinetic and interesting comparatively to the second half of the series which pretty much grinds to a screeching halt to focus on the beleaguered detective and delusional serial killer with Lee Tang running hiding from the police as a b story. What a waste of time to not develop and focus on the guy with the supernatural powers who can identify actually guilty people upon contact, even a brush through layers of winter clothing. There's gratuitous, explicit nudity as well, one of which is for a crime.

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Doesn't deliver on the deal

The best of the series is that Song Kang plays the part of an ethereal being (Gu Won) who can convince people in desperation to sign demon's bargain very well and handles both the emotional and humorous parts of the story compellingly and delightfully, whereas his co-lead Kim You Jung does not play a convincing 28 to 32 year old age range CEO (Do Hee) at any point in the story, with no gravitas, charisma, or authoritative aura. She is pretty miscast, the role would have been better served by an actor that's actually around that age or can play up that age. The writing for Do Hee and the show as a whole is not that much better, with her being morally repelled on things based on the needs of the writer in that moment rather than as anything that she particularly stands for consistently or confronts to change her mind. Part of the reason for this is probably because the show itself doesn't want to examine too closely how Gu Won enables a lot of evil doing in the span of a decade in exchange for taking the soul as well as damning desperate kind people to hell. It seems that he may have a choice, but that's a dangling plot thread never fully addressed. There's so many and I'll touch on some in a bit. Both the actress and writing does better for Wolshim, which would have made sense if she could have brought in a bit more of that character's strength of will into her modern day incarnation being as they are the same soul, but it doesn't happen.

There is also a lack of chemistry between Gu Won and Do Hee, which could be overcome if the characters had connection, but the writing doesn't develop that nor does it define the rules of it's supernatural world and it's stakes very well. People go to hell, but what that entails isn't explained. What was Gu Won's experience of hell? How did fisherman guy get out to reincarnate to make the same deal again and how did he become Gu Won's butler? Is the sentence in hell temporary or does it depend on the crime? Do people of all faiths go to the same hell? Or does it only apply to people in the Catholic faith? The reasoning between how the transfer of Gu Won's power to and from Do Hee occurred is also ill defined and then also did nothing with the premise of him dealing with life without his powers. It's merely an inconvenience as he still has access to it through Do Hee and he's also very financially secure with his art foundation where he also lives and also really just so the character would hold hands, but nothing more that affects Gu Won on a deeper level.

At this point, every kdrama has a serial killer plot and so does this one. I thought the ambiguity between the actual mastermind being son Do Kyung or the father Seok Min at first to be a good way to keep the sense of mystery, but they reveal who it was way too soon and Seok Min is just the stock over the top villain afterwards. It was weird how at the end of the drama they show a scene remembered by the mom Se Ra about Do Kyung and her like they were a relationship the show cared about all along, but they weren't. There were extremely extraneous sub plots that did nothing to service the story as well like the sister Soo An being extremely jealous and obsessed with Do Hee and the entire mafia that is obsessed with Gu Won. The weren't even useful in finding the other killer's identity as the police did that just fine. Ga Young's obsession with Gu Won was also really annoying more than anything. There is also nothing to build on her current relationship with Gu Won aside from being his actual stalker that even the show called out. They aren't even shown as friends but at the end it's supposed to be touching that he says goodbye to her. She tried to get his wife to take poison pills. If all these subplots weren't used to develop or parallel the main characters as people then everything is so mind numbingly surface level and wasted screentime and storytelling potential.

The ending is so frustratingly lazy. There is zero reason for Do Hee to block the shots for Gu Won. The show didn't even try to make it work by making them magic bullets that can kill a demon or something. It's just something to force Gu Won to make a decision that causes his combustion. The way he's brought back is also extremely anti-climactic. So it was because he won a deal with God, but why didn't that just immediately kick in? Why three years? Why did god have the wait three years? Everything is so arbitrary and meaningless. I initially had a slightly higher rating for this drama, but the more I think about it, the worse it really is. To end on a positive, there is one storyline that the drama actually did good on and it is Chun Sook, Do Hee's adoptive mother. The actress played the conflicting love and guilt toward Do Hee so well and the mystery of what she did had a full circle connection back to Gu Won. Her memory of seeing Gu Won collect on Do Hee's dad's deal was a great reveal. The timing of withholding and revealing this information was good too. She felt like a full person despite the shorter amount of screen time compared to the other characters. Again potential for the drama to be better is always there, but they always kept going in the opposite direction.

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A sweet show that takes too long to get to

The first six episodes is an awful slog to get through and doubly so when watching from week to week. The writing treats the audience like people who have never seen a television show before and the misunderstanding goes on forever. 6 episodes, which exactly half a span of the show is way too long to get to the relationship and very unfortunately probably soured a lot of interests in it. I quit watching it as it aired as well and came back to complete much later. I did enjoy watching the characters once the relationship started proper. I love Sun so much, she's not relegated to passive love interest, but she's very in tune with her feelings, communicates everything to the people around her, asks for advice, and apologizes when needed. She's kind and her popularity makes sense. Ongsa is capable of being spicy when she's lost in her comfort zone with Sun, leaving behind her neurotic defeatist self, as is Aylin at the end. Oooh girl that kiss melted Luna completely. I really like how the show models patience and understanding for neurodivergent Aylin. Her room is pretty cool as well. Ton continuing to pursue Charoen despite her repeatedly saying she's not interested being played for laughs is not funny at all. I hoped this drama would be much better than it was, but alas it's not.

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