Briar Rose

i went into this drama expecting not to care much for it, but i was pleasantly surprised by how much i enjoyed it, at least until the end. and i mean that literally. i found a scene from one of the cases on tiktok and immediately felt like i had to watch the whole thing. when i started it, though, it felt pretty slow for me. still, i wanted to push through because i really wanted to see what the core of the story was.

i’m glad i did, to say the least. the cases were definitely tough to watch at times, but they were done very well. i felt the casting was solid overall, and honestly, some of the “irrelevant” case characters stood out more to me than the actual main and side characters.

it really pains me to say it, but seokhoon carried this whole drama for me. everyone else felt incredibly boring, or if they were interesting at first, they became boring as the series went on. it was such a letdown to be introduced to a promising group of characters, only for most of them to show up so little.

i couldn’t decide whether i liked chaeyeon’s character or not, but either way, i was glad to see that her acting feels like it’s come a long way since the first time i watched her.

outside of the case stories or seokhoon’s storyline, the plot fell pretty flat for me, and the main couple, while enjoyable, wasn’t one i could really see working out long-term. honestly, i’m kind of glad the drama had an open ending, with them not explicitly getting together or the final decision being left up for interpretation.

as i see it, hyomin will probably have a crush on her boss, but he won’t reciprocate. he’s made his views on love and what he wants very clear, and while he’s fond of her and sees her as a promising young colleague, it really feels like he wouldn’t go beyond that. and if he did, it would feel wildly out of character.

while i enjoyed this drama for what it was and the small lessons throughout, the rewatch value is insanely low and i couldn’t see myself really recommending it to much of anyone. it feels like an acquired taste, because there’s a lot of word mash throughout and very long dialogue that some may find hard to concentrate on at times, especially when it comes to law and order, love and responsibility, and everything in between.