crayrules

The Art of Walking In Slow Motion and Staring Into The Camera

I'm keeping my review short as I haven't finished watching this yet and I feel like it's getting a bit repetitive at the 30 episode mark. But I will say that I'm getting tired of the constant slow motion walking scenes. Almost every single character gets a slow motion cat walk, even the servants, and especially the ML, Duke Su gets one almost every time. Then there's the repetitive looks into the camera as if the characters are staring at each other. And then the slow mo walk and then the look at each other and then into the camera, and then the slow mo walk...

The storyline started off great but like I mentioned before, it's now feeling repetitive. By 30 episodes in, I was hoping to see more development on the relationship between the two leads but now there are less than 8 episodes for me to watch and nothing solid between these two yet. Just a lot of flirting with word play. The villains get skinship but the main leads... on ep 34 they censor the kiss? Wtf?

I'll update my review if I manage to finish this.

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REPETITIVE... WASH,.RINSE, AND REPEAT

This show started off strong but I started to find the storyline a bit repetitive by episode 6.

So reading about the details of what this show is supposed to be about the Uncle, Joon Hyuk taking care of his sister and nephew in "hiding" but right up to episode 7, we deal with Uncle and family vs. the villains the "Momvelies". Basically a bunch of rich moms who own their own apartment units vs the renters like the Uncle's sister. So there's a war that goes back and forth between the rich mom group and the Uncle and family and of course, their young kids also hate each other and the young, rich kids are the typical bullies.

Now there's only so much I can watch with the dumb mom group being manipulative and a bunch of liars and the typical bullying and even when the Uncle gets the upper hand, somehow his side is either begging for forgiveness or his solution is to get the mom group to give back what they took away without really suffering any consequences for their lies and deceit. It's all too repetitive.

Now about the Uncle, of course, as he trying to make a comeback, something happens to derail his plans, EACH. AND. EVERY. TIME. On repeat...

After the Momvelies, finally comes the abusive, rich grandmother who plays the "new" villain. Of course, it's the same typical storyline of evil, rich in-laws thwarting and threatening everyone's happiness. Same ol', same ol'.

I'm a huge fan of Oh Jung Se, but I have yet to see how this show will tackle and focus on the Uncle finally perhaps making a serious comeback and to see whether or not this show will seriously address domestic violence and physical abuse.

(watched ep 10 as of writing)

A few months later... still haven't gone back to finish watching this after all.

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Too Confusing and Out of Place

I couldn't keep watching this as the pacing, the dialogue/writing, the music, and the acting felt misplaced.

While I lasted only 7 episodes out of 30, there were just too many things that confused me enough not to be able to watch any further.

I'm not sure how much they were trying to "immerse" the viewers in this period piece but I felt like some of the bass music in the background was so out of place for its timeline setting. A lot of the time, the music just didn't fit. There was so much bass pumping out in the background, I was practically expecting some kind of dance to break out all of a sudden.

Other things that minutely bothered me were things like the storyline and plot. They would add these stupid clichés at the most inappropriate times. For example, the FL gets poisoned and of course, she acts all funny due to the "hallucinogens" in the poison which leads her to kiss the ML. But then she's later so sick that she's near death. One minute we're supposed to find it funny and "cute" and then they expect the audience to feel the gravity of her almost dying? I was just scratching my head. There was another scene where she fights off 4 assassins, gets a cut on her leg, and just when you think she's done for, some mysterious old man comes with a stick to beat them off and then disappears. Then she goes home limping and her father is barely enraged or concerned, so it downplays the seriousness of what almost happened. She also brags about it in class. Every time they have a serious scene, there's something that just makes a joke of it almost.

Another thing is Zhao Lusi... don't get me wrong, I like her and all but I think she's falling into the small kind of roles over and over again. I'm getting tired of her doing the same kind of cliché acting... her slo-mo looking at the male lead, falling into his lap, overly smiling, and let's not talk about her fake laughs. It was so bad here. Then every time they showed a close-up of her, I was just so distracted by her brown-highlighted hair that I felt like I was watching a very modern actress acting in a period timepiece. I was like, "Wow, they had brown highlights back then..."

No matter what period it was in, they can't fool some of us who know it's really about a teacher and a student falling in love. The long title really had nothing to do with her being the first female to enter an Imperial College. 7 episodes were enough for me.

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