Charlotte

Still a big Lee Min Ho Fan. Oh Jung Se is awesome....especially after his Having fun re-watching him in Touch Your Heart. He's everywhere these days. Just finished "Jirisan". Great part for him...super-fit and courageous.

Not interest at all. I LOVED the first season and want to enjoy it as is. Riding on the coat-tails of the first has never made a second season better for me. Gi Hun's next adventure with other characters will dull the advantage that season one's amazing 'shock and awe' scripting surprised the viewers with. I mean, once you know the real meaning of "eliminated" in the game, there's no surprise going into each game, there's just expectations. You 'expect' gore and violence for a second season and nothing much surprises you. As for characters, we'll all be expecting 'the good the bad and the ugly' among the players, all facing off against the evil rich. Even if the wealthy club members are different, it will become the same old series. I'd rather move on to the many other great stories that koreans produce. They have a great taste for variety in their stories, and thank goodness they don't yet need to keep going back to the latest hyped cereal box of ideas to feed their hunger for good entertainment. That is...unless Netflix keeps throwing money at Korean content providers to americanize their work. So Netflix, if it ain’t broke…don’t fix it. Korean dramas created a Hallilu Wave that spread around the world before Netflix even began to notice them. Sigh….

You hit the nail on the head with the 'half-shows' they try out on us but drop if there aren't enough fans. The stories are cut in two. I also stick with the more korean formatted ones, knowing they'll actually get to an end.

Netflix and their habit of turning a Korean series into seasons is lost on me. It just seems to milk the characters dry of freshness. There's so many stories out there to tell, why dress up a series every year and keep repeating it? Korean Dramas are loved around the globe for their over-arching storylines. Their 'once upon a time' tale, whether it's a thriller, sci-fi, crime series, rom-com or a makjang soap drama... always has an ending. Then it's on to the next drama with a completely new plot, characters, place and action. Yes, I loved Squid Games, but no second season please... where new players face off the old bad guys in some new games. Then sadly, instead of remaining a one-of-a-kind gem, it just becomes another 'Survivor ' or a police procedural like 'CSI', where the never-changing old characters take on season after season of new bad guys. Korean television rarely had seasons when I began watching 6 years ago, but Netflix has been tinkering with the ‘magic’, likely so they can reflect a more familiar style and content to the US audience. Can't really call them K-Dramas anymore. Because they aren't. The only thing Korean about them is the content providers, who, like everyone else, are chasing the American Dream. Apologies, I needed to get that one off my chest. Thanks.

So true. That character is off the tracks delusional about how great she is. Narcissistic to the nth degree. My teeth hurt from cleanching my jaw when she's on! I'm hoping that the target of her very smug "I-will-make you-mine" obsession escapes her. He'll be under her thumb forever.

Thanks for your take on the drama Jojo! Perhaps it was the thought of 50 episodes that helped me make the decision. Or maybe because this was my 567th korean drama that my patience got a bit thin for both the female lead that the writer gave us, and the unconvincing job the actress did of portraying her. If this was the debut project for her then the director made a mistake that could cost the production in its ratings. I hope not. I usually hate to leave a story unfinished but must move on. Actually, out of the 567 dramas I've seen...I have only dropped about ten of them. Cheers.

Thanks Jeanna. Actually, I came here thinking you had watched these series. I do get why you might consider it a waste of time to keep going when your interest lags , because after all, there's so many other stories out there in the dramaverse, and of course that's your perogative. No one says you have to, but there are so many great ones out there that seem a bit slower upfront because they spend the extra time introducing the characters and their pasts, setting us all up for some emotional time-bombs much later. When I first started watching K-dramas in 2015 ( that was #561 dramas ago, when Dramafever.com was still alive) other commenters would encourage others who were about to jump from a dramaship, not to give up, that 4 episodes were a mandatory rule of thumb in order to get a good enough taste for the story. Which you have done for many of the ones above. I like rating the dramas I watch so I can compare and contrast what makes one fail while another with the exact same tropes, can succeed. Often my impulse to quit a drama comes when there is an obnoxious female lead, but when I stick to it, I've often been surprised by how well the writer turns the character around and reclaims her by the end. But that's just me. As you say, "you do you". I have five friends that Face Time often to talk about what we’re watching and share recommends, and we've agreed that if we want to recommend or 'thumbs down' something, we must have watched it all the way through, otherwise we might be trashing something that one of us with different tastes might have actually have liked. a lot because of our personal bias. I guess that's what it all comes down to.... personal taste.

Scriptwriters Lee Sae-Bom and An Hye-Jin, disappointed in "Times". The acting is great, the editing lacks smoothness but most limiting is the writing team's lack of ingenuity & freshness in their plot points. Time warps and travel dramas have been done with far better credibility (Tunnel and Kairosh), so as the newest entry in this type of genre , I was hoping to see something a bit different. The characters could have been better layered, to encourage us to engage in their desperateness throughout the story. Just my viewpoint, but it seemed to be focused on being an action movie with car chases and the many planning photo boards for the NEXT fiasco that will happen when their newest efforts fail. And the characters kept making the traditional "dumb" moves like going alone to a possible crime scene, or having a lone woman stop on a dark street in traffic to turn around when she's called from behind. Who does that when he couldn't show her his ID earlier? Korean dramas are traditionally written under the overarcing direction of one writer, just as an author would write a book, which makes it more cohesive and allows continuity of character and action, as opposed to american series, written by a 'troop' of writers who are assigned different characters and plot-lines. This team of writers didn't do it for me at all, and I guess I sound so diappointed because all of the actors are so professional and just couldn't seem to make me care enough about their fates. Apologies, to the writers for being so harsh, but from what I could tell on IMDB, this is the first big drama they've worked on. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't horrible, but disappointing, so I'm offering an opinion to say why it didn't lift off for me.

Scriptwriters Lee Sae-Bom and An Hye-Jin, disappointed in "Times". The acting is great, the editing lacks smoothness but most limiting is the writing team's lack of ingenuity & freshness in their plot points. Time warps and travel dramas have been done with far better credibility (Tunnel and Kairosh), so as the newest entry in this type of genre , I was hoping to see something a bit different. The characters could have been better layered, to encourage us to engage in their desperateness throughout the story. Just my viewpoint, but it seemed to be focused on being an action movie with car chases and the many planning photo boards for the NEXT fiasco that will happen when their newest efforts fail. And the characters kept making the traditional "dumb" moves like going alone to a possible crime scene, or having a lone woman stop on a dark street in traffic to turn around when she's called from behind. Who does that when he couldn't show her his ID earlier? Korean dramas are traditionally written under the overarcing direction of one writer, just as an author would write a book, which makes it more cohesive and allows continuity of character and action, as opposed to american series, written by a 'troop' of writers who are assigned different characters and plot-lines. This team of writers didn't do it for me at all, and I guess I sound so diappointed because all of the actors are so professional and just couldn't seem to make me care enough about their fates. Apologies, to the writers for being so harsh, but from what I could tell on IMDB, this is the first big drama they've worked on. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't horrible, but disappointing, so I'm offering an opinion to say why it didn't lift off for me.

Watching this on Viki. Mesmerized by the 'family' of characters. The great pacing in this allows you to breathe with easygoing laughs and tender scenes before the tension grabs you by the throat again. Actors are all consummate KD professionals. Music is korean and so hauntingly beautiful.

Watched it on Netflix Feb/2020

"There are certainly dramas that could benefit from the story telling styles of other countries [...]"
«Patricia: "I see what you mean here but while I agree they they could benefit, I don't think that they should venture that route at all as it would mean they would be doing dramas to cater to outsiders and that would remove, on my opinion the appeal that K-Dramas have. If they were any different they might as well be a drama from any other country. This would mean they would become mainstream standardized and that is removing their unique selling proposition which would be detrimental to their own market."»
☛Glad to hear you say that Patricia! I like Korean dramas because of their unique story & filming styles, plus the great insight we get into their culture. So for me, the newer dramas that veer into copying American dramas, for example, police procedurals, are a miss for me. I can get that genre style at home. You must spend a lot of your time studying the industry. Thanks.☛

Kudos. Well done. I'm reading a book on Korean History and was wondering how all the historicals line up with recorded history. This helped a lot.