festivalen

Yeah, the summary here is a little scuffed lol..
Here's the summary from Youku's english youtube channel. There's two paragraphs but I'll post the second separately cause it seems to be a bit.. spoilery -
[Psychologist 女心理师] A story that aims to highlight real problems revolving around mental health in the modern-day told from the perspective of a female psychologist. Because of a public service announcement (PSA) for suicide intervention, He Dun encounters a huge blow in her career as a psychologist. Feeling low, she goes out for a meal with her best friend where she accidentally runs into Jia Hui and Qian Kai Yi. Qian Kai Yi is the host of a radio program that deals with emotional psychology. Under his insistence, He Dun collaborates with him on the show.

I was curious so I quickly went through the first couple chapters and then the last one -
ending seem doesn't super tragic or anything. Bittersweet maybe? It's somewhat open, but both leads are alive.
However, the drama doesn't seem like a super faithful adaptation - they've made a lot of changes in how the drama is set-up. The ML has a different name and an entirely different family/childhood. The leads meet under different circumstances, as he is also disguised (as a girl lol). The way the twins were handled is also different - Hwi dies very early and the two never meet. The FL is raised to think she's an actual boy for many years. Soo... idk how much we can rely on the manhwa ending lol
The manhwa is only 44 chapters and is available entirely on mangadex, if you wanna check it out yourself.

Loving the pacing. I really expected certain plotlines to be dragged out for way longer, tho maybe all the daily dramas have poisoned my mind in that regard haha..
Fingers crossed the last half of this drama continues to deliver

I've definitely had this experience with so many dramas - synopsis/genre/cast seem right up my alley, comments are really positive... then I actually watch it and only find disappointment. It be like that sometimes lol
I agree with you that the plot/most characters are tropey and cliche. Very been there, done that. But ironically I think that's one of the reasons I'm enjoying it so much. There's something really, really satisfying in how the female lead interacts and responds to these cliches, for me at least. That said, while it works for me, I can totally see where other watchers might not find that so fun.
If you do end up coming back to this drama at some point, I hope you can find some enjoyment in it - fast forwarding has often been my companion for dramas that I want to love, but just can't :")

I don't think I'll ever get tired of Yeon Joo talking back to people. I've been watching daily dramas lately, so it's extra refreshing to see a heroine like this lol

I was kinda on the fence about Yeon Joo in the first episode, but she totally won me over in the second episode. It's so satisfying to see her deal with the in-laws, omg.

Yes, just by scrolling through the comments here, I could tell I was in the minority on this one lol. I do understand that this drama was well received and so on.. I just wanted to commiserate a bit with a fellow manhua fan ;)
Anyways, thank you for your insight though - I'm glad that this story, in drama-form or manhua-form, found such success.

Yes! The manhua holds such a special, fond place in my heart too. It left a big impression on me. In some ways, I am glad this adaption inspired such passionate thoughts in others and that it was so successful... but I can't help but selfishly long for what could have been :'')

Yeah, same here. I /loved/ the manhua and was excited when they announced this adaptation (esp cause the manhua will never be finished).. but I have the same issues as you. The reviews for this have been pretty good and the acting/production value seem fine (in general), so maybe if I didn't have such a bias I could enjoy this. But alas, I'm betrayed by my own expectations :''(

So Ju Il Do was on trial for the murder of those villagers. His lawyer's plan was to plead not guilty for murder, and if the trial were to spiral out of their favour, they'd angle for professional negligence resulting in death. That is a much, much lesser charge with a max jail time of 5 years.
At the end of the trial, Judge Kang does indeed find Ju Il Do guilty of professional negligence rather than murder. However, a certain bill was passed that allows for the Judge to give an "accumulated" sentence that accounts for all the victims. So because there were 47 victims, Judge Kang is basically charging him with 47 counts of professional negligence resulting in 235 years of imprisonment. In other words, Ju Il Do is likely going to be in prison for the rest of his life.
People were surprised because 235 years is a crazy amount of time, like that's the kinda sentencing they'd give people found guilty of multiple murders. Because of the evidence, Judge Kang couldn't find Ju Il Do guilty of murder, but he was still able to give him a punishment befitting of a murderer. Does that make sense?

Super apt description. I was trying to figure out what this drama reminded me of, and you hit the nail on the head. It does have a very uh.. 2007-2012 style. Like this would've fit in perfectly with stuff like Dal Ja's Spring, Personal Taste, Rooftop Prince, etc. The plot, the characters, and somehow, even the way this is filmed (like some of the lighting/sets/transitions, though this also doesn't seem like a particularly high budget drama) throws me back.

Yeah, I'm on the fence as well. It's not bad at all, there's just something I can't quite put my finger on, especially because I'm normally very into shows like this. Perhaps I've just been betrayed by my own tastes/expectations lol..
That said, SJK is great here and I'm glad this drama is doing well in ratings and stuff - hopefully its success will inspire more scriptwriters/directors/channels to take a stab at this kinda show.

My thoughts exactly! I agree with all your points, a good weekend watch is a great descriptor for this series (so far anyway). The comedy skews to the hammy side a lot, and I feel like a drier/more wry/less in your face kind of humor would fit better.. or rather it would fit my tastes better haha.

I also agree with @Solid Snake .. I feel like around 40-60 mins is the sweet spot for any drama, even for ones I really like. jTBC and TVN seem to really like these 80 min runtimes, but I feel like it invites too much padding/filler most of the time.

This is such a good watch! The ending was so great and was pulled off so well imo. It's got quite a few twists, but I felt like they all made sense - like I could think back after every reveal and see the hints and how all the pieces fit together. Like others have said, this is a total gem.

I went into this drama with no expectations really, but it's impressed me so much so far! I truly did not expect to like it so much, but wow. Sometimes the scenes go on a little too long (like with some of the staring, for example), but overall it's lovely (so far anyway haha). It's filmed beautifully, the editing and the music often has a kind of fantastical touch, the acting is solid across the board, the characters are interesting and feel fleshed out.. there's some dull moments here and there, but I don't have many complaints so far.
So many scenes have resonated with me or struck a cord, particularly the ending scene in episode 3 (with Gi Do and Kang Tae in the hospital) and the Zombie Boy story in episode 4. I hope it stays this good all the way through.

Yeah.... there's audio cuts and some sections where they clearly removed/attempted to remove/replaced background music. From a quick check, the music/audio all seems intact on the version they post on their website, so I'm assuming they're trying to avoid licensing issues or copyright strikes/claims on Youtube or something.

Hey, good catch! Admittedly, I mostly just eyeballed the ratings and lumped TKEM, Doctor John, and Nokdu Flower together and was on the fence about whether or not Vagabond and Hyena would be considered significantly better or only a tiny little bit better. But after taking a better/closer look at the ratings, I've gotta agree, you've definitely got the more accurate take. Unless ratings go wild in these last few episodes, TKEM falls on the lower end of ratings in this time slot.
Thanks for the correction! And I love your name lol

* Sorry in advance, this ended up being long lol *
I don't see any misinformation here, I'd say aeri_scorpi made a pretty solid and fair assessment. I'm really interested in the ratings situation with this drama, so I've been looking through articles on Naver (with handy-dandy google translate) and doing other research. You are correct when you say it's the 2nd most watched drama on it's last episode, but let's dig a little deeper shall we?

Here's a break down of what Naver lists as competition from this Saturday 5/30 -
1.) KBS2 Sat-Sun 19:55 long drama Once Again - 30.9%, 1st in timeslot overall
2.) SBS Fri-Sat 22:00 drama TKEM - 7.7%, 8th in timeslot overall
3.) TV Chosun Sat-Sun 22:50 drama Wind, Cloud, and Rain - 4.2%
4.) TvN Sat-Sun 21:00 drama When My Love Blooms - 3.9%
5.) OCN's Sat-Sun 22:50 drama Team Bulldog - 2.5%

Now, it's kinda hard to really compare all these, none of them are truly airing in the same exact timeslot and 3/5 are cable shows, but as far as I can tell, this is the competition drama-wise. Numberwise, none of these are performing particularly abnormally. The gap between Once Again and TKEM is very large, but KBS2's long weekend dramas normally pull those kind of ratings, so that's just par-for-the-course. Even TKEM is performing more or less in line with the other SBS shows in it's timeslot. None of these are big hits but there's no ratings blackhole here either.

Now having said that, you might be thinking that if TKEM isn't necessarily underperforming and if its even got the 2nd best drama ratings, how can it still be a flop? If TKEM was any other drama, with any other cast and an any other writer, it wouldn't be. It'd be a regular ol average performing drama.
But I think you know more than anyone that this isn't your everyday drama. After 4 years, this is the return of both Lee Min Ho (think this is his first drama after being in the military right?) and Kim Go Eun, who both saw success with their last dramas. Not only were they returning, but they were both reuniting with Kim Eun Sook, the hitmaker herself. Kim Go Eun hasn't done many dramas, but I know you know about Lee Min Ho's drama ratings and obviously Kim Eun Sook's been on a streak for like the past decade. TKEM had all the specs of a hit drama, but yet here we are with 7.7%. Even Goblin, Kim Eun Sook's first cable show, had better ratings than this. These are her worst ratings in ages. That's why it is considered a flop.
That all being said, being a ratings flop doesn't necessarily indicate anything about the quality of the show itself of course.

Surprisingly, Maximus isn't really making all those numbers up, but they aren't really representing them correctly either. The ratings they list are the highest single episode ratings for each drama, but only for the Seoul region.. so for example, episode 11 of Personal Taste had ratings of 17.6% in Seoul and 16.2% nationwide. The actual average ratings for each show would look very different. Beyond that, as they've stated in their original post, ratings have dropped for all dramas across the board. 15-20% used to be the average years ago, but now that's considered hit status. So looking at the ratings above (and from what I can remember at the time), Personal Taste and Faith weren't really considered massive hits for their time. Personal Taste averaged mostly around 6th or 7th for its time slot, highest being 4th. Faith bounced all around from 20th to 5th in its time slot. Not saying any of those dramas were flops, but I think their success is being a bit..overstated.

That said, some of the arguments they make in their original post follow this same pattern - they aren't necessarily wrong either but are misleading. So I just wanna elaborate on something. TKEM airs on SBS' Friday-Saturday 22:00 slot. This is a fairly new timeslot, they've only been airing dramas here since the beginning of 2019. Just looking at numbers only, TKEM has ratings about on par with many of the other shows in this time slot.
Hyena, the show that aired before this, had performed slightly better (managed to hover around 10% with no real drop, whereas TKEM has been dropping and struggling for a 7-8%). This timeslot has also been home to surprise hits like Stove League and Fiery Priest. I'd say it's a time slot that's had a lot of genre diversity and was probably the best choice for TKEM.
However, for a Kim Eun Sook drama, lead by Lee Min Ho and Kim Go Eun, the ratings are absolutely incredibly underperforming. Kim Eun Sook hasn't had an "average" rated show in like 10 years. Until now. That's why people say it's flopping. It has all the star-power, from the cast to the writer, but it still gets average at best domestic ratings. It should be getting 10%+ easy, but it isn't.

Anyways, sorry for dropping this big ol essay lol.. tbh the ratings situation for this drama is really interesting to me, so I've got a lot to say haha

This drama actually reminds me a lot of the webnovel Doomed to be Cannon Fodder. The plots aren't exactly the same, but I think people who enjoyed this drama and wanna see more of this kind of story might enjoy it.
But so far, this has been an easy watch - it's not perfect (just turn your brain off when you watch this one), but it's a lot of fun and very cute (for the most part).The female lead definitely falls on the silly side, but Zhao Lu Si makes her likeable. Though I gotta say, Zi Rui and Han Shuo's servant are somehow my favorite characters lol