luckz

In my subtitles, Ji Chul was sort of clearly the brother of Ji Hye, with his wife attributing similar faults to them early on.

I found the production substantially prettier than the first one.

The plot's kind of a mess in both movies.

Earlier she had an inner monologue that she only wants to see him again when they can speak without negative feelings from the past, and he basically repeated this back at her, to show how telepathically aligned they are or something.

And yes, more 'fluffy love' would have done the last hour(s) a whole lot of good.

If you don't enjoy it after that many hours, drop it.

Well, they wasted time on not forgiving, the whole silly fight to the death, the coma ordeal, "do I leave to Germany or not?", "let's not go cry to dad but go cry to mom and then after 5 minutes dad has to come drive out there and pick me up" and so on... it effectively wasn't better than amnesia.

I thought she was perfectly fine in the role, and other actresses wouldn't have done much better.

There's only once she does a completely unnecessary "crying baby" face. Other crying scenes were decent.

I'd call it a happy ending, for ML/FL as well as most side characters. It's just lacking the happy fluff at the end. They had more than enough time budget to film some of that.

normal Liaisons Dangereuses adaptations: she loves him, but only realises it after her manipulation & lies get the ML killed.

Tempted: he loves her, but she always rejects him because "couples break up"; when he gets over it and falls for the FL, she realises she loves him back, but her manipulation & lies destroyed their core friendship as well; the whole bet/game also almost gets the ML killed.

The Korean sageuk adaptation Untold Scandal is as far from PG as it gets.

Yeah, for ML/FL and most characters.

It's completely out of character, but towards the end of other Liaisons Dangereuses adaptations, the ML and FL are rushing towards each other (in Cruel Intentions, literally running) and the jealous female instigator (here = Choi Soo Ji) causes something nasty to happen to prevent their happiness. So it's the writer somewhat poorly trying to incorporate a core part of the storyline.

She does a very decent "generic Cinderella" in my book. Her character is surprisingly smart/competent at key moments. Can't complain.

Bad acting I only saw among some of the really unnecessary support characters, like Lee Se Joo's extended family.

It was weird that, at the 'silly train station place', they expressed a desire to sleep together (and then after some odd scenes literally merely slept together).

The more serious Korean movie adaptation of the novel is of course infinitely more explicit.

It's a case of "give it 3-4 hours and decide". It's not the worst drama out there.

It's definitely not worse than other "okay enough" dramas.

Forgiving FL not forgiving wasted whole episodes, yes.

GY (as in Lee Ki Yeong) could have easily been arrested by the police, there was more than enough reason for FL or the other 'good' characters who escaped to call them. The drama usually had its weaker moments when trying to adapt plot elements of the novel/source.

They had a small tacked on explanation by Myung Mi Ri as in Soo Ji's mother how she apologised and was punished. If that meant going to jail or doing community service or just bowing in front of a camera crew wasn't detailed.

Forgiving FL not forgiving wasted whole episodes, yes.

GY (as in Lee Ki Yeong) could have easily been arrested by the police, there was more than enough reason for FL or the other 'good' characters who escaped to call them. The drama usually had its weaker moments when trying to adapt plot elements of the novel/source.

They had a small tacked on explanation by Myung Mi Ri as in Soo Ji's mother how she apologised and was punished. If that meant going to jail or doing community service or just bowing in front of a camera crew wasn't detailed.

In Liaisons Dangereuses (adaptations), the (reasonably) evil manipulative female character with repressed deep feelings for the manipulative male casanova lead is upset that a lover rejected her for another girl, which provides the set-up. To hurt him, the casanova character is asked to seduce that girl (who isn't his later True Love™!).


In this case, Lee Ki Yeong breaks up with Choi Soo Ji around 25/26 minutes into Ep1 to pursue two girls simultaneously, Park Hye Jung and Eun Tae Hee. As revenge, Choi Soo Ji wants both of them seduced. This is (unconvincingly) supposed to hurt Lee Ki Yeong – touched upon briefly at the very start of Ep2 (Netflix: middle of Ep1) and at length shortly before the end of Ep2 (Netflix: end of Ep1).

Compared to other adaptations of Liaisons Dangereuses, the time it was just a bet to deceive the FL is *very* short in this drama.

ep29 (15.1): Se Joo & the FL Tae Hee are completely out of character to facilitate dramatic plot development. Se Joo as the one cleaning up after his friends would never use the nuclear option, and Tae Hee as a previously very smart Cinderella character would never follow someone far away for indoctrination after she already found out that she was lured out of the house under false pretenses (& knowing if she stayed she would get a big explanation).

ep30 (15.2): Makjang murder spree, with nobody calling the police or anything like that for the sake of later wasting screen time on the classic coma episode. Even more absurd than the lack of police or private security intervention is that nobody unties Se Joo at any point, even though several people could and have ample opportunity.


Many lost plot strands, even or especially with the weird 5 years time skip at the end:
- What happened with Park Hye Jung's boyfriend Joo An? He was hit in the head with a golf club and bleeding all over the place, but that's the last we hear of him? Is he not human because he's not rich?
- We never see Lee Ki Yeong (or his hired chaebol heir / part time assassin) punished. Just saying that his family's law firm is doing poorly now doesn't cut it.
- What happened to the wedding plans of Myung Mi Ri and Kwon Suk Woo?
- We don't even find out if FL ultimately moved to Germany with her dad or not.
- We can only guess that ML might have gone for formal painting / art education rather than enter the family business – but he's still on good enough terms with his family to spend outlandish money on a ridiculous prank.
- The drama is missing any scene of the "adults" (besides FL's stunned mother) reacting to who exactly ML has feelings for.
- We never find out the details of ML's mother's death. When the hospital director arrives she's still alive, after all - and why is her car door locked anyway? I've never driven with a locked door before, and even if it's common for KR chaebols, you would NOT do that with a heart condition. Plus her window is down when she talks to FL, but then up again later on.
- The whole hinted at sub plot of ML's father possibly conspiring with his later fiancee Myung Mi Ri to have his wife killed was so silly if the only goal of them lying was covering up his well-known feelings for FL's mother. Even his own mother knew everything about it.
- The subplot of ML kissing or perhaps even sleeping with the mother of Go Kyung Ju completely disappears to never be mentioned again. Go Kyung Ju talks to ML like a generic friend-of-gf side character later, like the writers forgot about earlier episodes.
- Go Kyung Ju's adoption is mentioned once, but also never pursued or detailed.