I don't need dramatic plots or fluffy romances, I just need well written characters and I'm actually shocked at how bland all of this drama's characters are. They don't have backstories, they don't have friends, each of them seem to have at most two fixed emotional conflicts, the leads don't experience almost any kind of growth throughout the series. The only out-of-plot conflict of the ML was his relationship with his father and for some unknown reason the FL keeps trying to force him to forgive him or something, and out of nowhere his father's personality change and they make amends? It was so damn weird.
It also really bothers me how the show treated cheating as if was nothing? A couple of episodes of angst and all of a sudden the leads were all bff-y with their exes? As if nothing had happened? There was no seemingly evolution from one thing to the other and goodness, the cheaters' story had a maddening amount of attention when the script didn't even made me empathize with them. It would be great to see a redemption arc to detail the growth from the second leads, but that redemption was never really showed to us - they went from villains to good people in a matter of a second. I didn't care the least bit about them, and surprisingly, I didn't care about the leads as well. They were so bland in so many ways it's sincerely astounding.
Oh, and there's that forcing a plot driven script in one that clearly needed to be mainly character driven. Sometimes the characters don't seem to have freedom in their making their minds, when it's convenient for the plot, some random people start to talk any shit around them and instead of asking for advice from people they actually trust, they buy the random people's shit. Or worst, people around the characters bring out a specific key subject into conversation totally out of the blue just to force them to think a certain way.
I'm alright with light dramas that don't deepen the characters too much as long it is enough for me to cheer for them and sympathize with them. That didn't happened at all with this show, I'm so MAD, and for real, it could be a great script if the ideas were better executed. Why didn't I drop this again? I feel so dumb for not doing so.
I am almost using the same words as someone else at this point... But that Yi Jin would take the job which means…
Yeah, I've seen this opinion a lot but while I get where you're coming from, even if Yi-jin did act out of character (which I respectfully disagree with), I don't see how this detail has anything to do with their breakup. Yi-jin not telling her about NY didn't cause or contribute much to their growing apart, for me it was just it... a detail.
I rewatched the show last week and really am trying to understand why so many people found the breakup forced but I guess I just can't. The long distance thingy for me was not the matter at all, Hee-do and Yi-jin's relationship was fragile way before that and we already knew after Yi-jin disappeared for some months that physical distance wasn't enough to disconnect them. Hee-do maturely chose to give a shot dating someone in a situation like her mom's, tried for some time but the difference in lifestyles ended up creating too much emotional distance between them. They grew apart without intending and that's how it is, it doesn't feel unnatural for something like that to happen, it doesn't matter how much they loved each other.
Gosh, this is so gooooood!!! It also became one of my favorite dramas ever and I'm still savoring all the mathematical inspirations. I can't believe I didn't notice the Hardy-Ramanujan parallel, thank you so much for pointing it out (the geometrical structure too!). I'm a mathematician in the making and how poetic and human this drama painted math is just absurdly beautiful, the way you wrote it perfectly describes it. I can't agree more with your review, thank you so much for it!
I don't need dramatic plots or fluffy romances, I just need well written characters and I'm actually shocked at how bland all of this drama's characters are. They don't have backstories, they don't have friends, each of them seem to have at most two fixed emotional conflicts, the leads don't experience almost any kind of growth throughout the series. The only out-of-plot conflict of the ML was his relationship with his father and for some unknown reason the FL keeps trying to force him to forgive him or something, and out of nowhere his father's personality change and they make amends? It was so damn weird.
It also really bothers me how the show treated cheating as if was nothing? A couple of episodes of angst and all of a sudden the leads were all bff-y with their exes? As if nothing had happened? There was no seemingly evolution from one thing to the other and goodness, the cheaters' story had a maddening amount of attention when the script didn't even made me empathize with them. It would be great to see a redemption arc to detail the growth from the second leads, but that redemption was never really showed to us - they went from villains to good people in a matter of a second. I didn't care the least bit about them, and surprisingly, I didn't care about the leads as well. They were so bland in so many ways it's sincerely astounding.
Oh, and there's that forcing a plot driven script in one that clearly needed to be mainly character driven. Sometimes the characters don't seem to have freedom in their making their minds, when it's convenient for the plot, some random people start to talk any shit around them and instead of asking for advice from people they actually trust, they buy the random people's shit. Or worst, people around the characters bring out a specific key subject into conversation totally out of the blue just to force them to think a certain way.
I'm alright with light dramas that don't deepen the characters too much as long it is enough for me to cheer for them and sympathize with them. That didn't happened at all with this show, I'm so MAD, and for real, it could be a great script if the ideas were better executed. Why didn't I drop this again? I feel so dumb for not doing so.