npatch

I don't remember all details at this point, but my thinking is that TaePoong considered everyone from his father's firm a sort of family, which is why he tried to gather all of them throughout the show, even if he couldn't necessarily pay them all. He was conflicted because he wanted to say something for her but GMJ was also experienced and part of the "family". Kinda like the annoying uncle you never bother fighting with on outdated mentality. I'm sure had it been someone else, he would have.

As for the bribery, I'm sure at the time, it was relatively common. Especially knowing how one of SK's prominent drama genres is corruption and chaebols and the further back we go in time, the easier it was.

Finally, even though he did bribe someone, nothing would have happened had he not been framed. The bribe itself was 10$, nothing. It feels targeted because it wasn't just the guy who stole GMJ's jacket that lied, but also the customs officer who had to shot himself in the foot to get GMJ into serious trouble. And if you remember, the thai gov treated public servants receiving large bribes very seriously and 10k was a serious bribe (minimum to get court appearance was 200$). He'd basically have to admit to a heavier crime, just for GMJ to go to prison. Had the officer not lied, GMJ would just get released with a warning and no court appearance, it wouldn't have made the news and the deal would most likely be still on the table, no penalties no nothing. And nobody bats an eye at that. The story and neither the characters tried to get to the bottom of this. That is what's ridiculous, that nobody bothered to figure out who and why.

Unfortunately it's the most common recipe. Make sure good guys are losing all the way to the end and triumph in one big climax. Really does a disservice to your characters. Any initial promise of potential for the characters has to die until the last couple episodes when they stand on their potential to win.

My disappointment was that it was another good vs evil case and the little trading they did was heavily influenced by the villains arc. Not all dramas need a villain. By the end you care more about exposing the bad guy and ML getting the girl, than seeing ML make it on trading sense and skill, which was the premise. You could have removed IMF era altogether and it could have still been the same story more or less. It had so much more potential, had they not taken this route, even with keeping the romance parts (with slight pacing changes to get there a bit faster).

it has a slow start, but its format is a dime a dozen. if you don't like cliches, not worth it.

Aside from the British, everyone else tends to stretch stories to a specific episode count format which coincides with TV Schedules and Seasons/Quarters. I believe each story has its own sweet spot for how many eps and/or seasons it should be, to fully utilize its potential. That basically defines your pacing. The better that is, the better the outcome. Otherwise you get forcefully stretched stories which are always obvious to the viewers, hence the complaints. Typically, this stretching also affects characters as they have to underperform, contrary to how skilled/promising they were introduced as, to allow the forced/fixed plot to progress. And if I had to choose, I'd choose shorter and better paced over stretched and forced, given the writing I've seen so far in SK.

I'm not arguing that it shouldn't be set during the IMF years, I'm arguing that it's turned into yet another drama with a villain and sabotage, power abuse and so on, instead of just failing a trade because of competition or because some shipping company screwed up etc. So far they've had only one successful deal and the fact that they still remain afloat having paid so many penalties in 12 eps and having been sabotaged multiple times is beyond me. And guess who's about to pay yet another penalty for a gov contract, until the police find Pyo is behind this and hold them accountable. But the gov contract itself is delayed if not screwed anyhow. The gov will have to shoulder some responsibility for their own subject's wrongdoing, since it's a contract with another country basically.

We got this, instead of seeing some company start small, managing to stay afloat, failing once or twice in the process but gaining reputation abroad in such a difficult climate, all through clever if not out-of-the-box thinking deals, before moving on to bigger things. They actually did part of of that in the show as is, but they opted to make it a good vs evil story instead of a slice of life with a focus on the work aspect. A type of story the kdrama space is severely lacking.

They couldn't restrain themselves from making it into another huge comeback at the end type of story. It could have been so much more had they just written about trading, no sabotage and scandals. They already do part of it when they make them decide having calculated risk and cost and everything, why couldn't they just focus on the trading aspect and make suspense from getting good and bad deals?! They are already poor at this point and now they have this loss to cover. Obviously they'll rise up at the end but do we really care at this point? Such a shame.

Of all the things that are wrong with this drama, GMJ's backstory and choices are not unrealistic.

I don't think GMJ was ignorant. He has a lot more experience than both of the protagonists combined. He's also helped with the Thai Typhoon agency before, seeing as it's his uncle who's the CEO there. Not excusing it, just saying that business back then did have a lot of bribery involved and it wasn't unexpected. That said, if you do business like that, you do assume the risk of getting caught. KTP's vision is to do business the right way, as it was his father's. But that doesn't mean the others were not greasing the wheels slightly. Especially if you think about Mrs. Cha too and her involvement with Pyo. They weren't all squeaky clean or that morally upstanding.

On the other hand, while they lost the big contract with the thai conglomerate because of GMJ's actions, they wouldn't have lost their merchandise because of it, nor the potential for selling it elsewhere. That was because he was framed, for what reason or by whom, we might never know. The merchandise got broken because they exceeded the number of days staying unclaimed at customs, due to the extension of the trial which GMJ should never have gone through, had he not been framed. And he was framed. First because the same officer he bribed said he received 10k, which if you think about it, the officer being a gov employee, means that would be tantamount to admitting that he got a large bribe, thus admitting to a larger sentence by the judge since he accepted the bribe. And also, the fact that the other guy who got his jacket lied to KTP and OMS about not knowing him at all and getting released is not by chance. He spoke Korean, he definitely made a deal by giving GMJ up to them. The question is whether he was coincidental, or he was put there on purpose due to him speaking korean. And if the guy was a coincidence and he just took advantage to get released, it still doesn't explain why the customs officer dug a larger whole for himself by lying that they got to him after 6pm to offer a substantially larger amount which also screws him over too. My expectation is either someone wanted to mess with the conglomerate, or thai gov wanted to mess with koreans, oooooor if we follow the pattern of the writers, Pyo somehow got involved since he has motive and has repeatedly interfered.

And between us, even if the writers hadn't used GMJ's actions to throw a curveball to the Typhoon agency, they would have done something else, as they've been constantly doing.

Obviously, considering how many dramas we watch that start interesting and end up flops or meh or just not great and are carried by their cast most of the time, you can see that they don't particularly care so long as they do get tv ratings. If the audience was that critical about things, you'd have way more competently written productions than what exists. It's not by chance the term makjang became a thing in Korea.

My advice is watch HP. It's a classic hospital setting. They manage without a villain, without compromising the medical aspect. If you like that, you can see how this could also have been more about trading with a smattering of interpersonal relationships, than what has become. And I didn't say they couldn't have competition, just not a villain who'll resort to illegal/shady paths (for what it's worth, I don't consider the factory they avoided giving the textiles to as a villain). At any rate, HP is a great case study to compare other stuff to, in the general writing sense. For one, it doesn't compromise its characters for the plot, which so many other dramas do. Just like in this one, Oh MS saves them a few times with incredible memory and knowledge of economic theory (as inexperienced as she is), yet she ignores the whole frame up up until the last minute and forgets about the camera films, which she obviously did, to have documented facts about their whole operation and process and avoid weird situations like the ones they had before. I consider this a huge foul towards OMS's character. I can understand a bit of shock being a factor to not think about it all immediately, but they ignored this issue for hours if not days. They didn't even bother looking into the frame up from the moment they heard about the 10k claim, or the moment they saw the guy with GMJ's jacket who also lied to them straight up.

PS: While I really love HP, the advice is purely in the interest of discussion over writing. It should certainly be enough to show that a tv show without an overarching plot, without messing up its characters, without resorting to villains (even though most if not all medical dramas do), still managed to be better than most if not all of them just for making good decisions in terms of writing. And my point is that this mentality and this paradigm is transferable to other genres. Which is why I call it a case study.

We agree on the 20% being what writers should try to do, but they just don't and ruin the potential of many shows.
HP and TF would be comparable if the premise of TF was kept to surviving in trading, using trading, instead of surviving personal vendetta of a classic type villain which will most definitely lead to some scandal. There's little trading happening and that's the problem. If the writers didn't try to use the same formula of 15 eps suffering 16th big climactic win, we wouldn't have this forced plot where they constantly try to create mess for KTP despite the sparse ingenuity he shows. Just look at how unreasonably JCR from Busan has bailed them out so many times with little to no benefit. While I don't agree with emotion has no place in business, there's a certain limit to how much you can keep giving money away to someone whose future looks bleak regardless of what they do. They had to do super unreasonable things to just send those shoes to the client. That's why I keep talking about HP. You don't need a villain in every show. They can be competition, but you don't need scandals or people resorting to violence and blackmail to make a good show. But resorting to it, creates cheap conflict, both in the sense of how easy you can write it and how bland it ends up if you force it. There's enough difficulty in trading and business dealings alone, that you don't really need villains to write an interesting story.

They do so because they can't survive without his knowledge. Sure he messed up big time this time, but generally he has more experience than them in the real world. And if you think about it, he didn't develop this habit overnight, shadow economy and backroom deals were the norm. Still are in some parts of the world, even the more civilized ones (otherwise we wouldn't be getting scandals in major countries still). Certainly became more prevalent in 1997 when the crisis hit multiple asian countries at the same time, making it not just business but survival. Just see how easily he got framed, because that's what it was, for something he didn't do (10k is considerably more than 50$). Normally he'd have been released as the bribe was very small, but someone tried to frame him. The question is who and why and whether the writers used it just for cheap conflict or it'll circle back to Pyo. But in general, we've seen much less trading happen than the vendetta between Kang and Pyo and possibly a scandal that Pyo is looking at. They are making it more like an epic than just a story about trading.

It's a pretty classic storytelling for 80% of kdramas. They always have to suffer through 15 episodes and win at the end with a huge climax. As I said to someone else, Hospital Playlist, a medical drama, managed to be great without an inherent villain. There's other ways to write stories, they just don't bother with them and opt for the easy way out. The description promises trading ingenuity in the time of SK's IMF crash and we've seen very little of it up to the 10th ep, exactly because of how unbalanced it is.

Hospital Playlist was a fantastic case study for how to make a very popular enjoyable well written show without a villain. They focused on relationships and actual medical issues. Here they had the opportunity to do something similar for trading, but it's like, constantly a war with someone or their own luck and very little about trading deals and progress and we're already at ~60% of the show. In the end, it'll be reduced to yet another good vs bad guys, at the very end.

The problem is they overuse this kind of format where the process only shows promise at the very beginning and the very end. Also making something 16 episodes when you could have made it less (e.g. 12). Or making it about actual trading than just another story with a villain who'll stoop low enough to sabotage at any given point, until the big climax at the end. It could have been more about TaePoong's ingenuity at figuring out deals to make money, reading the market, which he does but they keep throwing him curveballs just for darama, finding diamonds in the rough and closing close deals. But instead it's about some cheap rivalry with a spoiled child and his father's obsession and possibly fear over TaePoong's father which ends up tripping them up constantly. There's only so much you can ask money from everyone else without making it unrealistic. Even the fact that the Busan woman helped them so much and still hasn't seen any profit is proof enough. They always do this. Cheapen the plot for drama moments, instead of making a proper story that'll speak for itself.

For one I'd like an S4 without too much drama, other than difficult cases and want all the people from past seasons back to work as one whole team. We saw Do In Beom in S2, Kang Dong Ju in S3 and at the very end even Yoon Seo Jeong....Cha Jin Man was an interesting role, not the role he's played so far, but I wanted him to come back and stick around with his level.

That's not my problem. My problem is how they always do the same writing cheats. They set ML as a very bright very clever man. Perhaps socially inept at first, but after tasting the vile machinations of the villain, should have probably gone through some development, yet does not, makes a fool of himself in a very helpless kind of way. Same with FL, she is set up as very interested in solving mysteries and being very bright and knows stuff to carry out autopsies, but half the times she acts like a clueless villager who's unable to think of possibilities or even attempt to solve a mystery...like she didn't pick up on things. Like, what's the point of setting up characters with a particular skillset or traits if they're gonna forget about them when it suits them to show them having obstacles/difficulties just to drag the story and generate artificial suspense? Writer figures out there's a problem with a specific part, does not know how to solve it properly, makes super bright character drop 80 IQ points, done!

I'm currently watching ep 7, barfing since the 3rd and saw reviews giving it 10s, barfing even more. Writing my experience on my feeds, but suffice it to say, I'm hate watching at this point.

Completely agree with everything you say. Although I'd argue that character development can't really happen if your characters are not consistent. L can do marvelous things and be batman in one scene and be totally useless in another with more favorable circumstances. Same with the gisaeng who can throw knives and pin a man with an arm lock type thing, but when captured she's at the mercy of the captor even when she can kick/punch or do sth anything. Like make up your mind, are they cool or morons?

I also watched for Lee Yi Kyung and at least he was as good as could be. His character is a moron from start till end and makes some good decisions along the way being the marvel that LYK usually is.

Agree. I loved some parts but mostly due to Shin Hye Sun being every bit the awesome actress. But writing left a lot to be desired.

Dude boasted education yet trying to remember stuff on demand was an afterthought. He boasted Special Forces training which mostly became an unknown word joke, as he never used any of that training at all in so many occasions.

And here I thought this was a forum for discussion. But if you're gonna be that defensive about it, I'll leave it at that.

Anyhow, my lens is fed up with half-baked scripts. I used to appreciate stories and be more lenient, but that ship sailed. That said, I sincerely hope yours never will. At least you won't run out of dramas to enjoy.

For me it's meh. they only use crime solving in the most obvious times, yet they don't bother with it or cunning at all the rest of the time. which is why they just took wol out to her family's place even though the King risked to get her to their custody to solve the crime, yet they did not account for opposition. There are so many clues staring them in the eyes, but they just went to her parents' house happy go lucky. Too contrived and inconsistent.

Had they not bothered with the conspiracy and just had crime solving or even psychiatry(which is the title itself) for the sake of it and trying to create the science in a research kind of way it would have been more interesting. The cases they went through were fine on their own.