npatch

Finished it today. I'm pleased to say that it did get way better. This is one of the few cases I've encountered where once I find some major issue, the drama recovers. I did find a couple of things later on that didn't reaaaally make sense but oh well, they didn't impact the story that much. I won't go so far as to say it's a masterpiece but it's definitely good enough to watch.

It seems we do have different definitions.

Since we are arguing definitions, would you consider someone a master or a work as made with great skill, when they make such amateurish mistakes or if you will, half-assing the details just to make one particular course of events stick? Where's the skill in not finding a better course of events to work with(not perfect, just better)? Or resorting to common tricks like making someone careless for half an episode just to allow something to happen(ofc you could get careless as a human but at least show it in a realistic way that doesn't feel odd). If anything I'd consider someone a master if they utilized that trick but in a way that didn't feel contrived and obvious.

You mention flaws as if they are all trivial, but they obviously have their own scale of severity. It's one thing to criticize a script because it's slow in pace, or has more dialogue than actual progress and another to make such obvious mistakes.
I mean, take a look at Game of Thrones. The books get criticized for being very lengthy and that a lot of text is wasted in minor roles but it's nowhere near as bad as the criticism the TV show writers/directors got from how they handled the last season. Now it's forever blemished for most people, even if the previous 7 seasons were good.

I don't usually drop. I didn't even drop Diary of a Night Watchman which was absolutely excruciating to watch and the worst kdrama I've ever seen, so full of blunders I'm amazed someone paid for its production :P.
I will form a complete opinion of Graceful Family by the end. But for me personally, calling something a masterpiece when its flaws are so obvious, reduces the weight of the word masterpiece for those others who actually do show skill and care for their work enough to be thoughtful throughout it, not just most of it. That said, I won't say it's not good just because it has that mistake. But neither will I call it a masterpiece.

Anyhow, back to the show for me.

Actually you did imply it by saying it was a Masterpiece and well executed. After all admitting it has flaws and saying it was a masterpiece or well executed is a contradiction in itself. I'm refuting those statements, not trying to convince you to dislike it.

I do agree on the acting part though. I really like Seok Hee as a character. She even schooled the lawyer several times and she manipulated the young prosecutor into performing that investigation which gave her time. And Im Soo Hyang delivers on the cocky as well as the soft side of Seok Hee. And Bae Jong Ok is good in any role she's played.

My issue is that so many writers waste the potential of their shows by doing a half-assed job in parts of it. The way they abuse the male lead just so they could add a conflict for Seok Hee to dramatically conquer leaves a bad aftertaste, both for the drama and for the male lead's character. I keep finding shows that draw me in only to get disappointed by such handling. It's a shame.

Now I'm at ep5 and it's getting better. We'll see.

I stand corrected and am satisfied about it.

I will watch it until the end but it's already starting with a minus for me.

When Seok Hee was taken into custody for drug possession, the lawyer did point out there was no search warrant and instead of showing one, they forced a search, which showed drugs. Take ANY other show out there that has legal proceedings and you'll find that even a murder weapon can be inadmissible in court if not appropriated legally. This is such a frequent mechanic for writers to have their villains escape authorities in the first and middle part of the show.
Which brings me to how inconsistent the lawyer is. He's already had two misunderstandings and assumed Seok Hee's guilt about situations that later proved she was in the right and she did point it out multiple times at this point how he's always assuming before checking facts. At this point he is actually her lawyer so he has a duty to move for his client's rights which were clearly violated here. He also does not believe her even after that thing with the grieving father who got 1 billion in the most bizarre way just so he'd actually get it(otherwise MC Group would not pay a penny). She's shown many times so far that she is upstanding and a good person but he's yet again assuming things. So basically he's seriously incompetent. On the other hand, when it suits the writers, he retorts to Director Han quite well to show he actually has skills. So which is it?
Which brings me back to the drug thing. Any competent lawyer would block the whole investigation and would have gotten their client to walk away from it especially since there was no warrant involved and it would get dismissed later on. Instead he lets the prosecution do anything they want, which means urine test. She obviously has never done drugs so unless she was spiked at the house prior to visiting her mother, they will obviously fabricate the test. As they did with the drugs.

Also the fact that MC Group feels somehow threatened by an investigation of a young prosecutor whose father rose to Chief Prosecution by doing dirty work for MC Group therefore can go down with them if an investigation were to prove them guilty, seems ridiculous to me. His father will obviously block it to save his behind. Even though appeasing him solves their problems easily, it seems way too bland of a reaction from people that rose to power by way more brutal behavior. It seems inconsistent to me to have the Chairman accept that appeasing the kid is wiser than reminding him how his father got where he is, considering the Chairman's personality.

I wouldn't disagree this strongly had it been only the MC Group investigation thing, but the fact that the drug investigation got where it did when it's one of the most widely used legal tricks out there just to paint the lawyer incompetent is a red card for me. When is this guy going to grow as a character?

PS: At the beginning of the drug investigation the photoreporter who shadowed Seok Hee wanted to post about her drug bust and paint her a druggie when later on in the 3rd ep, she clearly had evidence it was a frame job since she was filming with her mobile inside the store exactly where she needed to. And she should have known from the get go. Either way, she had ample time to review her photos/videos later on but she somehow didn't?! Even after TOP came and took away the originals? What a huge blunder.

I'm still at episode 3 but I disagree.

That scene where Dong Chi imitates Mun Hee Man's way of speaking when he tells Jang Won to come clean about what he was blackmailed for, was sooo hilarious.

I'm at the 7th ep. Leaving aside the fact that Choi Min Soo rocks(and hopefully will stay a good guy till the end, I've only seen him in baddie roles, and ok he does look scary anyway, so it's not weird). But I'm still annoyed by Han Yeol Moo. She is a mess as a person. She became a prosecutor out of revenge, which is fine as it's a classic trope, but she's all over the place as to the rest. She almost never does a good job from the get go and half-asses her job at the beginning of a case and if she notices sth that her distorted sense of justice disagrees with, she goes all out for it without doing a proper job as a prosecutor. She despises Gu Dong Chi as the potential killer of her brother, without definite proof, and she continuously sees how good he is in his job and how considerate he is of the people he meets but disregards it in the end, while she goes through cases emotionally and not taking things into consideration. Frankly, I don't see much in the way of character growth but who knows...it's 21 eps for some reason.

I'm at ep.12 and at this point it's too obvious what's gonna happen to Yoo Jin. To be honest I empathized with her when she had that "I was raised that way and I was like Anna back then" moment. She also shows promise for reform but it's killed by everyone who shows interest in Anna alone. For one the moment it was apparent for me that she'd end up more miserable was when Je Ha stopped the attack on Anna and did not tell Yoo Jin that he saved two people that night, Anna and Yoo Jin from herself. She's obviously allowing him more space than anyone else and he never questioned it and while he said he'd rather have a friendly relationship than a master-slave one, he never followed through. Shame. I'd rather see him play the friend role no matter how difficult it might become for Yoo Jin who obviously has feelings for him, but at least she might show more character growth towards becoming a better person and leaving behind the self-destructive-karma-inducing one.

This is a very common tool in cop shows(US or SK). Sadly, only SK seems to have removed the SoL in real life.

Damn while the actors are good and the story is captivating, all the small details messed up here and there leave a bad aftertaste. So the Inju case was the one which sparked everything. Whether it was the cops in the 90s or the ones in 2015, nobody questioned the fact that all Student Council boys were loaded(money wise) and all of them were sons of people working for Inju Cement, and the whole city was dependent on that company(though Jae Han did find the facts, just didn't voice the question and instead asked the Park boy to prove his innocense). So sons of people in power basically. So how exactly does a nerd with no power, no money, no connections(as the guy who framed him said) get to force anyone of that level in society(Inju Cement people and/or their sons) to do anything?! It's like the Cold Case Squad or the people in the past never learnt anything from the Han Se Kyu case.

To be honest, I'm kind of disappointed by the conversations between past and present. In ep4, Hae Young talks to Jae Han about the last victim and even though nothing changed in the present, he still asks whether she died in the past. And alright, I get Hae Young might be testing the waters, but when Jae Han obviously sounds nothing like before, at least assume that she did die afterall. Also Hae Young seems kinda slow when he has to to communicate with the past...so much for the sharp and talented profiler.

Started the first ep(20min mark) and it seems the whole investigation is mainly based on the ransom letter with those newspaper cutouts and the fingerprint. The detective, that mentioned it was just the right thumb print, was right that it's strange, but what's more strange is that it just doesn't make sense to base the whole investigation on that thumb print. The newspaper cutouts were used so no one could trace and/or match the letter to a suspect since the sources of the cutouts(newspaper) are so common and they are not unique enough like a suspect's writing style etc. If someone went to such lengths to avoid being recognized by their writing style, wouldn't it make more sense to avoid leaving fingerprints? Fingerprints are much more concrete evidence than writing analysis. What's more it's just one finger's print. Stands to reason that if you find the thumb in the front side, the rest of the fingers(or at least a couple used to hold a paper, e.g. index and middle) should be on the back side. I wonder if they'll mention this fact later but it's still iffy to me, as it makes me expect the typical "the cops are just that simplistic/dumb in nature and will only make headway much later after they've gone through a lot". I seriously hope I'm wrong about this, as I've heard this is a really good drama(combined with the score above).

I mostly agree, though I wasn't as disappointed with the time travel. Sure it was not handled perfectly but I didn't see any major issue with it. It's left vague for a reason anyway, probably because they don't care to or can't actually explain it properly.
The female lead acted like that in the beginning due to all the psychological baggage she had from losing two families(biological and then the adopted from the fire which she witnessed). You can see she slowly changes though as she finds out about her biological parents and meets the dad she never knew who acts like a dad in front of her, getting worried about her, telling her to eat more etc. She also starts to accept SongJae as well, that scene where she opens the door and he's there with a bloody hand and she winces when she sees it. Wouldn't have happened if she saw that bloody hand in the first 4 episodes, she didn't even wince when she saw Gwang-ho storm in her place to put out a fire when she was in the shower in the beginning. But it's not something that can change drastically. She's still a person working in a psychology field that deals with murderers. She can't act like a ray of sunshine all of a sudden.
Antagonists in kdramas are mostly cool or smart all the way to the end, being a couple of steps ahead until their downfall. Good guys are usually the ones who falter and make mistakes. Pretty typical structure and most used.

One thing that did disappoint me though, which reaffirms my point about good guys making mistakes for the sake of the story, at the end Mok Jin-u abducted Prof. Shin due to the pen and after she was rescued, no one bothered to put a security detail on her(the optimal choice would be to have her be with either SongJae or Gwang-ho at all times, but even a patrol car outside would be equally reasonable albeit ineffective). Even if she was abducted due to the pen, she did learn that Mok knew about her father's identity. Stands to reason that he'd do it again out of spite. I could sort of understand it if she never spoke of it, but I don't see a reason why she wouldn't, especially being a thread towards her dad. And she should also know that if she wants to help, she should also remain safe so Mok can't have an advantageous position against Gwang-ho. This is the consistency of a character with profiling knowledge and the intelligence required by their accomplishments so far, if not their position as professors. But writers don't typically cater to consistency because they wouldn't be able to create conflicts easily to move the story forward. My biggest pet-peeve.

Oh and another thing that also disappointed me. Although they tied the elders' deaths to Mok Jin-u and the statute of limitations still applies as some of them were done recently while he was volunteering, they don't seem to bother asking about them. The women were killed because of his false sense of justice. They were a mission. What did he have against the elders? Or was it a humane way to go? Did they have some terminal disease that would end in pain? They also didn't inquire even after they found the young Gwang-ho's mobile with the elders' case evidence. I'd at least expect Prof. Shin to inquire further about them.

Spot on. That's about most of the world back then. Families in most countries have been patriarchal in nature and women didn't have rights(or power in the family) and were mostly groomed as housewives with specific tasks and the duty to never tarnish the family name(although that applied to all family members). So the result of such a society is that men will assert their authority which combined with the woman's role as a housewife, means they turn sexist(although there are various degrees). As for violence, it's not exactly violence for violence. It's just how different the world worked back then. He grew as a character because he adapted to the modern society. People usually behave as their environment does.

I agree that it's fine to watch it if you don't mind various flaws, you like cop shows, and have nothing better to watch :P. The problem is that when you see too many cop shows, the flaws of a poorly written one kinda pop at you easily. So it's difficult to enjoy it.
It had some good elements but all I can see is its unreached potential. That said, I would give the second season a go, if it ever came out.

It was rather inconsistent. Showed that they either didn't do research on how police works or deliberately made everyone ignore usual police protocols so conflicts can easily arise to move the story forward. It had some good elements, but for me the writing was lazy. Character inconsistency when it suits the story.

1) Det. Kang later on shows that he's way more analytical and smart about his investigations. Definitely another missing piece of the puzzle, since the special task force did not manage to prevent a sketch murder, or they took a lot of time to get there. Also later on Det. Kang notices various stuff about patterns on sketches. Shows how much of a valuable asset he really is.
2) No it doesn't make sense for Serge Yoo to be alone. They are exposing their most valuable asset since the special task force was only formed because of her sketches to all the danger there is. They don't fully know how her sketches work, they don't know if she would stay alive so long as she didn't sketch her own death, they don't even know if she can sketch events that involve her, especially the fatal kind. So the logical measures would be to either not involve her in the field or if it was unavoidable( for some reason they couldn't allocate people for the field) at least give her some backup. She's just a Sergeant, not a Captain or Detective to be running around alone. And later on, on various occasions, she proves she cannot function alone. She's made very weak. Two such cases are 1) the fight with Il Soo when she was kidnapped where she could not even dislocate his arm and 2) when fighting Nam Sun Ho in the fiery scene where she had two separate occasions where she could also dislocate his arm and disarm him but in both of them she didn't even try to disarm him so he kept the knife. Disarming is the first thing they are taught. Det. Kang tried to disarm Kim Do Jin earlier in that scene when KDJ tried to stab the unconscious Nam CEO.

This is so typical of kdrama writers. There are so many of them that create inconsistencies for their characters when it suits them. At the beginning Serge Yoo charges forward and a bullet grazes her( at the boat scene) where she properly disarms the amateur but then after Det. Kang is involved, she is like the damsel in distress. She's supposed to be a cop who has training damn it. At least make it so she's either overwhelmed or drugged when she fails. Otherwise, it's even more apparent that it's a mistake to keep her without backup.

Shows that whoever wrote the show, began with a flawed concept. If the task force was new and experimental, I might have accepted it, but it's not. They have gone through various sketches before. It's so painfully obvious that Det. Kang's reason for existing, involves among other things, his ability to save Serge Yoo.

Detective Kang is the missing piece but Moon discarded him like a piece of yesterday's left over pizza in ep.4. So the kidnapping of Serge Yoo comes off really contrived. And for all the hype for the legendary cop, he's just a stubborn, definitely not wise old cop. Had it been another show we'd see someone with leadership skills who'd AT LEAST try to discipline Det. Kang before labeling him a lost cause. The man lost his wife after trying so much and not even to the sex offender with a grudge. Moon gave up before even trying...so lame for a legend.