npatch

Did anyone else catch the reference to Oh My Ghostess in the final episode? Nam Il's actor played in Oh My Ghostess as a trainee chef who had finished Le Cordon Blue. One of the photographs in the cell was of him in Oh My Ghostess.

Been to Korea but not Jeju. I've also seen various parts through Hyori's BnB show. I'll go too someday. Have fun!

Don't get me wrong , there are good things about this drama. And in spite of some issues here and there it's a good story and the actors are good at what they do, but I get very frustrated when I see the same old mistakes. You start with a strong female lead role through and through, personality and experience, and then overturn it at some point just to make the impact of saving her, by the robot, more profound. Have her fight and somehow end up at a ledge or something. Give her a chance to be herself and then throw her in a life and death situation. No one will say anything about her being scared sh*tless because she's about to fall to her death and it will be impactful for the savior. I'm sure there are other ways as well. But that was like the easiest and worst way out.
Shame, the actors are doing a fine job so far.

Seriously why do so many kdramas ignore character consistency?!
Sobong is supposed to be a former MMA fighter and apparently has been a bodyguard of all things since her career end in MMA. But all situations where you'd expect her to show her fighting ability(apart from that girl fight with Yena), she acted like a defenseless girl. Looking mostly at the kidnapping scene. Her movement looks nothing like a trained person. On the other hand she shows no fear on casual situations and especially when she barged in on huge events to create a mess for Shin.
And the robot, does incredible things one time, and exposes itself so easily on others and then looking stupid as if not being to comprehend or prioritize.

Yet another drama that gets sullied with sloppy writing.

Technically all of them had reasons for their behavior. But the male lead's role was directed to be extreme. Ok I get the appeal of having some thug become a judge but he could at least try to maintain appearances. He didn't even try. And the absurdity is that no one paid attention to it. If it were another profession I wouldn't mind, but we're talking about Prosecutors, Lawyers,Policemen and various other professions related. You'd expect them to at least get suspicious, even if they couldn't put a finger to it.
Other than the protagonist, the rest seemed ok to me. Contrary, the first female was even more subdued due to her painful past and traumas, and perhaps personality(she seemed like the quiet type anyway).

I quite liked the lawyer with the father and hidden superiority complex and a false sense of being good. He was a nice touch.

Forgot to add, weakly written roles either due to personality or due to just bad writing, tend to affect the actress mostly. Even if she did a decent job at salvaging the role, it's still the actress' fault when it comes to user comments and who gets blamed in the end.

Yeah, got the reference after the clarification. Heard the expression before.
I was actually a bit biased in reading it the negative way. You frequently see negative comments about actresses in such dramas. Unfortunately, writers tend to make female roles rather weak or at least weaker than their counterparts. Even here Kang So Ra's role admitted to losing constantly and succumbing to the male lead's whims. So it was even easier to misunderstand :P.

Sorry, it's just easy to read like "How can you even like sth like this." and that the KangSoRa/10 is a bad connotation, as in she's very bad in all her dramas.
So you agree with me :P.

To be fair, it's not the actor's fault for how a character is written. Her character was written and directed that way. She had a decent performance for what she had to do.

How did they manage to make a drama where the side character's romances(two couples in mind) are more interesting than the main one? It's been 16 episodes of push and pull between the main leads that it's become boring.

What bothered me was the moment Hee Jin woke up, after struggling a bit, she thought it was a good idea to scream to Ji Uk to untie her. She obviously had some time to try and get away but she felt the need to let her captor know she was awake so he'd pay extra care she won't be able to get away. That was idiotic, especially for one as cunning as her.

Don't get me wrong. With that kind of life , full of abuse it's kinda expected she turned out like that. You can cut her some slack when it comes to criticizing her. But yeah, don't expect Cha Min to treat her just like before after all that happened. Not to mention in such cases, she'd need to learn how to properly approach people, granted she has all the trust issues and anger pent up from her childhood.

It's the disappointment and unfulfillment of potential of a show, not to mention waste of time and money the viewers might have invested. On the other hand, not all people have the same standards or priorities. Many people are casual viewers. They just want something enjoyable to pass the time and perhaps watch their favorite celebs in action. Others value the story a whole lot more and how well the actors performed on said story. I tend to get very frustrated when some producer/writer/director messes up a show they were building up so nicely by ,for example, having characters do uncharacteristic things which makes it painfully contrived. There are various other reasons and they totally ruin it for me.

I agree with you only so far as we're talking about people that criticize without giving out their reasons for it. Plain trolling and baseless comments are annoying. The point is to have a discussion on the topic at hand, not to lash at others just because their opinions differ.

As for being the worst ever, it's definitely an overstatement. Abyss pales in comparison to Diary of a Night Watchman for example. And I'm sure there might be worse ones out there, but that's my go-to rock bottom standard(from what I've watched so far) and believe me I'd rather not watch anything worse than that. I already regret the time I invested to watch it(damn OCD) and the fact that both Netflix and Viki have licensed it instead of various others with established quality that none of them have.

To be fair she did con him from the get go and did try to leave him right before getting abducted by her stepdad. At least Se Yeon was upfront about things, even if obnoxious(at the beginning).

Thanks! I just googled 비밀의 숲 2 but all I get is articles about actors from the first season , referenced as "the actor from Forest of Lies". Other than that nothing.

Btw, Forest of Lies is the actual translation of the Korean title. I was so accustomed to Netflix's that I never really looked at the original title.Stranger seems like Netflix was trolling the awkwardness and social exile of Hwang Simok...

That Chinese chef spoke a bit of Korean with the Chinese. He reminds me of what Lee Soo Geun of Knowing Bros does when speaking fake Chinese....It would be awesome if it was him though.

It felt like most of it from the beginning was dragged on and only near the end did it get more interesting where the pace got a bit faster.
Han Soo Ho changed totally very quickly. He made a 180 degree turn near the end and some time after he got punched by Kang Ho and told he did not have a right to be a judge. Sure he did feel a bit embarrassed at that point but not so far as to show complete remorse a couple episodes later.
This whole story was made so the fragile and almost incompetent female lead had to be saved at the last minute by Kang Ho. Though to be honest he didn't really save her. Her closing statement, although deep and along the lines of what you'd expect from a drama, felt quite weak as there was no real argument offered on her defense prior to that. At no point did she argue for her point of view. She is a trainee mentored by someone with considerable power who abused it to lord over and sexually harass her multiple times. She could not procure evidence because she never had the chance to prepare if needed, and he was careful. She did not ask for money and just filed a complaint. The whole point would be for her to ask for the court's opinion on how she could respond to threats about her career and being a victim when she had to overcome obstacles and all she ever wanted was to be left alone. That the way this procedure worked was in favor of the one in power. Even Kang Ho's testimony was obviously deemed questionable since there would be conflict of interest, Kang Ho being vengeful against the one who put him away. And somehow it was left to the judge to discern everything without any indication to that. What I mean is that in a drama you'd expect to see how someone comes to a conclusion. Even if you don't figure out how the story plays out, there's at least signs around if you look back on the story and you can accept that ok, that twist was totally justified and you should have figured it out since the signs were there. Now there were none. No evidence offered. The Prosecution claimed the investigation showed nothing. Kang Ho had reasons to be vengeful so his testimony is questionable and cannot serve as evidence and her closing statement was a weak platitude about ideals, which didn't even touch upon her own case more than insinuations about her being framed. Ok it could be seen as a call to the judge to see beyond the lies but it's still not enough for him to make that call out of nowhere.
The trials Kang Ho presided over were much better in comparison. This one felt forced just to show that Kang Ho was prepared to do anything for her and that Justice would/should prevail, which is fine as messages go but when it's executed like that, it just feels contrived.

Btw for S.Korea where everywhere you go there's at least one type of camera around capturing everything, the fact that there was no camera in the elevator seems weird to me. I'd expect buildings like Prosecutor's Office or Court buildings to have cameras everywhere.

Ok it got a bit more interesting but not that much.

I started this drama around the time it came out. Now some months later I'm resuming(stopped half way through) just to get it out of my list and because I have this annoying habit of ending what I started even if it frustrates me to no end. All I can say is that the main character is overacted for my tastes(whether it's the actor's or the director's idea) and at some point it became a bit boring. I mean the way he acted was way too out there for anyone to get fooled, especially people working at the judicial system. He's vastly different than his twin so it comes off very unrealistic. I'd have liked it more if he at least tried to act like his twin, even if he couldn't do it well. But he does whatever he wants and it just flies...
It is not the worst drama I've watched but I wonder if at this point it can change my mind.