porkman

I am enjoying this as a relatable and rather insightful workplace drama, but the toxicity is hard to watch sometimes - because I know this is a realistic depiction of their work culture. I thought the office culture in my country is toxic as it is, but this drama + accounts from actual koreans that I know are making me thankful that I'm not working in Korea or a korean company. I'm even more thankful that I'm not a woman who works in Korea because honestly, so many sources tell me that a high proportion of their men are absolute misogynistic sh!tholes. Just like half the men in this drama.

These trailers are so elegantly angsty and... japanese lol. Even though it's still a k-drama with a korean director.

She was great in the movies I've seen her in, but I think her signature "modern woman" kind of energy isn’t translating well to being royalty in a serious sageuk. There isn't the appropriate weight in her voice, the way she walks, or her facial expressions. Her lack of experience is visible next to JCW/the other actors and yeah they didn't really look in love to me either.

Almost 3 episodes in. Unfortunately, I already have many issues with the show. The King's death, even if I was expecting it, felt anti-climatic because of the way he died, and the way it was presented. I'm not impressed by JJS, who isn't giving much depth or charisma to her role - her teenage version who appeared for 15 minutes was more convincing. This is almost fatal because she's the titular character. Scenes are dimly lit but don't appear cinematic - rather, director seems to want them to appear edgy (which isn't really working). And the biggest issue; I don't really care about any of the characters and their fates, because they seem so one-dimensional. Ironically, it was the King that was the most interesting to me.

Also I have no personal problem with sexual scenes but frankly, sometimes they felt more like a gimmick than a genuine effort to enhance the storytelling.

Will be putting this on-hold.

Oh my, Shin Minah with her puppy eyes and dimples... 😍 Lbr, we'll all be marrying her for real if we were the ML.

From the trailer alone, this looks like a fantasy, legal, crime, detective, murder, mystery, action, drama, romance, thriller... show.

...Well, I guess why not lol.

I'm not sure about how they're gonna be handling the subplot of FL being wanted out of the company, it seems a bit sudden and out of place. But if the writing keeps up the same quality in the remaining episodes, this will probably be the best kdrama of 2024 for me (that I watched so far). If not, at least it definitely has some of my favourite female characters of the year (JNR and her daughter).

We had the FL's ex-colleagues show up once to quickly resolve her past work related issues, then the ML's ex-gf showed up, and now FL's ex is coming too? I'm seeing a pattern I don't really like here. Instead of the characters doing things and events occurring naturally, it's more like they're just going about their business and people/things just pop up around them with little to no reason. For people who have watched enough dramas, it's easy to read the intentions of the writer and it's hard not to see this as lazy storytelling. It's kinda like they're ticking things off a checklist as they write the story. The good thing is that the actors (and somewhat the directing) are making it look as natural as possible, or at least they're trying to. But the writer isn't doing them much favours.

The plot is very predictable, plays out exactly as you would expect from the trailer. The action sequences were pretty entertaining, but there's a LOT of plot armour for LJH's character that it's almost ridiculous. Still, it's a decent popcorn movie that's worth watching for the leads.

Insightful, heartfelt and bittersweet, I loved it.

The romance was by far the weakest and most poorly written part of the first season, and yet from the trailer, the biggest connection between the 1st and 2nd seasons seems to be... the romance. Welp. If they were going to make this a "fate brings tragically separated lovers back together" kind of story, they really shouldn't have half-assed the romantic development in the first place.

Definitely charming, but I see no signs of the "wicked" here lol.

I haven't seen WHC1, but apparently the school violence situation in SK is actually pretty bad, that's why there's this entire subgenre of school bullying dramas/movies that's kinda like a dramatized reflection of their reality. Those are upfront about being unrealistic so I'm more tolerant of them (I also don't often watch them since it doesn't rly appeal to me), but I imagine it's much more ridiculous to you lol.

Did you have to be so brutally honest lmao

I think a lot of writers just have no experience in corporate/office jobs so this is the result. Actually it's not just the representation of foreign companies, sometimes even in korean "workplace scenes" it's like they're playing dress up lol. The poor scenario and english here just made it worse.

NGNL exceeded my expectations, it's fun because it's unapologetically goofy and unserious. ENA is continuing a streak of well made thrillers with surprisingly good ratings (for its channel). I'm curious about how its romance shows airing later in the year will fare.

For me, the more dramatic sequences are not gelling well with the slice-of-life stuff. It's kind of jarring to quickly go from laidback, cute scenes to serious ones like the whole Chris fiasco. They are written very artificially, just like you said, conveniently existing only for the romance to move forward. Good writing should make the elements complement each other instead.

I won't spoil HCCC for you, but it also involved something pretty dramatic, and I personally thought that was also a weak point of its story.

The whole thing made the Greip employees look like clowns more than anything else lmao.

So far, this drama is fine but has those occasional cringey/bad scenes that just turn me off. At first, it was the totally unfunny violence of a mother towards her grown daughter. Now in episode 4, there's a whole work sequence that is very hard to take seriously. Within half an episode, the FL's company all the way from the US happened to be ML's client, she happened to overhear their private conversation, and the people in charge also happened to be her shitty ex-colleagues. That's just way too many coincidences happening in half of an episode, no? And the entire point of this was for the ML to be FL's knight in shining armour and to let him see her in her most vulnerable state. I mean sure, that's done in like 90% of dramas, but the way all of this happened could have been less intentional and forced. To top it all off, there's the atrocious english dialogue. The least they could have done was make it sound convincing enough, or hire an actor actually fluent in English for the Chris dude. Like so sorry to the guy, but I had to laugh when he said he immigrated to the US at eight y/o. The whole thing also got resolved way too easily but if that means I don't have to see those colleagues again, so be it lmao.

So yeah... latest episode didn't end on a nice note for me lol.

I'm so sorry for being petty but that's not the lowest she's weighed "in her life" lol. That's the lowest she weighed as an adult, because she would've weighed less when she was growing up. Anyway she did a good job in the role even if I didn't like the series, and I could see the effort to transform herself.