scenophile

Another fun installment to the series

I'm really glad we got to see this friend group together again — seeing all the characters and how they fit together to round out the team is still the highlight of this show.

Plot-wise, though, I do think this one is the weakest of the three. The weekly cases, Do-Gi's different personas, and how the team infiltrates each situation are just overall not as memorable or creative. The pacing feels slower overall.

Part of this is that there's no overarching plot. The first episode made me think they were going international and having another "who's going to get to it first" arms race with Interpol, but those characters, who I thought were going to be secondary characters, never showed up again. And then the last case made me wish that there had been an overarching plot related to the military and Do-Gi's background; it makes for a really intimidating antagonist, and the personal tie would've added a lot of stakes. We didn't get either of those though, which means there's just no recurring antagonist and no ongoing tension throughout the show.

Nevertheless, I think this was a decent send-off for our Rainbow Taxi team — and it does leave room for another season if they end up making another one.

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A trope salad in the making

One of the most dramatic ratings spirals ever. I'd probably give the first two episodes a 8/10, while the finale is a generous 1/10.

It's a real shame because the drama stole my heart in the first two episodes, when it wasn't afraid to be really loud and fun. The fearlessness towards physical intimacy was extremely refreshing, and the best part was that it made use of the great chemistry between the leads.

A few episodes later, I was still pretty locked in, but by now it felt that the drama was stronger in its quieter moments — a tense moment where the leads let the mask slip just a tiny bit, or Ji-hyeok's internal turmoil as the misunderstanding spirals further, etc. The other moments — like the female lead getting lost in the woods and needing to be saved, or getting kidnapped by loan sharks — at this point, those plot points are so recycled it doesn't add anything to the characters or the story.

I was nervous about this fun show becoming trope salad as it added more and more of those types of scenes, switching its focus to a typical corporate warfare plot that I didn't care much about, while making its leads go through the typical moments of poor girl/rich boy.

And it completely falls apart in the last episode, leaving our second couple in the dust with zero development, and rushing our leads through a Car of Doom and amnesia plot — which I cannot believe we are still doing, unironically, in the year of our lord 2025.

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Half-half

My favorite part of this drama has to be the romance. Mi-joo is just such a lovable character, with so many heart-warming scenes between her and her kids. I loved every single time she was on screen and wish we got more romance — though I get it would've been difficult considering Kang-ho's amnesia and state of mind throughout most of the show.

The main selling point of this drama really is the relationship between Kang-ho and his mother, and while I do think it's written with a lot of depth and the gray area leaves you a lot to think about. I didn't quite connect with it on an emotional. The same could be said for the country-side gang in general, who are kind of your typical comic relief characters.

With that being said, I think I was actually much more intrigued by the high-stakes revenge plot, but it's pretty much glossed over by the end and the steps Kang-ho took to get there doesn't make much sense. I get it — this drama has a revenge plot but it's not a revenge drama; it's mostly a backdrop to the story of Kangho's relationship with his mother. So I'd just say to anyone going into this to have the right expectations.

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Wow.

Wow. As someone who's had a lot of trouble getting into historical dramas, I found myself going into this one with a bit of hesitation, but it ended up hooking me and never letting go.

This drama balances romance and royal politics perfectly — there's elements of the show that are extremely romance kdrama-esque (you know, the slow motion falling, the silly misunderstandings), but the story still chugs along, all while keeping the tone very consistent.

I'm also just completely floored by the chemistry between the leads. Fantastic performances all around, and this drama reminded me just how great it is to see ACTUAL YEARNING on my screen.

There are some subplots that I found a little too long, or weird ones (like that tiger one lol) but ultimately, I found the show very cohesive and enjoyable.

On the ending...I was also a little nervous knowing the 17th episode was added later, but it really felt perfect to me. The pacing made sense, and it managed to come full circle while still letting the viewer do some of the lifting. Just a stunning show from beginning to end.

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Sweet, but

This was an extremely sweet movie and it really hit the right notes to get the feeling of nostalgia and youth friendship, without making anything too over-dramatic.

I do have one big gripe with this movie though; the tone stays pretty consistent and light-hearted throughout but it does what a lot of Asian movies seem to do in the third act: the noble idiocy break-up, followed by the time jump reunion. While this movie subverts the trope a bit (thank god for that), I'm not the biggest fan of it being there in the first place and felt like there had to be a better way to incorporate character arcs without doing it.

Still, a cute film.

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Cute and comforting (other than the...you know)

I loved the vibes of this one a lot. It felt extremely comforting to follow a character that came to terms with not having a dream and just being comfortable with enjoying the day-to-day. The romance is subtle, but its still there — and it matches the characters really well.

The main hiccup in this drama is the — yep, you guessed it — the murder plot. It really came out of left field, with suspects that were barely hinted at before. Then it was resolved in less than an episode, and it felt like everyone just...moved on. I don't think we needed it at all, and there were much more down-to-earth subplots that we could've gone for.

Nevertheless, it was sort of a blip, so it didn't bother me so much. My other minor con would be that the drama seems to redo the "drunk" subplot far too often, but other than that, I still really enjoyed this one at the end of the day.

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Calm

Rating this (and the prequel series) a little above the median. I think the most important thing is that I'm extremely impressed with its portrayal of lesbianism and asexuality, and even more so with its commentary on how it ties into housing discrimination, as well as gender roles in family units. I don't think it's something I've ever seen tackled so head-on in an Asian drama.

With that being said, while I do think this is ultimately a peaceful and cozy watch, with leads that are refreshingly mature, I feel like everything ended up feeling just a little too polite for me. I don't mind the lack of skinship — I actually love that this drama talked about different levels of comfort and going slow, but in terms of relationship dynamic, as a matter of personal preference I enjoy couples that are a little more high-energy and have banter. The leads here are very much not that, and after a while they start to feel a little one-note.

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Calm

Rating this (and the sequel series) a little above the median. I think the most important thing is that I'm extremely impressed with its portrayal of lesbianism and asexuality, and even more so with its commentary on how it ties into housing discrimination, as well as gender roles in family units. I don't think it's something I've ever seen tackled so head-on in an Asian drama.

With that being said, while I do think this is ultimately a peaceful and cozy watch, with leads that are refreshingly mature, I feel like everything ended up feeling just a little too polite for me. I don't mind the lack of skinship — I actually love that this drama talked about different levels of comfort and going slow, but in terms of relationship dynamic, as a matter of personal preference I enjoy couples that are a little more high-energy and have banter. The leads here are very much not that, and after a while they start to feel a little one-note.

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Half a season

There are some interesting premises and character dynamics here: reunited exes, Gi-hun and the Front Man, the perspective of No-Eul as a guard...but nothing really comes to fruition because S2 feels incomplete. I think calling it S2 and S3 is kind of a stretch; it's S2 part 1 and S2 part 2. I like seeing the push-and-pull between the character pairings, and the show does a good job of adding tension using dramatic irony, but other than that, it's a lot of set-up without any pay-off.

I have the patience to wait for S3, but it just feels like Gi-hun, as a returning character, is quite under-utilized. I'm not sure I buy into the idea that he's some kind of revolutionary leader who everyone falls in line behind, and I also feel like he's approached the games on too much of a surface level. He yells for everyone to listen and follow him to overthrow the game makers, but doesn't spend actual time thinking about why the games exist, or if they planted a player the way they did in the last game. Wi Ha-jun's character (whose name I can't even remember) is underutilized too. He's on a boat, but largely irrelevant.

I also think the games just aren't as good. I understand that the show needed to go beyond the games this time and couldn't just have the same thing play out again, but I felt like there was a missed opportunity here. Now that we have a guard character, I imagine — what if the protagonists planted people in the guards the same way the antagonists had planted a player? Or what if the players found loopholes to the games? Part of the chart of S1 was that the games were very simple: cut out this shape, pull the rope, cross the bridge, play marbles. This time, in making the game so complicated — have a team of five with each person playing a different childhood game as you walk around the track with your legs tied together — it felt like we lost something. We didn't get to see how each character approached a simple game because there were too many characters and games and we were just flashing through all of them.

Regardless of all this, I think this season is a decent set-up for whatever comes next.

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Mature in some ways, overdramatic in others

Trigger Warning: Suicide, Rape

This is a drama that simultaneously feels ahead of its time and VERY of its time.

The way it handles sexual assault, PTSD, and grief is overall very mature, and I thought that the more raw and unedited type of directing and the more down-to-earth dialogue and acting really helped. The humor is subtle but there. The good-girl-bad-boy trope is present, but doesn't feel over-the-top, and each of our main characters feel like they've each carved out their little worlds before we get to watch them collide.

The chemistry is quite good as well, and I did find our leads really cute. The banter is fun — even though the female lead is shy and quiet, she and the male lead have a very good back-and-forth when its just the two of them, and we get to see how he gets her to come out of her shell.

The friendships are really great to see too, and that is such a crazy thing for me to say considering the intense way Qing Mei bullied our FL at the start. But once we get past that, I really liked her character and the way she supported the main lead. With that being said, however, this is definitely a drama that focuses only on the two main leads, so her character's personality and storyline isn't developed much beyond that.

Those are all the ways in which the drama felt ahead of its time.

Now, the way it feels exactly of its time (2004) are the subplots and just how dramatic they get. I enjoyed a few of them, like the sociopath/psychopath character who wanted to mold Chen Ling into the same as him, but the drama lost me a little bit when it went into his backstory. There's his twin's suicide, his mother's death, the dangers of motorcycle racing, the estrangement from his father, who is actually a wealthy chairman of a big corporation. That last reveal of him being a secret chaebol was the worst one for me because it's just so 2004 and made the drama seem a lot less grounded than it previously was. Overall, however, having so much backstory for him just made it feel a little unfocused.

The way the female lead's r*pist came back and everything with him blew up into stalking and a fistfight...I know this does happen in real life, unfortunately, but for the purposes of this show I wish it had stayed in the backstory instead of being blown up into something so big, which was then tied into the storyline of the ML returning to his rich family.

I know this is based off a manga and I'll probably read that at some point because I do think it's an interesting story, but I can already tell that I'll enjoy the earlier chapters more than the later ones, which is what I felt about the show.

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A good old case-of-the-week

Taiwanese dramas of the "comedy" variety are really a hit or miss for me because it's either extremely witty or extremely cringe. I'm happy to say that this is the former. The comedic timing is impeccable and the three main leads (and even all the side characters) bounce off each other very well.

The cases are pretty interesting, but I admit that none of them really stood out to me as much the main arc of the lead recovering from the accident that killed his father, or even as much as just seeing the trio be goofy together.

It's the humor and the family theme that really make the show. I won't lie — I shed a lot of tears whenever the ML shared scenes with either of his parents, and I think it's those scenes that will stick with me the most.

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Eccentric lead, Underrated drama

This drama is so underrated. From the very first episode I was captivated by the female lead — there's something about these very eccentric but straightforward and socially unique leads that just feel so relatable and immediately create a different dynamic wherever the drama takes place, which, in this show, is a newsroom.

I really enjoyed the episodic format of this one as well, and it was even more interesting than typical episodic dramas because of how well they tied in the subplots of each side character with different cases. By the end of the show I truly felt like I knew every single person working in that newsroom.

My only criticism is a minor one: I enjoyed the backstory arc of the main female lead, which was revealed about halfway through the way, better than the actual ending arc, which was treated like the finale. It's not a dealbreaker by any means — in fact, logically it makes sense for the story to wrap back around to present day, but I just felt like it wasn't as emotionally hard-hitting.

Overall, I still really enjoyed this drama and I'm sad at how underrated it is.

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