scenophile

The aesthetic of Playlist Global is still so sweet and adorable, but I feel even less invested in the characters and plot than I did in Season 1. Just like in the first season, though, I really loved the friendships between the characters, and it was interesting to see new characters get introduced.

The main ship is starting to get a little on my nerves because of how wishy-washy they were being, and I actually liked the new character better. Other than that, I still had quite a good time watching this, and the fact that the episodes are short and updated frequently makes it easy to get addicted.

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Fun but unsubstantive

There was something quite charming and enjoyable about this drama, crazy visual effects and all — it's the kind of show you can watch without using any part of your brain. Once you did, however, you find that there's a lot lacking especially when it comes to plot and substance.

As much as it pains me to say this, the humor is almost on par with that of Melting Me Softly — it's loud, obnoxious, and zany, and most of the time it misses the spot. A few characters seemed to exist just for the laughs, but they really just ended up annoying and one-dimensional and seemed to serve no purpose. The worst culprit was DH's sister.

There are a lot of things that definitely made me uncomfortable, especially how race was handled. I understand that the people behind the drama said the webtoon artist was supposed to represent how people can come together around love for a culture, but his personality had not much to it other than being dirty and liking to draw x-rated cartoons. It also just felt incoherent at times, especially if it was used for humor which, as I previously mentioned, often fell flat.

I'm a fan of any romance that shows people slowly falling in love with one another in everyday situations, but I really just didn't FEEL it in Backstreet Rookie — honestly, I much preferred the dongsaeng-style relationship that SB and DH had, for multiple reasons. They dragged on the ex-girlfriend plot for far too long, and they also added in a "childhood" connection that made any sort of romantic plot seem even weirder with the age gap.

I also didn't like SB's sister, Eun-byul, who I felt like made so many bad decisions and never owned up to them, instead having SB run after her apologizing. I felt like I just really wanted more substantive conversation between the characters.

With all that being said, one thing that I did love about this drama was the theme of family (which may be why I preferred DH and SB being that). SB and DH's mother had the most heart-warming scenes together and the most touching conversations, and it was definitely something I wanted to see more of.

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Cool fight scenes

Very cool swordplay choreography and engaging political intrigue. I will always love a fight-to-the-death survival genre, and the production quality and set design are really good

I do think, however, that this didn't turn out to be as interesting as I hoped? There are a LOT of characters, some of which I cared more about than others, and even though there are only 6 episodes, the pacing actually feels pretty slow; between fight scenes there's some long conversations and aimless walking to the next place.

I'll still be tuning into season 2 though, and I hope we have a big confrontation and more political mystery.

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A lesser adaptation, but great at doing its own thing

If you were comparing this to the original, this does some things better and some things worse.

What this one did do better than the original I think, was setting up the romance much earlier. It's there in the original but so subtle I think a lot of people had trouble adjusting to it (not me though, I loved it lol). Here, they make the relationship much more obvious from the beginning, and while I wish we had the longer screentime for their development, I liked the clarity of it. The little bout of the SML "liking" the FL is also removed, which I thought was a relief, as it both gave the second relationship more time to develop, but also strengthened the main relationship by setting the FL's relationship with the two MLs apart.

The shorter runtime means they cut out a lot of slice-of-life moments that really brought the friendships and familial relationships to life. The third friends, while technically unnecessary, really rounded out the group and show's commentary on motherhood. A few things feel just a bit watered down, like the ML going to Seoul instead of actually abroad, or the SML's childhood backstory of almost having to give up school and work in the fields, leading to the FL's father taking him in.

Now, all comparisons aside, I think this drama was pretty great! The pacing and time jump feel natural, and it's really good at giving all the leads equal weight with their emotional stories. The family is by far the best part of the story, especially the dad; there are lot of scenes that will tug at your heartstrings, and the conclusion is sweet and satisfying.

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Less "second-chance romance" and more about "closure"

I really liked the slow and quiet vibes of this drama, but it does it so much at the cost of stagnating the plot, and I think I ended up being really confused.

The first few episodes were really great; I think the leads have great chemistry and were really cute in the high school scenes. They were both quiet characters but had distinct personalities, so it was nice to see two little introverts fall in love. I also just liked that none of their family situations were spelled out for us — we learned about them, slowly, through dialogue.

After the leads met again, I still really liked their chemistry. They both did yearning really well, and once again, the quiet vibes really let us just wallow in their lingering feelings.

As the episodes went on, I STILL really liked the quietness, but it became pretty obvious that the plot was missing movement, and the vagueness started working against the drama's favor — it became really confusing what events had happened in the past for the leads to get to this point, and when they were fighting or upset I wasn't really sure why.

I'd gone into this one thinking it was going to be a second-chance romance, and I kept thinking that once they promised that they would try to be more accommodating and not let distance and timing be an obstacle. But then, in the last two episodes, the leads barely have ANY screentime together, and it became pretty obvious the show was going, instead, for the lesson "sometimes people just can't be together even if they love each other, but it's important to end things warmly."

So, spoilers for those who haven't seen this yet: it's NOT a happy ending. I don't mind this, honestly, but I think the show took far too long to decide what it was trying to do.

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Well-written but slow

It's objectively well-written but I'm not sure if I really connected to the characters on an emotional level.

The pilot episode is fantastic and the overarching plot is really interesting, and it's supported by characters that are very layered. The show is supported by extremely strong performances — especially Lee Seung-gi's.

While I think the premise is interesting, the pacing did feel a little slow at times. There are some good twists, but the big whodunnit seems pretty obvious from the start, and we're just waiting to get there. I'm not sure if the show needed to be stretched into 20 episodes. Perhaps it would've worked better as a weekly watch, but there wasn't quite the "race against time" tension that I wanted.

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Confusing

I absolutely loved the first season — it hit all the emotional beats and had a fantastic balance of political, social and emotional arcs. I was really looking forward to this season, and while I think it has some really strong moments, it ultimately felt more confusing than anything to me.

There are a LOT of characters and I don't think any of them really stood out to me; it doesn't help that the timeline seems very muddy. The arson incident is not really given enough weight that clarifies exactly what happens "before" and what happens "after," and I also just missed the journalism and legal fall-out we saw in S1. This season seemed to go for more of a political perspective, but it didn't seem to be tied to the incident directly, and was instead just there as a more general backdrop.

Ultimately, I still liked a lot of the social commentary this season tried to give, but I don't think the story was told in a very memorable or clear way.

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Nice case-of-the-week

Another case-of-the-week jdrama, similar to Gossip: #Kanojo ga Shiritai Honto no 〇〇 or Don’t Call It Mystery. I feel like the cases in this one weren’t as memorable though (barring the LGBT one, which made me cry).

The strongest part of this one is probably our trio of main characters, who have a really cozy dynamic together. One thing I would ask for though would be for the climax to hit harder — I’m not sure the big, personal case at the end really hit hard enough for me. Still, I could see this being a show that could go on for many more episodes as they went through different cases.

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Feel-good

I don't watch a lot of historical dramas but I found this one modernized in a way that made it very easy to get into and easy to love. The balance of humor and serious topics was done really well, and I will always love a drama that also focuses on female friendships — especially one that subverts the evil second female lead trope. The communication between the leads from start to end is very refreshing, and it made this drama a very pleasant watch overall. The leads are super cute.

I do wish a little bit that the romance developed more slowly. The pacing isn't bad by any means, but they get together pretty early considering how many episodes the drama is. Still, this was a really delightful watch overall. If more historical dramas were like this, I would tune in more.

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