Cancer sucks. Kim Ji Soo did great. All episodes that focused on the main character were great but the other episodes that shifted the focus to other characters took away from the main character instead of building these memory blocks around him. It was a short 9 episodes, the last 1 didn't count, there was no room to explore around. It felt they wanted to build a much bigger story but there was no time, again, should've kept the focus on the main character and maybe give him more screen time. The addition of the store clerk not only was cringe but also redundant and could've been better spent somewhere else. Although the animated parts of each episode were alright but the voice over quality was less than subpar, sometime it came off as if the speakers were reading from a script. The last episode for some reason was just a collection of these animated parts stitched together.
The plot unfolded with a good mix of suspense and intrigue, throwing in enough attractive elements to grip you in, however, it's not exactly breaking new ground thematically, it did a decent job for laying down a serviceable short story despite its rough start. I appreciate having the entire plot based outside of Korea, it was nice breaking out of some tired cliches in the Korean drug world. Although the drama didn't mess up the ending but they went for the generic and safe route. The drama had a decent selection of cast but Hwang Jung Min stole the spotlight as usual. Always makes me wish to see him taking more drama roles.
The drama had a decent introduction and seemed promising with its theme. The first 3-4 episodes gave the impression that the drama was going to be an episodic formula about a variety of different scenarios and struggles couples could run through around their wedding, however, although they had a couple of these scenarios early on but everything after that boiled down to the typical financial issues which the drama repeated and reskinned 5-6 times until the end. The drama had a good set up to easily come up with a handful of other ideas themed around preparing weddings. On the other hand, the drama had a good cast for a short drama which made the whole thing more tolerable.
The drama was visually appealing with sleek fashion yet shallow, drawing viewers in with its polished aesthetics and grand production, but failing to deliver on beyond its initial entertaining value. Speaking of production, whoever handled the post production processing and edit did a poor job with Seo Yea Ji scenes. They over softened her skin too much to an artificial level of smoothness. Despite knowing what's coming, the plot was initially as enjoyable as having a fast food meal after a late night. The entire plot was structured around heavily dramatized drawn out scenarios. This is the type of plot that other shows usually make a parody of it when mocking makjangs. The constant bombardment of flashy visuals and exaggerated emotions overshadowed everything. I admit I enjoyed that aspect of it but only for the first 5-6 episodes before it lost its appeal. Waiting for the revenge to finalize is what kept me going, however, I can't say I'm satisfied with the resolution of the revenge. I was hoping for something different and maybe a bit harsher. Moreover, If I'm not mistaken, we didn't know what happened to any of the children at the end. On another note, the drama came out around the same time as Seo Yea Ji was going through a controversy. I'm not well versed on the subject, but I couldn't help myself to draw some parallels with her character in the drama.
The drama kept teasing us endlessly to what might have happened in Italy but it never revealed it. Sure, you can make some obvious assumptions but that's not as satisfying especially with the constant teasing. Makjang shows are designed to push your buttons through what's obvious from the observer perspective and this drama does exactly that but also eases the pain by making every character to have an unadjust trait or 10, including all of the leads. By doing this, it also makes it easier for the viewers to go softer on some of the wrong doings. You end up watching it to see how the car crash will end. In this case, a lot of fast and big changes happened in the last 40 minutes despite the drama having all the time in the world to approach its resolution more gracefully. Although it the drama was somewhat alright, but the harsh shift in the last 4 episodes made it really bad and unbearable. The main confrontation of the involved parties in the cafe was an example of that. The writer just wanted to amp it up as high as possible to squeeze the last dribbles of broadcast ratings. One thing I didn't like is how the drama forced every character to be connected to one another, it pushed the improbability of interconnected stories a bit too hard that it became ridiculous even for a makjang drama. If I had to pick one thing that irked me the most, it's how Da Ba's mother react differently between her daughter and Eun Gang on the suspicions of potential infidelity despite her daughter is the one doing it 10 folds harder in front of her face. A true bruh moment right there. Looking into the writer's previous projects, she's consistently decent except for a few outliers and this drama was part of these outliers.
What??? The ML and his mom spent 4 episodes in a rom com where she is totally falliing for him and it is beyond…
Preemptively knowing what the discussion surrounding it was, I paid extra attention to that, and in conclusion, everyone was blowing it out of proportions. By definition, it wasn't incest. Again, regardless, this point of discussion was absolutely the least of its problems.
A lot of names were thrown around in the beginning with not a lot of context, so you had to make a mental note to connect them later on—a really annoying practice, to say the least. Supposedly, the male lead was in China before coming to SK, but the drama made it a running joke for a couple of episodes that he was a caveman. This made the whole family meeting and living together a bit too cringe. There were many ways to approach such a scenario, but it seems the writer took the lazy route. Some scenes were stretched really thin and became too awkward to continue, like that one scene of both leads and Sang Chul talking about the old hotel staff photo. The drama would've benefited from having more grandchildren and better interconnected stories between them. Although there were three grandchildren, the middle one was an insignificant sidekick and didn't contribute to the dynamic as much as I hoped. The ending brought a change of heart to all of the opposing characters, but some of them didn't seem genuine in the slightest.
At first sight, you might think this drama was about the mothers and children in this community, but the mystery tag was there for a reason. This drama was kind of a mess; it tried to pack in a lot of themes and tropes you often find in female centered plots but failed to do any of them right and brushed off each one shortly after. The plot was equally disorganized and messy; it started with the ghosts from the past, the community of mothers and the tension with Jin Ha, then shifted to the female lead's prodigy kid, then turned into a murder mystery "whodunit," then moved on to some side stories, and then returned to the murder mystery with crimes and drugs. What even was that? I'm not sure what is the correlation between female centered plots and displaying all men in a negative light; this drama was no exception. If their intent was to give a highlight with social commentary, then it's obviously not a good way to do it.
On one hand, it tackled some important complexities surrounding youth crime and the justice system. But on the other hand, it felt like it was hitting the viewers over the head with its message a bit too hard. They always found a way to end up being overly preachy. I guess that's part of the overdramatization? The drama had a handful of cases but these were presented in descending order, with each one being less appealing than its predecessor. I feel conflicted about some of the cast choices, but if we were to ignore that and only focus on the characters, the situation didn't look so bright either. By episode 6, they started to inject personal stories and affairs, but it was a bit too late to have proper development when the drama was just 10 episodes. In the end, it was a watchable law drama with some notable ideas but remained average until the end.
The drama kicked off with good modern visuals and an interesting fantasy setting on a mystical island. However, it quickly unraveled. The fantasy elements, though visually appealing, peaked in the first two episodes, while the remainder felt like a rehash of what we'd already seen. It's strange that they revealed all their cards in the beginning, leaving the rest feeling empty. The female lead was sent to the island to work as a teacher, but this plotline was completely irrelevant and didn't last for more than one episode. The direction the drama took with the fantasy story turned out to be quite disappointing afterwards. More on characters, the female lead was an unstoppable cringe generator with her non-serious interactions, especially with the male lead in the earlier parts. It was the writers way trying desperately to build chemistry between the two, but it was impossible without rewriting the characters themselves. However, the character that suffered the most from both the writers' curse and the cast choice was Goong Tan. It doesn't take a blind man to see what was wrong. The drama ended up being this shallow shipwreck of recycled ideas and bland characters.
The drama kicked off with good modern visuals and an interesting fantasy setting on a mystical island. However, it quickly unraveled. The fantasy elements, though visually appealing, peaked in the first two episodes, while the remainder felt like a rehash of what we'd already seen. It's strange that they revealed all their cards in the beginning, leaving the rest feeling empty. The female lead was sent to the island to work as a teacher, but this plotline was completely irrelevant and didn't last for more than one episode. The direction the drama took with the fantasy story turned out to be quite disappointing afterwards. More on characters, the female lead was an unstoppable cringe generator with her non-serious interactions, especially with the male lead in the earlier parts. It was the writers way trying desperately to build chemistry between the two, but it was impossible without rewriting the characters themselves. However, the character that suffered the most from both the writers' curse and the cast choice was Goong Tan. It doesn't take a blind man to see what was wrong. The drama ended up being this shallow shipwreck of recycled ideas and bland characters.
You know they began to run out of ideas when they start to merge professions. It makes me wonder what might come next, but the entire law genre had plateaued, and coming up with new unexplored ideas got only more difficult. The entire hearts swapping operation at the beginning of the drama was flawed and didn't make any sense. Instead of giving us a cohesive storyline, we were left with this mishmash of abandoned subplots and forced plot turns that were hard to sell. You may expect a lot of highly implausible scenarios and you gonna nod your head and just accept it. Neither of the main leads brought any appealing character or performance making it difficult to empathize with their struggles or connect with their motivations.
An interesting mixed bag of ideas with varying degrees of execution. Although the first story #23 was the worst one out of the four stories, the first episode in itself was a really bad introduction for the expected quality of this show. I don't fully agree with the resolution of each story. Although each story presented a plausible real situation, but the drama went for the easy way out and ended each one safely. There was one thing the drama kinda brushed off, the mysterious woman across the fours stories. It seems her purpose was to give the leads a little nudge, but beyond that, we don't know much.
It started strong with a gripping premise but kind of lost its footing pretty quickly. I was expecting it to go deeper with its theme, given the +18 rating, but it remained super surface-level throughout, and the rating seemed to be there just because the plot included cannabis. It feels like a big wasted plot to something that could've been actually good. There were all these random side stories thrown in that were just bland and irrelevant. The attempts at emotional depth felt forced and artificial, as if the writer was more concerned with eliciting sympathy than giving a better portrayal of its theme. In the end, the drama will likely end up being a forgettable one.
It started strong with a gripping premise but kind of lost its footing pretty quickly. I was expecting it to go deeper with its theme, given the +18 rating, but it remained super surface-level throughout, and the rating seemed to be there just because the plot included cannabis. It feels like a big wasted plot to something that could've been actually good. There were all these random side stories thrown in that were just bland and irrelevant. The attempts at emotional depth felt forced and artificial, as if the writer was more concerned with eliciting sympathy than giving a better portrayal of its theme. In the end, the drama will likely end up being a forgettable one.
The drama had such a good concept to kickstart a great journey, which was also accompanied by an equally suitable cast to take on the mission. However, some problems came to light along the way. The drama was divided into 4 main sections: the beginning, the first operation, the second operation and the wrap up. For every section, except the wrap up, the drama took too long to progress and kept running in circles. The second operation part was its longest and least enjoyable one. The drama would have benefited greatly if this had been cut down to 10 episodes. The wrap up had its own problem, specifically episode 15. That's when the drama gave the characters their wake up call; however, it was done in the expected generic and cheesy way. On the other hand, the main cast were spot on with their roles and brought the characters to life. The cowardice of Ahn In Kyung is truly something to admire. I can't forget that one scene with her arms on the hips and offering her organs to be sold! Anyway, the drama was decent despite its issues.
6 
Another unfortunate victim to the poor choice of MDL's staff