6
Okay....
Oh god! It's a double amnesia plot. It didn't need to be 20 episodes at all. The drama follows all the old drama cliches which makes it hard for anything to stand out, the only thing notable about it is probably the cast. This is the drama where Ji Sung & Lee Bo Young met and married in real life, so there's that. Go into it without any expectations, it's an okay watch.Was this review helpful to you?
Hmm..
The tamest family drama I've ever seen. It's borderline too mundane. There's almost no conflict at all and even if there was one, it's very light and doesn't last longer than few episodes. Everyone is happy, everyone got a relationship/romance/kids/happy-ever-after/career. It can get too superficial with its events. Not necessarily a criticism but it's too ordinary. You would only stick around with it to watch the relationships develop with the younger cast. For this type of drama, I expected more baby making at the end.One more thing I found strange about the sound design is how muffled and subdued the sound is. You would hear the drop of a needle. Any background noise is very restrictive. It feels there's a switch that mute and un-mute the sound when a character speaks and stop. It's just something I kept noticing. The sound is probably fine for you, I'm just complaining too much.
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Wish it was a bit more interesting...
For the first 1/3, the drama was nauseating and almost unbearable at times. They were Jumping between too many characters in a single episode every episode and there were too many short quick cut scenes in a single episode. Doing so doesn't allow the viewer to have a breather or to get to familiarize with the characters. The problem solved itself for 10 episodes or so then returned to the same editing style and kept switching between both styles until the end.Usually for family drama there is one major story that you see it develop till the end but not in this drama, there's no major story only a collection of side stories some end and start at different times. The synopsis may allude you to believe it's about the "meaning" of family, although it's true to some extent, but that was hardly given any focus or attention. The individual stories of the younger generation took the biggest cut. There a far more superior family drama that tackle the multiple generation dynamic much better.
Not a single story of these younger generation were interesting, all were underdeveloped, they either started too late or ended too soon or both. Se Hee and Na Yeong stories had potential but they never gone anywhere and concluded too early, they deserved a better writing. The female cast in general was strong but male counterparts were generally weak. One more thing, why did they had to bring the mood down with that ending?
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Crime or is it?
Although it's from 2007 but it feels even older for some reason, regardless, crime drama from that era all do lean heavily on the drama aspect over crime/action/thriller aspects. All the cases were personal and connected to the characters which some of them also were connected to the main big case. The romance was quick and brief, I miss Go Hyun Jung older roles prior to 2010, I feel they were better than whatever she is doing now.Young Du was the worst case/plot line, about 4 episodes wasted on his lame boring-ass pity face. On the other hand, I love when Ma Dong Seok start flipping tables. The main villain lacked proper building and depth, they just gave him a generic mentally ill/psycho personality, they often do that a lot from that era. Although it's a crime focused drama but the police force/H.I.T was often an embarrassment.
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It's definitely overrated for how much people call it "underrated".
At least it was shot nicely so there is that.
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It's the cursed writer "Ha Myung Hee"!!
Don't expect to find a realistic portrayal of marriage and infidelity here, it's mostly quirky melodramatic maneuvers. Therefore, it's hard to see any raw emotion that carry a heavy emotional impact. Especially from Eun Jin, static stiff expressions throughout any emotional scene. Yes she tears up and her eyes get red but that's the only part of her face that moves. Also, Eun Jin had no chemistry with any of the two men. It only makes it harder to get invested. And of course, everything, with the power of magic, work out after a time skip :/Below average direction, weird inconsistent transitions and dialogues. Awkward insertions of music and sound tracks. The way the episode is divided into clips doesn't flow properly. It only get worse when they switch the topic within a scene to something irrelevant or unfitting for the scene.
I finished this drama and looked who was the screenwriter? Guess what? It's the cursed writer "Ha Myung Hee", she is the infamous writer for ruining any project she works on and this is no exception. As I said in my comment 10 months ago on her profile page "The writing is so weird, detached from reality and has no good construction.", since then, I watched 6/9 of her projects and my opinion remains the same.
Go watch "Valid Love (2014)" or "My Wife’s Having an Affair this Week (2016)".
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The bad kind of melodrama
This is the bad kind of melodrama. Not a single likable character. People calling it mature but these characters are the farthest thing from being mature. It had the chance to be different. For a second I though they wouldn't force a break up but it went with the classic melo move. By episode 9 my interest was almost nonexistent.Exhausting melodrama full of oppositions and lacks proper balance. But what's even more exhausting is the unbelievable frustration of seeing female lead running away repeatedly non-stop.
From start to finish she kept running and pushing ML away, I'm beyond done with this immature behavior.
They introduced Park Shin Young in the second half because there wasn't enough "story" remained to push for another 10 episodes. Her existence brought the drama down even further.
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Watch "The Guest" instead of this!
Strong first episode then goes down in a speedy downward spiral after that. This is nothing like The Guest! The Guest was superior in every possible way. How to fix? Remove the thriller, romance and drama and make it pure horror series.There was an attempt to do a supernatural/medical/police mix but none of which worked. There was 3 separate scenes wasted on 1 advertisement, talking about buying a phone, go shopping for that said phone, play with the phone with your friend. OCN needed that Samsung cash I guess lol.
The twist at the end of episode 12 ruined the entire drama, everything they went through became meaningless. Unsalvageable!
At the end, they thrown the amnesia element again to FORCEFULLY retain the priesthood imagery. What a load of horse shit!
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Maskless Behaviour
The story started with a big 'who done it' type of plot where every single person on the screen was a suspect. It kept this momentum for a few episodes before abandoning the idea and the 'masks' plot half way through to shift to something else. There was no coherency in this mess and the writer was improvising the story as the episodes went on. Instead of working on the mystery, it took the lazy way at every corner, it pushed most of the weight onto just showing the incident. It revealed the mystery through the brief snippets of the incident at the beginning of every episode. The character Kang Hoo was in particular problematic to the narrative and was handled poorly throughout. The cast was good but that's it, and the supposed sismance came off as forced more often than not, even during its high moments. The entire drama was a really big mess.Was this review helpful to you?
The Lawless Empire
I wish the Kdrama industry would grow out of this conglomerate high-class trend, it's been over done to death now and each iteration is worse than its predecessor. In the first episode, the drama had a lot of flashy elements, big bold statements, bloated itself with trendy topics, and cast its net as wide as humanly possible; however, all of that was done and came across as nothing but tacky. Despite boasting a stellar cast, the drama turned out to be a colossal disappointment, a bloated spectacle that collapsed under the weight of its own ambition. Although the drama had a lot going on all the time but the infidelity was always its loudest and trashiest plot, overshadowing everything else. It occupied all of the tension the drama had to offer. There was also this narrative of all "men" are bad that the drama kept pushing for some reason. One more thing, at the end of episode 5, there was a ridiculously comical hacker-like-scene that immediately abandoned the slightest suspension of disbelief the drama ever had. It was a goner at that point.Was this review helpful to you?
Six flailing crooks!
I hate how this was a prequel to "Tree With Deep Roots", I already hated what they did with the roots plot in that one. This one simply followed its predecessor in that regard, just an extension of the same aggravating plot device structure but this time it's double the length!! Doubling down on Tree With Deep Roots' biggest weakness without fixing its fundamental problem. I would presume they have gotten enough feedback from "Tree With Deep Roots" to do a better job but it doesn't seem to be the case here. There were some interesting moments, interactions and ideas but these were overshadowed by everything else. The cast was an even split for me, some of them were likable while the rest I really disliked throughout. Shin Sae Kyeong was a literal plank of wood for most of the drama. Anyway, if I had to really pretend to be blind for 2 seconds then the drama had some nice action sprinkled scarcely and that's probably what I would be remembering it for. In comparison, it's slightly better than "Tree With Deep Roots" but can be categorized equally the same.Was this review helpful to you?
Jang Hyuk can't bring miracles
Unfortunately, Jang Hyuk playing the same character he played in The Slave Hunters (2010) and that alone was problematic in that one. Unlike The Slave Hunters (2010), this one had a lot of interesting ideas and plot threads but they never reached their full potentials because it came at the cost of shoving flashy fantasy elements instead of keeping it grounded to reality, a case in point super-swordsmen flying and dashing. On the other hand, the "deep roots" plot was a massive clusterfuck of bullshit and was its weakest part. Not only that, the final battle/fight that we were anticipating for so long turned out to be quick, short and utterly disappointing. The ending isn't even surprising, it was obvious from the first episode that the ending will certainly flop. Add to the fact this type of ending was the dominant trend in 2000s/2010s, especially with project that managed to have a good viewership.Was this review helpful to you?
You're better off finding something better elsewhere...
Another one from the Goguryeo cinematic universe under-delivering its climax and ending. How could they be so incapable of producing anything but a lukewarm finale! Anyway, the drama itself was plagued by an unnecessary garbage love triangle overshadowing the story. Also, it had this habit of forcing everyone to be paired up with someone. This drama is the weakest and the worst out of the Goguryeo cinematic universe.Was this review helpful to you?
Barely watchable
Surprisingly, it wasn't crazy enough! I expected it to be more unhinged and fully commit to its premise but unfortunately it turned out to be a lukewarm investigation drama barely being watchable.Was this review helpful to you?
Another one...
The first episode was remarkably bad and dull, how did they expect to pull in the viewers with that? This drama is a strong contender for the worst high-class society themed drama. It's as bad-ugly as the architecture of the house they are living in. Not only that, the mystery element was utterly garbage and redundant which also led to a weak climax and reveal. Poor attempt to throw in teasers of the big event at the end of every episode. Everyone turned to a softy and no one went too far for the sake of this artificial sismance moments everyone was having. Any subplot the drama tried to throw in ended up being as sloppy and underdeveloped as you can imagine. The cast was fine but that wasn't enough to make the drama serviceable.Was this review helpful to you?
