Kate

the worse dramas have probably even worse ratings. Also, ratings depend on many factors not only good cast or the plot, otr even how good the drama is. Time and days it airs are huge factors too. If the drama is 'family friendly'.
As for 'better' actors. That's totally subjective thing so there is no point in even starting that conversation.

Well, Goblin was extremely good for what it was suppose to be: beautiful shot, cheesy love story that is easy to enjoy. This is not as good for it's genre, there are many better crime shows than this one. The low ratings are not really that surprising.

I like it a lot. The only thing that is slightly confusing is: they don't inform us how much time has past between certain story points.

They are dissing viewers so badly in 11th ep hahaha The world is so sick that we find cruelty, murder and gore entertaining... And this show is all about it hahaha

Kdramas love plot twists, no better plot twist than main guys not getting together and Ji Yoon not being related to Kang Soo as a half sister lol Those two things would be enough to make this drama stand out from other similar gems.

I'm really conflicted about Baek Jung Ki and how much he actually knows about shit that going on in his 'church'.

I feel like they should just go with Dan Ah & Jin Gyu and Kang Soo & Ji Yoon. Those relationships would be more interesting to watch. I would also LOVE to see the main 'couple' of the drama not being a couple but a true best friends for once, especially since I don;t see much chemistry between Dan Ah and Kang Soo that could turn into romantic feelings.
I'd love to see Dan An slowly warm up to Jin Gyu and teach him about real life and what it means to take responsibility of your actions and your life and him showing her that there are things to enjoy in life and sometimes it's okay to take it easy and take care of yourself.
I'd also love to see Ji Yoon being an anchor for Kang Soo. They can also learn a lot from each other.
O just don;t see the potential in Dan Ah and Kang Soo as in 'romantic relationship'. So them switching it a bit with main characters not ending up together would be so refreshing.

But I feel her emotions tho. One of my favorite scenes from ep one is when Jung Ki touches her thigh and just in her eyes you can see the shock and confusion. The only thing that changed on her face was were eyes but it was such an effective way of convincing us she knows where this may lead tho and what is going on.

Goblin is romance story with elements of fantasy. Romance is the main genre. And they did really good job with that. Secret Forest is using the same formula of political corruption and crime related story as many other dramas, but doing it in a good way. The same way Goblin used the same formulas for romance used in many different dramas but did it right. For what both of those dramas represent and tired to achieve they are both really good. The plot in a romance drama is not suppose to be all suspense and plot twists but a development of feeling between two characters. And that's what Goblin was.

that's the best way this conversation could have ended :D

and you are free to view her like that. As I said, I haven't seen 3rd ep so I don't know how bad it really is. All I know is 2nd ep ended with her risking her life (which I would call ultimate sacrifice, because if you die helping someone then that's it, the end) to help Jin Gyu, and if that does not indicate that even tho she might be ignorant at times and quick to jump to conclusions but good hearted person then I have no idea what would.

With the western shows from the beginning the plan the plot for more than one season coz thy don't mind just cancelling shows after 1 season and not explain anything that actually happened. That's why they don't bombard you with information and characters development the same way they do in korean dramas, coz thy have time to do it gradually over time.
In the us ver they usually had one case per episodes, sometimes it took 2 eps. But they did focus more on the killers compared with koran vers. Again, because they had more time to slowly show and develop characters. This korean ver does not have the luxury to do that.

she does way better job than Nam Joo Hyuk, so if I had to complain about someone I'd be complaining about NJH acting haha

@wolf_girl I agree. I think she hides her emotions because she had to protect her brother all the time, so she did not have the luxury to show what she really feels since her brother was always more important. She learned how to cope and keep it all in.

I haven't seen 3rd episode yet so I can't talk about anything that happened there. But as for Ji Yoon: feeling guilty means nothing if you are still lying your ass from every situation and using that crying to get what you want over and over again. If you bring Jin Gyu mental state then I'd say what happened in the cafe would not help him anyhow either. They both have pretty huge flaws: one is aggressive and hot-tempered and other one is manipulative. And for me, I dislike manipulative people way more. It's just a personal opinion based on my experience with people.
As for the blackmail... the writers should have played it differently for sure. They wanted to show how desperate Dan Ah is for money at her situation but it could have playing differently. She could have assume he hides his girlfriend there and blackmail him over that for example. That said, her thinking he is weird for being crossdresser does not make her transphobic because crossdressers are not trans. The words have definitions for a reason. Does it make her an asshole? yes. Ignorant? yes. But not transphobic.

They should pull Cheese In The Trap and focus on Hoo Ye from now on lol Since his story is the only one well acted and interesting.

I'd say I want more profiling and less running and fighting lol since that's what the drama was suppose to be about: profiles doing profiling hahaha

The original is pretty good for what it was suppose to be. Yes, the beginning was a bit messy but it got better with every ep, and since Korea ver. is based on original one already developed they should not make the same mistakes and we should expect for them to start already strong, and not get better later on. Also Lee Joon Gi is sadly not enough to make drama into good one. There are many amazing actors who acted in dramas which were not well received. I like his acting here, I like the acting of majority of the cast but I don't see that much of a unity of their characters as a group which is for me the biggest flaw. Since the group interactions were what I loved from the us ver.

I prefer Dan Ah over Ji Yoon: she can be a bitch and react aggressively but she does not pretend to be an angel and all nice while Ji Yoon acts innocent but in fact she manipulates people with her crying and expect attention and help even tho there is no reason they should give it to her (like how she just showed up at Kang Soo's place and decided to live there).

You can't blame people who saw the original series for comparing the two since they follow the original cases so much (and I don't know about others but I think they messed up the order big time. Killing Ki Hyung's wife so early had 0 impact. I know they wanted to created the case which can be solved throughout the whole 20 eps, but I don't really cared for the victim and in the end I don;t care for the case that much). We had certain expectations for this remake and it's normal and given. One of the things majority of US ver fans loved were the team dynamics, how the show was group oriented and the focus on the psychology of the killers, and the Korean ver lack all of those. We had just a few scenes were the members interacted as a whole, they usually team up Hyun Joon and Sun Woo together (ad they focus way too much on those 2 characters) and Min Young and Lee Han when I would love to see for example Hyun Joon and Min Young as a solving crime buddies. I blame the format of korean dramas for this one. You can't truly develop all the characters AND how they interact with each other and how group dynamics change in 20 episodes. It takes few seasons for sure.
Also, they did picked up the profiling a little bit more in the ep 6, but the delivery is sometimes off. It's frustrating since we know they did some justice in portraying criminal profiling is some dramas like Signal or Tunnel.
Is it a bad drama? no. Is it as good as original? no. could it be? maybe... if they had time and resources to make at least 3 seasons. I think the 'only 20 episodes' is the main issue I have with it. There is too many main characters and too complicated cases to show in such a short time.