Nana saves this rather average series.
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If I hear one more note of Clair de Lune, I'll make a killing. There are composers for your series, you know ? The same three truncated excerpts from Bach, Mozart and Debussy are a no-no. I know the pieces, I listen to them myself if I want : in their entirety ! It's almost less annoying than scenes and flashbacks repeated three or more times because we're obviously stupid... And the plot only progresses by deliberately not giving us the info, an artificial way of creating interest. 4 episodes of seeing the same scene without ever adding anything to the story ? I didn't get to the end without skipping scenes. Sorry about that. (it may be disrespectful of me but respect goes both ways)Otherwise, the story begins a bit like Pasolini's Teorema. Except that here it's an unbearable character, Su Yeon, who yells at everyone and breaks your face but... becomes your friend ?! I've seen Weak Hero too, and I solemnly ask : are Korean schoolchildren all right ?
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So this series was the first milestone in Jin Ki-Joo's “I'm an adult pretending to be a student” universe.I too wish my mother had never met my father. And that she'd live a better life than she had. (Look, I didn't cry at the end, okay ? I'll sue you for libel)
It takes place in 1987, and it's good to have brought in this political dimension. We were expecting it, and it arrives in a rather intelligent way. It's one element among others.
Having said that, the local cops are portrayed as good guys who are a bit dim-witted, especially the uncle inspector ; but he lets his colleagues beat up his nephew. This dirty cop blames himself ? you can blame yourself, scumbag.
And let's never forget that everyone hates the police.
(ps: surprising presence of a small bust of Lenin in episode 11. Nothing escapes me. yep. I saw it)
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Satisfying and Thorough, but also Horrific
Everything about this drama is good--acting, story, production, suspense. I watched a dubbed version on Netflix and I usually hate dubs, but even the VO acting was good enough not to detract from the tension and depth of the story and acting.Moon Dong Eun is just one victim of 5 kids who spent their high school years and beyond terrorising anyone they deemed unworthy. And, apparently, that meant almost everyone around them. The bullying is intense. It's not just words, it's physical torture that leaves deep scars, physical and emotional, on their victims. They push one victim to suicide, and another to drop out of school. Dong Eun isn't a pushover, however. She resists, she fights back, she reports them to everyone around her.
But as bad as the children are, the adults in this world are worse. Teachers, police, even her own parent, either disappoint, or enact their own bullying tactics. There should have been a straw to break Dong Eun's back, but the reality is that there was more than one. Her pleas, her avenues for justice are all slammed shut and the only option she has is to muster her inner strength and get her own revenge.
It takes her 18 years.
Over the course of those years, she finds kindred souls--others who faced injustices and understand her desire for revenge (though, once you see the extent of the abuse Dong Eun suffered, this won't surprise you at all). With the help of these people and with laser-focused attention, she gets a revenge that will please EVERYONE. I love the fact that she uses her abusers' own flawed personalities to bring them down. I love the fact that the screenwriters tied up all the loose ends (though I am a bit confused about the body of Yoon So Hee and why moving it was such an issue).
However, the depiction of the abuse is truly horrific. Is this normal? How is it possible that a child can be physically tortured to such an extent and NO adult will come to her aid (also, the sheer number of burns should have had her hospitalised)? How is it that a teacher is allowed to beat a student in full view of the entire school staff and no one will help her? How is it that the police ignores a student's testimony in a possible murder case?
Is this level of apathy truly what our societies have now become? This is a far more terrifying lesson from the drama than the abuse itself. I'm all for great revenge stories, and this would never have been written if just one person in young Dong Eun's life had a pair of balls. This is this story's greatest tragedy.
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And it seems that someone has a fetish for stabbed hands.
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Just brilliant. It's cathartic. First of all, Mask Girl hasn't done anything wrong. From start to finish, I'm on her side. Secondly, the script is full of surprises, as it unravels a continuum of violence of which Korean women are both victims and drivers. (The male characters, horrible as they are, remain secondary and banal. The series refuses to give them the attention they're looking for)And then, Nana would have deserved more presence, she's formidable as she often is.
Abolish the police and prisons ? I'm thinking about it.
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Han So-hee's physical involvement commands respect. You can really feel the pain and anger of her character. Some scenes are of a desperate violence rarely so well rendered.As for the story, it's in the same vein as Infernal Affairs, so there's little to surprise us. A mini-series that is solid in structure and brutal in execution.
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Tough life for the rich. What a bummer to be rich. It can't be easy having all that dough, can it ? I feel like telling them to use all that dough for useful things if their lives are so miserable, instead of wallowing in their pitiful little love woes. It'll give a little meaning to their indecent existence. That's what I said to myself at the start of the first episode. And then the Korean capitalist propaganda got me, again. What a sad life I lead. The flesh is weak, alas.Even if their thing of torturing themselves over a divorce that the gentleman never asked for and even : abandoned ! it pisses me off. He literally did nothing, but he's going to get rotten as if he'd strangled kittens anyway.
In any case, it's clear how the rich use progressivism to their advantage. They still exert their domination, but we have to thank them because deep down they think that women too can be tyrants like the others. What great values... damned rich. I want the money and your power to go. And your good intentions, keep them to yourself or let them be translated into action. Despite all this, I fall for these damned kdramas every time. Every single time ! God, that was good. The scriptwriter had already ripped me off with Crash Landing on You, I'm going to lodge a complaint. You can't make me love rich people with impunity, you have to pay for it !
Kim Soo Hyun, there's nothing you can do, he looks like a little boy. Throughout the series, I hesitated to denounce Kim Ji-won, but in reality, she's even younger than he is.
I must confess I stopped watching at episode 8 because of the revelation that the actor dated an underage girl who has since committed suicide. If she hadn't taken her own life, he would never have admitted it or apologized. It disgusts me too much.
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What can we say about these learning methods that consist in humiliating and discouraging ? Asking young women to do the impossible and then telling them that they suck for not getting it right the first time is pretty bizarre. Teachers, those damned little cops. And their shows, it's like they discover it by performing it, in the first episodes at least. Don't they ever do real rehearsals ? Too weird.Kim Tae-ri plays her colorful character with a lot of life and empathy, despite an extremely toxic and invasive entourage. Give her a break ! She exudes energy and has an impressive physical presence. A total commitment. The audition scene, in tears, is intense... But the rest of the cast is not to be outdone. The members of the troupe personalities evolve intelligently, and they don't go from very mean to very nice all at once. They don't even try to justify bad behavior, they simply take responsibility. And then the series manages to make us feel involved in a traditional theater we'd never have seen or even known otherwise. To the point where you don't know where the story ends and the theater begins.
As we say in France: “bravo les lesbiennes !” (courage Jooran)
"You can forget me. I'll remember us, for both of us."
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It's very, very hard to see the injustice suffered by some of the characters. Even if the aim of the series is to show situations of harassment and abuse in the workplace and then seek redress, it's still hard to watch (although the solidarity between the workers in the warehouse was great to see, despite the grim fate that awaited them). To say that it's a comedy series... I'm having my emotions played with here. The humour helps to get the message across, of course. A series that's both useful and entertaining.The three of them are great. And the lawyer is flawed, a bit lost, but he's also gifted with a relentless and unconditional empathy that's all Christian. And when we learn more about his life, it's hard not to shed a tear...
It's high time we abolished work, comrades. And it looks like Buddha is on our side. Long live the strike and down with the cops and the bosses!
(We're hoping for a season 2)
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Light but tugs at your heart… I love a bit of cliches reawaken kdrama era
The headline sums it all up but here are the key points…- The story is refreshing from all the countryside kdramas, dark themes, action and other genres that are released in subscription platforms (eg. netflix). It’s been a while since I’ve watched this type of story and I’m eating it all up and currently impatiently waiting for all the episodes to be released. In my take, kdrama moved away from all the cliche tropes and it lost its spark midway. I cannot pinpoint exactly where they went wrong but this drama saved it. In fact, I’ve been watching cdramas nowadays but this one broke my streak…. What a refreshing one!!!
- actors? Need I say much? Both are phenomenal in their own ways. And deym that long legs of Bws.. nothing can top that for me 🤣
- Music is fine.. we’ll see if there will be an ost that will pique my interest.
- Rewatch value… hmmm I’m not into rewatching dramas even tho I really loved it except for the really old ones the og ones so for me it’s just in the middle.
- Overall, this is a MUST watch drama. Saved the kdrama industry. Disney+ is onto something on their line up this time ✅💯
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First of all: imitating Silvestri's music for Back to the Future wasn't essential. That little arpeggio annoyed me.That said, it takes its time at the beginning, a little too much. Probably to show that the time travel thing isn't that central. But neither is the music, since everyone plays superbly without making the slightest effort. It's borderline genetic...
However, I demand a moratorium on characters travelling into the past who are surprised that people don't know their future and get lost in pointless misunderstandings. People have been sentenced to death for less.
Another thing: the fact that one man's affection for another is ridiculed for being gay, I think that's pretty lame and spoils the relationship between the two characters. (a son and his young father, no less).
"When life gives you lemons, make lemonade"
Personally, I'd rather wonder why I'm stuck in a remake of It's a Wonderful Life. In short, the cast is excellent but the story doesn't move forward enough for me to be carried away with it and that disappoints me, unfortunately.
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Firstly : Why doesn't he wear gloves ?Otherwise, at first I thought it was a good story, with everything mixed up together and very few details. But it quickly became tedious. You want to shake up certain characters who are deliberately withholding information for no reason other than to prevent the plot from moving forward. It's so absurd ! You can't understand why they keep quiet and make other people miserable.
Of course, they end up revealing the solution by crying over their fate, but they should cut their ties instead, you can't lie for years like that and get away with saying "it's for your own good", especially when it results in the death of a person (one of the best characters) that could have been avoided without all that mumbo jumbo. Ok, actually, that pissed me off. Don't ever do that again.
Besides, this 'psychometric' gift comes in very handy when you need it. What luck... On the other hand, their insistence on presenting people incapable of expressing emotions as dangerous people, I don't like that at all, being autistic and unable to do any masking.
Episode 7 : "being bisexual is unacceptable" ah really ? Well, that's embarrassing. Let's call the whole thing off, Park Jin-young !
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Duang Without Me
My review of this series will certainly not fit into the vast and I do mean vast majority of viewers of this series. For me, I simply did not get its appeal, outside of the obvious. However, how far can gorgeous, and I do mean stunningly handsome, young men take this story? I hate to make the contrast but if this series was composed of not so stunningly Adonizes, would there be such a mad flow to rate this series so high? Or perhaps even if one of them had even been marginally defective in some capacity. I think not, for if you honestly assessed it, the story itself is rather mundane and primarily relied on the God-given obvious assets inherent in the actors’ physical appearances. So, I want to take a step back from the apparent and appraise this series on how it emended me. And to be quite honest, I found this series to be woefully limited. While I know I am probably not in the typical demographics of those watching this particular type of BL, as my perspective of this series is going to be vastly skewed. Plus, I also know the vast majority of viewers are quite positive about this series. I simply cannot agree with that assessment. What I am disturbed about and find most disconcerting is the image that somehow this is representative of gay relationships, which all BLs are. In their world, nearly everyone is gay and everyone seemingly accepts gay unions as ‘normal’. That is NOT the case and Qin and Duang should have been made to, at the very least, have some obstacles to their relationship so that others who think ‘it is a walk in the park’ for us, realize it is not. I would also like to see some sense of maturity also develop in these BL relationships especially Thai ones, so that there is not this emphasis on Pollyanna endings and development of sugar-coated connections so that all one has to do is flitter one’s eyelids, act like a dog, and prostrate yourself before someone and pledge your devotion entirely to your loved one and you will then live in nirvana for the rest of your life. That is just not the case.Unquestionably, this is an entertaining BL; just not for me, however. I could not overcome the story’s flaws but found the portrayal of Marvis and Jamie so much more real and erotic than the connection between Duang and Qin. There are a few surprises but for me not enough to carry me over the finish line into thinking this was a great or even good series.
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At first, the hero is very insistent with his colleague and she thinks it's cute. They both agree to play this little game, so I guess it's all right. Still, it's a weird relationship. Anyway. And he's got an inhuman metabolism, he gets hit, beaten up, drugged but everything's fine, he gets back up."Not dead yet"... obviously, the scenarium armour works well.
The pace of this series is prodigious, there's not a second to get bored (apart from episode 10 when nothing happens. Why?) Everything follows on super fast with humour, action, suspense and you really want the [redacted] of [redacted] rotten to get caught, him and his henchmen. It has its over-the-top moments with improbable situations but we accept it, that's what we're here for. I mean, the synopsis alone... haha
All the villains are foreign Koreans, from places where the Japanese deported them. I don't know what to make of that. There must be a reason.
And lastly, Drug Monster, she starts off super badass and then the series goes on to belittle and destroy her. I didn't like the way she was treated at all.
PS: rarely have product placements been so unsubtle !
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