Reviews

Comedy and mystery well done

Things I adored

1 The relationship between the characters. All he characters. Those of Minamdang Cafe, those of the police station and the relationship between the two teams. It's rare I enjoy that kind of relationship so much. it was fun but also heartwarming. Kudos to all the actors and the director.

2 The ML actor. I've only seen him in another drama where his role wasn't interesting to me, although I liked the dram quite a bit. The problem is that he didn't have much to do there while here he was everywhere. It felt like he had fun playing the part and it showed. He was over the top of course in some scenes but when you know it's done on purpose you enjoy it. He was perfect in the shaman role but he was even better when he grieved his friend. I had tears well every time. In short, I loved the character and I loved the actor.. It was well done.

3 The ML's sister. What a charming actress and what a fun character. She also did a great job. I would love to have her as sister or friend. She was fearless, smart and funny. What else to ask? I even check other dramas with her. Not to say I loved her hair. Finally something different.

4 The policeman Jang Du Jin. At first I thought he was a suspicious character but it only lasted an episode. He was a great character, one of my favorites and the actor did a wonderful job. I loved his relationship with everyone in the precinct and the ML. He was a decent human and humble human being who was there for everyone. I'd love to see the actor again.

5 The FL. I'm not sure why people disliked her. I loved her in this role. She was good at everything. As a grieving sister she had me in tears more than once. As the enemy of the ML, she was funny and I couldn't wait for their next interaction. As a policewoman, she was fearless and great in the action scenes. As a colleague respectful and fair. Her character was perfect for me. I can't find her any fault so I'm not sure what the issue us. She was ready to apologize when she did wrong and she was a good person with a big heart who cared about people. Once the misunderstanding with the Ml was resolved she did her mea culpa and was a real partner to him. So again, no clue what was the problem. Is it the actress rather than the character? Maybe. I found her gorgeous and a good actress so again to me she was perfect here. I'm about to start watching her other dramas by the way. Also although the romance wasn't a big part of the series, she had a great chemistry with the ML. Honestly, I'd love to see a second season with them a couple now.

Things I loved

1 I loved the FL's brother and everything that had to do with him. Like the relationship between the Ml and him, his sister and him. It was a compelling arc and well done. We wanted to get justice for him. The actor didn't have much to do but he did a good job also.

2 The young assistant. He didn't have as big a part as other but he was great in it and I loved how close he was with everyone in the team and how he cared about them and they cared about him. The actors was charming and I hope he has a great career.

3 The other policemen. I loved them equally. They were great actors and great friends and colleagues.

4 Lee Ji Eun and her partner. They did a good job as characters and they approved a comedic relief that was welcomed every time. I'm glad we saw what the future would be for them in the last episode. She was fun and I'd also like to see the actress again.

5 The actor who played the main villain did a fabulous job. It worked so well for me because he was natural. He did an excellent job as the friend, supporter of the FL, as a prosecutor. He was conniving and it was believable that no one suspected him. he didn't do anything over the top and it was chilly because it could be our neighbor and we'd never suspect anything. I think they chose the right actor for the role. So although I hated his character, the actor did a fabulous job.

6 I loved the scenes with the FL and her hair going crazy as she was about to attack a villain. it was great comedy, and it made me laugh every time. A small detail, but the small details matter to me and here there were quite a few things like that. I loved the way the shamans used their hand fan, the way the sister of the FL grumbled about things and so on.

7 The chef of the police. Spineless, yes, but also funny. I loved the relationship with Jang Du Jin and how he came along in the end and I loved the last scene with him.

8 The plot itself. It was well done and well executed. Comedic with so many heartwarming moments and a decent intrigue that even if you suspected the culprit, you wanted to continue to see how it'll all come down in the end. I went in the hunt of spoilers and knew the culprit by episode 3 but it didn't take away from my enjoyment. The opposite actually, because i knew it was more rewarding watching it and see how it was crafted. How the relationships evolved, how he played with them. Good job.

Things I disliked

1 Kong Su Cheol. It's probably not fair since he was a loveable character, but he was the weak link for me. I didn't like the over the top comedic beats with him. There were more than I loved. Yes, he was a great friend and boyfriend, but although the ML did a great job with his comedic moments, it felt like he overdid it. But that's just my opinion, I'm sure others will love him. I did love his action scenes though. he was great and I loved that his character had this ability. It was great to watch him in these scenes as it was great to see how much he loved and supported the ML.

2 The lack of kisses between the main leads. There was one kiss I think and it was great so kudos to both actors, but what the heck? We went through a roller coaster of emotions we could at least have a few more cuddles and kisses.

Things I hated

1 Of course I hated all the villains and there were no shortage of them, but the one I hated most for some reason is Cha Seung Won the brother of the main villain. What the hell was wrong with him? I hated every scene he appeared and I wish I'd seen him suffer for his actions to the eternity and beyond, Terrorize his employees with no reason is one form of torture I hate more than anything and Kdramas are full of this and it's the thing I hate the most I think. How they show that like it's normal and any human being would accept it.

2 The main villain of course. But and there's a big nuance here, although I hated him as character and I don't subscribe at all at his distorted logic of why killing people is justified, I have to say that the actor did a great job and the character was well done. It's rare I say that and put a villain in two categories. I gather it never happened before actually. So the character had no excuse no matter what happened in the past since he never repented and was proud of what he did. Not to mention the cat and mouse game he played with the FL and the others.

3 The female shaman Aunt Lin. Such a vile stupid woman and I hate stupid people more than villains. She should see what was going to happen to her and yet not only she didn't but until the last minute she continued to trust the wrong person. Well done for her character. She didn0t deserve anything better.

4 The whole stupid gang of corrupted people. They all deserved a life sentence and I loved the way they caught them. It was comedic and also rewarding.

5 Koo Tae Su. When you know what happened in the past, one would think there's something redeemable about him. God, no. He had a million chances to repent and he took none. I even think seeing his mother wasn't right. He should have nothing in his life that would give him any relief. He was a weak, spineless idiot who also gave his trust to the wrong people over and over. Idiot though the end. Also the actor did a good job, but I have some doubts about him being the best for the role.

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Emotional drama

~ A Love Other Than Yours ~

A drama that left me with a lot of feelings and thoughts, especially when it comes to its characters and the way their relationships develop. What I appreciated most was that it didn't simply tell a story about love, but also explored guilt, emotional dependence, ambition, family ties, and the difficulty of choosing yourself.

Namgoong was, without a doubt, one of the most compelling characters for me. His relationship with Mido was complicated by years of shared history, affection, and, above all, guilt. I think he genuinely loved her, but that love had become so intertwined with his sense of responsibility and everything he felt he owed her that it was difficult for him to distinguish his own feelings from his guilt. His journey towards understanding himself and allowing himself to pursue happiness was one of the most interesting aspects of the drama.

I also appreciated the family storyline and how it explored the weight of past sacrifices, unhealthy attachments, and the difficulty of breaking free from relationships that have shaped your entire life. It added another layer to Namgoong's character and helped explain why moving forward was never going to be easy for him or Mido.

And I genuinely loved the ending. I think it brought the characters' journeys to a satisfying conclusion and reinforced one of the drama's most important ideas: loving someone doesn't mean you have to sacrifice yourself or remain trapped in the past. Sometimes, choosing yourself is also choosing to finally live.

Overall, a very enjoyable drama with interesting character development, emotional complexity, and a conclusion I was happy with. It may not be perfect, but its characters and their journeys made it worth watching. Some relationships are built on history, but the right ones give you the freedom to build a future!!!

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This is not only friend

I’ll make it short, I dropped this after two episodes because it was simply soooo boring. I am not kidding, I wish I was. I was never the biggest fan of the original, I’m not gonna pretend otherwise, but at least in that case there was some drama that kept me glued to the screen until episode 12. This the interesting part got deleted, they tried to mix the couple without ever making them kiss (boring as hell) and basically recreated only friend without the mess that made the first season so memorable. Great acting that’s for sure, all six were very good, and honestly I think I might skim throu the show to watch JG and their couple (their storyline sounded the best to me) but very honestly speaking, I’m not sure I want to go through that.

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A Brilliant Adaptation That Is Miles Better Than the Book

Teach Me, Touch Me is one of the biggest positive surprises of the year. The creators made a very wise and bold decision by almost completely abandoning the original novel. The book was a flat, boring, plotless "just sex" story. The series adaptation, however, has been given real depth, purpose, and a genuinely engaging storyline, making it a thousand times better than the source material.

The show's biggest strength and driving force is undoubtedly the incredible, natural chemistry between the two leads. Since they are also a real-life couple, it translates effortlessly onto the screen. Every little touch, glance, and gesture feels completely organic, with no forced or awkward moments. The NC and bedroom scenes are equally brilliant. Instead of the rather basic and uninspired approach we see in so many other series, these scenes are incredibly tasteful, aesthetically pleasing, and visually beautiful.

The main storyline reached its dramatic peak in episode 3, when James (Gear), with his adorable smile, coldly told the playboy Chalarm (Kan) that he was done playing games and wouldn't continue the lessons. Kan's complete shock, and the fact that this hopeless womanizer has finally fallen into his own trap, make for a brilliant setup for what's to come. The supporting storylines work just as well. Bringing in the FortPeat pairing from Yesterday was a fantastic move, and we're genuinely curious to see how their story develops. The storyline involving Gear's friend and the bartender is also incredibly entertaining.

All things considered, Teach Me, Touch Me is a flawless adaptation and a lighthearted, thoroughly enjoyable series that is absolutely worth watching. It deserves a confident, perfect 10/10, and we can hardly wait to see Kan chasing after Gear in the upcoming episodes!

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A Gorgeous Cage That Calls Itself Love

I came to 玉簟秋 for the wrong reasons and stayed for messier ones. I didn't know the plot—I was drawn in by a behind-the-scenes clip of Chang Lei on horseback that looked genuinely breathtaking, and by the title itself. 玉簟秋, jade mat in autumn, comes from a classical line carrying loneliness, the sorrow of separation, and the passage of time. That promised something elegant and melancholy. What I got was a republican-era warlord romance that opens with a genuinely interesting power-couple dynamic, then spends most of its runtime locking its heroine in progressively nicer cages while insisting this is love. I finished all forty episodes. I have thoughts. Most of them are about how a drama this handsome, this well-performed in places, and this emotionally effective in its final stretch can also be this frustrating.

The first arc is legitimately good, and I want to be fair about that. We meet a mischievous noble young man, the only surviving male heir of a warlord family, and a female lead who gets falsely arrested for an assassination attempt and proceeds to negotiate her own release, propose a ten-day bet, and out-talk everyone in the room. I was thrilled. I thought: finally, a couple who will stand side by side, matching wits, equals in a world that doesn't want them to be. The rain-soaked first meeting, the dropped silver dollar, the bracelet he picks up—standard material, but executed with enough charm that I bought in completely. Even the posters were telling on the drama before I started watching, putting the male lead front and center in the highest position while the female lead sat in a corner. I should have listened to the posters.

Because after that first arc, the smart heroine evaporates. She doesn't have the physical or mental strength to stand beside him anymore. Her brain runs out. She cries, she runs, she has to be rescued, she gets threatened through the people she loves, and eventually she's installed in a beautiful house being fed medicine and made to string beads. The trajectory from "I'll catch the real assassin in ten days" to "please let me leave and I'll never bother you again" is one of the most dispiriting character arcs I've watched recently, and the drama never frames it as a tragedy. It frames it as romance.

Yu Changxuan is where this gets complicated, because Chang Lei is genuinely excellent and the character is genuinely well-written in a way that makes me uncomfortable with how much I ended up rooting for him. The drama is built almost entirely around his growth: a broken little boy whose parents cared only about his elder brother, who never learned what love feels like, who hides his true self behind a mask of a useless gambling opera-going thug, then reveals himself as a real warlord, then a possessive lover, then a caring husband and father. Arc by arc, this is the best part of the show. Chang Lei carries it with a face that can go from lazy insolence to genuine menace to something almost tender, and the script gives him the room to do it. Around episode 30, I found myself wanting to love him, so I went digging into the story's depths to find reasons. And I did find reasons. His childhood explains a lot. A boy abandoned under a car while his father chose to save his brother, who woke up and pretended to be unconscious and carried that knowledge for years—of course he doesn't know how to love. Of course his instinct is to possess rather than to ask.

But explanation is not exoneration, and this is where I part ways with the drama's sympathies. The level of toxicity, dominance, and possessiveness this man inflicts on a woman who has no power to refuse him isn't a red flag, it's the whole flag factory. It stopped being a possessive romance and became violence and harassment. Around episodes 14 and 15 I nearly dropped it. As a girl, it was genuinely not comfortable to watch—the coerced transaction, the forced kiss, the way her tears are framed as something he has to endure rather than something he caused. I've been wary of red-flag male leads since SOKP and this one tested me. The one mercy is that Chang Lei never looks brutal while doing it; he stays handsome and hot even at his worst, which is its own kind of problem because the camera is actively inviting us to find the cruelty attractive. I have no idea how this passed censorship with this much violence and intimacy, and I don't mean that as a compliment—I mean it as a question about what we're willing to package as romance when the packaging is this pretty.

Here's where I'll complicate my own frustration. Some viewers argue that Ye Pingjun's coldness isn't a writing failure but a form of resistance—that she refuses to be emotionally conquered by someone who has taken away her choices, and that the drama, whether it knows it or not, portrays a woman keeping her inner self intact even when her outer life is controlled. I think there's something to this in the early and middle sections. Her body is confined but her judgment isn't; she can't leave, but she can refuse to say she loves him. The problem is the drama doesn't seem to know this is what it's doing. It wants us to read her resistance as a barrier to be overcome by his devotion, not as a legitimate stance the narrative respects. So we get the worst of both worlds: a heroine whose resistance is real but whose arc ultimately rewards the man who wore her down.

And then the amnesia. I understand why the show does it—it's the laziest possible reset button, wiping the ledger clean so the same dynamic can be replayed without anyone having to resolve anything. But it also gives the male lead a second, legally cleaner chance to "love" her, since she's forgotten she never consented to any of it. It's slick, and it's cynical, and it works on me emotionally even as I resent it. Because the post-amnesia stretch is where the drama finally becomes the show I wanted: Yu Changxuan caring for an unconscious woman for two years, learning to cook, reading to her, bringing her flowers, sleeping on a cot outside her door, teaching her to walk and to string beads, preparing a wedding dress and proposing on his knees. It's manipulative as hell. It's also genuinely moving, and I felt the manipulation working on me in real time, which is a strange thing to experience.

Xu Ruohan does her best work in this stretch. The shyness, the confusion, the slowly thawing wariness, the moment she starts wearing the ring and looking at the marriage certificate and smiling to herself—it's sweet. Their dynamic becomes something like equals for the first time, which makes it all the more frustrating that it took erasing her memory to get there. And when she gets it back, at the moment she's happiest, with a pregnancy she's about to announce, the trauma returns all at once: the memory of her mother dying in a fire, the button clutched in her hand, the realisation that the man she loves may be responsible. She sits beside him at night with scissors raised, and then doesn't do it, and cries. That's the most honest scene in the entire drama, and I'll defend it.

The supporting cast exposes the drama's unevenness. Tao Ziyi is a villain who never suffers enough for her deeds—she ends the show having done real harm and getting a wistful farewell letter and a boat to France. Jiang Xueting's final actions don't track with his established character at all; the show needs him to be redeemed enough to hand Ye Pingjun a ticket and die in her arms, and it contorts him to get there. Yu Zhongquan, the patriarch, spends the whole show being awful and gets a hero's death in the war, which the drama treats as absolution. I wanted more accountability and got less. On the other hand, the family dynamics are genuinely interesting: Yu Jinxuan's frozen marriage to Kuang Bingwen, a man who infiltrated the family to avenge his father and then fell for the daughter he was supposed to destroy—that's a better-written tragedy than the main plot, and the reveal of his and Chen Wanqiao's double identities as revenge agents is one of the few places the show's political scheming and personal betrayal actually fuse.

The show's treatment of history is where it's most confused and most interesting. For episodes, it's a warlord romance with some anti-Japanese sentiment sprinkled in, and then in the final stretch it becomes a full war drama. The tonal shift is jarring but also the most effective part of the ending—Yu Changxuan and Xiao Beichen standing together in the same trench with "only one name, Chinese soldier" is the kind of moment I didn't expect this show to earn, and it did, mostly on the strength of the performances. The deaths land. Yu Zhongquan's final "I was always proud of you" to his son, Zhao Baoru burning herself in the ancestral hall rather than sign a traitor's agreement, Yu Changxuan falling on the battlefield reaching for the hairpin—these are emotional in a way the middle of the show never managed. The final frame, with Ye Pingjun in the Soviet area planting a maple tree with her son and saying that when the leaves turn red, her husband will come back, is exactly the image the title promised. I just wish the road there hadn't been paved with so much coercion dressed as devotion.

The performances are the saving grace and also reveal the imbalance. Chang Lei is superb—genuinely one of the best things about the show, and the reason I couldn't fully give up on Yu Changxuan. His eyes do the work the script sometimes refuses to: the loneliness under the insolence, the fear under the dominance. Xu Ruohan is not bad, but next to Chang Lei, her limitations show. The drama gives her less to work with—the script is unambiguously built around the male lead's growth—but even in scenes without dialogue, her emotional range and micro face expressions doesn't match his, and there are stretches where I could feel him acting circles around her. They look right together. They don't invest at the same depth. I don't blame her for the script's imbalance, but I do notice the gap.

Pacing is another problem. The show has enough plot for thirty episodes stretched across forty. The middle third wanders: endless cycles of Ye Pingjun trying to leave, being stopped, being threatened, reconciling, being separated again. The final stretch, by contrast, is dense—a lot of detail compressed into the last few episodes—yet I didn't feel rushed, because the emotional beats were carrying me. That's an interesting reversal of the usual problem, where dramas start strong and drag at the end. Here the ending is the strongest part, and I think that's because the characters have finally earned the stakes. When the war comes, the romance stops being about possession and starts being about what two people are willing to lose for a cause larger than themselves, and that shift retroactively makes some of the earlier possessiveness feel like setup rather than endorsement—or at least, it invites me to read it that way, which is a generous reading I'm not sure the show fully deserves.

The social commentary is where I'm most frustrated. It's set in a period when young people were defining patriotism through blood and sacrifice, when progressive students were marching for national renewal, and it has a heroine who starts as exactly that kind of student—writing anti-Japanese propaganda, organizing refugees, arguing with a warlord about the value of ordinary lives. The show is aware of this. It even uses her writing as a plot device, with her battlefront dispatches asking when Chinese will stop fighting Chinese. But it keeps putting her back in the house. It keeps making her someone who needs saving. It keeps staging her agency as something that has to be unlocked by the male lead's patience rather than something she simply has. And the amnesia arc, which gives the show its sweetest stretch, is also the most damning: it says the only way this couple can be happy is if she forgets who she was. I'm not sure the drama realizes that's a condemnation, not a romance.

There's something genuinely unsettling about how much craft went into making a relationship that begins with coercion feel like destiny. The camera loves Chang Lei. The score swells at the right moments. The two-year coma sequence is designed to make us swoon. And it works—I swooned. Then I remembered she never said yes, and that the show's answer to that is to have her lose her memory so she can say yes without the baggage. That's not romance. That's a magic trick.

Would I recommend it? I honestly don't know. If you want a handsome, well-acted warlord drama with a genuinely strong final act and one of the more compelling male-lead performances I've seen recently, yes, with caveats. If you're looking for a heroine who keeps her agency and a romance that respects her, this isn't it, and the show's refusal to acknowledge what it's doing to her is worse than if it had just been honest exploitation. I'll remember Yu Changxuan reaching for that hairpin in the mud. I'll also remember Ye Pingjun with scissors raised, and the fact that she didn't use them, and that the show thought that was enough.

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Whoever wrote the Webtoon and this show is a complete moron

Really bad acting
Everything looks very cheap and the brightness of everything is really annoying
Shit looks like Bridgerton ordered on Coupang and they even added good old Zorro!

Picking up random shit they found about Europe and turned it into this garbage
As an European (and considering they are using "Empress" which means it basically can only be a korean depiction of the austrian empire or the german empire) this is almost offensive......

Disney stop doing this crap.... like seriously - you havent learned from your "african-american" Ariel and "colombian" snow white?

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Lovable Despite Its Flaws

Fool in Love is based on the incredibly ruthless and brutal Dark BL novel In Love with an Idiot. Although censorship has completely stripped the series adaptation of the dark and violent edge of the original story, the end result is still a genuinely good and entertaining production, flaws and all. It's far from perfect, but its atmosphere and character dynamics are enough to completely draw you in.

The series is undoubtedly and brilliantly carried by Bank Artit (Ing). His performance is incredibly mature and nuanced. He perfectly portrays an innocent character who loves with all his heart, and every little emotion and gesture feels authentic on screen. He alone makes every minute worth watching. His co-star Copter, who plays Yok, is unfortunately the show's biggest weak point. He seems to be stuck with the same irritating, stiff poker face throughout. The enormous contrast in their acting is frustrating, but Bank Artit's professionalism and charisma easily make up for it.

Instead of maintaining the intense dramatic tension, the storytelling has recently shifted towards dragging things out. Rather than finally dropping the bombshell about the financial fraud being exposed, episode 8 takes us into a breakup-and-reconciliation cycle that doesn't even exist in the book. Nevertheless, the jealousy storyline involving the hairdresser guy and Yok's denial are still entertaining despite their flaws, as they add a new, more human dimension to their relationship before the truth comes out.

The only real question now is what happens in the next episode, where the preview finally suggests that the truth will be exposed. Despite the imbalance in the lead actors' performances, Fool in Love remains a genuinely strong, lovable, and thoroughly enjoyable series. Thanks to Bank Artit's brilliant performance, it still deserves a solid 10/10 from me. Hopefully, once the truth is revealed, we'll finally get the ruthless revenge we've all been waiting for!

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You recognize yourself in it.

Everything about this drama feels so special and so carefully thought out that it almost feels personal.

Writing gets you quietly. Not through grand moments, but through the small, honest ones.

Conversations that feel true. Details that feel chosen. Emotions that feel earned rather than performed.

You recognize yourself in it, and that kind of recognition is genuinely rare.

Characters are written with genuine love and you can feel it.

You do not just watch them move through a story. You start caring about them the way you care about people you actually know.

By the time you realize how attached you have become, you are already in too deep.

And acting brings all of that home. Nothing is forced or overplayed. Every expression, every pause, every silent exchange lands exactly where it should.

At some point you stop thinking about performances and you just see people.

Whole world of it is beautiful. The cinematography, the direction, the music.

None of it is decoration. Every piece earns its place. Music especially knows when to speak and when to let a scene simply breathe.

Nothing here exists just to fill space. Everything carries meaning, and you can feel how much care went into building that.

It makes you laugh. It breaks your heart a little. It makes you think.

And sometimes it just leaves you sitting quietly with your own thoughts, which is maybe the most honest thing a story can do.

Even after it ends, part of it stays. That is what genuinely exceptional writing does. It does not just tell a story. It gives you something to carry.

A beautiful piece of art. Do not miss it. 🍀

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From a Promising Thriller to a Boring Soap Opera

Not Yours is one of the biggest disappointments of the year, which is particularly frustrating because the series got off to an incredibly strong start. Compared to the book, Pao Bei's character was made much bolder, tougher, and more cheeky, while Ross Chen (Peng) delivered absolutely brilliant facial expressions and screen presence. The brutal bathtub scene in episode 4, straight out of a psychological thriller, brought the characters' family traumas to the surface and created unbearable tension, promising a dark and hard-hitting psychological drama.

Unfortunately, just when things were getting most interesting, the creators slammed on the brakes and traded all that dark, toxic tension for a boring, overly sentimental picture of domestic bliss. It's completely unbelievable that after the bathtub strangulation scene, Peng suddenly turns into a perfect family man and takes the guy's siblings to an amusement park. It's as if the screenwriters suffered from amnesia and forgot that these characters were supposed to be fighting and clashing with each other, not eating cotton candy on a roller coaster.

The technical execution also takes a lot away from the experience. The Chinese dubbing of the Thai actor is absolutely terrible, and the poor lip-syncing combined with the artificial-sounding voices constantly pulls the viewer out of the scenes. However, the biggest problem is that there is almost no chemistry between the two leads. That particular kissing scene was an absolute joke: we got a stiff, lifeless "fish kiss" reminiscent of K-dramas from the 1980s, which is downright embarrassing in a story that's supposed to be this intense. To make matters worse, the side storyline is dragged out far too much. The other couple's endless hesitation and pointless back-and-forth only make the pacing even worse.

After such a brilliant setup, Not Yours has turned into a flat soap opera completely lacking in conflict. The actors' physical appeal is the only reason it deserves a generous 5.5 out of 10, but the story and all its tension have been completely lost in a sea of syrupy sentimentality.

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FL is the problem

I am so pissed watching this. What do you mean by not feeling butterflies???? Like you are in 10 years relationship and what are you expecting??? Love isn't about feeling buttermilk its about care and bond. FL is the biggest issue here.she was like all about butterflies and stuff.like girl you not 18 years old... being 32 and above is maturity. . From the very 1st episode she was biggest turn off for me... imagine not feeling butterflies after seeing and being kissed by seo kang joon lol biggest joke of the year... she wasn't even happy at her proposal.... rubbish ideaand rubbish potrayal of characters... please don't teach the world wrong... relationship and marriages continue by care and love not butterflies and sparks..... its just betrayal thats glorified in this drama.i hated it..... hated FL to the core her character 😒 omg... please stop writing if you don't have any imagination left... k dramas are not same now.....

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A Missed Opportunity

I think it's already safe to say after the first 45 minutes that this series is a massive missed opportunity. The basic concept of workplace rivalry had some potential, but the execution turned out to be painfully weak and childish.

The biggest and most disappointing problem is undoubtedly the casting of Thai makeup artist Nongchat. Excessive cosmetic procedures and plastic surgery have completely stripped his face of natural expression. On top of that, his acting is painfully amateurish. The dialogue is terribly artificial, as if the actors were mechanically reading lines from a piece of paper, without any genuine emotion or involvement.

The only positive aspect and glimmer of hope in this series is South Korean model Choi Seung-ho. He is incredibly handsome, charming, and does a fantastic job portraying his character. The NC scene in the first episode could have worked thanks to him, but intimacy takes two people. Instead of being hot and steamy, it ended up feeling downright awkward and uncomfortable.

Overall, I'd give the first episode a weak 5 out of 10, and the only reason it doesn't get an even lower score is the Korean guy.

I'll give it one more chance with the second episode.

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Old Man Yaoi: A Quiet Dance Through the Melancholy of Queer Romance

"If we don't speak for ourselves, then who will?"

Oh, man, this is quite sappy.

Love how each frame dances through the melancholy of aging, painted with a still-thumping heart for grace and the beauty of chasing love and identity.

It was drastically peaceful to embrace this OLD MAN YAOI that enlightens a golden romance, alongside the everlasting struggles of coming out of the closet with utmost realism and authenticity.

So many scenes left me equally humbled, desperate to revisit the reality of how so many individuals are still pressed into the corners of their own books, unable to rewrite their own forward days—in spite of an economy that labels itself as family, and a society that forges its raging oppression against one's rights.

Pak slowly, pleasantly finding peace in Hoi's presence was mesmerizing—the hot sweat threading down their wrinkled skin, the relaxed, tired smiles in each other's eyes, the timid, packed, vulnerable atmosphere that leaves these two old souls, for a while, in their own time. Oh, how I loved their silence wrapped in comfort. However, it was tragic, and I couldn't look away from the truth that Pak has to cheat on his wife, and Hoi has nothing to say about it. It was so raw and heaving.

There was such tied-up tension in the house of Hoi—he couldn't breathe without hiding away his true self from his son and his family. To hold your own self back in your own room, to shoo away a reality that you feel you can no longer claim, is a dreadfully horrific thing. Hoi made me really sad with how his hands long to reach and the tiresome eyes that look down from the little light captured—like Polaroids replaced by the turned leaves of a digital camera. But, alas, feelings could never be replaced, can they?

I enjoyed how agonizingly it portrayed the love between elderly people, who always contradict themselves and have to choose because of the people and the fear they are surrounded by. Yet, I liked how the other elderly individuals didn't quit fighting for their rights, pouring bravery into the film.

"Nothing good comes out of dating a married man."

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