Happy Ending Outside the Fence (2022)

This was soul sucking.

Please keep in mind this is how I feel and you don't have to agree or disagree. It's just my brain rambles.

They used Leo. Yeah, I said it.
Without him, I'm almost sure this would have completely flopped. no one would have talked about it. But the moment they said Leo would be in, we all(?) fangirled. We hyped this up so hard and couldn't wait to get our hands on it.
We were expecting this gourmet meal but got served dirt with worms instead. -_-

The storyline was a shit show of a mess, I admit, I still don't even know why Jung Woo was hated and blacklisted. The moment the show started, apparently we were already supposed to know. Cuz hell, it started in the middle of the show. It was awful writing and lacked in EVERYTHING. I also feel like this was a bromance but sprinkled with BL dust to keep viewers entertained. The connections were static. I'm sorry. >_<

They did my man Leo wrong though. They really said "we need your talent!!!...... but make it robot."
Through the whole show he had 1 emotion and voice flat af. You could see moments were a emotion would actually slip out then he seemed to have to correct it real quick to go back to his flat look.
*punches air angrily*
Was he the villain or wasn't he?!!? They sure as hell didn't really clarify that either. Did he really do that to keep his bf down or did he really and truly thinking its what was best?

Now if we can all agree the actual villain was the pos book company guy. Oh and Tae Young's friend. Man really went "I'ma quit and work for these backbiting shitty people"

I don't know. I just know I expected so much from this and it was awful. I don't ever want to watch this again. Lol

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Idol Romance et ses vieux (et récurrents) travers

Après visionnage de la scène d'introduction de ce drama, je me suis emballée. La scène était parfaite et j'ai pensé que ce BL serait ma réconciliation finale avec Idol Romance. Bon, ce n'est pas arrivé et en réalité, la scène d'introduction est le meilleur moment de tout le drama...

Comme je l'avais déjà mentionné par le passé, Idol Romance possède de bonnes idées, mais une fois en production ça ne fonctionne pas. Trop gourmand sur de nombreux plans (scénario inexistant ou incohérent, trop de sous-intrigues ou de personnages, manque de développement...).
Bref, les défauts sont là, bien qu'après Kissable Lips, j'avais eu l'envie de croire qu'ils avaient appris de leur erreur.

Alors, pourquoi ça n'a pas marché ? Des émotions absentes et un développement des personnages inexistant.
À aucun moment, le drama n'a fait s'emballer mon cœur. Pire encore, il n'a rien provoqué. Émotionnellement, Happy Ending Romance est une coquille vide. Les choses arrivent parce qu'elles doivent arriver, point. C'est un enchaînement de causes qui ont des conséquences.
Ce qui vient également impacter les personnages qui n'ont aucune profondeur. Derrière la belle apparence de Leo, son personnage reste détaché et fade. Karam était celui avec le plus d'opportunités, mais là aussi, il ne dégage rien. Quant à Ha Joong Woo, on ne peut nier qu'il est très chou à sourire, mais cela fini par le faire passer pour un chiot.
Il n'existe aucune réelle connexion entre les personnages, aucun lien vivant.
Pour finir sur la romance, elle n'existe tout simplement pas.

En bref, il me faudra encore patienter pour ma réconciliation avec Idol Romance. Tant pis.

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One of the most underrated bls ever.

This series is so underrated and idk for what- its so amazingg
their chemistry is amazing the actings is immaculate and the story is so well made and the actors fit their characters a lot. i love han's and jungwoons relationship sm theyre adorable together. i hope they end up together and have a happy ending. i really really recommend this series its a must watch.
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The duration makes this drama questionable

First of all, I am not gonna lie I watched this drama because of Taekwoon. But here, I wrote the review as a casual viewer, and is going to be as objective as I could be.

This drama really starts with confusing synopsis that gives hints about Jung woo's lover. At first, I thought he would be with Tae Young but the synopsis and the trailer tried to convince me that Jung Hyun is the end game. As a viewer, this confuses me as hell but I guess a good way to ignite the viewers' curiosity.

The thing I always hate about Korean BL dramas is the duration. This drama proved it. From the first until 3 episodes, I had a lot of questions and was literally lost in the storyline. How came Jung woo revealed his senior's scandal? How came Jung Woo and Jung Hyun ended up together even at the point they lived together? I had to figure out by myself the storyline. This is why I hate the Korean BL dramas' duration.

Regardless of its duration, this drama still delivered a good story as the episode progressed. Jung Hyun is literally a walking and living red flag. He is a gas-lighter and manipulative when it comes to Jung Woo. But I realize It was solely his obsession with Jung Woo that turned him to be like that. On the other side, Tae Young was totally sunshine. I freaking love whenever he smiles. His positive attitude evoked Jung Woo's spirit to write again. His character also made Jung Woo realize that hiding forever is not the best answer for him.

And I have to say that all the cast really acted well. None of them acted awkwardly. Standing applause for that.

The ending is still too ambiguous for me. Even though Jung Woo decides to be Tae Young, the damn gaze he exchanges with Jung Hyun on the rooftop is giving a big question for me. They standing on the rooftop with Jung Woo in the middle makes me wonder whether the love rival still continues or not.

Either way, you may give it a shoot if you want to watch a Korean BL drama that explores literature and people on the back with a sprinkle of boys' loves ofc.

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Mixed thoughts

So much manipulation!....for it to just end up like they wanted in the first place. It seems everyone wanted to beg, borrow, and scheme their way into being in control.

This is not so much a review for others as it is for myself. I'm trying to figure out what I just watched. Hidden motives, actions, reactions, and a lot of character contemplation make this seem like one of those books that you were assigned to read in high school. You know, the ones that you didn't really understand but had to do a report on anyway, and by the end of the report you kinda understood it a little better.

Ultimately, I liked this drama....but barely. Everyone had their own idea of how to fix a broken situation, and it was frustrating to watch. You never really knew whether the characters were being selfish or selfless. My favorite character was Han Tae Young, because he was so optimistic. But my second favorite was Jung Ji Yeon, the female editor, because she refused to let herself be manipulated and didn't hold back her opinions when asked. She told it like it was, and wasn't afraid to say that she was looking out for her own interests. But she also didn't blame anyone else for her own missteps. She had courage and class.

The one thing that I didn't like about the three main characters is that they were all determined, but so passive by the ending scene that it was unrealistic. And that professor? Excuse my language, but he was a douche.

I'm not going to recommend this drama, but I'm not going to not recommend it either. The actors carried out their roles well. So I guess the story is what left something to be desired. I've definitely watched worse, and I was able to get through the drama without any thoughts of dropping it or dreading the next episode. So I guess it was ok.

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An Ambitious Failure That I Still Kind of Liked

So there's a lot to appreciate about this series... and a ton of problems.

I really appreciated that the producers attempted to do something different by creating a complex plot with complex emotions and problems that don't really imitate any other BL that I've ever seen. The cinematography was quite nice and OST was great. Additionally, Ha Jong Woo brought an adorable and goofy demeanor to his character that reminded me of a labrador retriever. I can see how some people were annoyed by his spacey almost surfer-esque character, but I thought it was endearing. I also couldn't take my eyes off his lips. Also, a lot of people commented that they were annoyed by Im Too Chul's character, Kang Woo Joo. I have to disagree. He's got great comedic timing and without him this series would have been interminably dull. Ha Jong Woo's character, Han Tae Young was kind of flighty, and Karam's Cha Jung Woo and Leo's Kim Jung Hyun were very dour. If it had just been the three of them, the series would have felt to aimless and too dark. It needed Im Too Chul to keep things upbeat and pushing plot points that the other characters were too self-immersed focus on.

However, despite the producers attempts to do something different, they also lost sight of the forest through the trees. Somehow they thought it would be clever to never directly explain what Cha Jung Woo said or did at the beginning of the series to offend the legendary writer Jang Su Cheol. This was a huge mistake since the entire driving force of the series were the ramifications of this act. It's always possible that my confusion is a victim or poor subtitling, but I've read the comments on here and it seems many other people have the same issue.

Other glaring problems included the unfortunate choice of repeating scenes from the previous episode. I'm not talking about a 30 second, "previously on Happy Ending Romance..." kind of thing. I'm talking about whole scenes replayed. Like 10 minutes of a 30-minute episode were scenes from the previous episode. This happened more heavily in the early episodes, but it really sucked. It always sucks when shows do this! Do the creators really think we can't remember what happened half an hour ago (in this day and age of binge watching) or if watching weekly single episode roll-outs, that we can't remember what we watched last week? It's a little insulting to the viewers' time.

The show also spent a lot of it's time having Han Tae Young explain his infatuation with Cha Jung Woo's writing and how it made him quit trying to write and instead decided to focus on publishing. We got it! You don't have to have him explain this over and over and over. He explained to to Kang Woo Joo and then it felt like he covered it with Cha Jung Woo multiple times. Again, it feels like the creators are underestimating our intelligence. It would have been better to remove some of these scenes and instead built a better story around what Cha Jung Woo did initially to set off this chain of events.

It would be easy to blame the actors for how they presented their characters, and where they failed to make them seem real. There were were plenty of failures of this sort in this series. However, ultimately I blame the directors and writers. If the writers can't write a believable and multidimensional character, and if the director can't articulate and guide an actor to a nuanced performance that displays the full range of the character, then the writers should have written better characters, and the director should have done more rehearsals, or additional takes to coax those performances out of the actors. In this series Cha Jung Woo is portrayed as a wounded, fragile and depressed man with zero personality. He's not cute, nor interesting. He's just a boring sniveling baby that no one would like. So much so, that Han Tae Young falling in love with him is completely unbelievable. No one would like Cha Jung Woo. I don't care how much they loved his writing. The writers needed to write a better character for Cha Jung Woo, and the director needed to a ensure a better performance out of Karam so that he does something or says something that makes it believable that Han Tae Young is falling in love with him. There was ZERO chemistry between these two characters. I also think that failure of the show to reveal Cha Jung Woo's "original sin" added to this problem. If we knew what he did, we may have been more sympathetic to his depression, but not knowing what it was makes us think he should get over himself already. And this is where the series really failed. They failed to put forth a couple that you were rooting for. You sort of wanted Han Tae Young to run in the other direction. Not only was Cha Jung Woo a risky investment for his publishing house, he also seems like he'd be a sucky boyfriend.

My criticism of one dimensional characters continues with Kim Jung Hyun. This character in my humble opinion had the greatest challenge, and it totally failed. The writers, directors and producers of the show thought they were being clever with this character by being deliberately opaque with his motivations, but in the end the performance of the character (again, due to writing and direction, not the actor's talents) felt incredibly one note. It's like they told him to just be a moody bad guy. They didn't give him any lines or scenes to hang the characters true feelings on. This wouldn't have had to give away the series' twist either. There are many possible ways that they could have portrayed Kim Jung Hyun as caring about Cha Jung Woo, without only making him look only like a controlling bad guy. With a little nuance they could have made you feel that he cared about Cha Jung Woo and their relationship, while still allowing that creeping feeling entering in the story that maybe Kim Jung Hyun was still up to something no good. Then when the final episodes take place, you might feel the pull of this three way relationship and the pain of all the characters, but instead you're just happy that Kim Jung Hyun who was portrayed only as a villain for too much of the series, is finally getting his punishment. It's a cheap trope instead of a thoughtful character arc. How much more would we have been shocked by Kim Jung Hyun trying to block Cha Jung Woo from writing, if we saw Kim Jung Hyun being very loving to Cha Jung Woo to his face, and then doing this stuff behind his back. We would have thought he was a terrible two-face liar. But in the end, when the truth came out, we would have been able to identify with his loving side. As presented, even though he was motivated to do something good for Cha Jung Woo, he couldn't surmount his villain status and we just don't really care about him.

In the end, I still enjoyed watching a BL drama that attempted to tackle something other than love for love's sake. A crush is never enough for an entire series plot. This unique plot gave the characters something to care about other than the "will he or won't he fall in love with me" trope. Unfortunately, with the execution of this series they made things unnecessarily confusing by never revealing an important plot point, portraying characters to one-dimensionally, and most importantly, by forgetting to develop an actual love story.

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A perfect example of interesting idea, bad execution

As always KBLs come trough with their cool concepts and story ideas, but the execution was really bad. Part of the reason I really like south korean storytelling in tv shows is that they always think of interesting combination of characters from different backrounds. However, starting from the confusing timeline to repeated, non-sensical dialogue, putting the same song literally every 10 minutes, the long lasting close-ups of actors staring into nothing... it looked very diletant, like someone's homework from the final exam in movie school.

The acting was not bad at all, and I think the actors could've done more if someone actually read through the script and made it more like normal people talk and behave, it felt a bit theatre-like in its presentation, where people had endlessly free time to continuously met in coffee shops for "serious" discussions.

The two songs that they played ad nauseum, where not so bad and I would add them to my youtube playlist, but playing them constantly really just drove home the fact that they probably put all their money on producing these two songs.

it is ok for a one-time watch, there is very little rewatch value, unless you enjoy awkward kisses, and even more awkward sex scene.

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Short, deep & impressive

I am surprised that this series is underrated here but each of us have our own free thoughts and I’ll share mine.

It is a short series that could have been well developed into a 12 series. Saying this, it contributed to the somewhat vague discussions, confusing start, and the feeling of needing more. It felt like “it’s so good why rushed the storytelling” kind of feeling.

The actors seriously did excellently with the portrayal of their roles, evoking emotions and towards the end, I had to reach out for the box of tissue. Ending was good but lacked clarity as to how it got there, but still acceptable.

Romance is just a fraction of the story, it also talks about the hardship of being blackballed in the industry when you decide to voice your unpopular opinion even if it is right. It also showed how good intentions may not always work as a right answer. This is a mixture of human thinking, feelings and society’s impact on life.

It is confusing in the beginning, the way editing was done but it’s not bad enough to drop it. There’s recap that I find unnecessary and could have just been replaced by story explaining things that led to situations.

The BGM is good and perfect for the series.

The entire production is good, artists all did excellently, and editing is the only thing that could have improved.
Overall, it is a good short series to invest time. I hope you give it a chance and see for yourself.

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First few episodes is confusing, they keep repeating the same footages from previous episode. And there's a lot of empty scenes where the leads just stare into nothing with ost playing in background.

It took me some time to understand what happened to Jungwoo and why he couldn't write anymore.
The love triangle was interesting, i thought he would end up with Junghyun, but then there's Taeyoung coming between them. Taeyoung is indeed a good guy, he's positive and give good influence. But still, his presence kinda bother me. He clearly knows Jungwoo and Junghyun were together, but he went for it anyway.
And Junghyun, after 3 episodes he made me wonder if he's the villain or not. But i guess he's just a walking red flag.
TBH i don't feel the chemistry between them. The open ending just confuses me even more.

There's also something's missing from the story, but idk what it is...

Overall, it's an okay drama.
Acting was well done and ost was good. The message it trying to describe was good, but the execution is bad.
So i don't think I'd rewatch or recommend this to anyone.

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Confusing, but somewhat not at the same time...

To start off, all the actors were GREAT and they're amazing at what they do, and couples have chemistry. They're spot on when it comes to portraying emotions and expressing their characters wants and needs.
Leo made me hate his character, and then appreciate him once again.
The only thing I'm gonna be a little picky on is the kisses and editing/storyline.
Kisses don't have any feeling to them. It's like a tenth grade theatre show.
And then there's the storyline and editing. At times it was confusing, I'm not sure if it's the translations or the script itself, but at times I had to go back and pause to go over everything that was happening to be able to hang on, it got easier towards the end of the show, but at the beginning it was hard to really grasp anything.
I like to crochet whilst watching shows, but for this one I had to pay attention at all times or I wouldn't understand anything.
But the story is unique, and kbls are good at just that, unique stories we haven't seen before.
I do also wish they could clear up what that "incident" was that led to him almost being blacklisted.
But overall it's worth a watch when you're not tired and have time to give your full attention to the show!

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