La Regina delle Lacrime (2024)

Starpower shines, while storytelling stagnates

What worked for the show:

Major starpower across the board. Even outside of Kim Soo Hyun and Kim Ji Won, Park Sung Hoon and Kwak Dong Yeon are budding stars of their own and provide reason to tune in.

Strong middle episodes. Once the FL's family moved in with the ML's family in the rural town I was sure it was going to follow the trope of them being arrogant, rude etc, but actually the budding relationships among the family members on each side was the major positive driving force of the show.

Inverting the gender trope of the tsundre male CEO to female CEO. The drama industry needs more badass FLs.

What didn't work:

Over-focus on the antagonist in later episodes when the screentime could have been focused on the main couple overcomming the FL's memory loss. Like many kdramas this one included someone with psychopathy/sociopathy playing an overbearing evil character.

Childhood reunion trope. In this drama we find out that the ML not only saved the FL's life, but also kept her ipod as she was his first crush. I don't think this trope is natural, although extremely common in kdramas with the idea of fated love, but felt completely unnessary and forced.

Poor writing at times and overly convient plot devices. There are several issues with the plot in general, how are we supposed to support a character who actively feels relief when he finds out his partner is dying in a few months. Everything medical is spoken as a matter of fact and that medical science for experimental procedures is exact. The show treats her surgery which is a supposed rare technique with a few academic papers as a 100 percent success rate on curing her terminal cancer and highly likely to affect her memory. Medical procedures, even those not used for dramatic effect, have risk involved and uncertainty.
The certainty of how the medical side was handled made the show feel less realistic. How are the parents not following their daughter who is getting an experimental treatment in a foreign country with likely memory side effects?

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Perfect example of how great actors can’t make up for a weak story

I don’t care how popular a show is and how much attention it is getting due to a strong cast but if the story is shit nothing much actors can do to save the show.
Honestly I couldn’t understand whether the story’s main focus was on issues of a married couple, illness of the female lead or the villains taking over everything. Because there was just too much going on and it made a mess.
I WISH OH HOW I WISH the focus was on the issues of the lead couple instead of all the other drama then this show could’ve been a master piece. But what a waste.

I tried really hard to relate to the characters but couldn’t. Characters like cold CEO Female lead and jack of all trade yet caring Male lead are the ones we have seen before multiple times. And don’t get me started on the dumb and incompetent brother! He was annoying ugh

What intrigued my interest in the drama was how the ML wanted to end the marriage at the beginning of the show but that plot was thrown out pretty quickly without proper explanation. And that plot was the very reason giving some comedic side to the show otherwise it was just crying crying and crying. Honestly it got really annoying at the end.

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Eyecandy with lazy writing

This drama has everything BUT a good story line. I believe that people are so blinded by the good looking actors that they don't even think critically about the plot. Sure, the acting is perfect, the production, the visuals, the music... But when it comes to the story, it's messy, boring and repetitive.

The first half of the show is more about the push and pull relationship between the leads. He loves her, she loves him but they refuse to communicate like grown up adults and think that the other doesn't like them anymore and the love is over.

The middle part of the drama revolves around the female lead's sickness and how she and her husband come to terms with her being a terminally ill patient. But still, they don't talk about their feelings and think their relationship is doomed.

Then, the second half of the show becomes UNBEARABLE. It's basically a makjang with good looking actors. The bad mother and son steal the family's wealth. The bad guy is obsessed with the female lead and wants her all to himself while planning on killing her now ex husband. The story becomes so boring and repetitive that at some point I just wanted the female lead to finally die so that we can be over with everything. Also, of course the ending couldn't get any more unrealistic.

I honestly believe this is a highly overrated kdrama that is only popular because it had a lot of promotion on social media and one of the main actors is Kim Soo Hyun. All of the cast are talented actors but their good performance is not enough to save the lazy writing. Also, the screenwriter Park Ji Eun really needs to stop with the unrealistic happy endings. Why is she so afraid of sad but realistic endings? She's like: "I want a sad ending but not really. Also, the public wouldn't want a sad ending" (see "My Love from the Star", "Crash Landing on You", and now let's add "Queen of Tears" to the list).

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Poor execution of a good story

When I watched the first episodes I thought I would love this series. If this series was only about confronting relationship problems and the healing of a broken family, the series would be at least a 9/10, since it confronts a serious topic, however still adds a funny note every now and then. The actors are great and I surprisingly liked the side couples. However, what could have been a deep story about marriage was turned into the most stereotipical and superficial story. Every episode was filled with unnecessary car accidents and sacrifices. Everyone somehow had a childhood connection with the other, which made no sense as it is very often showns hiw everyone has such a different status and family background. The hate of the main character of his wife just suddenly turns into him giving his life every three seconds for her. Instead of escaping the unhappy life he lives, it somehow gets more miserable. I think less episodes and less "tipical kdrama plottwists" could've made this show into something very special. Instead it got turned into a whole a** mess.

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It Was Disappointing

*Disclaimer: This is my personal opinion. We don't need to agree and it truly doesn't matter if we don't. If you loved it, then that's just you, but frankly I didn't.*

Let me start by saying this drama is incredibly overhyped, and I truly expected more. I've only dropped around 4 Kdramas over the years of watching them and this has joined this list. I dropped it on episode 13, with only three episodes left. You may be asking why I watched it up until this point, and truly I don't know either. Maybe I expected it to get better as the episodes progressed but after waiting patiently from the point of episode 8, I knew it wasn't going to get better. Three more hours of watching the ML be biggest pushover ever and the FL still being sick with a bad attitude and no consideration for the ML feelings and only making choices from her perspective, I just wasn't in the mood for it.

Another point I'd like to make is that the character were flat, with little to no personality or depth to them. A big part of the watching experience for me is learning about the characters, and this drama simply left me starving, not even throwing me a bone to work with. For a Kdrama that is unnecessarily long and drawn out, I think they could've sent more time developing characters instead of giving us the human equivalent of paper dolls. Every episode felt like a filler, because it was just so boring.

The chemistry was another point of concern for me. Was a chemistry test between the actors not done before the filming began? The ML & FL had no chemistry to the point where I was becoming hyper aware that they're actors. Nothing about this Kdrama worked right except for maybe the visuals. They threw in every trope they could, but with a mediocre storyline, it simply didn't work.

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Boring and overrated !!!

A bit tired of these absurd stories about these "poor" rich chaebol.
A poor script, a drama that relies only on the couple FL and ML A disastrous casting choice, with the father looks as old as the grandfather (Hong family) and the son (ML's brother) as old as the father (Baek family). Useless characters to fill out an empty story. Everything in this drama sounds fake (how can such wealthy people be so naive and stupid?), and due to the lack of content, we're force-fed with repetitive crying scenes, where we are not even able to see the tears roll down on the protagonists' cheeks...

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Glossy romcom

It's a glossy rom com with very little to cherish tbh so far. The power tripping Fam is just crazy. Enjoying terminal illness of spouse is like a new Kdrama genre or something & that dreaded TRIANGLE whether it's love or hate. ARGH!!!

That Soo Hyun scene saying why am I cute when I drink was the best thing about this drama so far. The wedding scene was Binjin coded so much so that they even called it wedding of the century too.

The outfits that Kim Ji won is wearing is absolutely stunning 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 so far.

Let's see how it goes later on. So far I won't rate it extraordinarily for what I have seen.

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Bits and pieces of old kdramas combined together

I like how the drama started with a messed up marriage and showed story of a couple who have fallen out of love and their journey to rediscovering their love. It was going good till episode 7, after that it become like a complete different story. All the focus was shifted on the queen’s group family being broke and falling in the trap laid by the villains. And how easily the villains got everything they wanted and even kicked the family out of the house. It’s was bit unrealistic how a business tycoon family had nowhere to go.
And in the midst of all this villain drama the main issue was left unaddressed. What about the martial issues that brought the lead couple at this point? Why hae in and hyun woo hated each other that much at the beginning of the show? The answers were vague. I wish the focus of the show was on addressing their martial issues and rekindling their love and not on the unnecessary villain drama.
If the story had only focused on hae in’s illness and their troubled marriage. It would have been alot better.

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It is good but not that good!

As someone how has watched kdrama's since 2016 and has watched over a 120 kdrama's and 40 kmovies. I think it is safe to say that I know what I'm tallking a about.
It is good but not that good!
Don't watch it because of the viewer rating:
https://mydramalist.com/article/queen-of-tears-officially-surpasses-the-ratings-of-crash-landing-on-you

Crash Landing is better, if it came out this year instead of 2020 it would have had a much higher rating. A lot has changed in the last years, kdrama's are way popular now then only a few years back.
Back in the day we only had a couple kdrama's a year and a lot where very good, but now there are just too many which also gives us a lot of bad ones.
I mean come on! Who remenbes the days of amazing Kdrama's like "My Mister", "What's Wrong with Secretary Kim", "Mother", "It's Okay to Not Be Okay", "Prison Playbook", "True Beauty", "Mr. Sunshine", "18 Again", "Mr. Queen", "Descendants of the Sun", ...
Seriously the industry felt a lot more honest back then, now it feels like it's all about the money. They are anouncing a new kdrama every hour now its ridiculous now.
I will even go as far as saying that : assuming that a kdrama is better based on percentage of viewer rating is a insult to the industrie and to all the master pieces and the people worked on them really hard.
Queen of Tears is good but not as good as Crash Landing, just because something has a higher viewer rating doesn't mean it is better.
If you are a real kdrama fan you should watch the classics even if they are a couple of years old, instead of watching the hyped up ones.

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Can't imagine watching it again and going through torture

It felt like first 8 episodes were written by different writer and last 8 episodes were written by different writer because it felt like a different show after episode 7 but with same characters. Last episodes were filled with all old k-drama tropes and lacked any originality. The writer filled the story with every possible trope possible. I was on verge of tears as to what they did with the show and ruined it. the main leads constant crying made me exhausted.
It would have been fun if the comic part of the show was retained till the end and lead couple's martial issues was focused on but rather we were given unnecessary villian drama. When Hong hae in's amnesia after surgery made me completely lose it. Don't have it in me to watch it again or recommend it.

Actors were the only good part about the show. They saved the show.

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