Link (2022)

Cute leads in a cute romance to hide a wobbly thriller full of plot holes and wrong messages.

1/ STORY

1.1/ Thriller:
ML wants to find his long lost twin sister. Moves back to his childhood place and sets a new restaurant. But he does nothing. No investigation with pictures, places, suspects, links... on a huge board. He wanders from his place to the grocery store or the fish market with FL. Police does nothing but chit-chat and drinks in the evening. Suddenly in episode 15, the FL remembers something and the culprit is caught. Mystery solved.

First, the triller is an engaging dark comedy with plenty of people to suspect and dark humour in life and death situations but halfway it becomes a standard korean serial killer drama. Disappointing.

1.2/The romance:
ML spends the whole drama building his restaurant. The evening he cooks food with nice wine to comfort the FL because he feels her emotional mess. They get closer and closer to the point they kiss, date, break up, date, break up, kiss, break up because their lives are intertwined with sad past events. When the culprit is caught, everything stops and they become normal couple.

2/ CHARACTERS /ACTORS

2.1/ Good guys:
Let's say it, the two lead actors save this draggy romance and draggy thriller thanks to their chemistry and their cuteness which make them enjoyable to watch on screen. The other good point goes to the child characters and actors who are mostly cute, bring emotions and are at the core of the mystery.

- ML: A cry baby who tries to solve a mystery with the FL and enters a game of push and pull. When he is not lovey dovey with FL, he cooks, walks, cries or gets angry or beats people.
- FM: Poor girl trying to improve her life but she is victim of a stalker and has nightmares. She finds comfort with ML but stalker is not happy and tries to break their relationship. Flawed character but still likeable.
- ML's best friend Jin Hoo : Does one good thing to advance the plot then spends the drama loafing about in the restaurant.
- Eun Jung: Looks evil and scheming at first but quickly spends her time chatting with Jin Hoo in the restaurant.
- FL mom and grandma: a pair of ex con look alilke who behaves suspicious and funny but soon it becomes redundant as the story stalls.

2.2/ Bad guys:
- Stalker: crazy lunatic chasing FL but she prefers the cook so he tries to piss them off by unveiling a part of their past but only manages to trigger something he is not going to enjoy. Too much screen time for him.
- Other bad guys: Don't even know where they come from, why they did what they did. They just appear, act stupid, bad guy gets caught and voilà, the end for them.

2.3/ The police: (MAJOR SPOILERS)
A bunch of lazy asses who do nothing but drive round, chit-chat and drink and commit misdemeanors. In the end, they look at a video, start running and serve the people.

- Wontak: Stupid kid with anger management issues who rat on his dad as kid and now he is a cop who beats civilians and or threatens them and finally beats up his cop boss because he is so angry he left his dad suffer for years but he prefers blame others. Stupid brute should have ended in jail but the cops covered his misdemeanor. Bravo the police.
- Police officer Min Jo: ex lover of Wontak who does nothing but covering Wontak 's crimes and torts until the end when she save her ex lover's ass from being fired and goes back to be in couple with him. BS.
- Officer An Jung Ho: the worst of all. He does not remembers key events when he is sober but he does when he is drunk. And cherry on the pie, he committed a crime of hidding a murder and a misdemeanor of getting rid of a corpse. If he investigated that victim, everything would have been solved. And he has a happy ending anyway. Congratulations!
- Officer Young Wan suspects a guy who is not the right guy but police officer is not happy so he spends time harrassing him from time to time. Harrassing an innocent civilian when you are a cop. Bravo Mr police!
- Other officers: other stupid idiots.
The message saying the police members are good for nothing drunkards and criminals with a badge and people who do unlawfully but they can escape the Law because they were internally conflicted.. This is wrong.

2.4/ The "good" people:
Some rotten people who know a part of the truth but would not talk but they would lie and hide the truth in order to protect other and they get away with it. One character should be charged with failure to asssit a person in danger. One escapes murder and another escapes the crime of hidding a murder. They are not even bothered by the law. They all walk free. But ok, so many plot holes in this drama anyway.

3/ OST:
Honestly, the drama became so annoyingly draggy the main song they played just started to annoy me.

4/ REWATCH VALUE:
No

5/ OVERALL: If you like the two lead actors and want to watch a beautiful couple on screen who look cute and endearing no matter what, you can watch this drama. For the ones who look for a cute romance but also a consistent and well paced story with an original and intelligent thriller, you can pass. The romance is draggy and the thriller part is leading on and feeding the audience bit by bit with slow progress and nonsensical twists where villains and their actions are not even explained. Also in the end, the mystery of the ML feeling FL's emotions is not explained. 7.5/8 and avoidable.

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Not worth the bother

Weak plot, sloppy writing, shallow acting. You can find it all here. The plot bounced around as if it couldn't figure out where the suspense was. The scene in the candy store was sloppy - bad direction and/or writing, but it lingered over too much wailing and crying while no one did anything useful. It was loose and sloppy, not tight and crisp - how many times can you knock a guy out and still fail to tir him or subdue him so that he comes back again and again? Good grief. And I found Yeo Jin Goo's acting to be shallow and one-note - same for the female lead. I did enjoy the older women wandering around with their "weapons" but that got lost after a few episodes. The only real standout performance was
Shin Jae Hwi, the stalker, who did a lovely job with evil. I'd like to see him in more things, there may be a good actor in there. Overall, give this a miss unless you are besotted with Yeo Jon Goo.

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This started out as a 10, so an 8 is the most I can give out now
it was just misunderstanding, miscommunication, mistreating the kids, horrible adults that raised them wrong, blamed them and hurt them then hid it
the mystery was meh, the resolution was meh, the way everyone was involved was meh, the way they brought back the stalker again was meh

it started out great, new meeting, dark comedy, the link taking away the awkward "can I talk to that person" stage every drama hates, so instead of enemies to lovers which is the easy answer to keep 2 ppl remeeting, their link made them get to know each other slowly

I was still on board with the past connection and healing, I was ok with the mystery not even being a focus, I was not ok when they reopened their 2nd case, I was over it when they started the sob story of "should we breakup" and I was done by ep15 when they finally went to solve their big mystery. and ep16 was the worst in dragging it out even more

tho I liked two scenes of the ending, the mom and grandma bus scene, and the 2 cops with the cop car xD I also liked the ost with the kid's voice, tho I hated the overly over happy ending

jingoo is as always amazing, the mom and grandma were the highlight, the hot cops were a new discovery

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Bang Average

That’s it? The name is far more interesting than what the drama ended up being. Interesting plot but extremely sloppy execution.

The drama starts off exceptionally well, the ending of the first episode got me hooked. But it free falls from there, plot points repeat themselves and it feels like you’re watching the same episodes on repeat. It’s safe to say that the show could have been decreased to 10-12 episodes aside from 16 to reduce the suffering. The show would have ended way sooner if these characters would just talk. There were also so many things that the drama didn’t end up explaining and the excuse of it being open-ended doesn’t cut it for me. What was the motive behind everything that happened?

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I really loved the main leads acting skills . when they cried I felt like crying too.

It started off very interesting and unique. I loved the plot however I feel like it could have been 12 or 14 episodes insead.
I'm also just not a fan of the whole fall in love , then break up , then reconcile then break up , but I enjoyed watching it...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

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There's something very funny about it

You see, there's an always reocurring motive in so many series. Our MLs and FLs usually have their best, loyal friends. Those friends are too ideal, cope up with everything, support everyone and risk their lives to protect the MLs/FLs. Let's ignore a fact that it's pathological - I still always laugh when a big, painful story is revealed by a ML/FL to each other like they've never, ever spoke about it to anyone. How did they get those super-loyal, super understanding friends then? Like no one has ever asked about it. Those best friends theoretically know but they never have asked, never have discussed those, never have made the ML/FL realize what they are able to realize now thanks to what - a romantic love? It's so naive that there always has to be a new, magical, "game-changing" question asked by a new love for the ML/FL to realize basic stuff. Are they idiots, are they aliens? Seriously? Are those friends just walking around them playing comedy role that script-writers gave them for the show? :-P

It's really funny since quite an obvious thing - for instance - a great, close friend of the ML would ask how he felt, how he coped up with everything, was he ok, how it was for him etc. I'm sure they'd drink beer, talk openly, know each other's feelings. Men are really not some crazy beings, we have feelings and when our male friends suffer, we're not insensitive towards that because - huh - a male, not a woman so we won't talk! Men friendships remain different, obviously, but we discuss, share problems, suggest solutions, cheer up each other - even much more openly and without restraints that women do.

In the end, when naive scenarios like that come to that supposedly romantic, magical scene of a single, basic question - and it's presented like no one has ever asked that, the ML/FL were completely ignorant to it, now they magically wake up - it's funny - not romantic, not beautiful. It's cringe.

On a top of that - the mother's secred is stupid, it's not a secret, there're no reasons to hide anything from a daughter, extremely far-fetched, naive and illogical stuff. A policeman had no reason to cover anything up, a mother had no reason to "turn herself in" since she has just killed an attacker in her own defense or rather - in defense of a policeman, so it was a pure self-defense aka no problem, no reason for hiding anything. Majority of people here do not speak up when they should, stop asking after someone answers "it's nothing". The whole show could be solved in around 5 episodes but it's artificially stretched and all those forced secrets make literally no sense.

Basically, a lot of fuss is made about nothing in this drama, it's like a storm in a glass of water...

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A cult classic for sure because this will not be every one’s cup of tea!

As I stated in title this show won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, you will absolutely love it or you will find it absolutely boring/dragging! For me I absolutely loved it! Especially first half of the drama was simply fantastic with world building, character building and dark comedy nuggets! This drama’s second half mostly relies on all characters emotional healing process and revelation of mystery of disappearance of Sister of ML and everyone else’s involvement in that! We have main culprit who is actually overshadowed most of the type by another person who is absolutely horrible and also somewhat responsible plus all the residents of that area and how shady they seems to be! And ending is just so good! All the characters gets closure they deserves and story ends up perfectly!Plus all the ost songs are fantastic with Your river in me from O3ohn and Saying hello by Minnie for (G)I-DLE being my favourite plus we have couple of great songs by Janet suhh as well! One of the best drama of 2022 & we have quite many fantastic dramas in 2022! This one also gets add in to the list one of the best all time dramas that we got in 2022!

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Best drama ever ! I was so excited that I watched it nonstop. It s a great thriller drama with an interesting story. And there's love story too. ❤️❤️

The story , production everything is awesome. 😁❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

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Unanswered questions

I thought this would be a fun drama to watch because I like mystery/thriller dramas and I liked how it had romance also because I liked both main leads.

The story did drag on a bit. The ml moved to his hometown to open up a restaurant so he could find his sister and there he meets the fl who happened to know his sister. What I don't understand is why when fl finally tells the cops about her stalker they don't do anything. Also don't understand why everyone just continues to let her walk around alone at night and in dark alleys when he tried to hurt her more than once.

It was also sad to see how the adults failed ml's sister. For example, When she asked for help one of the residents from the hometown didn't want to and his excuse was he was having a bad day and just wanted to mind his own business. Everyone even blamed the ml for letting his sister get kidnapped as if he wasn't a kid taking care of another kid. At least he found his sister but it wasn't exactly satisfying since they never really revealed the murderer's intentions for murdering and kidnapping kids and that's more just up to the viewers interpretation despite him continuing to be alive.

I also didn't understand why even after finding out everything that happened with ml's sister and even saying he was disgusted with the way the people in the town acted at the time he came back. He disappeared for just a month only to come back and act like nothing happened?

As for the music I didn't really pay much attention to it unlike usual with dramas so I could careless about it. I don't think I'd rewatch it as it was hard to just finish it in the first place. I won't say I won't recommend it because a lot of others liked it. If you like the main leads I'd say watch it and then go from there.

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It looks like a light romance but tackles serious themes.

It's beautifully shot, the ML's are attractive, so why did I end up crying at least three times, and feel drained after starting out what looked like a simple fantasy romance.

It is a sweetly coated exploration of how bad things happen to good people just through making the wrong choice that at the time seems perhaps a reasonable one. There are villains, but perhaps the everyday compromises of life add to the evil of that villainy
At the start I thought how am I going to swallow this premise, but it worked, because it wasn't over done or over acted.
I understood why characters behaved the way they did, and the repercussions were believable.
I didn't want to skip anything, my only huge ?, was the restaurant ever going to make any money, and where did the money come from to fund it?
The ending gives some sort of resolution for nearly charector, perhaps too neat.

I can not give the story a 10, I think it needed a little more bite considering the subject, and the plot device of people not talking about the past in the equivalent of a small village is just not believable.

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I wanted to like this drama so bad because I love Yeo Jin Goo and Moon Gayoung but man.......... finishing this was actual work. This feels like a very messy combination of fun romcom and thriller. I enjoyed the first few episodes but felt that it started to really get boring around halfway.

What I liked:

- the relationship between Dahyun, her mom, and grandmother. It was very sweet and it was obvious that they cared for each other. This was probably the highlight of the show for me.

- restaurant and food scenes. I thought these were fun! I wish there had been more focus on the restaurant opening process.

- acting. Actors worked with what they had and I enjoyed it.

What I did not like:

- the mystery. I have to be honest, by the end of the show I did not care what happened to Gyeyoung and I wish I had skipped all those scenes. I did not find it intriguing at all and to me it was obvious she was dead. Lots of buildup by setting up everyone in the neighbourhood just for it to be some random guy was not great. Also very little explanation on what aside from kidnapping and death. I do not think that everything has to be explained in a show like this but we were given so little.

- I felt that the Link was underused and just kind of pointless?

- whatever was going on with the two police officers??? weirdly shoehorned in and a waste of screen time.

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