where they went wrong

this show should have ended with the first season. the first season created this beautiful fantastical world with well-developed characters and with a story that made sense. we had such a mentally strong and emotionally absent female lead that is so rare to find in kdramas. it's not a hard combination, but kdramas (and fans too) typically don't know what to do with such women. but the first season managed to do a very good job in her character work and others around her too. 

the second season destroys all of that. i personally do not like seeing faces change when i already attach it to a character, so not seeing jung so-min was a major let-down (no hate to go youn-jung). and we see a completely different female lead personality-wise. plus every other character changes drastically too. the direction of the plot changed as well. it was not in continuation with the first season, and was dragged out for too long. i felt so incomplete at the end since i really didn't get the ending i thought the characters deserved. 

what sucked about this show was that they thought they can just bank off of the success of one of the best rom-com kdramas of all time. do bong-soon did not need a cousin- as much as it makes sense. despite that, i know most of us were excited, and a lot of us knew this wasn't going to end up well. there are many things wrong with this show, but overall, it was just really bad writing: 

1) dismissing a lot of facts and rules that were established in this world by the original show. 

2) making nam-soon some sort of generational special genius just to show off some effects that have improved. it just felt pretentious. 

3) the weird "link" the women had in this family. that did not exist for do bong-soon. it's not a supernatural show, the women are just supposed to have superhuman strength. 

4) the lack of strong male characters. why was everyone so stupid? and the fat-shaming and eating disorders in this show were really problematic. it's a netflix show, and the majority of viewers were international. i don't care if it's normalized in korea. they know that people elsewhere are afraid to admit how awful it is, and even in korea, some people can see past toxic beauty standards more openly now. 

5) unnecessary romantic bit of the grandmother. it gave us nothing, and was absolute cringe and easily skippable. 

6) i understand that shows don't have to take everything so seriously and it can just be a mind-numbing plot-holed filled story with no substance in the characters. but not only does this show try to remodel after an existing show, it tries to take it a step further with everything. it feels disingenuous and honestly we didn't need it. there was such an amazing cast, but only the villain and cameos seemed to be convincing in their roles. 

i will be the last person to say i hated this show. i love the original playful kiss (as toxic as the leads were), and i also like this show too. i think where they went wrong here though was relying the on the chemistry of aom and mike from full house (thai ver.) and the fans they gained from that. i was excited to watch this show and can probably still rewatch it. but i did not like the some of the changes they made to the original plot. some changes were great, but some were kind of weird and i think messed up the character work. and the writing was just weak. 

this show actually had a great beginning and i liked the pacing of it too. idk why it only had 14 ep because it desperately needed two more for a cleaner ending. it was just rushed through at the end and felt choppy. i didn't hate this show, but it was very unsatisfying towards the end and that can ruin the experience.