Watching a lovable asshole struggle will touch your heart and soul

Let me break it down into some random categories:

BL?
No, not a BL. But it is marketed as one in some places. I totally forgive them :) They should get all the views!

Does it support the gay agenda?
Oh, so very well! So fabulously! Is it a rainbow? It is a DOUBLE RAINBOW! This is so refreshing, even on an international level. But even more so as it is Korean. Everybody and their mother loves a good Korean queer-baiting bromance. But sometimes it is nice to get the real deal. And this is so unapologetically gay. Every time they delivered a line or story aspect where I imagined the backwards protesters lining the pride parades in Seoul (who were watching for sure) to gnash their teeth in anger, I couldn’t help but loudly laugh in blissfulness. And the main actor unapologetically and publicly not giving a shit about the haters is better than any fan-service ever could be. Especially as he absolutely MEANS it. A mainstream Korean actor who plays a role that says – and I quote here – “Fuck me deep!” – oh the joy! At times it felt that they really wanted to tick off every item from the things-that-gays-suffer-from list and I can’t have been the only one thinking “What is it now? Can’t you give this guy a break?” I was surprised we didn’t get assault during an app hookup or a good old gay bashing in the streets. Remember the olden days, when gay characters could only exist as a joke or in depression? I felt that there were traces of the latter in this too (but probably unintentionally).
And I wrote gay agenda and not queer agenda on purpose – diversity is not a forte of this series. This is a story about stereotypical gay guys only (the first lover is a bit of an exception, but he doesn’t get much love). And of course all the actors are super hot. This is Korea after all. Shut up and lust after them!

Acting?
Great. Except the Japanese guy. One thing all the reviews can agree on :)

Creativity?
Hm, not sure. The storytelling was pretty standard for a story that isn’t really plot-driven. And for a story that in its core is about one character only, character development was quite limited. And I had a hard time understanding some of the character’s actions. I feel there was some symbolism that went over my head. And the hints of reality and fiction being mixed were a bit too vague for me. But maybe I’m just too stupid. Or didn’t focus enough.

Should you watch it?
If you liked my review: yes. If you didn’t: yes.

Take-home message: Two men eating pasta in public is gay. Seafood is fine!
Also: Life can be struggly.

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They threw the whole story into a huge plot hole in episode 78

I give it 10 points.

And then I deduct:

-1 for censorship/propaganda
-1 for that horrible ending in the last episode. They crafted such a nice vehicle over the course of 77 episodes and then crashed it into a wall in the last episode. Don't worry, it's not an ending that makes you cry because something horrible happens. It just makes no sense at all. And it is crammed into an episode lasting 6.5 minutes.
-1 for missed opportunity in the bromance department. For me, the bromance was what carried me through the series. They were very good at portraying that the two lead characters are deeply in love without saying it out loud. However, I was surprised how they didn't give us any fan service at all (unlike others censored BLs like Advance Bravely or Stay with Me). There is basically no physical touch between the two leads. Not by accident, not in a platonic way, and no acts of service, like a wet towel bath, etc. And while every "door" forces them to have sleepovers, only in the very early doors do they share a double bed, then later it is always bunk beds or separate beds - why?? Another example of a missed opportunity: in one world, they have to walk in the rain under one small umbrella, and if they get wet, they will die. Wouldn't you try to be extra close? They didn't :(

Which leaves us with 7.

What I liked additionally:
- the actors are all very good, with only rare exceptions
- many lovely side characters
- while it was repetitive, I liked the music
- the visual style

Also, why was the face of the programmer friend from university never shown but hidden inside a hoodie? I expected a big reveal in the end. Didn't happen.

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Doesn't work on so many different levels

This is my first review on here, but I just had to write one after seeing all the positive reviews and the rating for this show. They are not just positive, they are extremely positive with messages like "best drama ever", "masterpiece" and so on. I don't get that at all. Well, most of them are from 2015 and I watched it in 2022, so maybe this show just aged really badly. But I don't think so. And here's why:

Story: The overall idea of the many alternative personalities of the main lead is quite nice, I have to say! With this number of alternative personalities, so much would have been possible. But it was wasted, not explored at all. Instead, the drama was packed will all kinds of other things. It felt to me as if they wanted to make it a comedy, a love story, a mystery thriller and a story about a big corporation. And a doctor/patient story that educates the audience on psychiatric ilnesses. That's a lot. Probably not impossible but the writing here is just too bad and in the end, nothing makes sense. An example of a show, also including multiple personalities, where it made sense in the end and were the depth of the mind of the "patient" came to life is "Bad and Crazy" (2021). Also the other big aspect of the story, where they have a build-up of 18 episodes to make it appear as if there is a big dark mystery behind everything is weak, as they - spoiler alert - just don't deliver in the end. The biggest mystery to me was how I managed to watch this till the very end (self-torture, I guess ...).

Acting: the male lead is a phenomenal actor, but that doesn't help much if the writers and directors don't use his full potential. The female lead is horrible: overacting, screaming, crying like a baby, being happy like a kid - the child actor in the flashbacks was more serious than her! I have not seen her in other stuff, so I don't know if it is her inability or the director's choice! The writing for this character is definitely not suitable for a grown-up doctor and lover. Her character didn't bring anything to the story. The side actors are okay, no complaints here. I noticed the main female's dad and the psychiatrist professor as positive. However, the writing for most of the side caracters is, again, bad: the main female's brother really behaves like an a**hole the whole time (there is a 3-minute explanation somewhere in the end, that makes totally no sense), the male lead's mother, father and grandmother all are horrible people and there is little to no explanation on their behaviour in the end, the secretary is just like a dog that comes when called but is irrelevant to the story, same goes for the second love interest, and so on.

Editing: I noticed several times that the story jumps around quite a lot between places: one second they are all in his house, then her house then the company headquarter without a good reason and often without a proper segue/transition. And, but that's a K-Drama staple, overuse of flashbacks.

So, overall, I think there was so much potential, but it was executed so poorly. Definitley not worth 20 hours of your life!

Most memorable bits: Shin Se Gi's cheesy lines, Yo-na chasing after the idol and the brother (funny, but a bit homophobic) and the doctor ignoring al privacy standards without even blinking.

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The writing is abysmal, your average AI would have done a better job!

- The first two or three episodes are very good, emotional, good cliffhangers, sizzling bromance. After that, it goes downhill and is a random sequence of way too many random characters in business attire talking in random meeting rooms, offices, park decks and the like, slapping around buzzwords of the accounting and finance world, that the authors obviously didn't even understand.
- There is one obviously bad guy and the whole series is aimed at everybody else working on destroying him in a grand finale and - surprise - and that's the only surprise in this series - it just doesn't happen. Instead the story just kind of fades out. They kept it open for a second season. If this actually gets a second season I will scream in agony.
- The bad guy gets no back story whatsoever, he is just bad. And the poor actor gets nothing else to do than stand around, stare in the distance and look obviously bad.
- Same for most of the other characters: no back stories. They tried to overcome that by having many characters, but all so random that it wouldn't change anything if you left a few out. The second bad guy (Shim Hyung Woo) felt a little intersting, like he had a conscience and backstory that made him bad, but it is never explored.
- The love interest of the older lead is introduced as a badass business lady from Hongkong who acts totally evil but apparently has a plan just to reveal later that she had no plan whatsoever. Or they kept it a secrect from us. And she returns to the good side, but is totally useless.
- Minor observations:
-- The two room mates are nice caracters and sweets actors, I would have liked to see more of them.
-- Apparently, the largest accounting firm in Korea uses mainly paper files. And the filing room is the size of my bedroom and doubles as a library. And there is always still space for people to hide unnoticed to overhear conversations.
-- The company occupies two high-rise buildings, but all indoor scences take place on two floors.
-- Companies that are seconds before liquidation because their product is for a niche market (lactose free baby formula) without enough demand just need a few first-year accountants looking at their files for two days to find the great cure: market the product as something else (lactose free milk replacer) to someone else (lactose-intolerant people). Great! How could the company ever have figured that out without them? :)
- And lastly, but I kind of expect that from a K-drama, accountants are obviously able to fight off thugs with bats, 1 against 10, no problem!

Don't watch it! Look at the sky instead! It will be more interesting.

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Interesting premise destroyed by bad writing

Please ignore the MDL rating (8.6 at the time of writing in 2023)!

The very basic premise (time-traveling detective and serial killer) of this story is interesting. But the writers did a great job of destroying the potential. In two ways:
- All the characters are unbelievably stupid, except the murderers.
- The time traveling aspect is not used at all, it is rather a weird fact on the side.

To come back to the stupid characters: do you know those dramas where there is one lead character who always knows everything in advance and before everybody else, just by being super smart and of course they are also the best in every practical aspect? They can get annoying. Well, in this drama you get none of that :) Everybody is just so unbelievably stupid and incompetent it hurts. When a good detective's skills are 100, the average person's detective skills are maybe 10. All the detectives in this drama are a 1. And that's generous! No common sense at all. And they repeat their mistakes over and over again, and drag this very simple story out into 16 episodes. Some examples:
- When you want to catch a suspect, sneak up to them until you are 10 meters away, then shout at them, so they can run away from you without you being able to catch them.
- When you found out in which house a suspect is hiding, go to the house with 4 cars, all with full sirens! Then storm the house from the front without covering the back door.
- When you are a ML in a team of two and a great revelation comes to your mind, don't tell anyone and storm off angrily to get yourself in trouble.
- When you are a weak vulnerable FL, speak to a serial killer in code via TV and lure him into a dark forest where you wait for him all alone to be his next victim. Don't tell anyone of your police friends about it.

Then the time travel: time travel stories never fully make sense and that's fine. But here's a question for you: when you are a time traveling detective, would you try to catch a serial killer when he is young (in the past) or when he is old (in the future)? And as I said, the time traveling aspect is just there, it is not really relevant for the story, it just makes for some confusion and funny scenes. For a better use of time travel in a detective story, check out the K-drama Signal from 2016!

Ignore the bromance tag on this! It lasts two seconds, is super weak and can't save this train wreck.

I guess I should also say some positive things. The acting is generally quite good, except maybe the time traveling lead who has a limited set of faces. And the character development of the FL was a bit too much: for most of the drama she has the facial expression and emotional warmth of a stone and then suddenly in the end she meets a certain person and becomes normal quite instantly.

Ignore the rating and positive reviews and skip this one!

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Revenge by accident. And romance to distract you.

If you are looking for a satisfying revenge story, don't watch this! Watch "The Glory" instead - it is also not perfect, but a more satisfying watch. Here, in Itaewon Class, the ML is driven from the very beginning to get revenge, but he has no plan. He is successful in the end but only because he is lucky and somehow stumbles into it.
It feels like the narrative they wanted to push is: you just have to be a nice guy, then success will come to you. Also, it is very slow moving, the actual revenge only happens in the last episode. And even then we don't get a big finale with a bang.

The romance that is woven into the story gets a bit too much at times and is also a bit weird, especially the unconditional love the ML shows to the b*tch character for the longest time. Speaking of characters, the character development is quite weak in general, but two characters stand out to really behave erratically:
- The young heir: obviously a nice guy, he turns evil with the snip of a finger and hates himself for it all the while. And that while being the second character after the ML who should have the highest interest of getting revenge on the old scrooge, given his awful childhood.
- The second FL, the childhood "friend". She is an awful person from the very beginning and has no growth till episode 16. And all the while she seems to hate herself, judging by the single sad face expression she displays throughout the series. I'm surprised how many reviewers rooted for her.

The series was praised a lot for its diversity: a trans girl and a black guy. Well, the creators were probably meaning well, but it ended up being quite transphobic and racist. Both characters lack depth and they get no time to explore their stories. We have 16 slow-moving episodes and the black guy speaks what, maybe a total of 10 minutes? And while I don't think that only actors from the matching minority should play minority roles, I woudn't be surprised if they didn't find a trans actress who was willing to take on this simplistic role.

Some smaller observations:
- The story spans over maybe 15 years, starting in high school. But the appearance of the ML doesn't change at all - not even his hairstyle changes :)
- Of course, severely hurt people run from the bad guys following a street, instead of hiding in bushes. And of course the bad guys chasing them by car take forever to catch up. Enough time to stop for a little romantic scene. And of course, when you have the choice of running away by car or by foot, you choose the latter. I was screaming at this stupidity.
- What are the odds of running into your unknown grandma by coincidence in a country of 50 million?

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When your co-workers and the police are scarier than a psychopathic killer ...

This was very good. For the first 5 episodes. Nice pace, creative story, binge-worthy. And then it suffered from the all too common everyone-except-the-bad-guy-behaves-extremely-stupid-all-the-time syndrome and was stretched out into way too many episodes. 10 or maybe 12 episodes could have saved this. Or more creative writing. If they wouldn't have created such a power-imbalance between the male leads so early on, they could have had a few funny/thrilling episodes where they were rival killers or friends or scared of the other or whatever ... But what they chose instead was to let all the stupid people make all the stupid mistakes time and time again, ignoring all the read flags and alarm bells all around ... makes for a very frustrating watch for episodes 6 to 14 or so.

Minor observations:
- The hair gel gangster was such a funny character.
- The pushover's family was very nice. Would have loved to see them more.
- What's the deal with the internal revision lady? Her motivations stayed unclear till the end.
- How many times has this police officer NOT used her gun? Would have served her right to be killed ... *arghh*
- The co-workers would have deserved some more revenge. The toilet scene with the immediate superior was a good start, but not enough.
- The finale with the escape room must have been a joke, right? Could have been so much better with a better (longer) use of the escape room to tease the bad guy a bit longer. And what happened after the escape room was ridiculous.
- At one point, MDL hat the bromance tag on this. It was removed. Rightfully so, as there is no bromance.

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A very aesthetic fairy tale that also has some depth

At first, the story is so stereotypical that you would expect to read it in an encyclopedia entry on BL as an example story: sweet little weakling is heavily bullied in school until the savior comes along. And of course, they are stepbrothers. All the good stuff :)

But upon closer inspection, some things aren't as stereotypical as you would think - or judging from quite a few very bad reviews here - not as stereotypical as some would want it to be. This is not for you if ...
... you like a simple story stretched out over 12 episodes of 45 minutes each, spelling everything out for you
... you need a clear seme/uke relationship with no deviations
... you are looking for somewhat realistic cinematography or a very realistic story (but please, which BL ever has that?)

To elaborate on the above statements:
- The episodes are 25 minutes each and every episode is a new chapter in their life. So it is somewhat fast-moving and spans over a year or maybe even more. But to me, it was very nicely paced and it is easy to fill in the gaps that you didn't see.
- In the beginning, the smaller boy is indeed the weakling and the tall guy is the strong protector but over time it becomes apparent that the smaller guy is actually the stronger and more confident one. This culminates in the nice twist in the finale. I don't want to spoil, so let me just say: as this is Korean, it is especially nice how being gay is such a non-issue.
- The cinematography and set design and makeup and styling and everything visual in this is just from another world. Everything is in soft pastels, with extremely nice sun-lit views, sun flares and lovely interior design and architecture. And of course he has a part-time job in a flower shop that's straight out of an AI's mind with the perfection level and the pink level set to maximum. So in that regard, it is all very fake. At one point there is an outside scene on the street in an actual neighborhood and it felt a bit out of place to me, as it was - surprise - realistic looking. Some might hate this style, I love it. It is a fluffy fairy tale - enjoy it! The story and how the step-brothers act towards each other and with their mother is also a bit unrealistic at times, but even that for me adds to the positive fairy-tale experience.

Smaller details:
- The two friends are such nice characters, as I said before, especially as this is Korean.
- The smaller actor is so unbelievably good at conveying emotion with his eyes and face: the looks of fear and love and happiness from the tiniest of facial changes are so convincing - at least for me (I have read contrary views on here).

What a blossoming cherry tree is to nature, this piece of art is to BL.

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