This drama was heavily weighted down by its formulaic approach to world-building a story around "what makes a genius a genius" and ultimately gave the story a dated feel (if you know what I mean). So, if this was pre-2018 it would have been a great C-drama. Because then that type of "villain of the week takedown" would have felt refreshing, innovative, and new. (Well...at least in the C-drama world, since Kdrama already had that down since Lee Minho became the "City Hunter", child!) But to be fair, since 2019 C-dramas have carved a big chunk of their resources into those types of drama and have adopted that type of formula as a sub-genre. So, we have seen the "genius child who is always 10 steps ahead" trope many times before in Joy of Life, Ancient Detective, Snow Sword Stride, Under the Microscope, The Sleuth of Ming Dynasty, who rules the World, The Imperial Coroner, and many more...that at this point this drama felt like it came too late.

And most of these dramas were actually really well done compared to this one. It is certainly not to say that you cannot create a good drama from a sub-genre and formula that's already been well-established. It's just a little bit harder and requires more deliberate writing to make the plot captivating. The problem with this drama was that it didn't raise the bar. It just copied and pasted the formula...but as an audience, you felt like they thought they were creating something that was gonna blow our minds. I can assure you that they did not. The plot conclusion was so easy to infer. it was so obvious who the big baddie was from the very beginning.

Most importantly, the takedowns started to become repetitive and very predictable by episode 17. Yeah, the guy was smart...but we've seen smarter and more thoughtful convoluted plots from our "genius" MCs before. For example, in Snow Storm Stride this man designed a plan that required him to travel from one end of "China" to another to entrap the season's big baddie. AND it wasn't until the last episode you were able to put together exactly what he was doing. Additionally, in many of the dramas cited above there was a lot of smart and interesting foreshadowing and character development to make the transitions from one villain plotline to the next villain plotline seamless. We watched the MC of every single one of these dramas become better after every single villain or obstacle they had to overcome. Either by gaining more physical power or wisdom. But in this drama, the MC came in already a "super genius" and wasn't really any character development. We met him a certain way at the beginning and he stayed that same way in the end. It's almost as if...he regressed, tbh.

I'm not even gonna talk about the love story. I felt like one of the main points they were trying to make was how "cold calculations and rationality devoid of human empathy can turn someone into a monster themselves"...So having the girl around made him see the value in being empathetic and to not use human beings as pawns in his machinations without their consents...or whatever. But then they broke up, in typical man fashion he couldn't stop being a jerk and decided to sacrifice their relationship instead...And like there was no reason or need for it. The whole point of the drama was that he was this super genius or whatever...so why couldn't he figure out another way to do this without being a complete asshole? Well...we will never know. And also...he wasn't even "That cold-blooded and calculated at the beginning" to be seen as a bad guy. I don't know if it's a flaw in the writing of the actor's portrayal...but I couldn't see it. There was a lot of "tell and almost no show" when it came to that aspect of the drama.

Look, it's not a terrible drama. The acting was good. It was actually one of the few dramas this year that had several well-choreographed fighting scenes. The costumes and sets were stellar in design, no complaints there. Overall, it's not a bad drama to watch. It's just late...