Oh Jung-se is so dang good.

It’s Okay to Not be Okay, wasn’t really my kind of story, and that’s okay. Most of the reason I kept watching was to follow the super long reddit threads. The show didn’t do anything wrong (actually I’d argue it did very few things wrong); it just never got me. Maybe binge watching would have made me more invested, or maybe it would’ve made things 40 times worse. It’s not something that I could relate to, although I’m sure it will speak to a lot of people.

By far the most striking aspect of the show initially was the cinematography. The directing style was vivid, and the sets were beautiful. The tone is this consistent, creepy-ish, melancholy but hopeful vibe. It’s characterized by a quiet elegance that really works if you’re in the mood for it. The OST is really great and it fits well with everything else.

The slow plot movement is my real issue. The mysterious aspect of this show didn’t work for me, and I’ve learned that I need more plot-driven stories. I was never excited to watch the next episode. Every episode could have been the last one, and I wouldn’t have minded. The ending is ultimately satisfying, but it still leaves some questions unanswered.

However, what this show lacks in plot movement, it makes up for in adorable characters that I loved watching. The whole supporting cast is hilarious, and although it isn’t exactly a comedy, it makes you laugh at the right moments. And it makes you cry too. The main leads never got my heart, but I still feel like I’ve gone on a journey with these characters.

The Main Cast:

Kim Soo-hyun was the reason everybody started watching, and the man is really talented, I’ll admit. He somehow always has me on his side, even when I couldn’t relate to him. The chemistry between him and Seo Ye-ji was really great too. I don’t have a lot to say about Seo Ye-ji, but I think she was well cast for this part.

For me, Oh Jung-se was the star of this show and the reason to keep watching. I had a huge soft spot for his character, and I thought he did an amazing job bringing Moon Sang-tae to life. You could see him really becoming Sang-tae in everything from his face to the way he held himself. I’m a new fan. I’ll watch anything he does now.

Supporting Cast/Characters:

I really loved Jae-soo (Kang Gi-doong). I loved his character, and I thought the performance was great. I wish he got more of a spotlight in this story, but he stole the scenes he was in.

I always love Kim Mi-kyung, and I liked her here too. She’s the best mom.

Lee Sang-in (Kim Joo-heon) and Yoo Seung-jae (Park Jin-joo) made a great pair. Their scenes together and apart were always hilarious. I’ve got my eye on Park Jin-joo now, and I hope she gets more prominent roles in the future.

The OK Hospital people were also a nice big family. Some standouts were Kim Chang-wan as the hospital director and patients Kan Pil-wong (Kim Ki-cheon) and Joo Jung-tae (Jung Jae-kwang).

Oh also the child actors were good. Yeah I don’t have anything bad to say here really. Great cast all around.

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Worth it for Yoon Shi-yoon.

This show had me invested from the start. Maybe it was Yoon Shi-yoon crying. Maybe it was the endless potential this concept and story had. It was satisfying, but it could’ve actually been amazing if things happened a little differently.

The Premise:

I wouldn’t describe Train as a parallel worlds show. If you’re looking for fantasy, I’d urge you to look elsewhere. Sure there are several worlds and they certainly are parallel, but for the most part, Train is a police/serial-killer show and the existence of a separate world just complicates things a heck ton.

The short 12 episode format does a lot to keep you invested. Of all the shows I was watching on air, this was always the one I wanted to watch first on Saturday. The pacing was really great. Reveals happen in quick succession, and you never feel like you’re waiting for something to happen. I think this would be a really good show to binge watch.

A note: If I could go back and watch this show for the first time, I never would have read any episode discussions, because I feel like a lot of the less obvious reveals would’ve hit wayy harder. Some fans are just so good at theorizing. There’s some conspiracy theory level stuff in here that I wish I could’ve just experienced while watching.

Cast/Characters:

Train was Yoon Shi-yoon’s show. He carried the emotions, he instigated most of the events, he’s the reason to watch. I became a fast fan, and I want to watch him in comedy now, because I need to see the man smile. The side characters are all good, but it’s hard to fall in love with them in the 12 episodes we had. The villain was super great though; the story was way more thought out and interesting than I initially expected on that front (but I wanted moooore).

Yoon Shi-yoon as Do-won A had all the backstory, and he was the one person in both worlds that you get attached to. I think Train does the other members of the main cast dirty. Do-won B, Seo-kyung (Kyung Soo-jin), and Jung-min (Shin So-yool) all deserve better. Do-won B and Jung-min are characters that might have been so fun to explore, but ultimately the show falls flat on that front.

The female lead, Seo-kyung, is developed but she’s so boring. The character was fine, but Kyung Soo-jin and her one facial expression were kind of hard to watch. She’s probably a good actress, but I didn’t really like her here. I might just be biased, because as soon as Shin So-yool showed up, I wanted her to be the main lead; I was actually devastated when I looked at the cast list and found out she wasn’t.

Final Thoughts:

All in all, I wanted more from Train. It actually ended pretty well. I’m sure this show has plot holes, but I thought it did a good job answering some questions that I had given up on earlier (while also opening a new can of worms, but whatever). I appreciate that. It just could’ve been so much better, and I’ll always resent it for that.

Also I highkey want a spin-off following a certain very bad but important person that I won’t name here. Please @OCN, I’ll love you forever.

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Weird in the best way

Into the Ring is a really cute story. If you’re in the mood for an underdog tale or if you’re having a bad day and just want to watch a girl and her long lost best friend be adorable, I’d totally recommend. But when it leaves the main cast, it’s not nearly as fun to watch.

At first, I think this show knew that its strength was the couple at the center, and it never strayed away from them for very long. While not laugh out loud funny, the directing was off-kilter in a good way and the heroine was delightfully weird. I even liked the some of the odd side characters. The female lead’s two friends and the little boy they babysit are all fun to watch, though I wish we got to know them more.

I’ve been trying to pin down what didn’t work for me. It’s not the writing; I think the plot moves along pretty well. The story wasn’t slow, but it was just kind of boring… the cute scenes stopped being enough for me after a little while. The villains are the corrupt politician types, and while I think Ahn Nae-sang was good in his role, I didn’t particularly like or care about him or any of the other sketchy politician people.

Nana was pretty great, especially at the beginning. I'd totally watch Park Sung-hoon be a serial killer. These two made this show watchable. The OST is low-key, but it's got a couple songs I really liked.

All in all, Into the Ring was alright; it just needed a more compelling main conflict. It’s a simple show with some really sweet moments that I think I’ll remember it fondly.

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Marriage, not Dating is a fun show that knows itself really well. It's sweet, hilarious, and slightly over the top for most of its run. The cast and directing really gave it a heart even when the story bordered on frustrating, and it was an ultimately satisfying watch, though I think I might have loved it more under different circumstances.

Overall Story:
Marriage, not Dating starts with a bang and a really fun premise. It centers on two characters with vastly different views on marriage and dating that fake a relationship. But ultimately it was drawn out too long to really stay with me. There was a lot of back and forth. At least once an episode, the female lead would decide that she needed to tell the truth only for a change of heart to occur minutes later. I would have loved if she had fully committed to it, without it seeming like she was dragged along for the ride.

Our main characters are my favorites, largely due to the cast (more on that later), but some of the side characters are incredibly frustrating and occasionally nuts. This story is rooted in the real world and feels realistic in some ways, but a lot of the conflict was contrived. Romantic angst is unavoidable in dramas, and didn’t last very long, but it still frustrated me.

Family is a big theme here, and I think this show does a good job of fleshing out the stories of our main characters’ families and how neither is exactly what they seem. The scenes with them weren’t always my favorite, but they led to some tear inducing moments, and everything came full circle.

Episode Format:
Each episode starts out with an event happening, and then the episode backtracks to tell you how we got there, often subverting expectations. I really liked this device, especially early on, where the anticipation was on screen in the form of a countdown to disaster. Although, some of them were fake-outs and that was annoying. A lot of the later episodes continue subverting expectations in this way, but the anticipation leading up to the event was a lot less emphasized, which I thought was sad. Some of the starting scenes also weren’t very impactful and it felt like the writer just chose one because she had to.

Production:
One of the things I loved about this show was that it was a rom-com that was both romantic and funny. The comedy landed really well, and that was in part due to the directing and the sound effects.

Cast:
In my opinion, Marriage, not Dating is worth watching for the cast alone. Even if it was frustrating at times and I felt disconnected, these leads always won me over, and they’re part of the reason I’ll remember this fondly.

Han Groo is hilarious and pretty great at physical comedy, but she also brought a lot of emotion when she needed to. She was so believable, and she made me love what could have been an annoying character.

Yeon Woo-jin is my new favorite person, and I’ll probably watch everything he’s done after this. I’m pretty sure this was his first lead role, and he was great. His character, the rich jerk, has been done before, but the writing and his delivery made him lovable from the first time he showed up on-screen.

The rest of the main cast was fine, but my favorite of them was Heo Jung-min as Lee Hoon-dong, the female lead’s ex. He was so dumb and hate-able, but I really liked watching him. To be honest, his character in Another Miss Oh was basically the same guy (if my memory is right), but he’s good in these roles, and with this director.

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I can’t believe I watched this entire thing. The things I do for Ji Chang-wook. Ultimately Backstreet Rookie was a fun, easy watch, and I did like it, but I can’t ever see myself recommending it to anybody.

There were a few main reasons why people were skeptical of this show before it even aired. The age gap between the leads didn’t really bother me at all. But I can’t really ignore Um Moon-suk’s character, Han Dal-shik. He reinforced really terrible racial stereotypes, and I honestly can’t believe this character made it into the drama. Ultimately I did find him funny, and Um Moon-suk had me laughing a couple times, but I couldn’t help but cringe every time there was a fly buzzing around his head.

Other than that, I didn’t have many problems with this drama, because I wasn’t expecting anything at all. I just wanted something watchable, and that’s what I got. I wasn’t disappointed by it, like others seemed to be. You lose less when you go in with zero expectations.

I do think Backstreet Rookie had potential though. It’s a wacky and cartoonish comedy and I liked the directing style, and most of the comedy and references land well. I especially liked the over-the-top fight scenes in the first half, but as the fights take a back seat, this show becomes little more than a rom-com with characters that I couldn’t really imagine together.

When Backstreet Rookie is a comedy about a convenience store, it’s funny albeit aimless. When it tries to do romance, it fails. Ji Chang-wook and Kim Yoo-jung are adorable together as boss/employee or mentor/mentee, but as a romantic pairing, they fall flat. The show has an undeniable charm though. I like the leads, and I even liked most of the side stories. There were some really sweet character moments in between the comedy as well.

The Cast:
There’s a part of me that wishes I didn’t watch this, because I can feel myself falling out of love with Ji Chang-wook. I haven’t seen any of his projects in full since Healer. But after watching this, some of his facial expressions stand out to me more than they did before, and I’ve started questioning his skills as an actor. I think I’ll probably just (try to) stop watching his projects and wait til I hear good things. In the meantime, I’ll rewatch Healer again (and again and again). That being said, if you really like Ji Chang-wook, this has a lot of him, and he’s pretty adorable.

Kim Yoo-jung gives a good performance, but I didn’t buy this relationship because of her character. I blame the cartoonish writing for that mostly.

In other news, I aspire to like Han Sun-hwa. I recently finished Marriage, not Dating, and she does hate-able second lead fine, but it’s boring. I wish her character was more than irritating.

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Kind of hilarious.

Kkondae Intern is an adorable little show that I wish got more recognition. It’s not an amazing story, and it’s not particularly addicting, but it’s got a low-key charm and great characters and I actually really liked it. This was initially on my radar, because of Park Hae-jin, who I love. But I actually started watching it because of Park Ki-woong, because I missed him after finishing Gaksital.

Ramen felt a lot more important while watching this. Park Hae-jin made me believe his love for it.
The characters and the story were a little ridiculous, but I was sad to see it end. I’ve got a renewed love for Park Hae-jin, but he’s not the only person I was watching for. Every scene had a reason to watch, whether or not he was there.

Cast/Characters:

It takes a while for you to get a sense of the characters, especially the main lead, but once you do it’s a fun ride. Park Hae-jin is great in comedy, which was unexpected, because I’ve only seen him play low-key and high-key sociopaths (and also a sad second lead, but I don’t count that one because he was boring). He’s also got great chemistry with Kim Eung-soo, and I would totally watch a 50 episode sitcom about them living together, working together, and being grumpy together.

Park Ki-woong’s outfits cracked me up. Yep that’s all.

Honestly, a lot of the supporting cast is forgettable, with the exception of Han Ji-eun and Noh Jong-hyun (the “main” supporting cast, I guess). I really liked the two of them and their storylines.

The OST:

I kind of love the music in this show. I’d get really hyped when certain songs started playing. The OST isn’t amazing, but it really works with this show, and it made me laugh in its own right.

Final thoughts: Y'all should totally watch this if it seems like your thing. It's only 12 hours long, so not a super long time commitment, and it made me smile.

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I like to think of Splash Splash LOVE as a story of a girl who learns to appreciate math. I couldn’t stop smiling after finishing it, and it legitimately made me laugh. It sucked me in with its lovable characters despite an absurd premise. This show feels like a little dream, which is fitting for a tiny two episoder. It doesn’t totally make sense, and I doubt I understood all the jokes, but it’s charismatic throughout.

I’ve seen some reviews of this show that say they want more, but I was perfectly fine with the two episodes we got. Actually I think I’d have gotten frustrated if it was any longer. The characters were all caricatures and we’ve seen them all before, from the bumbling heroine to the strong silent second lead. Splash Splash LOVE is sweet and to the point, and that’s what keeps these elements from being overbearing. Though I guess I could watch 10 episodes worth of Kim Seul-gi and Yoon doo-joon being cute together.

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SKY Castle isn’t really my kind of television. Wealthy people trying to get their kids into college, ehhh, there’s nothing telling me I need to watch it just from the plot description. And honestly, the show isn’t much more than the synopsis. But what sets it apart is great directly, a tight script, and an amazing ensemble cast.

There’s not a lot I can talk about that hasn’t been said already, but I just like expressing my opinion so I will.

What I will say is that I wasn’t sure if I liked this show at the outset. The characters are all a little frustrating and the reveals take time. I don’t think I was able to appreciate the humor. If it hadn’t been for the great reviews and my compulsion to finish everything I start, I don’t know if I would have watched all of it. But it’s way easier for me to forgive shows that start out alright and have a really strong second half than the other way around. It took awhile for me to fall in love with SKY Castle, but boy did I when shit hit the fan.

I found out later that this writer, Yoo Hyun-mi, had written Gaksital (my newest old favorite show). SKY Castle is so so different, but what hasn’t changed in the 7 years between these shows, is her love of setup. Ultimately for me, Gaksital was the one I liked watching more, but SKY Castle is definitely the better show.

One wonderful thing about SKY Castle is that it’s a confident show. This show knew what it was and what it wanted to be at the outset. Nothing felt shoved in to fill airtime. Everything seemed like there was higher purpose and a plan, and it was nice to sit back and watch it unfold. It’s sometimes hard to watch a show when it feels like every word holds weight. Every scene felt like it was leading somewhere else, but it doesn’t feel like one cohesive story until the second half.

There are some scenes that in retrospect don’t seem important anymore, like the ones that took place with the dads in the hospital. It felt like a completely different show, and those scenes were often the boring ones. Eventually things connect, but I don’t think we needed to spend quite so much time there.

Ultimately I’m really glad I kept watching. The characters sometimes seemed so alien that I couldn’t relate at all to their motivations, but as we got to know them more, I started to love all of them, even if I didn’t love the storylines initially. I loved the cast for their literal quirks. And I felt their pain in the hard moments. Situations that I will probably never be in seemed so real, and I realized that everything that goes on in SKY Castle, though exaggerated, happens in the real world, which makes the emotional moments even more charged.

SKY Castle isn’t an emotional show (or at least it wasn’t for me), but there were surprising tear-inducing moments. It’s not in-your-face super sad or anything, but the cast and directing is so great that you can’t help but feel what the characters are feeling in the moment.

I didn’t realize until later on what an impression this cast made on me. Characters I hated or found boring originally had me cracking up later on (mostly Professor Cha). I was so happy to see such a strong female cast backing this drama. Even the child actors made an impression, and I’ll probably be following their careers (Kim Dong-hee was actually great in Extracurricular, I highly recommend).

Final thoughts: There’s no doubting that SKY Castle is good television, even though it wasn’t always my thing. I’m a new fan of everyone involved in this production, and I’m excited to see what’s next for them.

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You should watch it.

It’s now been several weeks since I finished Gaksital, and I’ve been thinking about how to write this review since well before the end, but nothing has been coherent. I’ve got eight pages of notes, many of which are repetitive; hopefully this will make sense.

To be honest, my expectations starting out were already sky high. City Hunter and Healer are two of my favorite dramas of all time. Going into Gaksital, I was promised action sequences, secret identities, and a superhero story. There was no way I wasn’t going to like it.

In short, Gaksital is a lot of things, not all of it good. If you asked me to list what this show does right and wrong, the latter list might be a lot longer. It’s remarkable how some technically good dramas fail to get my heart, but Gaksital for all its faults is one that I think I’ll remember for a long time.

The Story:

At its heart, Gaksital is a simple story about a man and a movement. But while the big picture is uncomplicated, the smaller character stories and their relationships are all tangled. It’s a wonderful mess, because part of good storytelling is good character development, and Gaksital had a lot of that planned for us.

Gaksital is quite literally, a big story. I don’t just mean that it’s epic (although it is). At 28 60-minute episodes short, this is officially the longest kdrama I’ve ever watched in full. Was it tightly written? No. Could it have been several episodes shorter? Maybe. Did I love it despite those things? Duh.

I felt like I was reading a book. The story takes its time to set itself up, which I actually wasn’t sad about. I knew vaguely where it was going, and I was more than happy to let it take me along for the ride. It didn’t go exactly where I wanted it to go in the middle, and it was occasionally repetitive, but ultimately Gaksital was never boring.

Characters:

The great thing about Gaksital is that we start out with all our main characters in place. They’ve got their goals and agendas. But it’s never static. Their attitudes towards each other are ever changing, but they’re still recognizable as the same people at their core.

We open with Kang-to (Joo-won) being terrible. He’s hated by the Korean people, but he’s hard to hate as a hero, because we know he’s working his way up in the world in the only way he knows how: by siding with the Japanese. And among the Japanese police, he’s somewhat an underdog, having worked his way up from the very bottom because of his heritage. The show sets up a moral conflict within him so well. Hating his actions but also being on his side was my favorite aspect of the opening episodes, because he wasn’t good, but he was fighting against a bigger bad.

The thing about morally gray characters and questionable pasts is that it gives a layer beneath the surface. We understand the bad guys that much better, because our “hero” understands them. I get to watch a man’s motivations and actions totally change while it was apparent that he’s still the same person on the inside. While Kang-to was never unpredictable, he had the moral conflict that makes the anti-hero story so compelling, and Joo-won didn’t hesitate to show it to us, even though the writing wasn’t always there.

Most of the rest of the main cast is similarly layered, but I do want to express disappointment with the female lead, Oh Mok-dan played by Jin Se-yeon. Ultimately Mok Dan isn’t a strong character. She’s a strong person, I’m sure, but she doesn’t have the same depth as the rest of the main cast. She plays her role and plays it well, but often is reduced to a plot device, which is sad. I wonder if she would’ve been more compelling if she had been played by a different actress, but I don’t think there was ever much to her character in the writing to begin with.

The Romance:

I dunno, it was fine. This show isn’t a romance, and it doesn’t pretend to be. I believed it, and it got me in the heart, but ultimately romance and love is all a vehicle for something else. It’s often what drives the characters. Gaksital isn’t about people falling in love. It’s about people being in love and the terrible and great things they do because of it. I felt like the romance served its purpose, but this will never be a couple I think about later.

The OST:

I’m not normally one for romantic angst, but I kind of loved it here mostly because my favorite song would play every time the characters were sad and pining. As a whole, the OST was great, and it always fit the mood. The action sequences and the dramatic moments all had their music. It took me so long to find the album on Spotify, but I have now and I’m happy.

The Cast:

First and foremost: Joo-won. I’m officially obsessed with him. While I have little to no interest in his other work, I’ll probably watch everything he puts out in the future. Joo-won is so great in this. Even when his hair is weird and his eyebrow is ever furrowed, there’s something about his energy and the directing that makes him magnetic on screen, and it’s a pleasure to watch. I started going through Joo-won withdrawal even before I finished the show, and Imma be watching all his 1N2D episodes on YouTube so hopefully that’ll tide me over until Alice comes out.

The thing about Joo-won in this role is that even when I didn’t like him, I still liked him. I was always with him, and I could feel what he was feeling. It’s not unique to him, but with the heightened emotions in this show, it was super noticeable.

Park Ki-woong: This guy is great. Or maybe his character was great. But he was great in this role; that’s undeniable. Talk about perfect casting. He’s so likeable until he’s not, and I loved watching his arc. I started Kkondae Intern as soon as I finished this, because I missed him so much.

Jin Se-yeon: I mentioned previously that I wasn’t really a fan of her performance. But I found out later that she was only like 18 at the time, and now I feel untalented and lazy, but such is life.

The Hair:

I had a lot of questions, and some issues. Maybe it’s a 1930s thing. Maybe it’s a 2010’s thing. Either way I often had problems with Kang-to’s hair. There’s one segment of episodes where it was good. Gaksital’s hair was always on point though. Perfectly windswept. Perfectly badass.

A brief description of some less-good things:

This writer has a love for setup that goes from intriguing to borderline frustrating. The characters are all smart and take their time to plan their actions, but I wanted to shake them into acting faster.

This show could have been a really great character study, but I feel like some of the development happens too fast to feel genuine.

There’s a revenge plot in here that feels half forgotten about for most of the drama.

Yeah, the bad stuff doesn’t matter anymore. I love this show.

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