⚠️ this review has been edited, but contains spoilers in terms of plot and character dynamics. read at your own risk. originally posted in April of 2023. ⚠️

i was going to write out a whole long ass, terribly formal review of this (complete with quoting OST lyrics and all) and then stopped halfway, bc with the things this show put me through it deserves nothing less than a review that is as chaotic as possible. (in case you're wondering, the original draft is still sitting in my notes never to see the light of day sksksksk)

so let's get this out here: the plot, for 3/4ths of its run, imo, was sh*t. and then it wasn't, but that was during the last four or so episodes when they made some questionable choices and left me trying to figure out how on earth things could have wrapped up so well and yet so wrong at the same time. like killing off Oh Man Ok, for instance, someone who could be considered the most interesting character after Doo Hak himself (and who i consider, courtesy of Jin Yi Han, as the dark horse of the cast in terms of powerhouse acting—give me back my morally ambiguous team leader with little backstory, a f*ckable voice and fierce loyalty to the man who chose the kid that wasn't even his f*cking son to act as an umbrella for [iykyk]), or separating our favorite "good girl/bad boy" couple after the main ship for no reason other than "a special wedding and a special divorce" (Hyung Joo and Yeon Joo—the JooJoo couple my beloveds 😔).
even Jung Shin and Doo Hak, the two we have been rooting for for so long, can never seem to get to the altar, unlike their on again/off again counterparts. and then, ofc, do not get me started on how the Big Bad never got the justice that was coming for him bc SOMEONE decided it was a good idea to close the f*cking door of the hospital room , or how we thought we should all gather around one man (name redacted) to hear his (supposed) last words and then freak out when he passes out from blood loss when we should have been getting him to a F*CKING DOCTOR IN THE FIRST PLACE. *exhales* but this is k-drama land, and logic sometimes is not in the equation. i am used to this by now
(i will take this opportunity to say that this is not a show that you binge watch. this is a show of makjang-like proportions, where there is one more person to hate every week and you must seethe in your chair for the next six days while awaiting the next episode. as someone who was lucky enough to be able to volunteer on the segmenting and editing team for Viki [the uh *cough* official streamers of the show after Wavve], the upside to this was finishing my assigned portion, watching the rest of the episode, and then heading to the team chat to see the rest of us having mostly the same view of things asfjhslkmkcsncnsq)

the acting was..... ok. Jung Shin, through no fault of her own, might have had the weakest writing here, imo—compared to In Ah's role in Mr. Queen i thought the performance was lacking. Dong Yoon as Doo Hak knocked it out of the f*cking ballpark (no surprise there) but even in this he is neck and neck with Young Woo: the ability to play such an unstable and emotionally damaged character at the age of 23 in what is his first real major, gritty role (after debuting in BL's You Make Me Dance and sticking to mostly light-hearted and slice-of-life offers since then) is something to be acknowledged, and despite my qualms about the final showdown in ep 16 you will have to burn the sight of him screaming that he is sick and tired of things at the woman he thought was his mother out of my braincells bc it's staying there. for a while. (like uh. he's turning 24 this year. the man is five years older than me and he is eating this sh*t up f*cked up script and all) the gang, as i affectionately like to call them, also did an amazing job, and even several members who i was prepared to write off as mortal enemies settled into a "scratch my back i scratch yours" arrangement with Doo Hak by the end.

the ending itself, tho—that was also very vague, but i think that might have been intentional? like we're told there's a warrant to be served but we're not told who it's for. even when Am-daek says that "she's his mother" and that her son is inside the Yeosu theater watching one last film, we have no idea which son she's talking about. for all we know, it could be the system, failing Lee Doo Hak once again. it could be the prosecution, come to take in one of their own. Cheol Woong, for his part once sh*t has hit the fan, wants to spend the rest of his life atoning, but his hyung stops him. "don't," he says. "it's all in the past." is this a quasi-redemption arc, something the writers decided on to tide those of us who hate tragic endings over? idk, but i will not accept it. something in me wants to see Cheol Woong go to therapy but also suffer, have just one more taste of the medicine that Doo Hak has been forced to swallow until now. but then again, maybe i'm being more like Doo Hak throughout the first half of this, and not like the Doo Hak we see when all is said and done.