There's some tv-dramas in Korea that can get a little bit hard to rate. If I were to review The Greatest Love on individual criterias, without considering the whole show, I don't think I would get anything close to its final rating here in MDL. Take the plot script for example :
It's not exactly anything we haven't seen before. Annoying / arrogant / jerk MC falls for the 'straight-man' played by a lovely woman, which in turn falls for the 'growing-not-so-arrogant-in-progress' MC. Remind you of something else already ?
Filming ? Not even that great. From the pitiful CGFX to the very unoriginal view angles, nothing stands out. So what does, exactly ?
As it happens : dialogs.
Dialogs in this TV-show (especially between the male/female leads) are ones of the best I could hear - correction - see (subtitles, since I don't understand korean ... yet). It makes up, hands high, for anything less well-written, and it's a real asset here since the story focused on very few characters. Most of the dialogs are snappy, fluid, sometimes a little too fast, while some lines are so violent that you can almost hear the slap on the face of the interlocutor.
Of course it helps when someone like Gong Hyo Jin is one of the actress to play those lines (and yes, I'm fanboying, so what ?)
Still, dialogs are not a trivial matter on this drama, and you have to follow carefully to fully understand what the characters are actually meaning. Which is great. Well, it's always great, when writers respect the viewers and don't take them for passive fools.
Another point of interest in this drama is the way the story unfolds. The development, of sort. Authors/writers must have enjoyed this part quite a bit, since they've played with it as often as they could. Here's an example : this drama is, more often than not, quite funny. The thing is - most of the time - you can see the joke coming a mile away. It's quite highly predictable. But as predictable as it is, you will still laught at the end. Since you expected the joke, the writers moved it just slightly elsewhere (the minor accident in the parking lot, for example).
This is one of the thing I love about this drama : predictable/unpredictable moves transformed into minor/major events, which in turn push the show a little further. It's not actually that original, or that unpredictable, in any way, but the show in its whole gives you a comfortable feeling, while remaining just snappy enough to pin you on your chair and complete it.
So at the end of this review, you, as a potential viewer, could enjoy this drama as I did. This drama may not please everyone, but if you're not waiting for it as your next masterpiece, this TV-show should provide a brief, good moment, comfortable, while not exactly "inoubliable", which results in a 8.0 rating.