Aged Way Worse Than Milk

There's an obvious case to be made around the exploration of the ups and downs of being a young adult, but this drama was an excruciating exercise in superficiality, offering nothing but a hollow shell of what could have been a worthy experience. From its cardboard characters to its cringe-worthy dialogue and moments, the drama failed to maintain an attractive hook, opting instead for a glossy, saccharine portrayal that felt more like a caricature than a digestible imitation. The stories were equally pretty shallow as well, its attempts at drama fell flat, overshadowed by its overwhelming lack of substance, conviction and commitment between most of the characters, relationships and dynamics. Its surface-level approach with everything left no room for any proper investment to be had. By every metric possible, the 2nd season was a significant downgrade to what was an already struggling piece. Yoo Eun Jae was undeniably the weakest link in season 1, recasting her actress to someone who's struggling to play it, made things 10 folds worse. The replacement was trying really hard to mimic the original while the actress facial expressions, fluency and intonations were the polar opposite. It doesn't take a blind man to be appalled by the comparison, not like the original was any better. Unfortunately, things got even worse, her continuous story, background, conflicts, motives, and character writing were a nauseating concoction of utter literary incompetence and creative bankruptcy, a slap in the face to anyone with even a modicum of taste. To be fair, both Ye Ri & Eun Bin brought a much needed improved performances into the 2nd season, their characters as well had a better fit. Overall, the drama was a disappointingly bland and forgettable entry that failed to leave any lasting positive impact. If you care, streaming services like Netflix cut off any inner songs/tunes/humming/reading-lyrics-out-loud, the first episode is +3 minutes shorter than TV.

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Steve Jobs on Crack

Where would you even begin with this crazy hot mess? The first 3-4 episodes were acceptable despite moving too fast and creating many gaps. However, as the drama unfolded, it became clear that it was biting off more than it could chew. Right off from episode 5, the drama became an irrecoverable mess. The pacing was erratic, jumping between weak fabricated plot twists, jarring narrative and bloated segments with no sense of cohesion. The drama was throwing everything at the viewers to see what sticks. Action, thriller, fantasy, sci-fi, mystery, melodrama, the drama couldn't decide what it wanted to be nor it managed to mix any of them well. The characters felt like caricatures rather than fully developed individuals, and their motivations often seemed arbitrary, inconsistent and generally weak. If the drama wanted to go for stupid ridiculousness then why not raise the stakes to match? Not even the ending could measure up to its intent despite its "supposed" twist.

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Nutjobs

Not enough alien juice! Another Netflix slop with no soul, rhyme or rhythm. Actually, this is a good example for having an interesting big idea but don't have a clue what to do with it. The first 2 episodes were interesting with a good build up, however, everything that followed up was a let down. After garnering enough attention in the initial episodes, it just wanted to get to the finish line quickly regardless of how it does it. All Netflix is good for is adding scenes of characters smoking, that's the typical Netflix-tax for you. On the bright side, at least the leads brought a decent performance.

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A Man In The Hole

Not the first drama with time travel to chase a lost love and not the best either. The first few episodes introduced us to the concept and up to episode 3 it seemed promising. The first time travel was to the past and the second one returned to the present to see the consequences of his actions. He did something minute in the past but resulted in him turning into a gangster once returned. The drama hinted into creating these radical scenarios for every round trip which sounded like fun. Unfortunately, this was a one off thing and the subsequent events were utterly disappointing. The entire plot device of this manhole was handled poorly. There were obvious coherency problems and plot holes, pun intended. I think the writer realized this problem which is why he didn't include any traveling between episodes 11-15. Speaking of which, these episodes got significantly dumbed down and became soulless and out of touch. They made the love rival blatantly bad and psycho to open the way for the main lead to have a clear black and white cut, avoiding any moral ambiguity the viewers might run across. That was the only way for the writer to glue them together without performing mental gymnastics. There were other remarks to be said about characters' reasoning, underlying theme, chemistry, side characters, story structure, and romance, but maybe on a later time.

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Balloons For The Circus

The drama kept teasing us endlessly to what might have happened in Italy but it never revealed it. Sure, you can make some obvious assumptions but that's not as satisfying especially with the constant teasing. Makjang shows are designed to push your buttons through what's obvious from the observer perspective and this drama does exactly that but also eases the pain by making every character to have an unadjust trait or 10, including all of the leads. By doing this, it also makes it easier for the viewers to go softer on some of the wrong doings. You end up watching it to see how the car crash will end. In this case, a lot of fast and big changes happened in the last 40 minutes despite the drama having all the time in the world to approach its resolution more gracefully. Although it the drama was somewhat alright, but the harsh shift in the last 4 episodes made it really bad and unbearable. The main confrontation of the involved parties in the cafe was an example of that. The writer just wanted to amp it up as high as possible to squeeze the last dribbles of broadcast ratings. One thing I didn't like is how the drama forced every character to be connected to one another, it pushed the improbability of interconnected stories a bit too hard that it became ridiculous even for a makjang drama. If I had to pick one thing that irked me the most, it's how Da Ba's mother react differently between her daughter and Eun Gang on the suspicions of potential infidelity despite her daughter is the one doing it 10 folds harder in front of her face. A true bruh moment right there. Looking into the writer's previous projects, she's consistently decent except for a few outliers and this drama was part of these outliers.

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Wannabe Aspiring Actor

A lot of names were thrown around in the beginning with not a lot of context, so you had to make a mental note to connect them later on—a really annoying practice, to say the least. Supposedly, the male lead was in China before coming to SK, but the drama made it a running joke for a couple of episodes that he was a caveman. This made the whole family meeting and living together a bit too cringe. There were many ways to approach such a scenario, but it seems the writer took the lazy route. Some scenes were stretched really thin and became too awkward to continue, like that one scene of both leads and Sang Chul talking about the old hotel staff photo. The drama would've benefited from having more grandchildren and better interconnected stories between them. Although there were three grandchildren, the middle one was an insignificant sidekick and didn't contribute to the dynamic as much as I hoped. The ending brought a change of heart to all of the opposing characters, but some of them didn't seem genuine in the slightest.

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Incomplete by design!

As per usual, such dramas start with abroad locations and a big budget just to serve us with whatever later on. While the drama had action later on but it wasn't on the same level of its earlier episodes. The plot itself couldn't compensate for that. There was a certain level of carelessness and ridiculousness in a non-comical setting from the director that's impossible to explain other than being intentional to maintain the dumb action vibes like a B grade action flick. It got progressively challenging to tolerate regardless of its "supposed" entertainment value. After what they had done in this 16-episodes runtime, they had the audacity to keep all threads as open as possible for a direct sequel, which will never happen! Was it some kind of a practical joke? Other than some of the action scenes and a handful of selected moments, I can't see much value in this drama.

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Better off not remembering

The first 4 episodes were dedicated entirely for their backstory and they did an outstanding poor job in that regard. These first 4 episodes were painful to sit through, unbelievably boring, lacking any interesting or gripping elements and it failed to lay the groundwork for things to look forward to in the future episodes. If that wasn't enough, the main story was mostly shelved and the subsequent episodes turned into side cases with slight relation to the bad guy until it returned to the main case in the last few episodes. Although the male lead was labeled as a genius and has super powers but his character proved to be otherwise. Namkoong Min playing a pathetic low-life chaebol playboy villain was definitely a miscast. It would more suitable for him to play a smart cunning merciless villain but the director was blind. On the other hand, Jeon Kwang Ryul playing the main victim with Alzheimer and being a good loving father was weird, another miscast and oversight from the production. The trend continues Park Min Young playing a prosecutor, it's just not it.

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Something-Something Inflation!

The drama had a good and gripping start with the trial and everything surrounding it but it was the only trial in the drama. The rest turned out to be something different. I wish we had more like that trial. Although the silliness and slacking around was fun at first but it got a little tiring later on and padding the drama with 3 full episodes of flashbacks with a serious tone wasn't enough. Despite its shorter runtime there were big inconsistencies rooming around, it's like they had 3 dramas with 3 different ideas shoved into one. However, the drama always felt like there was something missing to formula. I really liked the concept, it had much more to offer than we were shown. The characters and their dynamic had a lot of potential to be expanded upon. The cast also brought up a good performance to the screen. I found the murder case to be the weakest part of the drama and somewhat boring, it also took too much time before moving on to something else. Right just when we started to get real development the drama ended, that was really unfortunate. I don't think this will get season 2 based on what they've done with these 12 episodes.

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ADAaaam....

Although the twin had different styles with different clothing to make them distinguishable enough but I found it a little tiring to keep making a conscious effort to differentiate between the two. Maybe throwing on some glasses would help or I'm just too lazy. The first episode felt too tame and didn't show enough gripping elements. That scene in the forest at the beginning of episode 2 really sat the overall tone of the drama moving forward. At that point, it was obvious it's going to be the type of show that would waste time on nonsense, fail to deliver the information and dance around aimlessly. I though I would give them the benefit of the doubt; they might deliver on that with clever plays but they never did. Not even the twins element was utilized enough. After about 4 episodes, the drama lost most, if not all, of its engaging elements. The mystery turned into a snoozefest. This was beyond what's considered a slow burner. It took 11 long episodes for something noteworthy to happen. The ending was underwhelming after all that wait and they had the audacity to set up some teasers for possible continuation.

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100 Days of Patience

The drama was mostly a slice of life drama with minimum story. The concept is fairly simple and was done before, "Save the Last Dance for Me (2004)" comes to mind immediately. The leads had a good characterization and received an equally fulfilling performance by their cast. Which also why the leads had a good dynamic going on. However, its biggest problem is its lack in variety. Since it's a slice of life, the cast felt limited in size while jumping between the same few members of cast. They also lacked a unique variety in their archetypes to help keep the drama lively and vibrant. The same thing can be said about its lacking length of 75min x 16 episodes. There were too many slow and uninteresting sequences that dragged each episode too far. A slice of life doesn't equal boring when they're done right. If this drama were to be cut down to 6-7 episodes it would have been much better.

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Grim Prince

The spoiler/teaser introduction and that first episode in general left a bad taste in my mouth. There was no need to show moments from 10 episodes later this early, if their intent was to try to hook the viewers by showing spoilers then they failed. And don't even get me started on that loathsome love triangle that seemed to stain the entire drama. The pacing was all over the place—slow moments that dragged on forever and irrelevant sidetracking. The whole sibling rivalry angle was given a generic development. The not so good brother tried to justify himself but the writer didn't put an ounce of effort into that. On another note, Yoon Shi Yoon looked weird with his baby beard.

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Saimdang, Really Boring Long Diary

The drama, on paper, had potential. A mix of historical and contemporary narratives sounded intriguing, but the execution fell flat. The pace was slower than a snail's crawl, and the plot dragged on without significant development. The portrayal of the female lead's life in the past often felt overshadowed by the mundane occurrences of the present, causing a lack of focus and direction in the storytelling. While attempting to blend history and modern storytelling, the transitions felt disjointed, leaving me disconnected from the characters and their journeys. The drama's portrayal of the protagonist's life and the historical context lacked depth and failed to evoke a genuine emotional connection. The overall quality felt subpar—amateurish directing and filming made it hard to believe people were doing their jobs professionally. It's like they were clueless and just pretending. Such a shame that a big budget ($18+ millions) ended up wasted on this drama. The poor broadcast ratings weren't surprising at all. They even chopped off two episodes, probably to cut their losses. It shouldn't have been longer than 12 episodes max. It's almost like Lee Young Ae went on a very long hiatus to the point, when she returned, she no longer had any negotiation power and her agency just picked up whatever project they managed to get.

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Didn't hit the jackpot

A strong, solid and gripping introduction that captured the expected theme perfectly, accompanied with thrilling gambling scenes. Choi Min Soo instantly pulled all the attention to himself. He did such an amazing job embodying this harsh intimidating king. However, it wasn't all sunshine and roses, most of the glamorous elements that made the drama attractive were evaporated after 3 episodes. A handful of useless characters may come and go. The gambling became a secondary plot device. Stretching the drama thin and long by introducing three mini-bosses like an anime arc. The main lead was equipped with impervious plot armor eliminating the tension and risks. He may suffer irrecoverable fatal damage just to be resurrected from the depths of hell because the drama can't continue otherwise. A handful of other writing problems that kept holding the drama back sprinkled throughout. The only character that remained interesting was King Suk Jong, waiting desperately for his next scene of which they were scarce for a main lead. Yeo Jin Goo should stop picking up king/historical roles, he might be one drama away from being entrapped in typecasting hell forever.

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