High school dramas are hard to do right. High school itself is a really difficult time. You have to deal with growing up and finding your dreams, you have to deal with moving on and going into the real world, you have to become more independent and become a better person- it's difficult for writers to convey all of that. If you mess something up, you wind up with a whiny, boring drama with uninteresting characters. If you get it right, you get something like "Shut Up Flower Boy Band" or even "Dream High". Story: When I first started watching this drama about a year ago, I really didn't want to watch it. At all. In the first episode, it was really difficult to like Hye Mi or any other characters. Hye Mi was overly proud and felt unrealistic, Baek Hi had no personality other than being Hye Mi's follower and I didn't have much sympathy with her and Jin Gook came out of nowhere and randomly decided to be the knight in Shining Armor and confused me. If you asked me what I thought about this drama back when I had only watched episode one, I would say that it's a waste of time and that there's much better out there. I understand that the writers were trying to set us up for the inevitable "change" in which everyone becomes better, but there's different ways of doing it so that the audience doesn't start out hating every single character. *Sigh* That was my biggest problem with this drama. The writers wanted to show how *much* the characters changed, going from one extreme to another. But the thing it, real people don't change so dramatically. We do it in subtle ways, so slowly and so quietly that we can't even tell unless we're forced to realize it. Months later I finally got around to watching episode two. It wasn't much better, but I have a policy that no matter what, I have to finish anything I start. I was pretty much prepared to give this drama a five and move on with my life, so my expectations were pretty low. Episode three was a little better, and so was episode four. It went on like that for a while, until I finally found myself liking "Dream High" instead of merely tolerating it. The main romance story really surprised me, because I had no idea who Hye Mi was going to wind up with until episode 15. I liked how the writers showed her interactions with both Sam Dong and Jin Gook and how all three of them slowly developed feelings. I also liked how the writers made it so that you could wind up liking characters you hated in the beginning- or at the very least wind up respecting them. Acting: Taecyeon and Suzy were okay actors. They forced themselves sometimes, but they managed to decently convey the story when called upon. Kim Soo Hyun was amazing and pretty much carried the entire show with his portrayal of Sam Dong, Wooyoung and IU were cute, and everyone else ranged from good to amazing. Music: As a music drama, music is the primary focus of "Dream High". The music here was targeted to a very specific age group, people from the ages of about 13-24-ish. It was young and upbeat, with all the actors' voices to carry the music. Rewatch Value: I'd say there's a fair chance of me rewatching parts of this, but I probably won't for a while. Overall: "Dream High" is an acquired taste. It sort of grows on you as you move along through the story. It's not the most amazing drama out there, but it brings something new to the table.