Melting Me Softly (2019)

I was looking forward to this drama as it was Ji Changwook's first since he got discharged from the military service, but I was pretty disappointed. This show lacked substance, wit and failed to engage with me. As much as I have enjoyed other of his shows, here he just looked handsome and nothing more.

The first episodes were really promising, I liked how the show was shot and enjoyed the part about 1999 (Hongki's role was really cute) and how they dealt with waking up 20 years later. This part, which should have been the hardest to pull of the show, got me emotionally engaged. I liked a lot the relationship Miran had with her little brother, and it was refreshing to see a character with special needs portrayed so tenderly. I also felt for Ma Dongchan's family as I learned about how they suffered for years looking for him and never giving up (and losing their fortune). Also, how he tries to reconnect with his girlfriend from 20 years ago is really sweet, not caring about her aged appearance.

I also enjoyed how they start falling in love, how they actually need to keep away from each other not to raise their heartbeat and body temperature and... omg, the shower scene!

But after that the show became predictable and boring, leaning too much on the plot of the evil twin which was not very well carried out. Also, the scientist, even after regaining his memory didn't know how to raise their body temperatures to 36 degrees?! That part puzzled me... It means he froze them 20 years ago without already having the injection ready, meaning he was reckless to carry out the experiment and basically lied to Ma Dongchan saying everything was fine. That didn't make sense and I think it was the only way the writers had to make the story longer and make viewers more interested, but they lost me.

Now, I am all in for female empowerment, but when the female lead postpones taking the life saving injection to shoot a stupid teaser for a reality tv show? (which they didn't need her at all to shoot) They lost me again. When she finally wakes up after all the ordeals and tells him she wants to study abroad? They lost me yet again. Don't get me wrong, it's nice to see women prioritising their careers, but not actively disregarding the feelings of people around her!

By the end of the show Miran was acting like a spoiled princess that knew she had the guy wrapped around her finger, but to be honest, I never quite understood what he saw in her to be so madly in love. She stole his dream of becoming a PD, she stole the motivation he had to be a PD, her personality turned annoying, and she became completely self-absorbed.

It was a promising show but just when I thought it began to melt, someone turned on the A/C

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I don't think making fun of the #metoo movement and having men saying they're now afraid to interact with women was a smart move in 2019.
This was just the last drop. Ageism, story holes, unfunny jokes or the old fashioned body comedy. I also don't think they know how amnesia is supposed to work. Also how come can they walk after 20 years of not using their muscles? Even if they're frozen, there has to be some sort of adaptation period.

I really have to talk about ageism.
The actresses playing the leads' mothers are supposed to be in their late 60's from what I can understand, one of the actresses (the girl's mother) is 55 years old in real life and is playing someone who is 60 something but talking as if she's in her late 80's. The woman doesn't even have wrinkles. How are we supposed to know how we'll age if the media doesn't depict ageing accurately? I know it will vary from person to person but we need more realism in the media. They also depict most of the 40-year-olds (his sister, the girl's friends) as if they're walking xmas trees with aboslutely no taste and the need to be flashy to avoid aging. Just stop. Put real women in your dramas already!

Another thing that really got to me was when the leads' brother is praying at the temple. He wishes for his daughter to grow beautiful. Not successful, not happy, not intelligent but beautiful. The girl is sassy, smart and doesn't go by stereotypes. That character should have been treated with more respect.

I really wanted to check out Ji Chang Wook's return but I just can't with this drama. I'm hoping he gets a good one next.

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The 5 out of 10 I am giving are just for the few laughs that I had here and there and for the effort put by the good actors.
Greatly disappointed. No interesting plot and a wasted cast. Cringe worthy sometimes. Don't watch this if you have other choices. Even for me who's a JCW fan, I didn't enjoy watching him, his character ended up being dull.
The plot could have a great potential and I was expecting to see a lot of the adaptation to a world 20 years later but we ended having a weird mix between a research lab, a mob (mafia) and office romance. All of those were of no interest as I would surely have preferred watching more of the family links and more of what it is to be back 20 years later, how to adapt to an internet driven world, how to understand the evolution of world events, world music, world drama, all the scientific achievements, the new danger the humanity is facing...

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It now seems premature to have called Abyss the worst drama of 2019. Who knew dramaland had this televisual equivalent of listeria-laden warm ice cream waiting in the wings.

Ma Dong-chan (Ji Chang-wook, in the world's most inexplicable choice for a comeback drama) is a smoking hot GENIUS film maker who wins awards and grasps complex scientific theories in mere days. He agrees to get frozen for 24 hours but ends up being frozen for 20 years instead. There is a female version of him but she is mostly just pink. No, really, this excruciating Candy gets literally dressed as candy. I feel quite bad for Won Jin-ah who has a thankless role as Go Mi-ran - forced to be nothing more than a bright, happy, naive love interest for a man who's kind of a jerk.

Both Dong-chan and Mi-ran find themselves 20 years in the future and forced to keep a hypothermic body temperature to survive. While Dong-chan's fiance is now 20 years older, Mi-ran's narcisstic Freud-quoting ex is now a lecturer at her university. There's a lot of potential conflict to work with here but the show ignores almost all of it; steaming full speed for a somewhat-icky romance between a man who doesn't like his fiancé now she's old and the comparatively-uncomplicated Candy he starts making googly eyes at ten seconds after his break up.

It's not difficult to find negative things to say about this shallow puddle of a show: rather it's difficult to know where to begin in outlining them. Nobody involved in this has done anything right - not the writer, director, producer, actors or anyone responsible for anything. Even the music is wrong.

The humour of the show is similar to the worst of Strong Woman Do Bong Soon (this writer's previous work) and the show insists on undercutting any moment that could be powerful and emotional with bland, tasteless slapstick. Between the shrieking and the flailing and the forced romance, the show fails to make you care about either of these people. More importantly, neither of the leads have a character arc. Compared to a show with a similar premise - Thirty But Seventeen - it's shallow and trite with the 20 year time jump treated like a mild inconvenience and the hypothermia a mere romance roadblock.

The show seems to exist for the purpose of getting Wookie in a make-out shower scene to "cool down"; something that will only justify 16 episodes of television for the most ardent Wookie fan.

In a more succinct version of this review: this show sucks worse than Abyss. Don't watch it.

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With such a lineup of actors who are masters at portraying intense emotions, you would think that shallowness and lack of chemistry would never be a potential issue here. Yet it was, but I don't blame the actors.
I think the story itself, the writing and the directing were just not on point.
It felt too slow at times, totally rushed at others. I can see where the story is supposed to go and what emotions I'm supposed to feel as a viewer but the drama didn't manage to catch my attention at all.
The romance was very mechanic, and it felt like they were in love just because they had to for the purpose of the drama but nothing felt organic.
The comedic aspect was overdone and therefore not funny in my opinion. The plot was ... just very superficial, forced and uninteresting.
I couldn't go past the 10th episode so my review is based on only half of the drama but I dont think it's worth watching it further. I still put a 6 for the actors who seemed to try very hard with the material they had.

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Interesting Concept, but did it work?

After seeing Chang-Wook in Healer, I started looking for more of his dramas to watch. One of the titles that caught my attention was this one...but the thing that made me hesitant was all the negative reviews for the drama. Of course, I dropped my expectations very low, but that probably helped me enjoy what I could from it. By no means is it a bad drama, I thoroughly enjoyed what was presented. The two leads did the best that they could, given the flawed storylines and the plot holes that are as clear as day. The side characters were more of an interesting note for me, the villain didn't have much in terms of plot development, only to contribute as filler to help push the characters closer together. The second female lead's actions, well they were questionable to watch. Where does her true allegiance lay? It was hard watching her development, but at least the drama ended on a positive note and gave everyone what they deserved. I'd watch it if you're a Won Jin-ah/Ji Chang-Wook fan, but don't expect it to top your drama list.

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Many people had great expectations towards Melting Me Softly because:
- at the beginning teaser, it really seemed fresh and new
- Ji Chang Wook comeback

However, in general opinion it has become a disappointment. The storyline is really good and has so much potential. It's new, it's fresh and there are many other ways that the drama could have gone to be so much better.

In watching the drama I saw two problems why this drama is generally disliked:
- people had great expectations because we're used to getting quality content drama when we hear the name Ji Chang Wook but sadly the writers didn't do this drama justice
- people started to have prejudice towards this drama because there have been a lot of negative reviews *that being said, although it had been a disappointment but in my opinion, it is not worth all the hate it's getting... it's bad but there there are worse out there* But if you think about JCW and all the other actors here it is indeed quite below them all. The writers couldn't showcase the great cast's potential for sure.

But I would like to point out the things I love about this drama (since I see very few ppl think that there's even something good about it):
- I like how consistent both Ma Dong Chan and Ko Mi Ran with their role being "old-school". Especially at the beginning. It did get better when they started to "keep up" and the things they used started to get modernized but even so they're still consistent in acting like an old person (behind their times).
- The messed up hierarchy. I so so love this about this drama especially when it comes to Ma Dong Chan. He is mostly older than everbody else in the drama following his real age and it's funny how they all act around him. His younger brother and sister, his former assistant director all call him with honorifics even when he looks wayyy younger. I find it funny and interesting when they call him oppa, hyung and sunbae. (I especially loved the scene when his younger sister and brother came to him for a hug.) I also love it when he shows other people his ID card showing his date of birth and they're just stunned.
- The great effort the actors has put into it. And I can imagine how much fun they must have on set.
- The comedy. Yeah yeah call me weird for liking the comedy. But the thing is, I knew from first ep how the comedy in this drama is going to go. At first it will put you off cuz they happen at moments that they shouldn't have but I decided to just let it go and then along the way I started to like it and laugh with it.
- Ji Chang Wook doing these skit-like comedies. LOL. When we hear JCW we automatically think about Empress Ki (an emperor for goodness sake), Healer (a really skillful fighter), K2 (a very dangerous ex-military man), Suspicious Partner (prosecutor/lawyer). All of these drama did have their own funny moments and JCW did well in all of them. But, this is the first time that he obviously went all out. I like that I found this new side of him. And that proves what a great actor he is. I'm glad that he took the risk.

I admit that I watched it because of JCW and not because of a great story (cuz it's not haha). But, I still find things that I love about it so I don't think it's all that bad.

P.S. Rereading the review, I seem like a die hard fan of JCW and it looks so biased LOL. Just FYI I am not hahahaha. I just happened to watch all of his drama and liked them all.

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THE OVERALL RATING ON MDL FOR THIS DRAMA IS SUCH A SCAM.. REALLY GLAD I TRY WATCHING THIS DESPITE ALL THE NEGATIVE REVIEWS :)

for a drama addicted 23 y/o being and had watch 500+ kdramas for about 11y now.. u can say im quite picky but honestly this drama just damn funny and the story line is decent enough for me.. i dont even notice any plot hole and the series wrapped up great. I love Ji Chang Wook's character here in Melting Me Softly more than Suspicious Partner.. his character is more consistent and solid here.

The funny moments start when they wake up from the frozen capsule and notice the ppl around them aging.. i mean when suddenly an ahjusshi and ahjumma start calling him hyung/oppa out of nowhere HAHAHAAHH, the supporting cast really do a good job playing vice-versa character throughout the series.

I mean if u expect this is a sci-fi cryonic marvel superhuman movie with a Captain America character in mind.. PLEASE DONT! This is a kdrama who tell u a story about two human being who trying a cryonics experiment for a future medical purposes to help ppl who got illness, and that experiment was supposed to take place for only 24h but and accident happened and they have to be frozen for 20y without their consent..

Its a story about how the two cryonics human struggling to adapt new surrounding with 31.5 C which is an abnormal temperature for human.. and try to adapt on how the world change with new technologies, trends etc after 20y and of course end up falling in love with each other.. obviously, its a kdrama after all haha <3 their chemistry are lovable! its really funny whenever they tried to kiss suddenly their body temperature gone up and have to date in an ice room at the sauna HAHAHAHAH

Overall i really like the series, its a perfect romcom kdrama with lots of laughing moments.. i really enjoy it <3

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The low score reviews could be quite unfair

I don't quite get such harsh reviews for this drama which is why I am contributing with this review. Maybe expectations were very high and if the writer had chosen to grade down the initial level of exaggerated reactions and actions from family members and FL idiotic "first love" the reviews would be much better. I skimmed through the parts above mentioned and I was delighted to watch the development of a great romantic relationship between the main leads. They are great and provide many episodes of great entertainment and smiles. Family members also get better and even the idiotic support ML even though is dragged for a while in his annoying role, after a while starts to be toned down.

If you like the ML and FL give it a try, don't worry too much with a couple of initial general idiocy and I think you will enjoy it quite a bit.

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A little shy of all wrapped up

This is a 2O19 South Korean tv drama with 16, 60 minute; episodes.

Go Mi-ran (Won Jin-ah) Is a fearless “stunt“ woman working for a variety show. The very talented director of the show, Ma Dong-chan (Ji Chang-wook), is always coming up with fresh ideas that have won him acclaim and kept his projects at the top of the ratings. His next big venture is “the Frozen man” and, since it is risky, he plans to be one of the subjects but they need a 2nd and , specifically a female, to round the show out. While the Director does not. Know her at all, his assistant is aware of Mi-ran’s willingness to do almost anything to earn money to help support her family while attending college. However, this is even a bit too far for Mi-ran and she originally says no. She changes her mind when her long term boyfriend cheats on her and she finds out that if the experiment is successful it may help people with health conditions - people like her beloved younger brother. It is, after all, only for 24 hours and it is a good cause that pays well. Things go wrong during the experiment and those that were only to be frozen for 24 hours wind up frozen for 20 years. The world and everything in it has changed in 20 years and they both experience a side effect where they must keep their body temperature at 31.5 °C (max. 33 °C/88-91 °F) in order to survive. With so many bonding these two together will circumstances drive them apart?

*spoiler ? I liked the beginning a lot as it was fun to watch Mi-ran doing various experiments and what the Director would come up with. About 3/4 of the way through it felt slow and I was having a hard time continuing to watch. The concept of being frozen and response of all around them was intriguing but there were not enough plot elements to keep it interesting throughout. I also was disappointed that they were not married or at least a strong commitment by the end. With talk throughout of bad marriages I do not know if one of the writers was jaded that way or if some are embracing the idea that marriage does not need to happen for Happily ever after and I do not agree. I was glad they found a way to stay together but more formalized would have been good. Enjoyable but not one of my tops.

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It 's worthy

Well, at first I didn't want to see this drama because _Suspicious partner_ was so stupid and the main role of the girl, without role, in my opinion. And a new frozen story, well I was wary. But, as a big fan of JCW and its _Healer_, I tried it.
Good idea ! If you expect a sifi drama about cryogenisation, it's not a good choice but who says this story deals with it ? It's after cryo and what happened.The script is well done, very funny, Im Won-hee is a very talented actor, seen in _Dr Romantic_. The humor and the gags are good. I like the authoritarian JCK here. And the main role of the girl is effective, the actress too. Very surprised by the quality of the JCK game, it is constantly improving, becoming more and more precise and easy to read. Lots of different emotions or ideas on one face, it's great! One negative point, the secondary history with the university professor is long and useless. There were already enough materials and characters. In conclusion, a very good drama, I loved it.

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