Heartbeat (2023)

WTF

First 95% of the drama, 10/10. Some weak spots, but generally loved it, mostly for the actors and actresses, but still had a lot of fun watching it.

Last 5%, what the actual f**k, I feel scammed.

If you are looking for a happy ending, absolutely do not watch this. I feel like this kind of drama should not have been ended in the way it was. Be prepared to be blindsided if you actually do watch this. I can somewhat see what they were going for, but this was not the drama to do it with. It could have been ended so much better.

And jeez, poor In Hae. They give her that storyline, and that's the ending she gets??? She deserved better. And we're supposed to believe she's content at the end?

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Beautiful Story / Bad Ending - TOTALLY DISAPPOINTING!

I don't normally watch K-dramas until they're finished because I'm the type who binge watch. This drama though got me hooked and made me wait for weekly uploads. The actors were very good especially Ok Taec Yon, I truly admire him and his charisma is so strong and overpowering. However, when I watched the ending, I kept waiting for a twist that there was a way for Song Woo-hyeol (Ok Taec Yon) to become human despite all odds. He deserves to live and love because he felt the it and he said and showed his true feelings to Joo In-hae. Whoever wrote and decided the ending to be so ugly must be out of his/her mind and a really cruel person. I don't consider it an open-ended ending because Song Woo-hyeol died! It was only in Joo In-hae's imagination and memories that he lives. Of course, as human beings we remember our loved ones who passed away as such, same thing. Overall, the ending is utterly disappointing!

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Fang-tastic Drama

Only 2 episodes left but I don't want it to end! I have really enjoyed this drama and I have put it on my favorites list. Ok Taecyeon is so versatile in his acting and I have watched several of his dramas and he always seems to actually live the role he is playing. Won Ji An is a new actress to me as I have not seen any of her previous dramas. Her acting in this drams is extremely good and you can almost feel the absolute despair and loneliness she has endured in her life. I am sorry that some people don't find this drama interesting or funny or lacks whatever, but if you look at it, you will see how good and evil have a place in our world or in any other world for that matter.... It would be good to see Ok Taecyeon and Won Ji An together again in another drama.

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Only the ending was a letdown

I don't agree with most of the people who have a kneejerk reaction with the ending. I still think HeartBeat was good, but they chose to play the story straight instead of jumping the shark. This is, frankly, one of the few series where I'd have preferred the writers jump the shark to give the leads a happy ending, because they deserve it.

This series has one of the best written leads in K-dramas. Both In-hae and Woo-hyeol are absolute green flags, and they keep proving it over the course of the series. Their romance was of a slow-burn nature, built on understanding and wonderful communication. As a template for a great romance, their relationship is truly inspirational.

I do understand that most viewers aren't masochists. One of the worst mistakes that this series made was to market itself as a romcom - and while it was so over the first few episodes, it never really went away from reality. There's always human reality peering into their romance, even though it slowly and organically developed. The fundamental problem, I think, is with that dilemma that Woo-hyeol finds himself in, there's really no easy solution aside from leaning into even more fantasy, which might be tonally inconsistent with the series, but ultimately more sensible as it was branded as a romcom in the first place.

I do think that the ending is slightly more positive than what people think, because to me, Woo-hyeol returned to In-hae as a ghost (haunting only her). It doesn't change the fact that she's still human, but I think In-hae would be smart enough to have Woo-hyeol be exorcised as she'll be nearing her death (or ask help from the other vampires).

As a medical doctor, all realistic solutions fail because In-hae's blood would have to be sucked dry, and that will definitely kill her. I was hoping for some loophole that would allow them to do an exchange transfusion of sorts, but then that would take too much time and detract to the story. A more sensible solution (in terms of writing) would be for the curse to lift from Woo-hyeol as he showed an act of sacrifice for Do-sik's sake, perhaps reordering the world for the better. However, they chose to stick to their guns, which highlighted a pretty sad ending.

I'm still looking forward to picking up more clues with re-watching Heartbeat (as I have done so), but this remains to me a good series damaged by tonal inconsistency and a sad ending.

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Even a great cast could not save this failure

Aug 2023.
I was really looking forward to this , but found it so disappointing, apart from Taec-yeon and some other cast members who kept me watching, it was pretty poor.

Great idea, but such lazy writing and poor direction, ruined it.
Such childish humour, that frankly I see starting to pop up in too many K-dramas where it doesn't fit, and woeful plot failures...
No heartbeat means no breathing is necessary, so stuff getting up their nose and making them sneeze just would not happen.
Sensitivity to the sun was completely forgotten from one episode to the next, depending on what the story needed from the scene :-/

Both female characters were the most irritating of all. The FL veered from doe-eyed and mushy, to petulant, spiteful, loud (lots of shouting that was way more than necessary for the scenario) and aggressive. I get she was meant to be cold and distant as a form of protection, but her reactions were overdone. There was a mace/pepper spray incident that was like, WHAT?!!! So not funny, at least not to me.

The supporting female character was dull as dish water, not to mention psychotic/delusional, which we see far too often in poorly written K-dramas.

Inappropriate reactions, drawing out parts of the story until they were so thin they were transparent and a woefully weak baddy.
The humour this show craved was witty dialogue, subtle looks that can speak a thousand words and make us laugh, not the overreactions, characters getting hit, shouted at and generally acting stupid, which is what we got.
Also, there's a guest house that never got a guest, which would not have been a profitable business, me thinks :-/
Lots of clichés too, which again were not necessary; there was far more that could have been done with those moments.

The sets were nice.
The cast were nice to look at and did their best.
I honestly could have done without watching and not once did I shed a tear, when there were times I should have, as the story was definitely aiming for that.
I never tell anyone not to watch something, as we're all different and you might love it; many others did.

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I wish I had a girlfriend like Joo In Hae who can bite a vampire.

Such a shame not to make a sunscreen product placement. Everybody knows vampires and Koreans are suckers for sunscreen. And me too. They literally ducked a golden mine.

?They ducked so many more things in this drama, including believable character development. Shin Do Shik starts as a softie, then he is suddenly obsessed by murder, and then he ends up helping poor sick kids. His character was unsuccessfully begging for a moral choice. Director Na is even more messed up.

Yet the actor Park Kang Hyun performs very well despite this unfortunate TV debut. He has both gentle and evil vibes. As far as I know, he acted in musicals before, and he sings one of the soundtracks here. I'd like to see him in a better project next time.

?The screenwriters successfully traded all the charm and quirkiness of the first episodes for cheesy tropes and cliches and an intense "dramatic" La Crimosa remix. How come a guesthouse doesn't have a washing machine? It's just because the two leads need to splash in a basin together and make cute expressions for the camera. With such weak writing In Hae would never love so deeply to be ready to sacrifice her life for the boyfriend. No wonder she never offered.

And what's with that craven ending? Why are we supposed to decide the very last minute what the hell is going on if you can't sum up the story well?

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Very Slow and Doesn't Achieve Its Goal

The first episode started off fine but in between Heartbeat started to drag a lot. I disliked watching the struggle of the teokbokki restaurant owning vampire and the tarot card reading vampire. Man Hwi and Rose were the most interesting support characters and I liked them the best. I enjoyed scenes with them in it the most as well.

The show was about a vampire who wanted to experience his heart beating for love which is why he wanted to become human. I am not sure if we really got that. It seems the writers wrote themselves into a corner and decided the viewers will be satisfied with that. They could have done this same ending in fewer episodes and it would be less disappointing. It just made me glad that I binged a lot of the episodes together instead of watching weekly as it was not worth watching something this slow moving only for a semi-satisfying ending.

The main leads didn't even get enough romantic moments together. Too many distractions and running around. Second male lead and second female lead were also all right. I'd say most of the characters are very muted.

One can keep guessing if the ending was real or imagined. I thought it was just okay. Not what I had hoped for at least.

The comedy tag doesn't suit this show either. I can't remember one moment that I felt was funny.

If you like the leads, you might enjoy this series otherwise, it's best to pass. It's average.

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Disappointing...

I loved everything up until the last two episodes. The story was not the best and kind of draggy in some parts before that but I still enjoyed it so I didn't care.

Ep 15 was so boring, I could've skipped that entire episode. The last episode was better but the ending was very disappointing. The ending didn't make me feel any emotions at all, I'm not happy or sad, just disappointed. This whole drama feels like a waste of time and I kinda wish I stopped watching at ep 12.

I did enjoy most of the episodes so I might rewatch them! I'll never rewatch the whole drama tho lol...

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What the hell?!

Given 8 for the acting purely for Taecyon, Park Kang Hyun, the rest of the vamps and Mr Cat. As for the FL - good to start with then half way through devoid of any emotion, and for goodness sake wear some decent fitting trousers - backside like two boiled eggs in a handkerchief! A lot of the Kdramas I've seen have leads that look like the tomboy girl next door, but I want female allure and glamour!!

I really don't know what to say. A vampire genre flick is 10/10 for me anyway so I was looking forward to an interesting ride. Started off really promising but somewhere along the way it started to falter and the worst episode was the last. What on earth happened?! There was too much to squeeze in to one episode and the conclusion left me feeling absolutely cheated. There were absolutely so many different angles this story could have gone but they chose to conclude it that way? Not even one twist? (Cue Korean swear words.)

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We were rooting for you!!!!

Sigh. I really wanted this drama to not fall into the curse of being one of those dramas that should've had 12-13 episodes instead of dragging itself to a lousy 16 that ended up ruining the drama for me. Firstly, I loved the acting and the chemistry of the leads. The supporting cast was very cookie-cutter and replaceable, so I won't say much about them. They were boring to me.

Now, this drama presents itself as a romantic comedy at first that had a fun fast pace right from the bat. Where it falters is the need for it to become a melodrama from episode 12 onward. It is an abrupt change that feels forced and from there on all the characters basically repeat their actions over and over until the end, losing any pace it had before as a result.

The forceful need to have it be that one of the leads "needed" to die, instead of just ending with ML transforming into a human due to drinking a *bit* of FL's blood (would have been a perfectly good ending IMO, but no, let's force one of those ambiguous open endings on our viewers from what was meant to be a silly little rom-com about vampires.)

These scriptwriters and the director just couldn't pick a lane I guess. Wasted!

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What it takes to be HUMAN

Did I spoil ending way up in the title? But is IT worth watching? Resounding YES! You think Taecyeon is all light and goofy stuff, but this towering handsomeness has DEPTH, tyvm, Mam! Heartbeat title even alludes to a hit 2PM song...

Ok, seriously... production is top notch especially costume and set design... Acting...I credit actors to flesh out a little "thin" script. Actors (and hopefully even the Director) tried to flesh out a script that gets thinner and thinner by the episode.

IF they wanted a HAPPY and MAGICAL ending the "solution" could have been hinted on the earlier episodes. Towards the 11th  episode onwards, its just watching a looooong painful goodbye, much like the ML dying of cancer or what not. I wanted to have a GOOD CRY by Episode 14-16, but... I cannot... Why?

Like the leads and friends surrounding ML, the audience become another friend who just want to PROLONG the GOOD MOMENTS and tell Taecyeon, "Please don't leave us!" Sniff... Rarely do we get such a realistic and wise ending, folks! So...if you always want a fairy tale ending, HEARTBEAT is not for you! Love becomes precious the MORE REAL it is. And for me, the LOVE STORY and the impact of Taecyeon in their lives are as REAL as it gets. Bravo, Heartbeat!!!

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