REALLY Good TW Drama, but...

This was EASILY the best Taiwanese drama I have seen in years. It was so good that I bumped it up half a point. At the start of the final episode I was going to score it 8/10 but there was such a pleasant surprise during the final episode I gave it 8.5.

I started this drama for Ivy Chen and Roy Qiu, but I stuck it out for Lian Man Shu. Her performance as Mei Ji was awesome, as was the writing of the character. That character and Jenny really set this drama apart from conventional tropes, and it was the resolution of Jenny's arc in the final episode that prompted me to increase my score.

This was a female-centric drama that focused on friendship. The music was awesome (I especially love that they had a lot of Italian music), but it was the writing and acting that made this joy to watch. The drama went a little soggy toward the end, just a little, but I was pleased that it did avoid the Makjang excesses which often mark the final quarter of Taiwanese dramas.

Nevertheless the slight sogginess in the final six is one of the things that caused me to mark the drama down. Had the drama been 24 45-minute episodes, it could have been a 9/10 , had it been 20 it could even have been a 9.5/10.

The other problem the drama had was with the central lead. One of the tags associated with the drama here at MDL is "smart female lead", but for the first 15 to 18 episodes, the female lead was someone who thought she was smart but consistently made bad decisions, showed poor judgement and refused to accept that anyone knew better than her about anything. She treated the two people who had invested in her business as nothing more than employees who had to do what she said, and as people whose opinions were of no worth. This was profoundly irritating, especially because it was presented as if she did know what she was doing despite the fact that so many of her decisions were ill thought out and generated negative consequences.

Despite those niggles I am very glad I watched this drama, and I highly recommend it as an example of what Taiwanese dramas can be when good writing is paired with very good acting.

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Sieigi No Se was a great example of a simple premise well-executed. Most especially it deomnstrated that a sweet story does not need romance. Watching this short Drama about a rookie prosecutor reminded me of two other Dramas: Miss Hamurabi, and Nagi No Oitona. Both were blemished by forced romantic elements that dragged them down. In Ms Hammurabi, the Drama had an excellent platonic friendship develop between the male and female lead for 3/4 of the show, then the writer lost their nerve and decided "we gotta have romance", and suddenly jammed in a romance that was forced, stiff, and false, and a huge disappointment.

Seigi No Se did not make that mistake. It stayed focused on its core story, the growth of the lead *as a prosecutor*. Any future romantic interest for her was merely hinted at, and they were interesting hints. But that's all they were, they never got in the way of a simple, sweet story about someone passionately fighting for justice as she grew into her job. A feel-good treat of the sort that Japan delivers often, Korea seldom.

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I started this Drama for Wu Qian, and she's the reason I finished it. A real actor, she breathed life and depth into her role. The story itself was fine, and one or two of the side arcs were sweet. BUT, it was far too long. Thirty episodes would have been an absolute maximum for this thin story to really work, twenty-four would have been better.

They could have achieved that by ditching the pointless, go nowhere "love rivals" storylines. Had they done that, and perhaps trimmed the side lovelines from 4 to 3, they could have made a taut, compact story that still spotlighted both the main romance and the messages about sports, personal growth, and choices.

Despite that, I enjoyed the Drama overall, and was impressed by much of the dialog given to Wu Qian's character in the draggy last 10 (at least as translated in the subs). Overall, the strengths outweighed the flaws, putting into a rare category for my small number of completed C Dramas

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I actually rage-quit this Drama and just FF'd through the last three episodes because of a common problem with K Dramas - violent crime is excused and completely overlooked. In this Drama, the competitor firm is guilty of multiple kidnappings, assault, theft, breaking and entering, and many other crimes, and yet NO police action is taken. Even the "good" cop is shown as being utterly fixated only on tech crimes, and doesn't care at all about the fact that people were kidnapped and physically hurt by the other company. The company which actively and violently broke the law is shown repeatedly getting a free pass from the police AND profits from its criminality. And the second lead gets a free pass for his active involvement in all of those crimes.

As a simple love story, with some interesting commentary on the nature of identity, the Drama had promise, but this weird K Drama fixation on violent crime being disregarded totally snapped me out of the mood of the show. YMMV, but for me, this was a good idea ruined.

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I started watching this for the male lead, who impressed me in the delightful Le Coup de Foudre. In that he had to act basically expressionless, not as easy as it sounds. His acting in this one pleased me as it showed he can also display a normal range of emotions :)

I also started it because recently PRC dramas have been doing very well at turning out PURE FLUFF Dramas, sweet stories with ZERO major "drama" or conflict/tragedy. Le Coup de Foudre, Go Go Squid and Put Your Head on My Shoulder are examples of this. This Drama COULD have been, and imo SHOULD have been, but was not. For two main reasons:

1. The villain arc - introduced in the very first episode, the "villain out for revenge" is a clear foreshadowing of trouble to come. And sure enough, it arrives. Episodes 19-23 (and almost all of 24) contain effectively ZERO fluff, instead being angst, misery and tears. As the other Dramas cited prove, this was utterly unnecessary for a story of this type. Cohabitation and contract marriage Dramas CAN be made without resorting to the sort of melodrama that wasted 4 whole episodes of this Drama. And speaking of waste brings me to major flaw number

2. Not enough main lead time in the first third. This 24 episode Drama not only wasted 4 episodes on pain and tears, it spent the bulk of the first eight actively MINIMISING the time the leads spent together with no one else present. The Drama resorted to all sorts of annoying interruptions that served no purpose except to prevent the leads having time alone to grow the pairing. This was exacerbated by major flaw number

3. Three is the problem here - the number of couples the Drama featured. Go Go Squid and Put Your Head on My shoulder nicely showed how to develop a fluffy lead pairing while building ONE secondary pair. This Drama went for TWO secondary pairs. It should have picked one and stuck with it.

For the reasons outlines above, I give this Drama only 6.5. It should have been 20, not 24, with no villain revenge arc, and only one secondary couple. Had it been like that, it would have scored at least 8.5-9.0 because

THE LEADS ARE SO CUTE TOGETHER. This is a big part of why I was so annoyed by all the extra crud stuffed into this Drama - it detracted from the show's real strength, the sweet, cute, funny, HOT, and credible growth of the lead pair. The episodes from 8-18 were pure luff, and so very, very sweet and fun to watch. We saw both of them growing and developing, especially the male lead, who had so much more growing to do. That block of fluff is what the whole Drama could and should have been, with only minor conflicts and disagreements used to allow growth and development. The leads and their sweetness together are the whole reason this Drama gets as many points as it does.

As a hardcore brony, I'll almost certainly be rewatching PARTS of this Drama again, but because of the failings listed above, those parts will be fewer than they could have been. In terms of fluffy romcoms, I've seen MUCH worse (especially from SK), but I've also (recently) seen very much better, from the PRC. 10 episodes of fluff do not a 24 episode fluff fest make.

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From AWESOME to AWFUL

Zàijiàn to C-Dramas?

This was a painful review to write. For the first nine episodes of this drama, it just kept getting better and better. It was really outstanding and promised to be a truly exceptional C drama. There was only one little niggle - the unfettered childish selfishness of the male lead. He was literally a 24-year-old child, who believed that the female lead was his because he wanted her. For that first third of the drama, this was not a problem because the female lead was independent and self assured, and so is irritating and annoying as the male leads whiny self-centred possessiveness was, it was not the dominant feature of those episodes. Sadly, this state did not last.
Partway through episode 14, the male lead's manager gives him a lecture about his immature childish behaviour. He calls him a selfish brat and tells him that if hehates being treated like a kid, he should behave like an adult. Alas, that's as far as it goes. That very episode ends with the female lead deciding to be with him in a romantic sense despite the male lead having grown not at all. And he never does. Right to the end he remains a childish, immature, selfish and unlikeable brat.
One of the advantages of watching a subtitle drama that isn't streamed is that it is possible to watch on very rapid fast forward and follow the story. This is how I got through the last half of this drama. I was looking for some signs of growth in the male lead, and I was also very interested in how the stories of the supporting characters turned out. Their stories were an antidote to the seething rage I felt every time I had to look at that smug grin from the overgrown boy child who thought everything was a huge joke and that everything he did was always right. You know something's not right when a romcom makes you wish EXTREME violence on one half the lead romantic pair.
The reason for the title of this review is that the astonishing and tragic collapse of this once promising drama is making me reassess whether I should waste any more time watching ANY C dramas.
This Drama COULD have shown the ML growing into a mature adult who valued and supported the FL, and respected her right to be her own person, without resorting to lying to her and manipulating her, it could have confronted the challenges posed by cultural resistance to the significant age gap in a meaningful way, like the OUTSTANDING "My Queen" did from Taiwan, but in the end, it did none of those things. The moral of this drama ended up being the same as the moral of almost every single romantic C drama I have attempted to watch: That the male lead is always right BECAUSE he's male, the female lead always NEEDS the male lead, (in this Drama, the FL says “he’s the one taking care of me”, etc, more often that I cared to count) a woman's place is always behind a man, and that when a man decides he owns and controls a woman, that is the definition of romantic.
The overwhelming majority of romantic C dramas I have started to watch were easy to drop because they manifested this patronising, chauvinist and misogynist philosophy from the opening episodes. The fact that a drama which started so promisingly by heading in a very different direction eventually kowtowed to that deeply ingrained regressive "man rules yeah!" philosophy suggests that for whatever reason it is inescapable in C dramas built around a romantic arc.
There were many things to like about this drama. The first 9 or 10 episodes were truly exceptional, refreshing and promising. Some of the supporting characters were really interesting, especially Han Yue's role and performance as the older sister of the sasaeng University classmate of the male lead, and the FL’s divorced single parent BF. Following their arcs kept me from dropping the Drama even after it turned into a turd of epic proportions.
I don't know whether it was simply a failure of courage on the part of the writer, or whether it was simply compliance with the sort of external directives that are inescapable in the tightly controlled Chinese state, but whatever the reason the result was that a drama full of promise ended up being one of the bitterest disappointments of my drama viewing life. T
It IS possible for Dramas to be sappily romantic without the male lead having any sense of "ownership" of the female lead, but very few C Dramas have managed it , and this Drama was not one of them. I thought it would be an 8/10, in the end I felt generous giving it 3.5. That saddens me.

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Expertly put together, ike a good meal - or a great painting

I went into this one very, VERY wary. Korean "romcoms" have a nasty habit in recent years of being a bloody mess. I mean that literally. For some inexplicable reason, K Dramas have decided that nothing says "romcom" like having a serial killer story arc. So I was afraid of how this one would turn out. In the end, it's one of the best K romcoms I've seen, because the elements were blended almost perfectly.

There WAS a villain arc, of course, but it was credible, well-executed and kept in proper scale. It never dominated the storyline. The focus remained on the OTP, and their relationship grew very well.

Another worry I had was about the 'power balance' in the OTP. Too many times, the ML is a jerk and the FL apologises to him for causing him to be a jerk. So a crtical point in this Drama for me was when the ML screwed up big time, destroying something very, very important to the FL. When he got down on his knees to apologise to the creator for what he's done, I knew this Drama was different.

The dialogue was good, too. The FL called out the villain at the very end, not buying into his self-excusing BS. The only slight niggle was the over-reaction of the ML's Dad in the penultimate/final episodes, but overall, this was truly outstanding and a reassuring reminder that K romcoms actually CAN be both romantic and comedic, without any serial killer nastiness

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A celebration of subtlitled subtlety

This Drama was a bit of a flashback for me, to the days when JTBC was consistently my favourite go-to network for reliably good quality Dramas. Those days are long past, but this Drama was as good as almost any of those faves from 5-7 years ao.

What I loved about this Drama was its embrace of subtlety. Subtlety in story, subtlety in acting, and subtlety in dialogue. In a Drama all about subtitling, it seems especially apt that I had to rely on subs to follow the story - albeit enhanced by what Korean I've picked up from 8 years and 300+ K Dramas. So many times I smiled, snickered or even laughed out loud at the low key humour and the deliberately off-kilter words and actions of all the main characters.

I was VERY impressed by SSK's English, I had no idea she was THAT fluent, but I think perhaps the most interesting character of them all was CSY's. She really was borderline sociopathic to start with, and that was brilliantly counterpointed by her foil, the dryly irrepressible PA played so well by Yeon Je Wook, for whom I will defintely be keeping an eye out in future.

The Drama kept overused tropes to a minimum, avoided schmalzy sentimentality, and even kept its PPL to manageable levels with evidence of thought and care in its insertion. I've now completed 390 East Asian Drama series, and this is only the 45th to score at least 9/10. It scores that highly for reminding me of the joy that GOOD K Dramas can still deliver, when they get nearly everything right.

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This was a really interesting remake. Up until about episode 48, I was going to give it a score of around 6.5/10. It took the Japanese concept and invested it with warmth and humanity, and created characters to care about. The core concept was significantly better than the original, and if the drama had been 24 or 30 episodes instead of 53, I probably would have scored it 7.5 or 8. Now however I can only score it at 5 because of a troubling issue with the ML which resurfaced in episode 49.


There was still a lot to like about the drama which is why I'm giving it 5 but it could have been so very much better. If they had cut 20 to 25 episodes, if they had handled the female villain arc better, and if they had made the lead pair a union of equals, without the patronising paternalistic promotion of the ML’s flawessness, this would have been one of my favourite mainland dramas ever. It had so much going for it that I am disappointed it fell on the home straight.



WHAT FOLLOWS IS VERY SPOILERY. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED













The FL’s mother was a vicious sadistic criminal, without any redeeming qualities whatsoever. The FL’s very NAME derived from the fact that her mother attempted to kill her as a child. The mother physically and verbally abused her daughter throughout the entire series without remorse or apology and without ceasing. She bled her dry financially and crippled her emotionally. The ML never fully acknowledged the scale of the damage this evil woman inflicted on her daughter. He had his own childhood trauma, but he grew up materially comfortable, and never fully appreciated the sheer horror of the female lead’s background. He was always dismissive, his words constantly implying that what the FL’s mother had done was not that big a deal. At one point, he seems to have helped the FL to simply let go and cut all ties with the vicious fiend who gave birth to her. I was fine with that, letting go of resentment is one thing, and makes sense. But he undid all of that in episode 49. According to the subtitles that I saw, he said when the hellish hag got sick "yes she extorted money from you, but she was doing that for the family not for herself" that was a lie. In that lengthy scene, a third of the episode or so, He defended the abuser against the victim and emotionally manipulated or even bullied the FL into giving this evil thief another huge sum of money simply because she happened to be sick. This is the woman who prevented her own daughter from seeing the grandfather who saved her life and raised her. This monstrous mother lied to her daughter to steal money from her while the grandfather was dying. And after all of that, the ML takes her side over that of her daughter, his fiancée. That incident in episode 49 was simply the most extreme example of something that had been made manifest throughout the series. The ML’s constantly minimising and failing to grasp the enormity of what the female leads mother had done. In the end he still spouted the usual "but she's your mother" BS. It was the apex of the Drama’s adherence to the usual East Asian Drama trope that the ML must always ultimately be right in all things and at all times. The FL must learn the error of her ways and adjust her thinking and behaviour thanks to the benevolent paternalistic wisdom of the ML. That whole incident soured the drama for me and I kind of fast forward through the last four episodes. The final four or five were also the most makjang. Several of the characters suddenly had all sorts of things going wrong in a way that felt like makjang. I was grateful that it was only the final 4 or 5 45-minute episodes out of 53, Taiwanese Dramas often have 4 or 5 90-minute episodes like that out of 16-20 episodes. Still it was tedious and disappointing to race through the end of the series with my finger resting firmly on the fast forward button, especially as the last couple of episodes were unabashed paeans to the supreme superlativeness of the ML, he was THE SAVIOUR, the fixer of every problem, the source of ALL the answers. It actually made me miss the J original, where the FL definitely did NOT say things like “without you I had nothing anyway”, as the FL here does in the penultimate episode in response to the ML unilaterally and without any consultation committing their entire resources to a project of his design.

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Recently it seems that the PRC has been focusing on "no drama" Dramas, and doing them VERY well. Le Coup de Foudre and Go Go Squid fit that mold, this one does even more. What I loved most about it was that the ML fell first and HARD, while the FL remained her own self even as she too reciprocated his feelings. It also helped that unlike the other two mentioned, there was no clumsy unsubtle "CHINA IS AWESOME IN EVERY WAY" propaganda stuffed into the storylines.

I literally could not stomach Master Devil Do Not Kiss Me, dropped it with revulsion after 1 episode, so this the first time I've watched Xing Fei for a whole Drama, and I was very impressed. Stupidly pretty AND a good actor - I hope she does more Dramas like this one.

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The joke wore thin

This started off as bright breezy romocom, but sadly degenerated. In the end, the FL was exactly what she always 'dared' the ML to call her - pathetic. That's a shame, as Yoo In Na was the main reason I started the show.

I also UTTERLY LOATHED Joo Sang Wook's character. He was, I assume, supposed to be amusingly out of touch. Instead he came across as completely self-absorbed, to the point of delusion. The 'office partitions' scene was a great example of his unwillingness to even acknowledge that others were capable of possessing opinions. I ended up FFing through every scene he was in, which was just as well because another major flaw in the Drama was its length. Starting aff at 65 minutes and ending up at 79 was absurd.

The whiny, desperate Deborah, and excessively detached Su Hyeok were of no real interest to me. The reasons I scored this as "high" as 5.5 were the young couple, and the married couple. The 2 young lovebirds were cute, and as someone who feels safe in saying that I've been married for longer than most MDL users have been alive, I found the story of the longtime married couple to be a real strength. Their experiences and their expressions all rang true. Their difficulties, and the resolution, were the high point of the show for me, easing the disappointment and saving it from being dropped.

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Sweet, smart and ... SWEET

This was yet another J-gem. Thoughtful, intelligent understated dialogue (that made me REALLY wish I didn't need subs), believable characters and a consistent sweetness that never got cloying until the last half of the last episode, by which time a little excess sweetness was forgivable.

Even though it's unlikely that the three unlikely couples at the core of the story would have anywhere near so smooth a ride in real life, the emotional depth of the dialogue and the understated acting helped to sell the very sweet story. And of course, it helps that it was only 9 episodes - no risk of an overdose of saccharine or of the sweet soufflé going soggy from being dragged out too long. This heartwarming treat cemented Japan's top-ranking in "average sore by country" in my personal database and put Fuji TV clearly in front in "average score by network" for those 7 networks I've seen more than 20 Dramas from. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

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AVOID - Unless

My personal opinion of this Drama largely agrees with the overwhelming majority of reviews here - it's unwatchably bad. I actually found the first 20 or so episodes to be in the ":so bad it's good" category, but overall, it's just bad. I got though it to the end only by watching on 3X FF - hooray for subtitles! That's why I said AVOID - unless...

Unless you like makjang as a genre. It is VERY easy to mock the genre, and a glance through my feed will show I did just that throughout my rapid watch of this Drama. It was fun to take screencaps of some standout absurdities, and the amusement derived is a big part of why I finished it. But the genre has its fans, and the fact that a Drama like this one was made in 2021 shows there's still a market for makjang.

The other reason I stuck it out to the end was the performance of Lee Da Hae https://mydramalist.com/people/44919-lee-da-hae as Ju Se Ri. Her character was completely OTT even by the Drama's standards, but Ms Lee rose to the challenge of making it clear that the character believed her own story. Her facial expressions in particular were impressive, showing a much greater range and variety of makjang madness than the main villain, played by Choi Ye Jin, who was the main reason I started this. It seems fitting that of all the villains, her character has the 'happiest' ending.

So even though I'd never recommend watching this, I salute the professionalism of all involved - hardworking actors and crew who clearly gave their best to a 5-month project

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I was eagerly waiting for this because I liked both the Lius in the last Dramas I saw of theirs, but this one was confused, badly written and all over the place.

The first problem was the pacing: Only six 40-minute episodes long, NOTHING happened in the first two episodes that advanced the core stories, meaning the last four were super-rushed, and felt like the writers were stuffing things in to tick off a checklist. This was ESPECIALLY noticeable with the OTP. In terms of character and relationship development, They went from zero to horizontal in less time than it takes to type this. By the end of episode, I was seriously thinking of dropping the Drama, and only stuck it out because it was so short.

The development and portrayal of Eugenie Liu's character was bizarre too. She alternated between giggly naive schoolgirl crushing on her idol and foul-mouthed fighting ace with head-spinning rapidity. Never mind that anyone who was so calm and composed when receiving or dispensing violence would not, could not, be as naively starry-eyed as her other half was portrayed. Unless she had a Jekyll and Hyde thing going on.

The bullying agent was a disappointment as well. She came across as one-dimensional, when her back story had potential. As did that of the other lead actress.

I read recently that Netflix's first TW Drama bombed there. If the quality of this second attempt is any guide, I can see why. In summary, the best thing that came out of watching this Drama was the urge to rewatch "The Smile Behind Your Eyes"

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