Regressive Misogynist Merde - RANT FOLLOWS

I started this one starting after "The Love Equations" and at first it seemed very promising, especially the cemistry of the OTP. But in the end it turned out to be toxic trash. The one consistent theme of the whole Drama was that women NEED a man, they can never be better than a man at anything and need to be coddled and helped by "their man" because they are, after all, "just a girl"

This theme was introduced with the FL who was lied to for TEN YEARS by her parents, and we find out her YOUNGER brother knew about it. They all decided she had to be lied to "for her own good" to "protect her". She was also manipulated by the ML from the beginning it turned out, and even her little brother consistently ignored her requests and did whatever he and the ML deemed "best" for her.

Then, when the younger brother met an amazing woman, older than him and who LITERALLY taught him, he not only ended up becoming her equal or better in every field in which she excelled, he also had to be her RESCUER. That was a major facepalm moment for me, when the Drama proved it simply would not permit a woman to be superior to a man in any way, but would insist on them being shown as dependent on men.

This message was reinforced when noble idiocy cropped up in the final quarter. When this happened in "The Love Equations", the FL fearlessly called it out as the idiocy it truly was and there were real consequences. In this one, it was lauded as "noble" and the FL even APOLOGISED to the ML for letting HIM down.

In short AVOID this Drama unless your idea of "romantic" is troglodytic chauvinism, where women happily simper and can't exist without a good man to make up for all their many feminine frailties. If that sort of regressive bakvaas is not your idea of a sweet Drama, try The Love Equations, instead.

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The original Leverage was one of my favourite TV series, and one of VERY few US series that I enjoyed watchging for its entire run. I was excited by the casting for this one, so was keen to check it out. In the end, it was the casting that kept me going to the end of a rather stodgy, pale and humourless remake. Kim Sae Ron shone, her character the one most like the equivalent in the original, and she played it well.

While Kim Sae Ron's "Parker" was good enough to keep me hanging on, sadly, the same can NOT be said for Yeo Hoi Hyeon's "Hardison". How much of it was the writing and how much the actor, I don't know, but what I do know is that while Hardison in the original was awesome, and the complicated relationship between him and Parker was pivotal, in this version, the hacker character was just lame and annoying. Also, the Korean remake REALLY missed a great chance by not casting someone like Sam Okyere. I say that not simply because he's of African descent, as the original was, but because in the small roles I have seen him in, he gave off the same sort of amused detached outsider vibe of the original.

Some of the heists were fun in this remake, but the "big bad" was a big bore - seen it ALL before. K Dramas seem to have a fetish for mysterious cabals, and the EXACT nature of this secret plot have been used more times than I can remember in Dramas I've seen. The result was that I FF'd large chunks of this Drama to make sure I didn't fall asleep from boredom. Hence, 6/10 - and young Ms Kim is responsible for 4 of those 6.

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Korea should take notes

This Drama was sheer perfection. EVERYTHING was right about it: The tone, the length, the story arcs, the character development, the music - everything.

The perfection of tone and length were closely related. Because the Drama was a perfect length, just 14 hours total runtime, the tone stayed sweet and positive throughout. I am a hardcore brony, who just LOVES a good romance Drama. In recent years, Korea has stopped producing any. Instead K Drama writers have decided that nothing says "romance" more than having a serial killer as a major part of every "romcom", or resorting to fantasy pairings like a girl with a demon, or a girl with Cupid, or a girl with a Reaper, etc. etc. etc.

What the writers of THIS Drama got write was in understanding that a simple, sweet, uncomplicated "girl meets boy and it's love at first sight" story is ALREADY pure fantasy, and doesn't need any other baggage thrown in. No need for dark scary psychopaths whose only real function is to pad out the overlong run time. No need for love triangles, stalker exes, or anything to spoil the short sweet fluff. Evefn the creepy, sleazy client was presented a brief a nod to reality and a setup for more OTP bonding.

This worked because the characters were well-written, and this leads me to the main reason why on my personal database, I scored this as 11/10. This Drama is very much in the model of Itazura Na Kiss and all its clones, but with one HUGE difference. From It Started With a Kiss to A Love So Beautiful and lots of similar Dramas in between, I have watched "cute ditzy girl falls for hunky brainiac" A LOT, and this is the VERY FIRST ONE EVER where the FL had an academic strength in which she excelled the ML and even taught him. That was ASTONISHING. My drop rate for C Dramas is high, more than 50% of the C Dramas I start I drop, and that's because of the toxic chauvinsitic misogyny rampant in modern C Dramasd especially. The heroes are good at EVERYTHING, the Fl good at nothing, except pehaps EQ. Not this one. To see an ML & FL tutoring each other and helping each other as true peers was beautiful.

This equality was openly expressed in the dialogue too. The scene where the ML defends the FL to her young cousin by telling him how good the FL is at English (sad we never hear her say a single word of it) was an example of the quality of the writing. Since I rely on subtitles, and since I know how VERY much is literally "lost in translation" whenever I see a Drama where I'm blown away by the quality of writing IN THE SEBS, I think about how awsome the actual dialog must be.

I loved the sensible, down to Earth forthrightness of the FL. She knew what she wanted and went for it, but she also grew as a person and was never passive or whiny. The ML was great too, a great example of a "damaged" ML who was NOT tsundere. His little speech at a product presentation he gave about the impact of the FL on his life was magnificent, as was his thoughtful, PRIVATE proposal.

Whenever I need a remider of why I fell in love with East Asian Dramas in the first place, and why when they get it right they are truly I magical, I will FLY TOWARDS this Drama for a rewatch

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Lots to like, but...

This Drama surprised me. It was a blast from the past, nothing but trope after trope, with clichés thrown in to break up the tropes. BUT, it worked - mostly.

WHAT I LIKED

1. Self-awareness. THe show KNEW it was a tropefest and embraced it, inviting the audience to laugh at its rehashing ALL the tropes. Couple shirts?! It worked because the show knew it was silly and was inviting laughter.

2. Kim Young Ok. This amazing actor just makes EVERYTHING she's in better, and the writer here was smart enough to give her lines that fit her dual persona as hallowed halmeoni and spunky gran perfectly. She was a HUGE part of the reason I stuck it out, as was

3. Ahn Se Ha. The one role that wasn't a trope - no BoF, Heirs type Drama that I've seen had such an irreverent Sancho Panza character, and Ahn's delivery was perfect. Very refreshing, especially in the first half.

4. OTP chemistry. I'm not so much out of the loop on who's dating whom in K Ent as out of the entire galaxy the loop is in, but if these two are a real couple, it would explain a lot. A by-the-numbers romcom like this literally lives or dies by the OTP chemistry, and these two sold it really well, INCLUDING

5. The first kiss scene - HUGE bonus points for this scene, one of VERY few in K Dramas where The kisser ASKED FOR PERMISSION. That is both romantic and sexy and swayed me heavily in favour of not dropping

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE

1. The clichéd mushiness of the evil half-sister at the very end. Keep those cojones, sistah!

2. The show was too long

3. The show was way too long.

4. The show was ridiculously way too long

5. The show was irritatingly ridiculously way too long

6. The show was unbelievably irritatingly ridiculously way too long


In the end, I gave it 7.5 because of everything it did right. It would have got 8.5-9 if it had been 12 60 minute episodes instead of 16 70 minute episodes

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There was nothing particularly wrong with this Drama, and enough that was right to make finishing it worthwhile. The OTP was cute enough, though their clicking seemed a bit sudden when it happened. The mystery was also ok, I've definitely seen much worse. I give the Drama credit for what it put the male lead through in the penultimate episode, it went somewhere I wasn't expecting.

The downsides were the annoying clownish tutorial head teacher whose past caught up with him, and the show's determination to basically just say "forget the past" for some pretty industrial-level betrayal and deceit. Said betrayal was obvious early on, the big reveal was "yeah, saw that coming from episode 2" kind of material, but the journey to that point was tolerable. The second leads were a big part of the reason for that, their arc was more nuanced and more crediblw than the leads. Finally, I love the song used for the OTP, "Siren Song" by Three Laws - a keeper for sure

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Not awful, but...

This was not what I expected. SO MANY reviews, and one of the tags, said "comedy" - This was a funny as DIY dentistry. THe base story was fine, and it was quite well told in 6 episodes, but a comedy it was not. OTOH, it was lovely to see Han Ji Hye back on screen. I hope this was her way of easing back into acting now her child is bit older. I actually started for this for Bae Da Bin, but her role was disappointing – for a former Marine, she was portrayed as pretty much weak and useless. Also, I was hoping to her speak English as she did in her last Drama, but no such luck with this one

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A triumph of love over hate

In this case, my utter HATRED of the "kindergarten kismet" trope. When I saw that this Drama was built on exactly that trope, I assumed I would hate the Drama. But, it triumphed, and I loved it.

What I loved was that it played with the trope, mocking it, analysing it, and teasing the viewer until the final episode as to whether the trope would come true. The side couple were well done, the bar owner's arc especially lending some real emotional warmth and depth to the light frothy sweetness of the main storyline.

Another big plus was the short length. Four hours total runtime was just right, no angst or pathos padding out a longer series.

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SP? It means SPare yourself this waste of time

I rated the original series 7/10 for its examination of female friendship. This one only gets 4, and that's down to the hard work of the female leads. The SP adds nothing to the lead character's story, but did confirm that the "KEY" character was truly awful. Throughout the entire original series he never did or said anything supportive for the FL, always snide and blaming her - sometimes deservedly so, sometimes not. In the SP, he hit a new low. When the FL was emotionally devastated by something for which she was in no way at fault, he angrily attacked her and defended the person who had hurt her. If you enjoyed the series, don't taint your memories of it by wasting nearly 100 minutes on this very UNspecial

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That I stuck this Drama out for all 72 eps (with MUCH ff, of course) is testament to the fact that it kept surprising me by avoiding clichés in many setups throughout the Drama. Sadly, it fell into one of the worst of them at about the 60 episode mark. Noble idiocy rears it tired, ugly head, and we have to endure the male lead having a personality transplant/brain removal before it's fixed just in time. So the kindest thing I can say about this one is, I liked the leads, and the execution was better than expected in many places. I've definitely seen worse. It was also a bit jarring to see the cute youngest sister and keep thinking about what happened to the actor who played her. Very sad.

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SPOILERS: DO NOT READ IF YOU WANT TO WATCH











"Wonderfully Sweet and Entertaining" - that was how one blogger described this Drama, and it puzzled me. It STARTED that way, but by about 1/4 of the way through, the body count started to climb, and the deaths, most depicted with languid lingering attention to gory detail, kept on coming. Basically EVERYBODY dies, except the OTP, and apparently THAT makes it a "wonderfuly sweet and entertaining" romance? I started this for Ms Kim, whose work I've enjoyed for 6 years now, but the surfeit of savagery in this sageuk meant I had to bail out after making it to half way.

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I started this Drama because the synopsis sounded promising, about two single parents starting again. What I got was a makjang marathon made more miserable by the awful female lead.

For the first 25 episodes I raged against the FL's unbelievably selfish son, who did whatever he wanted whenever he wanted with no regard for anyone else and NEVER apologised for any harm his actions caused. It made me think of "little emperor syndrome" What made it worse was realising he learned that behaviour from his mother's own view of herself

In the course of 57 episodes she apologised exactly ZERO times for all the times she flagrantly exploited the male lead - even before they were together. She was an adult version of her spoiled sprog, utterly self-absorbed, HER immediate wants and needs the only thing that mattered. Even in the final 10 episodes, she was prepared to break promises she made to the FL whenever she felt she knew better AND then expect him to apologise to her for daring to get upset about it.

I stuck it out hoping for character growth, but the Drama's version of "character growth" was "she's always right, he has to say sorry", a pattern that was literally carried into some of the very last scenes of the very last episode. While I can count on the thumbs of one foot how many times she apologised to him, she made him apologise countless times for failing to realise that he should always tolerate everything she did.

In the interests of fairness, I have to admit that leads like this are common in Dramas, but the "spoiled child" lead is normally a sulky chaebol boy brat, not a newly-divorced single Mum. I dislike male leads who act this way every bit as much as I disliked this female lead. Whiny, self-absorbed "aegyo" from adults is NOT cute or endearing, regardless of gender. Ms Wang did a fine job of making me dislike her character, so kudos for her acting. The love story of the FL's BFF was cute and engaging, and one more reason why I made it to the very end of this stupidly overlong wasted opportunity.

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Simply superb

I put off watching this drama when it was released because fantasy is not a genre I normally enjoy. I now regret waiting four years, this drama was outstanding.

When it was first released, the creator of the drama was reported as making comments that astounded me, and that have always stuck with me. They said that they created this drama specifically and explicitly for Ko Chia Yen. That is a remarkable tribute to her as an actor. I have heard of individual movies that were created with a particular actor in mind, films that the writer and/or director have said could not have been made without that specific person in that particular role, but I have never ever heard of a 15.5 hour runtime drama that was created specifically to give a vehicle to one particular actor. Having completed the drama, it makes perfect sense that the one particular actor was THIS actor.

Ko Chia Yen's performance was phenomenal. Not just in playing characters at different ages, but playing two completely different characters at different ages. Because of the nature of the storyline she was at times playing an unstable introverted teenager who was playing an outgoing adult who was playing as that unstable introverted teenager. Layers upon layers, and she nailed it every time.

Of course, as exceptional as her performance was, the drama would not have worked if she had been carrying substandard performances from the other leads. Hats off to all those involved in the casting of the other main roles. Greg Hsu and Patrick Shih rose to the challenge of their roles superbly. A special word of praise has to go to Patrick Shih. The layered, Inception-style nature of the storyline meant that his was a distinctive and different kind of a second male lead role, full of nuance and complexity. His delivery of the role was moving, conveying the pathos of the characters situation perfectly.

The romance at the heart of the drama also would not have worked had the casting been off. The on-screen chemistry between Ko Chia Yen and Greg was palpable. The brief little thank you BTS they hastily put together after the drama aired was a wonderful glimpse into the professionalism of all involved - Ko Chia Yen being bleeped out when she commented on having to refer to the six years younger Greg as "Li Zi Wei gege" was funny, but it was also a nice reminder that this was a performance by highly skilled and trained professionals who told a well-written story exceptionally well.

There were a couple of flaws that prevented this from getting a score of 10 from me. The first were the 'comic relief' characters featured prominently in the early episodes, especially Kun Bu. I felt sorry for the actor playing that character because the role was superfluous and tonally grating. It was interesting that her character was easier to take later in the drama when she was playing a younger version of herself, she was less clownish at 19-20 than 26-27.

The other and more significant flaw for me was the "big bad" arc. The deranged psychopath was a plot device to generate tension and danger for all four of the leads – both of Ko Chia Yen's characters, and the two male leads. However, I felt that it was unnecessary, or at the very least excessive and over-emphasised. It was obvious right from episode one that the biggest danger to Chen Run Yu was internal, not external. The stunning performance in the penultimate episode when Chen Run Yu and Huang Yu Xuang went head-to-head really demonstrated that. Their interactions showed that there was little need for a somewhat crudely cartoonish external villain to generate an existential threat, when Chen Run Yu carried the biggest threat inside herself.

The prominence given to that external villain seemed to be a nod to a tradition in Taiwanese dramas, the apparent need to include elements of Makjang. It also contributed to the drama suffering from a very common flaw with Taiwanese dramas, that of being longer than it needed to be. Reducing the prominence of the role given to the psychopathic villain and perhaps reducing or eliminating the comic relief roles could have shaved one whole episode of the drama and would have made it even better than it was.

A somewhat controversial opinion here – the ending was just a few seconds too long. At the VERY end of the Drama, the creative team made EXplicit what had been made IMplicit seconds earlier, and I thought was a bit of a shame. Ending with the child actor would have been absolutely PERFECT, imo. Less is more. A very minor niggle, though.

That it was a little longer than it needed to be made me think of the Korean remake, which is 25% shorter. It was the airing of the remake that prompted me to finally get around to watching the original. I wanted to watch the original before I watched the remake. Having been blown away by the original, I will not now be watching the remake.

I hope that all who do watch the remake enjoy it, and I'm sure that this will be especially true for those who have not seen the original, but there are two reasons why I think it is fundamentally impossible for the remake to match the original.

First, the casting. The fact that this drama was created specifically for one particular actor, who was obviously the very core of the entire drama from beginning to end, means that any remake is missing a certain something. When the remake was first announced, long before it was filmed, it got a black mark in my scorebook for the fact that they went out of their way to cast the male lead first. This was a drama that was created specifically for the FEMALE lead, she was the reason the show existed at all, the fact that the Korean production chose to prioritise the casting of the male lead said to me that they had missed the fundamental point of the show's existence.

The other reason why I don't think the remake could ever be considered as good as the original is simply that - the original was ORIGINAL. It was inventive and creative and put well used elements like time travel and love triangles and internal conflict together in ways that, at least in my 600 dramas, I've never seen. That creativity and originality is something that no remake could have. No matter how good any remake is, it's working with pre-existing material. The bulk of the really hard work has already been done. And, of course, no remake would have Ko Chia Yen in the role.

This drama reminded me why watching East Asian dramas has been a major hobby of mine for 10 years. When they are good they are very good, and few come better than this one. I hope others try it, and I really hope they try the original first.

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