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onceiwaskingofspain

onceiwaskingofspain

Live korean drama review
Completed
Live
0 people found this review helpful
by onceiwaskingofspain
Mar 20, 2024
18 of 18 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 9.0
Story 9.0
Acting/Cast 9.0
Music 8.0
Rewatch Value 8.0

Slice of Life Police Procedural That's Sympathetic to Both Law Enforcement and Citizenry

The Good:

• No serial killer cat-and-mouse, genius detectives or glory hounds. Police work is everything from dealing with drunks to navigating departmental politics to high profile/high risk cases and it's all treated with the same gravitas.
• You may love-to-hate or hate-to-love some of the cast, but they all have reasons for the way they act and interact with each other and their conflicts and hang-ups stem from more relatable issues than Kdrama tropes.
• There's no easy answer to systemic societal problems and the narrative doesn't pretend to have any. Sometimes people make bad choices, sometimes they make good choices and sometimes there aren't any choices at all; just consequences.

The Either/Or:

• Because of the profession the issues dealt with are more serious than most slice of life dramas.
• The rookie romance love triangle is fine, but it could have been easily omitted without changing anything important in the story or characters; which is usually a sign that something should have been omitted.

The Bad:

• The final episodes take a dramatic turn which doesn't match the tone of the rest of the story. It's not completely over the top, but the main point - that guns can save as well as kill - was already adeptly proven reviously.
• The character stories could have been more tightly wrapped up instead of said dramatics.

Takeaway:

• It's a realistic and relatable depiction of broken people in a broken system trying to help each other without getting too artsy or pedantic in presentation. Highly recommended if you enjoy bleak but hopeful and occasionally philosophical slice of life dramas like Misaeng, Black Dog and My Mister.
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