In a toxic relationship with Nevertheless,

K-Dramas are no strangers when it comes to unhealthy relationships (unfortunately) but I have never seen a K-drama that was self-aware about it and leaned into that very premise, so I was intrigued by this show before it even aired.
I want to start off by saying, that a story is about a toxic relationship, is itself not a problem. I saw a lot of people writing this show off entirely because it contains a toxic relationship. Yeah, no shit dude, that’s what it’s about. You wouldn’t cancel a crime show because it contains murder and is therefore problematic. The question at the end is if the narrative endorses said relationship. And with Nevertheless, I am not too sure. But let’s get into it.

This show has a lot of things going for it. The cast is insanely charismatic. The chemistry of the two leads is especially off the charts, but the lead actress has a lot of chemistry with the second lead as well.
The cinematography wasn’t necessarily outstanding, I felt like they could have been more creative at times, but the show still looks pretty nice, and especially the spicier scenes were well-shot.
The soundtrack stood out as well, even though I have never been one to care about OSTs. I found it exceptionally good.
The dialogue was good and flowed naturally. Everyone talked like a real person would, which might seem like a low standard to have but is still something I appreciate. All the characters in the show felt like actual people, which is the foundation for a mature story like this.
This show definitely offered a more realistic approach to relationships, which I loved. The obsession with a purity that many Asian dramas have can get really exhausting so it was nice to see that casual sex wasn’t off-limits in Nevertheless,.
I really loved the supporting cast. I found myself rooting for Min Young and Kyung Jun who were sweet and funny and relatable and I wouldn’t mind a spin-off just about their relationship. But I was even more pleased about Sol and Ji-wan. Surprised because I actually wasn’t queerbaited (thank God) and it’s just really nice to see a healthy gay relationship in a Korean drama, but also because I was just really invested in their story. I thought it was a really well-done portrayal of a WLW friends-to-lovers-relationship. It didn’t escape me, that they were the only couple that didn’t really get any genuinely intimate moments, which makes me bitter, because we literally have multiple sex-scenes in this show but two girls being affectionate still was too controversial for Korea, but eh, sometimes you have to be happy with what you get. I usually have to look ages for halfway decent lesbian representation and happy endings for LGBT+ characters are especially rare so it was heart-warming to find something like this in a mainstream drama. I really can’t stress enough how much I loved these two and how happy this couple made me and without them, I probably would have given Nevertheless, a much lower rating.

With the leading couple, it's sadly not that simple. I expected to have major issues with at least one of the two characters because again, this is about toxic relationships, but I have major issues with both of them.
Park Jae Eon not wanting to date is completely valid. If casual sex is what you’re into, hey I don’t sl*t-shame. That’s cool with me. He wasn’t a bad boy that needed to be reformed in that regard. His actual flaw was toying with Na-bi’s feelings. When he was upfront with Na-bi and told her that he doesn’t do relationships, I was completely on board with that, problems arose when he started behaving like a boyfriend while refusing to be one.
Na-bi craving a stable relationship was of course valid as well. I also don’t blame her for falling for Park Jae Eon, because a) that man is dreamy as hell and b) he was very unclear about the boundaries of their relationship. I found myself frustrated with her a lot, for continuing to spend her time with this guy, but when you’re wearing the pink-colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags. We’ve all been there, we’ve all been in love with someone who clearly wasn’t good for us, but whose magnetism we couldn’t escape. I could only be so mad at Na-bi because I literally have been her and yelling at her to get her life together while I continue to make her mistakes would have been pretty hypocritical.
So we have two flawed people, a guy that’s aware of his charisma and toys with other people’s feelings and a girl that doesn’t respect herself enough to walk away. A common dynamic, truly a tale as old as time.

All of that itself isn’t a problem. I want characters to be flawed, heavily flawed even. I want them to make gratifying mistakes. But God damn it, something needs to come from it. Some growth. Or a life lesson. Because that’s my main beef with these two. Noone learned anything. I guess Park Jae-eon is willing to date now, but again, that wasn’t his flaw that needed fixing. Him enjoying flings wasn’t what made him toxic. What made him toxic is that he was just as bad at having flings as Na-bi was. He obviously struggled to differentiate between what is causal and what is romantic, which is why he continued to lead people on.
Na-bi wanting a boyfriend is valid, but she didn’t NEED one. Her not having a boyfriend wasn’t the flaw that needed fixing either. What she needed was to love herself. As much as I liked potato-boy, I prayed to God that he wouldn’t end up with our female lead, who herself was just as unready for a relationship as our male lead.
So, what this really should have been, was a story about two people overcoming their flaws individually. A girl that learns to stand up for herself and walk away from situations that aren’t good for her and a guy that learns to respect boundaries and communicate his intentions more clearly. Then I would have been totally fine with those two ending up together because they clearly have a lot of chemistry. But what those two needed was time apart to grow as separate people. Sadly this wasn't what we got. Na-bi and Park Jae Eon both never really changed throughout the course of the story, they’re just dating now. And that’s just really disappointing. Because now this show’s main message simply is “You can fix him <3”, which certainly is never true. And even if it was, that’s still a boring conclusion to arrive at. There are already tons of stories that keep telling us that love conquers all and that women are men’s free therapists, so I really didn’t need to watch another one that tried to sell me those ideas.

Should you watch Nevertheless,? Probably not. I wouldn’t classify this as a total waste of time, because there were a lot of things that I really enjoyed about this drama, but I still walk away from it with a bitter taste in my mouth. I was honestly quite surprised by Nevertheless, ending. Because it branded itself as being a more realistic, different approach to relationships but in the end, it still fell into old K-drama formulas. That makes the entire experience feels incredibly unrewarding. Because you watch Na-bi make the same mistakes over and over again to the point where it’s becoming ridiculously repetitive, all in the hope that the outcome will be worth it. That Na-bi will walk away from this, a different, empowered woman. But she doesn’t. And so this show is everything but.

In a weird way, I am Na-bi and Park Jae Eon is Nevertheless,. There were red flags that this drama would disappoint me, that I simply chose to ignore because I was too charmed by its strengths. I really thought things would be different this time, but I ended up heartbroken. I keep reimagining how things could have gone, a version of this that could have worked but it’s all fruitless. This is a toxic relationship and I need to love myself enough to walk away from it. Me and Nevertheless, simply aren’t meant to be.

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Death's Game toys with some very sensitive topics

Hm. Huh. Much to think about.
I feel like this critique is less of an examination of whether I enjoyed Death’s Game because I did, I had a lot of fun with it in fact. No this is more of a critical analysis of how K-Dramas continue to mishandle the issue of suicide.

As far as my actual review goes, I think this is a more than competent show. The premise is fresh and out there, the acting is overall very solid. It’s a visually stimulating and flashy drama. At times actually too flashy. Sometimes more is less, I feel, especially when it comes to sub-par CGI. I’m not going to fault the series for looking a tad cheap at times because I find that somewhat endearing, but occasionally it felt like they were throwing every visual effect in the book at me for no particular reason. So, there’s that. Other than that I really like the look of Death’s Game, I felt the gore especially, which shocked me every single time, was somehow still really tastefully done, if you can call dismembered bodies tasteful, that is.
The plot structure might have been a tad wonky. I kind of felt myself preferring the first few episodes for their pace, that being one person’s life being dedicated to roughly one episode. And the revenge subplot kicked in a bit late and then ended a little early, in my opinion. But I mean, I wasn’t bored or anything like that. Death Game was an overall thrilling drama and it most definitely made me think. But my thoughts might not have been entirely in line with what this drama was trying to convey.

This was a show which clearly considered itself to be very witty but more often than not, that attempted wittiness felt more smug than actually intelligent. Considering what prevalent and pressing subject matter suicide is in Korea, it’s rather strange that I can’t think of a single piece of Korean media that I think handled the topic well. Maybe it is the fact that that would warrant a more nuanced discussion about systemic issues. About stigma around mental health, the insane pressure Korea puts on its students and workers, outdated structures etc. Maybe that would not necessarily make good television. But for a story that I assume is supposed to function as some type of suicide prevention, Death's Game felt incredibly judgmental.
Our protagonist is literally sent through hell and back for struggling with his mental health. He is punished with physical and mental pain for feeling alone. How dare you feel this way? See the anguish your feelings have caused? You’re selfish. You’re cowardly. Cho Yi-Jae wants to die, and the best alternative this story seemingly had to offer was: Noooo don’t do that. Which, fair enough, I agree, you shouldn’t kill yourself. Suicide is bad for a variety of reasons, shocker. But what Yi-Jae needed, what this show needed was compassion. Someone killing themselves might seem like a choice. But the human mind is deceptive. What appears to be a choice often is not truly a choice. This story frames it as if our protagonist willingly abandoned his mother and girlfriend. And he selfishly decided that their love wasn’t good enough to stick around because he had failed in his career. But to presume and then perpetuate that those who fall victim to suicide did not have concern for others is wrong and harmful.

I don’t think that every story needs to be an after-school special. I don’t think every narrative has to be centered around what would be the morally correct answer. How dreadfully boring would that be? But suicide is a topic so incredibly delicate and if you get it wrong, there are actual repercussions. Imagine someone having those thoughts that Yi-Jae is having, watching this show, and the answer that they get is that they’re arrogant and that hell is waiting for them. Granted, if that deters them from taking their life, that’s good. There are no bad reasons NOT to kill yourself. But I don’t think that this was a super productive approach. Choi YI-Jae spends this show ironically enough literally living for other people. And sometimes that’s enough for a while. But that conclusion can also feel like a heavy burden to carry. I feel like Yi-Jae deserved the conclusion that he should stay alive regardless. Not only because you don’t want people to be left with the grief, you’re going to inflict, but because life is simply always worth living. Stay alive because your mom is making your favorite food next week. Stay alive because you’re not caught up with your favorite TV show. Stay alive to finish the book you’re reading. Stay alive because you’re not out of shampoo yet. Stay alive because honestly, most problems in life are temporary.

By the end of the drama, nothing has changed for Yi-Jae except for the fact that he has been through additional trauma he didn’t need. He had all these different lives to try and live out and nearly every single one was more terrible than the last. How much more powerful would it have been to reclaim life because he genuinely wanted to? Because he was reminded that no matter how hard it gets, on some days you get to see people you love and sit in the sun or see the city lights? Yi-Jae stayed alive because the alternative was hell, but what we needed to see, was that life on earth can be heaven sometimes.

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Awful, beautiful and bizarre all in one

Huh, those were two incredibly weird hours.
I am not familiar with the source material, but I’ve had Hot Gimmick on my watchlist for ages. The preview on Netflix had me genuinely convinced that this movie would be good, but I still couldn’t get around watching it. It was a friend of mine who convinced me that I just had to sit through this, purely for how strange this film really is, so we did.
And boy was she right.

Let’s get one thing out of the way before we start: Hot Gimmick is not good. The “story” is probably up there with one of the worst I have ever seen in a romance movie. The characters were all underdeveloped, unlikable or just downright sex-offenders. The pacing and the way this is cut, was very confusing to say the least. Every single performance had me cringing hard. On almost every level Hot Gimmick is a failure. And yet there is something more to it. But let me elaborate.

One can’t critique a movie without talking about the plot but when it comes to Hot Gimmick this is kind of a hard task. I feel like this film both had too little AND too much going on, all at the same time. Like, I am having a really had time, trying to remember like a single complete arc, but at the same time, I was confused about what actually was happening through the entirety of the movie. No one really does anything, and yet there is this whole universe set up with overly convoluted dynamics and backstories. It felt like everything that actually mattered, happened off-screen. The main girl is in love with idol-boy from the beginning of the movie but we never find out why or since when. She has this really complex family story with an adopted brother that only gets explained very briefly in a throwaway line that is easy to miss. Everyone’s parents in this are actually important and a vital part of the characters’ backstories, yet we don’t see a single one of them on screen, aside from main girl’s mom (who arguably was the only parent who didn’t matter in this whole debacle). Everything resembling a plot already happened before the movie even started. The protagonist never does anything, things just happen to her. It was like the film wasn’t even about her, she’s the only one that doesn’t get a backstory, so all Hot Gimmick movie really is, is her reacting to the past of other people. And since nothing is actually actively happening, all we’re left with is a story with already set rules that never really get explained nor challenged.

The characters, and even calling them that feels like a stretch, were a nightmare. As briefly mentioned in the above paragraph, our protagonist was one of the most passive ones I have ever seen. She doesn’t really have an opinion on anything and seems to be doing things without a purpose in mind. She’s supposed to be this symbol of naivety and purity and yet whenever anyone makes a move on her, she simply goes along with it. The only bit of a personality we get to see is when she refers to herself as ugly, which she does a lot.
The only character that I can call an actual character with personality was the protagonist’s sister but she was so insignificant to the plot that there wasn’t even a real reason for her to be here. Still, I was always happy to see her, she was a breath of fresh air.
I wanted all of the love interest dead, no exaggeration. At this point, I am used to Asian dramas blurring the lines of consent, sadly, but the extent and frequency to which this happened here was one that I could no longer overlook. I was deeply uncomfortable with many scenes in this movie. The male characters were incredibly cruel to our protagonist throughout the entire runtime and no one really grew from it. I guess her big brother was kind of unproblematic, or at least he would have been, if he didn’t have the hots for his little sister, so yeah there’s that. They also don’t do much, besides being romantically interested in the female lead.
Which brings us to our next problem: there is no chemistry. And that’s like the most important thing in a love story. I am willing to forgive a romance a lot if the couple has chemistry. Well, this film had three pairings and not a single one of them had any. But how could they, no one really has a legit reason to like anyone here. The female lead has as much personality as an IKEA cardboard box that was left in the rain and all the guys do is either sexually harass the girl or victim-blame her.
There was one (1!!!) scene where I felt like a couple had chemistry, it was one where glasses man and wet-cardboard-box-girl walked home side-by-side and had pretty legit banter. In those few minutes, I was almost willing to extent my disbelief and buy that these two characters like each other. Sadly, I wasn’t able to forget their previous scene together where he blackmailed her into kissing him on a public train station so I wasn’t in a very romantic mood.

This movie is gorgeous. I am not kidding, it’s legitimately beautiful. The cinematography is outstanding and I couldn’t name a single shot that wasn’t aesthetically pleasing. But it’s beautiful without a purpose. Art isn’t supposed to just look nice; it’s supposed to make us feel something. And Hot Gimmick failed on that level. Because, while every shot in this looked beautiful, most of them failed to communicate something. There were only very few scenes where I actually understood what they were going for, why something was shown the way it was, what mood it was trying to get across.
And the cutting suffers from the very same problem. Because most of the time the cut of a film isn’t supposed to stand out UNLESS you want to communicate a certain emotion. Action scenes are quickly cut and hectic for a reason, for example. Well in Hot Gimmick everything is cut extremely quickly all the time, for absolutely no reason. Except for one scene that was entirely one-shot, again, with seemingly no particular reason in mind. This made this film extremely hard to watch. Scenes in which the characters were just standing still and calmly talking to each other felt physically exhausting because it was so difficult to keep up with what was going on.

The soundtrack is genuinely kinda nice and something I wouldn’t mind casually listening to , but also dictated the mood instead of accentuating it. However, it did help me decipher, which scenes were supposed to be romantic,
because strictly by the actions of the characters, I never would have been able to guess.

So, you might read all of this and think that I hate Hot Gimmick but you would only be half correct. I gave this 9 stars for Rewatch Value for a reason. The last, let’s say 15 minutes of the movie had me genuinely moved and I don’t even have the slightest clue why. It’s not like I suddenly was invested in the plot, it’s not like I suddenly loved the characters but out of nowhere Hot Gimmick became raw and emotional. There’s this scene, pretty close to the end of the movie, where our female and male lead just randomly run through a park and yell at each other for what felt like an eternity and I was weirdly hooked through the entirety of it. Like for almost two hours, Hot Gimmick had been trying to impress me, with its fancy shots and with its attempts at being poignant, but it needed a shaky handcam and two teenagers incoherently yelling at each other for me to feel something. For the first time in the two-hour run time, I felt like I truly got it. I got what the movie was trying to tell me, got what the characters I thought I didn’t care about were going through. The weird cutting, the cinematography, the seemingly incoherent dialogue all kind of clicked together at that moment. It was fast-paced, awkward, helpless, and clumsy like teenage love is.
It’s absurd, because I can imagine a version of this that could have worked but at the same time, a good version of Hot Gimmick would require to change pretty much everything about it. Still, there is something good in here, I’m just not sure what it is and whatever it may be, it’s very very well hidden. But it’s not just the cinematography, there is something real about this film. For a few minutes, I felt weirdly represented in how honest, how awkward, how bizarre it was. At times I thought “This should have been a three-minute music video” at other times I thought “this should have been a 16 episodes TV show”. I knew what I was watching was objectively bad and yet I couldn’t give up on it.

Sadly, the potential to be good, doesn’t make something good. So Hot Gimmick simply isn’t and I cannot recommend sitting through this madness, unless you're interested in it from a film-making perspective, which was what intrigued me when I watched it. It doesn’t really work as a “so bad it’s good”-movie, for that it simply doesn’t have enough going on and requires too much focus but there are a few unintentionally hilarious scenes (look out for the hot chocolate scene as it had my friends and me laughing out loud).
Usually, when I am talking about wasted potential in a movie or show, I’d say that the basics were there, but the execution failed. Well, Hot Gimmick is the opposite. The very foundation was missing. The plot sucks, the writing’s bad, the performances are weak. And yet it’s beautiful. It’s like a castle built on sand, the very thing Jesus said one should never do.

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Brilliant in unexpected ways

This was one of the first K-Dramas I have ever finished and it left a very lasting impression on me so even though I might be late to the party, I really wanted to write a review about this show.

Because This Is My First Ife is both: Very flawed and kind of amazing. When I started watching this show, I was kind of turned off by the unrealistic premise. I was expecting just another cheesy romance. Which it definitely is, don’t get me wrong. But there is something more to this drama. And I don’t think the show itself realizes, how brilliant it actually is at times.

This is a drama that really stands out because of its writing. Ji-ho's monologue is oftentimes moving, poignant, heartbreaking, and always so real. Even though this show has such an out-there premise, I was shocked by how much I could relate to the things she said and the observations she made. That's because, while this show at first glance looks like your typical Korean coming of age-romance, it is so much more than that.
On the surface, Because This IS My First Life is just about a group of friends navigating life and the meaning of marriage. The core message of the drama lies in the title, it’s their first life, they don’t know what they’re doing but they’ll figure it out together.
But under the surface, this is a story, specifically about women trying to find their role in a patriarchal society.

We have Ji-ho, who grew up in a traditional East-Asian household, that valued her and her mom less because of their gender. As a result, she struggles to speak up for herself and lives sort of aimlessly. She’s extremely inexperienced in love and seems to pretty much have given up on it entirely, which is why she is so willing to marry someone out of financial convenience. Problems arise in her marriage after she is starting to fall in love with her husband but is not comfortable with fulfilling the societal role that is expected of a wife. She doesn’t want to heal See-he’s past wounds, she doesn’t want to be responsible for fixing his relationship with his family or take care of all the household duties. She knows that being the perfect daughter-in-law won’t heal him but rather that it would result in the loveless marriage of her parents where her mother constantly has to hold back and simply accept her dad’s verbal abuse. Ji-ho feels like the gender roles assigned to husband and wife not only harm her but also her relationship with See-he which is why she makes the deliberate choice to divorce him, so they can rekindle their relationship again, on their own terms. That she’s willing to take that step, is a sign of her character progression. She sues the man that harassed her and makes the selfish, but the right choice to leave See-he, finally putting herself first.
We have Woo Su-Ji, who is generally outspoken, confident, and honest but who has to tolerate the harassment she faces at work because she can’t risk her job. She knows that if anything goes wrong, she’ll be fired first, knows that she has to work twice as hard because of her gender. Being outspoken is a privilege that a woman in an office environment simply can’t afford. And since most men in her life really seem to suck, she doesn’t really trust them or tries to build meaningful relationships with them. When she finally meets a guy, she actually likes, she struggles to let him close and let her walls down. She’s used to being belittled by men, which is why she’s so scared of showing any signs of weakness and is only looking for meaningless sex. As her relationship with CEO Ma progresses, she learns to be vulnerable, learns that letting her guard down doesn’t mean that she has to give up her values. Su-ji’s character progresses but she doesn’t get any less fierce. Quite the opposite actually, her relationship makes her stronger, and she finally gathers the courage to quit her awful job.
Then we have Ho-rang who wants to get married so she can feel like “She made it” and belongs somewhere. She loves her boyfriend but is scared of the relationship going nowhere, which is a valid fear. At the same time, she also wants a wedding for artificial reasons. She knows her boyfriend loves her but things like social status still matter to her. She fears that people look down on her because she’s still unmarried. She’s a red coat, that wants to be a black coat, wants to conform. But even when she does meet a guy who wants to instantly marry her, who seems to be able to provide the secure life she longs for, she’s not fulfilled. She ultimately realizes that conformity isn’t worth sacrificing her happiness and while her arc ends with her long-term boyfriend finally agreeing to marry her, she also spent their time apart learning something about herself.

Korea is a country defined by neo-Confucianism a philosophy that values the collective above the individual. That has its advantages, for example when you’re in a global pandemic and trying to convince the people in your country that wearing masks is a good idea and that we should protect one another but it also has its disadvantages, like when you never really allowed to live freely the fear of disrupting the collective, the status-quo. Korea still has a long way to go in terms of women’s rights. Belittlement at the workplace is very common, women are usually expected to quit their job after getting married and having children anyways, so they rarely are in any leading positions and have to work harder to prove their worth to the company. This also results in the fact, that women in South Korea are way more likely to fall into poverty. Women are disadvantaged by the National Pension System because, since they are basically responsible for childcare in South Korea, only about 30% of them have pension rights. Reporting sexism is also generally frowned upon since you have to protect the company, you the individual, can’t do anything that might hurt the collective, even if you’re objectively getting mistreated.
Likewise, Ji-ho is just expected to mend her marriage, no matter how unhappy she is with the role she was assigned because again, she’s the individual and has to just take it to protect the collective, the family. This shows that patriarchal structures are everywhere, not just in our workplace but also in our homes and heads.
I was especially impressed with the scenes with Ji-hos mother, which show the sacrifices women have to make. When she hears the news that her daughter is getting married, she is scared that Ji-ho is giving up her dreams. She fears that her daughter will make the same mistakes as her for a life in conformity. It’s actually heartbreaking to watch, as Ji-ho reads her mom’s letter addresses to See-he and for the first time fully realized what her mom had to give up, so she could live comfortably.

In no way is Because This Is My First Life a perfect show and perfect example for feminist story-telling. The last two episodes are a bit of a confusing mess, and the disagreements between the two leads feel extremely forced to create some kind of emotional climax that the show didn’t really need. There’s also a whole arc about a stalker, that is so dumb that I blanked out for the entirety of it. Ji-ho still constantly has to get saved by See-he, which isn’t the girl boss narrative I was hoping for. I also don’t love that Ho-rang’s arc ended with marriage when it really should have ended with her realizing that she doesn’t need to conform.
Still, when I watched this show, I was really impressed by the lengths it went to talk about the female experience. Usually, K-dramas show some kind of female fantasy, where you get hit on by rich chaebols and swept of your feet. But Because This Is My First Life wasn’t interested in that. Instead, it showed you the real, harsh reality of being a woman in the 21st century. It isn’t always dreamy but it won’t change if we don’t talk about it. And this drama does talk about it, it talks about what it feels like to grow up in a patriarchal household, how women have to work harder to earn the respect of their male colleagues, about all the emotional and physical labor that is expected of a wife but ever fully acknowledged.
I love Korean cinema and Korean dramas, I love them so much that I am majoring in Korean studies at university but I have to address that the role of women in K-dramas hasn’t exactly been progressive. In older Korean shows the female lead is usually dumb and naïve and her sole purpose is to heal the cold and often-times downright cruel male lead from his trauma so they can fall in love. They send the message that it is a woman’s job to heal a man and that the greatest thing she can be is a wife. But I was delighted by the women in this show. Not only are they all smart, capable, and widely different from each other, the show makes a point about Ji-ho actually walking away from the emotional labor that is expected of her. She specifically states that she is not interested in healing See-he’s wounds. That a relationship is something that happens between two adults. That is kind of a revolutionary narrative, heck that is something I have yet to witness in a Western show.

I also love that this show dealt with the topic of sexism in such a mature way, something that is rarely talked about in older Korean shows. When a woman gets sexually harassed in an Asian drama, that often sadly happens as a plot device so that the male lead can save her. Or even worse, it happens so the oftentimes abusive male lead looks better in comparison. But Ji-ho essentially saves herself. She walks away from her job, even when they give her a chance to produce her own drama. She also makes the bold choice to sue her harasser. And the show also doesn’t brush off the sexist micro-aggressions the women face but instead, shows how they are part of the problem. It doesn’t victim blame Su-ji either for taking the abuse but instead highlights what she has to lose if she doesn’t keep quiet. It shows that sexism is a multifaceted issue instead of the result of a few singular men.

This is a romance, but what makes this show, are the women, defyining the Asian societal norms one by one. Still, even if you're not looking for a girl-power kind of narrative, this drama has still a lot to offer. I genuinely like the male protagonist here, even if he was outshined by the women and the portrayal of female friendship in this show. I find him quirky and charming. Very rarely do I see a male lead that is cold and kind of off-beat without being incredibly cruel and obnoxious. Heck, I kind of like all the love interests here. And I do like the romance. All the relationships in this show felt believable and mature. There are many swoon-worthy moments that 100% will bring a smile to your face. I was also pleasantly surprised by the humor. The actors all have good chemistry. The OST is pretty catchy. The cinematography doesn't necessarily stand out but it's still solid. All in all, this is a good romance. But it's an even better feminist story.

Since this show aired, the role of women in K-dramas has significantly improved, we now have a whole variety of strong, smart capable female leads to choose from. But in reality, Korea still has a long way to go. Women are still shunned for speaking out against sexism. This is why dramas like these are so important. They start a conversation.
All this and more are things addressed in this show which markets itself as just another romance, but in reality so much more. I didn't expect this drama to move me the way it did. And while it wasn't perfect, for that alone it deserves more recognition.

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The best dumb fun I have ever had

The second I saw the trailer I knew, that I would love this series. And I do, I honestly and truly love Vincenzo. It's been a while since I have had this much fun with a drama. But I am not going to sit here and pretend like this isn't an incredibly dumb show.

Vincenzo is an experience that is kind of hard to put into words. At first, I had problems connecting with this drama. I wasn't sure what to make of it. The first few scenes promised a high-stake thriller with a sinister feel. Then it suddenly turned into an off-beat comedy just like two scenes later. But Vincenzo is both of these things and neither. It's too gory to be a comedy and way too silly to be a genuine action thriller. The tone of this show is all over the place. But weirdly enough it sort of works.
As I fell in love with the quirky cast of this drama, I caught myself forgiving all of Vinceno's shortcomings. Those shortcomings include: A completely nonsensical plot with countless plotholes, cheesy dialogue, an overpowered lead, rushed plotlines, and confusing character arcs. This might all sound harsh but all my critique doesn't change the fact that I was incredibly entertained throughout the entire series. At times I laughed at the show, at times I laughed with it, but in the end, I always laughed, so who am I to complain.

Yes, this show has some fundamental problems. I have said before that it is riddled with plot holes but a big one is Vincenzo himself. The show is so scared of letting Vincezos fail at anything, that the incredibly high-stake premise starts to feel a bit pointless at some points because you always know that Vincenzo has the upper hand anyway. All attempts by our villains to bring him down get destroyed, oftentimes in the very same episode or even just ten minutes later. That makes Vincenzo feel less and less like an actual character and more like a Mafia version of Superman, a hyper-competent, invincible, supernatural being, everyone, and I mean absolutely everyone in the show, is in love with (the homo-eroticism in this drama is undeniable). I also wish we could have seen more bad-ass Hong Cha-young moments. She's supposed to be this super successful smart lawyer but 80% of the time, Vincenzo does all the work . I know that it's just one of the tropes that come with a Korean romance drama but watching her having to get saved by him time and time again did get a bit old.
While I love this huge and entertaining cast, it did feel like this show bit off a bit more than it could chew, which honestly is kind of amazing because it is so long and it still didn't really get the chance to develop each character. Some plot-lines here did feel a bit rushed as a result of that. This sadly also was the case with the romance between the two leads, which is a shame because I think they definitely had chemistry. I felt like their dynamic could have been explored more but unfortunately, the drama had more than enough on its plate already.

Still, while this show does get pretty dumb, there is a lot I sincerely like about it. I think the villain in this, while he is comically evil, is super fun and you can't say that the actor didn't give it his all. His over-acting is part of the charm here, to be honest. I thought Choi Myung-he was also a really fascinating, three-dimensional character and I enjoyed every scene with her. I also love a good redemption arc and a lovable himbo and this show offered both in one. The cast in general was really fun and different and there were many lovable characters to root for. The last few episodes were especially satisfying to watch and the finale didn't let me down either. While I have argued that Vincenzo's character was ridiculously overpowered, it would be a lie if I claimed I didn't love just watching him toy with the bad guys. And last but not least, I have never really gotten Korean humor, but in this show most of the time it worked for me. Others referring to Vincenzo as "corn salad" instead of consigliere will always crack me up.
While remarkable cinematography or editing isn't the first thing that comes to my mind when I think about this show, it still looks pretty cool and most shots get the point across while looking stylish, without feeling too showoff-y. The editing often adds to the humor and quirkiness of the show and the action scenes are also very well-cut.
The actors were great, of course. Vincenzo's actor really did try his best with his Italian lines so I gotta give credit where credit's due. I have already mentioned the villain's performance but his acting especially stood out to me and I just loved watching everything he did, no matter how insane it was.
I should probably say something about the OST as well but I honestly can't remember a single song from this show so I assume it was neither particularly great nor bad.

After I finished this drama I just sat down and asked myself: "Would I recommend this show?". And the answer is kind of. But you need to know what you're getting into. Don't come to Vincenzo and expect any realism. Don't expect anything believable or particularly meaningful from this show, otherwise, you will be disappointed. Just embrace it for its wackiness. Vincenzo promises an absolutely insane premise. And it delivers. The setup is insane. The characters are insane. The villain especially is insane. Everything about it is so over-the-top and off-beat, I don't think it's possible to not have at least a tiny bit of fun with this. But you gotta meet the show where it's at. Don't question anything. I am serious. Turn your brain off for those 20 episodes or your head will hurt.

I enjoyed Vincenzo the most when it leaned into its insanity. I couldn't really bring myself to care about all the times it tried to be depressing or deep. I had the most fun when it was just trying to entertain.
I feel like oftentimes films and TV shows are so dead-set on being edgy and clever, that they forget to be fun. Sometimes, after a long sad day, I don't want to see something witty and award-winning. I don't want to be out-smarted. I want to watch a Korean man try really hard to convince me that he knows Italian. I don't like that we measure art by how contrived it is. There's a time and space for dark, realistic, gritty stuff, obviously, but there should also be a time and place for a silly action show like this.

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A fun ride with some inconsistencies

Is how I would describe the experience that is All Of Us Are Dead. After feeling let down by Netflix's last few darker K-dramas, my expectations for this were rather low, but looking back on it, I am actually surprisingly pleased with this series.

All Of Us Are Dead is an eye-catching show in many ways. For starters, it definitely didn’t hold back when it came to gore and edge. Which I greatly appreciate actually. I wasn’t familiar with the source material but when I originally read the summary, I was under the impression that a highschool setting meant, that the target audience of All Of Us Are Dead was supposed to be teenagers and that the violence would be accordingly mild. Let me tell you, it is everything but. I can’t remember the last time I saw this many heads rolling and guts spilling out. Truly a sight to behold.
Aside from that, I think this series has pretty solid cinematography. The shot composition was visually stimulating most of the time. I think the simplistic single-camera really shined here. The action- and fight scenes were choreographed surprisingly well. Honestly, the show looks its best when all hell breaks loose. Suspension was high. I was on the edge of my seat throughout numerous scenes.
I really enjoyed the performance of our female protagonist Ohn-jo. She was my favorite character by far but I feel like I am in the minority here, as I have read countless complaints about her being annoying. I actually can’t relate to that sentiment at all, I found it very easy to root for the female lead. I haven’t watched any of the actress's previous work but considering that she is rather young and seemingly inexperienced, I thought she did a pretty convincing job.
I also appreciated the rare moments of comedy (well, most of them, not sure what to make of the two cops, to be honest). They didn’t feel out of place to me, instead, they were much needed to take off some edge from this dark dark drama.
In the series’ more humane moments, feel like I got to connect with most of the cast and got an idea of their dynamic with each other. In a very weird way, I was reminded of The Breakfast Club, the way our group of widely different angsty teens was forced to work and bond together. Just, you know, with more people dying. A lot more. While you have characters getting killed off left and right, most deaths felt impactful, which is difficult to pull off when your body count is this high. This for me signifies that All Of Us Dead did a solid job with setting up its characters and making me care for them, even if their screen time was comparably short.

But this show sadly also has its dull moments. I am not going to list every single plothole, for the sake of avoiding spoilers and also because this isn’t Cinema Sins. Also, unpopular opinion, I don’t care that much about stuff like that. This is a zombie series; my disbelief is already suspended. The only real crime you can commit as a story about the flesh-eating undead, is bore me, which this show definitely did not. Still, you have to accept some level of idiocrasy going into this. If logic is terribly important to you, I imagine that you will be frustrated a lot here. Everyone behaves rather irrationally but I mean, they’re teenagers. That’s what they do. Still, I can understand where the outcry is coming from, multiple moments don’t make a whole lot of sense if you really think about them for longer than a second.
I appreciated All Of Us Are Dead's attempt at social commentary but I don’t know if it was always warranted here. I don’t think zombie films have to be dumb, if you have something important to say, by all means, go ahead. But I think this show tried to say so much, that it ended up conveying very little. Maybe pick a message and stick to that one to avoid feeling like an After School Special. At its best, All Of Us Are Dead’s societal critique felt a bit preachy and on the nose. At its worst, it felt entirely out of place and took me out of the story.
The pacing started off great. The plot was developing fast and I was fully immersed in the experience. And then somewhere along the way All Of Us Are Dead got kind of lost with segments that took up way too much time. The last few episodes felt a bit draggy as a result. I don’t mind the typically ambiguous Netflix ending but since we started off so strong and plot-dense it seems like we got a lot of set-up with comparably little pay-off.
I struggle a bit when it comes to evaluating acting- I can vaguely tell what makes a story good or bad. Or what makes cinematography less or more interesting. I don’t possess the same talent when it comes to performances, it’s even more difficult for me when it’s in a foreign language. But for once I can point at one specific performance and go “Wow that was not exactly great”. That critique goes to the actress of Nam-ra. I am so used to Korean actors doing too much, honestly, overacting is part of the charm when it comes to Asian dramas. Well for the first time ever I witnessed a K-drama actress doing too little, it was honestly kind of puzzling to me. I understand that being stoic is part of the character but Nam-ra’s actress just gave me nothing, absolutely nothing at all. Maybe it’s because most of the time she did not have anything interesting to do, besides saying pseudo-poignant things at the entirely wrong time. Her chemistry with her love interest (who is also a rather bland character) was also close to non-existent, by the end, I honestly shipped her more with our female protagonist.
Speaking of romance, it also belongs to the show’s weaker qualities. I didn’t mind Cheong-sans and Ohn-jo’s developing relationship that much, but maybe this is due to my weakness for the Friends-to-lovers-trope. The love triangle???square??? though, felt entirely unnecessary and took up way too much time. It’s incredible that everyone had time for this petty drama while they had all these zombies to deal with.

I sometimes curse the day Train To Busan premiered. It seems like the existence of the movie alone has made it impossible for people to critique any piece of Korean media with zombies in it, without somehow comparing it to Sang-Ho Yeon's masterpiece. Even in universe, the title has to be somehow referenced, apparently, it’s just unavoidable.
Listen, is this the next Train To Busan? No, absolutely not. But I don’t think it has or tried to be. I think there is an important dissonance between entertaining and objectively great. At its best, All Of Us Are Dead was both but even at its worst I was still having fun, and at the end of the day, isn’t that what really counts?

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Basic and formulaic in the best ways

Honestly speaking, I am a rather pretentious person and I tend to be pretty snobbish about the dramas I watch, but I am pleased to announce that My Roommate Is a Gumiho reminded me, that I am in fact not too good for basic cheesy romance.
This is in no way a flawless or even remarkable show but I started watching this because I was craving something sweet and simple and this drama definitely served its purpose.

While My Roommate Is A Gumiho was unoriginal and quite predictable, I still wasn’t bored once through the entirety of the show. This is an incredibly charming, basic romance drama and I feel like its appeal actually lies in its simplicity. I’ve never gotten Korean humor but I also found it quite humorous as well at times. The characters were all very lovable, the actors had great chemistry, it was pleasing to look at, there’s really not anything to be mad about here.

If this drama had one weak point it might have been the love triangle, which I couldn’t bring myself to care about. I didn’t dislike the second lead, but I also didn’t really care for him and since it was pretty clear to everyone, who the main character would end up with, there really wasn’t a real point in stretching this B-plot for as long as this drama did, except for the sake of a conflict, this show didn’t need in the first place. The whole plot point about the red string seemed a bit like an afterthought to me. I didn’t hate it, but it was introduced to the drama fairly late and I really could have done without it. But I am nitpicking here, this is a romance K-drama after all and they can’t do without their love triangles, so I knew what I was getting into.

Should you watch this? Sure, why not. It’s not life-changing, but does it need to be? There are stories that stay with you, and I doubt that when I lie on my deathbed, that I will remember anything about My Roommate Is A Gumiho, but that doesn’t change the fact that for the past month this was drama was one of the few things that put a smile on my face. I thoroughly enjoyed this for how simple it was. Honestly, there’s really not a reason to NOT watch this drama unless you’re looking for something new, because this is everything but.

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As nutritious as cotton-candy (and just as sweet)

I’ve never necessarily loved Chinese romance dramas for a variety of reasons but I’ve had a rough start into the year which is why I was looking for something wholesome to soothe my troubled mind.
Well I am glad to report that Put Your Head On My Shoulder served its purpose!

This is so sickishly sickishly sweet, if this show was any longer it would be health concern. But there are actually a bunch of things that I genuinely appreciated about it.
For starters, I really really liked the female lead. I found the performance of the actress a bit cringe-worthy at times (does this woman ever stop smiling??) but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy her character. Often, I find myself annoyed by the female protagonists in Chinese romances, often they’re painfully naïve, incompetent, endlessly forgiving and chase after the male lead (who usually doesn’t even deserve it) to an embarrassing degree. Well, none of these tropes were present in this drama. I had a really easy time rooting for Situ Mo, she was confident, witty and funny and also good at her job. She wasn’t a genius but she wasn’t a complete idiot either. Situ Mo was driven by her emotions but never irrational or irritating to watch. She had an actual personality outside of her love life, had hobbies, interests and friends. She got along with other women, was never threatened by them or petty and treated even her romantic rivals with respect. And I also really like that she wasn’t afraid of taking the lead when it came to progressing her relationship with her housemate. Long story short, she was a complete person before falling in love. Never was she reliant on the male leads help, she was doing her own thing and chasing after her dreams, it was truly refreshing to see actually.
Another problem I often have with Asian dramas in general but Chinese romance dramas especially, is that I simply don’t see the appeal in a hypercompetent, arrogant male protagonist. I might be in the minority here but I find the idea of a perfect man whose only flaw is his ego so so incredibly uninteresting. When I read the premise of this drama, I thought that was what I was getting into with Gu Wei-Yi. But he turned out to be one of the most charming male leads I have seen in a long time. What can I say, I just enjoy watching a guy who is a little bit pathetic. And this is exactly what Put Your Head On My Shoulder delivered. Gu Wei-Yi was such an embarrassing loser, an academically smart idiot, a simp, as the teens would say. And I couldn’t be any happier about that. The first few episodes, when this show tried super hard to convince me that this character was supposed to be the coolest most intelligent dude ever, I found myself a bit bored by him. Only a bit further into the drama, when it got more and more clear that this man 1.) was down bad and 2.) had no clue what he was doing, I was truly charmed.
A lot of the comedy of this show came from Gu Wei-Yi embarrassing himself, which I really enjoyed. I am so used to the female protagonist being the butt of the joke, but this was rarely the case here. I think this was very needed to make the power dynamic of the lead couple more balanced, as the male protagonist was supposed to be a handsome genius that every girl desires and Mo Situ just a regular woman. He was also responsible for her living situation so all of this could have turned really toxic very quickly. But making Gu Wei-Yi incredibly socially awkward put the odds back into the female leads favor and I had a fun time watching this guy try super-hard for our protagonist even though this show initially tried to convince me that he was way out of her league.

The biggest weakness of this show has a name and it’s Fu Pei. I am usually soft for the childhood friend second lead, nope, not the case here! Man does this guy suck. Not only was he super unlikable and a borderline creep, he was also oh so boring, His prior relationship and dynamic with Mo Situ was poorly established and so was his further character development. Luckily you can just skip all of his scenes and miss exactly nothing, that is how irrelevant he was.
I also found this drama a bit redundant the second our lead couple got together, because, as mentioned, I think most of this drama’s comedy and charm lies in Gu Wei-Yi chasing after Mo Situ, but I also understand that you can’t stretch this plot line for longer than like 15 episodes so maybe this show could have done with like 16 episodes instead of 24. But the later episodes were still somewhat enjoyable to watch and I found them charming enough so I am nitpicking here.
Also: this is definiteley a drama that will make you cringe a lot, I don't think that that has to be a bad thing, often enough the show was self-aware about it and making the viewer feel embarassed was part of its charm/humor but it's something to watch out for if you're especially prone to second hand embarassment. I dare you to watch any of the "spicier" scenes with a straight face. Or any scene where any character soeaks English, it's a tough ask, believe me.

Put Your Head On My Shoulder is like cotton candy. There really is nothing to it except for its sweetness. This drama offers nothing of value, no themes , deeper ideas, barely any plot to be honest, but that was never what I wanted from it. I thoroughly enjoyed this show for its simplicity. Through the entirety of its runtime, I found myself expecting some kind of major conflict, that one of the characters would have a depressing past, that there would be a major love triangle, a big fallout, anything that would disrupt the peace I found within this, but to my surprise that moment never came. And you know what, I am glad it didn’t. There are times where I am looking for maturity and realism in my love stories, this wasn’t one of them. There is nothing wrong with silly wish-fulfillment and media that makes you feel nothing but good. Life is depressing enough, sometimes after a long day, you need shows like this.

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Works because capitalism doesn't

I want to start off by saying that this is more a think piece than a legit critique of the show. You don't need me to tell you that this show is good, you've probably heard that before. But in case you want to hear me say it again: Yes it's good. It's fantastic.

I discovered my love for Korean cinema with Bong Joon-ho. So mý approach to Koreas movies and dramas has always been a political one and it's what I appreciate most about this country's media.
This is on every level a more than competent show, acting, writing, cinematography-wise. But its brilliancy lies in its portrayal of the struggles of the working class.

Squid Game is not subtle with its portrayal and criticism of South Korea’s economy. The entire competition as shown in the show is held by the elites, who watch poor people killing each other for entertainment. The super-rich organizers have become so detached from everything, that the suffering of regular working-class people has become funny for them. We see rich men enjoying expensive whiskey and making jokes while the people in front of them are dying. The participants of the game are no longer human to them, in fact it gets literally said out loud, that they bet on them like they’re horses. It starts with them only getting referred to by numbers. And with each game, the players get more and more de-humanized, more and more alienated. The competition and brutality is what the game thrives on. It’s why the organizers deliberately give the participants less food, to “weed out the weaker ones”.
But there is more subtext to Squid Game, which makes it so brilliant. None of the contestants have been “forced” to play. Unlike in titles with similar premises the characters are here according to their free will. In fact, after the first game, they vote whether they want to continue the games, and the majority votes for no. And yet they still return. Because they have nothing out there waiting for them. In the real world, they have no real, tangible opportunity, to earn the money they need to restore their life, but in this brutal competition, they do. They can turn the cash down. They can leave the competition. But as participant Mi-nyeo beautifully puts it: “It’s just as bad out there as it is in here.” And that’s the thing, no one is forced to take part in this- and yet they are. Because their circumstances leave them no choice. Because partaking in capitalism is not a free choice, it’s the illusion of free choice. They’re playing a game of survival, no matter if they’re in the real world or in the game. But here at least, winning seems more realistic.

The harsh reality of capitalism also plays a big role in multiple backstories of our leads. Gi-hun, our protagonist, is unable to get back on his two feet after losing his job. Not only that but he is also traumatized after watching a friend and colleague die through police brutality at a strike.
We have Ali Abdul, an exploited Pakistani immigrant, who basically has no rights as a worker in Korea, since he’s there illegally. Kang Sae-byeok also fled to the South half-island from the North hoping for a better life, but finds herself disillusioned and trapped in poverty. The players of the competition can only exist because of capitalism. They are not unique and unlikely cases but part of a structural problem.

The idea behind the games is to give the participants one last fair chance to success. The frontman says out loud, that he wants a fair competition. In the real world the players of the game have been discriminated, based on their social status, based on their gender, based on ethnicity. But in this game where they play seemingly arbitrary games, everyone is supposed to have equal chances.
But do they?
Even though every single player could, in theory, make it through the majority of the games unscathed, how high their chances are is almost entirely based on circumstances that pretty much are out of their control.
Just like in Squid Game, whoever gets the advantages in life is based in arbitrary factors. In which family or country, we are born in as well as dumb luck. It's the meritocracy lie, the lie of the American dream gamified. Haven’t we all been reassured time and time again, by the 1%, that our system is fair and just, even though it clearly isn’t? The prize money is just hanging there, barely unattainable yet sufficiently close enough to see it and we keep telling ourselves, that we will get there if we push ourselves just enough.

Then there are the guards of the competition, dressed in menacing red robs. Though it’s easy to hate them since we constantly see them actively taking the lives of players on screen, there is subtlety in their portrayal, showing that they too simply are clogs in a machine with basically zero autonomy. Aside from, you know, constant murder, their schedule reminded me of that of an average warehouse employee. Their schedule is tight and strict and they’re not allowed to ask questions. A disembodied voice tells them what to do, when to eat or sleep, not all that different from the schedule of an Amazon warehouse worker.

In an environment as brutal and bloody as the one in Squid Game, kindness is a privilege that is impossible to afford. To make it through, you have to play dirty. Everyone who is kind and trusting by nature, like fan-favorite Ali, gets crossed. Many people have stated, that Squid Game makes a thesis of human nature.
But Squid Game isn’t as much about human nature as it is about the circumstances our players are put in. Except for a few exceptions, like the over-the-top evil mafia boss and his goons, the participants are neither good nor evil, they’re desperate. And they want to survive. It simply shows what happens to people who have nothing to lose.
Our hero doesn’t get as far as he does because he is kind, or because he is witty, but based on luck and technicalities. But his soft heart is the reason why he is left a broken man, unwilling to even touch his prize money. Humans aren’t good or evil by nature, but you won’t make it to the top through honest work or good character.

Korea isn't the thriving capitalist utopia that we imagine it to be. Korea's economic growth lies on the exploited working class, which works an average of 52 hours per week. In comparison to other countries, unions are weak. Human rights organizations such as Amnesty International have consistently denounced the situation of workers. Kang Sea-Byeok, the Korea from North Korea in the Series, was hoping for a better life in the South. But when asked if that wish came true, she simply stays quiet. Kang Sae-byeoks story is not an unrealistic one. Many North Korean refugees live as second-class citizens. Forever strangers living in a country that speaks the same language as their homeland.

The fates of Gi-hun, Ali etc. are familiar to many Koreans, but claiming that Squid Game’s scenario is only applicable to Korea, would be a false deduction. Many American critics have now taken it upon themselves to praise Squid Game for its portrayal of South Korean workers specifically. Fact is, that Squid Game works because capitalism has failed everywhere it’s been tried. It’s certainly not a coincidence that the two Korean pieces of media that have reached the biggest global success are both deeply anti-capitalist.
One of the elites in the show watching the competition live, states that South Korea's games are the best ones, in a throw-away line, implying that South Korea isn’t the only country that organizes games like this one. Meaning that, in the world of Squid Game, what we see on screen is supposed to be happening all around the world.
It’s one of the most telling lines of the show. Explaining Squid Game’s success despite all its cultural differences is simple: We all speak the same language under capitalism.

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Confusing and confused

(very light spoilers, nothing major revealed)
As everyone else, I was very excited for Hellbounds release. And I wouldn’t say that I was let down, but I still think that this drama left a lot to be desired.

Without a doubt, this show has a lot going for it, including cinematography and a few stand-out performances, especially coming from cult -leader Jung Jin-soo who had me captivated every time he was on screen. But this is a very plot-heavy show so it feels fair to focus my review of this drama mostly on that.
Hellbound has a few interesting concepts that I really appreciated. I think the most interesting aspect of this show, is how it explores the exploitation of tragedies. How would we act, if the existence of God and hell were confirmed in our universe? Wouldn’t our first instinct be to capitalize on those events? How long would it take us to try and rationalize what is happening, to twist the stories until they fit in our world-view? I think it was very fitting that no matter how out of control the events of the drama got, even after literally proving the existence of Angels of death, capitalism was the one thing that prevailed. That gave the entire show an air of capitalist-realism that I found really interesting. I got a strong Death Note vibe from the whole premise but the story had enough additions to make it feel like its own thing. Analyzing how we as our society would react to such a setting, factoring in the internet, mob-mentality, streamers, and video virality made this feel fresh and relevant. I also know that South Korea has a pretty serious cult-problem so the premise of the show also appealed to me on a cultural level.

So yes, in theory, this drama could have been great. But as the MyDramaList score shows: it’s not. It’s merely alright.
When I first read the synopsis of this show I was wondering, how the hell (no pun intended) they were going to pull off a story as complicated as this one in six episodes. The answer to this question is simple: They don’t. While I could, more or less follow the plot, Hellbound ended up being not only a confusing but also sadly a deeply confused show that doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be. A lot of elements, metaphors, and subtext were introduced and then quickly dropped, because six episodes simply weren’t enough to tell this story. I think the best example for this problem was demonstrated in detective Jin Kyung Hoon who, for a good amount of this drama on every level seemed to be its main character but suddenly disappeared when a new protagonist was introduced by episode four. Now I enjoyed both these characters but still was left kind of stunned when the show, past its mid-point, suddenly decided to tell the story from the point of view of someone we never even met before. Then there is, of course, the open ending, which I did sort of expect but at this point, I am very doubtful that we’re ever going to get a Hellbound season 2, and considering that, this story left way too many knots untied for my taste.

Also, and I don’t know where else where to mention this as it’s only a half-serious criticism of the show, but good God Bae Youngjaes baby is ugly. I felt like laughing every time it was on screen. I understand that the majority of the CGI-budget probably went to the monsters and action (and understandably so) but this has to be the worst animated infant I have seen since Twilight.

I read that many people were disappointed with the drama's lack of gore and that many were hoping for an experience more similar to Sweet Home. While Sweet Home is a show close to my heart, this is not the case for me. I think all the ingredients were there to make this drama special. I didn’t need any more blood from it, just a bit more focus. Sadly the potential to be great doesn’t make something great and so Hellbound simply isn’t.
Still, it’s not a total waste of your time. I am not mad about having watched this. The questions this story poses were interesting enough to keep me engaged. There’s enough about this drama to be somewhat enjoyable, plus while the short runtime might have weakened the quality of the show, this way it at least doesn’t feel as big of a commitment. Should you watch this? Sure but lower your expectations. I will say this: If you liked Death Note you’re probably going to get some kind of kick out of Hellbound. Just bear with it for those few episodes. You’re not going to get a whole lot of explanations from this show but a few interesting thesis statements about the state of the world (plus an ugly looking CGI baby).

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The importance of queer voices

Wow, this was sort of, kinda, lowkey really good.

As someone, who has their qualms with the BL fandom, I am always a bit wary when it comes to BxB content, often I am left with a weird, fetishistic mess, but people insisted Gaya Sa Pelikula is one of the good ones
And you know what?
They're right.

This was the first Filipino show I have ever watched and I found it incredibly charming. I think the reason why this struck a chord with me is that, while this drama has its flaws, I could tell that it comes from a place of sincerity.
My beef with most BL content is, while it capitalizes off gay relationships, it is so often very far removed from anything LGBT+. The writers/directors are often straight. The actors usually are. The plot is often centered around some weird harem full of handsome, vaguely similar-looking young men, so far removed from anything resembling "the gay experience tm”. Often times they treat the more flamboyant, feminine gay characters as a punchline, oftentimes they refuse to even use the word gay. BLs are so obviously produced for a straight audience. And that is okay, I guess.
But it's nothing I am particularly interested in.

Gaya Sa Pelikula is very much not that. I could tell that the plot, the characters everything about it, came from the corner of someone's heart. Because it touches on something real. It isn't afraid of tackling subjects such as unsupportive parents, internalized homophobia, heck even micro-aggressions within the LGBT+ community get mentioned here. It just felt... I don't know, real? Like the author obviously was drawing from his own experiences. And this is what made this show stand out to me. But okay let me structure this properly.

Let’s start off with everything I love about this drama:
I love all the characters in this, even the minor ones, but I especially love Karl. Many viewers were probably charmed by smart, outgoing, sassy emotionally intelligent Vlad, and I can’t blame them, but the character I found myself most in is Karl. I feel like he is, not only a relatable character for many LGBT+ teens, as he tries to figure out his sexuality, but relatable for a lot of young people in general. We all know the feeling of being a side character in our own story. And this feeling of having no agency in life, was beautifully conveyed in the show’s poignant dialogue. While I found the premise of the show cheesy and sort of immature, the dialogue very much was not. Not only was the banter between the two leads funny, cute and natural, but the dialogue in the more serious scenes was remarkably intelligent. Gaya Sa Pelikula, as mentioned, managed to touch on a lot of social topics, without it feeling like strict PSAs or the writer’s way of speaking directly to the audience. Every character had a distinctive way of speaking and everyone had a unique perspective and something important to say.
I also have to give a shoutout to the show’s female characters, as BLs very rarely take the time to write three-dimensional women. A lot of people loved Anna, and I get why, but I found Judit, Vlad’s sister much more intriguing. Yes, she was deeply flawed and oftentimes annoying but that was her point and what I liked so much about her. I found her journey as an ally very believable and important and especially the scene where Vlad calls her out for her performative activism left a huge impression on me. It showed that sometimes meaning well, simply isn’t enough, while also demonstrating how much she truly cares for her brother and wants the best for him.
This is also one of the rare occasions where I actually have something to say about the show’s OST: It’s great! Every song is an “absolute banger” as the teens say, especially “True Young Lovers” which I still haven’t stopped listening to. Everything in the soundtrack felt like it served a purpose and nicely accentuated the scene it was in.

On to the things I did not love about Gaya Sa Pelikula.
This show did not have a big budget and sadly you can just tell. I realize that this is something the production team, in the end, has very little control over, sometimes you have to work with what you have, so this is definitely one of the drama's minor offenses, but as a result, the cinematography doesn’t stand out. There were a few scenes where they were more creative with it, but mostly it fell rather flat. I also feel like this either wasn’t really color-corrected or like the color correction was just sort of… bad? The colors were extremely pale and it did throw me off sometimes.
This story also definitely just needed more time. I have commended this show in the paragraph above for how many issues it tackled and its characters but sometimes it did feel like it bit off more than it could chew. Anna’s side story of her temporarily leaving her daughter was fairly heavy and felt like something that could have been explored more, but since this is a mini-web-series, the whole thing gets resolved rather quickly and off-screen as well. In the end, I was left wondering if it hadn’t been better if they had left out that plot point entirely.
While I think that Vlad and Karl’s actors had good chemistry and while I definitely loved their banter, they needed more time together as well. The whole progression of them falling in love with each other was a bit unclear to me and did feel a bit rushed, unfortunately.
At times this drama also felt a bit overwritten. Like I don’t think we needed tragic lore on why exactly Vlad doesn’t like it when people touch his hair, I get what the writer was trying to do, but it gave me a bit of a “Joker-origin story”-feel if that makes any sense at all.
Also, and this is just personal preference, I just couldn’t get over the premise. The whole “fake dating”-thing made me cringe through the entirety of the show. I could have gotten past it if the rest of the show had been more on the silly side but it was just a bit too fanfiction-y to me, in a story that otherwise was very mature. I fully get that a lot of other people love this stuff, but I just don’t. I usually prefer for my romances to feel more grounded in reality, especially if the tone of the rest show is more serious. But again, this is something that comes down to personal preference.

The way this show tackled LGBT+ topics was honestly something I have never seen before. It wasn’t “great for an Asian drama”. It was just great. Period. Many scenes here will tuck on your heartstrings. Obviously, Karls and Vlad's breakup made me sad, but the first scene that brought tears to my eyes was between Karl and his gay uncle (a flamboyant, overweight man that is more than just a punchline, I can’t believe it). “I’m not always suffering because I am gay but because I always choose to love. So don’t turn me into a cautionary tale, I’m too fabulous to be one.”- How beautifully put in a show that is essentially about queer suffering. Many stories centered around the gay experience are so caught up with dealing with trauma, that they completely forget to remind us that grief is the price we pay for love. And that it is worth paying.
This show successfully captured the beauty of your first love and heartache as you figure out who you are. Never has "right person-wrong time" been so accurate. It doesn't demonize Karl for needing his time before he is ready to come out. It doesn’t demonize Vlad for not being able to go back into the closet. Neither of them has done anything wrong, it is society that has wronged them.

As I researched the writer of Gaya Sa Pelikula, I came across an interview where he stated, that the drama was indeed based on personal experience. That he once was like Karl and many years ago met his Vlad, an out and proud gay man who he fell in love with and who also loved him. But like Karl, the writer was not ready to come out, so when the other man asked him to be in a public relationship, he turned him down. When he eventually was comfortable enough to come out, the man he had rejected, had moved on and they could only be friends. Shortly after this, his first love died tragically at a young age.
This is the real heartache of this show. That the author’s first love will never be able to see this tribute to him. That it is a story of “could-have-been”s. “What would happen if we didn’t have to be afraid?”, is a question that Vlad asks in the very last episode and it is the one I have been asking myself ever since I watched this show.
Gaya Sa Pelikula, while being flawed, beautifully illustrated the importance of queer voices. Because this a story only a gay person could tell. And the more often we hear stories like these, the less often they will have to occur. In that sense, kudos to this show, for being so real, for being so poignant, for being so open, so vulnerable, so very very relevant.

I want to take this last paragraph to tell my fellow LGBT+ folks: Get your story out there. Whether it be in the form of an actual book or movie or if that just means existing and being an active part of the community, our experiences matter. No matter where you are in life, whether you can live your truth or are still in the closet, you’re so valid and important. What you have to say makes a difference and helps make this world a better place. You are the main character of your life. You have a story that no one else can tell, so make sure you tell it.

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Deadly charming

Gosh, what a show! It‘s been a while since I was this charmed by a drama but this did it for me.
What can I say, I love everything about Inspector Koo, even its flaws, which I would argue, make this even more endearing. Yeah, it’s riddled with plot holes and conveniences, yeah, the performance Mrs. Koo gives, is a bit strange and over the top, but man, that’s all part of the experience baby!
I am struggling, trying to take this show apart, and truly critiquing it because, for the first time in a long time, I was too entertained to pay attention to the details.
In no way is this a realistic crime thriller, but I don’t think it has to or even tries to be one. Somehow this show managed to be intelligent while having the most Ludacris plot ever. Inspector Koo definitely knows its strengths and you will catch yourself suspending your disbelief to new extremes simply because you’re too hooked to do anything else.

How refreshing to see a K-drama that is truly driven by its women. Female competence all around. Inspector Koo is a quirky anti-hero that you cannot help but fall in love with and Na Ja-hee is one of the coolest women of K-drama in 2021. But I especially lost my heart to psychopath and dream-girl K. Most people probably already know her from Kingdom but the only drama I saw her actress in before this, was some sleazy lesbian-fanservice 5 minute-episode web show. But man, she did such a fantastic job here! I was having fun whenever we got to see K on screen. No matter how deranged or downright evil she was acting, it was nearly impossible for me to hate her, that’s how much I enjoyed her performance here.

However, the biggest strength of Inspector Koo is its distinctive cinematography and cut. This is a drama that stands out because of its style. From opening to its montages, this show felt fresh, interesting and most of all: charming. Never did this drama go the easy route of conveying something, even simple scenes of people casually talking to each other were visually stimulating, thanks to the quirky look and feel of Inspector Koo. I was strongly reminded of the cinematography of Scott Pilgrim Vs- The World, which I love. The color and quick cut took the edge of the dark premise of the show and made this thriller fun without making the gruesome crimes of K feel trivial.

The OST is SO DAMN GOOD!!! I am not someone that cares for K-drama soundtracks or even K-pop, not at all, but I’ve been listening to the OST non-stop ever since I watched the first episode. It’s so catchy but never felt out of place. I found myself grinning ear to ear every time Round And Round by TRRP came on.

Inspector Koo is a silly drama, but it’s not a stupid one. I would somewhat compare this dark comedy with Vincenzo, which I also truly loved, but Vincenzo was a show that felt like dumb fun, with not much else going on. And that is not a dig at Vincenzo, I adore that show. But with Inspector Koo, I think there was more method to the madness and yet it doesn’t feel like it tried as hard. Amidst all the weirdness, there is something genuinely poignant and important about this drama. What is good, what is evil? And what should judgment look like, when those two ideas start to blur more and more?

I strongly strongly endorse this drama, I would even go as far and call this my personal K-Drama of 2021. The 8.2 does not do this show any justice, this is criminally underrated, in my humble opinion. Yeah it has its flaws, Inspector Koo‘s acting, as mentioned above, the plot holes, and at certain points, the plot was kind of slow and repetitive. I might be overly generous, I will gladly admit that, but no matter how hard I try to be objective, I just can’t stress enough how much fun this drama really was. TLDR: I think Inspector Koo is absolutely brilliant.

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