Blow Breeze (2016)

The writing is an insult to the talent cast for it and the viewers, too

This starts with a really strong and unusual set up with excellent child actors prepping the show for success. When they become adults and the main stars take over, it's still alright for a while... then about 12 episodes in, the second lead actress (the villain) gets injured and they cast someone else and it seems like they rewrote it so suddenly she's the lead, not Lim Ji Yeon. That's where it took a really noticeable downturn. I get that they were in a hurry and needed someone who could handle a role that was aggressive and selfish and such, but it's like the contract they signed with her had some clause that she had to get at least 35 minutes of each hour on average. Maybe they started like that, but if that's the case, make the villain the lead.

The leading lady is a total doormat, something I hate because no one is going to just put up with being kicked around-they'll either run away or they'll fight back be it in a drama or real life, at least when it's to this degree of emotional abuse, manipulation, etc. Ugh. Anyway, I really don't advise anyone to watch this unless they take sick satisfaction in seeing someone trampled all over at work, by her mother in law (here, it's tradition for the daughter in law to do the prepping of all 100 cabbages for kimchi making!) who still after marriage wanted to split them up, even... The two leads aren't fighting a good fight; they're being trampled all over and assaulted left and right. The scenes with sentimental connections between the grandfather and his blood granddaughter he is unaware of are really endearing; the good characters had so much potential, but what writer has a 40-50ish year old somewhat sickly mom, her daughter, and her sick grandson from a son who died sent off to a hostess bar? What hostess bar would have them let a little boy cough all night in a dressing room for hostesses? Shipping them off, abduction, wrecking their product when her own company was going to sell them... it's just so over the top, all the worst ideas you can ever envision someone doing to someone else, that I find it not only really awful to expose a viewer to but just unforgivable, especially if we're ever supposed to understand and reconcile our bitter feelings about the villainess.

Just trash. It's called Blow Breeze because it BLOWS. Hard.

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A hard watch overall

For those that like the genre, perhaps well watchable, while at episode 31 and surely watching it til the end, there are a few gruesome issues for me.

Episode 49 is where anything starts getting concluded, so if you can cope with 53 episodes in which most scenes only have the bad people and the rest is constant abuse without any long or good moments of "respite" or short "serenity" for the main characters, then this might be for you, only 49 episodes of constant doormat abuse without any kind of justice and a ML that never really defends her, with two exceptions that really do not matter for the story.

The male lead is a kind of nice guy who for the first 12 episodes mostly gaslights the female lead, whenever he does something remotely nice, he gaslights for that and coerces her constantly, some might find this cute, I do not, especially since he is such a weak person who let's anything happen to his love, never really protects her from any antagonist even until episode 31.
This is mostly handled with the usual "he's never there and she never tells him" trope, especially from episode 24 to 31 he constantly lets his mother and family walk all over her, without ever properly doing anything for her.

I personally have begun skipping a lot of scenes, because the absolute majority of all scenes are about the "evil" people doing evil things without any repercussion EVER, which seems to be a bit normal for MBC dramas.

The cast has some of my favorite actors, who act well as always (especially the two grannies) however the writing is overall rather mediocre, it is extremely predictable, uses the most common tropes.

I do hope it at least gets slightly better.

While skipping through the mud, I was moaning a lot and can't even put properly into words what kind of frustration it was, tho the worst frustration was not the skipping itself, but any moment where the skip wasn't instantly loaded because the extreme feeling of cringe that made me feel bodily ill got a massive extra dose of frustration whenever I couldn't instantly escape the for me almost unwatchable scenes of generic repetition from the most generic and common makjang tropes.

I absolutely hated the tempo, which the format (1 hour, 53 episodes) might create for some reason, however I have watched at least a dozen long running korean dramas where the tempo was quite perfect.

I think I just hate dramas that are 99% of episodes door mat destruction with a gaslighting, lying, manipulating male lead somehow depicted as "cute" and that then only give you a single or two episodes where everything is "fixed" "karmic justice" is dealt (while ignoring 9 out of 10 evil characters)

and overall that makes it very hard for me, with certain tropes I need them to be concluded quickly and not drag on for 20 or 50 episodes to be concluded in half an afterthought.

To add to this:
Whenever any of the children get abused by adults
The adults always go scot free, which is kind of infuriating because it is constantly used as a trope to drive the drama.

I also absolutely hate the main male character more than any of the evil people.
Just because he is such a weak person, who never defends her from the abuse she suffers.
Always stays silent when half a dozen to dozen people harass and abuse her, gaslights her in 9 out of 10 "romantic" scenes and it's just a lot.

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