Little Women (2022)

El mejor drama coreano de 2022

Desde el primer segundo la trama me atrapo y no solamente por ser una gran fanatica del libro en el cual se inspira. La historia tiene vida propia más allá del universo que conocemos de “Mujercitas” nos da una visión moderna de un cuanto conocido por muchos y lo explota de la mejor manera.

Fácilmente se convirtió en una de mis series coreanas favoritas y de las mejores series que ví.
No había escuchado mucho hablar sobre esta serie y es una excelente opción para los amantes de el misterio, lo policiaco y los cuentos clásicos. Debería ser un drama de que se hable más en la actualidad.

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Sociedade da orquídea

Gosto muito e veria 500 vezes novamente, adoro os personagens até mesmo o ódio que eu sentia de alguns era algo bom, a história é envolvente, minha vontade era não fazer nada e só assistir a esse drama.

Só não gosto muito da in hye pois achava ela muito trouxa de ficar com aquelas pessoas, ao passar dos episódios eu percebi do por que ela ser desse jeito. A mãe das 4 era muito sem noção, para não dizer outra coisa, e queria que tivessem aprofundado melhor o jeito dela com as meninas, também gostaria da infância delas ser mais bem explorada, sei que ja falaram bastante sobre mas queria saber melhor a história bem certinha de vida delas.

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Everything was perfect until E08 after that......

For me Little Women was just a decent Watchable drama. Everything look so interesting and gripping in the start, too many Mysteries with a very good story telling, plot twists, and more. But all are for nothing actually from E09. Slowness is ok. Because i already knew this probably a slow poison in the start but i was completely wrong to be honest. Because after E08 everything is predictable or i predicted almost everything.

So for me, i lost all the excitement. E08 ending was lit. But it all spoiled in the starting of E09. Politics is also unbearable. Too many unwanted story complications for nothing actually. If you think there will be a grand twist coming after all this, then don't fool yourself. Nothing was there. Actually if you can easily predict everything...

I thought this would be a good mystery serial murders kind of a story telling and unfold a large mystery with an unbelievable twist or something like this. But if you just look back after all 12 episodes you will probably get what i mean infact there was nothing but too many complication 🚶

Stunning cast and performance. And some characterisation, oh sister's are brilliant, even a simple detailing of their behaviour is superbly narrated. But it doesn't support the story.

Overall it's not a bad drama or must watch drama, it was a simple and decent drama to watch. Too many dragging after E08. Some point i thought even for just a 12 episodes they took so many time to conclude that story and what happen if they took 16.. 🥶

It's only my personal view.

#N45Views

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More Alice in Wonderland than Little Women

Loosely based on Little Women is the sort of loose that happens when the elastic in your trackies gives way and they drop to your ankles in a wrinkled heap. Yes they are still trackies, but not obviously so. I spent the first episode distracted by trying to unsuccessfully work out how this drama maps to the book. But I was looking in the wrong place, because, although there are parallels to be found, the map is really in the theme: the significance of money.

This is fundamentally a story about money and its sidekick—power (the perennial obsessions of K-dramas, well maybe most dramas actually…). How and why it shapes lives, morals, choices and character. How poverty shapes your mentality and expectations. What you are willing to let it buy and what that does to your integrity. What risks you are willing to take to acquire and keep it. Under what conditions you will let it go. The price that your decisions exact from both you and those around you.

It puts the protectors, helpers, underminers and benefactors of the wealthy centre stage and examines their motives and desires. This is a rare perspective and I can only remember it being the centre of a drama in one other totally brilliant case, “Secret Love Affair” (if you are interested in this aspect, watch SLA, it will not disappoint, although it’s not a thriller).

As you can guess by now, it is not the plot that makes this drama special, (more about that later) although you can simply watch it as a thriller. It’s the examination and unfolding of motive behind the fight for freedom and opportunity in a world that values money over the individual. A society that insists we fight for limited resources to fulfil not only our dreams but our basic survival as well.

It’s almost impossible for us to imagine a society not based on money. But money itself is not of course concretely real, it is simply a universally accepted system of sharing resources that becomes meaningless if we lose trust in it. It is the illusion around which our reality and dreams are built. And if you are going to be fanciful, you could watch this drama as a commentary on the system’s strengths and weaknesses and the approach people take to best work it. Given that it is compulsory to engage in this system, the question as to what is morally acceptable and what is personally justified is core to the unfolding of the narrative.

Having said all that, there are problems in my opinion with how the drama is written and presented. There’s a vibe of the sisters being ordinary people (a reference to Little Women perhaps) who are unwittingly and sometimes unwillingly mixed up in something big.

However, through most of the drama, the sisters don’t display enough realistic, long-term emotional reactions to support their ordinariness in the extraordinary and violent situations that surround them. In a normal thriller we suspend disbelief because the whole thing is not related to any recognisable reality in the first place. Here, particularly in the middle section, I am being made aware of the gap between quasi normality and the world of the story with the result that I am also very aware of suspending my disbelief. And at times I found the approach is not subtle enough to make it work.

Because the women are presented as relative amateurs, there are moments that stretched my credulity to breaking point. For instance, without any preparation and seemingly without backup, they are willing to confront people they think are probably murderers. There are scenes where professionals who would never disclose information to anyone let alone the naive woman in front of them, disclose it. Etc, etc.

There’s an odd mix of the ordinary, the extraordinary and the completely surreal. The more surreal it gets the less the ordinary women at the heart of it are credible. It turns into conspiracy theory central with hallucinogens thrown in for good measure. Whether this was intended as a reflection of the madness that money creates in people is debatable.

The plot gets increasingly bizarre and takes off in strange directions and at times loses impetus. This has a fragmenting effect which leaks tension and can be frustrating. But at other times the sense of confusion and powerlessness is very effective in putting you into the shoes of the protagonists.

Overall, this is an ambitious drama and when it works it really works, and when it doesn’t, it really doesn’t. I’m someone who is prepared to put up with stuff not always working well if an attempt is being made to experiment with something new and different. I think this drama tries to do that, so I was happy to give it the benefit of the doubt, but even my goodwill was tested beyond its limits by the end.

What my rating means: 7+ A watchable drama, but nothing exceptional. Good enough to qualify for the race, but finished with the pack. The sort of thing that promises more than it delivers.

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A Flawed and Twisted Tale of Dumb, Dumber and Ingrate

First of all, this kdrama has next to no connection to the classical American novel of the same name. It only loosely based its characters on it, namely - the three poor sisters, their rich great aunt and a male friend of the family who simps over one of the sisters. The rest is pure fiction with popular contrived tropes used in kdramas:
-evil chaebols;
-corruption;
-secret organization with unlimited power;
-off their rockers villains;
-makjang.

PLOT:
The first half of the show is great and promises a potential masterpiece. It starts fresh, with relevant topics raised about poverty, social issues and is mixed with murder mystery. Every episode manages to rile up new emotions in the audience with unexpected plot twists and sympathy for the characters suffering injustice. Small niggle starts to appear with the introduction of the conspiracy theory trope - the powerful secret society (#Illuminati), and fantastical properties of blue orchids.
And after a shocking finale of superb episode 8 it rapidly starts to go downhill with reveal that the main villain is just a deeply deranged person who likes to play with the victims before killing them. Absurdity, increased usage of makjang tropes, dumb circus and public shows are introduced in the next episodes until it all culminates in a cringey finale where none of the villains get what they deserve (they all die instead of rotting in prison for their crimes) and little women get what they deserve (money!) but at the cost of other people's fortune.
The tale of the ill gotten money, that is the catalyst of this whole plot, is a long winded one, but in the end the three sisters get their hands on it with the help of ML, even though originally it belonged to the victims of the bank made bankrupt by the villains.
The final message was supposed to be that ill gotten money is evil, it's not worth chasing if it costs someone's life, better live in honest poverty than dead or rotting in jail. But that message is completely negated by giving said money to the sisters anyway in the end. The hypocricy is apparently lost on everybody in the end, because that's where the show conveniently ends.

CHARACTERS:
First of all, lead female characters here are deliberately made dumb, flawed and reckless. It was script writer's conscious decision as was reported in the interview with her.

The dumbest of them all is the bookkeeper eldest sister, who throughout the whole drama made only 1 smart decision (to swap the cash with bricks), the rest was sheer luck or help from other characters. But what her character lacks in intelligence, is compensated by her love of her friends and family. She manages to forgive and save her friend, who basically set her up big time and put her in great danger, from certain death. And she'd do absolutely anything for her sisters. Being poor through all her life though, her next greatest love understandably is money and she makes a lot of stupid mistakes after a very large ill gotten sum of it is suddenly left to her as a gift. But stupidity must be punished, so in the end her character does suffer a bit to reflect on what she did wrong according to law. She's rewarded with her material dream by the end of the show.

The reporter middle-sister is a bit smarter than her elder sister. She is self righteous and claims to have unbending integrity and high morals, but they are heavily tested as her sisters get themselves in trouble and lawless methods that villains use make her fail to expose them again and again. In the end she succeeds in her investigation and gets together with a male long time family friend who helped/followed her throughout the episodes. However their romance from friends to lovers is very weak and that male character is one of the most useless in the whole drama.

The youngest sister is the epitome of a teenager during "a phase" - an ungrateful little brat who throughout the whole drama never once said a grateful word to her sisters who'd do absolutely anything for her. Instead, her grand plan was to get away from her poor family and get rich and comfy life quick by befriending the villains daughter. And she did succeed in that in the end without too much of a hassle, so I guess she was the smartest of them all. Some people claim that she did thank her sisters in the end by getting each of them a share of that ill gotten money. But she didn't actually, it was all ML who just accidentaly met them running away and decided to use her friend's account for a while (though he could have as easily have done it by himself). In the end her role was downsized to a minimum, a pretty selfish and consistently ungrateful character, who just had to be there because there had to be 3 sisters.

The villains of the evil secret society were several, but in the end only the main one is worthy of note. The society itself turned out to be not as powerful and omniprescient as was advertised. It's a drama about women, from women's perspective and so the main villain is also a woman. Her character development from a prim and proper house wife, that stands in support of her brilliant husband, to a crazy deranged psycho was entertaining to watch, but in the end, after her husband died for the cause, her house of cards crumbled easily and the final showdown with her was a total cringefest on par to the cringiest of the makjang dramas out there. Guess her character wasn't smart either without outside help.

And lastly whom I'd call the real main hero of this whole drama, the male lead, the guy who will give you major trust issues trauma throughout the episodes, the mysterious, the most confident and smartest of them all, the man with the plan - Choi Do-Il. He was a real safe haven of rationality and smart decisions in this drama plot's sea of random dumbassery and craziness. Probably the most favorite character of them all in this drama.
Of course, there was also his cool and badass commando father, but he was conveniently swept under the rug and forgotten about in the craziness of the last episode.

PRODUCTION VALUE:
It was excellent and just screamed quality. Cinematography was one of the best I've seen in kdramas, very well made.
Music was also very good and catchy.
Actors work overall was great as well. Kim Go Eun finally landed a role she was not a miscast for. The villains actors were absolutely infuriating to watch, they did really great, loved to hate them.
The only one who I think could have done better was the youngest sister's actress - Park Ji Hoo. She was too stiff and had samey facial expressions all the time. But since she's an underage noob I'll give her some slack.

Overall, it's an exciting and flashy drama, that reveals one shocking and unexpected twist after another at a breakneck speed, hoping you won't notice plot holes, dumbassery and shallowness under the surface. And introduction of certain badly chosen cringey tropes in later episodes ruined its twisted mess of a plot in the end. Could have been a true masterpiece otherwise, a shame. I give it a generous 8 out 10 overall.

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derrubem o capitalismo

esse drama mostra exatamente o quão ruim o capitalismo é, como sempre os ricos se safam pq são ricos e os pobres só se ferram.


até agora eu to meio ??? com essa história de vingança da hwajyoung, não tinha necessidade dela usar a injoo pra isso. a menina comeu o pão que o diabo amassou, sofreu a beça.

to ate agr??? com a morte do park lá, não sei PQ ele se matou por aquela psicopata lá, pq amor não foi.

odiem não terem deixado o doil e a injoo juntos no final, depois de todo sofrimento isso era o mínimo né, pelo menos as minis queridas estavam bem né.

a morte da sang-a foi pobre, muito rápida e sem sentido, ela devia ter sofrido muito mais antes de morrer, mulher maluca psicopata.

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Dramatic at times but meh

I went into watching Little Women blind with only the idea that it's based on a book that I hadn't read but had heard was quite good. I don't find this Korean adaptation to be special. It left me questioning many things that didn't quite make sense.

Yes, Little Women has wonderful cinematography and the director knows how to build suspense and anxiety but at times I felt like the motivation behind everything lacked any kind of logic and the end folded so neatly, it was actually both a relief and disappointing.

I wish I could make sense of why the society functioned the way it did. Felt meaningless and unbelievable that no one questioned a thing.

Although the Oh sisters irked me in many instances, I was genuinely rooting for In Joo and In Kyung. Oh In Hye will go down as 2022's most annoying main character. So selfish and ungrateful! I prefer any of the villains over her because at least you understand them to a degree.

Loved the mysterious Choi Do Il and it was fun reading viewers speculate. It's unfortunate that the other male character is nothing to write home about.

If you enjoy suspense, then you might enjoy the rollercoaster ride this show takes you on. However, the ending is not very dramatic. If romance draws you in then you might want to give this one a skip.

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Orquídea Azul

Uma história envolvente, cheia de reviravoltas e nem um pouco previsível. Ansiava todo semana pelo próximo episódio, pois cada mistério me intrigava. Sobre as irmãs, a personagem Oh In Joo ganhou meu coração, ela sempre vê o melhor nas pessoas, de coração mole mas corajosa. A Oh In Kyung é simplesmente maravilhosa, sempre com os melhores planos e nada a fazia desistir! A Oh In Hye foi difícil gostar dela, só no último episódio mesmo. O Choi Do Il foi perfeito, duvidei dele no inicio ao fim, mas não tinha como ela já havia conquistado meu coração. A vilã da história muito bem desenvolvida, psicopata total, amei!
Sem dizer da atuação impecável de todos os atores, principalmente da Kim Go Eun, nesse drama ela se superou!

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seru tapi apa sih?

Story
Dari ceritanya jujur sempet bingung di tengah-tengah, sebenernya apa sih yang dikejar di sini dan problemnya juga kurang kerasa banget. Oke duit 70 miliar ga ada, tp gua merasa keterlibatan 3 bersaudara tuh kayak yang damn aneh juga tiba-tiba mereka ke sangkut problem kaum elite. Sama gua ngerasa sebenernya 3 bersaudara dan tim kubunya tuh ga sempowerful itu untuk ngelawan kaum-kaum yang dari jaman dulu juga udah kayaaa. Terus relationship 3 bersaudara sama great aunt juga agak aneh yahh agak gak expect mereka keluargaan satunya kaya super satunya miskin super beneran yang drastis. Tapi gua merasa semua dibawakan dengan baik sih, cinematografinya juga nyaman diliat jadi salah satu alesan kenapa tetep lanjut nonton. Cuman emang dari tokohnya tuh ada beberapa sifat yang mungkin bikin bothering karena yaa tolil juga yaa. Terus dari ceritanya juga bukan yang romance banget gitu ya cuman ada kok kerasa atmosfer sekelibet dan atmosfer bulol bulol dari cowo di sini:D

Acting/cast
Jujur alasan terbesar gua nonton little women adalah aktor aktrisnya yang super cakep. Udah cinematography cakep orang di dalemnya cakep beneran cakep dah enak diliat. Cuman emang ada beberapa yang aktingnya agak aneh dan jomplang cuman yaaa overall good. Aku suka in joo sama do il hehew

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Little Women- Drama, Action, Mystery, Thriller

This drama is one of the best dramas I have ever watched. Mysterious and thrilling, this drama had me on the edge of my seat the whole time I was watching it. The plot was amazing and the plot twists were epic. I felt so stressed watching this show though ?, because you'd never know what was going to happen next, (who betrayed who, who stole what, who was lying, who died next...). I loved the different relationships between characters and how each character developed throughout the show. The show had really good actors as well as an awesome OST. I really enjoyed watching this show and I HIGHLY recommend it.

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bloody

WOW. A wonderful series with ups and downs, but excellent. The ending left me with a smile on my face, although I would have liked Choi Do-il and Oh In-joo to be together and have a happier ending for them. I would have liked In-joo to have more trust in Do-il, only that if I had put myself in her place, I would have done the same. I liked the way Do-il and Jong-ho looked at In-joo and In-kyung the most. HYPNOTISING.
The ending of the other two sisters was one that I really liked. The series was very good, the story and the acting excellent. Series rated 10. The death of some of the characters seemed well-deserved. All in all, it was a really cool series. From now on, I will see red shoes and blue flowers differently.

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Now this is what you call suspense

I am a sucker for dramas that center around women. A 9/10.

I will start my review with the eldest child, Oh Injoo (Kim Goeun). The girl who will do anything and everything for her family to get out of poverty. She portrays the burden of being the eldest child really well. I am a little bit annoyed with her character since, out of them 3, she's not the brightest, so she does a lot of questionable things in this show, but you can understand why she does it. Goeun is one of my favorite actresses, and she did not disappoint here.

The second is Nam Jihyun (Oh Inkyung). At first, I thought that the actress's look was too soft for this kind of drama, but as the show goes on, you can see how she perfectly fits the character. The smartest and fearless one, but has a heart of marshmallow. I personally believe that she is one of the strongest characters, but this drama failed to show that side of hers. Nevertheless, you can see her dedication to being a reporter and fighting for justice. The flow of romance with Jihyun and Kang Hoon (Ha Jong Ho) is so adorable and just perfect—not too fast and not forced.

And the last sibling, Oh In Hye (Park Jihu), She had the least screen time, but she left me with the most impact. I saw other reviews that said they hated her character since she doesn't listen to her older sisters, but I understand her. In a poor family, she receives the most of everything, and she can see how her sisters do their best to get what she wants, and she feels burdened by it, so to not feel bad, she does her best to not depend on them, which results in her looking like a rebel. She might look like a brat for not listening to her sisters, but you can see how mature and smart she is when handling situations that involve the future of her and Hyorin (Jeon Chaeun).

I agree with everybody that some of them find it boring, since I find it also boring from the start due to lengthy episodes, but it gets better as the episodes go on. A lot of plot twists and big events happen in each episode, and I can't even imagine how this drama will end. Not only the main leads are interesting, but also the other women, like Kanghoon, their aunt Hyeseok, and one of the most evil characters I've seen, Jiwon.

Out of all the scenes, the one that I like the most is when Injoo gets her dream house, but the first thing she does is stay there and cry. That scene makes me shed a tear. You can see how happy she is, but she also feels empty.

If you have time and want a show that will stress you out and doesn't have a predictable ending, then I recommend this drama.

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