There is no message here. Just vapid, bumper-sticker platitudes posing as poetic depth. For instance, a character says, "Youth is as lonesome as growing old," and yet neither he nor the show gives any explanation or insight as to why this should be true (in fact, it's flat-out untrue, because more elderly statistically live in isolation). The show's full of these bumper-sticker platitudes. But that's when someone in the show is actually speaking, rather than staring into space in utter silence.

The director seems to think that a character silently staring while another character is speaking to them, is tantamount to depth and meaningfulness. Indeed, a good 6 hours of this 16 hour show could have been cut simply by deleting all scenes of characters silently staring into space . Characters ask another character a question, and the other simply does not reply but, rather, stares silently. If someone failed to reply to my questions as often as the characters in this show do, I'd slap them.

When it's not utter silence it's only because, in lieu of dialogue, we're given long, circular internal monologues about how sad and confusing life is. Each of the characters gets to give one of these rambling interior monologues, and since they are all given in a low, lethargic tone of voice the viewer is supposed to assume that something deep and meaningful has just been stated. It hasn't. It's just a lot of mumbling about how life is bleak, empty and miserable. Why yes, it can be. Especially if strapped to a chair and forced to watch this freaking show for 16 hours. I only finished it because I wanted to know the answer to what was presented as a mysterious connection between characters who'd all met in a Suicide Club, only to find that the answer was as boring as the show itself.

As for the aforementioned Suicide Club, the show presents clinical depression as romantic. Let's just call it the "Sylvia Plath Complex," wherein legions of teenage girls have misguidedly romanticized this poet's suicide for decades. Worse, the show presents a 40 year old, unattractive woman's misery as the sole reason that a 27 year old, gorgeous-as-a-model man falls in love with her (it doesn't help that the real life actress is actually 50, and visibly twice her love interest's age). But age is not the issue, as lots of middle-aged women can be gorgeous and charismatic. The issue is that this particular woman is neither.

To the contrary, she has a pinched up, unpleasant demeanor. She is not depicted for one second doing anything generous, grateful, endearing, interesting, or realistic. Nay, she's so unrealistic as to sign a contract to ghostwrite a celebrity's book, but then stalks the celebrity demanding credit once the book becomes a bestseller (she clearly did not read her contract, because being a ghostwriter means, ipso facto, you get no credit). She is not only delusional, but so catatonically depressed as to warrant hospitalization. Yet according to the show's narrative logic, it's her very misery that attracts the hot, model 27 year old guy.

Sorry Mr. Director and Mr. Screenwriter, but I'd always thought only overdramatic teenage girls thought a display of misery was so poetic as to attract the attention of hot guys. Frankly, I was surprised an adult male directed this. Then again, it began to make sense when I discovered he'd never done a drama series before and that, moreover, his background is in arthouse cinema. In short, the director's background is in pretentious, artsy films and now, with this, he's been given 16 hours, instead of the traditional 2 hour film time, to bore the hell out of his audience. There's a reason this show's Korean ratings dropped to a mere 2% by episode 16.

If you want a K-drama with true depth, and genuine insight on what it means to be human, try the splendid series, "My Mister."