Park Min

A 5 episodes story turned into a full 16 episodes drama!

Ha Ji Won is one of my favorite actresses, on the contrary, both male leads (Lee Jin Wook & Yoon Kyun Sang) are amongst actors I hate. Both of which I've seen most of their filmography, they always put up artificial expressions, borderline cringe and overact.

This drama was quite disappointing, lackluster writing full of incoherent and jarring flashbacks, plus a sleazy shitty love triangle. The drama was heavily reliant on the ML's secret (why he can't love FL) to construct a story and this is its biggest downfall. The secret wasn't even that grandiose, it was just some insignificant bullshit from the teenage days. What a way to fucking blueballs the viewers.

I would say 3.5/10 and I'm being generous. By the end I wanted a miserable ending just for a final fuck you to the viewers.

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Modern-Day Delusional Liberation

The cinematography and visuals were great although they went overboard with tilted shots and angles, surpassing their creative limits. The drama had a decent melodic score that blended with the shots just okay but no particular track stood out. Enough technicality, no matter how I look at it, the drama boiled down to be a cheap mix between Thirty-Nine (2022) & My Mister (2018), lacking soul and a unique identity. The self narration bits were a hit or miss, some lines were brilliant and fit the mood, while others were just nonsensical pretentious scribbles. There was a good opportunity to give these narrations to other characters as well but these were mostly done by Yeom Mi Jung. The end of episode 2 made it seem like a tacky show in a fancy wrapping, signaling that it wouldn't stay grounded and would resort to impractical moves to progress the plot forward and grab attention. This is one thing the drama constantly kept contradicting itself with. I didn't like their approach for the ending; they should've just wrapped it up instead of sneakily dancing around it for way too long. Don't excuse its shortcomings by calling it a slow show. Both the writer and director have succeeded in creating slow shows before, but this one missed the mark and sacrificed other important elements along the way. Even with a very relaxed 16 episodes, most of the characters didn't get the development they deserved, but I guess some slice of life scenes were more important. That one major transition around episode 13-14 was embarrassingly poorly done and was a real cowardly move by the writer to escape the writer's block. It left an unerasable stain for what could've been a decent show. Although there were aspects to like and appreciate, the drama didn't quite reach its potential.

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The lesson to be learned here is reckless driving got consequences. The drama started with no one to root for, none of the characters were interesting or likable enough to care about them initially. I ended up hating more than half the cast by the end. It's infested with plot holes but I guess that's expected from long running makjangs. Sound design often fails every other scene. Some scenes were echoing while other were muffled. The "improbable coincidences" factor goes to extreme levels in this drama, kinda makes it hard to watch.

The bullshit starts after the first 1 year time-skip. It's impossible for Se Kyung hair to grow this long in a year lol. The drama hit the shitter after episode 32. It's impossible for someone as rich as Pil Mo to be this dunce, the dude got a single digit IQ. Kang Ha Ri is a main character but she almost doesn't show up in the second half, 5 episodes can pass without seeing her.

Worst time-skip ending in a long running drama ever, I'm not satisfied with this half-assed outcome. This 6-years time skip was awful, none of the stories ended up as I hoped. Not a single pair ended up together "officially". The pairings were awful altogether anyway. Dal Hee didn't get punished enough.

Random remarks:
Hong Shi smile will resolve any conflict in a second. Since I saw Byun Jung Soo in "Manny (2011)", I can only remember her as Janice as she screams "I'm Janice!". Lee Yoo Ri cameo around the ending was superb.

Some serious illogical assery in spoilers:
- Dal Hee/Sera Park, Miss Lee and Tae Soo all were alive and barely punished at the end but Se Kyung is dead. In what absurd logic does this make sense!!

- They built up Ha Ri and Gi Chan to be together for +50 episodes, they confessed their feelings to each other, their parents in law agreed to give them their blessings, yet somehow for whatever bullshit reason the love interest shifted towards Se Joon in the last 5 episodes. They didn't even have that many scenes together, let alone the none existent chemistry. Kang Ha Ri got robbed, barely any screen time and shitty love path.

- Eun Hyang and Hwan Seung not ending up together is another random bullshit. Oh Yoon Ah put 200% in her performance.

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Not that good!

It's 10 episodes too long, cut it in half! Feels like a copy from every other time-travel joseon era drama, especially "Queen In Hyun's Man (2012)" which shares great similarities. In comparison, "Queen In Hyun's Man (2012)" was better than this thin lukewarm copycat.

A lot of things are thrown at you and you are meant to accept them without questioning or whatsoever. Se Na is a generic pitiful villain with no character. Diluted story, poorly executed. The chemistry is often too awkward between them. Don't get me started on the script/romance/characters/editing, all of which were distasteful. It's a shame, these kind of drama are the ones that get popular. 4.75/10

Don't watch it from NETFLIX, they cut scenes from every episodes. Watch the TV or Blu-ray version.

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High potentials, fails to deliver!

Let's state the obvious, the comedic moments weren't good, it always felt forced. I assume they wanted to do that to lighten the mode? It took what felt like an eternity to kick start the story. Teasing the viewers constantly about the "tape" for the entire series was kinda annoying. How many times you can save Ha Ram's life became a personality trait for the male characters in the drama lol.

When you over complicate a story, things get out of hand real quick really fast. Maybe dedicate some of the budget to hire a team of skilled veteran writers instead? Many convoluted plotlines were brushed off eventually. Half of the death cases weren't interesting. The last 2 episodes in general contain some serious unsalvageable nonsense. The writer turned off her brain and started writing willy-nilly. Starting from the beginning of episode 13 there was a big disconnect with the story and the momentum.

Abysmal ending. The ending goes into my list of "I'm a special quirky little writer so I'mma pull an ending out the depths of my ass". They tried to make it "poetic" but ended up shooting themselves in the foot. The writing department was really lacking and barely functional that by the end it leaves you with nothing but pretty visuals. This is a real case of a drama that had high potentials but fails to deliver.

In conclusion, it got a visually appealing atmosphere, good enough cast, and it's entertaining enough to be passable. Definitely doesn't deserve the hype. The series was from Netflix I should have known better. This is a 5.75/10 on a good day.

P.S. Kim Won Hae is always a treat to watch.

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The Slipperiest Time Slip!

This drama turned out to be a reverse harem in disguise. A handful of princes with varied flavors happened to meet a mentally handicapped girl to start their quest of hunting this wild female from a different timeline. All of these princes have the edgiest troubled teens behaviors with a mix of daddy/mommy issues. Out of all of them, the male lead took the edge in being the ultimate dark and mysterious bad boy, literally. Zooming out, all of this was done for a trail of pathetic emotional baits with no substance, they were begging the viewers for pity points. The moment the female lead knew about them, she approached every single one with the mentality of "I can fix him". While the princes were intentionally irrecoverably broken by the writer to serve a purpose for the female lead, she equally had her own set of problems. Within the span of a few episodes she became weirdly too attached to all of them and going even further to offer sacrifices, while neglecting her brief arrival and the fact that she was transferred to the past, but I guess shirtless bois are irresistible. The romantic entanglements in general were agonizing to tolerate, it kept you wishing the worse for all of them. Although it was bad as is, but why did they decide to make it worse with each passing episode in the second half? It's just too painful knowing the writer is making fun of us. At least the cinematography was okay and I watched it on BluRay.

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It's just good

Excruciatingly long and pointlessly slow until the last two episodes where they speed up everything, yet the last 2 eps were underwhelming for an ending, especially the last 30 minutes wtf was that! It's full of fillers and mundane conversation. These conversations don't contribute in any meaningful way other than prolonging the series, if they were to serve a comedic purpose or to further develop the characters then sure keep them going. Also, 25+ hours of workplace abuse/politics is utterly exhausting and mind numbing. Massive missed opportunity to utilize this "empty" time to present a better story. Most of the drama is focused on Geu Rae & Sang Shik while the side stories are brushed off and barely given any attention.

Nonetheless, it's a good package but not as good as I was expecting. Looking at ratings/reviews my expectations were too damn high.

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Sexless Tea Party

You'd think there was room for this deep dive into human desires and the messiness of relationships, but the drama just stumbled into this predictable mess of melodrama and characters you could barely see through. The characters were supposedly torn apart by the whole moral dilemma of their sneaky affairs but they did the bare minimum in that regard. Even the romantic tension felt somewhat forced and lacking. The drama would've benefited from only focusing on the main infidelity but here everyone was cheating on one another. Too much noise. In comparison, all the previous points also applied to the JP version except that they were even more drastic and detached in that one.

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Oof...

Within less than 3 minutes going into the first episode we were presented with these goofy and silly sound effects for every motion and laughter. My expectations were nullified immediately which definitely helped to endure it. The interactions between the characters were painfully artificial and static, which made the dreadful cheesiness even worse than it already was. This is how it seems from the surface but the content is much more revolting and ugly. Highly not recommended!

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Dissapointment!

Interesting premise but horrible execution. Unfortunately it ended up being disappointing especially with how they handled both leads' characters. Aside from the main story, the side cases, investigations, and side villains all were mediocre anyway. The team doesn't matter, they were rarely shown, they had no existing persona, everything was led by and from the perspective of Tae Seok and they don't have any meaningful contribution even for the small cases. Which is why you can't consider this drama as one of those team investigation ones. Dare I say the drama was "less than average"!

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Almost there....

Suk Bin's mother wasn't punished enough for being less than a subhuman junky nor did Suk Bin himself. Both the female lead and her mother were absolute doormat characters, letting everyone have their way with them and completely surrender passively without even attempting to bite back. Completely infuriating to watch this behavior for 50 episodes. Even at the moment of the reveals if it weren't for the other characters acting on their behalf nothing would have been accomplished. Many characters were introduced but were never done anything with or even appear more than few times like Suk Bin's sister. The leads relationship had a decent attention and screen time in the first half but they were completely neglected in the second half. The drama also needed more characters and stories. The only independent side story was the FL's uncle which sucked anyway. It's safe to assume that the writing was very problematic when it comes to its characters.

It seems to be the writer completely forgot about the pink notebook.

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