Good for a Korean Drama

The drama shines with realy well written characters, amazing acting and a nice spin on a lot of classic cliches. Definitely one of the better KDramas I've seen over the years.

However it has one big problem, which is a running thing in the vast majority of kdramas: It focuses to much on the Problems. At the beginning it was better than kdramas usually are in that it split the screentime more evenly, but after around a third it dropped into the usual split, where 75%+ of the time aren't spent showing how a problem is solved, or how the characters working on it might solve it . Instead thosee 75%+ is just spent to show us the problem from different angles, how it came to be etc. creating an overall negative experience while watching it.
And while this shows is still one of the better korean ones in that regard, all to often problems still just get solved out of nowhere, with maybe a 30-60 second explanation on how the solution came to be tacked on later.

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Started well, then dropped beyond any hopes

Started out pretty decent, then amnesia hit and it all went to shit.
The problem wasn't just the stupid amnesia, the problem was that all creativity went out the window together with it. While amnesia plots are general just plain bad (out of more than 40 shows I watched with them, only 1 was a good plotline, and that later turned out the ML had faked his amnesia) this show just turns bad in general.
After the amnesia plotline hit the ONLY new content we had was the ML's sister and her lover getting together properly. Literally everything else was just rehashing the same problems, character traits and bahaviours again and again. Ml looses his Memory? Believes Chief Jo without any reliable person or proof to back her up. Looses his memory again? Believes Chief Jo without any proof to her statements at all.
ML looses his memory? FL doesn't even utter a single sentence to fight for the ML instead believing chief jo who has not a single shred of proof. ML looses his memory again? FL doesn't lift a single finger or utter a single word to fight for the ML...
It's honestly not so much that the amnesia is the problem, that could be overlookked (it's a Kdrama, they can't live without doing some tropes that are universally hated and siliked by the entire viewership in any country for some reason), it's that the quality is just gone. The writing turns from not-great-but-decent to something you'd get a failing grade in middle school for beeing so unimaginative, repetitive and just plain bad

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Good till it goes completely off the Rails

This drama starts out well.
The acting is pretty good, definitely in the top quarter of dramas I've seen.
The OST is something I usualy don't care about much, but I noticed it here by how impactful yet unnoticeable it was. I rarely really recognized thta the music was there or oding something, but when i checked for it it always worked well to enhance the important scenes.
And the writing is, while filled with tropes and very childish cheesy, still good for the first three quarters. Even with the enteraining way the 'bad Guys' are written just so on the nose plain bad.

*Minor Spoilers ahead*

And then the expected big Breakup happens for the thrid act, and it's shit.
Of course we had the usual Overbearing Mother in there, and the 'problems get massively increased by them not talking to another' trope. I don't liek those tropes, but I can live with them. But here they just had 2 Major, Major problems:

1) The Overbearing Mother is to excessive. She even literally locks here 22 year old daughter in room for fucks sake!

2) The Main reason for the breakup is that someone starts a rumor abotu them online, it beeing a contract and such. And that's it. they just take that as fatal problem, can't do anythign about it. Even though they are an actuall couple at that point, and the rumour poster has posted zero proof or anything. They could literally just say 'no, that is a lie, we are a couple', and convince everyone of that by, well, beeing a couple openly.
And it's not even liek that is the first scandal or romour about them, all the previosu ones they did just beat down with stating 'no, things are like this in fact', and some PR team shenanigans behidn the scenes.

It just completely killed the show for me, and I can only recommend anyone to NOT watch this at all.

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The ML is a piece of shit.

TL;DR:
The show is good in many ways other shows struggle with, but at random moments the script goes to shit so badly an elementary schooler would be embarased for making that shit up.


The drama itself was solid for the gaming parts, and even had a lot of good character development across nearly all characters. It dragged a bit here and there, and could have probably done with a few less episodes, but it had more than enought for at least 32 episodes, and 35 didn't stretch to much.

The main problem i have with this shows that, except for 1 single case, ALL major conflicts and problems in the show started off as minor/normal problems, untill the ML acted completely, boneheadedly stupid and made it 10 times worse. And he didn't even act in character there in some parts, it conflicted with other things he did in different parts of the drama (refering to the character there. The actors all did a decent or good job, this is solely and absolutely on the scriptwriters).

Honestly this show is frustrating as hell, as they actually did various difficult things amazingly well. For example they did an amazing job at not telling, but showing us that the ML was great at understanding the social and emotional problems of his team and, as captain, helped them work through them in believable and clever ways.
A lot of other shows resolve such problems far to fast, and somehow a deep emotional or social provlem just disapears in less than an hour of in-universe time shomehow, while this show takes the time it needs. Not screentime necessarily, but simply showing them working through it at multiple different times/days.
And then the show just turns around and makes the ML an undecisive, emotionaly blind wreck unable to express even the absolut most basic emotional concept somehow. And they don't just do that once, as said before, EVERY SINGLE ONE of the major problems of the show bar one is solely turned into a big problem by the sudden and completely random changes in the ML, from his normal character shown for 90%+ of the show to someone that seems to be in a completely different and unrelated show and just wandered on swt by accident, without knowing a single line of the story.

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Bad and boring outweigths the good

I started watching this after getting hooked by Dilraba in Love Designer and YAMG. And at first I was hooked. The random comically overdone breakup in the first 5 Minutes had me loughing, and the dream sequences were just damn impressive, with acting, scenery, CGI and music all beeing top notch.
Outside the dream sequences the FL was not that great, they overdid the fangirl a bit to much. But it was still decently watchable as she dkisplyed no negativity or bad manners at all really, she was just friendly, naive and overly enthusiastic. The ML was a bit harsh at the beginning, but not to bad either. As for the side characters, they were really good through most of the show, especialy in the first 15 or so episodes.

After a while though, problems begann to settle in. The FL had some ups and downs, but was on an overall upwards path, with a bit to much whining and mood swings. But the ML did not improve at all. In fact, untill like episode 30 or so, he actively gets more annoying, needlessly secretive and outright malicious. Similarly some of the side characters improved from their already good start, but then went bsck down to below starting level, while some others went outright bad.

To top it off the dream sequences, which were a big enjoyment so far, tapered off nearly completely, and the IRL stories also kept getting pointlessly darker and overall also degraded in quality a lot. Both of these factors multiplied each other to degrade the quality even further.
The plot at the start had plenty of holes, apprupt changes and ilogical behaviour. But that was mpstly okay as the whole presentation with a not so serious tone, quirky characters and outright fantasy sequences in the dreams made that work. No one expects to much consistency or logical behaviour from characters that take a break at night to literally drop a whale from the sky to crush a dragon after all.
But as the story got darker, the dreams dissapeared and the overall tone became a lot more consitent and serious, the continuing amaunt of plotholes and illogical acting by the characters became more and more problematic.

As the story went on I became less and less interested untill I finally dropped the show. Partpy because the story went downhill fast, and partly because the amount of characters that became really stupid or dislikeable went up so much that I nearly ran out of characters that I actually cared about.
So what if the ML faces some crisis (which he AGAIN brought down on himself in part)? He was so much of an asshole to other characters that I jsut didn't give a damn if he came out okay or not. Similar for other characters.

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Pretty good with 2 caveats

The show starts of pretty weak, the first 3-4 episodes aren't really that good, althoguh they do decent work to set up all the characters and such.
Then the good parts of the show starts. It's nothign groundbreaking for the most part, and filled with cliches, but I wnat to highlight a few real god things:

1) The FL is strong, but has her clear weaknesses. She has a few very clearly defined flaws that occasionaly bite her i nthe ass (read contracts fully before signing them girl) she is in no ways a pushover, and whiel she gets to be somewhat dependant on the ML in the way peopel would be in a relationship, she is still clearly her own person, with her own ideals and her own way of doing things, and she isn't just deadlocked without the ML solving her problems (he does multipel times, but not because she wasn't willign to solve them herself)

2) The ML has emotions. He starts of as the clicheed cold rock CEO at the beginning, but after 5 or 6 episodes he starts to warm up. And not only towards the FL, but in general. And not just positive emotions either, he just starts displaying the full set of human emotions.

3) While they grab nearly every cliches in the book (no amnesia though thankfully), they resolve a lot of them a lot better han they are suauly resolved, and

4) he whole show atfer the first few episodes just has a good flow of events. You don't feel like it's stuck on one problem or situation for to long.

5) They do a lot better than some other shows (especialy korean ones) to show us the characters working on solutions to a problem instead of just mopping over the problem all the time. And not all of their solutions even work, some of them run basically head first into a wall withotu solving anything, but at least the characters tried instead of beeing deadlocked just lookign at the problem.

6) If you like Kissing scenes, this show has a LOT. And they are msotly pretty good too. And with a lot I don't mean slightly above average. At a rough estimate I'd say before they get together properly they kiss as much as more than half the romances I've seen kissi n total. After they get together i'd say they kiss more in any given episode than half of the lead couples of other romances kiss in the entire drama.


Now to the two main problems I had with this show.

1) As mentioned earlier, the first couple of episodes aren't that great. not 'stop watching' bad, but just not that good.

2) While they manage to nearly completely stay away from stupid cliches and problem handling, they fall for one classic pitfall. After their marriage contract is relvealed in public, they for some unfathomable, unexplained reason can't just solve it by lying. Liek their whole marriage contract was based on both of them willingly lying to the public and faking the relationship. WHen someoen revelas the contract, they could solve 95% of the backlash by simpyl stating 'no, thath's not true' or 'no, that was a joke' and go on with it. And at the point it gets revealed they are a loving couple for plenty of episodes already, with their friends constantly complaining because they show so much affection in public. they have no problem whatsoever proving that they are in a real relationship. Why can't they say that was true from the begining??????



TL;DR:
Different spin on cliches, and overall a really good show as contract marriage shows go.

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Reality TV has better writing.

So the show starts out actually quite good for the first 7-8 episodes. The actors are pretty good, the music is decent, and the story is pretty entertaining.

Then around episode 8 it starts to show Problems. The lead ouple are both starting to treat the companie constantly like a playground. It worked before as it was mainly the FL goofing off, but more and more the entire company becomes a circus. On top of that the two Big initial plot 'secrets' start to drag on far to long. But still enjoyable enough at that point.

Around episode 12-13 stuff really goes bad. The siblings of both Main Leads are increasingly going out of their way in order to intentionaly hurt the main couple, even though their beef is with the Grandfather. And the main lead just becomes so bad at keeping the secret that I wondering for a bit if they went crazy and were trying to set up an actuall mental illnes plot.
SPOILERS!!
The FL plans to tel the ML about her sister. Her sister asks her for 1 more month, she agrees. Then when that comes rolling around, the FL meets the ML to explain. Before she can, Grandfather bursts in with a photo of ML/FL brother/sister, and acuses FL of cheating on ML. Instead of simply giving the explanation she had already PLANNED TO GIVE ANYWAYS, she stays queit under repeated questions, then proclaims she can't explain stuff at that time.
I tried to hang on to see if they'd turn it around with increasing skipping of scenes, but had to drop it by the end of episode 17. Ususaly I'd skipp a lot of scenes or episodes till the end with a show that goes bad simply to see how it turns out. But i didn't do that for this show when I found that there wasn't a single important character that i was hopjng would get any kind of happy end. Quite the oposite in fact.

TL;DR: the actors did an admirable job with what they were given, and I wish the writers a happy life. But by god i hope no one let's these writers touch a script ever again in their entire life. This is not simply a bad script, this so far holds the crown (together with the ML from that vinyard inheritance drama) of the worst, most despicable and unlikable Main character (FL from this) i have ever seen.

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No structure, no buildup, no personalities

It sounds like a good premise, and from the parts I have seen the acting was decent and there was the occasional nice scene. BUT:

- the pacing and development was all over the place. There seemed to be absolutely no coherency between episodes as to what happened when. The leads just randomly go back and forth between scene swere they like each other/develop feelings slowly, and scenes where they are either indifferent to each other or outright vile and spitefull.

- the romance didn't work for me. Basically before they got together we had three kinds of interactions. The ones where they were nice to each other/interested in each other, the ones were they were neutral or oftentime ssomewhat bad but without bad intentions, and the ones were they treated the other actively bad, oftentimes intentional and without any apparent reason for that.
One of the main Problems of the show was that the neutral scenes tended towards negativity/them treating each other kinda bad. Which ciuld have still worked, except we got about as many sweet/interested scenes as scenes were they activaly attacked/sabotaged/mistreated each other. Just not believable that any real relationship would srping forth frkm that.

- the show wasted hughe amounts of time on flashbacks and the secondary couple. They were not well executed or writen, and they, together with most of the ML's backstory could have just been cut and replaced by generics, and the show would be better for it.

- the lead characters really lacked buildup and personalities. They basically had no live outside working, getting drunk and having issues with their past. No hobbies and barely any friends/relations, and those that existed were badly writen and had very little screentime.

- The FL's beeing the "number 1 anti fan" was simply not there. Yes, she disliked him. But the only way in which the show shows her as Nr.1 anti fan before the reality show parts starts is that she ONLY antifan we see. Period. Like they didn't even have her on Message boards/chatrooms or anything with other anti fans. Everyone except her and the SML seems to love the ML, no opossition whatsoever.

Overall the show was just plain bad, and I recommend strongly not to waste time on it

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Inconsistent mess

The show starts of in a cheesy and somewhat rushed way, but at first that felt almost refreshing. The point of the show is the two leads, their relationship and the school life, and the show delivers the viewer there admirably quickyl.

But once the schol life starts, the hughe problem of this show comds in jn full force. There is just no consistency or logic in the characters and a lot of the plot.
One scene the FL stands up to bullying, 5 minutes later she lets someone bully her without opposition.
One scene the classmates believe the FL, 10 minuts later they suddenly don't.
And the list goes on endlessly, wiht nearly all characters and a lot of plotlines. Kt almost feels like they wantdd tk make a sketch comedy show, but weren't willing to commit to it in the end.

The acting, soundtrack, set design etc. are watchable, but middle of the pack at best. So overall the show is really not very good.

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The ML is despicable

The show starts of okay, with a decent story in a refreshing setting.
Most of the characters and story continue like that, with a not amazing but nice progression.

And then there is the Male Lead ( the character, not the actor. The actor is perfectly alright).
He starts of on the wrong foot, sith various actions towards most other characters that are generaly dislikable and bad. But it thought that he might just have a rough patch at the start of the drama, especialy as it's hinted/shown that he is under external pressure and stress. But every episode that i watched he didn't get better, instead he grew worse.
He treated the FL like shit, which was bad but acceptable at the start when they were strangers. But then they started to grow closer and get to know each other, and he kept treating her worse and worse. Same with other characters.
And the stress excuse kept getting thinner as well, as the show depicts him getting time to relax in the countryside and kalm down. Yet his behaviour didn't aprove even the tiniest bit, quite the opositte.

I decided to drop the show when i watchdd the show and it suddenly occured to me that the best, most enjoyable scene that could come next would just be the ML getting hit by a car and dying, or something similar.

TL;DR: in all my time watching western and asian shows, this is only the second time ever where i actively wished the ML ( character, not actor) would just die. I rarely get that level of obsolute disgust, dislike and spite from villains, and they're supposed to be the bad guy. The ML should never be this disgustingly despicable.

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Good start, weak end

The show starts of great, with a fairly good plot, decent leads and by and large the best asian child actor/role I have seen so far.
It goes on for a whiel with the usual woes of arranged marriage and family building and such, and it works pretty well. HGer psychology role could have been shown better and to a larger extend, but it's mroe of a 'wonder why they don't show more about that' when watching instead of a 'it's bad that they don't show more' thing.

The prolem comes near the end, when their slow burn romance finaly blossoms and theyg et together after ltierally 3/4 of the show is already over, and then they break up again after less than an episode.
And the problem is not only that, romance tkaing a backseat worked decently wel lfor the first 3 quarters. The problem is on why they break up, with the usualy brain numbingly stupid amnesia and arrnaged marriage cliches, plus the classic 'I can't tell oyu anythign abotu it, but doing that for your own good' bullcrap.
And to make matters even worse, one of exactly 2 things the FL actually does in psychology in the whole show up to then, and was also shown to take great commitments and risks to push it through, was to face problems and get help for psychological issues instead of ignoring them.
Instead the FL doesn't communicate with the ML, and breaks up during an already very difficult time ofthe ML's life, all in the slim hope that he wouldn't need to face his past trauma. Instead of, you know, help him work through it, like she literally risked her job and physical injury before to get the mother of a random patient of hers to get help for her condition.

And it's not just a short situation either, it goes on for multiple episodes. Overall it made me really disgusted with the FL, and hoenstly wished the ML would find osmeone better who doesn't intentionaly hurt him in multipel ways whiel intentionaly working against one of the few thigns she was shown to know and care abotu for her profession as frigging DOCTOR OF PSYCHOLOGY.

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Good but disordered

I quite liked the show, it was lighthearted while still showing major problems the characters were facing.
Acting was good, music okay, the setpieces were really nice.

My only problem was that the love story felt really dragged out for no apparent reason. There came a poitn at episode 12 or 13 where it was clear both to the audience and to the leads that they were in love, and the other was likely also in lvoe with them. Then for some reason it dragged them becoming a coupel out another 6 or so episodes, where nothing of real importance to their relationship happened, and all the other storie arcs that happened would have worked perfectly fine with them beeing a coupel as well.
Overall it just felt really pointless to drag the relationship out liek that, especialy since a lot of scenens in episode 15+ would have wokred BETTER if they'd been a coupel at that point learning to get along with each other as one and such.

That aside, still recommend it as a light fun romp and growing up story.

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