Busque: WWW (2019)

Its biggest downfall is the mix of genres

Seriously, what was the point of the romance x work drama? Pick a side or stick to giving both equal attention.
Bae Ta Mi and Park Morgan had excellent chemistry for like the first half of the series, but by the end it fizzled out and was overshadowed by all of the work drama. It's almost as if they spent more time being sad and away from each other or fighting, than together or working through their difficulties as a couple. I wish they could've had some sort of talk other than the get together.

Song Ga Kyung and Oh Jin Woo were there too. I guess? Their intimate moments sort of melted together for me, as interesting and nuanced as they were, since as usual, they went nowhere by the end. Literally. I have no idea if the two would try out dating or not, even knowing how devoted to helping out Oh Jin Woo was. They didn't even talk really, after Song Ga Kyung held the big announcement.

Scarlett was such a fun and fascinating character, truly the highlight of the entire show, and her romance was super cute, I can only wish for her and Seol Ji Hwan to have had even a fraction of Tammy and Morgan's screen time. At least the two had some sort of arc to speak of, earning us not only a nice fan x star couple, but a cute last minute surprise meet up.

If I'm being brutally honest, the way all three romances flopped makes my head hurt. Even the ex boyfriend character got his happy get back together with the vlogger girl and had more of a completion than any of the main characters. This in a way, I feel, cheapens both sides of the series and there is no real commitment to either side.

Should you bother with WWW? In the end, yes. I have to praise the side characters immensely; from both sides. Jang Hee Eun was an incredibly compelling villain that loomed over everyone. Brian was the level head everyone could use in their lives. Nevertheless, expecting the fun romance girlboss mix to hold up its quality, up to the final ep at least, would be a mistake.

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If you are looking for a good romance, I found this one lacking

The business aspect of the show - 9. The romance - 7. This show was a testament to girl power! Strong women, that go for what they want. I loved the acting by all the actors, but some of the characters I liked more than others - Cha Hyun was beautiful and she didn't put up with any junk! When Bae Ta Mi asked for help and she showed up with baseball bats, priceless! I loved the romance storyline for Cha Hyun as well. The music was good, as was the cinematography, but I really had a problem with Bae Ta Mi's character. She kept insisting she never wanted to get married. They used the camera angle a lot of her and Park Morgan being far apart from one another, and he was ALWAYS the one that came to her, even after the big breakup. And they'd barely been together for two minutes and she started in on the fact that they were going to continue to fight over the marriage vs. non-marriage. The ending could have been so much better romance-wise. The business aspect was tied up nicely, loved the ladies riding into the sunset in their Maserati, but I would have liked for Bae Ta Mi to have some kind of epiphany in realizing that she was going to be miserable without Park Morgan. The gentleman playing Park Morgan was excellent, very understated but displaying a wide array of emotions.

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A War of Search Engines

The war between two search engines (Unicon and Barro) is a war of personalities. Two companies were competing against each other and the constant outside pressure of people seeking or rejecting influence. You will find yourself rooting for the underdog. WWW is a drama about the people that make all this happen. A crazy team of dedicated professionals.

The characters are well developed, with each holding a spot in this unique storyline. Each episode adds or subtracts value from these characters, so I advise against fast-forwarding, as so many people like to do. The likability of the characters in this drama is, like always, subjective.

Ga Kyung (Jeon Hye Jin), the managing director of Unicon, was perhaps the most confusing of all the characters. She did nothing in the present-day story to make her seem like anything but a bad person. As a regular activity, she threw people under the bus numerous times and used hurtful language with those supposed to be her friends. But somehow, the story seemed to be trying to convince us that she was a good person, and maybe she was.

Tammy (Im Soo Jung), the female lead, was another confusing character. As the Barro team leader, she directed her team, taking the company to new heights. However, her romantic life was a mess. She didn’t want to get married; her boyfriend did. She carried that attitude and all its ramifications into her everyday life that made her unlikeable at times.

Park Morgan (Jang Ki Yong), the male lead, was not easy to discourage. That much was certain. Putting up with Tammy, his confusing girlfriend, who rarely showed any commitment whatsoever, was a testament to his tenacity. Will they overcome their differences?

Scarlett (Lee Da Hee) was a breath of fresh air. Her character was always exciting and likable. Her movie star boyfriend gave her a chance at romance. At first, she was at odds with Tammy but became close friends as the show went on.

I never felt much chemistry between the two leads. Their relationship was, at best, volatile. I wondered how the story would ever bring the two together. They managed to accomplish this near-impossible feat, but it leaves you wondering why. From Morgan’s viewpoint, the reward didn’t justify the effort, in my opinion.

Be sure to watch every minute so you don’t miss one brick of the story building.

Leia Mais

If you’re tired of female leads being weak and dependent on the men around them, this is the drama for you.

I see three women dominating the corporate world and I was totally blown away by its premise. We’re so used to seeing males act as prince charming in dramas, that seeing the opposite in this one was such a breath of fresh air. One of the male leads fell for the female after seeing how competitive she was, that already says something.

The setting of the story was also fresh, you don’t get to see how web portals operate on a daily basis. It surely was interesting to watch. The OST was also perfect.

this drama made me feel excited the whole time and I totally recommend it!

Leia Mais

Search: WWW is the #girlpower K-drama I didn't know I needed. I've been looking for a drama with a strong female lead - and this show gave me not one but THREE powerful women in the spotlight! I loved the fact that this show is practically run by the female characters (because well, who run the world again, Beyonce?). The plot is unique and well-written, the characters aren't one sided, the lovelines are not sickeningly sweet and overbearing.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching the three couples bloom, and seeing them at different stages in one episode but was very interesting. It took my emotions to a roller coaster ride! Out of the three, the main (Bae Ta-Mi x Park Mo-Gun) couple felt the most realistic, but I felt most drawn to the Cha Hyeon x Seol Ji-Hwan couple - they are so funny and adorable to watch! I seriously can't get enough of their scenes, I found myself looking forward to this couple every episode (sorry, Ta-Mi and Mo-Gun!). Song Ga Gyeong and Oh Jin Woo also proved to be a formidable couple who shared a depth unlike any other - I just wish they get their happy ending somewhere in DramaLand because they really deserve it.

All in all, I loved Search: WWW! I loved seeing the strong independent women rule the world of web portals! Would definitely rewatch!

Leia Mais

Search WWW is that one daydream you have while you're stuck with your daily complicated routinr. You're still sane enough to create the story neat and makes sense about the real world yet package it beautifully and seasin with the sense of utopian that you wish you have at that time.

This drama is really wonderful. If I have to sums it up to 3 statements, they would be alpha females, the internet and hopeless romantic. I know right, they are weird combination but they worked just fine. Love this! <3


My review before I completed it:
It's amazing. The story looks promising, the character is bold. You can enjoy it with aesthetic color grading and soothing music. I'd also be lying if I say I don't like the actors because I've seen them doing pretty good on their previous drama. I'm so happy that I find this drama in the middle of unsatisfaction I faced after I finished watching Chicago Typewriter.

Leia Mais

A Powerful Display of Women, But with 2 Very Risky Choices

I loved this drama to bits. Such a great show of female empowerment with a diverse array of female personalities - a lot of which definitely go against the typical view of women, in reality and in dramas. See these women as they move through their careers and their various feelings about morals, ends and means, and relationships was very enjoyable. With a lot of material to spur some nice ethical and societal debates, should viewers decide to

The women were all strong characters. The main characters consisted of a a strategist with a great ability to read situations, a quick-on-her-feet action-taker with strong ethics, and a hard-to-read calculatory businesswoman. There's also a morally grey support character that I adore. You don't really see such types in modern-setting dramas much.

The romantic storylines rarely involved miscommunication or misunderstandings - if at all. It was truly quite novel. There was a lot of really great communication and emotional maturity. The main couple had a lot of inside references/jokes between each other - a personal favorite element of mine in romances. The couples also features some nice role reversals.

The music was exceptionally well-chosen, ranging from vibe-y tunes to emotional melodies. All of which fit into the scenes like magic. The editing and cinematography was gorgeous, poetic, and purposeful. Making me rewind on multiple occasions.

There were 2 major problems with this drama though:

Two of of our three female leads read as quite suicidal for a significant amount of time. And only one of them felt somewhat properly addressed. In fact, the one that wasn't properly addressed even said some insensitive lines to a minor character which displayed such traits as well.

If you made the storyline around the three female leads into a Sapphic love triangle, you wouldn't notice hardly any difference in their interactions with each other. Just about all of the usual cliché romantic tropes and lines were used in scenes revolving around these 3. The sweet romantic background music and rosy filter certainly didn't hide that it was purposeful either. I'm not one that typically calls "queerbait," but this one deserves it.

Leia Mais

Modern Romance, Intelligent Women

More mature portrayal of the career driven lives and very different relationships, friendships and families of the main 3 female characters.
The hurdles of being in a relationship with a man 10 years younger are portrayed differently from the usual ones, which was so refreshing. The real issues that are hard to face or tackle, even when in love, are considered and doesn't have to do with the judgement of others for a change.
The women in this are all very different, but what links them is their drive, passion, focus and intelligence.
I very much liked the more mature conversations and interaction between Tammy and Park Morgan, which was befitting of a woman and man in their late 30s and 20s respectively.
I loved how one central female's frankly abusive parents and arrogant, audacious, overbearing mother-in-law, were portrayed; such good acting. Loathed them!
My personal favourite character was Scarlett, fabulously brought to life by Lee Da-hee.
The main male characters have an equally modern representation, as none are either phased nor jealous or intimated by clever, feisty and outspoken women. Breath of fresh air.

Leia Mais

Search: WWW is a Korean slice-of-life office drama about three competitive independent career women working in the IT industry. They prioritize their career before romance, and show that they don't need a man to be successful and happy with their lives. There is romance in this drama but I'm not too interested in the romance aspect in this drama. This drama also discusses corruption in the IT industry and data manipulation. My favourite character in this drama is without a doubt the badass Scarlet; she can kickass ;D. The cast did a great job in playing their characters and the soundtrack was good. I would recommend this drama.

Leia Mais

Engaging and unusual romance with techy rivalry background

Overall - one of the best romantic dramas I've seen
Set against a context of a competition between two web companies for market share, each having a markedly different philosophy and ethos. One is very capitalist, managed by those who prioritise only profit and are happy to victimise their own staff to protect themselves, and the other run on more ethical lines.
Easy to vilify the capitalist teams, but this is slightly subtler, and there are always suggestions that the main manager in that company has other more complex motives
Set against this, we have three women, who are linked in a number of ways, which are revealed as the drama unfolds. Each is a complex character, and - unusual in Kdrama - each is both strong, and develops and grows over the course of the series
And for each there is a romance which also develops over the series. The main romance is between an older woman and younger man - a detail which she struggles with much more than he does. It's very engaging, but while it is well acted and fairly well written, is not really all that substantial : we understand that they love each other, and the issues for each of them - but we don;t actually see all that much of WHY they have these feelings, which appear to be largely based on appearances and - well - good sex. That said, even if the sex is good, for an inordinately long period (after their first encounter) they don;t actually have sex at all, so, yes, that's not very credible.
However, I would say that may be the biggest weakness here, and it didn't much bother me. The premis of an older woman/younger man romance can be difficult to pull off, but - frankly - the completely unrealistic beauty of these actors made it very effective. If they had been more normal looking, it would have needed a lot more depth though. However - spoiler alert - I was very struck by the way in which the (male) directors managed to capture the erotic nature of the female gaze, and also showed at times a different, gentler angle on male sexual attraction. Sweet. ... there is no even vaguely explicit sexual "action" though - not necessary.
Pacing - was mostly good. I often hate the pauses in Kd and liberally apply the FF button. Here, this was pretty lightly used. It's telling that most of those instances were during lengthy patches meant (I think) to be reflections on the romance/feely goings on, and I think this is probably an indicator that the romance between the M and FL could be much stronger.
The techy context was very glamorised (computer work is NOT this pretty) even though they were shown working long hours. For some reason, even though we were supposed to see them working 12-18 hour days, they still had lots of time for faffing about with their personal lives. My own experience of that is ... you go straight home, eat and sleep, and any other interactions (including hygene) are conducted at high speed using minimum of energy. You can't make a drama out of that!
The acting is wonderful, even more enjoyable because this is an ensemble piece, with a number of characters shown in the round. Of course, most of them are fairly snap-shotty, but many of those have evidence of more than one aspect of their personality and behaviour. Lots of strong female characters - even the b****ds. YAY! Males are good too. Nice. Very good writing
Much of the drama looks at commercial ethics and sketches in some dilemmas. A lot of that is simplified, but still thought-provoking. There are also issues of abuse and exploitation - including in a chaebol setting - some of it dark and stifling, but handled in quite a satisfying way, with it being resolved in an unexpected conclusion. Clever.
I must say something about the music. I confess I FFd a fair bit of it, when we were supposed to infer characters were reflecting on stuff. It is a pleasant OST, though. Latterly, however, after I was struck by something I saw / heard, I started to listen to more of the tracks. I found that - more than at any other series I've watched including Itaewon Class - the music added to the drama, actually reflecting the events, sometimes with gentle humour. Some of the music is really beautiful, with absolute poetry for lyrics. Don't be like me - give this a fair crack of the whip.
[It reminded me of Possession by AS Byatt - a brilliant novel about literature, with the narrative switching between times, and interspersed with poetry. I skipped the poetry on my first reading, but re-read it on a recommendation from a friend - and when I did so read the poetry too: it was stunning, that it so deeply added to the narrative and showed incredibly clearly and deeply the internal world of characters, set against their environments, and revealed insights into the central mystery of the plot. This drama is not working at that level, but there are similarities for me.]
Overall, yes, I loved this, and it's unusual for me to experience such an unmixed pleasure with a drama. Highly recommend.

Leia Mais

So glad to see Im Soo Jung back in this female-centric and women empowerment drama written by Kwon Do Eun (the same writer of the hit 2022 masterpiece Twenty Five Twenty One) 2 years after the success of Chicago Typewriter, which was her comeback drama after 13 years of hiatus from the drama world since her last hit I'm Sorry, I Love You with So Ji Sub.

Im Soo Jung joins Lee Da Hee and Jeon Hye Jin as the 3 main female leads here in this office/work-centric drama. Soo Jung plays the role of Bae Tami/Tammy, a strong-willed and competitive woman with an integrity, while Da Hee plays the role Cha Hyeon/Scarlett, a badass and savage one yet has a soft spot when it comes to her crush, the actor Seol Ji Hwan (played by Lee Jae Wook), and Hye Jin as Song Ga Gyeong, Tammy and Scarlett's childhood friend since high school, who is struggling to break free from her manipulative mother-in-law. Despite the polar opposites and misunderstandings between our 3 main female leads, they were able to overcome all of their struggles and rekindle their friendship once again, showing their essence as women.

Their leading men (played by Jang Ki Yong, Lee Jae Wook and Ji Seung Hyun) are all walking green flags, especially Jin Woo, who is a very supportive and understanding husband to Ga Gyung, and not a mama's boy unlike any other husbands out there in the drama world. Though Ga Gyung and Jin Woo didn't end up together, Tammy and Scarlett still got the happy ending they deserve together with their partners, Morgan and Ji Hwan.

The cinematography, locations and settings were perfectly executed. The cherry blossom scene with Tammy and Morgan was iconic, and also the one I loved the most in this drama. The OST was overall good, with Mamamoo's "Wow" topping it all. They also added a very artistic and modern intro on its Netflix version. I highly recommend this drama not just to female fans who seek women empowerment through female-centric dramas, but to fans of all gender as well so that their minds may be opened about the struggles of 21st century women, and how the society deals with them. Girl power at its best! ♀️?✊

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