Nothing happens. You might or might not mind.

the various Reply series are good if you:
- enjoy slice-of-life content
- don't need story progression
- don't mind repetition
- enjoy having a 'life lesson' delivered several times in a row
- don't need many minutes of romance, action, or suspense
- think that goat noises make everything funnier
- derive happiness from seeing brands and fads you might fondly recall from decades ago
- love references not only to history and pop culture, but also spotting re-use of phrases, scenarios and characters from other Replies


they're a horrendous choice if you:
- require plot development
- are allergic to filler storylines (= don't like your time wasted)
- hate laugh tracks and the idea that dumb noises should accompany jokes
- want (actually) funny jokes/comedy
- hate preachy voice-overs and the writers droning on and on about the same point
- don't like information initially omitted just to show the same scene again except slightly longer (= don't like your time wasted)
- feel underwhelmed when the writers try to sell you the same thing they already did in another Reply time and time again
- don't miss the 80s/90s in the first place
- want *all* questions answered
- don't like sudden giant time skips, especially for the purpose of furthering the romance storyline(s)
- can't stand screechy girls & people yelling at each other at length



Except for virtually all actors in Reply 1988 being really bad at crying on command, the casting, acting and production are all great.

The 80s music is very good / appropriate, but on Netflix and other legal streaming sites, a lot of the music and otherwise copyrighted content will be omitted, replaced, or blurred out. Especially if you watch the show to 'experience those times', you don't want to watch it like that.
I didn't care for any of the original music, it was very much forgettable.

Leia Mais

TRS walks too far down the path of a fantasy rom-com before deciding it does not want to be one

First, some friendly words:
The music was on point (much better than say in The Crowned Clown).
The few fight scenes were fine.
The emotional scenes were well made (except for any deaths). In general, the production staff did a fine job.
Most of the actors were decently chosen for their roles (but all politicians were weak/unremarkable).


The first maybe 40% of the show are a generic Cinderella fantasy rom-com. The little attempted comedy isn't funny too often, but the leads and their chemistry are alright. After that though, there is so much dragging and nonsense, before it eventually culminates in something like a Wikipedia article. In hindsight, I just want my lifetime and sanity back.


== FULL-ON SPOILERS & COMPLAINTS FROM HERE ==

The core issue of the show is that it wants to both be a Love In The Moonlight- or Tale Of Nokdu-esque pure fantasy show, but then at the same time match the tragic real story to get those tear glands going. While it's still a romcom, you not only have the very silly secret Maidumminati organization of moon-sourced court lady villains complete with death temple and ninja girl assassination squads — but most importantly, only while it is a romcom, the FL has agency. The FL does things. The FL makes things happen and is pretty much the center of the story. The FL (of course) is a sassy FL that talks back to her king-to-be, yet at the same time they save each other's lives numerous times (through competence & effort!).
Admittedly there is a bit of puffing about the initial villain having set up the FL with the ML from her childhood on with the hopes of spying on him, as well as using their affection to prove he desires the king's "property", but that goes nowhere.
These characters they show us could just dandily shack up together in some royal arrangement, make babies, and live happily ever after. We don't even have an angry grandmother-dowager opposing this union! There is literally no obstacle to this union besides them opening their mouths to converse about it and ... the plot, its writer, and actual history.

Alas, the historical background to force into this is "this court lady rejected the king twice, and then at some point 15 years down the road she gets pregnant a bunch of times, and even tragically dies while pregnant; the king loved her a lot though".

Supposedly the real historical maid/consort (FL) had reasons like "I can't become your concubine if your actual wife hasn't born any children", but since Junho must stay pure and virginal for his one true love, no actress is even cast as his life-long historical wife. She is mentioned in passing like once or twice, and that's it.

So what do you do as a writer? Obviously, the FL does not want to be his wifey because.. well, dunno? Because she doesn't love him? Unfortunately they already showed that she did, so let's go for the next best thing: pretending not to love him. Even better, make it some grand parable about womens' rights. A poorly-treated palace maid has the freedom to go out to the market once per month, she can leave the palace for a short bit, wow, such independence in-between being forced to do menial jobs and being mistreated by those higher up! Meanwhile, a concubine/consort with maids of her own can't leave the palace at all! The horror! She only has one freedom left:
¯\(°_o)/¯ Loving the king sincerely, but not admitting to it. (⊙_⊙;)
It's one of the dumbestestest things I've ever seen in television.

As the FL refuses a reasonable happily-ever-after for very poorly defined, poorly expressed, and barely if at all comprehensible reasons, the ML is forced to wed the SML's 12 year old sister, but because Junho (ahistorically) does not want to be a pedophile, she (historically) dies of overwhelming sadness, and that makes SML turn into an insane traitor with a private army of ninja man assassination guards. For that stuff he (historically) is not beheaded, even though he really should have been, and not even exiled into far-away thorny shrubs – only so that he can later be an allegedly-not-scheming emo kid lurking around the palace to either get some power back, or have the FL for himself as a form of consolation prize because the ML can't (yet) have her. Ultimately he stays alive for a bit merely to send a truthful letter to the ML about how the FL and not him dutifully saved him a very long time ago. This whole arc is a waste of screen time.

In summary, TRS' FL repeatedly refuses the ML's declaration of love with the following consequences:
– A child she befriended has to marry him and dies unhappy. (Sparking the abuse/torture of other court maids as well.)
– Some mean lady is hired as the next consort, abuses the FL, and tries to get her beheaded.
– She herself presumably dies of pregnancy complications that would have been less likely at a younger age.

Needless to say, I vastly preferred watching the generic romcom Cinderella in the first episodes to the annoying troll that came after.

--

Stuff that just never got cleared up:
– ML/FL never talk about the tattoo FL has.
– ML/FL never have an earnest talk about how the evil head court lady set them up to be together.
– What is the book of Yeong, ML's grandmother, even about?
– In the show, Head Court Lady Jo herself "caused" Sado to become unstable (as explained by the oppressed nearly-dead Court Lady Park), of course intentionally, merely out of jealousy for another woman. So she herself is the architect of the calamity that she claims to warn about. Why does the Maidumminati ninja clan follow her blindly when at least some of them know this? Why do they try to assassinate ML even after her death?
– Early on the show makes a huge deal about the funeral convoy for a royal consort versus the way a maid is evicted from the palace to avoid her even dying there. Given this, we should be shown FL's funeral procession, and the ridiculously long Wikipedia-style episode #17 has more than enough time for this.

Leia Mais

Starts out as light romcom, becomes super random, then makjang, and finally finishes how it started.

Sometimes it's quite funny, the FL's dual role is sufficiently charming, and the frequent songs don't hurt either.

Acting, production and sound aren't great. There's more than enough plot holes and scenes that serve no purpose.
Unfortunately the whole middle of the show is full of filler scenes (while it's not that bad early on, one episode near the end is almost entirely made of adverts!).
Towards the end the writing goes into some really absurd directions, with obstacles being created and torn down again just because. Many spoiler reviews lash out at a particular arc that really shouldn't have been added.
The final episode only wraps up about two thirds of the characters, with the others disappearing never to be seen again.

As is common in CN dramas, the audio dubbing is very noticeable and sometimes quite bad.


P.S.:
I've seen shows that have cliffhangers meant to make you tune in for some revelation every single episode.
I've seen shows that just stop between scenes and don't try to fake excitement.
But I've never seen a show where plenty of episodes just stop like it's in the middle of somebody's sentence.

Leia Mais

After K2, Healer and Black, Rugal is my fourth K-drama thriller with glaring plot issues

Now that I'm on the fourth show of this kind that I really wanted to like, but the writing prevented it AGAIN, I'm slowly at a loss for words.

Some shows like Healer and Black clearly run out of budget or time and have to rush the ending in a messy (& stupid) way.

Other shows like K2 and this just never really have a plot structure to begin with, despite a great premise. Every episode, some evil (or evil-seeming) person does something evil and has to be stopped, or some other challenge is to be overcome. The overall character relations are rather static, with most players looking to take a stab at one of their targets, but this rarely happening in a meaningful way.
After about half of Rugal, it even turns into what feels like endless filler episodes, one more ridiculous in plot than the next. The primary villain of the show is pretty much Chaotic Evil, truly over the top in his atrocities, and most other characters have the chance to end him and spare us the last ~10 hours. Yet they all somehow help him, or even rescue him, and as a result we viewers must endure.

The acting is passable, but most supporting characters are underused and rarely get to shine convincingly.
The music is not that far behind K2's in excitement but is used in comically unexciting situations.
There's a lot of action, yet it's sadly often sprinkled in to cover for the lack of anything else. Random fight scenes with an infinite legion of goons are all too common.

If a plausible plot is not among your requirements, you don't mind violence, and sci-fi tech plus hero vs horde fights sound good, Rugal is likely worth a watch. The same goes if you just really enjoy the kind of villain who could eat up any weaker character.


*SPOILERS FROM HERE ON*

Starting from the very beginning, several characters end up killed, except not actually killed. They resurface perhaps mostly dead, perhaps alive and well. Sometimes they're remote-controlled monsters, but with a bit of good will they can be healed. One has part of his head sucked out, but then he's fully intact later on. It gets so bad that it's actually more surprising when a named character truly stays dead.

Sometimes the antagonist can create incredibly potent living weapons, other times they're just failures of ruthless human experiments. Rules of physics may or may not apply depending on the scene, the current week's horoscope, or who is supposed to look cool at any given moment. There's occasional Wuxia moves, fighters' motions can make robot noises irrespective of them having any biomechanical body parts, and for a police force without the license to kill, Rugal engages in a lot of neck-breaking.
The antagonist's living weapons may be zombies, or have the same abilities as Rugal members.

The plot twists are built for shock value, but usually lack all logic. This includes absurd and implausible suicides.
Supposedly, the Big Bad has an incredibly long-winded plan for world domination, but the film crew obviously never know what it actually is, and so it fizzles away in favour of an obsession with winning the protagonist to his side.


Speaking about said main character, he is given an absurd amount of leeway. For no reason whatsoever, he essentially turns into the most magically powerful one of the four Power Rangers, and everybody else is constantly enchanted by him. He's not even the team leader, but in every group shot walks ahead of the team taking point, and otherwise takes the center of attention. Because he's the actual team leader, Strong Man Tae-Woong also gets to remain relevant throughout the show, while Mi-Na and Gwang-Chul fade away into complete obscurity. To really drive home that they have no meaningful roles, they're given injuries to recuperate from for the finale.
While his artificial eyes 'whisper' to him after a few weeks/months of use, taking control of his actions and eventually subduing his will with pain, he happily murders a bunch of people – some unarmed – in cold blood, but nobody really cares. The AI chip gets replaced with a fresh, untrained one, meaning it only buys time – yet even in the "several years later" epilogue that either never became a problem again or is handwaved away by having another character assist him.


Rugal starts as a somewhat simplistic yet entertaining show, before going all-out Dumb & Dumber. Sad.

Leia Mais

Flawed adaptation with some pros and various cons

The leads have a strong bond and a healthy, drama-free relationship. WRTW is very suitable as a show without misunderstandings and draggy triangles.

What starts with the promise of an interesting empire-level power conflict quickly shifts focus to palace intrigue in just one of the empire's six states, the type of endless (endlessly repetitive) squabbles in which the baddies can never be stopped for good.
(From other comments online, I've learned that this was added by the drama writers, and in the actual novel there are "only a few paragraphs" of the palace intrigue that makes up a big portion of the show.)

Since she's an excellent fighter, little Lusi doesn't always need to be rescued. Except when she needs to be rescued.
Most of the time she's just hungry, which is terribly unimaginative. (Eventually the writers forget that. Just like they regularly forget the whole 'falcon' technology.)

95% of the show, FL and especially ML are super mega smart. The only times one of the leads is in serious peril, it is because they devolve into truly moronic drama leads that make nonsensical decisions without consulting the other – otherwise the writers have no way of plausibly getting them into danger. Every time this happens (admittedly rarely), this is somewhere between disappointing and infuriating.

The villain(s) and the "token" plotline don't make a lot of sense to me. I don't know how much of that is because of Netflix's usual so-so translation quality, or how much stems from the drama adaption vs the original work.

I feel it must be mentioned how unpleasant Yang Yang's hairstyle he wears for most of the show is ("hair up" doesn't work with his face), and how poorly the matter of double identities is handled, especially with regards to revealing them.

Leia Mais

As a Reply hater: this is the Reply I hate the least

For people that loathe Reply-likes (including Prison Playbook and Hospital Playlist), Noh Hee Kyung's attempt at writing one could be the least offensive of all – simply because there's more of an actual plot, episodic crimes, and sort of normal character arcs. There are no supposedly-funny animal noises, and you don't see the same scenes repeated with more detail except to resolve episode cliffhangers. However, not all is rosy here either. 'Live' cannot fully commit to being a serious show with believable or even real characters, ultimately for two reasons: there is a degree of paid product placement that is at odds with these goals, and, occasionally, outlandish makjang scenarios are sprinkled all over the place.

It's a pity that it cannot "keep it real" because it comes pretty close. Characters seem human, and only the parents of the leads have at times inconsistent personalities with a crazy switch that is flipped when the writer feels like it. I didn't find it too jarring that, frequently, four or more of the cast turn into something like public service announcement drones to let you know about problems plaguing police officers (like the evergreen of how the police should have the 'power to indict' and their struggle against the prosecution, or spouting out statistics about recent stabbings, or the suicide rate among the police force). From cleaning up after drunks to crimes committed by children, happy slapping and serial crimes, you see all aspects of police work, and it's clear a lot of thought (and research) went into the show. You're frequently reminded that patrol officers will also have to keep the bathrooms clean and pay for all sorts of work-related expenses out of their own pockets, despite performing a hazardous job with poor pay and questionable job security.
Compared to your average drama, some very serious topics are touched upon, notably a lot of sexual crimes, often against teenagers. I feel these were handled tactfully, but a trigger warning is nonetheless appropriate.

Especially around a quarter into the show, there is so much bickering and mostly pointless fighting between the various characters, including the elderly ones, that at its worst, 'Live' has you observe children in adult bodies swimming (or just flailing about) in the vast product placement ocean. Not only is there the mandatory sponsored plastic water bottle, the sponsored canned cold coffee, but also the sponsored sometimes-talkative rice cooker (owned by every household, identical colour scheme), and the occasional appearance of a wireless vacuum, but it even reaches the deepest depravities of intellectual bankruptcy: sucking what there is to suck out of red ginseng plastic satchels (guaranteed to extend your lifespan). Needless to say, much like in The K2, any serious conversation about your relationship must be had at Subway – sandwich in hand.

OST-wise, you find memorable songs (and characters singing) in the first few episodes, but later on, the music supply gets a bit thin considering the drama's length. The romance scenes have very generic K-drama love songs. The episode outro montages often have absurdly unfitting songs playing, and they're cut short by preview spoilers anyway.

Speaking about romance: besides for one pre-established relationship, I don't think the romance-related plotlines added very much.

In episodes 14 and 15, it's like the filmmakers realised they are paying Sung Dong Il and Lee Joo Young for very little plot relevance, so some old material gets recycled to make them seem less superfluous. Fortunately, after that, the show is wrapped up in a tolerable way, instead of drowning in an onslaught of replays and flashbacks as so often happens. I don't like the ending given to one of the leads, but compared to the truly disrespectful way Prison Playbook treats its characters, that's a very, very minor complaint. Unlike that show, and Reply '97 and '88, 'Live' is the only Reply-like I've imbibed that I will be able to look back on somewhat fondly.

(On Netflix and other streamers like iQIYI, you don't get the complete unaltered show: https://mydramalist.com/24015-live#comment-12997047
That's also very Reply-like...)

Leia Mais

A romcom drama that's very much 'decent'.

The chemistry between the leads is alright (not as good as in What's Wrong With Secretary Kim). The plot is very much standard fare, with every cliché you've seen a dozen times.
The idol fandom topic is done tastefully, but doesn't have the same effort put into it as say Reply 1997.
The supporting characters are alright: sometimes funny, sometimes not, but never obnoxious.
There is an average amount of filler scenes and plots.
A perhaps average amount of product placement, but in a more stupidly obvious way than you'd expect.
The OST is okay as well (but nothing I'll remember for months).
I didn't sit in agony for hours waiting for any painful plot arcs to end, either. In a way, I'm most thankful for the scarcity of pointlessly negative story elements, with the writers instead going for themes like happiness and healing.
All in all: no serious complaints. Serves its purpose as a fluffy, no-stress show.

On Netflix and such you have content missing compared to the TV version: https://mydramalist.com/32293-her-private-life#comment-12329955

The special you can watch either before the show or after a few episodes; it has some minor spoilers regarding characters and plots introduced a bit after the start.

Leia Mais