This show is a garbage can that is on fire. It stinks, it’s bad, but you can’t look away because unfortunately you want to know what’s going to happen next.

The main positive thing I can say about this show is that it sure was good at ending episodes on a cliffhanger. I would be watching the show, asking myself why on earth I’m watching it, resolving to stop once I finished the episode, and then it would end on a cliffhanger. Then I, hating myself for wasting my time on a show I didn’t even like, would have to click to watch the next episode.
Can I mention my favorite cliffhanger while I’m at it? Our female protagonist is standing in the middle of the street, with her two male love interests on either side of the street, telling her to come to them. That’s the end of the episode. The next episode starts and she walks away from both of them! I laughed out loud. Despite how garbage the majority of the show was, it did have some occasionally golden moments.

Since I’m talking about the positive parts of the show, I might as well mention that quite a few characters are good. This was the first role that brought Kim Woo Bin to my attention, and rightfully so. He is a thousand times more interesting and compelling than Lee Min Ho’s character. Krystal was also great in this show, she really stood out as a very jealous spoiled brat but she morphed into our female protagonist’s friend through... spite? I think she basically became friends with her to keep her away from her boyfriend lol. I think overall the acting is fine in this, but the script is just. So. Bad. The dialogue is flat and boring. Seriously, so much of this is a snore. That’s why Kim Woo Bin’s character was the most interesting, because he at least had more dynamic motivations and managed to convey more emotion than our two main leads combined. He’s a pretty terrible person, but at least he’s interesting!

It honestly cracked me up when I came back to this show years after I had watched it, because I hadn’t realized how jam-packed of stars it was! And I couldn’t remember any of them! Like, Kang Ha Neul was in this, and I was genuinely surprised, I didn’t remember him at all. Many, many actors that I like and respect are in this, but the script is so bland and boring that none of them are interesting. Seriously, even very talented actors couldn’t bring any life to this lifeless show.

This show suffers from what I would call cliche over content. The show filled itself with all the kdrama tropes and “shocking” moments (our female lead getting pushed into a pool, that dramatic crosswalk scene, etc) so it does manage to get its hooks into you, but there is hardly anything else besides those tropes and dramatic moments so it almost feels empty. Characters hardly exist outside of their tropes and thus they aren’t very interesting. They don’t really have the opportunity to portray emotions. The dialogue is mostly in service of whatever plot stuff is happening (and in the most utilitarian way) or is just filler, so no characters really demonstrate much of a personality. There’s plenty of dialogue that I wanted to or did skip because it was either the same conversation they had had before or nothing of consequence was really happening and it was boring. The show does a lot of telling, not showing. This is particularly evident in the main romance, of which I am fairly unconvinced actually exists. The two main leads... like each other? Dunno why, but the music and cinematography tells me so so I guess it’s true. It certainly seems to underlie their motivations but when they actually interact it’s very dull and they don’t convey a lot of emotion. It’s a little hard to tell whether (a) the acting is just kinda not great (which I find a little weird, since I don’t think Park Shin Hye or Lee Min Ho are untalented), (b) the script is so bad there’s nothing even good actors can do to save it, or (c) the editing focuses more on the ~drama~ that it fails to capture any emotions that the actors portrayed. Also that closet kiss was low key assault and while some kdramas do have some sketchy kisses that one was pretty bad.

This show is an excellent case study for observing kdrama tropes, so I’d almost recommend it if you want to see all of them in one place. However, aside from that, this show is addicting but it leaves you feeling really crappy and bad about yourself afterwards, so go watch a better show instead. There’s plenty of addicting kdrama tropes in other shows.