Put Your Head on My Shoulder 2, the slightly inferior sequel!

I did not think that a Xing Fei + Tang Xiao Tian pairing could work, but this drama proves my preconceptions wrong. Daddi's (Chinese actors and their self chosen English? names, gawd) visuals have been significantly upgraded, perhaps he has gotten a bit more mature too in the past 2 years. Anyway the leads had great chemistry and their romance really delivered.
I always liked fluffy romcoms with weak love triangles and this one is right up my alley. I've been more than sufficiently entertained really.

Comparing this drama with Put Your Head on My Shoulder makes a lot of sense. Not only because of the lead actors' reunion, but also because the plot structure of the two dramas is strikingly similar, or at the very least the way the love triangle situation is handled is almost the same. (One weak triangle in the early episodes and another in the second half, both easily resolved) MLH has two big shortcomings in this comparison. Firstly the setting is much worse, the whole hospital and law firm environment leads to a few minor annoyances, annoyances the other drama did not have. Secondly MLH is 6 episodes longer & in my opinion it's just about 6 episodes too long. There is quite a bit of repetition & artificially stalled progress between episodes 16 & 26. Also the ending episodes were not nearly as good, they weren't bad or anything, but drama faded into boredom a little bit.

The second leads had decent chemistry too, but I found their story somewhat unnatural. Also their conclusion is lacking. So much effort has been spent to explain their backstory in the early episodes, how they wanted to stand on their own feet etc, but ultimately besides them ending up together their story feels somewhat unfinished. What did they end up doing with their lives? Sure they did the store renovation, but then fastforward a few scenes and they are traveling around the world spending the money of their parents!? *shrugs*

I think this drama is the second one I've seen just THIS MONTH, that featured volunteer doctors visiting the site of a major earthquake, the surgery during an aftershock scene is also something both dramas had in common...

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Overall this is still an above average cdrama in the fluffy romcom category. There are no breakups, no forced separation and all conflicts and the complications are easily resolved, the OTP romance is great too.. 8/10 seems fair, I might even do a rewatch someday.
With that said, if you have not yet seen Put Your Head on My Shoulder, you should start with that drama first.


edit: I did a rewatch. I still enjoyed the first half a lot, but the second half was even more of a letdown than I remembered. (Way too dragged out, annoying second couple relationship and quite a bit of boredom) Adjusting the score to 7,5.

Leia Mais

This drama is pretty difficult to grade. On one hand it's very unique, with a heartwarming story, there is no love triangle and there are quite a few brilliant moments in the drama. On the other hand the chain of misunderstandings is just too much, borderline makjang-ish. Decided to give it an 8, because it's just too awesome and memorable for anything less.

UEE was incredible as Do Hee, I don't understand what all the hate is about, I could not imagine anyone doing a better job in this role. Choi Woo Shik was surprisingly great as well, though I only knew him from Fight for My Way. They had great chemistry too. The rest of the cast were also decent, the casting director did a great job.

The OTP's romance is really on point, I just wish they would have foregone the mandatory breakup in ep14, at least the ending was great, a really satisfying happy ending. (I don't care much about the result of that trial)

As for the second leads I'm on the fence about their relationship. For starters I did not like the second ML's character and it took 16 episodes to resolve their principal misunderstanding. At least the confusion about his sexual identity was kind of amusing.

One thing I noticed is that in the early episodes Hogoo's shenanigans caused me a lot of secondary embarrassment, I felt like he is mentally challenged. However in the second half his character was adjusted to become much more capable and attractive. Natural character development cannot possibly be held accountable for this upgrade.

The semi animated opening credits were awesome.

edit:
I've increased the score to 9, because I keep thinking about the drama & feel a strong urge to start a rewatch session already only after a few days..

edit2 (1 year later):
Changed it again to 10, the reason being that the romance is just so incredible, that the flaws are easy to ignore. There are very few dramas out there that give me the same feels.

Leia Mais

I've read the manwha "Shall We Have Dinner Tonight?" even before my kdrama addiction has started. So I was kind of hyped about this drama. Also Before Sunset is like one of my favorite movies of all time & I'm bringing this up, because the manwha reminded me of that quite a bit. I'm saying it confidently that the writers have butchered the magic of the original. The witty dialog & the bonding over food is almost completely missing from the drama. What's funny though that I did not even mind while watching the first half. Episodes 1-9~ were very entertaining for me with a lot of charm, it felt like I was watching a light hearted romcom, where even the exes were interesting in their own way. I hate love triangles, but while watching those early episodes I thought that with a story sequenced like this having more aggressive secondary love interests was perfectly fine.
Unfortunately the ratings were low & as customary with live filming, major changes were made. There are about 3 episodes where the focus is completely on Jung Jae Hyuk's (second ML)'s mental illness & not only that but our FL is also doing some incredibly stupid and frustrating things. Honestly at times I felt that the writer was just cruel to the audience.

The entire cast was great, perhaps the ML's performance is the weakest link. The OST is extremely repetitive, there was an episode where the the "Mokja nyan nyan" song was played like 6-7 times. The visuals were great, but nowadays that's true for all kdramas..

My suggestion is to keep watching until episode 11 & then just skip to episode 14 for the best experience.

Leia Mais

This is obviously very good, so the 8.5 rating is definitely justified, having seen the other reviews here all the good points were already mentioned, so I'll just focus on what I did not like.

The OST is just as repetitive as in Pretty Noona, yes it's very good, but there are only like 5 songs & there are episodes where the "seasons change" song plays more than 4 times.
Pretty Noona has become terrible after the midpoint, here the start is not quite as explosive, but still very good and the show never becomes terrible, but there is a lot of forced drama in the second half that I did not like. Especially episodes 14-15(28-30 in the stupid numbering system) were quite eyebrow raising at times. Having a second male lead like this is fine for maybe 2-3 episodes, but for 16 it's just ridiculous, at least this was handled better in Pretty Noona. People talk about how real this show feels, but this character is completely immersion breaking & the same is also true for how Jeong-in interacts with him.
From a Korean viewer's standpoint this show is probably quite progressive, but frankly I don't like it when the dark side of Confucianism is showcased this much. (parents forcing their will upon their grownup kids , the barbaric Korean divorce law and Korean social stigmas) Also there were some acting hiccups here and there, overall the acting performances were incredibly good for the most part, but I felt that nearing the end the actors have ng-ed scenes at times, but the director just let it go for ehm reasons, but I realize that this could be considered nitpicking. The flow of the story & character progression have some inconsistencies , I sense that there were some script rewrites & character micro adjustments, I feel that I would not have noticed much, have I not been watching all episodes over the course of 3 days.


edit: I was bored and rewatched the show.
I was impressed by the early episodes a lot more than the first time around. They way how fate and extreme attraction is brought to life in this show is just beautiful and there were just so many great conversations & touching scenes all the way to the end.

Leia Mais

It's difficult to review this drama, because the story/writing is just abysmal, but despite that there are some amazing things in it too. Many comments talk about Hwang JungEum being terrible in this, personally I think that this is the role that fit her the most out of all the roles that she had, her acting was phenomenal, it's not her fault that she had to portray a superstitious nutjob idiot of a woman. Ryu Junyol himself is also a nice surprise, he was so much more interesting in this one than in R1988. (I never understood why everyone wanted him to be main character in 88) Their chemistry was amazing. I liked pretty much all the side characters too, the exception being Gary Choi. What a super annoying male second lead he was..

To elaborate more on the bad writing. After enjoying the first 5-6 episodes the drama really started to drag & the stupid triangle started to annoy me quite a bit and then finally when all that was resolved following just one fuzzy episode everything went to shit as usual in many kdramas. I mean good God, that fortune teller just had to ruin everything. The ending is a cliche fest, forced separation into time skip into a rushed reconciliation.

I could nitpick about inconsequential things too such as how Tennis players don't have agencies, but rather they employ a crew, or an agent if they have to. Tennis is not the SK entertainment industry. Then there is the blonde Novak Djokovic...
There is also the recurring theme of stealing games/code pre-release. There are very good reasons why this doesn't happen, especially how it went down the second time around. Then again these I could easily forgive..

Leia Mais

Typically I don't like watching high school cdramas, because censorship makes it near impossible to portray a reasonable romantic story in them and also they often have content involving parents & teachers that I abhor.
This drama is a standout in in this genre in the sense, that they've shown innocent but very sweet high school dating. At times I was wondering how this passed censorship. Then later on ML's momster came and forced a 1 year separation, so everyone could focus on their studies & then I thought "okay, so that's how". There were also various moments in the drama, when the leads were vehemently denying their romantic involvement with each other, but it was never in doubt. It was very strongly implied that they knew each other's feelings and they did everything dating teens would do, other than skinship that is.
(This is the second crama I've seen that is like this, the other one was 'Meeting You')

Basically the show can be split into three parts.
1) The kids getting to know each other. (first 5-9 ep)
2) The friend group of 5 enjoying their best life. (this is very close to 10/10 amazing)
3) College, young adult life (last 6-7 ep)

I would say 1) is not great, initially I found the show to be the most typical Chinese high school drama I have ever seen. I was fully prepared to drop it, but I did not really have anything else better lined up & I needed something to watch during my late night workout sessions.. Upon reaching 2) I was very surprised, suddenly everything started working for me and it felt like I'm watching a different show, where EVERYTHING is better, including the acting, the editing and even the background music inserts. In fact episode 10 is one of the best cdrama episodes I have ever seen, it was absolutely magical.
After the forced separation we quickly transitioned to college life & adult dating. While I tend to enjoy a simple, fluffy and complication-free happy ending, I felt 3) to be lackluster in many ways. I really liked the second couple & they barely had scenes there. Much of the non romantic plot earlier was involving ML's brother & momster. FL did not meet ML's mom during the adult part of the show, at least other than us seeing the mom sitting there at their wedding there has not been anything else. The brother also only had like one line during the wedding, would have been nice to see what happened to the genius. Also there were at least two occasions when I felt the writer set up some big cathartic faceslap moments and the then things just fizzled out, not cool! Give me my loud slap! To sum it up, in 3) we just went through the motions without enough emotional impact. (well there was a little of that in the finale, maybe)

Anyway despite the negative points this one is absolutely worth watching, perhaps even just for the bromances, but to me 'A Love So Beautiful' -despite that annoying Wu Busong and the breakup- is a much better cdrama that is largely similar to this one, but feels far better overall. It's better acted, has several really epic moments, the final episodes are very satisfying and it's amazing from episode 1 onward etc etc.
Of course if I started to compare it to the best university/young adult cdramas then it would just fall short.

TLDR: It's the second best high school cdrama I've seen, but usually high school cdramas suck, so 8/10.

Leia Mais

I was a bit disappointed at first, I found the first 5 episodes a bit boring . However by the time we reached episode 10 I was over that and I started to dread the moment of the inevitable reveal, but I was pleasantly surprised when that moment came (very late in the series), because the revelation drama/conflict had gotten resolved swiftly and the resolution was very beautiful and unexpected. Throughout the entire show I was waiting for various terrible things to happen, but they were only teased, none of them came to be. (such as extreme love triangle plots, forced separation, or strong rivalry induced melodrama) This is one of those shows that's about enjoying the journey, rather than anticipating the end. I really liked the character interactions, the comedy and the main leads had great chemistry, the entire cast was amazing really. Having watched Legend of the Blue Sea I kept thinking how much better Shin Hyesun could have been at being a hapless mermaid, I like Jun Jihyun as an actress, but that mermaid character was nearly identical to this 30 years old teen character, but it's blatantly obvious whom this role fit better.

The OST was awesome, not at Goblin levels, but not much worse really.

Leia Mais

While I somewhat enjoyed watching this, I don't think this is a good office drama. The show is presented in a sitcom format, but it lacks the intensity that a sitcom would need to keep the audience interested. There were many really boring episodes, the comedy is just not that great. While I liked the acting ensemble & also the couple, but outside of a few episodes there is really not all that much worth seeing. The romance between the leads is good, but just so little of it is shown.. I watched about 2-3 episodes of this every day after work & I fell asleep multiple times, if I'm watching something worthwhile that rarely if ever happens.

Leia Mais