Watching this show is like eating a whole tub of ice cream by yourself. It is a little naughty but so satisfying and a guilty pleasure. You almost feel a little embarrassed to admit you liked it so much.
This show has all the things that you'd decried about tropey, over-the-top scripts with questionable story telling but it has so much charm and energy that you didn't realise until you are hooked and it is too late to bail.
A lot of that energy came from the young cast. There are a lot of testosterone, teenage angst and bravado on display and sometimes it can feel monotonal but most of the time, the young actors, especially the Racket Boys, pulled it off. A special mention goes to Tang Jun Sang. He was impressive in Move to Heaven and he did not disappoint in this show. One to watch as his career develops. Kim Kang Hoon was a joy to watch, a mix of cuteness and determination. The veteran actors provided the glue that gave the show cohesion and a nurturing environment for the youngers to grow and be themselves. To be honest, some of those roles are from central casting and there is not a lot of depth to their characters but the fact that they are instantly recognisable is also comforting within this dramaverse.
As you can imagine, humour is central to a show like this but some of it is pretty crude and they are served with extra cheese. The show can be cringy as it farmed all the clichés and set up tropey situations just to milk the laughs/tears. What made it worked is the ensemble cast (both young and old) and the fast pacing so that you are never given enough time to analyse each scene. For much of the show, there is a definite coda, see setback -> overcome obstacle -> plot advances/character grows -> rinse and repeat. The show also tapped into many other themes beyond sports, found family, friendship, romance, dislocation, alienation and many more. Even a bit of supernatural towards the end which you can only shrug and say "why not". You would think it is a mess and it was but you are too invested to care (or you'd have dropped the show a long time ago). You'd forgive a lot of their trespasses just to see what happens next. However, this is a doubled edged sword as you knew things will never get too rough and the reward is always a few scenes away.
However, not everything can be dismissed offhandedly. The way the show dealt with antagonists can be quite tone deaf and lackadaisical. Foreigners and city dwellers are easy foils. Bad people will do bad things, end of story. The whole land developer subplot was heavy handed and farcical.
Romance was a big part of the show and a source of minor frustration as the teasing and push/pull goes on and on. There is little skinship to talk about but it is rated PG15+ more for other contents.
I have read some comments on the badminton games were not realistic. I beg to differ. I doubt any sport based drama has ever portraited their sport 100% realistically. Drama and plot development must come first so tight editing and a bit of CGI are used to create tension and magic. I think the young actors did their best to impress us on how physical and challenging the game is at elite level and I'm sure they'd have sweated through tough training sessions as well. They deserve a bit more credit.
One thing that did irked me was how Kang Tae Seon gets to play in the national team selection match against the ML. According to the show, Kang has not played badminton for 10 years. Putting aside his fitness and skill retention there must be some kind of ranking system so that people have to demonstrate a certain level of merit to earn a wildcard entry but to go straight to the top seemed to take the mickey out of the system, Consider his character was introduced late in the drama and probably will not show up again (unless there is a season 2), it served little purpose other than to take the ML down a notch and to humanise the head coach.
Even with the questionable subplots, I definitely enjoyed this show and it demands very little from you. The less critical you are, the more enjoyable this show will be. Like I said, it is a guilty pleasure that you can binge watch easily.