Took me 3 years to end this one, it gets boring so fast, the plot is almost non existent and acting wasn't even that strong to talk about that, characters developmente was so awful, watch it if you like some of the main actors otherwise an easy pass.
It started out amazing. All the Gossip Girl vibes were there. Then, the ML fell for the FL way too quickly, a never ending cycle of break-ups and make-ups ensued, and in the end the whole thing took a turn for the ridiculous and overly melodramatic and went off the rails, only to end with the mandatory hea.
Kinda disappointing tbh.
Not a disappointment, though? The outfits, particularly all the gorgeous trench coats. And Tae Hee's dad. That man was a gem.
Randomly noticed that on Netflix (and surely Viki or other licensed sites), like so often, various things are removed/censored.
All the music at the very start of Ep.1 (character intros) is different.
Ep1 at 11:50 on NF has some replaced music, while Dramacool at 11:20 has the Superman theme play.
- also Ep1 at 8:10 and 7:44, slightly different music for the musicians playing
- Ep 1 at 19:20 / 19:04, different music
- all techno club music in Ep1
At 12:54 of Ep.1, they sing the KR anthem for a few short seconds – Netflix just does one big cut. Not missing much here.
There's a LONG two minutes scene missing at Ep1 55:00 (DC: Ep2 21:35) introducing Park Hye Jeong.
Ep.2 (or 3 in the 32 split) has Lee Se Joo watching pornography on his TV cut out. At around 25:30 on NF and 25:10 on Dramacool and the like.
Different music again at Ep2 12:55 NF / Ep3 12:35 DC.
Short sequence of cello playing missing at Ep2 34:30 NF / Ep4 00:28 DC.
I suppose each and every instance of Choi Soo Ji playing her instrument might be missing on Netflix.
I wonder how much else of the show is removed/censored. This seems almost as terrible as the Reply series in that regard.
Regardless of the source material, the spoiled and manipulative rich kids is one of the most overused plots in the world, so things got boring very fast. Soo-Ji is probably the most one dimensional character in this series, and everytime I thought she was going to show a little more character development, she just went back to her default spoiled kid state. Se-Joo surprised me, in a negative way, he has absolutely no personality, in fact at some point he was just there to do the dirty work that writers probably thought were too dirty for Soo-Ji, but the truth is, his character doesn't exist as a stand alone character. Tae-Hee...I liked her, sometimes, she seems to be the most complex out of the four, but honestly she cried way too much, even when she was supposed to be screaming and cursing, she just...stand there...crying and Shi-Hyun had the same problem, actually he has the same problem all characters have, they need to keep things for themselves in order for the plot to thickens, because had he told his friends (most precisely Se-Joo) the same things he told Tae-Hee half of the plot would be resolved. I know some people liked the ending, but I thought it was silly, redemption arcs only work if we see the redemption process and this is not what happened, I feel like I got way more upset with what happened than the people involved in those situations, and some of their actions were completely out of character.
It's just another series that I'm watching because the main lead is a good actor, but seriously, Woo Do-Hwan needs a better agent cause this one is constantly putting him on bad series.
Review by luckzBlockedParent2022-01-26T10:59:00Z
5.5 / 10
There's some actually really good Cinderella & Cheese in the Trap mashup in the early episodes. Thankfully Les Liaisons Dangereuses isn't adapted all that strictly (I watched three movies as preparation for the show!), and ML very soon stops being anything like the 'full-on psycho' character you'd find in aforementioned Cheese in the Trap.
From others' comments, I expected more outlandish recurrent breakups than there were, though the ones the writers came up with were usually very hard to agree with as a viewer.
By the last two hours, as is tradition with K-dramas, the story takes odd turns, and the ending is unfulfilling.
The last episode in particular wastes tons of time on utter crap instead of using it for something useful.
ep29 (15.1): Se Joo & the FL Tae Hee are completely out of character to facilitate dramatic plot development. Se Joo as the one cleaning up after his friends would never use the nuclear option, and Tae Hee as a previously very smart Cinderella character would never follow someone far away for indoctrination after she already found out that she was lured out of the house under false pretenses (& knowing if she stayed she would get a big explanation).
ep30 (15.2): Makjang murder spree, with nobody calling the police or anything like that for the sake of later wasting screen time on the classic coma episode. Even more absurd than the lack of police or private security intervention is that nobody unties Se Joo at any point, even though several people could and have ample opportunity.
Many lost plot strands, even or especially with the weird 5 years time skip at the end:
- What happened with Park Hye Jung's boyfriend Joo An? He was hit in the head with a golf club and bleeding all over the place, but that's the last we hear of him? Is he not human because he's not rich?
- We never see Lee Ki Yeong (or his hired chaebol heir / part time assassin) punished. Just saying that his family's law firm is doing poorly now doesn't cut it.
- What happened to the wedding plans of Myung Mi Ri and Kwon Suk Woo?
- We don't even find out if FL ultimately moved to Germany with her dad or not.
- We can only guess that ML might have gone for formal painting / art education rather than enter the family business – but he's still on good enough terms with his family to spend outlandish money on a ridiculous prank.
- The drama is missing any scene of the "adults" (besides FL's stunned mother) reacting to who exactly ML has feelings for.
- We never find out the details of ML's mother's death. When the hospital director arrives she's still alive, after all - and why is her car door locked anyway? I've never driven with a locked door before, and even if it's common for KR chaebols, you would NOT do that with a heart condition. Plus her window is down when she talks to FL, but then up again later on.
- The whole hinted at sub plot of ML's father possibly conspiring with his later fiancee Myung Mi Ri to have his wife killed was so silly if the only goal of them lying was covering up his well-known feelings for FL's mother. Even his own mother knew everything about it.
- The subplot of ML kissing or perhaps even sleeping with the mother of Go Kyung Ju completely disappears to never be mentioned again. Go Kyung Ju talks to ML like a generic friend-of-gf side character later, like the writers forgot about earlier episodes.
- Go Kyung Ju's adoption is mentioned once, but also never pursued or detailed.