Now that I'm on the fourth show of this kind that I really wanted to like (K2, Healer and Black), but the writing prevented it AGAIN, I'm slowly at a loss for words.
Rugal is my fourth K-drama thriller in a row with glaring plot issues.
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.
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. – self-harm as extortion.
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.
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 a 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 it 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.
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.
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.
Whisper is a corruption-focused K-drama where a set of characters use various ruthless methods to reach their goals; the good guys want to uncover murder & corruption, while the bad guys individually seek to avoid trouble. There's occasional shifting alliances, but it's usually the two leads against everybody else.
The rapid pace of twists and turns keeps you on your toes, and the 'competent protagonist' is sure neat, though ultimately he's mostly the female lead's stooge throughout the majority of episodes. There's little he does that's not done to help her.
Sadly half of the time it looks like a cheap soap opera because of the way it was filmed - maybe it's mostly the framerate that has that effect. The camera work itself is occasionally obviously bad & even comical. I've watched some 25 Asian drama shows, and none had me laugh at the overdone zooms, silly angles, or poor cuts this often.
As many other viewers have noticed, you have to be able to stand "convenient" plot points, like how characters receive every phone call with millisecond precision to affect conversations they're having (and there's hundreds of these phone calls).
SPOILER:
Several hours of plot development or rather lack thereof from the middle could be cut out because the end of Ep 11 renders them void. I found that really cheap and underwhelming.
