40somethingahjumma

This is weird. I thought they were setting up a romance between paramedic and Jindo Dog. She seemed more partial to him. Was that all just pity? Or is the show just "subverting expectations"?

I need to get back to watching this.

Edit: The show is still doing nutty things I see.

Well, I've watched the whole lot. I managed to get through the last six with my mediocre Chinese and the show didn't let me down. Thankfully. I think the ending was the right one for this show. It's what Li Lianhua wanted except that everyone kept dragging him into things. Of course he had a strong sense of loyalty and obligation too which is why he got himself embroiled in the Nanyin fiasco.

Xiao Zijin and Shan Gudao were such losers from beginning to end. That final plot twist was pretty good. A nice slap in the face for Shan Gudao I might add.

The fight scenes at the end were pretty darn good as @OsmanthusTea promised. (The mention of old HK movies made me nostalgic. And of course I loved Jet Li in The Once Upon a Time in China series.) I think Fox Volant had slightly better choreo but this one was no slouch either. I think Cheng Yi was a perfect fit for the role. His sword wielding scenes are just pure elegance.

I really liked the last 12 episodes. The hilltop mansion case was okay but had an important message. I found amnesiac A'Fei's dynamic with both Li Lianhua and Fang Duobing quite hilarious. I miss it now that he's regained his memories. I'm glad that Li Lianhua's identity is now out in the open because it's pretty painful watching him get misunderstood when he's been sacrificing himself to save everyone. I've been thinking Li Xiangyi must have been quite something in his heyday because even with less than 10% of his previous power, he's still thrashing everyone. I'm glad this show's come good (unlike another show which we won't name) and hopefully we get a logical and consistent resolution. 

Frankly they should just destroy the Ice pieces so nobody can activate the Doomsday device.

I hear that iQiyi will be doing a big dump of episodes for a few extra bucks so the show will be ending earlier than previously scheduled.

7 minutes ago, Chocolate said:

 

Oh no!

 

@abs-oluteM Is this showing on any of the subscription channels?

 

It's on Viki. 

In Episode 8 I sensed some small but palpable changes in Eun-mi. I agree that she's far less wacky with Jin-hong in the picture. He's a good counterbalance to her and provides a de facto parenting alternative to the one that Jin-hee has been getting from Eun-mi. Rather than being combative, he is thoughtful and gently communicative. He acknowledges Jin-hee, tells her that she's a good daughter and a reliable one. In more ways than one, he is the father that she needs in the present.

So what do I mean by that? Because he is around to keep her mother company, Jin-hee is freer to do her own thing. I think Eun-mi is rather over-reliant on Jin-hee for companionship which in turn restricts Jin-hee's ability to expand her horizons. On two occasions, Jin-hee goes in search of Jae-won for drinks and heart to heart. It's a healthy development for both women. It's quite obvious from Jin-hee's drunk and slightly tipsy interactions with Jae-won that she's keen to get closer to him. So it is essential in this story for Jin-hong to be a part of Eun-mi's life before Jin-hee can find her romance, as it were.

Speaking of which, I feel bad for Jae-won because it seems like he's going through an existential crisis of his own. It's rather telling that he's looking for a reason to be a cop and yet he hasn't stopped doing his due diligence while he's pondering the meaning of the universe. That said, I suspect that he has already found his reason to stay in the police as he's helping Jin-hee and Eun-mi in the background following leads on the mugging murder. I'm making this assumption based on the fact that his immediate supervisor came to see him and mentioned that he hadn't received a resignation letter from him for a while. At the very least I think he's found a reason to get up in the morning while there are two women in his sphere of influence that need his help.

The writing so far is very good. Better than I even hoped. This writer certainly understands how television should work and make every scene matter in terms of plot and character development.

If the writer doesn't manage to screw up the ending completely, this would be the best rom com that I've seen for a while. :P And I mean a while.

I'm enjoying this show despite Eun-mi's antics. It was peak self-centred tantrum throwing in the first half of Episode 7 but there were some bright spots here and there. I don't think the show condones Eun-mi's bad behaviour but uses it to highlight the fact that Jin-hee and Jin-hong are often the adults in the room. It shows too that they love her enough to put up with some of her ways. It is frustrating that everyone else apologizes to and accommodates Eun-mi BUT, having said that, I see a softening in her. She's taking baby steps and even taking cues from Jin-hong about how to be more considerate of Jin-hee. I think secretly she rather likes Jin-hong being a little bit more assertive.

I'm also heartened by the fact that there are signs of the trio becoming a family.

I too have a hard time understanding the vehement dislike of Jin-hong around the web. As far as I can see he is a sweet and considerate guy. It wasn't his fault that Eun-mi neglected to tell him about her pregnancy and then he was lied to about her lot in life. He's also walking on eggshells around her in relation to Jin-hee. Of course he's curious the daughter he didn't know he had. Who wouldn't be? It's unreasonable for Eun-mi to expect differently. The problem with Eun-mi is that she expects everyone to dance to her tune.

I've heard the word "narcissism" being thrown around in relation to Eun-mi and I don't disagree. And I do understand where that comes from. Her abusive background can provide a plausible explanation to how she is but not an ongoing excuse for continuing inconsideration of her own daughter. It's not as if she doesn't love her daughter. She does because she's given up on men when they get in the way of their relationship.

It makes sense to me too that she would want to get back together with Jin-hong because he was the guy who liked her despite her background and abrasive personality.

Despite the limited screen time that they share, I do think that there are hints here and there that Jin-hee and Jae-won have feeling for each other that go way back. Because this is a second chance romance story, I think the odds are high that it started while they were at the police academy together. I think Mi-jeong's remark that he's the "Police Academy Oppa" is telling. I suspect she almost confessed while drunk before Jin-soo took the phone from her. It's was funny that she called him 24 times while drunk.

After 31 episodes, I've decided to give this the flick. It's too much of a waste of time when I have such a long list of shows I want to watch. I don't even care about how it ends. There's too much unnecessary chatter by people who aren't even needed in the show.

I wonder why this show was even made when it seems nobody but the actors cared about this.

Up to Episode 20...

This Li Lianhua... honestly... if he weren't a pugilist or a physician, he should be a con man. The tales spun by him without batting an eyelash are a hoot. But what has really taken the cake this time round is his conversation with the amnesia stricken Di Feisheng. He missed his true calling as a grifter. 

"I'm your master." LOL

Wow. What a great looking production. The cinematography looks amazing. There looks to be some political unrest in that episode preview that's been posted. I'm glad that they're taking this project seriously. I note that it's the director from The Veil. The lad who played Gyeong-chan from Shadow Detective looks to be a scholar of sorts. 

@abs-oluteM

Unfortunately I can't start right away. I have a few dramas to get through first as you well know. :D I must be crazy to have taken on half a dozen dramas at one time.

I've finally caught up on all existing episodes. Who knew getting 4 people to sit down together to watch the same telly show could be so challenging.

The show gets better with every episode and despite all the violence, there are still plenty of heartwarming moments here and there among the members. It isn't wall to wall action. On the other hand the talk of retirement and ageing sounded ominous and gave me the jitters. No doubt the team is feeling the pressure of having to confront the three super villains. No doubt it's why Mo-tak and Ha-na are going hammer and tongs in the training. 

I wonder too if we will see more of Ha-na's high school boyfriend(?). I can't imagine that they would introduce him in such an elaborate way and for him to be used only to lead us to the newbie's unique ability.

The first and last 10 minutes of Episode 3 had me on tenterhooks. Hwang taunting Mun as if he had discovered his weakness set them as antithesis. Hwang is an anti-Mun.  "You have a lot to protect". For Hwang whose powers are stolen from others he can't comprehend a good kid like Mun whose strength and abilities comes from a place of wanting to help and protect.

The three supervillains remind me of DC's Joker, Harley Quinn and Harvey Dent.

1 hour ago, dramabler said:

 

 This is my first Gong Jun drama and I'm warming up to him. I want to watch another one of his dramas but I don't think he's had any other good ones besides WOH? 

My favourite Gong Jun drama is the contract marriage one with Zhou Yutong called Begin Again. It's quite funny at first then gets very serious. There are soap opera elements but if you're a sucker for contract marriages, I think this is one of the better ones. He plays a doctor in that one.

My first experience of Gong Jun was in a period fantasy drama starring William Chan and Liu Shi Shi called Love Lost in Time. I think he plays the 11th prince in that. The first few episodes are nutty. The last few are draggy but it's a good show for the most part.

Not enough Jae-won in Episode 6. Need more. A lot more. 

1 hour ago, OsmanthusTea said:

 

That's what me and my fellow tea @SilverMoonTea said too..... It took 20 eps for the show to finally made some senses, if not because of the 3 leads I had dropped it like hot potatoes around eps 3....  I love LinLang too, sadly she is about to dies....

I knew what they were trying to aim for from the start but the storytelling is terrible. It breaks all kinds of storytelling and television rules. And boy, even though the 20s are better, they are still guilty of all the same kinds of issues. This drama is very weak on "show not tell". All we see are characters sitting around tables talking about something that happened off-screen. I wonder if this show was done on a low budget

I'm hanging on for the leads. Especially Gong Jun. But I am interested in the impending war. 

I'm sorry to hear about Linlang. But more sorry that hers is an unrequited love.

Okay... I'm still watching but with the aid of the FF button. The show's somewhat better in the 20s but there's still things about it that bugs the heck out of me. I think the show wants to be Nirvana in Fire some of the time and Princess Agents some of the time. But it can't hold a candle to either.

I'm getting a bit fed up with Anle/Ziyuan's treatment of Han Ye. Without him any plan that they had would never have worked. I'm getting a bit tired of them ragging on him. It's getting old. They don't have to be grateful but they don't have to keep harping on things. It's not as if he doesn't feel everything acutely already. 

Tim's character is a baddie. Nice. That arc is by far the more interesting part. I suppose there's nothing like war to unite the people and a couple of star-crossed lovers.

What the heck!

80 000 people died because of one woman's jealousy?????

At some level I do enjoy this show even if I find mother and daughter hard to relate to at times. I don't dislike them. I kind of understand where they're coming from but this "the world is a battleground" attitude gets a bit wearisome at times. Far more shouting than I'm comfortable with. Jin-hee is definitely the adult in that dynamic. Relatively speaking. Which is not surprising. As a slice-of-life comedy, it's okay. Some of the jokes land, some don't but I love Park Sung-hoon who is playing a similar character to the one in Into the Ring. He's keeping it real and sane. 

I'm glad that Jin-hee finally knows that Dad is back in the picture. I don't think Eun-mi should have kept it from her in the first place but I'm relieved she was forced to before that "will I, won't I" gets dragged out unnecessarily. Jin-hee is not a child to be protected. The show has to give some explanation as to why it's taken so long for Dad to find out about Jin-hee.

I am not a fan of characters beating up on other characters in dramas just for humour. 

1 hour ago, OsmanthusTea said:

 

Cdramas have their own problems but AnLe which have Reba, GJ, LYN and some other quite experienced actors shouldn't reach this kind of bad. Not to mentioned AnLe has the same directors (2 out of 3 directors) with Word of Honor which is way way better executed drama despite having minuscules budget with GJ as a strugling actor at that time.

It wouldn't surprise me if the leads signed up for this project because of the directors and because they wanted to work with each other. 

Fortunately the first five episodes are probably the worst. The romantic progression is okay but it's ridiculous that fake Di Ziyuan can't play chess. She wasn't even taught properly. She should have been learning all this time. Ah... whatever... *facepalm*

When does Han Ye work out that Anle is Ziyuan? 

I can't believe that Tim Pei is just standing around as somebody's bodyguard.

Gong Jun is an actor that's definitely born to be in historical dramas. He looks good in every form of styling. That said, this show doesn't do him much justice. I can tell that Han Ye smart and circumspect but he's too passive.

You guys are not wrong about how bad this show is. The actors are doing their best but the entire approach to this is odd and wrongheaded. I don't want to insult children but this show does feel like it's written for children. The whole premise of Ren Anle playing the fool doesn't work. It's ridiculously unrealistic. I know that's not necessarily a good argument but considering the show wants the audience to take it seriously, it's a bit of a fail. A historical boss girl strutting around solving crimes while flirting with the crown prince breaks immersion. The set-up is terrible, the world building is sloppy and in general the writing is lazy.

This show has a lot of the same problems as most C dramas but in larger measure. They practically sledgehammer the point that the FL is smart over and over.

@abs-oluteM

Yes, I have finished it. I've been so busy watching all kinds of stuff that I didn't post my final thoughts here. I was actually going to post something on my blog but I got a bit distracted. ;)

Overall I really liked the series. It reminds me somewhat of a favourite film, L.A. Confidential. Both seasons feel different but in light of what we know in S2, a lot more of S1 makes sense. 

It's a fascinating character study of two very different men. They both want the same thing but they certainly don't agree on how to achieve it. Taek-rok cares about people. That's what BST was meant to be for him. About protecting people. For Do-hyung because he felt powerless against the corrupt bureaucracy, he believed gaining power was the key. That's what Geumjeong was to him. A tool to gain power and then to maintain it. I'm not unsympathetic to his frustration with the system but as people said to him in the end, he killed so many cops to achieve his goals. There's a great scene of him washing the blood off his sleeves in the bathroom just before he gives his speech at the welcome to the party event. It richly symbolic. Sort of like Lady Macbeth and Pontius Pilate. He's spilt blood to get to where he is. I actually appreciate the fact that he was unrepentant to the end because a good antagonist always thinks that he/she is right.

The way to fix corruption isn't more corruption. It often makes things much much worse. And consider all the collateral damage.

I was thoroughly entertained. The fight scenes were the highlight for me. The final scene in the warehouse was so well choreographed and staged. There was more clowning than last season in this first episode. Most of it was palatable. I'm glad that I did a rewatch with my daughter recently because two members of my family had forgotten quite a bit and were throwing out all kinds of questions.

I don't mind upgrade So Mun. The telekinesis was put to humorous effect. There's an edge to him which I like because it's a natural progression from a side of him that was seen even in S1 where took on the school bullies and just about killed them. I also like that he's less emotional. But he's still great with kids as he was in S1. 

My main criticism would be how the Chinese counters were written. It was clunky and obvious. Kang Ki-young's not-so-great Mandarin aside, the C counters had terrible teamwork didn't take important precautions and were clearly sacrificial lambs for the evil spirits so that they could level up. I suppose with only 12 episodes to spare they didn't want to spend a lot of time setting up the stakes.

Other than that it's a promising start. Looking forward to the rest of the season.

1 hour ago, mademoiselle said:

That fireworks scene is beautiful. Now I know what it is when I saw it from 19th Life drama!

 

I don't think the finale episode answers everyone's questions raised here. What happened to Mokdan then? It seems all just a redherring in the end to deter the viewers but no real use for her sacrifice. She could have become another akgwi, if not a juvenile ghost. After her death, her finger was cut as well.

 

Were the five objects ever the required objects to get rid of Hyang Gi or it's used to seal her only? Or the five objects were meant to help her possess the host body? The note given to Halmoni by the Shaman was not translated so was it just capturing information about her name and the five objects? What's so special about the finger if they have her whole body anyway, which was taken away by NFS! I'd think under the circumstances that her body had been disposed of in 1958, then it'd mean be more logical the remaining finger of hers is the only way to get rid of her completely.

 

Mokdan wasn't the second child so she didn't become a juvenile ghost when she was killed. I think she was a red-herring because she also disappeared around that time and was officially reported as such. However she was not entirely a red-herring because Hyangi did try to escape her fate by sending her sister to the shaman instead. I suppose one could raise the question of how the shaman would know that Hyangi would eventually come looking for Mokdan. I wonder too if the fishing boat which their father and brother were on was deliberately sunk to create that feeling of isolation so that she would seek out her sister.

But there are scenes which we see from the POV of the vengeful spirit in earlier episodes that clues us in that Mokdan is possibly not the spirit. For example the scene where someone ties the hair ornament on Mokdan's head.

Ordinarily five objects and a name would be enough (I think) to exorcise the spirit but according to the shaman Hyangi was a particularly "tenacious" juvenile ghost so her finger was also needed on top of everything else as a precautionary measure. It was that extra thing that was needed to get rid of her if things got out of hand. I imagine the show is reinforcing Hyangi's inhuman will to live in this case and her resentment at being born poor and being used as a sacrifice to prosper the village. I don't think normal logic applies here because these are rules of the "magic" of this universe. It has to be the finger. Recovery of the remains apparently leads to a different result ie. the ghost being able to take full control of the host.

It was stated over and over that San-yeong's dad, had all the objects sealed (as according to the ritual) but there was something missing.

12 hours ago, SilverMoonTea said:

 

 

@40somethingahjummamaybe you should just take the plunge and join us 🤣

And suffer with you?

I might try. I can't promise anything because I've dropped quite a few C dramas this year. Not even nice looking men can compel me to go the distance.

7 hours ago, ktcjdrama said:

 

 

Most nagging question will of course be why Shaman Choi lured away Mokdan when she herself knew which girl was chosen? Was it too dark that selection night that she couldn't recognise the face? lol.... In fact, the whole village knew that it was Hyang-i who was selected, why are the whole village watching her being lured away and said nothing? Are they not worried the deal will be off if they did not "present" the correct sacrifice? And yes, why was Mokdan even present there?

 

My next question will be why the need to torture and starve the child? Waiting for auspicious time to kill and offer sacrifice? Why not just do it right away? Was it explained, did I miss it? 

 

Hyangi was always the target. She's the second child not Mokdan. Mokdan was used to bait Hyangi and then heighten her anger and fear in order to turn her into a particularly evil spirit.

It was explained in one of the earlier episodes that in order to create a juvenile ghost, the "chosen" subject would have to be starved to death for a certain period. And it had to be the second child.

It is a very cruel practice.

The purpose of the evil spirit is used to kill the people that got in the way of Junghyeon Capital and give the family member an alibi. To ensure that they would have not obstacles reaching their goals I imagine.

1 hour ago, OsmanthusTea said:

 

 I can only recommend this drama for people whose really love Reba and/or Gong Jun.... Not a quality drama. Bad production, director, CGI, settings, fight choreography etc etc. I was wondering of why stars at Reba and GJ level will accept this offer. Maybe they got scammed.....

That's entirely possible.  

I've heard it on good authority that often actors don't even get anything resembling the first draft of a script. I think they are at least required to come out with some kind of brief these days. 

The industry is pretty dodgy from what I've heard. In such cases they rely on the big names to pull them through. 

Let's face it. It's the same with trashy K drama rom coms. They put good looking people with good chemistry in a show together with a script that could be written by high school fanfic writer.

How's this drama? I really want to watch it for Gong Jun and Tim Pei but I've heard so much negative stuff online about it. And after Fireworks, I'm a bit tired of the Romeo and Juliet stuff to be honest.