That was my clear cue, that I would be happier pulling the plug on this one. I considered fast-forwarding my way through all the bits of the show that didn’t interest me, but when I tried that out in the second half of episode 8, I found myself fast-forwarding through. I also found my attention wandering, A LOT. I found myself wondering where this story is going to go, if it wants to fill 16 episodes of screen time. I theorize this in my head, but I’m not exactly feeling connected enough with our characters, to feel what they feel, or feel like I’m invited to share their struggles and conflicts. Truth be told, this is all a mental, almost hypothetical exercise for me. While I can imagine that it must be very conflicting for Yeong Ro and Soo Ho, to find themselves in such a situation, where they are suddenly on opposite sides, where before, she’d worked so hard to keep him safe, I find that I’m not truly engaged in their story. Hey, whatever works, right? □ SAYING GOODBYEĬoming back to this show at episode 8, after a break of about a month, I found myself already tired of the hostage situation – and it even doesn’t look like this hostage scenario is going to end anytime soon. □įocusing on Jung Hae In doing his tortured badass strut, worked out to be the most pleasant way of spending my screen time, ha. This is partly because Yeong Ro’s scenes become more difficult to deliver from this point onwards, and I personally found it rather painful to watch Jisoo’s delivery. Once the hostage situation occurs in episode 5, I found my interest shifting away from the romance of the OTP, to Soo Ho’s broody, tortured state of being. In that sense, our OTP is allowed some space to interact, outside of their personal contexts. There’s suspense that’s naturally built into this arc, without Soo Ho’s personal context as a North Korean spy coming between him and Yeong Ro. I do think that I was relatively more engaged in episodes 2 through 4, than the other episodes I watched, because this is the stretch where the girls are working to hide Soo Ho, while he’s being actively hunted by the police. But I conclude that I much prefer the balance that Youth of May managed. I feel the contrasting tones is deliberate, to show the difference between the world in which normal people are living, compared to the people who are involved in the political scheming side of things. I felt like I was watching 4 separate dramas in one. In Show’s early episodes, the dorm stuff is played innocent and funny, with lots of emphasis on the romantic potential between Soo Ho and Yeong Ro (Jung Hae In and Jisoo), and we spend a lot of time there.īut then, Show thrusts us into, 1, the men’s politics stuff, 2, the informal women’s society, where they are all angling to make their husbands successful, and 3, the secret agents and their intent search for Soo Ho. It feels like Show is trying to do an unexpected tonal mashup, kinda-sorta like how Vincenzo managed a weird tonal mashup, but where in Vincenzo it mostly worked for me, here, it’s mostly falling flat, for me. It has this (probably unintended?) effect of making light of the situation, and I can see how this choice would make sensitive viewers (see controversy) even more annoyed. I was surprised to learn that Show is pitching itself as part black comedy, and I have to say, the “funny” music scoring this show, doesn’t work for me.
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