Blood

I am out of korean dramas, what to do ? so i had to watch this but i really did not like it that much. It was nice to see that some scenes from the first and last episodes were in my country, Romania. Also cute to find out that the main actors are a couple in real life. The ending was very bad.

There is an entertaining and sufficiently different vampire story here. The main flaw is there are too many episodes. It should have been 16 at most. Some of the technical jargon is tiring. Many scenes walking along the corridors talking could have been cut. The dialog is quite well written in parts plus some funny moments are quite unexpected. Ahn Jae Hyun looks like a vampire so he is well cast if he slightly underacts a bit. Better than overacting. His real life soon to be wife Ku Hye Sun is pretty here and her character is suitably feisty. Look out for a bright and cheerful Jung Hae In supporting role. Ji Jin Hee is a memorable villain smiling yet menacing. When he shows his anger it is effective. I liked that the bad guys were trying to do something for mankind if too ruthlessly. Unfortunately the ending isn't satisfactory by any means.

I have seen a few other vampire k-dramas and this one had potential but ultimately it fell flat.

Here's what it did well: the story was interesting, at least at the beginning. I liked that the vampire lore was rooted in science rather than magic - that was different from almost all vampire shows and movies I have seen and made the show much more interesting. I think the set up was done well too - and the characters were for the most part likeable, especially Hyun-woo the nerdy sidekick who really held the heart of the show in his hands.

Everything else was bad however, which is why my rating is so low.

The villain in this show was too powerful - it made our protagonist seem irrelevant and made me lose interest about 2/3 of the way through. The last 1/3 of the show felt more and more pointless with every episode. And to make matters even worse the ending was very open ended and made the viewer question everything that happened in the last episode with no conclusion or closure at all.

Despite the two leads going on to be a couple in real life who end up getting married (and subsequently divorced), I felt like they had very little chemistry on screen, which is odd considering the real life effects/results of this show.

In addition, perhaps due to the age of the show, some of the special effects were really bad, particularly the "wild dog" scene in one of the very first episodes. The music felt dated as well, and along with some poor pacing and overly dramatic scenes, some parts of the show drifted into soap-opera territory.

All in all I was rather disappointed. This show could have been halfway decent had it been about 4-5 episodes shorter and given a better ending.

I have watched several KDramas which cry out of an inconclusive or even sad ending, but spoiled by contrived happy, happy nonsense. It must be a law of some kind. Having said that, some characters are so engaging I yearn for their safety / return / miraculous escape.

Like too many of these shows, they'd be much better with tighter dialogue and fewer episodes.

'Blood', of course, asks us to suspend disbelief but they do a good job confusing the viewer with medical mumbo-jumbo.

The characters are not one-dimensional, indeed there is a fairly good attempt to understand the motives of the evil guys. The acting (as alway) is very good - in a soapy, melodramatic way. And as with almost all KDramas the production is absolutely first class.

But please... the ending??? Was a second series planned but never green-lit?

I have mixed feelings about this one... I liked the general idea of the story, but as for the actual execution... you have to suspend a lot of disbelief. It was filled with little inconsistencies and illogical actions! I managed to watch the first few episodes before giving it up because I liked the actors, I like most vampires (not named Edward) and because I almost died laughing when I realized it was shot in my country and they were speaking Romanian. The main actor makes a valiant effort to get the words right, but I had to listen 2-3 times to actually understand him:) The female main character is REALLY flawed and by that I mean that you can't help hating her. She believes herself better than anybody and even endangers a patient's life just to prove a point. On the other hand the main male character is a bit too awesome (being a vampire that decided to specialize in surgery and saving people) so they try to bring him "down to Earth" by making him randomly clumsy. It's rather funny and cute.

Short review: if Romanian please watch at least the first episode for pure fun, if not you might want to check it out for the hot main actor playing a sexy vampire (and also check out his other TV shows)