Edeonui dongjjok

Just finished the series. The story is well created and the casts are amazing at doing their job. Through this series, I've learned a lot about true love and the things it stands for: trust, loyalty, righteousness and above all sacrifice. The main character, Lee Dong Chul (by Song Seung-heon), is truly a man of honor. There are so many conflicts in the series and Lee Dong Chul, who has both a sound mind and a big heart, deals with them with great wisdom. This series is great not just for entertaining only but also for educational purposes. Never give up on the ones you love, always trust, always hope and always forgive. And cherish every moment you have with your beloved ones.

Though I like the cast very much, I had put this one off for years because it is so long. Sigh. It could have been superb if cut by half, but it is not, and the result for me is excruciating bloat and repetition under-scored by the screeching mother meme and increasingly mediocre acting by exhausted secondary actors. I ended up skimming much of the second half of the series to the predictable, overdone closure. The best of the cast deserved so much better.

To say I'm disappointed is an understatement. I came into this expecting something similar to "Giant (2010)" but ended up getting a flashy action and a lousy over-dramatic fuss. This the type of drama were you get 20 quick flashy shaky camera edits before an action is taken. Lackluster action despite having a massive budget. It seems the number of episodes was predetermined before finalizing the story/writing, this is why we got a handful of nothingness. What do you expect from the writing department when they had internal issues midway through. Even the lead actress dropped out halfway through. Even the other female lead had a significant screen time reduction.

The drama had one of the cringest last scene epilogue out there. The awkwardness as they were sitting around the table, I could feel it piercing through my bones. Can't help but feel this was a waste of big cast. Classic Korean society normalizing rape with no consequences, even more favorable for the rapist. My expectations and interest were nullified when that happened. All the relationships sucked, romantic and non-romantic ones. By the end, I couldn't care less what happens to who. One finale remark, if they want to commit to the route they choose, then there should've been more deaths!