SKY Castle

All this chaos because everyone wants their kids to become doctors. Wonderfully acted and the story line is engaging compared to the plethora of rom-coms littered on my Netflix home screen. A tad too long, the final act lasts a couple episodes more than necessary. I can't say I enjoyed it on a personal level because holy ... 90% of the cast is sooo unlikable. Most of the time I was going ... eff these rich ass people ... Which goes to show you how well acted the families are.

Wow, every episode just keeps get better as the story unfolds. It really brings awareness on the social issues concerning the education system and also how the high class members of society desperately tries to make sure their child succeed in every way. It also brings to light the stuffs students have to go through in dealing with pressure at home and at school.

This drama is so stressful. Watching it, I was thinking about myself as being a student. I have never gone through this much. Maybe this drama is exaggerating much yet this practice is done someplaces. Like I watched a documentry where I got to know Korean students actually reads 12-14 hours.

However, I loved this drama. It has so many leyers, you can't but wandering around. Everyone is hiding something, everyone is trying to reach the top of the pyramid by any means. It also shows the bad side of Korean education system or can say harsh education system and misuse of power so amazingly. What happend in end, clarifies what actually education,moral, happiness actually means. Power doesn't buy happiness and peace of mind.

I enjoyed watching this show. The story depicts the realities of a highly competitive society and complexities in the family. The struggle to be the best in one's environment in order to survive is a crucial point. This challenge apparently drives people to edges.

I noticed how forgiveness and reconciliation is quite easy for everyone.

I like the diversity of characters and roles in the plot. Each one deals with his own thing. For instance, the hilarious pyramid-obsessed dad was very traditional and authoritative yet lovable since he tried to adjust his restrictive character to preserve his love to his family.

Dr. Kang's wife is a typical mom who struggled to accommodate her in-laws' expectations as well as her social community by denying her flawed past. Maybe she was under the impression that her pretense will serve as a survival tool in order to co-exist against societal biases. However it eventually caught up on her. One can run but can't hide forever. She wants to protect her family at all cost even if entails resorting to drastic measures.

On a different note, coach Kim's dark tones and manipulations went overboard by taking advantage of desperate people's weaknesses at the same time gratifying her own. Although she may be evil on one side, but her soft spot surfaces when her daughter is involved. Also, when she got caught, she attempted to spare her men.

Hyena's tragic fate was undeserving. Her flaws could have been dealt with differently considering her existing circumstances. It's true that she had a perplexing personality that displayed a devious character in the making. Her struggle for love and acceptance went wayward. This is quite disturbing in the real sense. However, her other side also showed a loving daughter and strength of character. She wasn't given the chance to prove her worth thou.

In general, at least each one's unique battle shares a moral lesson for viewers.

Honestly, one of main reason why Korean dramas aren't my cup of tea, is due to their big love of romantic comedy flick across so many cliches and plots. Sky Castle, being told as story about college entrance drama among residents of so-called Sky Castle, an exclusive housing complex for renowned scholars and doctors in the country.

Sky Castle begin with so much things to be explored. The nature of parent-child communication, the Asian perspective on college, the hardships and its system, and the high-class and low-class perspective (while it's too cliche to be true). The story feel so original for me, along with the characters that aren't so blatantly evil, so as the episodes go, I feel a sense of empathy for them. With the nature of conflict that getting more complex, each subplot also begin to develop nicely during each episode,to make the tension between the plot more shifted. The news of Korean being crazily into cram school and college depicted here with interesting ways, so that we got insights to what's (probably) happening to the country beside their Kpop.

As many fans pointed out, the additional four episodes due its popularity bring the prolonged closure that feels too different than the early episodes that feature many dark topics. While it's a shame to be a letdown, Sky Castle still makes me mesmerized and cried in the penultimate episode. The biggest award should be addressed to Yum-jung Ah who played the complex character Han seo-jin. Her heavy character backstory in the series provide much insights about her and how it affects the action.

What's turning me from giving the perfect score is the highly unreal characters in Lee-so im family. Like being a hero and angel and playing the opposites of Han family, makes me annoyed. The acting is okay, but the logic behind their action are so questionable (forgiving so many bad people around them easily) it's so dull.

However, being a Korean drama, we got many cliches like comedic subplot with exaggerating acting. I think it's best to overlook those kind of things because as a whole, Sky Castle provide an original story with many touching/deep subjects that maybe we can't have for a long time.