My Man is Cupid

TLDR: This is a decent romantic / suspense thriller series and my recommendation is to definitely give it a try. If you are interested in the romance, you'll need to be patient though. The romantic thread starts slow and the good romance doesn't really pick up until the back end of the series. On the other hand, the suspense/thriller plot-line is great (although does fall apart a little in the end).

The acting is great and although it can be difficult to tell because of how the romantic thread progresses, the chemistry between the FL & ML is really good. When they finally kiss, they have some of the best kissing sequences I've seen. Often, the kisses are not much more than two people holding their lips together. Im Jin-ah (Nana) and Jang Dong-yoon really sell the romance of their kisses. I wish that the romantic thread had been a bit stronger early on because we miss the opportunity to see Im Jin-ah light up the screen with her smile. Early on, we mainly only see that when she is working with the animals at the pet clinic.

The two secondary romantic leads are great as well. I'd seen Gong Min-jung previously in 'Marry My Husband' and it was really good to see her in an expanded role in this series. And the secondary romantic thread was very sweet.

As for the suspense/thriller plot-line. It is very good up until the end when the killer doesn't take a perfect opportunity to kill the last witness even after going thru some extreme & cruel means to set up the opportunity. And then, inexplicably breaks pattern and uses a bomb in a way that doesn't make much sense...he has no motivation to kill the person the bomb would most likely have killed yet, gets very lucky and has it actually affect the last witness...who he had no expectations would have been in that position. Also, a simple statement from the last witness to the police or Sang-hyeok when she was almost certain she knew the killer's identify would have saved the police a lot of trouble...and there was no reason she would not have told at least Sang-hyeok. All of this was a rather sloppy way for the writers to further the romantic plot-line which was unfortunate as it lessened an otherwise very good suspense/thriller story.

But on the plus side, they did an excellent job with the hints as to who the real killer is. The rollout of the backstory and motivation for the killer was well paced and subtle. Very well done.

The romantic plot-line is almost the exact opposite. It starts slow and doesn't really get good until the second half of the series. The main issue I have is with how poorly the underlying backstory and character motivation is revealed.

Flashbacks repeated the same content too often. Generally, when really good Kdrama's use this technique, each flashback furthers the backstory a bit more. Too often, this one didn't. The flashbacks were just repeats of what had already been shown so the flashbacks turned into filler rather than furthering the story-line.

Also, because of how poorly the backstory is paced, the writers do not provided good motivation for the FL to continue her pursuit of the ML after repeatedly being rejected...especially when some of the rejections were rather harsh and when there was another suitable suitor available that matched her prophecy. The backstory that provides her motivation is not revealed until one of the second half episodes so it left all of the earlier episodes feeling a bit strange.

In some of the early episodes, in the modern time-frame, they had several scenes with what were obviously supernatural beings, that did not really provide any hints for furthering the story. They just left the question "why was that scene put here?". Again, they finally reveal who those characters are in a late episode but the writers wasted a lot of potential.

Despite those issues, once the flashbacks and supernatural being conversations filled in the backstory, everything made sense and the romance hits high gear (better late than never I guess). I loved the ending and am very glad they gave the time to provide a glimpse into their future. Although there is the slight time issue that is ignored....1000 becomes a large number of years when progressed only a couple times a week.

Overall, well worth the watch. I just wish the screenplay had had better editing with respect to the backstory pacing and rollout. It would have turned a decent but unremarkable series into a great one.