Song Seung-Heon | subtitledreams

Review – When A Man Loves

Deep satisfied sigh. What a cool melodrama! Talk about an unusual plotline that hooked. I was completely swept up into this romantic entanglement. Not quite a love triangle, not quite NOT a love triangle. There was more nuance and character development in this drama than most shows. You’ll be hating someone in one episode and completely understanding them and sympathizing with them in the next. Shades of gray, my friends. It’s a show about how your life experiences define you, even when you’ve changed your life.

Plotline Short Version: A gangster falls for the daughter of the man he’s terrorizing and a series of events leads him to change his ways and give up his life of crime to reemerge several years later as a successful businessman. When he runs into the daughter again – he sweeps her into his new life, with promises of financial security and his heart. However, our young lady is wary of her new suitor. He’s over a decade older than her, excessively smitten, and… ya know… a bit scary. While she’s attempting to let this man into her life, she meets another man – her age – whom she shares natural chemistry with. Unfortunately, his life is equally tied to the reformed gangsters. It’s a struggle of will, of families, of obligations and of fear as these three circle around each other. And it’s really great tv.

Overall Rating – 9/10. One Person’s Love Is Not Enough To Carry Two Hearts.

LOTS OF SPOILERS, life musings, dating advice, and rambling follow…

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Review – Black

Black was a giant twisted MESS of a show. Honestly, it’s like the writers were suffering from schizophrenia. It’s a show about… rape? Corruption? Lost souls? Grim Reapers? Death? First loves? Child murder? Familial problems? Romance? Revenge? Cop stuff? Who knows! It just stuck its hand in a big bag of ideas, grabbed as many as it could get its fingers around, then scattered them across the table and said, “Perfect! That’s our show!” And everyone else looked down and said, “Wait, what?” I am hard pressed to think of a more chaotic show than Black. Despite the great actors and the cool fantasy aspects of the afterlife, it failed in coherence and theme. For 20 freakin’ episodes… it was like untangling Christmas lights, except when the whole thing unraveled you discover half the bulbs are dead.

And Black, Grim Reaper 444… or is it 420?, was a disastrous character. What exactly happens to you when you die that makes your personality turn into a cartoon character? His behavior was so hammy, so on the nose, so “Ha, Ha, Ha, I Don’t Like Humans Thus I Must Act Like A Childish Moron.” It was groan inducing.

I have nothing else to say about this show. If you want to throw away 20 hours of your life one day, like I did this Saturday, then feel free to watch this mess.

THE REAL MYSTERY OF THIS SHOW (besides trying to figure out why I watched the entire thing) is the conundrum of Kim Dong Jun… and how he’s the male mirror image of Han Ga In. Seriously. I thought, “they must be twins… It’s uncanny!” But nope. They’re not related. Maybe they have the same plastic surgeon, I don’t know, but geepers… it’s unnerving!

Overall Rating – 4/10. The Afterlife Is Full Of Plot Holes.