Despite Song Joong-ki not really convincing me as a Mafia mobster, Vincenzo is actually rollicking good fun, especially when our Italian-Korean lawyer becomes a fish out of water in his birth country. Main cast: Song Joong-ki (from Descendents of the Sun) as Mafia’s consigliere, Vincenzo Cassano. He escapes from Italy to prevent being caught between... Continue Reading →
First Impression: Hello, Me!
Storyline: Ban Ha-ni (Choi Kang-hee) worked as a promoter for the supermarket. She was in a squid costume dancing the squid dance to promote a new squid flavoured snack, when a little boy suffered from an allergy after eating the snack sample. She was on her way to apologize to the mother of the boy... Continue Reading →
Penthouse 2 – First Impression
Story in a Nutshell This series starts two years after the end of Season 1, marked by the teenagers' now being seniors in high school (season 1 had them fighting for a place in high school). Lee Kyu-jin (Bong Tae-gyu) is now an assemblyman, staging a hunger strike against real estate laws (while secretly pigging... Continue Reading →
First Impression: River Where the Moon Rises (KBS, 2021)
Sypnosis: King Pyeongwon (Kim Pub-rae) was the king of Goguryeo, but was actually controlled by Go Won-pyo (Lee Hae-young), a politician and royal relative from Gyerubu, into making policies in favor for Go Won-pyo. Queen Yeon (Kim So-hyun) wanted to help King Pyeongwon to regain his power, so she went to visit General On Hyeop... Continue Reading →
Final Review: Royal Secret Inspector
Before we have a deluge of First Impressions to write, I decided to get the final review of Inspector out of the way first. To summarise, this show can be condensed into a “series of near misses”. As mentioned in my earlier post, the trio bungled more things than actually settle them. And the resolution... Continue Reading →
Final Review: Hush (JTBC, 2020)
Story (including major spoilers): Lee Ji-soo (Im Yoon-ah) was an intern at Daily Korea newspaper, together with 4 other interns. She was famous for her line "Rice was more important than pen" during her interviews. The mentor for the interns was Han Joon-hyuk (Hwang Jung-min), the reporter who reported that Ji-soo's father was involved in... Continue Reading →
What kooriyuki watched this week: 13 – 18 Feb
This marks the week of a crazy number of premieres (7!) but here I am trying to clear Qin Dynasty 4 (18 episodes more to go). This is gonna be short since I haven't caught up with anything except the weekenders. Sat-Sun Mr. Queen -> Homemade Love Story Mr. Queen (Ep 19-20) I know a... Continue Reading →
LUCA: The fugitive X-man
I watched 2 eps. And conclusion: I hate it. As a nitpicky Sci-fi geek, the entire premise of LUCA totally fails to wow me. For one, the purpose of creating a part-human, part-animal, part-insect (?) and part-everything else thrown in, is not very clear from the start. The lab which Dr Ryu works for, is... Continue Reading →
Drama Review – Lovestruck in the City (Netflix, 2021)
Did I enjoy this? Sometimes, but mostly I found it frustrating, especially during the hide-and-seek of Eun-oh/Seon-ah (Kim ji-won) and Jae-won (Ji Chang-wook). I like the friendships more than the romantic relationships the six people have/had. I thought the most underutilized character was Sun-young (Han Ji-eun); not just her screentime was a lot less than... Continue Reading →
Final Review: True Beauty (tvN, 2020)
Major Spoilers: Lim Ju-kyung (Moon Ga-young) mastered make-up techniques to make herself more beautiful and more popular at her new high school, but she was always worried about others knowing about her secret. Lee Su-ho (Cha Eun-woo) was the first to learn about her secrets, although he seemed to be making Ju-kyung to run errands... Continue Reading →
Final Review: Mr Queen
We have our “happy ever endings” and basically, the narrative decided to take the “safe” route and return everything back to “normal”. This is despite the bulk of Queen veering dangerously on the “risky” transgender issue and whether it is ok for a man (in the body of a woman) to fall in love with... Continue Reading →
Drama Review – Cheat On Me, If You Can (KBS, 2021)
Show started off quirky and good, down right my alley. And then the story meandered, throwing in lots of red herrings that our odd-ball female lead murdered her husband's mistress (and also because they had some bad blood in the past). It's pretty obvious that Kang Yeo-joo (Jo Yeo-jung) is fascinated with murdering cheating men... Continue Reading →
Movie review: Pawn (2020)
Synopsis (including spoilers): Doo-seok (Song Dong-il) and Jong-bae (Kim Hee-won) were working as debt collector at Incheon. They tried to collect debt from an illegal immigrant Myung-ja (Yunjin Kim), who had a nine-year-old daughter Seung-yi (Park So-yi). Doo-seok chose to use Seung-yi as collateral, so that Myung-ja would repay the debt to retrieve her daughter.... Continue Reading →
What kooriyuki watched this week: Feb 1 – 12
In a very rare period of KDrama lull (!) I managed to complete some KIVed dramas and made sure I'm all caught up with the currently airing ones. Twas the life of a couch potato. Mon-Tue Secret Royal Inspector -> L.U.C.A Secret Royal Inspector (Ep 13-16) I've enjoyed this ride pretty much and thinks it's... Continue Reading →
Final Review: Run On
If you are finding the finale ep of Run to be lacklustre as compared to its start, Mi-joo aptly explains it for us — there is no such thing as a “happy ending”, it is an ideal tacked on to stories in order to make reality less painful. Erm, maybe an excuse for writer-nim to... Continue Reading →
L.U.C.A.: The Beginning – First Impression
Story in a Nutshell It's not a dystopian world nor some time in the future, but somewhere in South Korea there's (yet another) research group that is hard at work with some yet-to-be identified agenda involving mammalian cells. It feels like an extension of Awaken, the drama in the exact same slot that Show took... Continue Reading →
First impression: She would never know (JTBC, 2021)
Synopsis: Yoon Song-ah (Won Jin-ah) and Chae Hyun-seung (Rowoon) worked together in the marketing team of the cosmetics brand KLAR. Hyun-seung already fell for her during a career counselling session, bought her lunch upon learning she had missed her lunch and even guarding the door to stop other applicants from disturbing her lunch. However, Song-ah... Continue Reading →
Drama Review – Fly Dragon/Delayed Justice (SBS, 2021)
I wonder what is with SBS and the recurrence of dramas made to change lead actors in the middle of a drama. Thankfully Show stayed true to its original intent of bringing hope to the marginalized people in the society, especially those who suffered great unjust. I was pleasantly surprised for a brief dramaverse crossover... Continue Reading →