Monster – (Almost) Half-time Comments

I’ve got to admit, I have no idea why I’m still watching this, though admitedly it actually is pretty entertaining if you like revenge stories. The writing is outrageous, not at all realistic (what with secret Chinese organisation that’s actually dealing with firearms but also is trying to develop a top secret vaccine for some top secret deadly virus), but it’s entertaining.

Till now I don’t see much use of Park Ki Woong‘s character Do Gun-woo, for his antagonism towards to Kang Ki-tan (Kang Ji Hwan) pales in comparison to Ki-tan and Byun Il-jae’s (Jung Bo-seok) one-uppance of each other. Gun-woo has his own revenge – against his biological father, and that is far less interesting than Ki-tan’s revenge. I do like that at Episode 20 Il-jae finally figured out Ki-tan’s real identity, and Ki-tan’s quick on the uptake that Il-jae knows. It was fun to see how Ki-tan delivered the blow to Il-jae and his father-in-law, but Show is now one level up since Ki-tan’s ruse is up and it’s a head-to-head fight. The alliances are pretty blur here, as Ki-tan keeps changing allies as long as they help with his revenge against Il-jae.

I don’t really like any of the female characters here, and they’re pretty useless to the storyline thus far. Ok Chae-ryung’s (Lee El) main purpose as a character is just to serve as a jealous third party between the OTP (Ki-tan and Oh Soo-yoon/Cha Jung-eun (Sung Yuri)) when she’s not helping Ki-tan gather information about Il-jae; Soo-yoon totally lost her spunk in her teens; Yoo Sung-ae (Soo Hyun) disappeared and re-appeared in the past few episodes, and still nothing it explained about her secret spy identity; Do Shin-young (Jo Bo Ah) is just being a bratty chaebol daughter who’s hoping to be the heiress to the Do-do Group by doing nothing and donning bad fashion.

There’re so many extended plotlines just so to maintain 50 episodes, which can make viewing tiring. I think it’s perfectly fine if Show just runs in the background because you wouldn’t miss much. Show’s definitely not gripping like Empress Ki, or peppered with black humor like History of Salarymen, but it’s entertaining in its own way, as long as you’re fine with the winding storylines and ragey revenges.