Post by ajk on Jun 12, 2013 16:05:04 GMT -5
I mostly enjoyed watching this series, and it was pretty good. It could have been really outstanding and memorable if they’d done a couple of things differently.
The premise was certainly interesting and novel, and the storyline kept me coming back during the early episodes when I was on the fence about watching it. It took too long for the characters to get to the point where we cared all that much about any of them. Too many episodes where they all needed a good chewing out for one reason or another. But especially in the second half we started to get a lot more backstory and the whole thing got better and better, at least up through Episode 14. And it definitely was well done behind the camera; the locations and the visuals were nice, and some of the incidental music was beautiful.
And to repeat something I said before, give the series big credit for not being predictable. When and how Soo would be found out...you figured he’d con his way in safely at the beginning and not be discovered until the end. But it wasn’t like that at all; it was always hovering around, and started leaking out sooner than expected. Plus we’d get an occasional surprise, like when Dr. Evil told Psychobitch he always knew she had stolen the money. To find that out for the first time in Episode 11, that was great.
I just wish they had done two things differently. (Besides giving the greenhouse kitten a regular role!) One, come up with a better finish. Episode 15 went off in a weird direction and fell flat, and then 16 pretty much crashed and burned. Actually it would have been better to go to 18 or 20 episodes since there was so much left to resolve after 14 and since they finally had given the characters more depth and substance. Too bad. Or maybe things could have been laid out better from the beginning to drop some of the slower stuff early on.
And then the one big problem: ICK ICK ICK! For that matter, the whole romance angle. Why was it there? Was it assumed that some viewers wouldn’t watch the thing unless there was a romance at the core? I just don’t get it. There wasn’t any need for Soo and Young to get hot for each other; it didn’t add a single thing and it took away from what made the story compelling: Soo struggling with feelings of decency and principle for the first time in his life, and Young having a “brother” in her life who helped her deal with her difficult past for the first time. It would have been so much better as a purely moral/familial story. And good heavens, some of those ICK scenes, how could it not occur to anybody on the production side that viewers would be squirming and cringing? Maybe it’s just me but I think that’s the one huge black mark against the show.
But still worth watching and I’m glad I watched. Thanks to knov for doing a good job with the board and the summaries. And the beat-this-captions, what a great idea...let’s make that a regular feature around here. Well done.
Now I’m going to fill a bathtub with Ick Guard and soak for two or three days.
The premise was certainly interesting and novel, and the storyline kept me coming back during the early episodes when I was on the fence about watching it. It took too long for the characters to get to the point where we cared all that much about any of them. Too many episodes where they all needed a good chewing out for one reason or another. But especially in the second half we started to get a lot more backstory and the whole thing got better and better, at least up through Episode 14. And it definitely was well done behind the camera; the locations and the visuals were nice, and some of the incidental music was beautiful.
And to repeat something I said before, give the series big credit for not being predictable. When and how Soo would be found out...you figured he’d con his way in safely at the beginning and not be discovered until the end. But it wasn’t like that at all; it was always hovering around, and started leaking out sooner than expected. Plus we’d get an occasional surprise, like when Dr. Evil told Psychobitch he always knew she had stolen the money. To find that out for the first time in Episode 11, that was great.
I just wish they had done two things differently. (Besides giving the greenhouse kitten a regular role!) One, come up with a better finish. Episode 15 went off in a weird direction and fell flat, and then 16 pretty much crashed and burned. Actually it would have been better to go to 18 or 20 episodes since there was so much left to resolve after 14 and since they finally had given the characters more depth and substance. Too bad. Or maybe things could have been laid out better from the beginning to drop some of the slower stuff early on.
And then the one big problem: ICK ICK ICK! For that matter, the whole romance angle. Why was it there? Was it assumed that some viewers wouldn’t watch the thing unless there was a romance at the core? I just don’t get it. There wasn’t any need for Soo and Young to get hot for each other; it didn’t add a single thing and it took away from what made the story compelling: Soo struggling with feelings of decency and principle for the first time in his life, and Young having a “brother” in her life who helped her deal with her difficult past for the first time. It would have been so much better as a purely moral/familial story. And good heavens, some of those ICK scenes, how could it not occur to anybody on the production side that viewers would be squirming and cringing? Maybe it’s just me but I think that’s the one huge black mark against the show.
But still worth watching and I’m glad I watched. Thanks to knov for doing a good job with the board and the summaries. And the beat-this-captions, what a great idea...let’s make that a regular feature around here. Well done.
Now I’m going to fill a bathtub with Ick Guard and soak for two or three days.