THE SHORT VERDICT:

At its best, Show offers a moody, intriguing setup, with flashes of tension and atmosphere that hint at something sharper and more cohesive underneath.

However, the overall execution feels uneven and under-thought-through, with character beats and plot developments that don’t always land with the weight or clarity they need, especially in the final stretch.

Not without its moments, but ultimately more stylish than substantive, and less satisfying, the closer you look.

THE LONG VERDICT:

For me, this one fell into that bemusing, perplexing “No Man’s Land” — of not being strong enough to deliver a satisfying drama experience, and yet not bad enough to warrant a hard drop.

To my eyes, Show kept offering flickers of promise, which is why I kept giving it the benefit of the doubt.

That, and the fact that I’d locked in early on my theory of who our mystery killer was; that burning curiosity to see if I was right kept me tuning in, episode to episode, week to week.

I’ve given this show a lot of thought (honestly, probably more than it deserves 😅), and in this review, I unpack where Show’s ideas don’t quite come together — and what might have helped it all land more effectively.

OST ALBUM: FOR YOUR LISTENING PLEASURE

Here’s the OST album, in case you’d like to listen to it while you read the review.

Honestly, I think the music does a lot of heavy-lifting in this show.

Even during stretches where I felt like Show was falling short in other ways, the music often managed to create an emotional pull, all on its own.

Specifically, I’m referring to Track 1, Fear Inside, which has a haunting, atmospheric, almost hypnotic quality to it that I felt worked very well.

Here it is as well, in case you’d prefer to listen to it on repeat. Just right-click on the video and select “Loop.”

HOW I’M APPROACHING THIS REVIEW

First I’ll talk about how to manage your expectations going into this one, and what viewing lens would be most helpful.

After that, I’ll discuss the core pieces at play in this show, and before breaking down the penultimate and finale episodes. Finally, I end off with some specific ideas on what Show could’ve tweaked, for a better result.

If you’re interested in my blow-by-blow reactions, &/or all the various Patreon members’ comments during the course of our watch, you might like to check out my episode notes on Patreon here.

MANAGING EXPECTATIONS / THE VIEWING LENS

Honestly, the main thing that I can tell you, to help you maximize your chances of enjoying your watch, is:

Don’t think too hard, with this one.

Personally, I found that the closer I looked at things, and the more I thought about things, the more Show’s flaws would become obvious to me.

So I conclude that the best way to watch this one, is by sinking into Show’s vibes, while keeping one eye (or both eyes!) closed. 🙈

[SPOILERS THROUGH THE REST OF THE REVIEW]

1. THE CENTRAL MYSTERY

On paper, I do think that Show’s central mystery is one of its more compelling ideas.

The notion that someone within Seol Ah’s orbit is quietly removing the men in her life, not in an obviously menacing way but in a way that’s meant to pass as incidental, or accidental, immediately creates intrigue.

The immediate questions of Who and Why spring to mind — just who is this person, and what is their attachment to Seol Ah?

This could have been a really big hook for viewers.

However, quite early on, at least for me, it began to feel like the field of possibilities was narrowing rather than expanding.

Instead of multiple threads pulling in different directions, I found myself circling around one primary line of suspicion.

And once that happened, the question of Who started to lose some a lot of its tension.

Mostly, I felt like I was just waiting to see if Show would confirm what I already suspected.

At the same time, the investigation around the most recent murder didn’t always feel like it was building momentum in a sustained way.

There were moments where new information surfaced, but they mostly didn’t translate into a strong sense of forward drive.

So even though things were technically progressing, the experience often felt a little… stalled.

And because of that, I found that a lot of my engagement with the mystery wasn’t coming from the show steadily tightening its grip, but from my own theorizing.

In terms of sharpening Show’s execution on this front, I have a suggested tweak that I think would have done a lot to make things more interesting, which I talk about at the end of the review.

And of course, it would’ve been nice if the police officers had been portrayed as being more competent and less biased. 😏

If you’re curious about my thought process in locking in on my killer theory, here is an excerpt of my notes from episodes 1-2.

LOCKING IN MY PRIME SUSPECT

E1-2. My drama brain is homing in on Eun Hyuk (Han Joon Woo), the bestie photographer, as the prime suspect.

The first thing that made me go, “Hrrmmm,” was the scene where we see that Eun Hyuk’s sitting at the bar with Seol Ah, when someone by the name of Eun Hye (Han Chae Rin) calls him on his phone.

We don’t know who Eun Hye is, ie, whether she’s Eun Hyuk’s girlfriend or sister, but the point is, Eun Hyuk pointedly ignores the call, even though he’s not in an active conversation with Seol Ah.

They’re simply sitting side by side at the bar, and he still ignores the call, which makes it feel like, at least in that moment, Seol Ah is clearly more important to Eun Hyuk.

That made me consider Eun Hyuk with interest – and that led me to realize that it was actually really weird that Eun Hyuk would be the one to call Seol Ah, to ask her to come to the dock to identify her fiance’s body.

When I’d first watched that scene, I’d assumed that Eun Hyuk must have been a detective, because he was acting like he belonged there, among the actual detectives.

In fact, when Seol Ah arrives, the way he escorts her to the body, totally made me think that he was a police officer.

And so later, when we see him taking photos, I’d assumed that he must be a detective who moonlights as a photographer – that’s how strong my impression of him was, as a police officer.

However, as we see, Eun Hyuk isn’t a detective at all, and is, in fact, a photographer by trade.

This makes his presence on the scene of the “accident” a distinct point of interest, because if he’s not a detective, then why was he there at the dock?

Had he been involved in the “accident” – is my next natural question, of course.

Putting this with the idea that Seol Ah is very important to Eun Hyuk, I can’t help theorizing that perhaps he’s obsessed with Seol Ah, and this is his way of punishing other men who have the audacity to get close to her.

I theorize that by getting rid of her boyfriends in this way, Eun Hyuk maintains exclusive access to Seol Ah, whom he perhaps deems too special to be tied down by a mere man.

Additionally, I’d say that Han Joon Woo’s casting supports my theory, because he’s in that sweet spot where he looks quite harmless, and he is not famous enough for people to wonder, “Hey, why did they cast someone so famous in this supporting role?”

Yet he’s good enough of an actor, that if it is revealed that he is the killer and that there’s a lot more demanded from him in terms of difficult scenes, he would be able to deliver.

Putting that all together, my drama spidey senses are convinced that it’s Eun Hyuk who’s the secret killer engineering this “Siren” sort of aura around Seol Ah.

2. THE EMOTIONAL CORE

If the central mystery is what’s meant to pull us through the story, then the emotional core — particularly through the connection between Seol Ah and Woo Seok — is what’s meant to give that journey weight and meaning.

And for me, this is where things don’t quite come together.

I think the main reason for that is the way Show limits our ability to see into the inner workings of both these characters, particularly in our earlier, foundational episodes.

With Seol Ah, for much of the early stretch, she presents as being quite controlled, contained, and not especially forthcoming with how she feels.

So when I got to the end of episode 4, and Seol Ah tries to fall off the cliff, it landed for me as more of an explosion that appeared to come out of nowhere — precisely because, to my mind, Show hadn’t offered me much, in terms of glimpses into her emotional landscape.

When I thought about it, I could reverse-engineer it, and her motivations do make sense — the insomnia, the constant accusations, the way Seung Jae’s family shuts her out; it’s a lot, and I do think any normal person would crack under that kind of cumulative pressure.

The thing, though, is that with Seol Ah, we don’t really get to see many observable cracks along the way. So when she finally crumbles, it lands as sudden, rather than as the culmination of something we’ve watched escalate.

I believe that a big part of the reason for that, is because Show is actively holding back on that interiority.

Because so much of the story hinges on whether Seol Ah might actually be guilty or not, Show keeps oscillating between suggesting that she could be responsible, and then pulling back from that.

In order to preserve that ambiguity, it doesn’t really let us into her head in a sustained way — which also means that something crucial like her revenge angle only really comes into focus quite late, rather than feeling like a clear driving force from early on.

Which makes sense, in terms of what the show is trying to do — but it also means that when those bigger emotional beats arrive, they don’t feel grounded to our eyes.

On Woo Seok’s side, I find something similar happening, even though he isn’t meant to be opaque in the same way.

In our first few episodes, we see him investigating, and repeatedly running into findings that don’t quite support his initial suspicion of Seol Ah.

Instead of that shifting his line of thinking in a clear, progressive way, we often see him circling back to the same question — what does she gain from these deaths?

So on the surface, we understand that something isn’t lining up for him. But in terms of what’s actually changing inside him, we don’t get very much beyond a look, or a pause, or a furrowed brow.

Which is why, when he suddenly grabs hold of Seol Ah at the end of episode 4 (after she tries to fall off that cliff), and says that he wants to know everything about her, it also lands more like a sudden explosion coming out of left field, than as something the story has been steadily building toward.

Again, not because the idea doesn’t make sense, but because the internal shift hasn’t been made visible in a sustained way.

With both Seol Ah and Woo Seok written like this, it does leave the relationship resting on a shaky foundation.

I couldn’t feel a genuine connection building from the inside, and that really affected my ability to buy into this relationship.

Interestingly, though, by the end of my watch, I did find myself going along with it, not because it was especially well-seeded, but mostly because Show repeated the strength of their connection enough, that I just… accepted it as truth. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I would have MUCH preferred it if Show had approached the OTP connection differently, and allowed us more access into their inner thoughts and feelings.

I think that would have made a big difference to my engagement with this loveline.

3. THE AUCTION WORLD / INSURANCE ANGLE

Another big piece of Show’s setup comes from the overlap between the auction world and the insurance side of things.

On paper, this is actually quite an interesting idea.

The notion that high-value artworks are being insured, declared destroyed, and yet somehow still exist — there’s a version of this that could have felt clever and intricate, with a clear sense of how the system was being manipulated.

But for me, this is where things started to feel insufficiently thought-through.

The biggest sticking point, to my eyes, is the handling of the originals.

Because if the goal is to benefit from insurance payouts, then the originals should, in theory, be destroyed.

Instead, Show has Chairwoman Kim (Kim Geum Soon) keeping them, hidden away in that vault, which immediately raises the question of: Why?

If the originals are meant to no longer exist, then keeping them doesn’t really benefit her in any obvious way. In fact, it does the opposite.

It creates a pile of evidence that could be used against her, if it were ever discovered.

And I have to say, I couldn’t quite buy into the idea that she is just such a pure appreciator of art that she simply couldn’t bear to destroy them.

That feels less like a convincing motivation, and more like a convenient one.

Because keeping the originals allows Show to have its cake and eat it too — to have the insurance fraud angle, while also preserving a vault full of reveal-ready evidence.

So while I could see what Show was trying to do with this whole setup, I didn’t feel like the underlying logic really held together.

And once that question lodged itself in my mind, it was hard to fully settle into this aspect of the story. 🤷🏻‍♀️

4. TONE & IDENTITY

One of the things I kept circling back to, as I watched, was the sense that Show has aspirations to be an elegant makjang.

Not just elegant in a general, broody sort of way, but specifically the kind of elegant makjang that marries polish, mood, and dramatic extremity in a way that feels controlled and intentional.

Think Money Flower (review here, Open Threads here!), which, if you haven’t yet seen, I highly recommend. 🤩

To my eyes, it feels like Show wants to operate in that kind of space.

It wants the broodiness, the atmosphere, the sense of something simmering under the surface. It wants its reveals to land with weight. It wants that polished, moody sheen where everything feels just heightened enough to be dangerous. 🔥

And to be fair, there are moments where it does achieve a semblance of that form.

There are certain beats where I could feel what it was going for, and for a moment, it almost convinced me.

But while Show sometimes achieves the form, I don’t think it has the substance underneath it to sustain it, to be brutally honest.

When I say “substance,” what I really mean is this:

1. The internal logic needs to hold up.

   For something like an elegant makjang to work, the larger setups need to make sense even when you look at them a little more closely.

   And this is where something like the Chairwoman Kim / vault situation starts to wobble for me, because the logic doesn’t quite stand up once you think about it for more than a minute.

2. The plot mechanics need to be properly stress-tested.

   It’s not enough for something to work in the moment; it needs to feel like it would continue to hold under pressure.

   But we see, for example, how Eun Hyuk’s alibi holds for as long as it does, not because it is especially airtight, but because it isn’t meaningfully challenged until much later.

   And that creates this sense that the story is moving forward because it needs to, rather than because everything is actually locking into place. 🔒

3. The emotional engine needs to be visible.

   And this is where the lack of character interiority comes in.

   We’ve already talked about how it’s hard to track what’s shifting inside Seol Ah and Woo Seok in a way that feels continuous, and that matters, because that emotional grounding is part of what gives this kind of story its weight.

And related to this, I also found that Show isn’t always very precise in how it manages its information.

It will hold onto certain reveals for a long time, and then release them in a way that feels less like a carefully constructed payoff, and more like a delayed drop, like the Su Ho reveal in episode 8.

So instead of tension tightening in a controlled way, it sometimes just… stretches, and then resolves, without quite delivering the kind of impact it seems to be aiming for.

When I put all of that together, it starts to feel like Show isn’t consistently keeping a firm grip on its own details, whether those are plot, character, or world-building — and that makes the whole thing feel a bit unstable.

Episode 8 is probably the clearest example of this for me, because that’s where Show suddenly tips into a much more overtly makjang register, with the identity twist around Jun Beom / Su Ho and all that heightened energy.

In that moment, I remember thinking, “Oh — is this what we’re doing now?” 👀

Because if Show had committed to that, I think I would have enjoyed it more, since a blithe makjang at least promises to be interesting, if not entirely logical.

But it doesn’t.

It gives us that spike, and then slips back again into this more broody, restrained melodramatic mode, as if it still wants to be taken seriously in that polished way.

That back-and-forth definitely contributes to the unevenness in the watch experience.

It’s not that a show can’t move between tones; it’s that in this show, the tonal shifts don’t feel fully controlled.

Instead, it feels like Show is switching modes whenever it feels like it, without doing the groundwork to make those shifts feel earned.

In the end, what I’m left with is a show that seems to aspire to be an elegant makjang, and can sometimes approximate the look of one…but doesn’t have the underlying structure to actually hold it together.

That’s why I said upfront, that it’s probably best if you choose not to look at things too closely, with this show.

SPOTLIGHT ON THE PENULTIMATE EPISODES [SPOILERS]

E9-10. So.. my big thought while watching these episodes was, “What in the makjang, Batman… where did the makjang go?” 😅

Because coming off episode 8, I’d genuinely thought Show had… found itself? Like, it had finally leaned into its own chaos, shed whatever restraint it had been trying to maintain, and just gone, “You know what, we’re doing this, we’re going there.” 🤪

And I was actually kind of on board with that.

But then we get episodes 9 and 10, and it’s like… Show has very carefully put its elegant cape back on again, smoothed its hair, and gone, “No no, we are a serious, broody, mysterious drama.” 😇

And I’m sitting here like… but I saw you?? 😅

Episode 9, in particular, feels like we’re settling back into a quieter, more measured mode, with the investigation into Su Ho / Jun Beom’s death ticking along in the background.

And I say “ticking along” very deliberately, because it doesn’t feel like it’s really moving.

Woo Seok does identify that there must have been a third person present — the glove prints, the blood on the tree further out — and that should feel like a proper shift, right? Like, okay, new lead, new direction, let’s go.

But instead, it kind of just… sits there?

We don’t really get a sense of momentum building from that, and so even though the investigation is technically ongoing, it feels a bit stalled to me.

And then there’s the police.

I have to say, the police in this show are not exactly inspiring confidence.

There’s that moment where, when the possibility of a third person comes up, one of the officers actually looks disappointed because it means Seol Ah might not be the culprit.

And I just… I had to pause a bit at that, because that’s not how this is supposed to work?Like, are we solving a case, or are we trying to prove that Seol Ah did it? 👀

Again, this is where I feel that tension in the show’s tone, because if this were fully makjang, I’d just shrug and go, okay yes, everyone is a bit dramatic and biased, sure.

But because Show keeps presenting itself as serious and grounded, and I therefore feel invited to approach it on those terms, these moments start to feel more glaring.

There’s also a small beat in episode 9 that I found quite interesting, and that’s Eun Hyuk’s reaction — or lack thereof — when Suk Ji (Song Yi Woo) brings up Su Ho’s allergy.

She describes what sounds like a pretty serious, memorable incident, and Eun Hyuk just goes, “Oh, I don’t remember.”

That really stuck with me, because that’s not the kind of thing you just casually forget, especially if you were part of that circle, yes?

Since the only other possibility is that he’s choosing not to acknowledge it, I feel like Eun Hyuk’s still very much in the running to be our mystery killer.

At this point, I also wanted to talk about that conversation at the bar in episode 10, where Seol Ah tells Eun Hyuk that she had once thought they would become something more; that she’d had romantic intentions towards him, and that his lack of response was what led her to date Su Ho instead.

This is apparently news to Eun Hyuk, and I’m just over here, feeling quite blindsided by the whole thing.

I dunno; I guess I hadn’t pegged Seol Ah to be someone who would entertain feelings for her best friend and not say or do anything about it — and choose to date someone else instead.

If Eun Hyuk truly is our mystery killer, then I feel like this revelation would likely mess him up quite a bit, especially if the murders were, as I theorized, in order to maintain exclusive proximity to Seol Ah.

If my theory ends up holding true, then I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s Eun Hyuk who goes unhinged in our finale episodes. Let’s see if I’m right?

On the emotional front, episode 9 leans quite a bit into Seol Ah and Woo Seok, especially in that interrogation room scene.

Woo Seok manages to get access to her, and you can see how concerned he is — he’s asking if she’s eaten, if she’s slept, he’s trying to reach her not just as an investigator, but as someone who truly cares about her, and believes in her.

Seol Ah, in response, does the opposite. She shuts him down, she distances herself, she even leans into this idea of taking the blame, as if that might be enough to push him away and keep him safe.

I can see what the scene is going for, I really can — but I have to admit, I found myself watching it rather than feeling it?

Like, I understand that they’re meant to be deeply invested in each other at this point, but I don’t fully buy into that emotional connection, so when the scene leans into that heightened space, I’m a little bit outside of it, observing how it’s constructed rather than being pulled in.

We get more of that dynamic when Seol Ah collapses and Woo Seok takes her home.

He cooks for her, insists that she eat, tries to get her to stay, and she refuses, again. She tells him, very clearly, that he is the one in danger, not her. That it’s the men around her who are being targeted.

And honestly, I think this is one of the threads that does make sense. Because from what we’ve seen, she’s not wrong.

So even though his concern is understandable — there is a killer out there — her logic holds true, and her insistence on distancing herself feels like the most practical way to protect him.

While this is going on, Show is starting to spend more time on Chairwoman Kim’s operations — the art, the insurance fraud, the properties under borrowed names — and I can see that this is probably going to tie into everything eventually, though I can’t quite figure out how.

And in the moment… I have to admit, I’m not very invested in this thread. 😅

Part of the reason is that I don’t quite understand the logic of it?

Like, if the originals are meant to have been destroyed for insurance purposes, what exactly is the plan in keeping them? What do you do with them after that? It’s not like you can resell them or re-introduce them somewhere..?

Because of that, this starts to feel less like a fully thought-through system, and more like a setup to give us a vault full of useful incriminating evidence later. 😅

Moving into episode 10, we get that near-miss in the stairwell, where Woo Seok almost walks straight into Ju Hyeon Su, and Seol Ah pulls him out of the way.

He tries to talk to her, to compare notes, and she shuts him down completely with a, “I have nothing more to say,” before she walks away.

So, a very clear boundary there.

Soon after this, we have the lawyer visiting Seol Ah to inform her that she’s been named as the beneficiary of the Stiller painting.

This detail feels very makjang to me.

I’m not referring to the bequest itself, or the execution of the scene, but the fact that she is an active suspect in his death, and yet this process is just… proceeding?

Like, in what world is the prime suspect in a murder case being approached about inheriting the victim’s assets without that being a major issue? 👀

So that definitely pinged as makjang logic for me — which would be fine if Show were leaning more into makjang, but in this serious manner that it’s choosing to take, it feels out of place to my eyes.

At this point, Woo Seok goes to Royal Auction to find Seol Ah, and this is where I started to feel a bit of whiplash.

Because she takes him aside to a meeting room, and suddenly, from pushing him away and shutting him down, she’s more open.

She tells him that she doesn’t believe Su Ho left her the painting for any benevolent reason, and she reminds him again that he is in danger.

And then he grabs her shoulders and says, “Then protect me.”

Okay, in the moment, that line lands in a heightened, melodramatic, emotional sort of way, but almost immediately, my brain goes… how? 🤨

Because up to this point, her way of protecting him has been to stay away from him. So what does it mean, practically speaking, for her to protect him by staying close?

How is that supposed to work? 🤔

And then we get this interesting shift.

We cut away to Chairwoman Kim in the vault, looking at Seol Ah’s father’s painting, making that ominous call, and then when we come back to the meeting room, Seol Ah is now… telling him things: about the properties, about Ju Hyeon Su, about what she’s uncovered.

“I thought you should know.”

I couldn’t help but feel the jump there, because very recently, we’d witnessed how she had explicitly refused to share anything with him, and we don’t get to see what had actually changed for her.

If I try to connect it, the only bridge I have is that earlier line — “then protect me.”

So maybe, just maybe, in the show’s logic, this is her way of doing that now? Like, instead of pushing him away, she’s… arming him with information, so he can protect himself?

I can kind of make that work, if I squint hard enough, but it does feel like I’m doing a bit of the heavy lifting there, because giving him more information doesn’t actually reduce the danger he’s in. If anything, it pulls him further into it. 😅

So again, I can see what the show is trying to do, but it doesn’t quite land cleanly for me.

All of this leads into the plan to access Chairwoman Kim’s vault, where they figure they have about a week, and Seol Ah insists on being the one to go, because they can’t risk Woo Seok, and she’s leaving Royal Auction anyway.

That part, I can follow, but then we get to the actual execution, and that.. doesn’t go so well.

She goes into the vault… and closes the door behind her. 🤦🏻‍♀️

And I have to say, my immediate reaction was just… “No no no, why would you do that??” 🙈

Because even if you’ve never done anything like this before, the first question is simply — how are you getting out?

And sure enough, that becomes the problem.

The exit code is different, she’s trapped and this creates a tense cliffhanger.

To be fair, I do think the discovery inside the vault — the paintings, her father’s work — has emotional weight, but the situation itself feels very avoidable, and it feels like a mistake that doesn’t quite align with how careful and shrewd Seol Ah has been shown to be.

Even something as simple as wedging the door would have made sense here.

So instead of being fully caught up in the tension, I find myself thinking about how we got here in the first place.

Honestly, you could say that that’s kind of where I land with these two episodes, generally speaking.

There are moments that sound right, that have the shape of strong emotional or dramatic beats, but when I try to follow them through in terms of logic or action, they don’t always hold up.

To be fair, I do think that this would be a much more enjoyable watch if I didn’t look too closely.

Meaning, if I just take the mood, the music, the drama, and go along for the ride, there is something entertaining about it — even in how bold or bizarre some of the choices are.

But like I alluded to earlier, it was Show taking itself seriously, that invited me to take it seriously in the first place.

Now I’m really curious to see which direction Show ultimately leans into in our upcoming finale: will it fully embrace the makjang, or will it continue trying to wear that elegant cape?

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see! 😅

THOUGHTS ON THE ENDING [SPOILERS]

E11-12. To be brutally honest, my friends, I didn’t have extremely high hopes coming into these finale episodes — and somehow, I still ended up underwhelmed. 😅

Let me explain.

What struck me most, watching these last two episodes, wasn’t so much any one specific plot development, but the overall shape of the experience.

There are moments where Show feels like it’s about to lock into place — a spike of tension here, a reveal there — and for a brief stretch, it almost convinced me that everything was about to come together.

We get that early jolt at the top of episode 11, and then again towards the end of episode 11 and into the opening of episode 12, where things feel like they’re finally cresting into something sharper, more focused, more… purposeful.

And in those moments, I found myself leaning in, thinking, “Ok, here we go, this is where it all clicks.“

But then, just as quickly, the energy dissipates, and we end up drifting into a lull.

So even without looking too closely, even if you’re just watching this at a surface level, there’s this noticeable unevenness to the experience — these pockets of engagement surrounded by long stretches where things feel oddly muted, or underpowered, or just… not quite doing enough.

Looking back, I’d say that for a good while, I was willing to give Show the benefit of the doubt.

Because that’s the thing, right? When you’re watching a story in good faith, the natural thing to do is to assume that whatever feels loose or underdeveloped will be clarified later.

However, as I moved through these finale episodes, it gradually became clear that the moment of convergence… wasn’t coming.

And that, I think, is where the underwhelm really set in for me — not because Show completely falls apart, but because it never quite comes together in the first place.

Take Eun Hyuk, for instance.

On paper, he’s actually a pretty compelling idea for a central figure — someone who has quietly positioned himself in Seol Ah’s life for years, whose actions are driven by a warped but deeply internalized logic about protecting her, about deciding who is “worthy” of her.

There’s something there that could have been genuinely chilling, or tragic, or even both.

But in execution, it never quite sharpens.

His motivations are explained in this last stretch, but not felt in a way that builds steadily over time.

His actions often make sense in isolation, but don’t always carry the weight they should in the moment.

And at times, it starts to feel less like he is an especially precise, calculating killer, and more like the world around him simply isn’t asking enough questions.

Like the alibi with the studio — it’s not that it’s brilliantly airtight; it’s that it isn’t meaningfully challenged until much later, when Woo Seok thinks to investigate.

I find that with this show, the closer you look, the more of these seams begin to appear.

The mechanics around some of the murders feel under-thought-through — not so much because they’re impossible, but because they rely on a series of things going just right, without Show fully establishing or reinforcing those conditions on screen.

Take Seung Jae’s (Ha Seok Jin) death, for instance.

On revisiting the scene, it does seem likely that Eun Hyuk had stowed himself away on the yacht earlier, and waited for the moment when the engine quieted and Seung Jae relaxed — which, in theory, makes the setup workable.

But even then, the sequence hinges on a very specific chain of timing and circumstance: that Seung Jae would be alone, that he would settle into a position where he could be subdued without resistance, that Eun Hyuk could act without being noticed, and that throwing him overboard would reliably result in death.

None of these are individually impossible, but Show doesn’t spend the time to firmly establish or reinforce them, which leaves the scene feeling less like a carefully constructed plan, and more like something that only really works once you’ve gone back to piece it together after the fact. 😅

Character-wise, too, there are beats that I feel don’t quite land with the weight they’re set up to carry.

Eun Hye’s hostility towards Seol Ah, for example, is eventually explained, but the explanation feels disproportionately small compared to the intensity of what we’ve been shown.

It lands less as a revelation and more as a neat closing of a thread that had initially been positioned to feel more significant — like Show had, at one point, positioned her as a possible red herring, and is now ready to move on.

Similarly, Yun Ji’s (Lee Elijah) death, while not entirely without logic, feels thin in motivation.

After all, she doesn’t say or do anything to indicate that she finds her sighting of Eun Hyuk on the day of Seung Jae’s death, to be suspicious.

The idea that her mere presence becomes enough of a threat to warrant killing doesn’t feel as compelling as Show seems to want it to be, especially given how much leeway Eun Hyuk seems to operate under elsewhere.

And then, perhaps most egregious of all, are the emotional gaps.

The most striking one, for me, is the complete absence of any real reaction from Seol Ah to Eun Hyuk’s death.

Because regardless of everything that’s happened, this is someone who had been deeply woven into her life — a long-time friend, someone she had once imagined a future with.

Those feelings don’t just vanish cleanly, and Show doesn’t give Seol Ah even a moment of screen time to process his passing.

Instead, we move almost immediately from the discovery of his death into a brighter, more forward-looking sequence, as if we’re meant to transition smoothly into closure.

I found that quite jarring, to be honest.

And that, I think, is a great example of Show’s general sense of under-execution — not in a single flaw, but in the accumulation of these moments where things are just a little less developed, a little less grounded, a little less fully realized than they could have been.

Which brings us to the ending.

We have a Meaningful Soundbite from Seol Ah as she talks about the Siren painting, and then another Meaningful Soundbite from Woo Seok as a closing voiceover.

The problem for me, is that these soundbites gesture towards ideas of prejudice, of misjudgment, of how the world labels and condemns, of choosing to hold on to love in spite of it all.

Taken on their own, they sound… nice. Thoughtful, even.

BUT, when placed against the story we’ve just watched, they don’t really feel like they’ve grown organically out of it.

Because while Seol Ah has been misunderstood and judged at points, that was never the main point of this story.

So when Show leans on that idea so heavily in its final moments, it doesn’t feel like a culmination — it feels like something completely different being placed on top of the story, rather than something emerging organically from within it.

That’s why, for me, those closing soundbites don’t quite land.

Again, this is a great demonstration that Show’s ideas never quite coalesce into something fully satisfying, and its better moments never quite build into something sustained.

Show could have done so much better and been so much more — and that, to me, is the real tragedy here.

WHAT SHOW COULD HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY

I’m not talking about a massive story overhaul here.

I just want to point out a couple of key tweaks that would have made this story, as intended, work better overall.

Certainly, there are more changes that could be made to improve this story, but I’ll limit it to the two that I think would have made the biggest difference to the watch experience.

1. Make Suk Ji a male character

One of the most straightforward ways to improve the tension would have been to make Suk Ji a male character, and to lean more into the friendship between the three of them.

As it stands, Eun Hyuk becomes the most obvious suspect very early on, simply by virtue of his devotion to Seol Ah, and his access to the ex-boyfriends.

This means that a lot of the tension drains out of the story pretty quickly. It stops being a question of who is the killer, and becomes more a question of when Show will confirm it.

If Suk Ji had been a male character, however, and if Show had put a bit more emphasis on the dynamic between the three friends — their history, their closeness, the way they relate to Seol Ah — then suddenly we get a much more interesting setup.

Because now, it’s not just one obvious candidate. It could be either of them. Or even both of them.

You could start to wonder if one of them is the one acting, while the other is unknowingly enabling it. Or if one is protecting Seol Ah in one way, while the other is doing something much darker in the background.

That alone would have gone a long way in keeping the suspense alive across the episodes, instead of letting it flatten out so early.

2. Seung Jae’s secret message

The way Seung Jae’s message is delivered could have been handled in a way that feels more intentional, rather than accidental.

Right now, the reveal hinges on the bottle breaking, which feels a bit too convenient for something that is supposed to carry such important information.

Not only that, if I were in Seol Ah’s shoes, I would most likely have moved to preserve the wine as a keepsake, rather than drink it or examine the bottle.

It would have been much more satisfying if the message had been designed in a way that required Seol Ah to actively engage with it.

For example, if Seung Jae had set it up such that adding a specific substance to the wine would turn it clear, revealing a message hidden within — and that substance is included with the bottle in a way that doesn’t draw attention to itself, but which Seol Ah recognizes — then the reveal becomes something much more purposeful.

That way, the discovery feels earned, rather than something that just happens to work out because the bottle breaks at the right time.

THE FINAL VERDICT:

Stylish in flashes, but underbaked and lacking in substance.

FINAL GRADE: C+

TRAILER:

MV:

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