To be honest, this movie wasn’t even on my radar, even though it’s already been out for more than a year.
When I saw the cast list on this, though – Park Sung Woong! Uhm Jung Hwa! Lee Sang Yoon! 🤩 – I knew I wanted to check it out, even though plane hijackings aren’t my usual kind of thing.
And whaddya know, this one turned out to be a pretty fun ride – with the right lens, which I’ll talk about in just a bit.
Psst: Links to watch are at the end of the review!
You guys, I’m officially calling it quits on Snowdrop, 8 episodes in.
I know that opinions on this show are divided, ie, those who love this show, reallyreally love it, and those who don’t, find it really quite underwhelming.
Clearly, I’m not in the first camp, since I’m writing this Dropped post (heh), but I’ll do my best to lay it out, so that you can figure out whether this one’s for you.
My last foray into a fantasy kdrama dealing with angels and devils didn’t go too well (I’m looking at you, Angel’s Last Mission, cough), so when I heard some rumblings of dissatisfaction on the grapevine about how this show about selling one’s soul to the devil seemed a little all over the place, I was ready to give this one a blind pass without actually taking the time to check it out.
Thank goodness for blog regular Putri, who convinced me to give this show a try, after she’d watched it and really liked it herself.
Once I actually got going with this show, I was pleasantly surprised by how engaging I found it, and now that I’ve emerged on the other side, I’m happy to report that Show even manages its mythology reasonably well.
Since one of my pet peeves with fantasy dramas is that the mythology isn’t clearly presented, &/or crumbles on itself by the end of the story, I count this a pretty big plus in Show’s favor.
The mythology presented isn’t perfect, sure, but it retains its structure enough, and is true enough to itself, that I found myself reasonably satisfied on this point.
Which then also helped me enjoy the rest of the story more, too. Plus! I even found myself jiving with Show’s humor, uh, most of the time. Win, win, and win.
Thank you, dear Putri, because I hafta say, I’m glad I didn’t end up missing out on this one.
You guys, this is possibly the one show that I ended up watching quite literally by accident.
See, even though quite a few of you had suggested this show to me, I’d put it vaguely on my list for “later,” and my track record shows that “later” often stretches into a black hole void of “maybe never,” mostly because there are just too many newer shows vying for my attention and I can’t keep up with it all.
The thing is, when I saw this available on Viu, I thought I’d click on episode 1, “just to see.” Well, whaddya know. I got sucked in within mere minutes.
This one struck me as immediately engaging the way a classic melo like Winter Sonata is immediately engaging, and by the 30-minute mark, I knew I’d be following this one through to the end. In a drama landscape where a good number of dramas take about 4 episodes to get going in earnest, that’s skillz.
The question is, did Show manage to keep it up all the way through to the end?
YouTube’s algorithm sure knows how to pique my interest.
I mean, when YouTube suggested this movie to me, I quickly sat up and paid attention.
The idea of a movie starring Park Sung Woong and Ra Mi Ran, with a bit of Jin Young pretty thrown in sounded like just my kinda thing, and I promptly changed my Saturday afternoon viewing plans, heh.
Now that I’ve finished the movie, though, I will say that this movie’s a reasonably decent watch, but I did like it better in concept than in execution.
Once upon a time, I used to categorize Jung Kyung Ho in my head as Dramaland’s go-to beta male, especially after seeing him in 2009’s Smile, You, where he was the sweetest beta male love interest to Lee Min Jung’s feisty broke chaebol.
(Twas a sweet and cute story, pity about the whopping 16-episode extension, which then resulted in lots ‘n lots of pointless and frustrating filler. Boo.)
Back then, I liked Jung Kyung Ho well enough, but mostly in a casual, almost cursory sort of way.
Compare that to today, when I would quite literally check out a show purely because Jung Kyung Ho is in it, y’know, because he is just so wonderful and brilliant and so good at what he does. *hearts in eyes* What an amazing evolution, eh?
So did I check out this show purely because Jung Kyung Ho is in it? Why, yes I did. Did I know what I was in for? No, can’t say I knew much at all, going in.
Did I eventually understand everything about this show, and its somewhat fantastical premise? I’m gonna hafta say, No, I do not.
But did I enjoy it all the way through anyway? Oh yessiree. I sure did. <3
Despite Hidden Identity pretty much flying under the drama radar, I was curious to check it out for a couple of reasons.
One, this was tvN’s first foray into the crime thriller genre, after establishing itself as a steady producer of quirky rom-coms. I wondered how they would do, especially compared to OCN, where crime thrillers are a mainstay.
Two, Show promised gritty, badass Kim Bum. Given my soft spot for Kim Bum and my weakness for badass leading men, I couldn’t say no to that.
To be perfectly honest, She is WOW is pretty different from your typical kdrama.
Irreverent and saucy much of the time, and dark, bittersweet and even a little bit mysterious the rest of the time, this show is not for everyone.
I picked up this drama coz of the modest measure of positive buzz that followed it while it aired, and the bottom line, for me, is that while I don’t think this drama is quite my cup of tea, in its own irreverent way, it manages to still be a thought-provoking show that asks some hard questions.