Welcome to my weekly blog post where I give thoughts on dramas I’m watching but not recapping.
This week I recapped the first two episodes of Our Dining Table, a Japanese BL that hits me in my slice-of-life-feels. If you need to be reassured that sometimes a meal can be a feast of instant food because what really matters is who you eat it with, this is your show.
This week I finished:
My Lovely Liar – 소용없어 거짓말 – 2023
A recently aired Korean Supernatural Mystery Comedy Romance of 16 episodes.
A woman who can tell when anyone lies, and everyone lies, meets a man who doesn’t seem to sell a single one.
Here’s a link to my initial review.
Like last week’s The Legend of Zhuohua, this is a show I started with enthusiasm and finished with a disappointed sigh.
Everything I initially liked about this show I still liked at the end. The lead characters were a great combo of sharp-edged woman/sweet guy that I wish I saw onscreen more. I loved how tough she is and how soft he is and that they love this about each other. While they grew and changed I never felt like they went out of character for the sake of conflict. They acted like adults, had good communication, and a relationship that was fun to watch.
The main cause of disappointment with this show is the writing. The signs of weakness were there from the beginning when about a dozen side characters were introduced. Half of them belonged to the dark, creepy backstory of our male lead while the other belonged to a whacky, neighborhood comedy. Korean dramas can do an amazing job balancing different tones, but it didn’t work for me in this case. I wanted more of the darker stuff, less of comedy. I’m sure there are people who feel the opposite.
The weakness got worse later in the series as the various storylines intersected poorly. Rather than developing them into something deeper, the writers kept adding more ‘stuff’. There were subplots with side characters that didn’t go anywhere or affect anything in the main story. It feels like a script with multiple writers, or one writer told to do conflicting things.
For my taste, I wish it had gone more in the direction of The Glory, with more creepy darkness and intensity.
It’s not a show I regret watching, but I’d only recommend it to people if they’re really drawn to the main couple. I still really loved a lot of their interactions, particularly in the first half of the show.