Crime – The Joys and Worries of an East Asia Lover

“Why should I be righteous? That’s what makes us kill each other. I’m just trying to do the right thing for myself.” – Do Chi Hwang

Damn. My plan was to review another drama that I finished recently but once I started this gem of a series, I just could not wait to share this with my readers. Change of plans, the drama of the month is “Watcher”.

I have, previously in numerous posts, praised cable TV networks for their high quality dramas. Too bad they don’t get enough traction. This one is pretty recent, so some might have heard of it.

Watcher 1 — *Yes, listen to this pretty lady pliss and watch this drama!!*

Watcher is a crime thriller where three different people come together to solve a case and catch a murderer they are all related to. This also involves corruption within police and prosecution department. And now you will say, but all the crime thrillers from Korea have this exact same story line. You are definitely correct.

What stands out here is how the plot has been executed and the mystery of who that murderer is, you just cannot put one name to it. By even ep 12th, you would know people who are involved in the corruption, you would know who has been doing what all this while but you would just not know who that mystery man is. This, is what I call, a successful plot. Makes the viewers keep guessing.

I am on 12th episode while I have started preparing this post (remember I told you guys last week that I will need to prepare buffers for my posts since I might start working on weekends starting next week?) and I just feel like directly going to last ep to know who the person is. The suspense is killing me!!!

Watcher 2 — *Always to the point Do Chi Hwan*

Phew! After a few hours, finally finished it. I would hate to give out spoilers though. Here is the plot. The story follows a cop named Do Chi Hwang (Han Suk Kyu), a traffic policeman named Kim Young Goon (Seo Kang Joon) and a prosecutor turned lawyer called Han Tae Joo (Kim Hyun Joo). They are embroiled in one case 15 years ago when Young Goon’s father is arrested by Chi Hwang for murdering his own wife, Young Goon being only witness and Tae Joo acting as the prosecutor for the case. 8 years later, Tae Joo manages to procure some evidence deeming Young Goon’s father innocent but is attacked by someone in the police breaking her family apart too. The story is set in the present where these three form a team to find the corrupt police officials and prosecutors and reveal the mystery behind all these incidents around these guys.

As I mentioned before, not only the plot has been executed flawlessly without many frustrating points because you are just so busy guessing who the actual perpetrator is but the acting and OSTs are top notch too. But I am sure I haven’t praised anything this much for the plot. Plot itself can carry this particular drama, other things are just icing on the cake.

Watcher 3 — *The minion doing all the dirty work ❤*

The only thing that might be lacking is character development for Do Chi Gwang. You get to know his story, you come to know his POV but he still remains stubborn old man and that actually is his charm. Other characters really see great development, especially Young Goon. Seo Kang Joon also provide some comic relief to otherwise very serious drama. The struggle between what’s right for you, your emotions and what’s the greater good is real in this one though.

The one question they keep asking throughout the series is “Where does our humanity come from? What’s different between a human and an animal?” OMG, I have become such a big fan of this writer’s writing. I will go and look for more dramas from this writer or source material for this drama. In the meantime, you should go check the series out. It’s usual 16 episodes with 1 hour runs. You won’t be disappointed.

Conclusion: Good series need more watchers (Do you see what I did there? :P). I give this series a solid 10/10. 16 episodes, no romantic melo drama. Perfect for people interested in only crime thrillers. I personally also loved the wardrobe of our female lawyer. Those dresses are goals in life.

Final Feelings: ( ＾◡＾)っ ♡

Watch here: Watch Watcher for free on Viki

Personal Front: Nothing much to tell this time. I did get my first ko-fi last week. Thanks to the anonymous person and subsequent people who bought me some, I could prepare this post. I worked more than 40 hours this week and am going to work tomorrow as well. Gotta earn that extra monies lol.

Anyway, I am looking for animal shelters to volunteer for around my area. I could try the library too but I wanna work with animals. Not been very successful so far but let’s see.

Today was also the last day of my boss and a senior whom I had come to be great friends with at my current company. I’ll miss them both. Those last hugs TT_TT.

Today’s song: This new song this time coz haven’t been listening to any lately. Still dunno my feelings about this song from Stray Kids

Disclaimer: All images and videos belong to their respective owners and none of them are mine.

Hello everyone, how are you guys doing? Apparently, this was going to be my last post for 2018 but as usual, it didn’t happen. Do remember that this is a review and not a recommendation. I personally feel like I wasted too much time watching this drama. And I don’t want my readers to go through the same, even after the star studded cast.

This drama is a prime example of over-hyped actors in the drama and a haphazardly put bland plot. If you read the synopsis on the drama websites, you come across the words NIS agent, conspiracy, murder and a widowed female lead whose husband is the part of this whole conspiracy. Fans of criminal dramas like me are hooked.

But then you get 2 annoying kids who ~~if they were my kids I would slap the shit out of them to make them understand how troublesome they are~~ are the cause of each and every trouble in the whole drama. Basically, the whole plot rests on the fact that the two brats cannot control themselves.

I envy them for having such a lovely mother though, they still cannot understand her plight. Some people would bash me over expecting too much from 5 and 7 year olds but trust me, you would get annoyed just watching them, imagine dealing with them in real life, ugh.

Anyway, this is a story about an NIS agent called Kim Bon (So Ji Sub) who was falsely accused of murdering a spy from North Korea, despite them being lovers. He is still being chased by some of the NIS agents so he’s gone undercover, trying to find real murderer behind his past lover. Go Ae Rin (Jung In Sun) is a normal housewife whose husband works for some big conglomerate and is killed when he witnesses a murder of some congressman happening.

*That’s probably the most romantic moment in the drama?*

Through fateful meetings and help of her extra nosy neighbors, Go Ae Rin realizes that her husband was actually part of a conspiracy. She also happens to start working for the same set of people who murdered her husband, coincidentally of course. Then she gets involved with actual NIS and helps Kim Bon clear his name and catch the murderers who are just a small part of a bigger chain involving all the bigshots from the government. They solve the mystery and fall in love too.

The synopsis looks pretty normal. But as I stated in the beginning, this story is just a bunch of loopholes and you end up pulling at your hair in frustration. (Another frustration filled update will be coming soon with The Golden Eyes).

The only good thing about the drama is the acting of main leads. So Ji Sub is a veteran. This was my first drama with Jung In Sun and I really liked her acting. The villain was good too and the most comedic part of the drama. But other characters were so frustrating, especially Kim Bon’s friend in NIS.

I hate it when scriptwriters take us normal people as fools when it comes to criminal dramas. But they should understand that we viewers have so much material at our dispense, that although we obviously can’t be experts, it’s easy for us to point out flaws. I would give them though, it was hard to figure real villain out. The focus kept shifting from one person to other. But by mid of the series, that also became really obvious, so, yeah.

Comedy was okayish too. The awkward Kim Bon with the kids was hilarious. I remember the OSTs to be good. Revisited and I actually like almost all of them.

I can’t really think of anything. Quite disappointed I was. The plot was so bad that it trumps everything. I don’t know why it’s rated so high mydramalist and other websites.

Conclusion: Watch it at your own risk. If you want something which you could watch without putting too much brain into it, and just pass time, you might give it a try. I personally would give it a 4/10. 16 eps and I was just wondering when it was going to end.

Final Feelings: (；⌣̀_⌣́)

Watch here: Couldn’t find any official release. So, here, unofficial one on dramacools

Personal Front: I went to look at an apartment today and it was really disappointing. I think I shouldn’t look at houses at all. I gotta find a new place for me as soon as I can.

In other news, the golden eyes is coming to an end and I absolutely hate the fact that Zhang Yixing would choose such a poorly written script. Or, perhaps, given that how close his character in the drama is to his life philosophy, he just chose the drama for that? That would be such a sad thing.

Also, as I mentioned in my last post that I won a few merch from this company’s prediction game. One of them was a manga portrait done by a professional artist. So, here I present my manga portrait. It would also be the first time revealing myself here lol, at least in part.

Today’s song: I really liked this one OST from this drama:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzEtUUKkFJs

Disclaimer: The pics and videos belong to their respective owners. I do not own anything.

The Joys and Worries of an East Asia Lover

The name says it all!

Tag: Crime

Drama Reco: Watcher (왓쳐)

K-drama Review: Terius Behind Me (내 뒤에 테리우스)

Recommend to your friends

Recommend to your friends