July Drama Reviews 2023

Queen of Masks

This drama is about 4 women who are friends. Jae-Yi (Kim Sun-A) who is a human rights lawyer and has her eyes set on becoming a mayor. It also stars Go Yoo-No (Oh Yoon-Ah) who comes back after 10 years and being framed for a murder case to try and find her daughter. This drama is about a murder case that happens to 4 women who used to all be friends but one of them gets framed for the murder. It is 10 years later and Go Yoo-Na (Oh Yoon-Ah) the woman framed for the murder is back and she is trying to find her daughter. She goes to her old friends Jae-Yi (Kim Sun-A) who is a human rights lawyer to try and get their help to get her daughter back. It also stars Ju Yu-Jeong (Shin Eun-Jung) who is a chairwoman of an arts foundation and is just getting her life back on track with the new man in her life. The other friend is Yoon Hae-Mi (Yoo-Sun) who is a vice president of Mariana Hotel and is trying to climb the ladder to success as well. Jae-Yi is also trying to climb the ladder to success to try and find the man who sexually assaulted her the night of the murder and has to decide what is more important her friends or justice.

So this drama is very much a melodramatic drama and I don’t think I have watched this genre before or anything at least this extreme. I keep thinking whether I should continue watching it or not because it felt like a soap opera and I didn’t know if it was going to get really bad. I was kinda surprised about the drugs mentioned in the drama as I feel like I never really seen drama go to that area and I have to say I didn’t care for one of the characters struggling with drugs. The writing of the characters didn’t really make sense to me most of the time. Jae-Yi is supposed to be this lawyer but she does some of the dumbest things in the drama. She gets the mask with blood on it and they act like this is true evidence of something and try to use it to get the perpetrator to do what they want when clearly this doesn’t mean a thing and wouldn’t change anything. A lot of the reasoning and technical stuff just doesn’t even make sense at times. They make a lot of stupid decisions in the drama that frustrated me. One of the characters buries some video files instead of looking at them or handing them into the police, just sheer stupidity is witnessed throughout this drama.

This drama did not need 16 episodes and even went over an hour with each one, it should have been shorter and more consistent with the characters and made them smarter. The ending did seem a bit anticlimactic after the build up but at least it was a decent ending, at least for the majority of the characters.This drama wasn’t all bad it still was interesting to see how the mystery played out and to get to know each of the characters more and I have to say the perpetrator did some good acting despite him being the bad guy. It was also kinda nice to see a cast of older women instead of teenagers and give them an opportunity to tell a story.

If you could get past some of the frustrating parts of the drama it was still an interesting drama that kept me guessing at times and had some decent twists and turns to keep you invested. It wasn’t a great drama but it wasn’t a horrible drama either it was just an okay drama.

All That We Loved

This drama is about two high-schoolers Go Yoo (Sehun) who loves basketball and is a outgoing personality who is very protective of his friend who is like a brother to him Go Joon-Hee (Jo Joon-Young) who is a quiet and is always studying and does well in school. They both meet Han So-Yeon (Jang Yeo-Bin) and they both start to have feelings for her but she likes to keep people at a distance from her because of her own secret.

This drama was pretty good until the ending, I thought it was building up well and it was interesting flipping from the present to the past but unfortunately the ending was super disappointing. Super important things in the story are not explained at all and the love line in the drama was also super weak. I think if they had more time to properly tell the story it could have been a really good drama and the build up in the drama and pacing was good but the just needed more time. I don’t know if they just couldn’t figure out an explanation and got lazy or if they just needed the time to wrap it up properly. Also some of the medical conditions seemed sketchy and really unbelievable but I was willing to go along with it until they gave us the lackluster ending.

I did like the acting and was impressed and even though I didn’t like the ending I still found it interesting and compelling and would still watch again. It is a shorter drama with less time and episodes so it is not like you wasted too many hours to get a crappy ending. I would still watch it again because I still enjoyed the ride even though it felt like there was too many loose ends and unanswered questions at the end. It has some interesting concepts with how people can change and how other people can affect you. I still thought it was interesting and would still say check it out but be warned your questions won’t all be answered at the end.

Oh! Young Sim

This drama is about Oh Young Sim (Song Ha-Yoon) who is a struggling TV variety show PD who keeps getting her show cancelled due to low popularity. She casts a popular new start up company CEO Mark Wang (Lee Dong-Hae) in a dating pilot program. She finds out that he is her childhood friend that had a crush on her and their friendship ended on bad terms.

So this is a short drama felt more like a webtoon so again it felt like the writers had to speed things up and I found that to cause a lot of elements to feel like it was lacking. They don’t build out the characters and the romance as well as they could and it was somewhat disappointing. The ending was super rushed and felt kinda weird, it just didn’t feel like I had an emotional investment in this drama. It wasn’t very funny either. Some of the writing seemed sloppy especially for the action type of scene in the drama. Also I am getting really sick of the childhood unrequited love trope in all dramas. It just feels like they threw this drama together really fast and felt kind of cheap. At least it was short then so you didn’t waste too much of your time.

I think the drama had potential but it just totally missed the mark!

A Warmed Up Love

This is a Japanese Drama where Kiki Inoue (Mori Nana) who is a part-timer at a convenience store and she also is a social media reviewer of sweets and is very good at understanding what sweets will be popular. She meets the new CEO Takumi Asaba (Tomoya Nakamura) of the convenience store chain and he eventually finds out about her reviews and decides to enlist her help to create a new dessert for the store.

I enjoyed this drama it was an interesting concept of developing a dessert for a convenience store and how they are developed and the problems that go along with it. It was also interesting because of the different relationships and how two similar people aren’t always the best match in love. It felt somewhat fresh and I like that they didn’t spend the whole time forcing love and making someone a couple from the first episode. I think it was interesting because it showed different types of loves not just the chemical reaction of love. It showed the mature type of love where you fit together because you have the same mindset and then the more immature type of love, where you are safe to be silly and play with each other. It somehow finds the middle ground in the drama and it has a good ending where I was satisfied. I also like that it was a more ambiguous type of love story where you kinda had moments where you were guessing who was going to end up with each other.

The only thing I didn’t like about this drama was maybe how Kiki was somewhat immature at times and it felt somewhat concerning with the age gap that was in this drama. I wasn’t that bothered but at times felt a little bit weird.

I would recommend if you like a cute, short romantic drama!

Lies Hidden In My Garden

This drama is about Moon Joo-Ran (Kim Tae-Hee) is a traumatized woman that is living as a housewife to her husband Jae-Ho (Kim Sung-Oh) who is a doctor. They live in a nice house in a rich neighborhood. Joo-Ran starts noticing a foul smell coming from her garden and her husband tries to dismiss her concerns. It also stars Chu Sang-Eun (Lim Ji-Yeon) who is struggling to live with an abusive husband while being pregnant. The women’s live intersect when Sang-Eun’s husband winds up dead.

I did not like this drama at all, it felt very dark and depressing through the whole eight episodes and thank goodness they only had eight of them. I know it was supposed to have all these plot twists and turns but it just didn’t feel that shocking while watching it. I hated the ambience of the drama, it felt like a cheap thriller movie all the time where there is always someone bad lurking around the corner. It felt really obvious and the motives of the people just weren’t convincing to me at all. The cinematography was honestly annoying with the artsy type shots and the super long pauses in the dialogue. I fast forwarded a lot while watching and started to get annoyed while watching, they could have spent more time building the character. The silence just didn’t have meaning to me, there are some dramas that utilize this technique well but it just didn’t have a good effect to me for this one. I think I was most annoyed with Moon Joo-Ran’s character and what she was thinking because it felt like I couldn’t get a good grasp on her ideas and motives for this story. She is weak and bothered by her sister’s death which I still don’t understand what happened there and why the whole world seems to blame her for the death, which is absurd?? They spent so much time in this drama focusing on her sister’s death and it doesn’t even get explained at the end was highly disappointing to me. I guess they were just using it as an excuse for her husband to gaslight her I suppose.

Honestly the last two episodes just seemed like bizarre behavior, I don’t understand why Joo-Ran wouldn’t get the police involved in the situation instead of doing the crazy stuff she did at the end. It just seemed like there was no redeeming qualities in any of the characters in this drama and I just couldn’t wrap my head around their behaviors. I just want to say this allowed murder is wrong and bad but self-defense is a completely different idea. It is strange because normally when you watch a mystery type drama you find yourself curious but somehow I just wasn’t that curious, maybe because every character on this drama seemed to be bad and evil what they do wasn’t surprising at all. If they showed a completely different personality and then found out they did something evil, it would be more shocking. It also seemed to give the message that men are evil and will abuse their wives which can happen in real life but every character was giving this message.

If I could say anything good about this drama is that acting was well done, at times I had to skip over because it was just too hard to watch some scenes.

I personally did not like this drama and wouldn’t recommend unless you like thriller dramas that are dark and depressing!

Upcoming Dramas

Miraculous Brothers

It is about a failed writer that is down on his luck and he runs into a young man and they are involved in an accident. When the young man wakes up he doesn’t have his memories and has developed some abilities to read people’s minds and feel their feelings. The writer decides to help care for him.

Longing For You

This drama is about a detective that is trying to solve a murder case when his brother becomes one of the suspects and he works tirelessly to solve the case and bring his brother justice. It all ends in tragedy and he has to solve his brother’s murder case.

My Lovely Liar

It is about a young woman who is able to hear people’s thoughts and she meets her neighbor who is a successful music producer and finds out she can’t use her power on him. He is involved in a murder scandal and is in hiding when they meet.