Probably best if viewers choose a different destiny.
This series features a pair of well-known but essentially mediocre actors, Jo Bo Ah and the mono-faced Rowoon, playing characters who spend an incredible amount of time sparring with each other before the inevitable coupling/"happy ending". The basic plot is that Jo finds herself in possession of a book of one-time use only spells, one of which she uses to make her crush, a rather pedestrian co-worker, fall for her.
Unfortunately for her, and all of us, it gets drunk by Rowoon, another co-worker from a rich family, who is engaged to the lovely but not very nice Yura, whom he dumps, in numerous cruel increments, to start an initially unreciprocated pursuit of Jo. Jo's use of the spell book further scrambles matters, to little discernible effect.
What makes the whole thing unbearable is the bullying and stalking that Rowoon inflicts on Jo for episode after episode, no matter how many times she tells him she likes someone else and even after she falls for him. Time after time he goads her, presses her, chases after her, makes demands on her, abuses his position to imperiously summon her, with phone calls and texts and showing up at her home and at her office, long past endurance. Each time she resists, with an admittedly impressive array of repartee, all of which bounces off him as you would expect of an oblivious and crass male chauvinist that one can barely imagine could exist today, but obviously still does, at least in the twisted minds of the writers and directors of this limp mess. Perhaps she's supposed to be some kind of saint, but in the modern era (even a less than progressive South Korea), she would have long since sought a restraining order.
As the series progresses, her resolve weakens but his obnoxiousness remains relentless and charmless in equal measure. Both his and her tragic pasts still haunt them (in what Korean drama do they not) but nothing very inventive here (he suffers from some curable "incurable" disease and she has not got over her father's drowning while saving a couple of children). Inevitably, it turns out that they met earlier in life, actually in a previous Joseon-era life, which assumes a progressively more important role in the wager-thin plot, which also involves a murderous garden store owner whose villainy is facilitated by extraordinarily stupid decision-making by the two leads.
As in most Korean dramas, in scene after scene characters refuse to listen to each other and they tell each other unnecessary lies. For example, in one scene, the heroine's colleagues assume that a photograph of her and a colleague facing each other and maliciously posted at the instance of a jealous rival show that the two are having an affair. When the photograph was taken, the two were just neighbors. There is no reason that she concealed this from them in the first place and they refuse to listen to her when she tries, far too late, to explain. In the same episode, she gets pushed into a pit and dirt gets shoveled onto her. When she is rescued, she pretends to her rescuer that she slipped, when there is every reason for her to tell him what happened and both of them probably know who did it. These idiotic scenes are so unbelievable that they completely fail to add any actual dramatic tension. They just make the audience smirk.
At least we can tell this whole lame story wasn't created by Artificial Intelligence, which would have done a better job, more like Artificial Insult to the Intelligence. I can readily imagine some trope-infected program churning out the tired old characters and plot lines, not to mention the all too real studio cafeteria serving up meal after meal in lieu of action, with egregiously intrusive product placements. Oh yes, Korean directors would rather have their actors eat and get drunk than move the plot forward. There is a relentlessly annoying subplot that has nothing at all to do with the main story involving two of Jo's co-workers. And, as usual, any suggestion of actual sex is reserved for the bad girl and a rather unpleasant side character. Watch a few Korean dramas, and you'll easily comprehend why the Korean birthrate is the lowest in the world.
This series features a pair of well-known but essentially mediocre actors, Jo Bo Ah and the mono-faced Rowoon, playing characters who spend an incredible amount of time sparring with each other before the inevitable coupling/"happy ending". The basic plot is that Jo finds herself in possession of a book of one-time use only spells, one of which she uses to make her crush, a rather pedestrian co-worker, fall for her.
Unfortunately for her, and all of us, it gets drunk by Rowoon, another co-worker from a rich family, who is engaged to the lovely but not very nice Yura, whom he dumps, in numerous cruel increments, to start an initially unreciprocated pursuit of Jo. Jo's use of the spell book further scrambles matters, to little discernible effect.
What makes the whole thing unbearable is the bullying and stalking that Rowoon inflicts on Jo for episode after episode, no matter how many times she tells him she likes someone else and even after she falls for him. Time after time he goads her, presses her, chases after her, makes demands on her, abuses his position to imperiously summon her, with phone calls and texts and showing up at her home and at her office, long past endurance. Each time she resists, with an admittedly impressive array of repartee, all of which bounces off him as you would expect of an oblivious and crass male chauvinist that one can barely imagine could exist today, but obviously still does, at least in the twisted minds of the writers and directors of this limp mess. Perhaps she's supposed to be some kind of saint, but in the modern era (even a less than progressive South Korea), she would have long since sought a restraining order.
As the series progresses, her resolve weakens but his obnoxiousness remains relentless and charmless in equal measure. Both his and her tragic pasts still haunt them (in what Korean drama do they not) but nothing very inventive here (he suffers from some curable "incurable" disease and she has not got over her father's drowning while saving a couple of children). Inevitably, it turns out that they met earlier in life, actually in a previous Joseon-era life, which assumes a progressively more important role in the wager-thin plot, which also involves a murderous garden store owner whose villainy is facilitated by extraordinarily stupid decision-making by the two leads.
As in most Korean dramas, in scene after scene characters refuse to listen to each other and they tell each other unnecessary lies. For example, in one scene, the heroine's colleagues assume that a photograph of her and a colleague facing each other and maliciously posted at the instance of a jealous rival show that the two are having an affair. When the photograph was taken, the two were just neighbors. There is no reason that she concealed this from them in the first place and they refuse to listen to her when she tries, far too late, to explain. In the same episode, she gets pushed into a pit and dirt gets shoveled onto her. When she is rescued, she pretends to her rescuer that she slipped, when there is every reason for her to tell him what happened and both of them probably know who did it. These idiotic scenes are so unbelievable that they completely fail to add any actual dramatic tension. They just make the audience smirk.
At least we can tell this whole lame story wasn't created by Artificial Intelligence, which would have done a better job, more like Artificial Insult to the Intelligence. I can readily imagine some trope-infected program churning out the tired old characters and plot lines, not to mention the all too real studio cafeteria serving up meal after meal in lieu of action, with egregiously intrusive product placements. Oh yes, Korean directors would rather have their actors eat and get drunk than move the plot forward. There is a relentlessly annoying subplot that has nothing at all to do with the main story involving two of Jo's co-workers. And, as usual, any suggestion of actual sex is reserved for the bad girl and a rather unpleasant side character. Watch a few Korean dramas, and you'll easily comprehend why the Korean birthrate is the lowest in the world.