tempest-88220

It took me over 8 tries and 2 years to watch this drama. This was one of my very first Cdramas. In the past I had tried to watch Cdramas but past productions were very made in china looking and storytelling was all over the place. What bothered me about this drama and made me quit after 1 episode was the audio dubbing. I'm just not used to it. I've watched American shows and TV all my life and they use live audio. The sound of studio dubbed voices not matching with the scene's environment really threw me off. The episode starts off throwing a lot of events at you, you really have to pay attention to follow. I think that's why I failed to get pass episode 1 8 times. I kept seeing raving reviews about the drama and critical acclaim and yet I could not get pass episode 1. After 2 years of people talking about it, I finally decided one day to really just sit there and TRY. Once I did I could not stop watching it. The story telling is magnificent. This drama isn't for casual people, it takes a bit to fill the viewer in on what's going on, but after the background is filled and you have an understanding, you realize this is very subtle and thoughtful storytelling. A lot of people misunderstand this as a revenge plot/story, it is not, it's an endearing story of seeking justice. There aren't any ridiculous romance tropes or crazy protagonist plots at the end, the story stays true to the end. It took me 8 tries to watch it and to this day I've rewatched it just about 8 times.

The drama started ok but as you watch each episode, the story felt drawn out unnecessarily. The storytelling was all over the place going back and forth each episode. No suspense whatsoever. Essentially this story could have been told in 4 episodes and didn't need 14, the 10 extra episodes felt empty and redundant, unnecessary things thrown in for filler. It's also full of the typical kdrama over the top melodrama I'm starting to get annoyed with in kdramas. The poor storytelling takes the mystery and thrills out of this drama unfortunately. After 10 episodes I couldn't bare to continue finishing.

I'm not sure why this drama was rated so highly. It was infuriating watching how the police could do nothing against a few terrorists and just stood by trying to do nothing. And then when they did, instead of just shooting the terrorists from behind which would be the safest and with less casualties, they screamed something stupid to draw attention before opening fire and then got shot and died. And then another police officer did the same thing and got shot. Way to lose the element of surprise. Like WTH really? There's a lack of common sense in these action sequences. Everyone's just doing stupid things that don't make any sense and it's a shame cuz this event was so very tragic.