Hairaki

This drama is like being presented with a fine wine, but getting served water instead. Very weak storyline. They lure you in with, what should be, a really good revenge/mystery plot but give you a story that's dull and not well written. The actors did the best they could with what they were given and how they were directed, so I can't fault them. With the exception of Lee Chae-Min, I found the others needed more guidance in their portrayals as they seemed like lifeless puppets reciting lines. No emotions really, their eyes remained blank. Plus, sorry gentlemen but the only character I found intimidating was played by Choi Won-Young. The story is too fast paced as well, revealing things way too soon without proper foundation, like the writer kept coming up with last minute ideas and implemented them before solidifying their base in the story. One last thing, I felt the whole 'love' storyline between the 2 top rich students was both unnecessary and emotionless.

A big budget, beautiful actors and sceneries, and nice cars could not propel this KDrama to the level of others that share the same tropes. It's not all bad, but there were so many wasted opportunities for this to be spicy.

Characters: FL-dull and lifeless; ML- I liked, but I was sneak dissing him by the end. Other characters- awesome opportunities to explore how they could have pushed the plot, but didn't.

Unnecessary parents- did not impact or improve anything.

Avenge your brother-period. Nope. Let's "change the school's culture". Unrealistic outcomes based on a lackluster plot and mediocre acting.

Romance? Let's race to see if we stay together (Boys over Flowers vibes). They tried to have a triangle, but that failed.

The "blackmail" idea became tiresome by the end. This could have been so awesome with some twists.

The biggest letdown, IMO, were the underdeveloped relationships, irrelevant flashbacks, and overall failure to launch (all over the place).

Watch it. Grapple through all 7 episodes. At the end, I think there's an aftertaste that needs a spoonful of sugar.

To be honest, there was no likeable character in this show. Maybe He-ra and sometimes Kang Ha, but everyone else sucked. Like the mystery/revenge wasn't executed well and the ending was super underwhelming. The romance was also bad, like they would insert past clips of the female lead and second male lead, for what? To make us like them?, because they were both terrible people to be honest and dull.

Every actor besides Lee Chaemin also looked lifeless. Literally no emotion. The only good thing about this show is maybe the visuals, but tbh even with the good looking actors, it still sucks.

Don't watch this show. It's a waste of time. Only the 1st episode was decent and then it went downhill fast.

Everything is very boring. The plot is practically non-existent, we only see how some rich people interact with each other and how the poor are mocked. There is nothing else. Also, these "high school teenagers" behave as if they are full-grown adults, actually I can't see them as 17-18-year-olds, but 25-30-year-olds because they behave very mature as if they have a thousands of responsibilities and secrets and it's not realistic at all. I don't know, maybe if it was a college drama, their behavior would still work, but not here. Some of the actors act well, but others have the same facial expression for three whole episodes, like they're confused vegetables. I had high expectations, but it's not worth your time.

Why in the heck did I watch all 7 episodes in this (thankfully) short series? It started off really interesting but it lost me somewhere around episode 3 1/2. I guess I kept watching because I thought that at least some of the monstrously entitled characters: Jae-Ri, Kim Ri-An and their coterie of sycophants would somehow CONVINCINGLY tranform into better human beings. But that never happened. And the one decent character, Kang Ha just got less interesting because of his joke of a dumb crush on a girl with the allure of a designer doormat. The finale/Episode 7 was the worst episode of all. A coda of inconsequential duhhh-like-we-didn't-know-all-this-already moments, hollow mea culpas and the obligatory throwing of a posse of nobodies under the bus. Our series' unloved hero, Kang Ha just fades into the background while the 2 characters (who I couldn't stand) take over the series' final scenes. Side notes: Jae-Ri is disturbingly weak both physically and mentally, yet still manages to be consistently imperious around her sassy so-called best friend. How Kang Ha fell in love with her at first sight was unfathomable-unless maybe in Korea it's normal to worship ice queens with blank stares. And why did the drama feature most of the rich kid's parents but scholarship student KangHa is presented like some parentless possibly homeless nobody from nowhere? I sort of wondered if it would turn out that this was a clue that Kang Ha wasn't real- that he was a revenging ghost figure. (Think Clint Eastwood in Pale Rider.) Now that would have been a worth sticking around for twist. And Yo Netflix! Don't order another season of Hierarchy unless you can fire the Season 1 writers. They totally dropped the ball.