Lies Hidden in My Garden: Episodes 1-2 (First Impressions)
by quirkycase
Welcome to the eerie world of Lies Hidden in My Garden where something always lurks under the surface. Kim Tae-hee and Im Ji-yeon star as two very different yet equally desperate women struggling to break free of their respective prisons. With tight writing, strong performances, and cinematic flair, it looks like we’re in for a well-crafted mystery/thriller.
Editor’s note: Weekly drama coverage will continue.
EPISODES 1-2
From the opening deceptively cheery theme that then distorts like a lie, I knew this was going to be my jam. The tone is enigmatic and ominous without being overdone. The storytelling is so assured and focused, making every moment feel important. I love the focus on minutiae and sensory phenomena – sounds, images, smells – and the grounding role they play here, almost like proof of reality.
I haven’t read the original novel, but the drama does have a novel-like structure. Each episode is divided into perspective and day, which works well since the story isn’t told entirely linearly and could get confusing. It also allows the drama to play with style a bit to suit the perspective. For instance, there’s a notable bluer palette for most of Joo-ran’s scenes that gives off a surreal, eerie vibe. And for scenes (often Sang-eun’s) evoking more visceral horror, the palette leans warmer and darker.
Overall, this is a very cinematic drama with high quality filming and production. Everything from the sound effects and background music to the strong imagery and use of Dutch angles to give an off kilter feel works together to create something with a strong sense of atmosphere. There’s this less-is-more style that highlights salient details to show rather than tell us who these people are and what they want.
The opening scene sets the tone well. In a dream sequence, MOON JOO-RAN (Kim Tae-hee) walks alone in a hazy forest. A boy in a ram’s mask stands immobile and stares at her before turning and walking away. As Joo-ran runs after him, the scene shifts to inside a large house. Joo-ran slowly ascends creaky stairs and hears an menacing, loud banging. Frightened, she opens a door and watches herself enter an apartment. The other her calls out, “Unnie,” and then gasps in shock and horror at what she sees. Joo-ran wakes up.
September 18: Joo-ran
It’s clear from the onset that Joo-ran is depressed (she does take medication). She stays in her upscale home most days, alone with the shades drawn like she’s hiding from the world. Her only contact appears to be with her family. She seems to have a good relationship with her husband PARK JAE-HO (Kim Sung-oh), a well-known hospital director who is attentive, affectionate, and considerate of her mental health struggles.
They recently moved from Seoul to try to give Joo-ran a fresh start, but their teenage son SEUNG-JAE (Cha Sung-je) is not adjusting well. His mother’s depression – and seeing her attack a man with a wooden beam in front of a crowd (all wearing animal masks, for some reason) – has impacted him. He’s also showing signs of depression and even told his teacher that he wants to die, but his father gets defensive when the teacher tries to talk to him about it.
Father and son tiptoe around Joo-ran at home, trying to keep her from becoming upset, which makes for a very tense and stifling environment. Whenever her unnie’s death anniversary comes around, Joo-ran becomes particularly sensitive and prone to potential hallucinations. For a while she heard a banging (like in her dream) and now, she’s fixated on a nasty smell coming from outside (the garden, perhaps?). Even their neighbors have commented on it.
Jae-ho assures her the smell is just their natural fertilizer, but Joo-ran remembers the stench of death from when she found her sister dead in her apartment. Still, she trusts his reality more than hers and accepts his explanation. But it looks like Jae-ho is keeping some secrets. That night, he gets shifty while on a phone call that makes it sound like he’s being blackmailed.
The next day, Joo-ran can’t get that stench out of her head, especially when her new cheery neighbor OH HAE-SOO (Jung Woon-sun) – who is rumored to have killed her husband – comments that it smells like something is rotting in Joo-ran’s yard. Joo-ran can no longer ignore it and starts to dig.
September 18: Sang-eun
A security guard runs upstairs and knocks on an apartment door after getting yet another noise complaint. He encourages CHU SANG-EUN (Im Ji-yeon) to report her husband’s abuse already, but she just assures him they’ll quiet down. Inside, her husband KIM YOON-BEOM (Choi Jae-rim) has the gall to yell at her for not eating enough and potentially harming their baby (she’s five months pregnant). After making a threatening call to Jae-ho, he viciously beats his wife again when she comes home with the wrong groceries.
Although Sang-eun hasn’t reported Yoon-beom, she has been collecting evidence. She documents her bruises and even secretly records video and voice files to use as evidence. Her work friend is helping her prepare to meet a divorce lawyer.
The next day, Yoon-beom picks Sang-eun up from work to take her to her mother’s for the night. But first, he makes a stop at Joo-ran and Jae-ho’s fancy neighborhood.
September 20: Sang-eun
In the middle of a stormy night, Sang-eun returns to her mother’s home and takes a shower. She then lies beside her mother (who seems to have Alzheimer’s) and cries. It feels very suspicious and foreboding, especially when a call comes the next morning. Her husband Yoon-beom is dead.
September 19: Joo-ran and Sang-eun
We jump back to the side trip Yoon-beom and Sang-eun took on the way to her mother’s. As luck would have it, he arrives just as Joo-ran unearths what looks like a decomposing human hand in her garden. She’s reluctant to open the front gate, as anyone would be in that situation, but she recognizes Yoon-beom as someone who has worked with her husband in the past. He forces his way into her yard and leaves a large suitcase full of who knows what. While he’s inside making Joo-ran increasingly uncomfortable with his invasive behavior, Sang-eun spies in her husband’s glove compartment and finds a bejeweled phone.
Once they leave, Joo-ran calls Jae-ho in a panic, so he comes home to check out the garden. Just like Joo-ran, what he sees is a dead human hand. But when he comes back inside, he lies that it’s a dirty glove workers left behind that rotted the soil. It’s hard to tell if he’s gaslighting her out of concern for her mental health or something more nefarious. The whole blackmail business isn’t helping him look well-intentioned.
That night, Joo-ran wakes alone – Jae-hoo is nowhere to be found. Elsewhere, Sang-eun gets out of Yoon-beom’s parked car, switches to the driver’s side, and leaves. The next morning, Jae-ho says he fell asleep in the study and didn’t go meet Yoon-beom like he’d planned, but the mud on his boots and car tells a different story.
Meanwhile, Sang-eun gets the call that her husband is dead. She identifies his body in the morgue while his sister weeps. Then, she goes alone to a restaurant and eats like she’s been starving for a year. When Yoon-beom’s brother calls, Sang-eun casually tells him his brother is dead while stuffing her face, and then she hangs up on him.
Coincidentally, this is also the day of Joo-ran’s unnie’s death anniversary. When they arrive home from the memorial service, the police are waiting to question Jae-ho. Sang-eun told them she last saw Yoon-beom when he left to meet Jae-ho for business, which the cops find odd since he was fired a month ago.
Both women ruminate on their husbands’ lies: Yoon-beom not saying he had been fired and that they owe multiple rent payments, and Jae-ho saying he didn’t leave last night. Joo-ran’s suspicions get the best of her, and she checks the CCTV. The videos from the previous night have been erased.
Sang-eun does her own digging and peruses that bejeweled phone. After getting a strange call from someone listed as “Grasshopper” about customers, she finds videos and photos of men with this one young woman (likely the phone’s owner). In one of those photos is Jae-ho. Taking up the mantle of blackmailer, Sang-eun texts the photo to Jae-ho, smiling for the first time. We end on Joo-ran’s face as she sees the text while Jae-ho is in the shower.
I’m already all in. I love the juxtaposition of Joo-ran and Sang-eun, one caught in a psychological hell and the other caught in a situational hell. I can’t tell yet what kind of relationship they’ll have, but I’m curious to see them interact. Everything in this drama is ambiguous in a good way, making it hard to predict where we’ll go. If the storytelling and filming continues being this deft, we might just have a great drama on our hands.
RELATED POSTS
- Premiere Watch: Lies Hidden in My Garden
- Lies Hidden in My Garden with Kim Tae-hee and Im Ji-yeon
- Kim Tae-hee digs to find the Lies Hidden in My Garden
- Something suspicious in Kim Tae-hee’s House With a Yard
- News bites: May 22, 2023
- News bites: May 20, 2023
- News bites: May 16, 2023
- News bites: May 13, 2023
Tags: Choi Jae-rim, first episodes, First Impressions, Im Ji-yeon, Kim Sung-oh, Kim Tae-hee, Lies Hidden in My Garden
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1 welh
June 23, 2023 at 11:04 AM
Another Studio Dragon production with a similar beginning to SYIM19L: a woman in a flowing blue dress in nature. Huh. But the two series could not be any different. The previews were dark, but one of my current pet peeves is filming scenes that are too dark to show what is going on. Episode 1 was filled with major darkness moments that presumably hid clues to what was going on. And flashes of important images were annoying because who wants to pause and rewind every few minutes to try to see a clue? In two episodes, KTH was a gaslit zombie apparently being drugged by her husband to possibly cover up his misdeeds. And LJY plays an abused wife faking a pregnancy in a bad, poverty level marriage. She is drifting along in a state of numbness until she learns her husband is dead.
The opening episodes did the story no favor. To me, the back and forth time line was unnecessary and confusing at times. For a short series, the lack of critical story information is criminal. Over directing and piecemeal script reveals are not good. Caught up in the ambient mood is no substitution to action and dialogue. Is Joo Ran PTSD or psychic? If she found a body, why did she not report it to the police? Is Sang-eun sympathetic or a greedy opportunist? If the gated community had such a noticeable smell, would not the authorities been summoned? And what about the neighbor who moved back into her house after her “release?” Is this setting up to be a killer wife club? My biggest fear is that this confusion is all in the imagination of a character.
I understand that the two female leads have horrible back stories to tell, but the way it is being told was not engaging. The only non-sleepwalking moment was when Sang-eun feasts after her husband’s demise. There was an emotional release well captured in that scene. I was not impressed by the series opening but it is such a short run I think one has to press on even if it turns into a hate watch.
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too_much_tv
June 23, 2023 at 12:40 PM
I don't think Sang-eun was faking pregnancy. There was one scene where she is leaving work where we see her removing a girdle of some kind, and she shows a little bit then. I also liked the scene of her eating. I felt like the previous scenes of her buying herself strawberry ice cream, and getting meat for her mother, set up the scene with her eating.
I'm also pretty sure that the woman crying and calling her agassi (that is what she's saying, right? so weird) is her brother's wife, not her husband's sister. It makes more sense that she would be around Sang-Eun's mom.
It's hard watching something in a language I don't know and trying to pick up on the clues for a mystery. If this were a show in English, the unreliability of the first female lead's recollections would make it more fun. It still might. Right now I'm assuming that the doctor murdered his wife's sister, and I will be surprised if that's not the case. I really hope their kid finds a way to get away from the two of them! We saw in the first episode that he's looking for one.
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minnie
June 23, 2023 at 1:13 PM
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minnie
June 23, 2023 at 1:15 PM
Totally agree with you on all accounts, especially the stench/corpse.
Decomposing bodies have an incredibly pervading stench like nothing else on this planet. If someone (especially a psychotic person) finds a corpse, the first thing they do is call the police, not put a flower pot over the exposed body part (which would make the stench even more noticeable).
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too_much_tv
June 23, 2023 at 2:02 PM
I've always wondered about this issue in other media. How do people get surprised when they find a body?
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emsel
June 23, 2023 at 8:55 PM
The opening episodes did the story no favor. To me, the back and forth time line was unnecessary and confusing at times. For a short series, the lack of critical story information is criminal. Over directing and piecemeal script reveals are not good. Caught up in the ambient mood is no substitution to action and dialogue.
Unlike the recapper, this is what I felt about the directing after Ep 1. These stuff work well in a movie that is an hour or two, but not quite in an episodic format. Dropped!
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Islander north
June 24, 2023 at 8:50 AM
I'm not a fan of dark suspense for long periods of time, so I agree that a movie would suit me better. However, curiosity and my love of Kim Sung-Oh may bring me to drop back in again in the future.
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2 Blue (@mayhemf)
June 23, 2023 at 11:12 AM
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3 Blue (@mayhemf)
June 23, 2023 at 11:17 AM
I quite liked the first two episodes, enough to continue. The psychological aspect was quite disconcerting. I am convinced about Jae-Ho gaslighting his wife. it was just so hard to watch. On the other hand, its physical abuse, equally hard to watch.
Sang-Eun after her husbands death - Are you sure he is dead? He looks too calm to be dead!
And her eating food.. And her whole transformation during that phone call - I did not expect that turn. There is definitely more to what we see.
Yoon-Beom - I don't think he had multiple monthly rent payments but rather he changed their lease to monthly instead of annual by taking the security deposit back. So basically she now has no home and no savings to find another home.
YB was a living terror. That scene of him entering her house and taking pictures was terrifying.
I wonder how the friendly neighbor will come into play in all this.
I am surprised no one called the cops for the smell.
Will be continuing to see how this goes.
Thanks for the recap @quirkycase!
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4 bunnylita
June 23, 2023 at 11:33 AM
I really enjoyed the first two episodes. They gave out just enough information to hook me. And the way they dole that information out feels so intentional. I love when it feels like a show knows what it's doing. Makes it easier for me to sit back and enjoy the ride.
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5 jerrykuvira
June 23, 2023 at 11:38 AM
The cinematography here is excellent I must admit and your intro @quirkycase along the lines "Welcome to the eerie world of Lies Hidden in My Garden" captures everything. The word "eerie" most certainly describes how I felt just a few minutes into the movie.
I said earlier that the cinematography is excellent, so excellent that even though I know this isn't going to be an easy watch it drew me in nonetheless. As quick as I was to pause and compartmentalize, I was pulled with equal force to click on play and was sucked right back in. This is a top notch production quality. I can see the care they took into all the details.
Can I say that Yun-beom deserves his cut? Damn! The man pissed me to the moon and back.
Kim Tae-hee's Joo-ran has this air of classic dignity around her. Her costume says it all - from the crown of her head to the sole of her foot. She's delicate, for now. But I also see restrained strength. And just her opposite is Oh Hae-soo, who is styled retro- and, Im Ji-yeon who has all the traits of "Ma-pi", with good reason. I absolutely commend the writer for following her visiting the morgue with going to grab a whole chunk of a hearty meal. That man suffocated life out of her. She needs to breathe, and most definitely needed a breather.
Kim Sung-oh unsettles me. I can't meet his eyes. This is me being enamored with and complementing his delectable iris color variation a few weeks ago to me not being able to look Dr. Park in the eye. It's...he's chilling. I'm hoping I'm wrong but I'm not putting a murder past Dr. Park.
Lies Hidden In My Garden is artistic.
I made it through this week. I'm gearing my psyche up for next week.
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Midnight
June 23, 2023 at 12:12 PM
I won't be watching this, but I'm upvoting your beautiful writing.
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6 nerdy
June 23, 2023 at 11:44 AM
I actually dropped this show after episode one. I was not really sure why I should continue watching. Realistically speaking, if you are getting beaten, are pregnant and don't have enough money for a lawyer, your husband suddenly getting killed off is not all that bad(?). For the first episode, I should have gotten at least a glimpse on why Sang-eun has to do anything in future.
In addition, it was hard for me to care about Joo-ran, all we have gotten out of Kim Tae Hee in that episode is that Joo-ran is distressed.
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7 minnie
June 23, 2023 at 1:03 PM
I agree with you @quirkycase on this drama being a very cinematic drama with high quality filming and production.
But that is it. I was looking forward to this, but now I am disappointed and annoyed: the back and forth in the storytelling, the female leads acting as if their brains were sucked out, Moon Joo-ran ultra-slow motion moves (jeez, I wonder how both she and the house can be that stylish/spotless without a helper if she moves that slowly).
Finally, and this really is the dealbreaker for me, the stench coming from a decaying body is SO characteristic, that there is absolutely no way to mistake it for "organic fertilizer" or anything else. And how dense must you be, if you let yourself being fooled by a household glove when what you really found was a decomposed hand? Depressed people still can think that far, even when on medication.
This is another drama (Black Knight, I am looking at you) that would have profited from being made into a movie instead.
But I will be reading your recaps, as they are going to be much more fun than watching:)
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8 Seon-ha
June 23, 2023 at 4:33 PM
We seem to have a lot of people here who are quite familiar with the stench of decaying bodies. Just sayin’.
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hacja
June 23, 2023 at 10:55 PM
Although its been a while since I buried a body in my garden, wouldn't you bury it deep enough so there would not be a malodorous stench? Or did the husband bury it shallowly on purpose, to further gaslight his wife?
I will say, though, that one time a whale washed up on the beach near us, and the smell permeated the whole neighborhood for an entire month, even though they had a crane remove carcass relatively quickly.
I really sincerely hope there isn't a similar real life familiarity here with the malodorous behavior of the males in these first two episodes, including the son by the way. What happened to the courageous boys of earlier kdramas, who stood up for their Omma no matter what? Killed off by the Netflix effect, I guess.
It makes me look forward to watching a female demon beat up a literature professor tomorrow. In fact a mashup of these two horror shows--the wives unleashing the demon on the husband--might make for a good revenge story, which is just what the kdrama season is calling for right now!
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bong-soo
June 24, 2023 at 6:59 AM
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bong-soo
June 24, 2023 at 7:13 AM
One answer to your question,
“What happened to the courageous boys of earlier kdramas, who stood up for their Omma no matter what?”
may be that Nam Da-reum grew up and he is now fulfilling his military commitment having begun his service (at Korean age 21) on Feb. 8, 2022. His discharge should be in August. Well done NDR.
On the subject of odor. Would lime be that difficult to find?
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hacja
June 24, 2023 at 7:21 AM
I looked it up, and in addition to reducing odor, lime has the advantage of maintaining the PH of the soil, making it more suitable for planting. Don't know why the husband didn't think of a fruit tree or two on top of the corpse!
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Blue (@mayhemf)
June 24, 2023 at 9:35 AM
It not easy to dig a deep trench. It is quite backbreaking. But that was too shallow for a corpse.
@marcusnyc20 thanks for the lime tip. Don’t think I will need this information but it probably will stick 😶
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Seon-ha
June 24, 2023 at 9:40 AM
Hmm…so what I’m learning is that I’ve started a thread about improving our collective understanding about how to hide a dead body??
Excellent…I knew there was a reason I joined this community.
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hacja
June 24, 2023 at 9:56 AM
As it turns out, digging deep trenches is something I have a lot of experience with, having worked the summer for a contractor on jobs where small California yards sometimes made backhoes impossible. So I know I could successfully bury a body in some places in California. This was generally in sandy soil, however. I know in some places hardpan was so obdurate that property owners stuck dynamite in it to make excavation possible. This method might make it unnecessary to even bury the corpse. I'm not sure what type of soil dominates in Korea--so I'll be sure to research before traveling over there to bury anything. The lime tip seems universal, though.
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Blue (@mayhemf)
June 24, 2023 at 12:48 PM
In my case it’s clayey soil. So burying is not an option for me.
bong-soo
June 24, 2023 at 12:08 PM
@mayhemf, When I made the suggestion of lime I almost added as an intro, “Not that I have any personal knowledge, but…”
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welh
June 24, 2023 at 5:10 AM
The average person has probably gone into their garage to find the horrible scent of a dead mouse. Just multiply that by 300x.
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9 john
June 23, 2023 at 4:40 PM
Quirkycase, thanks for the recap.
I’ll watch next week, from the preview it looks as though things pick up.
First episode didn’t do much for me. Creepy rabbit masks ! Zombie mom, zombie son, Both husbands are bastards. Who owns the sparkly phone ? I fell asleep in Ep2, rewatched what I think I missed.
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Blue (@mayhemf)
June 24, 2023 at 9:30 AM
It definitely would have worked much better as a short series, say 4 episodes. Would have been more gripping. The whole ‘mask’ thing didn’t feel eerie but rather repetitive when it happened a few times.
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10 merry
June 23, 2023 at 5:20 PM
Surprised myself that I can sit through it. Agree with quirkycase on the over-all production 'feels' of being well thought out. Thanks for this and future re-caps. Gave me SkyCastle vibes; though a bit more dark. The Yoo-boem character was so evil. Is he a new actor? Haven't seen him in anything? Likely to see this drama through; shorter, not the usual episode count, someone noted?
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solstices
July 18, 2023 at 8:08 AM
Whoops this reply comes a little (a lot) late, haha! You're partly right — Choi Jae-rim has only been in one drama prior to this (he played Lee Yo-won's husband in Green Mother's Club), but he's also a veteran musical actor! Most recently, he acted in Kinky Boots and Matilda, and he'll be starring in The Phantom of the Opera from August onwards :)
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11 bong-soo
June 24, 2023 at 6:55 AM
I watched and enjoyed the first two episodes so I am along for the ride.
Thank you @quirkycase for your First Impressions. For me this is a drama that a recap/first impressions is definitely helpful. I will probably read it again before episode 3.
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12 Diana Hansen
June 24, 2023 at 8:59 AM
Wow! Do I dare or don't I dare? Its got my curiosity piqued for sure but don't know if I can stand imagining such a smell in my backyard. Or sticking around to find out who did it but I might give it a try if it is not on Disney?.
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Blue (@mayhemf)
June 24, 2023 at 9:28 AM
In the US it’s on Viki!!
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Diana Hansen
June 24, 2023 at 2:23 PM
Thank you muchly!
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13 Evelyn
June 25, 2023 at 8:21 PM
I'm a tad amused that this drama is quite split with viewers (Little Women was the same), but this is right up my alley. I was hesitant to watch cos of the rather negative/on-the-fence comments here, but I loved the first 2 eps and binged it in one night. Lim Ji Yeon/Kim SungOh's characters - pheww there definitely is more than meets the eye here. So unsettling and disconcerting. KSO is def hiding something. So much gaslighting going on as well. YoonBeom was a real abusive jerk and I'm glad he's dead. The way he barged into JooRan's house when she knew he was alone, invaded her personal space and just went around uninvited taking photos/exploring their house - such a disgusting, disrespectful person.
the thing that isn't quite hitting for me is Kim tae hee's acting. I know JooRan is depressed but she has the same blank face for most of the 2 eps..her scenes seem to drag alot for that reason.
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14 MikeyD signed up
June 25, 2023 at 9:15 PM
Once again I discover a drama entirely to my liking. Its been a long time indeed since I've discovered decent new dramas one-after-another. I'm doing pretty good this month!
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