Pros

Lead's chemistry that is painfully beautiful
Stellar acting
Great cameos
Black comedy in initial episodes
Asthetics and cinematography
Kim Soo Hyun crying
Kim Ji Won's vehicle to stardom (I mean, I only watched her in 1 drama and was not her fan, but here her performance makes everyone fall in love with an icy queen)
Family friendly drama with PG-13 initimate scenes
@unit 's awesome recaps

Cons

Run time (Each episode is 1.5 hours long)
Lame anatagonists, their underdeveloped backstory, weak motives and frustrating machinations
Inclusion of all Kdrama tropes in the last quarter
Missed opportunity to explore the breakdown of the leads' marriage

My ratings: 8/10. A classic that you will either hate or love!

We will never really know why lightning strikes in the places it does and thats pretty much my feeling regarding Queen of Tears.

It was enjoyable, the cast was solid, the production values were excellent and my favourite thing about it was the fact that it "felt" like a classic K-Drama (one Beanie accurately described it as a classic weekender condensed into 16 episodes, which is super accurate).

However the writing was by far the weakest aspect of the show, the antagonists were underwritten, their motivations were weak and they inspired zero emotional investment.

So many missed opportunities:
The breakdown of the leads marriage, the death of their baby, the borderline abuse faced by the male lead (and all the other husbands) at the begining, a lot of ideas and themes were hinted at and then swept under the carpet in favour of Makjang-style plot developments.

Overall it was an enjoyable watch, why it became a history making blockbuster escapes me but im not fussed because Kim Ji-won is finally getting her long overdue recognition.

I say give it a chance if you havent.

Hello fellow beanies I would appreciate it if yoy could spare a few minutes to check my thoughts on the drama finale
https://kdramadiary.com/kdrama-review/queen-of-tears-tvn/ ‎
Hoping you like it
Thanks in advance

QoT tells it's story with emotions. The emotions have a story arc you can follow- frustration, sadness, family angst, mystery, greed, reconciliation, reunion- and love in various forms as a theme thru it all. The drama focuses so strongly on emotions that the storyline is lost at many points, and we are left at the end with many narrative questions.
Both leads are brilliant, the cast is wonderful, and spending time watching their beautiful faces is suprisingly mesmerising.
Their are times in life where living with your emotions is a good thing, and this would be the ideal drama for those times.
Ultimately though, this drama left me feeling like I had eaten too much dessert and not enough dinner. Once the emotions had washed away, there was not enough narrative content to make me feel satisfied.

Watch this for:

Beautiful leads looking straight out of an issue of Vogue the entire show. A minuscule hurdle like terminal cancer? Psst. It's no impediment.
Beautiful Crying.
Underwhelming villains who often look lost trying to figure out what they are doing in the first place.
Non stop Crying.
Plot lines swallowed by black holes.
Senseless Crying.
Characters who have no consistency.
Habitual Crying.
A script that had the entire kitchen thrown at it and nothing to douse the fire when it went up in flames.
Furious Crying
At the end you wonder why did you cry so much for........
No end to Crying

For more information on QoT script please refer to episode 7 of Lovely runner, time stamp 28:30.

I have followed Beanies I respect as they work through this drama. And I feel it has been WORK. From a personal perspective it has been a first for me. A big blockbuster K-drama that everyone in SoKo loved; but I did not.
I could not watch another episode after #4. Physically impossible for me to hit play. So happy that so many enjoyed whatever aspects of this show that appealed.
Will meet my Beanie friends on the other side.

What I like
All the cast
A strong and smart heroine
An intriguing male villain
The second and third couple
Not-your-usual-cameos
A mixture of genres: Romance, rom-com, thriller, family, and makjang
The directors and scriptwriter
Cinematography: South Korea and Germany
The whole OST
The hubby is not a cheater, wife abuser or killer
No nakedness or raunchiness here (The writer sure love to keep it clean)

What I dislike:
Too much crying on the male side.
Why are all the males on the Hong side so stupid including the grandfather?
Why do they have to make the last two episodes extra long, 1 hour 40 minutes and 2 hours +?

P,S: I give it a 7.8/10. CLOY is so much better than this.

This was a much anticipated drama, with big names, a focus on life after the wedding and plenty of lingering shots of beautiful people and places. The first half humour, the challenges faced by the characters, the cinematography and OST made this a must watch drama. Please note there is one scene in the first episode where the humour may cause offence.

The second half lost the balance of the first half with the tropes and ridiculous elements outweighing the pretty and there was too much screen time given to characters of little interest.

I am glad that I watched it live but think it would be great to binge watch. I would recommend this whilst acknowledging I was disappointed and frustrated at times.

As a big fan of CLOY, I had lot of expectations for this since it was announced. The casting fuelled those expectations to another level. But this not your usual rom-com but more of a family-nonstop-crying-drama. It had its moments but those where drowned with unwanted fillers. Just read @unit recaps they were more entertaining than the actual drama.

I think the pros and cons of this show have been well communicated by other commenters.

For me, I think the (over)hype captured and held my interest long enough to get me through this bloated series. There were things I really enjoyed, such as the flipping of the cold CEO trope, the craziness that was Aunt Hong, the surprisingly moving character development of the brother, the blending of families and Kim Ji Won’s outstanding performance. Kim Soo Hyun was great too, but didn’t add anything new to his oeuvre.

I would have enjoyed this much more if the writers had kept the plot and run time more concise and given less time to the villains machinations and more to delving into our lead couple’s issues and marriage recovery. Honestly, I could have watched a whole show about the two families clashing and joining. I love a good relationship/family drama.

Due to the exhaustion I suffered after the ups and downs of each episode and all the crying, OH THE TEARS, this is not a show I plan on re-watching.

It was my favorite show while it was broadcasting but I have to agree with many of the complaints about it. Just what happened here? Why could so many of us feel that, as the reviewer for TIME put it, the show “Failed to stick the landing”?

Many people have noted so much that was missing from this story, while noting how long the episodes were. This was a hit show by a top writer who has given us some of the best Kdramas that I have ever seen: Not just CLOY but THE LEGEND OF THE BLUE SEA as well as MY LOVE FROM THE STAR- definitely two of my all-time favorites. What happened here is a question that needs an answer and I have a hypothesis that I would like to put out there- with a moral for not just the incredibly talented Park Ji-eun but for anyone who wants to write a drama.

It actually springs from a comment made originally by others that QoT seemed to be very similar in its plot (and large ensemble of actors) to a Weekender. It should be noted that Ms. Park previously also wrote one of those as well: MY HUSBAND GOT A FAMILY which is actually one of the better weekenders.

Think about it: One of the complaints that others have made was that the episodes were so long and yet there were so many things that we never got to see: We never got to see the marriage of our OTP breaking down, there was really almost no skinship, we did not ever get even a hint as to what motivated our Mistress From Hell, etc.

The total length of QoT’s episodes was about equal to one half of the total runtime of a typical fifty-episode weekender.

Is it possible that Ms. Park started out to write a new weekender but was persuaded to truncate her story? Because, looking back, that sure fits with what we saw.

What is the moral here? Just as it is a mistake to stretch a story out with filler it is equally a mistake to cut a show so short that you no longer tell the entire story.

What I loved: the dialogue, zingers, and positive relationships. This was a OTP for the ages, even though there was so little skinship. I liked that she took on the challenge of showing how the couple miscommunicate without making me want to throw a book at them. Instead, it makes me ache for them. The ensemble of family and friends who support the couple is a little underused, but still great. I commend dramas and writers who don't use supporting characters are mere props for their main characters. Lots of feels and lots of stellar acting and directing.

People seem more focused on Kim Soo-hyun (and he's, indeed, fantastic), but I thought Kim Ji-won did the best job at nailing a character whom you can pick out from a crowd. She nailed the combination of tough, direct, pragmatic, aloof, and vulnerable.

A warning: The male lead can seem weirdly callous in the initial episodes, but stick with it!

The movie-length episodes and the uninspired rehash of kdrama tropes in the end made me groan in relief by the very end instead of reveling in the afterglow. The villains were dreadfully one-note and a chore to watch. By the final quarter with the makjang-ness of it all, it felt like a throwback to those 1990s Lifetime (a channel in the US that ) movies - the kind that is geared towards women and depicting sad and terrible things happening to women.

I feel like the Park Ji-eun who could write such thoughtful and creative scenes for the "good guys" is capable of doing much more with the villains and wouldn't need to resort to overtired tropes, but she just chooses not to. And that is disappointing. So feel free to FF or do chores during the villains' parts and just focus on all the other good stuff.

The quality of the show is great. It reminds me of Descended from the Sun, You Who Came from a Star, and Crash Landing on You. It looks like a huge-budget production, with great wardrobes full of high-end sponsoring brands (Blgari, Valentino, Dior, Louis Vitton, Tiffany & Co., Cartier, Gucci, etc), so if you have the eye for fashion that might be cherry on top.

The writing makes the show gripping from the beginning to end, though it might progress a little slower near the finale ep. The show seems to follow the tried-and-tested formula that its predecessors had, and they made it wonderfully. This is your typical Kdrama, sprinkled with makjangish plotlines, laughter and tears in between each ep, and a wonderful, wonderful cast. While the lead couple shines with their beauty, their beautiful outfits, accessories, hairdo, and makeup, and their romantic and heart-rendering performance, we also have equally beautiful, beautifully dressed side characters with greatly captivating acting as well.

So in all, I’d say that if you’re ok if the first 2 eps and have the feeling that this might be it, go for it. I think it’ll be a good ride ;)