This drama give me thrills. Its not your average drama and the characters are interesting. Look - there's people here who complain about the "wooden" characters and don't realise that the acting is a reflection of the writing. This is based of webtoon and Park Seo Joon stoicness IS a defining character trait that his character has to work around and he does try despite how uncomfortable and messy it was (as how growing up is in real life). People forget there was a a total of 10 years time skip and the character did not just did a 180 per se, I've gathered a character analysis of mine and other thoughts of their developement below. You need to think about it that way, they had to fit a webtoon into 16 episodes. And believe me, I know they could have gone to at least 30 episodes with the amount of character growth, but they did the best with what they have and made the series drama length. The writing, acting, story was good, and worth the watch.

Here both the main leads are opposite in personality yet bonded with one thing in common, and their choices in own journey is what brings them together. This is a drama about the underdog and the usual heroic traits that is emodied by Park Sae Ro Yi through his usual determination and stoicness and his unbending to his principles despite the tragedies he face. The main story is about how he will accomplish the hard task of beating down Jangga Co, headed by Chairman Jang. However he is not an infallible hero and soon, encountering many life lessons, from people in his past and present, the Dan Bam crew, Yi Seo, Soo Ah, the brothers, through pursuing his revenge, they come to understand what is most important in their life and how much you can change your life with just the choices you make.

No character here is perfect. And this is its main strengths. There are so many themes explored: what being true to yourself costs, is it worth doing it if it hurts others (no matter how you try not to get others involved), how parents shape their child, what life is all about, and what is important in the end. This drama allows you to experience many emotions and its this that make the crew stronger and wiser. Here, a hero becomes a real human, that needs to be grounded in life and be shrewder to actually accomplish his objectives. And to navigate all of the traps set by his enemies requires planning, strategy and patience. Our hero may have patience but the writers are honest in showing that he needs others to be his second set of eyes and to teach him his on what he is lacking, and the fact is, he can't do it alone. They need each other to be successful and only after that, is he able to defeat his enemies, and the for him, closure over his own tragedies in what he calls, "his endless nights".

The acting was good, casting was great, and writing, pacing, direction was well done and music represents their struggle well, I love V's theme.

Some of the weaknesses of this drama: The main evil person is SO evil, that his character never for once causes us to takes his words seriously even IF there an element of truth because we all think "oh, he is manipulating us again" The writers don't give him a real chance to show us his inner thoughts other that this character really is beyond salvation. We all dislike him because that make him easy to hate. Despite that he has a story of how he was poor and wanted to feed his family to make the business, we don't understand WHY he became such a ugly character. And then the show hints that aw, he started from the bottom like Sae Ro Yi, but doesn't go on to show anything else. So he serves as just a shadow of maliciousness waiting for SRY to meet him at the final boss battle. His premise leaves a lot of questions to be explored.

Also some of the themes did NOT have time to be expressed well. Like the transgender issue, racial issue, bullying issue. There was many themes just jampacked in a show of only 16 episodes which could have fit more. I understand maybe the main story wasn't enough to also fit in the new themes while avoiding filler episodes so there's that. It would have been better to leave it out then because stories like Tony and the grandma side story and also his time in prison and the gangster history was also left to dust. Similarily, the love story and IC's growth also had potential to do more instead of the 10 year time skip which is a lot, but still I felt they knew to prioritise those two stories the most and it showed. The 2 main stories they did choose to develop, developed well despite the rush and was a fresh take that Kdrama land needed.

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On Yiseo and Saeroyi relationship:

I like the dynamic between Sae Ro Yi and Yi Seo. They are similar in personalities, but one distinct difference is that he stands by his conviction even when he gets punished for it, while YiSeo reminds me of Ying Luo from Story of Yanxi Palace; cunning, intuitive, resourceful, intelligent but with a heart of gold.

Where SRY's philosophies and kindness puts him in a position where he ends up being the 'suffer in silence' type, YiSeo has no such qualms in striking back AND gets away with it, even if her audacity [or recklessness] gets her into trouble.

I like that she chose him; to support and protect him from that particular weakness [helplessness against injustice] that he has, how they balance each other's outlook in life literally like Yin and Yang; her rash, apathetic attitude with his wisdom, his destructive temper with her cool-headed shrewdness. The fact that this time it was a female lead that was the rock in the relationship, the one pursuing the guy and staying by his side.

I'm not really sure why people expect PSY to make a total 180. He has never been good at expressing his emotions and showing his affection towards others. We've seen how much he loves Yiseo by how much he shares with her, how honest he is with her. It may not be the most exciting way to show it but it's realistic to his character.