u/HooverGaveNobodyBeer

Some dramas tend to grow on me, and some others fade away or end up leaving a nasty aftertaste even though I really liked them at first. I’ve been noticing lately (within the last 6 months) how a deciding factor of which category a drama ends up in has been the ending notes. 

An ending note, as I’m using it here, is a particular scene, image, or interaction that occurs in the final minutes of the drama (definitely within the last half hour but probably in the last 15 minutes and most often the last scene), so it’s different than the finale episode itself.

Maybe more than other viewers, I get really interested in a drama’s themes and what it’s trying to say with its story. For me, an excellent ending note is one that encapsulates the primary theme of the drama without laying out its meaning literally. It boils the themes down to their essence, so they are both easy to identify and yet effervescent. Often, I find it hard to pin down exactly why these ending notes are perfect, yet they stick with me and become one of the first things I remember when I think of the dramas. 

Examples of dramas that have seriously grown on me:

• Mask Girl: I didn’t particularly care for it until its 4th ep. (out of 7), and even bits of the finale I was on the fence about at first. But then came the final scene where >!Mo Mi’s daughter is watching her mother as a child say when she grows up she wants everyone to love her.!< This sentiment is absolutely true to the character yet profoundly tragic. The scene just brings everything full circle so that even the earlier parts of the drama worked better with this context.  
• The King of Pigs: I felt underwhelmed by it and spent a lot of its runtime wondering, “Why is this so highly praised?” Yet, the scene at the end >!with the boys teasing each other, playing together, and just being kids!< brought tears to my eyes, thinking about how none of the tragedy was inevitable. It’s not providing answers, but it’s also saying that everything isn’t as bleak as we might think. 
• Money Game: The finale felt like an odd duck, like it was focusing on things that didn’t seem to matter that much. Moving into the final 20 minutes, I was scared that a confrontation that HAD to happen for the drama to feel satisfying would be left out. When it happens, suddenly not only the finale but the previous episode became sooo much more satisfying. Superficially, >!the ML and Heo Tae (his antagonist/ally/dark mirror) are discussing how Heo Jae murdered the ML’s father, but in reality the scene is about how Heo Jae infected the ML with his worldview. !<Everything about this scene operates on multiple levels. The more I sit with the drama, the more I find other aspects that are the same way.

Examples of dramas that I really liked but have faded or I’ve soured on: 

• You and Everything Else: As I watched it, I thought it got better and better. I know I was crying at the end and thought the finale was perfect. Yet, I barely ever go back and think about it. When I try to home in on its ending note, I’m left with the image of >!a closed door in the Swiss countryside.!< I know why I’m remembering this, but it doesn’t feel like what I should be focused on. When I try to grasp the meaning of the central friendship, it slips through my fingers. 
• Love, Take Two: This almost immediately won me over, and I enjoyed it immensely. However, the only specific moment I remember from the finale is >!the daughter calling the mother “her first love” coming out of surgery,!< but this happens at the very beginning of the episode. So here, while the finale had the “right” focus at the end with its theme about motherhood, it didn’t do anything particularly memorable with it to seal the deal. 
• The Art of Negotiation: The drama as a whole worked best when it was playing cat-and-mouse games with business dealings instead of trying to incorporate human stakes. Still, in the final two episodes, it focuses on the ML and his backstory. There should’ve been something revelatory there, but in the end, it didn’t feel like the drama had anything to say beyond, “You shouldn’t ignore human emotions when doing business,” which had been its mantra since the first episode. I didn’t have any specific complaints about the finale, but it feels like a missed opportunity when I look back.  
• Blind: At the beginning, the drama sets up its theme about the meaning of family. But as it goes along, it kind of forgets about this as it gets wrapped up in its intricate plotting. That means while the finale ties up the plot neatly, it forgets to say anything about family and instead gets sidetracked with ideas about revenge’s methods. So the investment I had in >!the brothers’ relationship (both pairs) and Eun Ki processing her paternity !<is left hanging. It feels like there’s no emotional payoff since the final scene is >!random boys playing a game!<. What's interesting is this is very similar to The King of Pigs's ending note but falls absolutely flat where that one hit me in the gut.

As a counterexample, The Devil Judge is a drama I loved initially only to LOATH the finale. Still, it has a perfect ending note–>!The ML not allowing Yo Han to be demonized nor held up as a hero before the government committee but also obsessively chasing his image through a crowded lobby!<–but that has not done much to help recapture the fascination I had through most of my watch, and I haven’t thought back on it as much as I expected to. So I don’t think an ending note is enough to turn an otherwise frustrating finale around. But it does feel like a powerful ingredient in the overall stew of a memorable drama. 

All my top dramas I’ve watched in 2026 have wonderful ending notes–Love in the Big City: >!Releasing paper latterns with the one who got away!<; The Interest of Love: >!A conversation ruminating on the meaning of their near-miss romantic relationship!<; The Queen Who Crowns: >!Watching her son perform the dance she performed with her husband at the beginning of the drama!<; Misty: >!The ML driving into the fog and the FL’s mask that she’s kept up her entire adult life finally cracking!<–yet, these are dramas that I loved so wholeheartedly that I’m not sure how central the ending notes are to how much they’ve stuck with me. Especially since Nobody Knows, my top drama from my 2025 watches, had a solid finale but no memorable ending note. This makes me wonder if ending notes are one of those elements that I just started paying attention to so that they seem more central to my enjoyment all of a sudden, especially since as a viewer what I’m paying attention to shifts depending on what I get interested in. It could very well be that ending notes are just my latest obsession.

So I’m wondering, not limited to the dramas I’ve discussed, do other people think about or pay attention to ending notes this way? Are there any dramas that you feel like your love for or how much they’ve stuck with you is because of a particularly great ending note or lack thereof?

While experts have often tied serial killers to abuse experienced in their childhood, normally these connections are tenuous, a sort of reverse engineering of risk factors rather than causation. In real life, the line from victim to killer is not so linear, which makes it harder to blame some one experience or trauma in real life. A boy abused by his mom usually doesn't start by killing his mom, the social worker who didn't help, the police officer who stood by, etc. By reimagining this connection in a more direct way, these dramas try to rationalize serial killers, turning a phenomenon most people cannot fathom into a tale about society's failures. 

These stories come from a place that is worried about the social contract to protect and raise children in a safe, loving environment. If adults can't or aren't protecting children, what happens to them? And what does that mean for the rest of society? Here killings are framed as considered rather than compulsive. Instead of being unable to control themselves due to the abuse they suffered, the characters reclaim the control they lost as children through careful payback. In reality, childhood trauma plays out far more messily in its consequences, so here in imagining a cohesive narrative with a one-to-one correlation, the dramas also clean up the problem and make it more manageable. However, as each drama shows in its own way, trauma cannot be contained so neatly. 

In each of these stories, main characters experience extreme abuse as children. In Blind and Awaken, this happens in facilities run by adults based on >!medical testing!< and>! parental abandonment!< respectively. In The King of Pigs, other children are the main culprits although adults are either powerless or normalize these behaviors. What each of these have in common is portraying the serial killer as a victim while the true villains are somewhere else. The real tragedy, according to these dramas, is what was done to them. The serial killer is never as hateable as the forces that created him. In The King of Pigs, the bullies are now grown but almost universally unrepentant and just as awful as they were as kids. No matter what punishment is visited upon them it's hard to feel bad. In Awaken, while the viewer does not immediately understand how the victims are tied to the original trauma, they are also not the kind of “perfect” victim we can pity. Blind takes this a step further by having the serial killer begin by targeting the children of the people he's out to punish. Even though the victims themselves are innocent, we can still sympathize with the killer’s motives given the horrors they are seeking revenge for and how awful the victims’ fathers are. 

One anxiety that feels concerning from a Western perspective is the distrust of mental healthcare to address this issue. Awaken explicitly deals with dissociative identity disorder, a mental health condition directly tied to trauma. The good news is that the character who was adopted to the US received care for the disorder and is shown as the most functional of the central trio. However, >!the serial killer is not helped through therapy but instead receives a drug that dispenses his condition miraculously while Jung Woo is shown as permanently suffering with no hope in sight. !<The message ends up being that any standard treatment now would be too late to do much good, so it’s not even worth trying. The King of Pigs nods to schizophrenia. Although it doesn't explore this in depth, the killer’s abandonment of active participation in his own therapy coincides with his turn to violence. How we interpret this is more open ended: Could therapy have stopped him from going down the violent path if he'd embraced it or was the past always going to be too strong for “talking” to do much good? Given the tenor of the drama as a whole, the latter seems more plausible as its outlook, especially considering >!how the killer's wife does not try to work with his therapist to get him back on track and instead turns to joint suicide as a solution. !<This reads like a disbelief in the power of therapy after a certain level of brokenness. Blind never explicitly engages with even the possibility of seeking mental healthcare for the main culprits even though >!Seong Hoon’s hidden cutting !<would normally be seen as an indicator of its necessity. Instead, the drama calls for the other victims, the ones who didn't become serial killers, to seek mental support, thus reinforcing the idea of therapy as a preventative measure instead of a path of healing that is valuable for its own sake.

Another anxiety is revealed through how in each drama one or more of the abuse victims ends up in law enforcement. Those who are failed by the system end up undermining it. In The King of Pigs, >!Jong Suk is the kind of cop whom cops look up to. He's managed this through repressing the past, even though his victim's dream was to become a cop, which shows it’s not fully buried. He is a criminal hiding under his identity as a representative of the law. He uses his position throughout to stymie the investigation through withholding information or misdirecting resources since disguising the truth of his own past is more important than stopping the criminal. !<In Awaken, >!the ML sends himself and his team hints of the crimes he is also investigating so that his position is also one of manipulation rather than revelation. Then when he starts on his own revenge against his abusers, he uses his knowledge of police reactions to his benefit.!< In Blind, the system is used even more explicitly. >!As a judge, Seong Hoon manipulates events not only to get a jury trial but also to select the exact set of jurors he wants. As well, he uses the respect he has as a judge for credibility in any information he gives the investigation, leading it in the direction he chooses. !<All of the stories distrust the criminal justice system to be impartial and protect. The system is manipulated to conceal instead of reveal. The tools that should have prevented the abuse in the first place are no more effective now, which reinforces the necessity of the killers seeking methods outside of their bounds. 

But law enforcement’s complicity is not alone in causing the revenge to spin out of control. Each drama's story is divided between two traumatized characters who represent control and chaos. One character plans a focused revenge against those who have wronged them while the other lashes out in unpredictable ways. In The King of Pigs >!Jong Suk’s goal is not relieving his own trauma on others but hiding it away. He just has no clear plan to do so, and his increasingly desperate efforts send him spinning out of control. This contrasts with Kyung Min’s carefully crafted plan where each person's punishment has been decided in advance as befitting their role in the bullying.!< In Awaken, >!it is the third child’s chaotic manipulated suicides that add the X factor that Jung Woo uses as a lever for his own masterminded plan. !<Something similar happens in Blind, but the results are far bloodier because >!here the chaotic and controlled efforts begin on the same team. Therefore, Yun Jae has access to Seong Hoon’s plan, and their shared past means Seong Hoon is unwilling to immediately abandon his chaotic partner, even after he has veered far off course. !<In each drama the character who represents control ends up being the more sympathetic one, as if channeling trauma into violence is admirable as long as it’s done in the right way. The chaotic character serves as a cautionary foil: If you don’t take your revenge, you could end up hurting those who are undeserving.

The dramas end in different places that reflect a scale of hopefulness. The King of Pigs is the darkest with a nihilistic message that none of this mattered, nothing will be fixed, and the same broken institutions will go chugging along. It feels like a scream into the void. On the other end of the scale, Awaken has the most hope. >!The main serial killer is “fixed” in a miraculous turn of events, and another major victim is a functional adult with a family and career. Jung Woo is the most broken but not unredeemable since he's shown as pulling back from his most out of control impulses and taking up the burden of caring for his abuser, facing the trauma head on as a means of catharsis. !<Even if they cannot be seen as fully healed, they're on their way. Blind lands in between. >!Yun Jae was completely broken far before the drama even begins, but Seong Hoon is in a more conflicted place where he is not ready to admit he was wrong but still feels uneasy with the outcome. !<This leaves those who were not direct victims to continue the good fight through awareness building, something the drama half-heartedly applauds.

The dramas leave me with various levels of unease depending on where they come down on violence is a solution. In each case, the killer ultimately gets what they want: Secrets are unearthed, and injustice is addressed. While violence begets violence, these stories superficially seem to claim their violence ends the cycle and thus provides catharsis. And that's something that seems like even more of a fantasy than a serial killer with a clear-cut motive. This is probably why I find Awaken the most dissatisfying since its end to the evil is the neatest and most complete. Blind pays lip service to the idea that the serial killer’s methods were wrong, but the call to make sure tragedy of this type does not strike again would never be made without him. It seems to want it both ways. Only The King of Pigs acknowledges that while the killer’s project is completed, it doesn’t really matter in terms of the larger picture: Kids will keep being bullied, and the same people ostracizing the bullies now are the same ones who fail to speak up when it happens again. The police will continue to look after their own. So what does this violence really fix in the end? And that’s a question I’ll keep asking as a viewer because to me fiction is never just fiction. It’s a way of exploring the kind of stories that ring true to us and which assumptions and values we’re willing to embrace and reject, no matter how stories package them to sell to us. 

I want to make a plea in the name of making this sub a more positive and welcoming space again.

If you adore X drama, no matter what it is, no matter what I think of it, I will respect your right to that opinion, just as I hope you respect my right to mine, even if it is the opposite. We can express opposite opinions in a friendly and respectful manner. We can certainly point out if someone gets something factually wrong or seems to misinterpret something about that drama. I am in no way asking that people stop disagreeing. 

What I am asking is that if someone says, “I don’t have any interest in that drama,” we respect this. We can certainly ask why they don’t want to watch it or share what we liked about it, but telling them, “You’re missing out,” is basically saying, “You will like what I like!” Which we have no way of knowing. It also assumes you understand that person’s tastes better than they understand their own. 

Similarly, if someone says they watched multiple episodes of a drama and dropped it because it wasn’t for them, please don’t say, “You should keep going. It’s great!” Again, this assumes your subjective experience of the drama will match theirs. Of course, there are certain dramas where you could say, “I think you might want to stick with it until ep. 4 since the vibe changes.” But again, this is giving advice, not telling them they are “wrong” somehow for having a different view of the drama than you do. 

Especially when you have a different opinion than the person you are responding to, it’s important to take a moment to think through what you’re saying and how it could be interpreted by the other person as attacking their opinion or preferences. All of us doing our best to frame our POV in a friendly manner instead of an antagonistic one can really go a long way. 

I know there has been a lot of discussion lately around here about how the vibe of this sub has changed, and this is one of the shifts I’ve seen that bothers me the most. I know this behavior has always been here, but it really does seem to be increasing in prevalence, so I wanted to offer my own POV about how we could course correct as a community if we choose. 

Please feel free to share your own thoughts about how to engage with others positively to make this community feel like a cozy space again!

Why I Love The Devil Judge

The drama never backs down from its thorniness. It refuses easy answers to the moral dilemma at its center: Do the ends justify the means when faced with overwhelming injustice baked into the system or does having a “code” and lines you will not cross matter more? Instead of simply posing this question, it engages with it again and again, bringing in new scenarios and having the characters who represent the different positions weigh in. Kang Yo Han (the eponymous judge, played by Ji Sung) represents the view that only ends matter and repeatedly doubles down on the fact that he will do “much worse” to achieve them. Su Hyeon (Park Gyu Young) continually stands up for the process and that breaking oaths as someone sworn to protect justice can never be right. For her, ethical principles matter more than changing the world for the better. This leaves Kim Ga On (Park Jin Young) stuck in the middle. In a different drama, his reactions might feel like flip-flopping, but here, with each new situation, he is truly considering how far is too far? What oaths need to be kept? Which principles can be bent? What makes this drama so, so special is instead of offering an “answer” or shrugging off the question altogether in the name of “Let’s just punish the bad guys! Yeah!” it wants us to think about all these perspectives as having something to offer. 

I love how the drama never says, “Yo Han was just misunderstood and didn't do anything horrible after all.” While he isn’t a straight villain, he is violent, manipulative, and misanthropic and has no problem lying to achieve his goals. In a different drama, one would expect a reveal that >!he didn’t actually turn his classmates against each other for judging him a monster, !<but the drama never backs away from his ugliness. Whenever I was inclined to sympathize with him in one scene, the drama rubbed my face in his dark side the next. For example, >!after introducing Ga On to his “helpers” who all have injustices that have brought them to his side, he almost murders someone, not for any grand principles but because they had the audacity to mess with a person he cares about.!< He despises the public whom he manipulates just as much as the elites he's fighting to take down. This begs the question of why he's fighting at all. It mostly seems like a grudge. These particular people in power got on his bad side, and he wants to destroy them. There's no positive change Yo Han talks about; he talks about “punishment.” He channels the rage of society, willing to let it burn whomever he doesn’t personally care about. He embodies the worst consequences of his seductive worldview, showing that his philosophy means not only punishing the guilty but also strangling someone because they pissed you off. Anyone who watches this and sees Yo Han as a hero forgot to take their Walter White glasses off. 

I love that the drama keeps stoking the tension between Ga On and Yo Han instead of resolving it. The push-pull of their relationship is both philosophical and personal. As much as Yo Han tries to seduce Ga On to his side, he doesn't fully succeed. Ga On sympathizes with Yo Han but doesn't fully trust him. He loves him more than he agrees with him. He calls him “pitiful” far more than he calls him “right.” He recognizes that Yo Han taps into justifiable anger, but he can't wholeheartedly embrace his methods. This is shown>! in the end in front of the government when his defense of Yo Han is measured instead of passionate. !<For his part, Yo Han wants Ga On from the beginning, both as an ally and >!as a stand-in to prove his brother could still love him even after what he has become.!< While this craving never alters his fundamental beliefs or softens his methods, on the personal front, Ga On has a clear effect. As much as Yo Han is forcing Ga On to reckon with the darkness of the worst of humanity, Ga On is dragging parts of him toward the light through the fundamental joy of personal connection.

A lot of dramas have Christian windowdressing. This drama actually wrestles with Christianity as a moral framework by having Yo Han represent its antithesis. Here Yo Han becomes Satan as a source of disruption as opposed to a force of evil. He’s the original rulebreaker who refused to follow God without questioning. In the same way, as a judge, You Han refuses to play by society’s rules that should govern his actions since they’re the means by which the powerful keep the weak in submission. Additionally, Satan is a tempter who urges people to give into their dark desires. Ga On wants to make the world a better place, and Yo Han is telling him he can do it, as long as he lets go of his pesky ethics. There’s a “fight for the soul” conflict at the heart of this with Su Hyeon and Yo Han playing the roles of angel and devil. However, the drama feels more like a referee than on the side of the angels. While the devil is holding out a heady, dangerous drug, the angel’s side is toothless, playing it safe by claiming only the problems right in front of it are its business and ignoring the structural injustice since it cannot be solved while playing by the rules.

The tug-of-war between Yo Han and Su Hyeon is further complicated by her symbolizing the “wholesome” straight sexuality (what Ga On should want according to society) while he represents the hedonistic, queer one. >!Even the kiss Ga On and Su Hyeon share feels chaste and safe in a way his interactions with Yo Han never do. !<Since Ga On never displays sexual desire for her while immediately being drawn to Yo Han, this equates queer desire more with what is true but socially unacceptable than “evil.” As someone who has found claims of homoeroticism in other dramas overblown, I was pleased to find that is not the case here. The intensity with which Yo Han gazes at Ga On is toe curling. While I don't want to oversell this and leave people feeling burned (like I was with the GL levels in Friendly Rivalry), both men feel queer-coded through subtle hints. There are several domestic scenes where they are positioned together as a couple. While this aspect never becomes overt, the drama certainly feels like a dark romance at times. Both Ji Sung and Park Jin Young, who plays the wide-eyed ingenue perfectly, absolutely sell this subtext. 

Why I Hate the Devil Judge

I want to preface this by saying the drama is absolutely brilliant until near the end of ep. 15, so the first couple of points are just what stopped it from being a 10/10 drama until then so don’t quite qualify for reasons I “hate” the drama. The true rant will focus on the last 20 minutes of ep. 15 and ep. 16. 

While I love the aesthetics created by the excellent production design, the worldbuilding is lacking. The elites recognize the economy is in trouble due to high unemployment but instead of scheming to create more exploitative jobs that people would take out of desperation, they want to segregate the poor with their ultimate goal remaining blurry since >!Seon Ah’s reaction makes it clear that it wasn’t supposed to be illegal medical testing.!< I still don't understand how a virus that killed many people would lead to extreme unemployment since there would be fewer people to fill the necessary positions. The drama doesn’t seem like it thought through the economics of its setting. The dystopian aspects as a whole feel like windowdressing when all it really wanted was the court of justice as reality TV.  

One choice that frustrated me was >!turning the Bamboo Spears into a tool of the government instead of showing them as a side effect of Yo Han’s methods as the earlier episodes imply, such as when the kids play at flogging. !<The drama at its finest doesn't let Yo Han off the hook, even while showing the appeal of his point of view. This aspect partially erases his culpability in playing the game in a way that doesn’t care about collateral damage. One of the drama's sharpest insights is that the same kind of people would cheer for Judge Kang and the president, but unfortunately it doesn’t follow up on it, as if their goals being different matters more than their appeal being fundamentally the same. 

Why is it that drama thrillers just can't help themselves and need to throw in that last minute twist to up the stakes even if the drama would be stronger without it? >!Judge Min, along with Su Hyeon (whose death means he's standing alone at this point), represents those who want to protect justice as a process instead of focusing on the satisfaction of punishing the guilty. He’s the philosophical opposition of Judge Kang, so saying he's really the same and he’ll use any means necessary to stop what he thinks is wrong undercuts the character’s narrative purpose. The drama doesn't need him to make a point about those who profess goodness but actually are self-serving since the Foundation has been playing this role the entire drama. What I find particularly egregious is that the drama got nothing out of this. If he hadn’t been a sellout who betrayed Ga On's trust, the plot could’ve ended up in the exact same place. He could've been manipulated while thinking he was doing the right thing. There's no reason he wouldn't have believed that Yo Han was in fact guilty and put Ga On on his trail with the best of intentions. A different spin and the reveal that Ga On had been used as a tool against Yo Han could've worked the same while pointing out that Judge Min’s worldview was fundamentally naive instead of having yet another example of someone being corrupted through personal greed so he wasn't really the person the drama showed us the whole time. !<

Also, the reveal >!of the truth behind the fire felt underwhelming, made worse by all the characters interpreting it bizarrely. Yo Han has a REASON to feel guilty because he left a small child alone playing with fire. As well, her parents were pretty unconcerned about where their 6-year-old daughter was. Watching this, I thought the fire was entirely the adults’ fault for not intervening when they had a duty to do so. But Yo Han is only obsessed with protecting Elijah from knowing about her actions, not reflecting on his own. I understand not wanting his niece to know she started the fire, but Ga On’s horror at the video made me roll my eyes. There's a reason we don't send six year-olds to juvie for arson, but everyone acts like Elijah not only will feel guilty but should feel guilty. !<Then the consequences go no further than that scene. The background mystery fizzles out with a whimper. I believed this MUST be the drama's low point, and it would pull out a decent finale, but it only got worse from here. 

The scenes >!in the secret medical facility!< feel like they belong in an entirely different, much dumber drama. >!The idea that over a hundred people DYING from a vaccine is within safety parameters made me LOL only to realize how sad it is that someone might actually believe this. And if you die from drug testing, doctors are not harvesting your organs! The drama could've gotten the same message across with a skosh of reasoning. They could've killed people with an unsafe vaccine and recognized they needed to do better in order to sell it. The organ harvesting could’ve been a totally separate project.!< None of the horror would've been diminished. 

Could we also (jaebal!) put a moratorium on >!last-episode fakeout deaths? Either do it earlier in the drama or have the person actually die. I've never seen this trope done in a way I can get behind. When Yo Han reappears, Ga On says that it's such a relief he's alive, but in screentime he'd been dead less than 10 minutes and was ANYONE fooled by this? Was there a single viewer who thought that off-screen “death” was real? !<It seems insulting in its laziness. And it does this not only once but twice! Are you freaking kidding me!?!?!?

At first I thought >!the suicide bomb was a smart move. If this aspect had been done right, it could've been a great way to highlight how Ga On and Yo Han are still fundamentally different in their philosophies: Ga On is willing to sacrifice himself to achieve his goals while Yo Han sees self-sacrifice as one more form of manipulation. I thought Ga On's plan was to go into the courtroom party with the demand to be live streamed and the threat that if they didn't comply they'd all die, this would've worked so much better than what happens instead. But his actual plan is sending out an email . . . Huh? His argument is if the content is juicy enough it will get reported, but why would they broadcast this after a suicide bomb instead of just covering the bombing itself, perhaps with some manufactured juiciness, especially considering the government’s threats? As the bomb ticked down, I said, “This is when Yo Han shows up” a second before he did. !<A plot that went from unpredictable in the best way was suddenly predictable in the worst. 

The climactic scene where the villains are punished feels like a thrown together first draft. >!You're telling me they shut down all social media and “forgot” an app that was the poster child of the trouble that social media caused them?!?!? COME ON!!! Then the vote feels so weird. Especially considering how slim the evidence presented against Seon Ah is, I would've been in that 1% voting against this, but it seems like the drama is over it and wants to jump to the inevitable. And what's the point of the recreation of the church scene? We know they’re horrible and selfish, so what does this prove? Empty symbolism over substance, bleck! Also, why wouldn't Seon Ah walk straight to the exit as everyone else is fighting? Killing herself doesn't fit with anything we've seen from this character so far. She could easily escape and rebuild. It feels like the drama wants to paint her as morally gray in the end between this and the scene at the medical facility, but this is even more laughable than Yo Han being a hero. !<This was the scene when the finale went from poorly written to a betrayal. However, I will give it points for the last two scenes, >!where Ga On is testifying in front of the government and how he sees Yo Han but isn’t sure if he’s there, !<providing a solid closing beat that feels worthy of the drama, if not its finest moments.  

Final Thoughts

After the drama lost me at the end of ep. 15, I spent the entire finale tearing it apart. All the love I’d put into it curdled into hate in a way that would've been impossible if I hadn't adored it in the first place. The finale felt like some prank to see how thoroughly it could ruin the drama. Maybe the lead writer went on vacation and left the last episode in the hands of an intern? I had tears in my eyes because I hated it sooooo much. If I didn't already recognize that most viewers get bent out of shape about MUCH different things than I do, I'd wonder how this is not one of the most reviled finales of all time. But I’ve participated in enough online discussions to understand that I'm probably mostly alone in this. At least I can find a little closure in ranting. Like a beautiful relationship turned sour, it'll take me a while to get over The Devil Judge. 

Even though I know it's cheesy, it feels weirdly fitting to end this review/rant with a couple of quotes that reflect the dialectic at the heart of this drama as well as my feelings about it: 

>We have to be careful that in throwing out the devil, we don't throw out the best part of ourselves.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

>We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection . . . when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

– Abraham Lincoln