Reviewing Defendant

Soooo while I’m not reading I guess I’m just going to do reviews of things I’ve watched in the past like dramas because I MUST KEEP THIS COLUMN ALIVE lol.

Defendant was a pretty decent watch but the ending was particularly lacking for me even though (obviously) the bad guy gets put down. Also in an attempt to justify why I’m always late to all the drama parties, I just have to say that I just got into k-dramas last summer and I also haven’t been consistently watching drama episodes weekly or something due to school stuff 😛 Also my drama watching involves a lot of skipping typically unless I need subs because then you gotta go to some of the other sites so lol.

This review will mainly be a rant about the ending just because it’s the main thing that I remember about this lmaooo. There might be spoilers in this, but I guess it depends on your definition of spoilers.

*All photos and media belong to their respective owners. If you would like me to take something down, just lemme know!

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Drama Name: Defendant
Episode Count: 18
Rating: ★★★
Synopsis: Park Jeong Woo is a prosecutor at Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office. One day, he wakes up and finds himself a convict on death row. Suffering from temporary amnesia, Jeong Woo has no idea what transpired to land him in prison. He struggles to recover his memory and clear his name before his time is up.

Rant:

Before we begin, I just have to make a few clarifications. I watched this drama months ago, so there’s not going to be much detail besides how some parts made me feel because feelings are pretty much what resonate with me most and I can actually remember them unlike other stuff 😶 lol.

The drama pulled off the thriller part and secretive part super well, and I liked a few of the twists that were pulled in some of the episodes. I didn’t think that this drama really made you watch because of the twists, but I ended up just watching this to the end because the bad guy was so EVIL and I literally just could not handle him.

First of all. The bad guy is literally flawless and OP. He has pretty much ALL the power in the drama and he also apparently doesn’t do anything that incriminates himself. Even in the scene where he was finally turned in, you see his lackey is the one who messes up. He only messed up one time, and that was near the end. I felt like the drama wrapped up very quickly, so they were honestly trying to make things work.

We see scenes of the bad guy doing all of these horrible things to different people, but GUESS WHAT. Even though the main conflict focuses on one crime (with a LOT of side crimes), he only gets put in jail for a single side crime. The drama was literally prepping us so hard for the bad guy getting punished, but I personally did not feel like he completely “paid back” everything that he owed to all of the innocent people who he harmed in the drama.

So basically. Every time I saw this guy in the drama I had a heart attack because he angered me so much.

But despite the ending and the stupid bad guy, the drama was executed extremely well. I thought the fact that Jeong Woo wasn’t losing his memory again (after losing it maybe 3 or 4 times) was really uncanny. Also felt like it would have been a huge twist if it had been triggered rather than just happening psychologically but welp.

Really loved the acting~ I thought the guy who played the bad guy did an admirable job playing two people since he plays twins with one of the twins being the bad guy who is consumed with hatred and yet at times, you can’t help but feel sympathy for him (at least in the beginning). Also Jeong Woo was also pretty well done (at least from what I remember). His child was also super cute and a really good actor!

The intensity of some parts was absolutely great. I felt that bigger twists could have happened at different parts, but even without those twists, the feeling of unveiling more and more secrets was pretty nice.

And OH RIGHT.

One of the side characters who is Jeong Woo’s wife’s brother (I think uhh), was super annoying. Like honestly, I would also really feel angry towards someone who killed his own wife (at least all the evidence pointed to that), but it felt overly done. His shift when he believed Jeong Woo was SUPER ABRUPT. It was like “omg you’re lying to me, stop telling me you didn’t kill my wife” and that immediately changes to “oh i believe you now, let’s get revenge”. Some shifts in these types of dramas are super overdone and just weird tbh.

Also before I end, I just have to say that all of the relationships that were created in this drama were really special and you could really see the bond created between all the characters. Shoutout to Shin Cheol ShikXJeong Woo bromance lol.

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Other Recommendations:

Some recommendations are taken from my watch list and others are just loosely connected dramas through actors and such that you may also enjoy.

• W
  • You might like this for the interconnected plots and such if you liked Defendant’s schemes and secrets
• Secret
  • Ji Sung (the person who played Jeong Woo) is also in this! If you liked him in Defendant you may enjoy him here where he plays an overbearing rich guy who eventually falls in love.

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That’s all for now folks! Hopefully I’ll actually be reading something by next week…

If not, I will just revive the Learn Chinese column so I have something to blog about LOL.

If you guys have any thoughts or further recommendations, let me know in the comments! Also this review didn’t really mention anyone’s name because I was writing the rant from what I remember which does not include people’s names apparently lol. I only ranted about like two characters tho so lol do you really need names for that?