As I've said (too)many times before there are a small amount of photos which should be outlawed for how sizzling they are! That bottom one above is which is another that is wayyyy up there on my all time pictures list! Always takes me so long to begin drama posts, doesn't matter what format I use. This 'Current Watches' series began about five years ago and only discussed movies, did four posts and then never continued with it. But was getting so burnt out writing up long posts for dramas and must have done 800 of those from 2022 until last August and said enough is enough! But didn't want to give up talking about dramas and movies for I do watch many plus when this blog began about fifteen years ago those were the main themes of the blog and hasn't that changed over time?
At first these were easier to write up but now I'm sliding back into my old ways and the posts are becoming too long. Which is very understandable for it's hard to discuss what happened in 2-4 episodes of a drama in just a few paragraphs but that was the main point, just giving a brief synopsis about a drama or film along with some of my thoughts and whatever else. A goal in the near future is to do drama recap posts where up to four episodes will be included, each will have 3-4 paragraphs and that seems like something I can do. But not for another month or two as let me experiment with that different format and a shorter drama would be a good test. This post for today will be different than the previous dozen posts since September as I'll just be talking about two dramas and have just finished both off. The pair of series were much better than expected and so much took place thought having a post devoted to the two dramas would work out better. This series does make me pay attention more to shows and to also finish a drama which in the past didn't always happen. It's also been a place where I can discuss some American TV shows and for the most part had watched only one until late 2024. Am juggling a quartet of those shows and will talk about them in the next post in this series.
EDIT: Changed things up and will only be recapping the final four episodes of "Liar Game". This post would have been too long had "Undercover High School" been added in and discuss that a bit further down. Will have the recap for the final two 'Undercover' episodes in about a week.
For I will have a post that day or right after for Se-Yeon who will be hitting the age of 32, my top three Korean women were all born under the sign of Aquarius and their combined age is 106 years old! Won't be discussing Se-Yeon after this paragraph and save everything for that birthday post, I try to lead off the posts for this semi-regular series with a massive fave that hasn't had a post for a while. On January 31st Se-Yeon's newest drama began, it's her first since 2024 and is titled "Recipe for Love" and she has the lead role in it. Weekend dramas are the most popular shows in Korea and they do last much longer than other dramas, will have some screenshots and such in her birthday post. The bottom two pics below are from the 2015 movie "Enemies in Law" and in all honesty Se-Yeon did leave me speechless.... and of course breathless!!!!
The main star of that terrific series is the taxi driver Lee Je-Hoon, he plays the character of Kim Do-Gi and if you're ever in a fight that's the man you want backing you! One of the other recent dramas I've obtained is "The Art of Negotiation" which Lee also has the starring role in and it aired last year. That looks to be such an interesting and suspenseful series yet the length of the episodes are the longest I've ever seen. The series is a dozen episodes which add up to be almost 900 minutes or 75 a show! Those are long episodes so even if I just watch two in a night they still add up to be 2 1/2 hours, I'll view the show but not right away. So that's three series in the 'To Watch' list, you can also add in the second season of "Sukeban Deka" and did view the first ten of 42 episodes and paused after that so need to start on that again. There's also a very old Japanese series from the mid 1960's titled "The Samuari", I have seasons five through nine and there's about a dozen episodes in a season. But the shows are only 23 minutes in length so that's another option, so isn't the Korean series "Low Life" that aired last year but was set in the 1970's. It's about a group of treasure hunters and smugglers who search for some lost gold and priceless ceramics that sunk in the year 1323. I don't pay too much attention to reviews but they were so positive about that show decided to check it out. Besides those six there's also a few others from Japan and Korea on my list, at times it can get so frustrating deciding what to view next!
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Or would it be the above woman Nam Da-Jung who recruited the other man Ha to help her out when Da-Jung lost all of her cash at the end of the first episode? Ha (31 in age and so isn't Kang) had been a college professor but when his mother committed suicide he took revenge for the man responsible. However there wasn't enough evidence to try Ha for murder but he did spend a year in prison for swindling. On Ha's first day out of prison Da-Jung hunted him down for help and eventually Ha became a contestant with the main reason being that he may be able to find out the real reasons behind his mother's death. At one time there were 22 contestants, entering episode nine we're now down to eight and for the final challenge only four are planned to remain. Will have one section for episode's nine and ten followed by many screenshots of the action. Then will have another for the final two episodes, each section will have 3-4 paragraphs and now may change the format of this post. ****For if I add in the second drama "Undercover High School" this post will be way too long and a huge reason for these posts were to make recaps shorter. So at this point am 95% sure I will have that other drama in a different post and just devote this one to "Liar Game". With the ending it seemed 99.8% certain there would be a second season but it never happened.
The Japanese version of "Liar Game" is my all time drama from that country and have viewed it at least 25 times but bet it's been close to four years since last viewing it. So unsure about some things from that series as I have forgotten, the challenges the entrants have done have been the same up until now but is the order they played them the same? Below are 22 screenshots from episodes nine and ten, could have taken three times that amount! In the top one is the professor Ha, he was talking to a reporter he trusted whose name was Goo Ja-Young. Wish her role was larger as she was one attractive woman, in real life her name is Choi Yoon-So. She's discovered some of Kang's background info, he was the host of the Liar Game show but is now a contestant. Goo's report showed that Kang had spent quite a few years in America, he graduated from college there and had worked on Wall Street. But Ha had heard of that Walden Two project and it was very controversial, was Kang one of their subjects? It appears so and a few times Kang has mentioned to Ha that they shared some time together when youngsters, that Ha has no memory of. The fifth screenshot down is of the Liar Game's director Lee who became the host when Kang joined the game, Lee was one slimy and not to be trusted man!
Game/challenge #5 is called 'The Smuggling Game', the two teams are East and West Nations. The game is now down to eight contestants, four are on each team and it was presumed they would be the same team as the previous challenge. Not so for Kang traded away his only female Jamie who is the most devious of the eight, she now has to work with the innocent and naive Da-Jung while Kang's team gets the expert hacker Choi who is in the fourth screenshot. That hurt Ha's teams as him and Choi were becoming close friends, that's one reason Kang whisked him away. In the Smuggling Game the object is to smuggle money past your opponents, at first it sounds confusing but not after you've watched a few rounds. Each team has a bank account of 25 million Won, they can withdraw up to 100,000 Won for each smuggling attempt. The rules are somewhat simple, there's two contestants that face off in each round, one perhaps trying to smuggle out a suitcase full of cash and the other player trying to thwart that attempt, you can bring anywhere from 100 to 100,000 Won. If the player trying to stop the smuggling says pass then the person with the suitcase was successful.... to an extent. If he/she were carrying money then they've had a successful smuggling and could keep the money. But if the player said 100,000 Won to the smuggler and that's how much was in there then the attempt was a failure and the other team could take the money back. Think the game went on for thirty rounds, the team whose account was the largest at the end were the winners and could move on to the next round. As long as the person who guesses the amount in the suitcase doesn't go over that amount his team could claim the money. For instance if the declarer said 70,000 won and there was 50,000 won in the suitcase he stopped the smuggling, if the amounts were switched then the smuggler was successful.
It may sound a tad confusing at first and I was a bit lost too but caught on quickly. I'm not going to explain everything that happened in the 'Smuggling Game', I give enough details to hopefully make some viewers interested in a drama and wonder how often(if ever!) that's worked out? Things did look bleak at first for Ha's team, Kang was often the player from his team who would guess how much if any money a suitcase held and uncannily he was correct 100% of the time! Ha became very suspicious and what he noticed was his teammate Da-Gul secretly sending messages to Kang. Da-Gul is the older man you often see with Ha and Da-Jung, he was in the same prison with Ha and they became friends but not close ones. When Da-Jung's father lost all of his money and went into hiding Da-Gul was the loan shark who tried to get his agency's money back. Which didn't work well as Da-Gul was very soft hearted as he took a liking towards Da-Jung and would secretly help her out, he was recruited into the game in episode seven. Kang had blackmailed Da-Gul into telling him how much money his team was smuggling, if he refused then Da-Jung may be severely hurt!
That Da-Gul told Ha who was very understanding and told Da-Gul to give Kang the wrong info for the next round. That enabled Da-Jung to smuggle 100,000 won and Kang was beyond furious, from then on out his team lost every single round! Which meant Ha's team soon overtook Kang's team for most money smuggled out and ended up being the victors. Forget how much money was on the line for this game but by now the money didn't seem to matter, if a player made it this far then a loss wouldn't be as devastating as a loss in the first round. Under the normal rules four players would be left.... Ha, Da-Jung, Da-Gul and Jamie who was one extremely hot woman! But the director Lee really wanted to see his ex-host Kang make it to the finals as the ratings would be massive plus he wanted to know what secrets Kang had about Ha and as we learned he also had some about Da-Jung. So a new game would be held with the four that made up Kang's team to have a fifth player for the final challenge, however Ha paid Choi's exit fee for being such a trusted friend and ally so this off the cuff challenge would begin in episode eleven. There was also a few other betrayals that went on during the 'Smuggling Game' such as ATM cards being stolen and/or destroyed but as I said above don't want to reveal all that happened and you can't in four paragraphs.
There will be a few days off until the game to determine which of the three from Kang's team moves on to the final round. Below Da-Jung went back to her PT job at a coffee shop, she was listening to an interview with her father and from what he said was her now close mate Ha responsible for the father going bankrupt? Not really and as we came to discover this Liar Game was such an elaborate scheme created by Kang, we learned early in this episode he's actually the owner of JVN-TV which is airing the show and is looking to make a killing selling the station because of the Liar Game ratings! The first half of episode eleven was devoted to a game of Poker to decide who will be the fifth entrant in the final challenge, the threesome were Kang along with his two teammates Koo and Bulldog. Neither name was mentioned until now but their faces have been seen in many screenshots, Koo was forty in age and a washed up actor who had been popular at one time. Bulldog was a gangster but at one time was such an excellent boxer, he claimed to Koo he could see the Joker in the deck which he could and for a while it appeared Bulldog would make it to the final game which would have been a ratings disaster.
This Poker game was a different version as it only used seventeen cards, a Joker along with the four Kings, Queens, Jacks and Tens, a player was dealt four cards. Bulldog got on an early hot streak but that may have been the plan of Kang's who asked that the shuffling be changed and his strategy made me roll my eyes as it was a bit too unbelievable. After Bulldog asked for a new card or two Kang always asked for four, each time he received four of a kind!!!! After Kang ended up winning this challenge he explained how his strategy worked and how four cards in the deck would always be in order. Which to me was close to impossible and this was the only long scene and game that didn't work out well. But Kang made it to the finals where the last challenge was called "Last Man Standing", the five players were Ha, Da-Jung, Jamie, Dal-Gu and Kang. Each player was handed a pistol and of course it only shot blanks, the object was to hit an opponent five times to eliminate them. There were three options to each round, you could add a bullet to your gun as all only had one to begin with and they could hold up to five. Option #2 was that you could fire at an opponent and try to take away one of their hearts but the third option was to Pass/Protect, that meant if someone fired their gun at you the bullets would have no effect.... don't think this was a game in the 2007 version of "Liar Game". No talking was allowed unless it was your turn or you were the person being fired at, it didn't take too long for Dal-Gu and Jamie to be eliminated and the sponsors got their wish for who they wanted as players in the final round.
Jamie and Dal-Gu did watch the final match for the team had an agreement that the prize money would be split between the pair along with Ha, Da-Jung along with Choi who left before the Poker game. This is the third paragraph in this section, won't go past four so some things won't be explained too fully. In this final "Last Man Standing" game most of the rules were the same but each player now had fifteen hearts instead of five with the biggest change being they could no longer Pass/Protect so the game could move quickly. But things were stretched out a bit and what we saw more of were flashbacks on how there was a connection to Ha, Da-Jung and Kang. All had spent time in the same orphanage twenty years ago, Ha's mother ran the place and seemed like such a decent woman. Da-Jung was there for her father needed time to earn money for his wife's surgery, after about six months he came back for his daughter. So of the trio Kang was the only true orphan and the threesome did become friends in the short time they were together. Kang was such an intelligent youngster and had been 'bought' by an American family. However they were part of that Walden Two project and experiments were performed on Kang, it did make him even more intelligent but it also gave him such an evil side. This series could have used two more episodes to fully explain things, there wasn't enough time for Kang's entire horrific past to be told. Also during this flashback scene Da-Jung's father in present time had been kidnapped by some of Kang's thugs and that was to make sure the game's outcome would go according to Kang's plans but the father had been rescued by Dal-Gu.
It appeared in this final game that Ha would be eliminated first as both Kang and Da-Jung were firing at him but that may have been Ha's secret plan. Soon the tables switched as both Ha and Da-Jung turned their pistols upon Kang, Da-Jung finally realized that Ha had been an innocent pawn in her father going bankrupt. The final bullet shot was by Da-Jung and of all things it was a real bullet that Kang had inserted in her box of ammo! That scene is below and Ha also had an inkling this final shot would feature a real bullet, he jumped to shove Kang aside but Ha himself was hit by the bullet though it wasn't a fatal wound. It was a mystery at the end with that real bullet, did Kang himself want to die or did he think that Da-Jung would have unknowingly shot her friend Ha to death, that we'll never know. So the two winners of this first ever Liar Game were Ha and Da-Jung who went back to her old life living with her father as all of his debts were paid off. Kang was arrested after the game and is in prison but it seems he's still in control of the TV station and the Liar Game from there. That we learned in the final few seconds it was five years later, the third occurrence of the Liar Game was starting on live TV and of all things it featured Ha.... as a player or the host? At that point we viewers presumed there would be a second season and it never happened, wonder why? All in all this version of "Liar Game" didn't top the 2007 Japanese series yet I thought this 2014 version was terrific and much better than I had expected. I'll give it a grade of 9.1/10, the first episode was kind of sluggish and the Poker game could have been much better but those are my only beefs about the series. The action moved right along, there was plenty of intensity and also more violence compared to the original series plus the format of it being played live on TV was a neat twist. So if you're a fan of the 2007 series I would recommend viewing this one and still not sure why it took me eleven years to finally view this but glad I did. **** Have one other mini thing after these screenshots.
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