Queen of Tears (2024)

Lacking in plot development and character motivation

Queen of Tears is story of Hyun Woo & Hae In's unhappy marriage life, threatened by chaebols and Hae In's fatal illness. A classic soapy melodrama, with star-studded ensemble cast and cameos. The production quality is top, with the stylish wardrobes, wonderful scenery and romantic OSTs. However, the execution was not up to the par.

The first 2 episodes set the story quite well, but they didn't make their characters' motivations sensible. At least give a reason to make me believe why their relationship was failing, instead of crying too much and lack of communication. Really, most of their conversations were ended by crying or fighting to the point I got numb. I was bored with the villains' suspenseless and super slow scheming. By the end it gets ridiculous with all the cliché tropes shoehorned. What ended up to be the most anticipated scenes was the cute auntie Beom Ja's romance, it's fluffy & gave off immense heart-fluttering moments. Overall, the flaws of the drama amounts to my disappointments.

Thanks for reading!
April 2024, Find me on instagram: @kdramajudge

Leia Mais

Lacks depth and substance

This drama takes on a very serious and nuanced topic -- marriage and divorce. Unfortunately, instead of leaning into all the difficult issues surrounding a failing marriage and dealing with them head-on, it skirts around all the important parts and instead delivers nothing more than Hallmark-type cheesiness without any real substance. A lot of people are saying it was good up to Episode 10 or so and then went downhill. But for me it was downhill, or flat, from the get-go. I don't really get what all the hype is about. Frankly, despite the fact that I love Kim Soo-hyun, I did not enjoy this drama, for several reasons.

1. Supposed to deal with marriage and divorce but fails to get into the real issues. This multilayered topic needs to be handled with maturity, depth, and honesty, and this drama just fails in that regard. While we are led to understand it was just a simple case of miscommunication (or lack of communication) between the leads that led them down the dark road to divorce, this matter is never really fleshed out or given any further treatment. We are not really made privy to what really happens between them. There is one scene that deals with a miscarriage, but that's it. No context or follow-up is given and it is hardly ever mentioned again. In other words, there is a lack of context and story development to enable the viewer to participate and empathize. The drama instead chooses to focus on external conflicts with one-dimensional, cartoonish villains. The failing marriage is dealt with shallowly and romanticized, and the real issues are swept under the rug. Suddenly, this couple has the perfect relationship and their only problems are actually how to recovery the company and vanquish the baddies.

2. Unlikable characters, especially in the first half. In the beginning, the ML seems to have been made deliberately weak. I felt like the drama was pushing some sort of feminist rhetoric -- subversion of the patriarchy and all that. But there is no need to emasculate the male in order to emphasize the strength of the female. Likewise, the female need not be an uber rich girl boss with a bad attitude in order to come off as a "strong independent woman." Anyway, Baek Hyun-woo is introduced as a seemingly shallow, silly, ill-intentioned weakling who could not even stand up for himself or make up his mind about what to do with his own marriage. He relies on a friend to tell him what to do. To make things worse, he actually seems relieved and even slightly elated to learn his estranged wife is terminally ill. Now, I like falling in love with my kdrama/jdorama men for the space of a few hours, and I definitely was not going to fall in love with someone like this. Neither could I relate with the wealthy CEO girl boss who was cold and arrogant and disrespectful and had no qualms about berating her husband in front of their colleagues. It just wasn't working for me. Even later when her arrogance is toned down, Hae-in just comes off to me as abrasive and unrelatable. Many people are saying the leads had great chemistry, but I never saw it. They're both great actors for sure, but there was something off for me about their pairing. Strangely, I felt like the FL was patterned after the typical Asian mom or aunt -- brash, brisque, pragmatic and unromantic, and the ML has the typical henpecked husband vibe. And their romance felt to me like I was watching one of my stoic aunts suddenly becoming lovey-dovey with someone. Goosebumps. But because the actors are both attractive, it probably seemed that the characters were attractive too. The writers seem to realize this and tones down everything in the second half, which leads to my third point:

3. Inconsistent characterization. I guess the writer wanted to show that the characters have a deeper dimension than what was shown in the first episodes, but somehow the sudden shift in the overall tone of the characters didn't work for me. Suddenly, the FL is vulnerable and in love (but still, just for me personally, unlikable and unrelatable). Suddenly, she is a silly lovelorn stalker. I mean, sure. One can argue that her coldness and arrogance were merely a facade or a coping mechanism and that she actually really is a softie, but somehow, that doesn't feel believable. And the ML suddenly becomes strong, capable, fiercely loyal, very loving, and knows exactly what he wants and what to do. Yes, writer-nim. This could have worked if you had written him that way from the beginning. Making a character's real personality a plot twist just does not work for me. I need to connect with the characters immediately or as soon as possible for the story to work. That is the most important factor for me in any story. The plot could go to hell but as long as the characters are well-written and feels real, I am in. I think it just is bad writing overall, the way the characters were set up. Again, the actors' face cards and sex appeal covered this up for most viewers.

4. The drama can't seem to decide what it is, and the main relationship lacks substance. In the beginning, it seemed like it was going to be a romcom. But wait, Is it a thriller? Is it a makjang? Is it a "beautiful love story?" It tries to be all of these but fails. The thriller part wasn't thrilling enough. The romance part was, to me at least, somewhat cringey (probably because of the Asian mom/ahjumma peronality of the FL). And the romcom just failed to show up. Instead, the drama seems to take itself very seriously and seems to think of itself as a "beautiful love story. " In order to show this, it resorts to cheesy lines and overly sentimental scenes that don't really show any real connection between the husband and wife, at least none that you could really feel or that is properly developed. Instead, their strongest and most powerful connection seems to be the dreaded "childhood connection thingie" that Koreans seem to adore -- unmyeong. In other words, their love is one for the books because they were fated for each other, as evidenced, apparently, by the fact that they had a chance encounter when they were children. This is a pet peeve of mine in kdramas. This is a very shallow type of sentimentality, IMO. Instead of trying to establish this childhood connection, why not focus on their current mind-to-mind, heart-to-heart, soul-to-soul connection instead?

5. The loopholes. In a romcom, I usually could look past the glaring leaps of logic because most romcoms are meant to be a little silly, and so the logical inconsistencies just seem campy, not a writing failure. But you can't really call campy on this drama because it takes itself way too seriously. One major example of a glaring lapse in logic is the fact that the villain manages to step in and claim to be the guardian and fiance of a patient who has lost her memory. What an insult to European hospitals! You're telling me, writer-nim, that the hospital does not have any protocols at all regarding patient security? Furthermore, Baek Hyun-woo actually sees the villain walk in as he was being scandalously arrested (another huh moment). And he doesn't do anything about it, apparently. Yes, he got arrested and dragged away to prison on false charges, but that should not have prevented him from instructing one of his lawyer friends (or hello, Hae-in's family) to immediately contact the hospital and inform them that that man should not be allowed anywhere near the patient as he is not family and not her authorized guardian. And why didn't Hae-in's parents, on their own initiative, do anything? A phone call would have done it if they didn't want to fly out to Germany to look after their daughter. They knew than man is dangerous and Hae-in is in an especially vulnerable position after having lost her memories, and not a single one of them tried to contact the hospital? LOL. There are many, many others. This is just one example. Very shoddy writing.

To sum up, again, this drama tries to be something -- an epic, sweeping, memorable, beautiful love story, or a deep dive into marriage and divorce -- but does not really have enough meat and bones/substance to actually succeed. Instead, we get a lot of cloyingly sentimental scenes, cheesy dialogue, a half-baked thriller element, and a kind of surface treatment of a serious topic that is more suited to a romcom or light drama, and a dancing or skirting around the important issues about love and hate in a relationship and all the nuances and layers of emotion that are involved in a marriage, and all the heartbreak of divorce. This weird, half-baked stew just didn't work for me at all. The actors did their best to hold it up, but it is not worth all the hype and is way too overrated, in my honest opinion.

Leia Mais

When you try to be too many things and end up being nothing.

Queen of Tears is a show that is trying to do it all. It wants to be a complex story about a dying marriage. It wants to investigate the fragility of mortality. it wants to look into twisted messy familial relationships. It wants to explore the tragedy of losing your children. It wants to be a thrilling chabeol game of thrones. It wants to be documentary about toxic unrequited love from an obsessive villainous male lead. The end product is a sopping misshapen mess that manages to be none of the above .

It claims to be a journey of a married couple at odds finding their way back to each other (but the male lead spent half the show trying to divorce the female lead or hoping she dies) it attempts to be a meaningful essay on death and sickness (but haein's illness seems to be an afterthought half the time, merely a plot device to remind the people around her that she exists and that shes human and that she deserves to be loved) it takes multiple sloppy shots at trying to play the inheritance games (but the chabeols you're supposed to root for are so stupid and pathetic you feel no sympathy for them when they get taken for all they're worth) The messy familial dynamics fall flat as we watch a mom very unreasonably neglect and villainize her 10-year-old kid over the apparent murder of her other child. It tries to skim over the terrible topic of miscarrying your child into a mere oddly placed 10 minutes.

The show is its own worst enemy. it stages an effective angsty scene between the leads about the difficult choices u need to make when ur ill and then undercuts it in the editing room by immediately following it up with an oddly placed flirtatious and humorous scene. It tries to impress upon us the terror of yoon eunsong's controlling, manipulative ways and immediately follows it up with Haein freely stalking her apparently abusive lying cheating ex-husband with a smile on her face. some shows are capable of maintaining a light tone while speaking about heavy topics and still pay them the respect and significance they are owed [refer: oh no here comes trouble] but queen of tears is not one of them. Rather than a show that uses comedy cleverly as a way of bringing to light its complex subject matter, it comes across as a jarring whiplash of moments thrown together by two different editing teams who were given two very different instructions.

This is a show that tries to tell more than show. They want to tell you that these people love each other but when you think upon it for more than two seconds you start wondering why they fell in love, why they fell out of it, why the miscarriage that got 8 minutes of screentime tore them apart so viciously that the husband began to wish his wife would die and her terminal illness would make her more likely to leave him with some soft cash to fall back on. On the surface level, it's all there, Hyun Woo's self-centeredness, and Haein's inability to communicate her emotions but it's too little too late for the depth of the melodrama they plunge us into.

Despite Kim Jiwon's and Kim Soohyun's stellar performances, you exit the couple's showdowns thinking "damn is it really that deep?" and that's where a romance drama fails for me, it fails if I think the romance is too soppy coz that means that the foundation or crust of the writing is too weak to hold the decadence and the intensity of the acting job.

Queen of Tears ends it's run tonight as a show that tried to do too many things and ended up doing none of it satisfactorily. Rather than introduce terminal illness, scheming villains trying to usurp wealth, and obsessive friends from college they should have delivered on the one thing they promised, a married couple at odds finding their way back to each other. If only they had stripped down the additional dressing and focused on the messy terrible marriage of Hyun Woo and Haein and their respective and combined issues and how they overcame it without the unnecessary roadblocks like amnesia and evil second male leads, maybe it could have been worthy of the acting performances of the leads.

if you want to watch a messy married couple falling back in love its better to watch hits like flower of evil or go back couple coz this one was just disappointing.

Leia Mais

Overhyped and Overrated

With the amount of hype this show was getting, I was really curious as to how good this show must be to boast being the highest rated TvN show of all time...but of course as usual it's nothing new. It seems like these days any show with a good looking cast and high budget set and cinematography is enough for people to rate it a 9, completely overlooking the lacking story, plotholes and clichés.

Initially the plot seemed promising, most k-dramas do not start out with the leads already being married. Although, the cold CEO fl and sunshine ml has been done before (ahem My Demon ahem). The hype seems to stem primarily from praise for the actors, cinematography and OST, which are important factors for a good show don't get me wrong but like...does anyone even care for the story? Nobody cares that when Haein awoke from brain surgery (although it was supposed radiation therapy) she looked fabulous? Perfectly normal? Perfect hair, makeup??? Did they even TRY to make it realistic?? Am I supposed to believe she just underwent a major brain surgery?? And oh god they didn't even try to make Park Sung Hoon's character interesting. Just made him an obsessive evil rat with no personality whatsoever, it was such a disappointment considering his character in The Glory, that's what I call a real villain. Everytime he came on screen it was excruciating to watch, but Park Sung Hoon's visuals make it a lot more bareable so there's that. The family is your typical chaebol money hungry ruthless evil family, who turn into a big happy family toward the end to unite against a mutual evil force. The progression in their characters was lackluster and more depth could have been added into Haein and her mother's reconcilation. The story is extremely lackluster and honestly I feel like 12 year olds on Wattpad could do a better job than Park Ji-Eun. Most overhyped show of 2024 fr.

It seems like the writer Park Ji-Eun doesn't know how pacing works, she wasted the initial 5 or 8 episodes making them completely meaningless, plotless, boring which added close to nothing of value or substance to the story, and then rushed a crucial plot point in the SECOND last episode?? AND THE ACCIDENT??? HELLO??? Shock factor does not equate to good storytelling. It just makes for pointless tension. I guess this is what writers had to do to stretch the show to be 16 episodes. I never found it interesting even in the initial episodes, I kept watching because the ml and fl couple were eye-candy and had great chemistry, but if you overlook that, this is nothing but mediocore, maybe even less than mediocore. I kept watching and watching hoping it would get better but nooo oh god. You all need to seriously pick better shows to make popular. It's My Demon all over again. A less than average clichéd show which gets popular because of the cast and high budget set. How superficial. Truly a disappointment. But I must give credit where credit is due and I will admit that the stellar cast did live up to their names by delivering an exceptional performance and the cinematography delivered, truly an eye-candy show. Overall, if you value your time, don't watch it.

Leia Mais

Overrated show that you will watch only for its leads

First of all...what the heck. Second of all...who in the world is writing this soap opera story. Anything is happening out of nowhere. I stopped making sense of the story after a while and people are not trolling when they said it is highly overrated. This worked only because of the two amazing leads. They are the backbone of this drama. I had this bad feeling from the get go that this story is walking on the edge of becoming a complete mess and guess what it did become one. Highly disappointed with the writers. It could have been so good but who wants that...better test out every single scene that comes to mind and create a story that will blow the minds of the viewers. And it did! In a bad way.
Don't watch this show with your logical brain, better throw it out of window, only then you can forgive the writers and move on. The family's reaction to everything and and second ml and his mother though promising in the beginning, made it into a soap opera after a while. I enjoyed every single interaction of the two main leads. Well, they were just wonderful in every single scene. Acting is promising and the music is beautiful. It's definitely a tear jerker and will leave you devasted many times (but don't worry writer won't cease to amaze you with their flawless ideas). If not for the main lead I would have dropped it half way but still watched it. Sigh. What a trauma!
Watch it if you are too happy with your life and want to check out if your tear glands are properly working or not. (I thought 'Penthouse' was the only drama that could make me this riled up...but unfortunately I was wrong.)

Leia Mais

Full of kdrama clichés

Powerfully dumb storyline that's full of kdrama clichés and it's just unforgivingly jarring, almost like some classic parody too well made. It boasts unbelievable visuals of high concepts but turns out to be practically hollow, dialogues are strikingly coarse and far from relatable, and absurdity keeps coming as the plot goes on. It's not really a bad watch as there are some good parts that are worth rooting for, but the not so clever parts completely overshadow them and it simply becomes not more than just a race of mainstream popularity contest. Even the ending is still full of silly stuff to force a climax that doesn't resonate well, though the faint-hearted might still flutter intermittently.

Leia Mais

A Flash In The Pan

Common tropes and cliches abound in this poorly executed story, leaving loose ends untied and logic sorely lacking. The characters make questionable decisions that do not ring true to their development, such as Hae In blindly trusting Eun Song despite obvious red flags. The lack of critical thinking, like Hae In not hiring a lawyer to protect her memory through a diary, undermines the believability of the plot. The character of Grace switching sides serves little purpose other than to conveniently aid one side with the progression of the story, without any real depth or consistency. Even Hae In's parents' lack of visitation after her treatment in Germany contradicts their supposed love and support for her after learning about her illness. The most ironic thing of all is how Hyun Woo had to cook for the commemoration of Hae In’s grandmother. Viewers were under an impression in the first episode that how stressful it must feel to be in this powerful family. Yet just as the story progresses further we can see they are actually clueless and powerless, with the entire family surrounds Hyun Woo’s bed just to listen to what plan he has for them to restore their family power.

Overall, this narrative fails both its audience and its cast with lazy storytelling and reliance on tired cliches.

Leia Mais

Plotholes, tropes and bad writing.

Let me start off by saying that I was hooked for the first 11 episodes. Yes, the story is soap opera-y but the actors and actresses acted the heck out of what was given to them. Kim Soo-hyun can do no wrong and I’ve always enjoyed Kim ji-won so the problem is not because of them (or the production, cinematography, styling, etc). It’s the writing.

The last few episodes were just so painful to watch. Common sense were non existent, villains just did whatever the heck they please, the story just dragged and more and more tropes are being added.

I’m serious - nothing made sense.

Like, how did the SML think that he can just “erase” the FL’s past by throwing away some pictures and mementos. She exposed him on national tv and have recordings of him threatening her! It’s so dumb.

Why is our smart ML not more careful? The SML and his mom literally stole, threatened and put a hit on him. Like maybe get some bodyguards or let the hospital know, “hey there’s this guy that’s dangerous to the patient, beware!”

Why weren’t FL’s family with her in Germany?

Why did it take so long to convince her to do the surgery!? I thought the choice was a no brainer.

Anyway - if I didn’t have only two episodes left I would’ve just dropped this drama. I will finish it.

Leia Mais

Should be called King of Tears and Ice Maiden

This is a single layer story about a greedy woman who abandoned her son and coiled herself around a rich ceo to inherit all hus wealth by destroying his family. And she is truly wicked - doesn't shy from murder, sending her own child away to America etc etc.

In this straight layer you then have multiple players who are entangled. Then there are subsets to these people.
Simple, boring, clichéd, seen that before, yawn.

What then races these dramas to the top are the players and their nuances - both of which are absent here.

Let's start with the players.
Stand out performances by Grace (the spy), the FL wimpy brother, the FL secretary, the ML attorney friend and the bad villain (abandoned son)..

And now the leads:
One would think that if the premise is love/marriage /divorce/remarriage to same person, then there has to be an iota of chemistry.. Should they not test this in the audition? Maybe the stars are so big they discarded the auditions.
So Alas Alas - here we have to use our wildest imagination and fantasy to assume the two are madly in love.- because frankly they behave like they are allergic to each other.

There is not one heart fluttering moment between them, no sizzle, no intimacy, no intensity.
We have miss ice maiden who is mean to the ML through ep.15 and then agrees to hold his hand in16.
We have the king of tears who spends 80% of his screen time with wet eyes.

What a pitiful drama.

I think k dramas need to stop focusing on these so called big regional stars and get back to making their old classic story line with real actors.

Think about it - we've had 3 dumps already in 2024 with hot shot actors :
Doctor Slump, Welcome to Samdalri, and now this Queen of tears........all dramas that totally missed the point.

Leia Mais

When Tears Speak Louder

Queen of Tears” serves up a solid introduction. It reminds us that love isn’t always perfect, especially in the complex world of relationships and marriage. The characters’ struggles resonate, and the ending promises deeper layers to explore. Whether you’re a seasoned K-drama fan or a newcomer, this series has potential. ?
**"Queen of Tears"** is a captivating Korean drama that delves into the complexities of love and marriage. The story revolves around Hong Hae-in, a privileged heiress, and Hyun Woo, a middle-class man. Their fairy-tale romance takes a dark turn as they struggle with control, freedom, and unmet expectations. A must-watch for those seeking a fresh take on relationships.

Leia Mais