jayakris

Keen observation, and very well put. The male lead role was fairly straight forward, as he is a normal person and not a complicated character - yet he created so much of emotions in all his scenes by acting exactly like real people would react to the sad situations. The female lead had to act as an unusual character, so if she got things wrong in her acting, the emotional content could be lost, and the audience would not have liked the character much. She too aced the role, as though the actress is of a similar nature in her real life. She had such a clear sense of what kind of a person Hae-In is, right form the start. All in all, it has been a real pleasure to see these two leads' acting, and how they have carried a drama that was actually quite poorly made when it comes to everything else.

I agree. I think the two leads are not getting enough compliments for their acting. Their scenes together are amazingly realistic. Both do a lot of acting with their eyes, but KSH is exemplary at showing emotions just in his eyes. KJW does a lot of small things with her mouth, which I have rarely seen anybody else do in drama acting, and it is all at appropriate times to convey something or other in what she feels. I think she is just making expressions she makes in real life. The times when each of them break down and cry is something to see. These two are essentially living their roles. This is not acting; it is just living as the character. Incredible, really. Though I said above that the episode was dragging from the story-line standpoint, it did not bore me at all because I was so engrossed in what emotional turmoil the leads were in. Really, nothing much new had happened at that point when she changed her mind and decided to get the surgery, but their acting made us feel that it was natural for her to take so long to change her mind (even when opposing the surgery did not make that much logical sense) and it felt natural that she decided to do it at that point. Basically she was going through a kind of deep confusion that was to be expected, and their realistic acting and the time the drama devoted to it all, made us feel that it was all very realistic - because we were also forced to feel their emotions. I know, I am probably not making my point all that clear... Tough to explain, but we can't deny that the two leads captivate us and drag us deep into the life they are living, at an emotional level.

Another sloooooowwww episode. And then everything went wrong for a few minutes at the end (but there is a hint of a positive turn-around at the end of it too), and I did not watch it, as I cannot stand that fellow EunSung. i did not enjoy this episode at all.

Oh boy, you pointed to a really troublesome possibility there, of her losing her memory and being kidnapped by YES who tries to brainwash her. I would hate to see that. Yeah, too few episodes left to really do all that, thank God.

Maybe not boring, but I also found the episode dragging. Lots of cuteness from Hae-In though. Really sad to see her do all that, knowing all the uncertainties of whether she would die or live. Her acting after asking him, "how did you even get into Seoul National Univ?" was really cute. I thought one of the 3 secrets would be about the drowning accident, but I guess Hae-In doesn't know who saved her. Nothing much happened in this episode though.

A nice article listing the best scenes from the drama so far... https://screenrant.com/queen-of-tears-15-best-scenes-so-far-ranked/ Kwakkie fans will love the 7th best scene.

That must be Moonlight Drawn by Clouds where Kwakkie was the bodyguard and close friend of the male lead Crown Prince. Kwakkie was very good in a serious role there. I think we saw him with long hair a few times there.

I like his versatility too. I have seen him in at least 5 or 6 dramas; and he always does his job. I hope he gets a good lead role soon. Hopefully in a serious role as a surgeon in a medical drama or a police detective in a crime drama. I understand the feeling. It must be frustrating for his fans to keep seeing him typecast. Hopefully he will be the "transformed guy who became serious enough to save his family" in the last 4 episodes.

But didn't you find it odd that she was being nasty to the chairman? What was the need for her to do that, when she still needed to get something from him? Why would she bring out her true self already? I didn't get it... Another plot hole, probably. I love the way the drama has orchestrated the romance between the leads, and their scenes are so carefully written and shot, but I need to let go off the shoddy job here and there in everything else. (As for why she did not tell HyunWoo that she thought ES was him, I guess I can grudgingly buy the reason EunSung gave her that it might shock HW that she has advanced to the next level of cancer, and so she wanted to tell HW a bit later in the day and not on the road right there. Having just had the shock herself, she might have been a bit confused and still doubting herself on whom she was talking to, also)

I think the problem is that there aren't that many bad words used in common speaking in Korean as there are in English... In Engish we have punk, lowlife, jerk, bas**d, a*s, jackass, worm, blockhead, fool, idiot, dolt, dunce, dork, twit, nitwit, numskull, punk, SOB, f**ker, m-f'er, sucker, bi*ch, hag, wench, sl*t, tramp, broad, who*e) so on... Most words are used in various contexts in common speaking too. But what happens in English is that we do not have that many flexible words that fit all contexts. In such cases, English speakers would add something else... like "godforsaken women", or "f'ing punk" or "damned brat" "bloody SOB" etc. People who translate never go for those options as they make the subtitles longer. Korean drama conversations, on the other hand, use only a few words for all the above cases ("sekki", "gaesekki", "gaejibe", "paboo", "meongcheongi" "ee-neom" etc)... Well, there are some other potent words out there, but they are not used by "decent" people in Korea and are considered unacceptable (censored too) in dramas, while most of the bad words in English are used by decent people too, and nothing much gets censored in English dramas/serials. So, when the Korean hears a "gaejibe" in a drama, they feel how strong a curse it was, based on the context. But the translator struggles to pick an appropriate word from English and they just go for "brat" even for a woman murderer. There is no such catch-all word the subbers can rely on. I understand their predicament, but I too sometime wish they would stop using "jerk" "brat" and "punk" for everything, and went for some of the many other bad words and phrases that exist in English. Yeah. I don't know if the mistress madam caused the downing accident, but it is possible that Eun Sung had tried to prevent Hae-in's brother from saving her, so that he could go save her... But by the time his fight with the brother finished it was too late and Hyun-woo had saved her already. Who knows!

You are right. I think it is not the fault of the actors, but rather of the Producer-Directors who ask them to do it. Like they think that comical relief needs over-acting. The PDs probably feel that if they do not over-act they will be taken as doing serious roles and so there will be no humor felt by the viewers. That may even be true, as the Korean audience are so used to not expecting them to act normal. I don't know, but I also don't like it when they do it that way. Kwakkie, acting as SuCheol, is often type-cast and asked to over-act, as he is good at producing some humor with that. You can see that he can do quite fine in regular acting too, like in Ep.12 today ( @partyon, since you asked about Kwakkie...

Good catch! I hadn't noticed that the subs were different, as I was listening only to the Korean there. Yes, the adjective, 마음과는다른 ("differently from what was in the mind") in front of "blurted out words" (내뱉다 is literally "to spit out," but closer to "blurt out" in meaning), was very important. It clearly showed that she was not "saying harsh words" knowingly, but saying things she did not mean in a careless and cavalier manner. I would have translated it as "carelessly blurted out words I didn't mean" But the problem is that (I think) the Netflix subbers, as also I believe viki and other sites' subbers, have been asked to be brief in everything, as Korean is often quite compact and would need a little more lengthy English lines to properly translate. So they go overboard in skipping details. The idea of finding the most brief word is fine and necessary, but in most cases, Netflix' problem is something else. The time segmentation of the subs. They set up the subs to stay on screen only to the exact time point when the spoken sound finishes, so they flash by and we cannot even look at the acting in our hurry to read the lines. This is totally unnecessary in most cases, and I don't know why they are stubborn about it. Like in the above instant, when there were many seconds of gaps between parts of the sentences spoken, and proper subs could be given that lingered a half second longer for readability. Plus, they changed the order to fit the English order, and made you almost forget what was said earlier before finishing "despite all the harsh words" when what was said in the second segment was entirely different. This is all too much clashing for many of us who know at least some Korean and are left confused. Just give a proper translation and use gaps in speaking within a sentence to let the subs linger on screen. It is like we are in a war with the subs, to read it before they go away. What is he hurry? It would be much better if Netflix would just let the subs linger a little longer on screen (0.5 second is more than enough in most cases), which would allow for cleaner and closer translations that do not drop details. (By the way, I know these things from doing subtitles for the old crowdsourced darksmurf substitles site several years ago before Netflix, Viki etc got enough subbers to do things fast. We used to rarely drop anything in what was said, and never Americanized the lines or context much, though the subs often looked "unprofessional" because many subbers were newbies. We would just extend the time segments wherever we could and let the lines stay on screen a bit longer, so nobody needed to rewind to see something that flashed by too fast)

Interesting that this brief exchange stayed in my mind too, though maybe for a different reason. Somehow the Netflix translation didn't feel quite right to me. I generally listen to the Korean, but some subs catch my eye sometimes like this did. "The same goes for me" was the Netflix translation of what she said. That was okay, but it perhaps lost a little nuance in what she said. What she actually said meant "I as well, for the same reason" (나도 그래서 그래). Had she said the usual 나도 그래, that would be a straight "me too". Maybe this was why it did not came across as too cold to me. Rather it felt like she was deliberately acting cold. Even hinting that she knew he was also deliberately saying something (in Ep 9) that he didn't exactly mean. The extra 그래서 ("for that reason", "the same way") in what she said was probably why I felt that way. By the way, welcome to Soompi and this thread. Please post more comments. This drama is great and deserves more comments and discussions! Vincenzo was at first part of Italian mafia in that earlier drama, so they were mixing it in. That scene was quite funny though people who had not watched the other drama might find it all odd and wonder what the big deal with the lawyer was... You are right, I also have not seen any drama where the male lead cries so much. Maybe the "queen of tears" is actually the male lead. They should have called it "King of tears" !

A cute short clip from Kim Jiwon

Thanks for that. I was wondering about it too. They both keep saying they are divorced, but I couldn't remember if they had both signed it and submitted it at the Government office. Actually, even if they do that, there is still something like a 2 or 3 month waiting period mandated by the law (to make sure that it was not a hasty decision)...