The Glory Season 2 (2023)

Sin palabras

No tengo suficientes palabras para describir este drama. Los actores han actuado tan bien que hacia qué te creyeras la misma historia. La ambientación, estética, etcétera. Son de diez y sinceramente no hay nada malo que pudiera decir.

He sentido que la protagonista se ha tomado su tiempo, el que necesitaba, para planear su venganza y aquí vemos cómo a pesar de que no todo salga como lo tenía planeado ya iba surgiendo. Sobre todo es increíble como los mismos “amigos” del grupo se iban traicionando a ellos mismos, todas las situaciones se iban enlazando, cobrando un sentido. Al final me ha encantado que Yeseul se quedará con su padre, el único que la iba a cuidar y querer como es debido. El hecho de que él no la rechazara en ningún momento pese a que no era su hija biológica me pareció súper bonito, pensaba que iba a ir por un rumbo que no me iba a gustar nada (y sin sentido) pero lo han tratado como es debido.

En fin, ha sido increíble, muchos sentimientos acumulados y con un final justo.

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Dong-Eun mi ídola máxima

[Escrito el 07 de abril del 2023]

Han pasado algunos días desde que terminé esta serie, pero sigo impactada por el tremendo trabajo de producción al desarrollar una historia de venganza tan interesante, sin caer en lo cliché y con la cantidad exacta de romance.

En cuanto al casting, opino que fue muy acertado. ¡Las actrices y los actores de este drama! cuánto talento, me dejaron fascinada, sobre todo Im Ji Yeon personificando de forma detallada a una cruel y perversa Yeonjin.

Hubo momentos donde pensé que el final sería distinto y que habría algún plot twist, que la protagonista no conseguiría su tan anhelada venganza. Sin embargo, me alegro de saber que no fue así y que, finalmente, el calvario que atravesó tantos años tuvo un desenlace justo para Dong-Eun. Además, fue bello apreciar cómo no sólo obtuvo la justicia que deseaba, sino que también pudo recordar aquellas acciones que le permitieron ganarse el cariño de diversas personas y, por ende, la ayuda que tanto había querido tener en su traumática adolescencia.

Una serie bastante cercana a la realidad respecto a que tan deshumanizados pueden ser las personas, no sólo quiénes agreden psicológica y/o físicamente, sino que también aquellos/as que no prestan ayuda a las víctimas y permiten que enfrenten en soledad una situación tan compleja como lo es el acoso escolar.

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La mejor segunda temporada, satisfactoria resolución

El título no es tan interesante pero es porque, es lo que tiene. Esta temporada supera a la primera porque acá es donde explota todo, y haciendo spoilers no generales, es donde se destruye la gloria de Park Yeongjin. Entonces, a continuación SPOILERS GRANDÍSIMOS indirectos, pero si hablan de lo sucedido.

Me gustó todo diría, y me gustaría comentar como manejaron ciertas y escenas y mensajes que las hicieron más bellas. Como, cuando se descubre cuál fue el destino de Myeongoh y por quién, está esa escena en la que una joven Dongeun en su clase de español decide traducir la parte del tatuaje del chico, "memento mori", solo la parte que no estaba tapada por una cura, y se traducía "me morí". Fue hermoso como lo unieron a sus escenas actuales. También, hablando del desarrollo del otro acosador, Jaejun, a este costó más dar su merecido pero mientras, se me hizo divertido como le importaba el descubrimiento de que era padre y giraba siempre en torno a eso sus acciones, como cuanto molestaba a su abogado porque le diga que sí hay alternativas para el tener su paternidad. Y como sus intentos de parecer el padre ejemplar al final morían al siempre mostrar de vuelta su susceptibilidad, explosiones de ira y violencia. Sobre las otras dos chicas, Lee Sara y Choi Hyejoong, no tengo mucho que decir, son también el mayor de ejemplo de acabar hundiéndose, por su propia culpa. Querían las dos satisfacción personal y eso las llevo a llegar más rápido a su sentencia.... Dejándonos hablar de las víctimas que hicieron que el plan de Dongeun se consumase.
El doctor Yeojeong y la especie de espía Hyeonam; me gustó la parte realista en la que la venganza deseada por el primero, no estaba yendo bien. La frustración mostrada por parte de Lee Dohyun, las escenas en las que lloró las sentí y la verdad fue muy bueno su interpretación. También más en sus escenas en las que actuaba como el verdugo, antes solo los veía en facetas amables y acá se le veía ese alterego más frío y dispuesto a hacer daño por esa justicia que la policia u otro no te puede dar. Y sobre Hyeonam, me gustó su la parte en la que decía (Aunque creo que esto fue en la primera temporada), que aunque le pegasen no significaba que no se podía reir o ser graciosa, me pareció un personaje muy cálido y fuerte, sobretodo.
Como se puede ver, eran diferentes tipos de victimas. Estaba la protagonista, vacía, que no recordaba sonreir casi, estaba Yeojeong, que intentaba hacer parecer que todo estaba bien pero vivía perturbado, ansioso, y luego Hyeonam, que transmitía esa calidez solo mientras su hija estuviese bien entonces ella podría ver el lado positivo.

Otra cosa, es que me gustó el papel del esposo de Yeonjin, de hecho, sonará vergonzoso pero hasta hubo una parte en la que hasta lo llegué a shippear con la protagonista pero es que, no sé, aunque todo estaba calculado se veía ese misterio genuino por parte de él en un principio, por su forma de jugar. En general, este hombre me pareció casi el único rico educado y que le dio el beneficio de la duda a su esposa, aunque al final no sirvió de mucho.

Yeongjin... su desenlace, creo que es inmejorable. Literalmente, de a poco, le arrebataron todo lo que ella conseguió y pensaba que sería para siempre o merecía. La más satisfactoria para mi fue cuando su propia progenitora la traicionó. Fue hermoso, aunque suene retorcido. Y también, la actriz que la interpretó hizo un trabajo excelente al expresar todos los momentos de frustración, lágrimas, por sentir que nada estaba en su control ni siquiera lo que antes estaba segura. Muy bueno.

Dejándonos con la opinión mía del final final, que me gustó también. Ver a la protagonista y el doctor juntos se sintió correcto, y suficiente. No antes, sino en ese momento, pues al final no se trataba de un romance sino el proceso de una venganza. Y bueno, fue satisfactorio sentir que el doctor podría tener lo que tanto había deseado y acompañado de a quien tanto se había aferrado, aún con sus desapariciones. Fue un 9.5, quiero pensar solo porque no caló tanto en mi como en otro, y la música sin tantos puntos solo porque no le presté tanta atención. Igual cumplió las expectativas.

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Magistral

Pufff no sé por dónde empezar. Quizás por el final.

Tras 18 años de larga espera llega el momento deseado.

Cada una de las historias personales quedan finiquitadas de una manera magistral. Algunas completamente inesperadas, eso sí. Pero muy acorde con los caracteres de los personajes.

Una venganza cocinada a fuego lento.

Drama cien por cien recomendable, si no buscas el clásico romance y sí acción y suspense.

En cuanto a estos ocho últimos capítulos, he de decir que me costó entrar de nuevo en la serie. Esto se puede deber al parón, intencionado, por parte de los señores de Netflix. Cosa que no llego a entender. Pero retomando el hilo, una vez que te enganchas nuevamente ya no hay respiro hasta el desenlace. Capítulo tras capítulo ves cómo la trama va in crescendo.
La elección por parte del encargado de casting para la serie, me parece fantástico, desde la hierática e inmutable Moon Dong Eun (Song Hye-kyo) hasta la entrañable Kang Hyun Nam (Yeom Hye-ran) pasando por el maravilloso Joo Yeo-jeong (Lee Do Hyun). Todos y cada uno de los actores son magníficos.

Y, para ir terminado esta reseña, no podía dejar pasar la noticia relacionada con el director Anh Gil Ho, quien, para echar más leña al fuego, ha sido denunciado por unos antiguos compañeros de colegio debido a un caso de acoso escolar en el que él mismo está involucrado y del que ha pedido perdón.

¡Qué más le falta a este drama! ¿Una buena OST?

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A satisfying end... which is rare in the kdrama world as we're all familiar.

The first thing that needs to be applauded is the actors and their masterful acting. Without the acting the plot would've withered as another project with lost potential. They literally breathe the life, the fury, the glory into this drama.

As a sequel, it is commendable that the show did not go overboard or underwhelm in any aspect. It was just enough to make you sigh a breath of satisfaction. Lives upto everything the first season built upto and the trailer predicted. No non-sensical plot points which were forced to make the story coherent. It was woven smoothly start to end. They delivered the dramatics perfectly. Their was no unnecessary romantic part which ruined the slow-burn. Despite all the first season's information, there were twists and turns and the thrill was maintained. If anything was over-done, one wouldn't really give this show much of a rewatch value. But the makers took their jobs seriously and made sure that people can come back to this and find hope in the victory of everything good.

People might argue about the amorality of the whole revenge plot itself, but we know that justice does not take place in our world very often, the world is very unfair, and people we know, people around us, and people like us may feel wronged everyday, but what we can take from this as a positive learning is that we all need to come together and help the Dong Eun's all around us by giving them support, and being a friend in their time of need. Of course is doesn't have to be an elaborate revenge plot, but even the smallest effort would go a long way. And at the end of the day what goes around comes around. So it is by each other's support that we move forward, otherwise we'll find ourselves stuck at a point in life which will sooner or later drive us crazy.

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Underwhelming

======EDITED======
I finally get to rewatch. And my opinion stays the same. It is underwhelming and didn't live up to expectations- especially the excitement.

The build up was good during the first 3 episodes. However, after that, everything started to get boring and fell into that cliché path that most revenge drama has.

1. Everything suddenly seems easy for DH - suddenly people just keep coming to help her. So it makes me wonder, what if those people didn't come to help her? What if she didn't meet those people? She spent more than a decade to plan but later on I cannot help but think "what was her original plan?" - you know the plan she created without those "sudden helper" which suddenly pops up for her to use.
I am yet to see a revenge drama with a solid plan and kept that plan until the end without the sudden boost of helper.

2. Suddenly everyone is screaming. One character screaming would've been believable but when almost everyone is screaming and started to act hysterical? Gosh

And I do not get why these villains who used to be powerful, calm and always seems to know what to do - suddenly becomes this weak character who - for whatever reason just do not know what to do except panic and scream.
When in truth, they can just order their men to kill the avenger but none of them think that way. They didn't even think of a way to punish this avenger and stop her from ruining their life. The only thing they did was to pay her mom to humiliate her and force her to leave her job. Really? Is that all you can do?
They started hating each other and fight each other but none of them decided to fight the avenger?

3. They went crazy in the end. These people who never felt guilty for ruining someone's life and live well all these years suddenly lose it. Lee Sa Ra seems fine at first then suddenly went full blown drug addict. PYJ was fine and then in the end she also started losing it - I don't know what's the purpose when that happens because if they were to be punished, I want them to be totally sober - with their conscious, and clear mind still intact -so they can feel all the hardships and pain of my revenge.


Another scene that I hate was Lee Sara's scandal - of her playing herself. I just don't like that part, she was drugged and to shame her -- everyone has to see her playing with herself as if that's some bigger sin than her being involved in bullying and drugs. That's so wrong. She was a victim in those videos.

And what was that thing with the Shaman? That was so unnecessary!

I am not sold out with the romance either. There was no chemistry at all.

I think that it could've ended with just 5 episodes but they had to stretch it out. It felt that they do not know what to do or what to add to make up for the rest of the episodes so they resorted to flashbacks.

The ending where DE was leaving the school and looking happy would of been the perfect ending. Everything that happens after that just... seems forced, like "yeah let's add some more scenes to complete this episode."

And their world is small indeed, suddenly almost everyone has met DE before.

And the avenger team at the end ?‍♀️
The assistant could of message her daughter at least but we didn't see that. I thought she was going to follow her daughter or try to live a different life for her daughter or for herself, but nuuuuh, in the end she became part of their avenger team.

JYJ - I thought that after seeing the killer of his father who seems be a psychotic who doesn't feel anything no matter what - thought he will at least realize that dealing with him will just be a waste of time.
No matter what he do, to punish that man, it will have no effect on him. He will not feel guilty or regret, instead he will just be happy to see JYJ dirtying his hands, he will be happy that he still has control over him because he made him that way- AND that's exactly what he wanted.
But tbh he will just waste his time on that guy. People like that don't deserves attention, it would be better if JYJ showed himself really happy in front of that guy - that kind of revenge is better - after all, there are many ways to get revenge, not just by hurting them,killing them or ruining them, sometimes being happy and moving on is also a revenge - because some people just hate to see you happy, so seeing you happy is a torture for them. So I was disappointed that they decided to create an avenger team just for him.

So far my favorite scene and the scene that marked on me the most in this season is DE's scenes with her mother. She never cry when facing her bullies, she didn't cry when remembering the past. But seeing her mother trying to ruin her- she cries. She started to break. In the end, the one who truly hurt her is her mother- compared to the pain the the bullies gave her, the pain that she received over her mother's betrayal hurts her the most.
I understand when she said that she is glad that her mother didn't change bcoz it will feel like she will have to erase what she did to DE back then and heal from it and learn to forgive her mother if ever she showed any affection. Knowing that her mother doesn't care for her even a bit and will never change, she accepted that and so, her mother can no longer hurt her, she's done.

I must praise all the cast of this series, they all did a fantastic job and deserves recognition- everyone - especially the villains.

Anyway I will rate it 4
Though disappointing at some parts of the story, I love the characters and the tension during the first episodes.

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Satisfying ending, however the Netflix issues were worse.

I enjoyed Moon Dong-eun and Joo Yeo-jeong's stories a lot! I was so relieved as, there was a point there where it almost seemed like they wouldn't get a happy ending. This part really hit hard on obstacles in Moon Dong-eun's way, especially her mother, but I felt satisfied that the punishments doled out were proportionate.

This part digs more into Moon Dong-eun's terrible mother. In some ways, the ending of her career at the school felt unaddressed. She says farewell to Yeon-sol, but since we didn't get many shots of Moon Dong-eun at the school in this part, it almost felt like she wasn't there that much, despite it being her job. A couple of things felt somewhat dropped in this part.

We find out that Jae Jun apparently got Yoon-hee pregnant, but we don't really dig into that any further. For a character that was so important to Yeon-jin's story, his ending seemed a little brushed aside. Sa-ra's undoing was a little confusing as everyone seemed worried she'd be in big trouble after the press photos at the church, but then she was just at home playing around on her computer like nothing happened. It took her stabbing Choi Hye-jeong in the neck for her to get in any serious trouble, and I don't think Moon Dong-eun could've predicted that.

Ha Dong-yeon's ending was happy, I think. I was a little curious why he didn't have any further goodbye with Moon Dong-eun, but I was glad he wasn't caught in the crossfire too badly after Yeon-jin's conviction.

Again, my issues with this series were Netflix produced drama's tendency to have unnecessary nudity, unnecessarily drawn out violent scenes and unnecessary sex scenes. I have never seen a kdrama with bare breasts - I also don't think that was necessary. We have an unnecessarily drawn out (and repeated) sex scene with Myeong-o and Sa-ra. Also, a really weird note, the scene where we find out there's a creep at the elementary school taking pictures of children showed the pictures and I don't think they needed to. You can convey what he was doing with that. There were a lot more scenes of characters just screaming at each other and that didn't make for drama, it skewed into melodrama, in my opinion.

However, overall, I enjoyed the series and it's ending. I think it would've been even stronger if there didn't seem to be this focus on adding the kinds of scenes that draw in international audiences.

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The revenge was meh.

I love revenge plots, especially in the hands of a highly intelligent and capable female protagonist but with the proper motivation, of course. And, there was no doubt that the people who made Moon Dong-eun's (Song Hye-kyo) life hell on earth were all more than deserving of the kind of old school, biblical vengeance reserved for the very wrathful God of the Old Testament.
And, actually, I thought that the series might have wanted to say something about the hot-button issue of school bullying and spousal abuse but opted instead (in typical K-Drama fashion) to focus on the obligatory fan service of a romantic pairing of the two leads with less than zero chemistry between them.
The level of gratuitous violence on display in both parts 1 & 2 felt unnecessary at times because the payback was nowhere equal to the damage inflicted on the victims.
Maybe if she would've exacted her revenge in the very gym where the majority of the bullying took place I would've felt more satisfied with the conclusion.

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Contrived, Confused, Inglorious Conclusion

The second half of The Glory always had its work cut out for it--not because it had to live up to some lofty standard its predecessor had set, but because it had to make up for its flaws. A dozen loose strings, some narrative incongruities, and a curious pacing to its story progression (or, in some senses, lack thereof) had left more than a few worries that the series might not be able to properly exact its tale of revenge--even if the hope was there in equal measure.

And, sadly, those worries turned out to be entirely warranted: The Glory (Part 2) is a bit of a mess, rushing its way to a series of endpoints possible only by the great efforts of not only its heroes but also its villains to reach them.

A story of this kind typically relies on what are technically conveniences or coincidences as much as it does on the willingness of the audience to not be bothered by such...but The Glory goes to the suspension-of-disbelief well one (or several) too many times, asking its audience to ignore a string of contrived beats, character inconsistencies, and unnecessary narrative detours on the way to its strangely toothless dramatic ends.

Ultimately, it's a disappointing (and at times confusing) conclusion to an otherwise watchable show, with far too much going on and far too little happening, giving you exactly what you want in almost the least satisfying way possible.

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I just don't see the glory

I wasn't too impressed with the first half of The Glory, which I gave a 5.5. After finishing the second half, I'd say this second part was only marginally better because things actually happened.

At *no point* when watching this show I ever thought, "WOW THIS IS AMAZING OMG. BEST DRAMA EVER" Of course, everyone has a different experience and reaction so this may not be your experience. I still spent my time watching the show so it has entertainment value in some form.

The ending scene made me LAUGH because of the delivery. Legitimately, I laughed out loud and I know the producers and writers had zero intention of making that scene funny (or did they? Who knows!). I really don't think this show needed romance - the only positive thing that came from this was a role for Lee Do Hyun. The romantic beats fell flat. I also started finding it funny whenever Song Hye Kyo just showed up on the screen dressed in all black staring at one of the baddies who then gasp when they find her staring at them.

Don't get me wrong, I like all the actors in this show and thought they all did a fantastic job for the most part. Im Ji Yeon really gave her all as Yeon Jin and Kim Hi Eo Ra as Sa Ra.

I really feel that the domestic and sexual abuse depicted on screen can be triggering. In addition, unfortunately, few shows seem to be free from having a mom you absolutely loathe. We get her here. Joy!

You will see the pains that the leads have to deal with. The positive is that you do get to see the FL's revenge in action. I do have to give props to the writers who had no problem going all the way with punishing our favorite bffs.

But yes, I still view this show as nothing more than something you'll view for some shock value and entertainment for a day. Enjoy!

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