SPOILER ALERT! There will be spoilers in this post so avoid it if you don’t want any!
For the final part of my Digital Writing assignment I’ll be doing a review of EXO Next Door (우리 옆집에 EXO가산다). This drama has 16 episodes that go for 10-12 minutes each, to me it seems more comedy than anything else but I’m not sure whether that was SM’s original intention. I spent most of my time just laughing at the secondary characters, rather than paying attention to the love triangle going on between Chanyeol, Yeonhee and D.O. To be quite honest, I really didn’t like Yeonhee coz she’s pretty dumb most of the time and it really annoys me how she can’t piece together that her childhood friend Chan is the same person as Chanyeol. I mean, she said herself that her mum (a real-estate agent) wouldn’t let just anyone move into that house, so when a guy called Chanyeol moves into Chan’s grandfather’s house you would still make the connection even if it was unbelievable, wouldn’t you? Besides, in Korean culture you may have a nickname for someone but they never introduce themselves by that nickname so she would have known his name was Chanyeol. He even gives her so many obvious hints and she still doesn’t get it!
Anyways, enough about my dislike of the female lead. This drama was really funny and I really enjoyed the bromance between Sehun and Yeonhee’s brother, Gwangsoo. They bonded over Gwangsoo’s old school coffee grinding and ended up with one of the most epic bromances I’ve ever seen in a K-Drama. That scene in the final episode where they’re saying goodbye to each other gave me stomach cramps from laughing so hard. You just see Gwangsoo sprinting after the van with the coffee beans he spent all night grinding and Sehun yelling brother out the window with his huge hand right in front of the camera. Those two are the real lead couple in this show!
This drama really feels like someone’s badly written fan-fiction, the unbelievable storyline and even some of the lines they use just scream fan-fiction. I suspect that some fangirl coordinator-noona at SM wrote this and they decided to make a drama out of it. Nevertheless, the EXO boys did a pretty good job of acting in this drama. D.O does the angsty, second male lead part really well and Chanyeol is basically made for the part of the angry, jealous, male lead. Then you have Baekhyun pretty much being his annoying but cute and squishy self and Sehun being all bratty and aloof but still the adorable little maknae (youngest member). The other six members of EXO do appear in the drama, but they’re really only there to briefly distract us from the other stuff going on and to create some different drama. I think SM did a fairly decent job of producing this drama, the editing was well done and they managed to fit a complete storyline into a really short amount of time. However, they could have made Yeonhee’s blush thing a little less pink coz it looked really weird!
All-in-all, this drama was pretty good and I enjoyed the ending much better than GOT7’s drama, Dream Knight. That was a good drama but it left too many questions at the end for me to be fully satisfied. Whereas EXO Next Door was able to end well and didn’t leave me with any lingering questions about its plot.
Plot: 6.5/10 – It wasn’t a terrible plot and it was completed well within the short time frame they had, but it certainly wasn’t the best I’ve ever seen. It was enjoyable but I couldn’t really relate to the characters very well and I was constantly facepalming because Yeonhee was so clueless.
Character development: 4/10 – To be really honest I saw very little character development in this drama, except for D.O and Chanyeol’s characters and even then it wasn’t a huge change. Yeonhee is supposed to be the main character but she remained immature and clueless right up until the end, she even repeated her same mistake from the first episode. It was supposed to be funny (I think), but it just annoyed me because she hadn’t changed at all.
Acting: 8.5/10 – I can’t give this a perfect score because there was some awkwardness at times and I’ve seen too many actual K-Dramas to really think that this is wonderful acting. However, despite my dislike for Yeonhee I actually think that Moon Gayoung is a decent actress and she did pretty well with the crappy character she was given. I also think that the EXO boys did a pretty good job and I enjoyed watching them.
Editing: 8/10 – Overall the way it was edited was fairly good and I thought the intro sequence was really cute. However, as I said, I didn’t particularly like how pink Yeonhee’s CGI blushing was and some of the sound effects that were used were really odd. For example, the “ahhh” noise they added when Yeonhee began blushing was really awkward and I have no idea why they decided to use that particular sound.
Soundtrack: 10/10 – I really couldn’t fault the soundtrack for this drama, the thing that SM always does perfectly is music. That’s their main industry and they’re a very well-known company, so they have to be good. Baekhyun’s solo OST was really lovely and I never got sick of any of the music they used. Unlike with Boys Over Flowers where I got so sick of ‘Almost Paradise’ by the end that, to this day, I still can’t hear that without feeling annoyed.
Overall satisfaction: 8/10 – I really did love watching this drama despite its flaws and I was always impatient for the next episode to come out. I might be a little biased since EXO is one of my bias groups, but I don’t think that anyone could say it was a completely terrible drama. Like most dramas, it had things that could have been done better but overall I think that SM did a decent job.
For the final part of my Digital Writing assignment I’ll be doing a review of EXO Next Door (우리 옆집에 EXO가산다). This drama has 16 episodes that go for 10-12 minutes each, to me it seems more comedy than anything else but I’m not sure whether that was SM’s original intention. I spent most of my time just laughing at the secondary characters, rather than paying attention to the love triangle going on between Chanyeol, Yeonhee and D.O. To be quite honest, I really didn’t like Yeonhee coz she’s pretty dumb most of the time and it really annoys me how she can’t piece together that her childhood friend Chan is the same person as Chanyeol. I mean, she said herself that her mum (a real-estate agent) wouldn’t let just anyone move into that house, so when a guy called Chanyeol moves into Chan’s grandfather’s house you would still make the connection even if it was unbelievable, wouldn’t you? Besides, in Korean culture you may have a nickname for someone but they never introduce themselves by that nickname so she would have known his name was Chanyeol. He even gives her so many obvious hints and she still doesn’t get it!
Anyways, enough about my dislike of the female lead. This drama was really funny and I really enjoyed the bromance between Sehun and Yeonhee’s brother, Gwangsoo. They bonded over Gwangsoo’s old school coffee grinding and ended up with one of the most epic bromances I’ve ever seen in a K-Drama. That scene in the final episode where they’re saying goodbye to each other gave me stomach cramps from laughing so hard. You just see Gwangsoo sprinting after the van with the coffee beans he spent all night grinding and Sehun yelling brother out the window with his huge hand right in front of the camera. Those two are the real lead couple in this show!
This drama really feels like someone’s badly written fan-fiction, the unbelievable storyline and even some of the lines they use just scream fan-fiction. I suspect that some fangirl coordinator-noona at SM wrote this and they decided to make a drama out of it. Nevertheless, the EXO boys did a pretty good job of acting in this drama. D.O does the angsty, second male lead part really well and Chanyeol is basically made for the part of the angry, jealous, male lead. Then you have Baekhyun pretty much being his annoying but cute and squishy self and Sehun being all bratty and aloof but still the adorable little maknae (youngest member). The other six members of EXO do appear in the drama, but they’re really only there to briefly distract us from the other stuff going on and to create some different drama. I think SM did a fairly decent job of producing this drama, the editing was well done and they managed to fit a complete storyline into a really short amount of time. However, they could have made Yeonhee’s blush thing a little less pink coz it looked really weird!
All-in-all, this drama was pretty good and I enjoyed the ending much better than GOT7’s drama, Dream Knight. That was a good drama but it left too many questions at the end for me to be fully satisfied. Whereas EXO Next Door was able to end well and didn’t leave me with any lingering questions about its plot.
Plot: 6.5/10 – It wasn’t a terrible plot and it was completed well within the short time frame they had, but it certainly wasn’t the best I’ve ever seen. It was enjoyable but I couldn’t really relate to the characters very well and I was constantly facepalming because Yeonhee was so clueless.
Character development: 4/10 – To be really honest I saw very little character development in this drama, except for D.O and Chanyeol’s characters and even then it wasn’t a huge change. Yeonhee is supposed to be the main character but she remained immature and clueless right up until the end, she even repeated her same mistake from the first episode. It was supposed to be funny (I think), but it just annoyed me because she hadn’t changed at all.
Acting: 8.5/10 – I can’t give this a perfect score because there was some awkwardness at times and I’ve seen too many actual K-Dramas to really think that this is wonderful acting. However, despite my dislike for Yeonhee I actually think that Moon Gayoung is a decent actress and she did pretty well with the crappy character she was given. I also think that the EXO boys did a pretty good job and I enjoyed watching them.
Editing: 8/10 – Overall the way it was edited was fairly good and I thought the intro sequence was really cute. However, as I said, I didn’t particularly like how pink Yeonhee’s CGI blushing was and some of the sound effects that were used were really odd. For example, the “ahhh” noise they added when Yeonhee began blushing was really awkward and I have no idea why they decided to use that particular sound.
Soundtrack: 10/10 – I really couldn’t fault the soundtrack for this drama, the thing that SM always does perfectly is music. That’s their main industry and they’re a very well-known company, so they have to be good. Baekhyun’s solo OST was really lovely and I never got sick of any of the music they used. Unlike with Boys Over Flowers where I got so sick of ‘Almost Paradise’ by the end that, to this day, I still can’t hear that without feeling annoyed.
Overall satisfaction: 8/10 – I really did love watching this drama despite its flaws and I was always impatient for the next episode to come out. I might be a little biased since EXO is one of my bias groups, but I don’t think that anyone could say it was a completely terrible drama. Like most dramas, it had things that could have been done better but overall I think that SM did a decent job.