Notes from the Last Row Review
A lot of people criticised one of the kisses in the drama?
Time for me to watch it!
Do you think "Notes from the Last Row" will get another season?
Director Kim Kyu Tae has worked on some of my favourite dramas like "It's Okay, That's Love", and even the ones I didn't finish had this specific ambience, for example, "The Trunk".
He is perfect at creating great atmospheres, and this can be seen in "Notes from the Last Row".
The best scenes in the drama involved manipulation. It gets a bit easier to understand what's happening when you get the gist, but it is still captivating in its portrayal of the characters.
"Notes from the Last Row" has been adapted from the Spanish play called "The Boy in the Last Row", and it's hard to say what came from the screenwriter himself. Especially when I haven't seen the original or any of the works from Jang Myeong Woo.
However, it was very interesting to watch, but it would've been even better with a bit of attention to detail in some of the parts.
Directing: 9/10
Synopsis:
The story follows Heo Mun O, a failed writer and Korean literature professor who discovers the extraordinary talent of Lee Gang, a quiet boy sitting in the back row of his classroom. Intrigued by the student’s raw brilliance, Mun O offers him private writing lessons, hoping to shape his genius, but as he becomes increasingly consumed by Lee Gang’s stories, the line between mentorship and obsession begins to collapse, dragging them both into a spiral of manipulation, ambition, and chaos. (MyDramaList)
If you like a bit of a mind fuck, where you don't know what's happening, this is a good drama.
This drama did very well with the characters. It's easy to hate everyone, and the professor is definitely frustrating, but the journey you go through feels worth it. To the point where you want to write a whole thesis on why you hate him (or maybe that's just me).
It perfectly portrays characters that are not always green or red flags and has an interesting storyline.
It's hard to describe much without spoiling things, but it's interesting to create your own theories of what's happening and see how much you got right or wrong. The mystique of the novel, the sad wife and the rival authors, while this new student has a good tale to tell.
There are only six episodes in the drama, so, understandably, it's not possible to focus on every character individually, but I believe that both the director and screenwriter did an amazing job in making it all come together smoothly.
However, I would have loved a bit more of a professor-student dynamic, as this at times felt like an author meeting with a fan who got hands on the newest, unreleased novel.
Let's move to the spoilery part...
Overall: 9/10
In the first episode, they gave a lot of cards away; we get to see Lee Gang manipulating the game, and the professor is egotistical about it. The drama has only 6 episodes, so it has to be quick and summarise the story and characters in a short time.
However, that still didn't fully convince me.
There were some similarities to"Parasite" at times, especially at the very start where the poor guy infiltrates the rich family. However, this time the main lead writes down his experience and tells it to a random professor.
What grabbed my attention was the twist of the real father coming into play.
Before the reveal, there wasn't any moment where I thought that the father could be anyone else, and it worked well in the drama.
The professor never felt like a real teacher. Maybe that's how it's supposed to feel, but it made me question whether the university hires anyone.
It would be nice if, at times, the talk between Heo Mun O and Lee Gang would resemble a lesson. Right now, it feels like he isn't learning much, while the professor devours the story with few questions or edits.
This made it easier to grasp how things would end, but it was still interesting to see Lee Gang's backstory and why things happened the way they did.
By the end, everyone had their own end, which they deserved, but what ruined the moment was their attempt to push the second season. When Lee Gang comes back to ask Heo Mun O to write another novel, it did not make sense for any of the characters.
This is an obvious cash grab and unnecessary, knowing that it did not make sense even in the K-drama community.
Story: 8/10
From the start, Heo Mun O is shown as an egotistical man who only cares about himself, while crying about what he lost. His character is easy to decipher and not very likeable from the beginning, but this is the reason why the drama works well.
It's also very funny how he spits about morals, but is never the one to keep them.
He will be the first one to reminisce about his one-sided crush from his twenties. He will be the one to ignore his wife for a random story because it involves your rival. But never the one to actually look further into something.
The only time Heo Mun O feels something is when he reads the novel and gets manipulated by a boy.
Some of the scenarios are a bit unlikely to happen. For example, when Lee Gang saw and heard all those things, he was always in the right place while juggling his life (which Heo Mun O forgets about).
But if you look at it through the professor's eyes, everything makes sense, because he only cares about the story, not what is happening behind it.
The drama does a perfect job of telling us what kind of characters they are and what purpose they serve for this egotistical man without any redemption arcs. No one is going outside their boxes to change and do something better. "Notes from the Last Row" is here to look at the uglier side of people.
Even when Mun O hits rock bottom, he still doesn't think much about HIS wrongdoing, but rather about Lee Gang being a scumbag or his wife leaving him.
After the drama, it is pretty visible that Lee Gang was here to be used as a tool for the insanity rather than anything else. We still get a bit of his backstory and the reason why, but it never popped into my mind that I needed to know him more as a person.
It was also nice to see some of the other characters, also known as Mun O's wife.
The storyline with his wife being unhappy and, by the end, MAYBE cheating on her husband with the student was an amazing twist. While so much was happening in the main story, this was so freeing to watch.
We don't get to know much truth about the family that Lee Gang infiltrates. It was left unanswered, and I kind of like this narrative.
By the end of it all, this is the story that Heo Mun O created.
Characters: 9.5/10
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