Moorim School

Moorim School

2/10

Moorim School

Genre: Episodes: 16 Year: 2016

Fantasy

Action

School

Synopsis:

Popular boy-band member, Yoon Shi Woo, struggles to perform as a celebrity as he suffers severe headaches and occasional hearing loss. After a near accident, Shi Woo’s rescuer suggests that he attend Moorim School, where the Dean is likely to be able to cure his illness. Wang Chi Ang is the son of a wealthy Chinese businessman and his mistress. Chi Ang’s father is adamant about his son attending Moorim School, but Chi Ang is reluctant to go. However, Chi Ang decides to attend after hearing that a girl he is interested in, Shim Soon Deok, is a student at Moorim. 

Cast:

Lee Hyun Woo (Yoon Shi Woo/Yoon)

Hong Bin (Wang Chi Ang)

Seo Ye Ji (Shim Soon Deok)

Jeong Eu Gene (Hwang Sun Ah/Young)

Shin Hyun Joon (Hwang Moo Song)

Alexander (Yeob Jung)

Shin Sung Woo (Chae Yoon)

General Thoughts:

Yeaaaaahhhh. This drama. Oh goodness. I think it tried really hard, and I think everyone involved tried really hard- but it was just all over the place. To start with, it had no clue what genre it wanted to be, and each character seemed to belong to a different genre. Yoon Shi Woo was the star of a melodramatic coming-of-age drama.

Some much needed fan service. 

Wang Chi Ang was the second male lead in a chaebol rom-com. Hwang Sun Ah was the support in a melo cross action. Shim Soon Deok was the heroine of a tacky school rom-com. Then we also had Hwang Moo Song slaying it as the star of his very own mystery-action…but no one else was in on it. Too add to this hodgepodge of genre, we had a very, very green cast. Jeong Eu Gene did well enough as Sun Ah- I believed her in her role, and she never went too over the top, even if you could tell she was acting some of the time. Hong Bin absolutely nailed his role. Granted- arrogant, childish chaebol isn’t the hardest role to conquer. But who cares? He did it well. All you people b*tching about idol-gone-actors can just shut it, because Hong Bin out-acted half the actor-actors in the whole darn drama. Lee Hyun Woo’s not green. He’s anything but, and he delivers a strong performance- which is just as well because his character is sucky and weak, and without Lee Hyun Woo behind the wheel, I wouldn’t have given a flip about Yoon Shi Woo. The writers just made him too perfect. Nothing the boy did could go wrong. He was suddenly zen and mature and a master of romance and all martial arts. Yawn- it’s not fun when your hero already has all his sh*t figured out. I really wanted Wang Chi Ang to kick his butt in something just because Chi Ang was going through all this struggle and turmoil, while Shi Woo had it pretty easy. Ah well. 

NOPE

Then that brings us to Seo Ye Ji. Guys, guys, I’m sorry. But I just wasn’t buying it. I always felt as though Seo Ye Ji was acting. I never felt even the slightest hint of genuine emotion from Soon Deok. I wasn’t a big fan of Soon Deok as a character to begin with either. To go with the cheesy over-acting, Soon Deok was rather selfish and inconsiderate- particularly in regards to Chi Ang. I don’t think I’ve seen a supposed heroine lead someone on quite like Soon Deok did.

Jeez, leave some boys for the rest of the school

By the time the drama finished, I still had no idea who Soon Deok was supposed to be as a character. She was flat, lifeless and unentertaining to watch. Beyond our four leads, the rest of the characters all fall by the wayside, only having brief glimpses of the spotlight. The plot is probably the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen. The writers tried to be too mysterious, but it was all fairly obvious. It was easy to peg who was a good guy and who was a bad guy- even when they hadn’t explicitly said so. And then the show acted like it was a huge reveal when these characters came out and actually said ‘Oh yeah, btw I’m a bad dude’. Oh, we know. And then things that were supposed to be obvious were totally confusing. There’s a bloody great school hidden in the mountains and I’m just supposed to accept that? What are you doing, this isn’t Hogwarts- get your act together and tell me what’s going on. In addition to being glaringly obvious, the plot was so slow, and so boring. Nothing really happens, and you’re dreaming if you want any solid character development. The music was pretty great, but, y’know- VIXX. And Lee Hyun Woo. It would have been blasphemy if it wasn’t.

What Was Great:

Alexander the Great:

Yeob Jung was probably one of the most interesting characters of the lot. He had a great deal of hidden depth about him, and was set up to be a great antagonist.

Bring on the teenage angst, I say

Obviously no high school is complete without an arrogant jerk ready to trample on all those in his way. Woo- tension! What a neat surprise tension was in this drama. And Yeob Jung was at the centre of most of it. 

Alexander makes it aaaaalllll better. Well...not quite.

Alexander did a great job at portraying the assy bad-boy. His acting was pretty spot on: whether he was being an angry antagonist, or a begrudgingly helpful schoolmate. His occasional bouts of English were pretty random (and bordered on gimmicky but that’s not his fault)- but at least he can actually speak English well. As well as 500 other languages. Just kidding guys, it’s not 500- it’s only 8. And did he do his own martial arts? I’ve got no idea, but it felt like he did at least a little of his own martial arts. But I could be wrong. Sadly Yeob Jung's character development did come to a screeching halt- perhaps due to the episode cutback. Apparently we're all just going to ignore his glaringly obvious family issues and the fact that he tried to strangle his brother in a school fighting competition. I don't care, still one of my favourite characters.

International Cast:

Ohhh my goodness what a smorgasbord of international actors. Joining Alexander (who is half Korean-half Portuguese, raised in China, studied in America) we have Shannon (English), Sam Okyere (Ghana), Daniel Linderman (Germany) and POP (Thailand). It was super exciting. Until I found out none of them did anything.

What Wasn’t:

Waste of Cast:

Yeah, so that was a gaping hole in the series. We have this beautiful, exotic cast- but then they are totally under-utilised. Alexander gets the most screen time of the lot (which I’m not all that mad about), but I still wanted to see more of the international cast- especially as this was one of the main reasons I set out to watch ‘Moorim School’.

Wow- just look at all those characters who won't be developed.

Daniel comes in second and gives a nice performance in the limited screen time he got. It was nice to see a white guy in a Korean drama that could actually act. Way to go Daniel. Sam only pops in every now and then to remind people that he’s the security guard, but he doesn’t actually do anything. The school essentially has no security. POP and Shannon barely get a look in. I couldn’t even differentiate POP from the rest of the Korean school kids unless he was speaking Thai.

Is This Even a Plot?:

It’s a little like the ‘What came first: the chicken or the egg?’ scenario. Except it’s more like: is the plot so bad because the number of episodes were cut, or were the number of episodes cut because the plot was so bad? 

Apparently no one knows. Not even the writers.

At first you think it’s about Shi Woo losing his hearing- but nope the writers forget about that pretty fast. Then you think it’s about the bromance-romance tension, but Soon Deok makes her choice super early on. And can I just say- what a d*ck move Shi Woo. Our hero who is supposedly shining in glorious perfection knows the only friend he’s ever had is crushing on this girl, so he totally just steals her away. And everyone seems surprised that Chi Ang isn’t cool with that. Whatever. I wouldn’t have been half as mad if that meant Chi Ang got his love line with Sun Ah moving- but no. They only get together after that huge time skip and we miss all the good bits. Anyway, after that brief conflict (if you can call it that) we move on to the whole Chintamani thing. Yeah, I don’t really get it either. Apparently there’s this thing that can grant wishes and there’s a key to get to it that’s been split in three and everyone’s fighting over it. For an action drama there’s a hell of a lot of chitty chat about who’s got the key and how they should go about getting the key. For fudge’s sake people- JUST GO GET IT. FIGHT. FIGHT. FIGHT. There was no tension. There was no suspense. There was no real sense of conflict. There was no doubt in my mind that Wang Chi Ang was on our side. All those scenes of him pretending to be buddy-buddy with his father were just painful to watch.

Coincidence? I think not.

Then the show went all Kung Fu Panda- and the Chintamni was actually just a glowey rock. The Dragon Scroll (oops I mean Chintamani) says you are the secret ingredient.

What the Hell is This School?:

Am I just supposed to accept that there’s a weird ass school up in the mountains? And that everyone kind of knows about it and is cool with that? What does this school even teach? It doesn’t seem like magic is a common thing here, but the whole school is hidden inside a glowy magic barrier. And that’s just normal to everyone. Hmm, okay.

I don't even know what half those teachers teach

Oh, and Shi Woo and his father have telekinetic abilities too. No one seems too disturbed by that either. Seriously, for a school that only teaches morals and martial arts, there’s a whole lot of spooky sh*t going on. Way weirder than some glowing rock. Though not weird enough to be interesting.

What Language is This?:

In honour of our drastically under-utilised cast, there were a bunch of different languages going on in the drama. Which is great- I’m all for a multi-cultural K-Drama.

Please, please- just make it stop

But all the school kids seemed to understand Yeob Jung when he spoke English- but no one else could speak English. And sometimes they understood Nadet (POP) when he spoke Thai, and sometimes they didn’t. Similarly, characters’ ability to understand Chinese seemed to differ depending on the situation. Shi Woo’s father has been interacting and correctly responding to this woman who speaks Chinese all drama long, and then suddenly he can’t understand her when she’s on the phone speaking Chinese because that would be inconvenient to the whole plot. Whatever, I don’t even care anymore.

Re-watch?

No. If I could un-watch this, I probably would.

Finish him.