Rich Man

Rich Man

3.5/10

Rich Man

Genre:                                                  Episodes: 16                                    Year: 2018

Romance

Comedy

Synopsis:

Lee Yoo Chan is the CEO of an IT company, but is arrogant and rude. He suffers from an inability to recognise faces, only being able to recognise the face of Kim Boon Hong, a girl he met years ago. Despite being smart, Kim Bo Ra struggles to get a job after graduating collage, but manages to get a job at Yoo Chan’s company by using the name Kim Boon Hong.

Cast:

Suho (Lee Yoo Chan)

Ha Yeon Soo (Kim Bo Ra)

Oh Chang Suk (Min Tae Joo)

Kim Ye Won (Min Tae Ra)

Park Sung Hoon (Cha Do Jin)

Yoon Da Young (Park Mi So)

Han Jung Hoon (Lee Dong Ha)

Lee Jae Jin (Kang Chan Soo)

Choi Kang Il (Nam Chul Woo)

Kim Min Ji (Kim Boon Hong)

General Thoughts:

This drama was in no way shape or form a good drama. As a person who likes to complain, I tend to enjoy having a good rant after watching a bad show, but ‘Rich Man’ has left me kind of exhausted and lifeless.

Sad to say, but I just wasn't a fan

I had a hard time categorising what this show was supposed to be. Comedy? But it’s not funny. Melodrama? But it’s not dramatic. Romance? But there’s no actual romance (until the last episode). It was just in this weird no-mans land were it wasn’t one thing or the other. It was just…nothing. Which sounds harsh, but it’s true.

Do I care about the company? Not at all.

Even though I have sat down and watched all 16 of these episodes, I fail to see the point of this drama. Because it wasn’t a cute romance that made me happy and giddy, it wasn’t a hilarious comedy that made me laugh out loud, and the plot really had…well…no plot. Tae Joo just turns against Yoo Chan for kinda unclear reasons, and then Yoo Chan has to rebuild his company. And then he does. And where back to where we started and Tae Joo and Yoo Chan are friends, and Next In is back up and running and…why did I have to watch this happen? Why did this show make me sit through 16 hours to get right back to where we started? Sure, Yoo Chan is less of an asshole, but he’s still kind of an asshole. Not to mention his dramatic personality change happens in the span of about two seconds in the second to last episode. It’s not like we got a slow, steady character development here. I haven’t seen the original Japanese drama but I heard that the Korean version changed up the plot and characters a bit to stop it from being a direct copy. I won’t lie- a part of me wishes they’d kept it a direct copy, because despite not having seen the original, I highly doubt the Korean version is an improvement. The plot just struggled along, not quite sure what it was trying to do, and not really giving satisfactory answers to any of its plot points.

Our 'hero' was even dating a different girl for 90% of the show 

The drama tended to hyper focus on a mystery or plot and then wrap it up really quickly with very minimal explanation. First it focused on the Boon Hong thing, then on Yoo Chan’s relationship with Tae Ra, then on Next In falling apart. There was very little to actually fill up the drama’s 16 episodes, and so I found myself rapidly losing interest in the story and its characters.

Sorry, but no

It always felt like the show was spinning its wheels and taking too long to solve issues, and there was just no spark that kept me engaged. The cherry on the top of this rather disappointing cake is that the acting was pretty crummy. The only comments I saw commending Suho’s acting (in fact it seemed the only people watching this drama) were from hardcore EXO-Ls. Which is fine- an idol you like is starring in a drama, fangirl away! Lord knows I do when it's an idol I adore. But from an unbiased perspective, Suho’s acting wasn’t good. It wasn’t insanely bad either, but it definitely didn’t make the drama any better. Suho has the charisma and the presence of an idol, but as a lead in a drama with rather shoddy plot, that just isn’t enough. His arrogant acting was believable enough, but I really struggled whenever Yoo Chan had to show either an extremely happy or extremely sad reaction, as Suho just didn’t have the ability to make the scenes feel authentic. He has great potential, but acting in a drama is very different to a music video or musical, and I really wish he’d taken on smaller roles to build his confidence and experience before jumping right into a leading role. To be honest Ha Yeon Soo wasn’t much better.

These leads suit a bubbly, frictionless rom-com. Not...whatever this drama was trying to be

For an actress I’m aware of and recognise, she actually has very little experience. She was good at being cute and charming, but similarly to Suho, any scene that required any real emotion from her felt very lacking. The chemistry between the two leads was pretty much non-existent, which probably contributed to how unentertaining I found he drama to be overall.

She was pushy and possessive, but at least she wasn't hateful

Kim Ye Won was probably the best actor in this series, but her character was rather dislikable and had little substance. However, unlike other actors, I found Kim Ye Won was at least able to add something a little bit of her own to her character that made Tae Ra feel more layered and detailed than other characters in the show. Oh Chang Suk wasn’t bad, and I liked hm when he was playing the mild-mannered good-guy, but his character had such a randomly sporadic shift in dynamic that I don’t think anyone could have acted it believably. The directing I found to be pretty okay, but not outstanding, but the problem here is definitely with the writing. The two writers behind this drama have almost no experience with dramas (as far as I’m aware), with one being involved mostly with movies, and one being pretty much new blood with no credentials. And it shows. There was not enough plot to span 16 episodes, and the characters were written as flat, 2-dimensional beings. The relationships between the characters felt awkward and insincere, and nothing in the events of the plot or the personalities of the characters felt remotely authentic.

An accurate depiction of chemistry levels

And while I’m sure the soundtrack had more than two songs on it, ‘Hard for Me’ and ‘Real Love’ felt like they were just playing on repeat, and I got real sick of them real fast. They weren’t even bad songs, they just played them way, way, way, way, waaaaaaay too often.

What Was Great:

Side Characters:

I don’t even mean the side characters here. I mean the side, side characters. As in the more or less nameless employees at Next In- particularly the three boys on the Big File team. Chan Soo was an absolute delight, 

Do Jin was pretty fun too

and I adore Lee Jae Jin in these cute and fun roles. He has an energy that grabs me right away and makes me want to know more about his character. Steve was also a character I found myself wanting to know more about, and these two characters provided most of the successful comedy in this show. Steve’s ‘confusion’ with using formal and informal speech was a hoot, and the guys on this small team just added a lot of warmth and heart into an otherwise dull workplace setting. I wish the writers had expanded their characters more, and that we’d seen more of what made these smaller characters tick. Lord knows we had the time for it. I mean, that romance for Chan Soo in the last episode came out of absolute nowhere- I would have adored seeing that relationship hinted at and then start to grow. Or maybe the writers would have just spoiled that too, and we should just be glad that these dynamic, smaller roles weren’t completely ruined.

What Wasn’t:

Basically All the Main Characters:

Pretty much everybody sucked. Yoo Chan was a self-absorbed, entitled asshat who cared about no one but himself. When he was kicked out from Next In so unceremoniously I think the writers were trying to evoke a sense of sadness and sympathy. But all I felt was a vicious sense of justice.

Looks like karma to me, buttwipe

I mean, this guy has been firing his employees out of the blue with no explanation for how long now? It only felt like he was getting what he deserved when he got fired himself. No sympathy from over here. And while Bo Ra was quite likeable at the start, she was on a steady downwards trajectory. Yoo Chan is in a fairly serious relationship with Tae Ra, but Bo Ra never sees that as a sign that he’s off limits.

You are literally the 'other woman'

I think the drama was trying to push that she and Yoo Chan had such a strong connection that no one could come between them, but honestly it just felt like she was being a bit of a b*tch and using her knowledge of Yoo Chan’s past experiences with her friend Boon Hong to steal him. Yeah, yeah, I know you can’t ‘steal’ a person, but Bo Ra’s decision to not acknowledge or respect Tae Ra’s relationship with Yoo Chan felt extremely conniving and really lowered my opinion of her. That’s classic b*tchy second-lead material right there, only this time it’s in our lead. Not cool. Tae Ra herself was actually not bad, but she was pretty annoying at times. Her insistence on trying to monopolise Yoo Chan felt competitive and controlling, and while I agree that Bo Ra was way out of line, Tae Ra could be pretty snitchy about it. I liked her way more when she was focused on trying to bring out the best in a young, undiscovered artist. Even if that whole plot line was a bit random. Her brother and Yoo Chan’s best friend, Tae Joo, was sweet and sensible and kind. Until he wasn’t.

Care factor- Zero

The drama really threw his character under the bus in order to create some ‘tension’. I say tension sarcastically as by the time Tae Joo’s character turned on Yoo Chan and revealed his harbouring animosity I’d already pretty much clocked out of this drama and was just watching it to get through it. By the end of the show I suppose we can say that they’re all better, kinder people. But their development was so sporadic and unbelievable that I didn’t buy these character changes. Nor did I care. And Mi So, the money-obsessed roommate that git knocked up was just materialistic and shallow from start to finish. Were we supposed to find her endearing? She wasn’t.

Ah yes, marriage, the obvious answer to a failing relationship

And for the love of all things good, I really wish dramas would stop touting marriage as the solution to accidental pregnancies. Yes, I’m aware that it’s more South Korea’s stance rather than a particular show, but when two people who fight a lot get married for the sake of a baby it’s just a divorce waiting to happen. And a messy one too.

Unoriginal:

Wealthy man is a rude jerk until he meets a nice girl.

Childhood trauma does not give you the right to be  jerk to literally everyone

Seriously, how many dramas could I be describing with that synopsis. Probably slightly more than half. There was absolutely nothing original in this show. Nothing. Rich guy falls for poor girl- been done. Boss falls for employee- been done. Love-triangle- is done in like, every drama ever. Workplace conflict that no one really cares about- I can’t even tell you how many times it’s been done. It’s not that every drama needs to be completely ground-breaking, but there does need to be something that sets it apart from other shows. Unfortunately for ‘Rich Man’ pretty much every aspect of it I had seen in a drama I’d watched before. And done better too. It just made the show feel like a cheap knockoff. Or a drama that was designed by a teenage fangirl with no writing talent trying to live out her K-Drama dreams by mashing every romance show she’d ever seen into one big, awkward mess.

Recommend?

Never in a million years.

Evidently 2018 is not the year for rom-coms in K-Dramaland