Zombie Detective

 Zombie Detective

7/10

Zombie Detective

Genre:                                    Episodes: 12                        Year: 2020

Comedy

Fantasy

Synopsis:

Kim Moo Young is a zombie who has learned to imitate human behaviour. He works as a private detective and has no memory of his life before becoming a zombie. Gong Sun Ji works as a current affairs writer and becomes involved in moo Young’s detective agency while working on a kidnapping case.

Cast:

Choi Jin Hyuk (Kim Moo Young)

Park Joo Hyun (Gong Sun Ji)

Tae Hang Ho (Lee Sung Rok)

Lee Joong Ok (Wang Wei)

Ahn Se Ha (Lee Tae Kyun)

Lim Se Joo (Kim Bo Ra)

Kwon Hwa Woon (Cha Do Hyun)

Ha Do Kwon (No Poong Shik)

General Thoughts:

This drama was so unexpectedly good! When I started the show, I was kinda expecting it to be…well honestly, I thought it would be terrible. I’d watched a lot of good shows in 2020 and was actually trying to balance it out by picking one I thought would be a bit of a dud. Well, that so didn’t happen.

Why does this drama work? This drama totally shouldn't work

‘Zombie Detective’ is obviously not going to be a perfect, visually stunning show free of plot-holes, but it just goes to show that a drama doesn’t need to be those things to be good. ‘Zombie Detective’ branded itself as a comedy, and it did comedy well. Which kind of surprised me. I have not really seen Choi Jin Hyuk do comedy. I saw him in ‘Emergency Couple’ but he played more of a straight-faced character there where comedic things happened around him. In Zombie Detective’ there was nowhere to hide- Choi Jin Hyuk’s comedic timing was front and centre. And it was so unexpectedly brilliant.

So silly, so fun

While there is a certain level of overacting that has to go into creating a ridiculous situation such as a zombie training to be human and maintaining a human facade, it never felt like Choi Jin Hyuk crossed the boundary into ridiculousness. Sure, he overacted (as was necessary), but he didn’t over-overact. I’ve not seen Park Joo Hyun in anything before, but she did well here as our heroine. She was fun in a non-slapstick way, and had a really sweet chemistry not just with Choi Jin Hyuk, but also with Ahn Se Ha, who played her character’s brother-in-law. The two had a really quirky and endearing relationship, and it was nice to see such a cute, platonic, familial relationship play out on screen. While the characters were fun and interesting, the plot also had to be substantial enough to old these interesting (if slightly ridiculous) characters up, and this plot was just beefy enough to do that. While the show didn’t take itself too seriously it still had some pretty serious plot lines weaving through it. The show also did a really great job at balancing those plot lines so that the sow always had something going on. The plot moved from Moo Young learning to be human and finding his feet as a detective, to finding the culprit behind a kidnapping case that Moo Young was involved in when he was alive, to capturing the corrupt man behind creating the zombie virus that infected Moo Young.

It was suuuuper satisfying when his zombie traits came in handy

Each big scenario led nicely into the next, and it felt like our characters were stepping forward into the next logical issue, and that their discoveries were shaping the newer conflicts. The drama built its tension really well, and there was always a sense of forward momentum in the story. Which is quite amazing when you think about how much filler this show actually had in it. Moo Young and Sun Ji were often off doing unrelated cases or having personal crises that somehow seemed relevant at the time (in hindsight I do wonder how this show was so cohesive, but hey- it was), and a few random characters got a fair amount of screen time too. But the episodes were always interesting and fun to watch, and there was never a time that I could feel myself getting bored with the show.

Choi Jin Hyuk weirdly rocked the mo makeup

I think a big part o this is that the show didn’t try to push for 16 episodes. There was enough content for 12, and the show didn’t try and draaaaw itself out- it just stuck with what it had, which allowed each episode to carry on with a consistent momentum and avoided making the show feel long and drawn-out. The costuming for Moo Young as a zombie was pretty, uh…silly, so I’m glad the drama went into how he could put on a human disguise, because I’ not sure how seriously I could have taken the show with Choi Jin Hyuk wearing such a ridiculous costume.

Santa story was really intriguing

I guess they did it to make him appear more funny than scary, but a part of me does still wish that Moo Young’s zombie form was a bit more…zombie-ish. Kinda more like the evil vet’s zombie form. Which was actually reminiscent of a zombie.Speaking of the evil vet, he did potentially feel a bit out of place in this show. It’s strange, because the rest of the bad guys in this drama fit into the show well, despite being more serious than the heroes. However, Poong Shik did feel just a touch too dramatic for this particular comedy. Because his character was introduced late in the show, there wasn’t a whole lot of time for him to get any sort of character development. He was pretty vanilla compared to the other bad guys Moo Young had to face, which was a bit of a bummer for the finale. I quite enjoyed the santa case and how that all played out, and while I wouldn’t change how the show did anything, it is a bit of a shame that the final case wasn’t as strong and impactful as the first. I must also say that I didn’t super love how the show finished up. Moo Young wasn’t cured of his zombie-ness, but he also didn’t stick around to continue running the detective agency with Sun Ji. Then he just appears again in the last episode (presumably for good), and he’s still a zombie and nothing has changed? It was just a bit weird.

What Was Great:

Choi Jin Hyuk-larious:

So Choi Jin Hyuk is great at action. He is also great at drama. No I can officially say with confidence that he is also great at comedy. It was an unexpected surprise, but not an unpleasant one. There were a few slapstick moments early on, and Choi Jin Hyuk handled them with complete confidence, and completely owned the role of Zombie Kim Moo Young.

10/10- would watch in a comedy again

While Park Joo Hyun did a brilliant job as our heroine, it never quite got to the point that it felt like no other actress could have done the role as well. However I 100% feel like no other actor could have delivered the same deadpan humour in such a wonderful way as Choi Jin Hyuk did. He completely embodied the zombie detective and I’m not sure the show would have been as entertaining had the male lead gone to someone else. Choi Jin Hyuk kept me engaged and invested in both his character and the show as a whole from the first episode until the last.

What Wasn’t:

Too Much World King:

Perhaps one of the show’s biggest weaknesses was that there were not very many characters. Our titular zombie and his helper, Sun Ji, were the only main recurring characters, and then we had the two recurring support characters in the detectives at World King Agency. Sure, we had a lot of good characters in Sun Ji’s family and I definitely enjoyed the scenes they were in and what those characters and actors brought to the table,

Just...not my style

but they were certainly playing support to the support characters. That is to say, they weren’t in the drama very much. Really any time the show wasn’t focusing directly on Moo Young and Sun Ji, it was focusing on Sung Rok and Wang Wei at World King. And while I enjoyed these two bumbling slapstick characters for a time, it did start to feel like a bit of overkill that we had to see so much of them. While I liked a lot of the humour that was going on in ‘Zombie Detective’, the humour that was involved in World King Agency felt like the type of humour that is used for cheap laughs. You know, kinda like fart jokes. A little is okay, but if you use it too much it can become a bit of a turn off. This hit especially hard as I really like the time we spent with Moo Young and Sun Ji, so any time away from those two was already not as fun, but having World King take up so much of the leftover time wasn’t great. I think the way the writer injected their two characters into the show was done really well- it’s not like Sung Rok and Wang Wei were popping up at places with no reason for being there. I just kinda wish they hadn’t been there. At least so much. Their type of humour just wasn’t my style.

Recommend?

If you’re looking for a lighthearted laugh then yes, if you’re after a more serious show then this will not be the one for you.

This show was a good laugh right when I needed one

Voice 2

Voice 2

6/10

Voice 2

Genre:                                                     Episodes: 12                                   Year: 2018

Mystery

Thriller

Synopsis:

The Golden Time team relocate to Poongsan City for a month in order to track down the criminal behind the murder of their team captain.

Cast:

Lee Ha Na (Kang Kwon Joo)

Lee Jin Wook (Do Kang Woo)

Kwon Yul (Bang Je Soo)

Son Eun Soo (Park Eun Soo)

Yoo Seung Mok (Na Hong Soo)

Kim Woo Seok (Jin Seo Yul)

Kim Joong Ki (Park Joong Ki)

Song Boo Gun (Goo Gwang Soo)

Ahn Se Ha (Kwak Dok Ki)

Kim Ki Nam (Yang Chun Byung)

General Thoughts:

Okay, a K-Drama hasn’t made me this grumpy in quite some time. This drama didn’t make me grumpy because it’s bad, or because the plot doesn’t make sense, or even because the characters are unlikeable. No, this drama made me grumpy because it’s NOT F*CKING FINISHED.

WHERE'S THE REST OF MY DRAMA YOU SADISTIC B*STARDS

Yup, you heard right. OCN has basically sat me down at a restaurant, taken my order, and then brought me out my meal. Only it’s not cooked. ‘Oh- you want your dinner cooked? Our apologies, you’ll have to order another season and wait 12 months for that.’ Like, f*cking what? Anyway, moving along.

Jang Who? We have a new hero now.

Apart from the fact that this is basically only half a drama, what it did deliver was pretty darn good. It was a smooth continuation of the first season, and despite Jang Hyuk not returning, it didn’t feel like a giant gap in the story. There was a good cover for his character not returning to the Golden Time team, and our new hero was introduced in a swift, believable way. To be honest, Jang Hyuk is probably one of the things that annoyed me in ‘Voice’, so I wasn’t all that upset that he didn’t return for this season. The show was similar to the first season (duh), but it did a great job at presenting itself in a new way. While a fair bit of the subject matter were things we dealt with in the first season, there was enough in ‘Voice 2’ that was different, that it didn’t feel like we were watching the same show with a different male lead. While we were still chasing a serial killer as our main villain, Je Soo was a very different ball game to our killer last year. Chaebol psychos aren’t exactly rare, but Kim Jae Wook gave such a great performance last year that it made the villain terrifying and interesting. This time around, we had a villain that was far more secretive.

Though, if you want his identity to be a secret you might wanna pick an actor less conspicuous than Kwon Yul

We had far less open confrontation, with much more going on in the shadows. Our villain this time around also didn’t work alone. While usually having accomplices would lead to more ways to get caught, the vast connections that Je Soo had actually made him much more frightening- because these accomplices were more than just his henchmen. With his manipulation and string-pulling,

Who's in the box, who's in the box, who's in the box today-ay?

Je Soo had basically ensured that there was a whole group of people willing to continue on his horrific deeds even after he was caught. It also meant that he had a lot more people willing to take the fall for him so that he wiggle out of tricky situations. I appreciated the added mystery in this season, and thought it brought a lot more interest to the plot as opposed to a singular, rich murderer. In fact, I think the plot as a whole was a bit tighter than last season. The first season relied heavily on case-of-the-hour situations, with the main villain being on the back burner a fair bit until he was brought to the foreground as the final obstacle of the series. In Season 2, it felt much more like the end game villain was the one we were chasing from day one, and most of the smaller cases that came up in the meantime were still somehow connected to Je Soo and his creepy killer network. Both scenarios are totally fine, I just thought it was a good move to pace the show a bit differently in order to set it apart from its predecessor. While the writing behind the characters has definitely improved, I still wouldn’t say that the characters were as detailed as I would have liked them to be.

Man, it sure would be nice to get to know some of the other people on this team

I liked the way Kwon Joo’s development went this season, as having her not be as connected to the serial killer allowed us to see a little bit more of how she was on a regular basis. All I got out of last season is that she had good hearing and was dedicated to catching the man who killed her father.

I feel like her super hearing was way less important this time around

This season showed that she was dedicated to her job as a whole, with a deep desire to help people. She felt trusting and loyal without being weak or easy. The relationship between Kwon Joo and Kang Woo was excellent at showing us deeper aspects of Kwon Joo as a person. Lee Ha Na did a good job at continuing her role and she slipped right back into character nicely. Personally, I think she did a better job than last time, as I thought she was able to express Kwon Joo’s inner thoughts much better than the previous season. Lee Jin Wook did a great job at stepping into a franchise that already had a well loved hero (well loved by other viewers, not me), and was able to make Kang Woo very different to the last season’s hero. Despite both of them being rather hot-headed and determined to solve crimes, they didn’t feel like similar characters at all. Lee Jin Wook brought a moodiness to the drama that suited his character well and enhanced the mystery that surrounded Kang Woo. He made Kang Woo feel lonely and a bit jaded, and at times even slightly unhinged, without letting the character fall too far into unlikeable territory.

♫Does that make me crazy? Does that make me craaazaaaayyy? Possibly♫

The two leads had pretty great chemistry, and the characters’ desire to trust one another paired with their uncertainty that they should made for some pretty interesting viewing. Unfortunately I was a little underwhelmed with the villain performance. I know Kwon Yul can be scary, and it’s not like he did a bad job, but he didn’t creep me out the way I was hoping he would.

At this point I'm questioning if the writer even knows what his deal is

While the actions and motivations of our villain, Je Soo, were highly intriguing, he did suffer a bit as a character due to fact that he was completely doused in mystery. Last season we had a pretty solid understanding of our villain and what made him tick, whereas this time it felt a bit like the character construction for the villain was sacrificed in order to keep the mystery…well, mysterious. Which is a further downside to this particular plot being continued in a separate season. I have no doubt that Je Soo is going to be a fascinating villain, but because his story didn’t play out at the end of the show like I was expecting it to, I’m left confused as to why he’s so obsessed with Kang Woo and why I should care. The side characters were all interesting enough, but similarly to last season they were all very, very underdeveloped with very little screen time. Enjoyable as our main leads are, I still think it would be nice to get a bit more development for the other characters that fill out the Golden Time Team.

What do you mean there are other people on this team?

Even during the story arc that centred around Eun Soo she didn’t get a lot of screen time for herself as a character. Yes she was on screen, but she was mostly just there as a victim and as a catalyst to get Kwon Joo and Kang Woo into action. 

What Was Great:

Never Boring:

Perhaps this is one of my biggest annoyances that this season wasn’t a whole, complete story.

Is he gonna help you or is he gonna cut your hand off? Who can tell?

It was really, really good and everything was tying together quite nicely only for it to end, which then makes me question the good aspects of this drama. Like, the aspect I enjoyed most about this show is that it was never dull. There was always something going on with the Golden Time Team, the cases they were solving, and of course the tension that came from not knowing 100% if Kang Woo was an accomplice of the murderer, unwittingly or not. This show did a brilliant job at keeping the tension high from the very beginning, and there were no lags mid-way through. This drama was always interesting to watch. But on the other hand, that’s not exactly something that’s hard to do when you tell only half your story. The reason this plot had no lag mid-way could very well be due to the fact that right now we have only just arrived at the mid-way point of the story.

What Wasn’t:

Incomplete:

I don’t know about you guys, but part of what made me fall in love with Korean dramas and helps keep my obsession strong is their single season format. I don’t like commitment, so I love not having to dedicate years of my life to the same show. I also don’t like waiting, so I love not having excruciating gaps in a story I’m enjoying (seriously, I feel like I’ve spent half my life waiting for ‘Game of Thrones’ seasons).

I kinda feel like doing this to you right now, writer-nim

That being said, I’m not against bringing in a second season into K-Dramaland. ‘Voice’ is actually the type of drama that is perfectly set up to be multiple season show. The police setting allows the show to have an ever changing cast (with a few staple characters of course) without rocking the boat too much- which makes it easy to add new faces to freshen the show up, or replace old characters should the actors not want to return.

Plus, does anyone actually believe they'd kill off this heroine? No. Not at all.

The police setting also gives us a reason to have multiple antagonists. Essentially, all you need to keep this show going is for Lee Ha Na to keep coming back as our heroine. And yet…they kind of mess this format up. Because for me, unless you’re going in knowing it’s a long story that will have more than one season (indeed, like ‘Game of Thrones’), I expect the seasons to be able to stand alone. We have a mystery, work all season to solve it, then move on to a fresh mystery in the next season. I thought that was what ‘Voice’ was doing, because Season 1 wrapped up all nicely and left us all with a satisfied, content feeling. Season 2 was a bonus! More of what we liked as kind of a Take 2 rather than a direct continuation. We had a new story. It would make sense for the show to continue that way- wrapping up Season 2’s mystery and getting a new mystery together for Season 3. But instead, Season 2 cuts off right as we get towards the main part of our mystery. This left me feeling like we had accomplished very little, if anything at all in Season 2.

I want to know what's going on and I want to know now

The PD (who is not Kim Hong Sun from the first season, I might add) said that two seasons (seasons 2 and 3) were planned from the start and as the story ‘couldn’t be wrapped up in just 16 episodes’ a third season was brought in and Season 2’s episode count was lowered to 12. I would seriously much rather have a 16 episode series that is absolutely jam packed with content than cutting off the story for a season change.

I am going to be at least this angry if 'Voice 3' doesn't deliver

Seriously, I have never once complained that a K-Drama has tried to cover too much content in its episode count, yet I have frequently complained of story lag in the middle of a drama/season due to there not being enough story to spread over all the episodes. I’m also skeptical because it didn’t seem like there was much more to discover for our current villain, Je Soo. All we had to do was arrest him (because legit the whole world knows he’s a murderer now) and figure out how he was connected to Kang Woo. Even Kang Woo’s back story was pretty much filled in at the end of Season 2, so I’m not exactly sure what it was that made it ‘too much’ for 16 episodes. I actually went in thinking this drama was 14 episodes (so it was like a double shock when I got to episode 12 and found out 1- this was the end, and 2- there is no closure.), and as I was watching the final episode, not knowing I was minutes away from the season’s end, I honestly believed this story could be wrapped up in a satisfactory manner in the next two episodes.

Aren't...aren't we pretty much done here?

Why they need a whole other season is just beyond me. Money, I guess. But the thing is, if Season 3 doesn’t turn out to be the BEST THING EVER, it’s going to be really disappointing.

My expectations for the next season are weirdly low

There’s been all this build-up, and you’ve left us hanging for a year, so if it’s anything short of excellent, not only season 3, but also Season 2 (which apart from being incomplete was actually a really solid show) will be ruined. Additional seasons with complete story continuation also make me nervous for the simple fact that the cast may not even sign on. There’s been whispers that Lee Ha Na and Lee Jin Wook have both signed on for Season 3, but nothing has been confirmed yet. And I mean, Lee Ha Na has done this for two years in a row now- who says she even wants to do it for another year? Maybe she wants to try something new? And I’ve heard literally nothing about Kwon Yul coming back on board, so who knows what’s happening there. Essentially what this boils down to is that this season can’t stand alone, so as well as being unsatisfied with the conclusion thus far, I’m hesitant to say if I even like this drama or not- because how good or bad Season 2 is, is now tied in with how good or bad Season 3 ends up being. And I don’t love that.

Recommend?

Not unless you are 100% committed to another season. 

We don't even know if Season 3 will be the final one...