The Best Hit

The Best Hit

4/10

The Best Hit

Genre:                                                  Episodes: 16                                         Year: 2017

Romance

Comedy

Synopsis:

In 1993, Yoo Hyun Jae, a popular member of a successful boy group travels forward in time to 2017. In the modern time, Hyun Jae learns that he mysteriously disappeared in 1994.

Cast:

Yoon Shi Yoon (Yoo Hyun Jae)

Lee Se Young (Choi Woo Seung)

Kim Min Jae (Lee Ji Hoon)

Cha Tae Hyun (Lee Gwang Jae)

Yoon Son Ha (Hong Bo Hee)

Dong Hyun Bae (MC Drill)

Lee Deok Hwa (Lee Soon Tae)

Hong Kyun Min (Paark Young Jae)

Chae Eun Woo (MJ)

Bona (Do Hye Ri)

General Thoughts:

I put off writing this review the way I put off finishing this drama- and for the same reason. This drama is so, so, so, so, so insanely boring. How can you have two comedic goldmines in Yoon Shi Yoon and Cha Tae Hyun and not have an outlandishly hilarious show?

Why are you so unfunny, show?

It’s not like the show didn’t have anything to work with- we started with interesting characters, a intriguing time-travel plot and a fairly talented cast. But it just…wasn’t what I expected it to be. I wonder if this show was funnier to its Korean audience, because a couple of times I did feel like the show was being funny but I just totally didn’t get it.

The kiss gag was fun, but it did make me nervous that there'd be a romance

I also fail to see how this was a ‘variety-drama hybrid’ (which is what is was marketed as), as really it was exactly the same as a regular drama. I was looking forward to a sort of mockumentary style similar to ‘Producers’ (which I found hilarious), but instead it had nothing in it that made it stand out from other comedy dramas. To be fair, at first the humour was pretty good, and I found myself enjoying the show, but as the storyline progressed (and the fun at Hyun Jae flailing around in the future faded) the show’s humour seemed to fall away. The antagonistic relationship between Hyun Jae and Gwang Jae was annoying rather than funny- I would have much preferred a long-lost bromance dynamic similar to ‘Tunnel’, and the love triangle between the father and son just kind of creeped me out. There were some fun moments to be mined from the situation while Hyun Jae didn’t know that Ji Hoon was his son or that his son was also crushing on Woo Seung, but as soon as he found out the whole situation just weirded me out.

This is the most uncomfortable love triangle I've ever been subjected to

Ji Hoon himself was just far too serious to be funny, and I thought Gwang Jae was a touch to whiny and butt-hurt and wasn’t funny either. And Bo Hee was just kinda super useless. Grandad and Mal Sook were always pretty fun, and I tended to always enjoy their snippets on screen- like when Grandad tried to buy off the young boy in exchange for not playing with Mal Sook anymore. I also found MC Drill pretty fun.

He also made Ji Hoon fun which is an added bonus

Though I do wish his character had some serious scenes or moments of character development, at least he could be relied upon to be consistently funny. At first I though Dong Hyun Bae was going a little over the top with his character’s representation, but as the show and his character found their groove, he acted quite well. I also appreciated that he didn’t shy away from being labelled as Tayang’s older brother- the scene of him bursting into ‘Eyes, Nose, Lips’ was just hilarious. Dong Hyun Bae actually reminds me a bit of Kang Ki Young (who is fabulous), and I hope he continues acting and expanding his range. Kim Min Jae as the other half of the duo I usually like, but he’s starting to fall into the trap of playing the same sorts of characters. His role here was really quite similar to the prickly guy with a soft spot for his girl that he played in ‘Because It’s the First Time’ and was even a bit similar to the entitled young King he played in ‘Goblin’. I know that he’s a good actor, but I wish he’d be a bit braver in the projects he chooses and step outside his comfort zone a bit.

You can do better than this Min Jae-ah

Yoon Shi Yoon was of course fabulous, but I did find his character pretty annoying. Yoon Shi Yoon’s natural charm only just managed to make Hyun Jae a likeable character. And I thought the leading lady Lee Se Young was just bad.

Not really a fan of these characters. Super not a fan of their love-line

Similarly to Hyun Jae, her character was super annoying, and Lee Se Young just didn’t have the charm or charisma to make up for that. Woo Seung was grouchy and often unapproachable, and was petty and selfish to boot. The character was simply boring and poorly written- with her having nothing more to do than simply be around as something for Hyun Jae and Ji Hoon to disagree over and fight about. Actually that pretty much wraps up the story as a whole. I kept waiting for the big reason that Hyun Jae time travelled to the future (was it to find the money? Discover who killed him? Spend time with his son?), but it turns out that…um…yeah there’s really no reason. He just sort of comes to the future, mucks around a bit, and then steals his son’s crush. Yeah man, what the hell? The fact that the whole story just came down to an immature romance really sucked. For most of the show’s run, Ji Hoon and Gwang Jae didn’t even want Hyun Jae around, and in the end, his trip to the future didn’t change anything.

If fate or destiny or whatever was gonna propel him through time you'd think there'd be a good reason for it

Nothing in the past altered, and nothing in the future really changed either except that now Ji Hoon has no chance with Woo Seung. Ji Hoon and Drill would have debuted through

An actual expression! You've come a long way since 'To Be Continued'

World Entertainment without Hyun Jae coming to the future, so all he really did was help sign MJ. Who was a significantly smaller character than I would have liked. Unlike most of the other characters, MJ did tend to be quite funny. Cha Eun Woo has improved a lot- there was actual believable emotion on his face! I would have liked MJ to be a bit more involved in the story. In fact, I would have liked ALL the characters to be a bit more involved in the story, as most of what we got was Hyun Jae and Woo Seung which was weird and boring. There were all these other smaller plot lines in the works that just weren’t developed, and left the story as a whole feeling rather one-dimensional. The drama lacked the heart and emotional core that shows about close friends and family usually have, and I blame that entirely on focusing too much on the romance. Oh and the characters just being generally sucky.

What Was Great:

Yoonie:

I really only kept watching for Yoon Shi Yoon (and the fact that I hate leaving dramas unfinished). He did a great job trying to drag this dead drama along, and a couple of times he actually got me to care about what was going on in the story.

Oppa~ let's pick better projects now, okay?

He did a pretty good job at building the romance, because Lee Se Young didn’t really help him there. He was flamboyant without being unrealistic and brought his dramatic charm to a character that otherwise could have been too haughty and arrogant. I adored Yoon Shi Yoon’s ‘90s style and he pulled it off surprisingly well. 

What Wasn’t:

Kinda Gross OTP:

I just couldn’t get into the love-line of this drama. Not at all. It’s an awkward time skip to include a romance. In fact, because of the amount of time that had passed,

Does it not weird you out at all that he's actually your best friend's father?

I really wasn’t expecting there to be a main romance at all- because it just wouldn’t make a lot of sense. It would either be Hyun Jae with Bo Hee- who was now old enough to be his mother and was raising their son with another man, or with Woo Seung who was the same age as his son and was in fact the woman his son was in love with. It’s just weird either way. Most time travel dramas that work in a romance can do so because the time between the two timelines is so great- I’m talking hundreds or thousands of years. So you don’t really picture one of the characters being significantly older than the other- you just go off their biological age, which is usually pretty similar (think ‘Queen In Hyun’s Man’). But by having such a small amount of time between the timelines (a mere 24 years) everything changes. Because there are people that the hero knows in both timelines, it seems creepy for him to get into any sort of romantic relationship. Because Woo Seung was the same age as his son, I found it super icky that Hyun Jae would even consider her in a romantic sense. I know they’re technically the same age, but it still kinda grossed me out.

Guys...it's not cute. It's just creepy.

Kinda Boring:

Because I was so disengaged from the main romance, as soon as the drama started centring its story around the love-line between Hyun Jae and Woo Seung, I just wasn’t all that interested.

Why does she get so much screen time? Just why?

Due to being so weirded out by the whole relationship, I struggled to find their interactions fun or cute, and as a result, their scenes together just became boring. And there were SO many scenes of them together.

What a stupendous waste of time

As I mentioned before, as the romance took centre stage, everything else in the drama just fell away. We didn’t really discover what happened regarding Hyun Jae’s disappearance, and when we did it sucked. What- he wanted to secretly die rather than let people know he had an illness? That’s possibly one of the stupidest things I’ve heard in K-Drama. And I’ve heard some pretty stupid things. Gwang Jae and Bo Hee’s romance was brushed over super fast and even Ji Hoon’s dreams of becoming a singer and his debut were just glossed over at the end. I tend to like my dramas to have some kind of meaning- not necessarily deep meaning, but at least have things happen for a reason. There were so many directions this drama could have taken, and in the end it opted for a sporadic series of events that revolved around an awkward romance.

Recommend?

Nah. Nothing was really done all that well- not the time travel nor the love-line.

I recommend not watching this drama

Producers

Producers

8/10

Producers

Genre:                                   Episodes: 12                                   Year: 2015

Romance

Comedy

Mockumentary

Synopsis:

Baek Seung Chan has a crush on a KBS employee and decides to enter the same field of work as her. He enters the KBS entertainment division as a junior producer, where he is devastated to find his crush is involved with Ra Joon Mo, head producer of ‘2 Days & 1 Night’. Things worsen for Seung Chan as he begins having difficulties with Tak Ye Jin, head producer of ‘Music Bank’ and close friend of Ra Joon Mo. After Seung Chan is assigned to Joon Mo’s variety show as a junior producer, he meets popular singer Cindy, notorious for being stubborn and cold, who has agreed to join the program out of a growing interest in Baek Seung Chan.

Cast:

Kim Soo Hyun (Baek Seung Chan)

Gong Hyo Jin (Tak Ye Jin)

IU (Cindy)

Cha Tae Hyun (Ra Joon Mo)

 General Thoughts:

It’s a funny, endearing drama with funny, endearing characters. At first I was worried that much of the drama would be lost on me, as the only experience I really have with Korean Variety is 'Running Man', but I was happily surprised. The jokes presented in the drama are pretty universal and avoid being too ‘insider’. The humour and mockumentary style was helped along by tasteful cameos.

It's cute, and delightful, and emotional

The cast was delightful. As usual Kim Soo Hyun was magnificent, displaying his amazing acting abilities and embodying the awkward, honest man that is Baek Seung Chan. Gong Hyo Jin is wonderful as Tak Ye Jin- her straight-faced shamelessness and unwillingness to admit mistakes flowed effortlessly. But the real star of the cast is definitely Cha Tae Hyun.

All the pairings were adorable and plausible

So far I’ve only watched him in dramas where he is cast as a baddie, so it was marvellous to get a taste of his comedic flare (which I might add, is excellent). The main characters are just so real and believable- it’s hard not to become emotionally invested in their struggles. The lovelines flip-flop all over the place, which make the drama that much more compelling. Anyone could end up with anyone, and it would still make a satisfying conclusion. The mockumentary style of filming is unique and adds a great deal of humour- with scenes that directly oppose what our characters have said, right after they say it. Sadly though, this style seems to fall off the bandwagon a bit, and becomes a bit of an afterthought as the drama progresses.

What Was Great:

Earnest Maknae:

Kim Soo Hyun so perfectly fits the role of the hardworking junior with absolutely no social graces. His character, Baek Seung Chan, is developed nicely from the get go, with each scene seeming to add something new, no matter how small.

Kim Soo Hyun slays it in whatever role he plays

His inability to read sarcasm and his blissful obliviousness to social cues pair nicely with his childish pettiness, and make him a character that is a joy to watch on screen. He has wonderful relationships with the other main leads that continue to develop throughout the whole drama. The love-hate relationship with Ra Joon Mo is hilarious, as is his confused puppy-love relationship with Tak Ye Jin. The only fault in this character is that I wish they’d spent a little more time and effort developing Seung Chan’s relationship with Cindy. His sheer determination for Ye Jin and awkwardness towards everyone else wore a little thin towards the end, when I was really hoping his character would have a little burst of mature growth that propelled him from being a ‘boy’ character to a ‘man’ character.

So Many Lovelines:

At the risk of becoming vague and irritating, the show keeps our four main leads in an ever-tangled mess of feelings. And it works splendidly. All our characters seem to be looking lovingly at someone who is looking lovingly at someone else, but there are enough moments of semi-reciprocated feelings that we as viewers are never left feeling high and dry with no romance.

Lovelines...lovelines everywhere

The two love-triangles, or love-square, or whatever it is, is massively unpredictable. As the show progresses and our characters get even more developed, it’s easy to see the story swinging either way. And while I’m sure everyone has their own favourite pairing, the drama seems to quite easily avoid stepping on anyone’s toes, even as it ventures out and explores other love possibilities. All these lovelines really helped to mould Cindy into a relatable, pitiable character, while providing mass amounts of cute. At first I felt nothing for IU’s character, but the second the lovelines start getting messy- I got so many feels for Cindy, and basically loved everything about her.

Every girl's been here at least once

It’s absolutely heartbreaking to watch her loving someone who won’t even look at her, and the show really digs the knife in there by showing the similarities between Cindy and Seung Chan. Both of them are in unrequited loves, and neither knows what to do about it. Seung Chan bounces around like a puppy- doing everything and anything he can to make the girl he likes happy, while Cindy takes more of a backseat approach. She drops little hints now and then (which of course the socially incompetent Seung Chan totally overlooks) and continually sneaks peaks at him while waiting for him to notice her, even just a little. I wanted so badly for both of them to be happy, which basically destroyed my emotions, because those were two conflicting outcomes. I adore Joon Mo as well- his quiet, unacknowledged acts of kindness for Ye Jin when no one is looking are just unbearably sweet. It’s appealing to watch our four leads dance around this one underlying complication- do you potentially damage your relationship trying to change it, or do you stick with what you have? The twisted, tangled lovelines manage to provide both mass hilarity and mass feels.

♫Baby, can't you see-ee-ee...you belong with me-e-e, you belong with me♫

Just Plain Good Story:

While the lovelines did deliver the bulk of the story, all aspects of the plot were great. Behind the lovelines were a group of people struggling to figure out the world and make meaning in their lives.

What figuring out your life looks like

The continually developed friendships between our four main cast members were simply beautiful to watch, and it’s so easy to become invested in every aspect of their lives: work, friends, love. The plot is continuously moving forwards- while not always at a ripping pace, there is always some change in our characters, their views, or their situations.

Aww yeeeees

Kookie:

My main Korean heartthrob makes his acting debut! I went into this drama knowing that Kim Jong Kook was going to be making a couple of appearances, and I was tickled pink to see how much screen time he actually got. While I didn’t actually get the point of his character (except for adding in a few extra laughs), I thought he did an excellent job with his role, and hope to see him take on more acting in the future.

What Wasn’t:

Abandoning Style:

I really loved the mockumentary style. It added some dry wit and stark contrast humour into the series that is rarely seen in K-Dramas. I can understand why the people behind ‘Producers’ decided to drop the risky mockumentary style for a more conventional type of presentation, because if people in South Korea don’t appreciate it, the show won’t do well. However, the series was managing to score pretty high ratings even if its mockumentary spin was taking a bit of criticism, so I really wished they’d tried sticking it out for a bit longer.

I sincerely wish they'd kept this style throughout

Halt in Seung Chan’s Progress:

The drama started out looking like it was going to be about this young man’s development from a boy into a man. It was awkwardly humorous, but I didn’t mind at all when the show started to lean more towards the relationship dynamics rather than focusing solely on Beak Seung Chan.

Basically Seung Chan after any social interaction

Unfortunately, towards the end of the drama Kim Soo Hyun’s character just seemed to skid to a stop. Rather than making the gradual transition into wrapping the drama up, we had continued melancholy- with Seung Chan constantly trying to win Ye Jin over, and Ye Jin constantly having to let him down gently. While Seung Chan’s bleeding heart, overflowing tears, and boundless passion are simultaneously fascinating and heartbreaking to watch, it did get old. We’d seen it before, and frankly I was hoping we would get more of a look at how Seung Chan develops past this setback- how he reacts and responds after realising that pure effort cannot gain someone’s affections. These scenes became even more cringe worthy when compared to Cindy’s scenes. I felt far more compassion and sympathy for Cindy quietly ‘building up and tearing down her house’ on her own, than for Seung Chan trying to force his way into Ye Jin’s heart. It got to the point where it felt as though Ye Jin had expressed herself clearly (and repeatedly) but the young maknae still couldn’t let her move away from him and be happy with another man.

Son, just leave the woman alone

It also adds a bit of salt in the wound to see that each time he behaved in this mildly irritating, clingy way, Cindy (who rapidly became my favourite character) was left even more heartbroken and lonesome. Those scenes where Seung Chan rushed to Ye Jin and abandoned Cindy while she waited for him- not needing a man, but simply a friend- practically made me disintegrate into tears. Open your eyes foolish boy!

Re-watch?

Absolutely. I loved every moment of this drama, and became invested in all four of our main characters. The end was pleasing and satisfying, and I can’t wait to experience it all again.

So many feelings