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...

Voice

Voice

6/10

Voice

Genre:                                  Episodes: 16                           Year: 2017

Mystery

Thriller

Synopsis:

Moo Jin Hyuk is a detective who has cracked many major cases, but after the brutal murder of his wife, his life starts to fall apart. The suspect for his wife’s murder is released after an emergency-call worker, Kang Kwon Joo, claims she has supersensitive hearing, and that the suspect’s voice wasn’t the one she heard during Jin Hyuk’s wife’s emergency call. Three years later, Kwon Joo creates a Golden Time Team in the police force, and works with Jin Hyuk to rescue victims in the crime’s ‘golden time’ period, and also search for the true murderer from three years ago.

Cast:

Jang Hyuk (Moo Jin Hyuk)

Lee Ha Na (Kang Kwon Joo)

Kim Jae Wook (Mo Tae Goo)

Baek Sung Hyun (Shim Dae Shik)

Lee Hae Young (Jang Kyung Hak)

Yesung (Oh Hyun Ho)

Son Eun Seo (Park Eun Seo)

Lee Do Kyung (Mo Ki Beom)

General Thoughts:

2017 better start stepping up it’s game because so far there hasn’t been a single drama that I’ve really liked from start to finish. Sigh. ‘Voice’ was okay as far K-Dramas go, but I will admit that I didn’t really have a lot of affection for any of the characters. They were set up nicely, but never actually developed beyond their character profiles which was a shame.

Who even are you?

The side characters didn’t really come into play and weren’t relevant to the plot at all. Hyun Ho and Eun Soo barely got any screen time at all, and despite being set up as a cute couple-in-the-making, the show didn’t spend any time focusing on the way their relationship developed. Or the way any relationships developed. I wasn’t totally sold on the acting either.

He always seemed a touch drunk

This was the first drama I’ve seen with Jang Hyuk, and I’m sad to say that his style of acting just isn’t my favourite. While I wouldn’t say he’s a bad actor, I didn’t find him super convincing, and he never made Jin Hyuk a likeable character for me- it felt like he was staying securely in his little character profile box. I was more impressed by Lee Ha Na in this than I was by her in ‘High School King of Savvy’, but in saying that I don’t think the role here was particularly difficult. She did a great job in pretending she could hear things others couldn’t, but apart from the one scene of her listening to her father get murdered (which she did act excellently), Kwon Joo was a fairly static, robotic character. The side characters barely even get enough screen time to display their acting skills at all. I was keen to see how Yesung would go, but sadly we didn’t get to see much of him do anything. On a positive note, Kim Jae Wook’s acting was just superb. The mystery-thriller aspects of the drama were really cool, and it had a bit of an ‘NCIS’ or ‘Law & Order’ vibe about it, which are both shows I’ve really enjoyed. The individual cases always felt interesting and different, even if one or two did feel a bit like filler.

I like Jin Hyuk best when he's saving people and not arguing

By focusing so heavily on these cases, I sort of started to forget that I didn’t really care about any of the characters because in those scenes they were heroes off to rescue abused victims- and that itself is enough to make you cheer for their success. The show wasn’t afraid to go to some darker places, particularly with the main villain, so that added a large amount of tension into the series too.

Such suspense, much wow

The characters always felt as if they were in some kind of danger, and I honestly believed that one of the leads might actually get killed off at some point- and that’s a rare edge for a drama to have because it’s usually so obvious that all the main characters will make it out safe and happy. The show was shot beautifully, and really capitalised on lighting and camera angles to heighten its suspense. The soundtrack was also really solid and did an excellent job at complementing the scenes, whether they were sad, creepy, or suspenseful. My only production gripe is that there were times when the camera wasn’t still. And that doesn’t make me feel more anxious for our characters at all. It just makes me want to tell the camera director to sober the f*ck up. But apart from that, the editing and production was swell. The story was a bit of a weird one, in that I still felt the excitement and the suspense, but there was just something about the series that kept me at a distance. I never felt fully involved in the characters’ lives like a giant invisible stalker the way I usually do- it felt very much like the only parts of their lives we saw were the aspects that involved the murderer. And while that’s interesting and all, I kind of wanted there to be more to the characters (and by extension the plot) than that.

What Was Great:

Villain:

Kim Jae Wook was the shining beacon of hope for this series. Which is ironic considering he was the psychotic murderer. Surprisingly, of all the characters Tae Goo seemed to have the most depth. He was just endlessly fascinating. I wanted to know how he became a murderer, why he murdered people, how he chose his victims, and of course I wanted to see him eventually brought to justice.

He was weirdly alluring in a totally terrifying way

I think on paper he was your average rich chaebol with an unbalanced mind and murderous tendencies, but Kim Jae Wook made him much more than that. He was oddly alluring and just dripping with charisma, so you’d almost fall for him until he’d do something crazy like bathe in someone’s blood. While he felt psychotic, he also came across as more than just your average ‘psycho’ who has nothing but a mental illness to excuse their behaviour. As well as Kim Jae Wook’s performance, I did like the story-progression of Tae Goo as a character and how they explored his psychotic nature.

'Killer' cheekbones (hur hur)

Every new behaviour of Tae Goo’s added an extra layer of creepy (killing people, literal blood baths, keeping victims' hair, sending their hair to his next victim), and it was fascinating the more his history was unravelled. Rather than just having Tae Goo be a regular crazy chaebol with a father who covered up his murders, I liked that this drama took the stance that it was because his father covered up his murders that he became even more psychotic. It added a nice twist to a story that we’ve heard several times, and even seemed to make Tae Goo that much more of a villain. Because he didn’t even need to become a villain, it was just his father’s pride and greed (and general disregard for other people) that gave Tae Goo the foundation he needed to become the worst murderer of the decade. On a side note, I’m not that thrilled with how Tae Goo’s demise played out. It was all going well right up to when he got arrested and Jin Hyuk didn’t kill him the way he was expecting, but his death afterwards was just weird. It was hard to tell if it was an imaginary sequence from Tae Goo’s broken mind (as it was shot in black and white) or some weird sort of set up for a season 2 (with the doctor being the new murderer).

What madness is this?

Overall, I much preferred the ending being one of psychological torture for Tae Goo rather than Tae Goo himself getting murdered. It was much more interesting and satisfying to think of this mass murder being in constant torment for not being able to kill people anymore rather than just being dead himself. Oh well, he was still a fab villain.

What Wasn’t:

Censorship:

I knooooow that this is technically the station’s fault but it still bugged me. Like why on earth would you air a mystery-thriller if you were going to sensor half of it anyway? I’m not against a bit of gore in my dramas so I really enjoyed the dark vibe of ‘Voice’, but nothing makes a killer seem less creepy than blurring out his atrocities.

Olive? Eye? Thanks to censorship we might never know

I’ve seen censorship in other dramas, like a blurred knife or blurred blood, and just had a giggle and moved on, but here it severely impacted the enjoyment of the show. There were times I couldn’t quite understand what our characters were talking about because I couldn’t see it myself, most notably being Tae Goo spooning out one of his victim's eyes and leaving them like olives in a martini for detectives to find. It took me a little while to piece together what it was because behind all that blurring, all I could really see was a glass. I assumed it was an eye only because the police mentioned ‘body parts’ and you can’t exactly put a foot on a toothpick and chuck it in a glass. It’s not exactly thrilling to have everything the killer does in the series blurred out. It just seemed so very stupid. If you don’t want to watch gore then maybe don’t watch a drama about a dude who bludgeons people to death with a metal ball. Just sayin’. 

No Character Development:

By far the biggest weakness of the story was how little development any of the characters got. If you compare your knowledge of the characters in the first episode to the last, not a lot changes. And that’s not a good thing.

I so wanted to watch you get together. Why didn't you?

Jin Hyuk is an impulsive, angry jerk at the start and he’s an angry, impulsive jerk at the end. Kwon Joo is desperate to catch her father's killer at the start and that’s all we see her do all series long. Outside of wanting to catch Tae Goo, I really had no idea of who these characters were as people. Even their thoughts on their loved one’s deaths were pretty one-dimensional.

I think this is the most perfect nose I have ever seen

Tae Goo killed them so they want to catch him. The drama never explores our characters’ feelings of guilt or loneliness much. There were a few scenes slipped in now and then, but not enough to shape them as characters. Dae Shik got a nice bit of development at the end there (which is just as well or it would have been such a waste of Baek Sung Hyun), but again, it wasn’t quite enough to make me care about the relationships between the characters. Sure, I’d prefer if Dae Shik and Jin Hyuk remained friends, but I’m not really fussed either way. By not giving the characters any development, they always felt very one-dimensional. They felt like characters rather than people, and while we know that that’s what they are, it does stop you from connecting to the characters on an emotional level- because they don’t feel real. In the final episode when Dae Shik was in danger I did get a bit distracted wondering if they were going to alter Baek Sung Hyun’s perfect nose after so many kettle-bell shots to the face, which kind of demonstrates the level of engagement I had with the characters. It’s a bummer really, because the drama would have been so much more compelling if the characters had some depth and got me attached.

Recommend?

I’d recommend purely for Kim Jae Wook’s performance, which was amazing. While the thriller aspects were pretty cool, I don’t think ‘Voice’ is in a class of its own. I wouldn’t rush out to tell you to watch it, but I wouldn’t rush out to tell you not to either.

One of the craziest crazies in K-Dramaland

High School King of Savvy

High School King of Savvy 

7/10

High School King of Savvy

Genre:                                   Episodes: 17                         Year: 2014

Romance

Comedy

Synopsis:

Lee Min Suk is a high school student who is good at nothing except ice hockey. On the day his highly successful brother is due to come home, Min Suk gets a mysterious phone call from him saying he won’t be able to return. He convinces Min Suk to go to work and pretend to be him, as the brothers look almost identical, and Min Suk finds himself trapped trying to balance ice hockey and pretending to be a corporate director.

Cast:

Seo In Guk (Lee Min Suk/Lee Hyung Suk)

Lee Ha Na (Jung Soo Young)

Lee Soo Hyuk (Yoo Jin Woo)

Lee Yeol Eum (Jung Yoo Ah)

Jo Han Chul (Kim Chang Soo)

Oh Kwang Rok (Choi Jang Ho)

General Thoughts:

It’s not my favourite drama in the world, but it’s enjoyable enough. The writers really owe a lot to Seo In Guk’s portrayal of their character, because he did a splendid job as our hero. He was charming and funny, and was just so entertaining to watch- he does the best angry/disbelief stutter-rants I’ve ever seen. And any scene with him swearing was just hilarious.

Seo In Guk is the king of youthful hilarity

On the other hand, I actually think Lee Ha Na made her character seem worse than she was written. I can see how she was going for a quirky individual character, but I almost would have preferred a stock-standard Candy heroine- as I just flat-out didn’t like Lee Ha Na’s interpretation of the character. Rather than sweetly naive and clumsy, I found Soo Young more stupid and sloppy- which aren’t really traits I like in my characters.

Doesn't make much of an impression

I found Min Suk so appealing and Soo Young so not that it took a while for me to warm up to her character at all. I enjoyed the main romance purely because Min Suk was so into it, and anything Min Suk was into I rooted for because I loved him so completely as a character. The story-line was a little odd in that not much happened, but the eccentricities of our characters allowed for the episodes to flow nicely without becoming boring. Min Suk’s interactions with everyone were either cute or funny (or both), so it was quite nice to just watch this loveable teen flounder in his beautifully confident way. The love-triangle was never really a real thing for me, as I could honestly not root for Jin Woo at all. It wasn’t just due to my Min Suk love (because he could do better than Soo Young anyway), but Jin Woo was just such a wanker at the start of the series. And I don’t just mean he was kind of an asshole, but some of his actions were borderline sexual harassment. Sure, if you make a character hit rock bottom there’s nowhere to go but up- but I was a tad uncomfortable any time Soo Young was alone with him after his very creepy, almost rapey attitude in the carpark when he forced himself all over her. Of course, this also did little for our heroine as when she knowingly met Jin Woo alone she just seemed so incredibly stupid. Like, how has this woman lived as an adult for 10 years?

Just let him hit him once

Apart from his brief slip into creepy territory, Jin Woo had a nice progression throughout the story. Lee Soo Hyuk acted him brilliantly, so most of the time he was understandable even if you didn’t agree with him. Lee Soo Hyuk acted Jin Woo with an air of vulnerability that made it easy to sympathise with him. It was nice how Jin Woo and Min Suk became friends in the end, and do wish we’d had a bit more of that sprinkled throughout the show. I wasn’t super crazy about Jin Woo getting a girl in the final hour either, as I felt it was much more important he had a solid, loyal, supportive friend like Min Suk than a cute girl he didn’t know. But alas, K-Dramas tend to like tying up every single loose end there is, even if it doesn’t hurt to leave some ends untied. The Noona Romance was very cute (all because of Seo In Guk), and as with all Noona Romacnes, we get our dose of complete and utter angst.

What to do? He's sooooo cute, but he's sooooo young

I actually really liked the way the angst was handled here, as it played out in a natural way. Soo Young has to come to terms with the fact that the guy she loves is 10 years younger. There’s no magic spell that can fix this problem because it’s a problem that can’t be fixed.

Whatever makes our Min Sukie happy

It’s part of what makes Noona Romances so entertaining- it’s not so much a ‘will they?’ but a ‘how will they?’. While I did find the marriage a bit of a cop-out, I was at least happy that the writers didn’t solve the issue with a time skip so that Min Suk was older and thus the relationship more acceptable. The wedding itself was kinda on the tacky side, and it doesn’t actually solve any of their problems- Min Suk is still in high school, he still doesn’t have a job or money, and he’s still going to get embarrassed in front of Soo Young’s friends. But it's still better than the dreaded 1-5 years of needless separation. Most of the time I found the writing to be on the better side of okay, but there were instances (such as the rushed wedding) that felt pretty weak. Most of the characters were really fun, and their world mixed with the gimmick of Min Suk pretending to be his brother was hilarious, but sometimes there were just situations or dialogue that didn’t feel natural at all. I also didn’t feel it was strictly necessary to take hockey away from Min Suk in the end either. While it was horrifically sad the first time it happened, it was less so the next time, if only for the fact that we’d been there before. It seemed like the only reason Min Suk couldn’t play hockey was that they wanted him to end up in the business world where he’d been pretending to be all along, and I wasn’t super crazy about that. I guess you could view it as Min Suk growing up, but I kind of wanted our ice-hockey boy to…well…play hockey.

Why did you have to kill his dreams, show?

What Was Great:

Seo In Guk:

Seo In Guk is the star of this show. There was never a single moment that I didn’t like the character of Min Suk, and Seo In Guk filled him with such life and personality. He let his comedy come easily and just completely nailed the role of a young man brimming with unwarranted confidence thrown into a world of adults.

Can Seo In Guk just not age so he can be in every youth drama ever? Please?

Although much of Min Suk’s character was based around humour, he never felt gimmicky or unnatural. Seo In Guk always ensured that there was a base of genuine emotion for the humour to work around that gave Min Suk an extremely genuine and humane quality. While Min Suk was childish in many ways, I appreciated that the show didn’t portray this in a negative light. While there were downsides to being romantically involved with someone that young, the show did still point out that many adults lose something important as we transition into the ‘real’ world. Next to the company men that were so jaded and so desperate to get ahead, Min Suk was like a breath of fresh air. I also appreciated that the drama kept those traits about Min Suk even after the time skip. He was still confident and fun, just a little less naive. Seo In Guk also did a great job in portraying the two different brothers. While Hyung Suk didn’t get a lot of screen time, he still felt like a real and distinct character- one that was entirely different from Min Suk. I don’t think this drama could have been half as good as it is without Seo In Guk behind our youthful, loveable hero (and his brother).

Let Min Suk have everything cuz he's the best

Extended Cast:

The supporting cast added a lot to the drama. While they weren’t necessarily important to the story, they were essential elements in making the drama something you could invest in emotionally.

This family could never have too much screen-time

All the characters felt like they led their own lives offscreen whether they were company employees, high school students or family members. The high school kids were mostly there for laughs, but did provide a nice dose of heart every now and then. While I wouldn’t call myself a fan of Yoo Ah (I dislike pushy people/characters), I did find her growth interesting to watch. The company workers were similar in that they were mostly there to react to situations, but they were given enough personality and just enough time on screen to solidify that these could be real, functional adults just going about their working lives. The characters that really snagged my heart were Dad and Grandad. They were both so cute, and were essential as characters that shaped our loveable hero into who he was. Much of the emotion and heart of the series came from Min Suk’s interactions with his family, and any scene with Grandpa was lovely to watch- even if some were sad, they hurt in just the right ways.

What Wasn’t:

Almost Too Much In Guk Love:

The best thing about this drama by far is Seo In Guk. However, I will admit that this hurt the show a little as well. The only other people I felt were on Seo In Guk’s acting level were Oh Kwang Rok (Min Suk’s father) and Lee Soo Hyuk. Not our heroine. Because Seo In Guk dazzled so much brighter than everyone else, it was extremely easy to latch onto him as a character.

I want what our hero wants

Not only was he so wonderfully likeable, but we were seeing the new world of Comfo through this young man’s eyes. Min Suk was easy to connect with and relate to and became a completely brilliant character. However this complete character adoration can have a downside when the other half of the romance isn’t up to scratch.

Maybe you could, I dunno, talk to him sometimes

Seo In Guk was much more dynamic, interesting and likeable than Lee Ha Na, which unfortunately for Lee Ha Na meant that I didn’t connect with her character at all. Whatever was going on in the story, I was 100% on Team Min Suk. If Min Suk was mad at someone- so was I. If Min Suk was sad about something- so was I. Every emotion our hero felt I felt as well, which is a wonderful thing 95% of the time. But when the show is trying to create angst and tension between the two leads, I didn’t feel the heartbreak intended, because I only liked Min Suk and only really cared about the way he saw things. I only really cared for Soo Young when Min Suk did, so when the two had fights I didn’t think ‘oh no, poor couple, Min Suk didn’t understand’, I thought ‘oh no, damn Soo Young, she should have communicated properly’. It was a mix of pure love for the character Seo In Guk gave us and constant terrible communication from Soo Young that led to a little piece of dissatisfaction in the love-line.

Where’s BroBro?:

One of the more interesting plot points of the show is Min Suk’s brother. I mean, he’s the whole point there even is a show as he’s the reason behind the main gimmick- Hyung Suk can’t go to work so Min Suk goes in his place. It’s an interesting set-up with a lot of mystery surrounding Hyung Suk.

Where you at? What you do? Why you do it?

I was a bit disappointed when the whole fiasco was part of some rather poorly constructed revenge plot (his whole revenge was based around his un-studious teenage brother not being discovered impersonating a highly educated, successful businessman). I understand that it would have been difficult to do much with Min Suk and Hyung Suk together as Seo In Guk played both roles, but I found the wrap-up for main plot rather quick and not all that satisfying.

I could've watched a couple more episodes of this

Hyung Suk has spent months, maybe even years constructing this revenge, then Gramps dies so he stops and goes back to Germany. I would have really appreciated if the show had got onto the revenge-story a little earlier so that we had time to flesh it out and give it more depth. As it was, we learned about the death of the boys’ biological father at the same time as we learnt of the revenge plot, so it lacked impact because we were too invested in the Comfo employees. I would have loved to explore more dynamics between the brothers and how they became two very different people, and how they could help and understand each other, but it never really came. Even the reconciliation after Hyung Suk stopped his revenge was pretty light and unsubstantial. There’s a text message and they wave at the airport. Like, c’mon, where’s the emotion in that?

Re-watch?

Nope. Seo In Guk was spectacular and the Noona Romance was sweet at times, but it’s a one-time-only sort of show for me.

I came, I saw