One Mom, Three Dads

One Mom, Three Dads

4/10

One Mom, Three Dads

Genre:                                     Episodes: 16                            Year: 2008

Comedy

Synopsis:

All Song Na Young wants is to have a baby with her loving husband, Jung Sung Min. When Sung Min discovers he is infertile, he decides he will do anything to make his wife’s dream come true. Sung Min convinces his three best friends to donate their sperm. Na Young becomes pregnant, but before the baby is born Sung Min dies in an accident. Not knowing who the biological father is, all three friends take responsibility for Na Young and her baby.

Cast:

Eugene (Song Na Young)

Jo Hyun Jae (Han Soo Hyun)

Jae Hee (Choi Kwang Hee)

Shin Sung Rok (Na Hwang Kyung Tae)

Yoon Sang Hyun (Jung Sung Min)

Joo Sang Wook (Jung Chan Young)

General Thoughts:

It could have been so much more than it was, but the drama never quite seemed to make it out of its own gimmick. Yes, there’s one lady and three dudes raising a baby and there’s going to be humour from that, but you need something a bit meatier to chunk up your story.

It never quite developed a story of its own

You can’t just coast along on your set-up and hope that there’s still some momentum left by the end. Well, I suppose you can, but it doesn’t make for a fantastic drama. The humour was pretty okay for the most part, but the show did tend to repeat itself. What with having three potential baby daddies I guess the writers thought it was a free pass to reuse the same material.

My face when the same joke played for the third time

Quite often the same joke got used for each of the three male characters. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. It did lead to a feeling that the writers didn’t have a lot to draw on, and it could lean towards boring rather than humorous. The gags themselves were pretty obvious- you could see them coming from a mile off. Occasionally it would still be funny anyway (what can I say, three dudes and a baby is a funny concept), but at other times I felt completely underwhelmed by the supposed joke. It wasn’t just the gags, but everything in the drama seemed to be in pretty broad strokes. The characters stayed firmly in their little character profiles unless the actors forcibly dragged them out and drew out some development on their own. Again this brought on the feeling that the writers were relying too heavily on the gimmick to sell the show. Yes the odd couple relationship with the guys and the baby was what brought us there, but they really should have put a bit more effort into keeping viewers there. By the end of the series, of all the boys I only really liked Kwang Hee. Kyung Tae became too immature in his crush and Soo Hyun was a d*uchebag from Episode 1 to Episode 16 with very little to redeem him. I actually quite enjoyed the suggested love-line between Na Young and Chan Young, but even his character dropped dramatically.

I'm on your ship forever Kwang Hee. The baby ship. Not the relation ship.

Sure, I kinda knew Na Young wasn’t going to go to Dubai (I’ll admit to a slight fear her departure would be rectified by the dreaded ‘Five Years Later’), but I still thought Chang Young was a wanker for ripping her and the adorable baby that everyone was in love with out of the lives of these men just cuz he was keen on the baby momma and wasn’t a fan of her living situation. Like, that’s just not a cool move. And it also killed any desire for Chan Young to get the girl.

I liked you guys better when you were dads- not suitors

I will admit that I was pretty disappointed that it came down to romance for everyone at the end. For starters, Na Young was such a poorly written character that it kind of begged one to wonder why any let alone all of these guys were in love with her. Half the series she was only there because someone needed to be the one to give birth to the kid. I do wish that only one or two of the guys had fallen for Na Young, because it felt like the last couple of episodes were just men fighting over a scrap of meat. No one really considered what Na Young wanted and just kind of assumed that she’d marry one of them. The best parts of the drama definitely centred around the love the guys had for the baby, not the mother. I do wonder about the point of bringing Chan Young into the story if he wasn’t going to be a love interest though. I thought that it would be him trying to appease these three guys in order to be with woman he loved, but in the end he just joined the confession team (to other men, not the actual woman- heaven forbid these men tell the girl anything). One of the things the show did really well was to gradually show how the men came to care for baby Ha Seon. The boys weren’t always in love with the baby, but the show really captured how she slowly grew on them and how important she was to them by the end. 

Yep- the boys were best with the baby around.

What Was Great:

Two Actors:

Jae Hee and Shin Sung Rok did really well with their characters. All the characters in the drama were pretty underdeveloped, but these two actors put in a real effort to make these characters feel like real people.

I'm so used to him as a villain.
I almost expected him to start killing people off at the halfway point

Jae Hee was just excellent, and I was rooting for him to be the baby daddy (even though I knew in my heart none of them were). Jae Hee made Kwang Hee’s transition from immature playboy to loving family man seem smooth and natural, and never seemed like he was breaking his character’s mould. Jae Hee put in a real effort to make Kwang Hee relatable, and most importantly- likeable. His emotions were perfect and I genuinely believed that he loved that baby (and that the baby loved him). He made Kwang Hee a character I really enjoyed seeing. Shin Sung Rok also did a great job at making his character feel like an actual human. The rather dim detective was played for comedic effect most of the time, but Shin Sung Rok could carry the emotional scenes well when he needed to. His character did become mildly annoying towards the end, but I still think Shin Sung Rok did an excellent job with a horrifically written, horribly underdeveloped character. 

That Baby:

The baby was cute as. She was for sure the highlight of this drama. I felt happy just looking at her, so it was understandable that these three men felt the same way. Babies can be such a variable when filming, but everyone (including the baby) did an excellent job in making her feel like an authentic part of the story. 

How can you not love her adorable squishy face?

What Wasn’t:

The Other Two Actors:

Eugene and Jo Hyun Jae just didn’t put in the same amount of effort as Shin Sung Rok and Jae Hee. Their characters felt flat and lifeless, and I didn’t really care that much what happened to them. I only cared if it directly involved the baby or the other two boys.

We get it, you're a tightass- you don't need to keep reminding us

Admittedly, the female lead was actually such an insignificant part of the story that I can’t really blame Eugene for not giving the greatest performance of her career. I’m less lenient towards Jo Hyun Jae. I mean, if you’re creating scandals to film the darn thing (he ducked out of his mandatory military service early to complete filming) you might as well make sure you do a good job. Soo Hyun was a character that felt totally fake, and he was just straight-up dislikable. Does any real person talk about money that much? It felt like Jo Hyun Jae delivered nothing more than what was written on the script, and as a result we got a cold, calculative character with no depth. There were scenes that should have made Soo Hyun feel more genuine (such as hospital scenes with his father), but the lack of warmth that Jo Hyun Jae put into the character really blocked me from connecting with Soo Hyun. The differences in acting became more and more obvious as the drama went on- I was disgruntled whenever Soo Hyun was on screen, but delighted when it was Kwang Hee. The writing didn’t really make Kwang Hee a more likeable or more developed character than Soo Hyun, but the acting did. 

The baby has more personality than either of them

Light on Content:

Nothing really happens. Which is a bit of a bummer. The story is one that really needed to be driven by relationships and situations that forced those relationships to grow and develop.

The plot fell asleep pretty early on

I couldn’t believe how awkward all the boys were with Na Young even after a year of living together. Sure, it was only 10 or so hours in real-time, but in drama-time it was 12 months, and the awkwardness really should have disappeared or at least reduced. There wasn’t a lot of character development between anyone except the baby, and there wasn’t actually a whole lot that went on plot-wise either. The things that did happen were pretty low grade and unimportant (like deciding to put Ha Seon in daycare or not) and didn’t really force the characters to interact in ways that were out of the ordinary. Most of the drama took place in the house- and that’s just not very exciting. 

Recommend?

Nah. Maybe back in the late 00s when this was made I’d consider giving it a recommendation, but even back then it was nothing outstanding. There are so many slick new dramas around that I really can’t tell you to watch ‘One Mom, Three Dads’ over one of those. 

Cute idea, shoddy execution