Strong Woman Do Bong Soon

Strong Woman Do Bong Soon

6.5/10

Strong Woman Do Bong Soon

Genre:                                   Episodes: 16                           Year: 2017

Comedy

Romance

Thriller

Synopsis:

Do Bong Soon comes from a family where the females are gifted with superhuman strength. After witnessing her strength, Ahn Min Hyuk, CEO of a famous gaming company hires her as his personal bodyguard. Bong Soon has a longtime crush on her childhood friend In Gook Doo, a policeman, and after a misunderstanding she believes Min Hyuk also has feeling for Gook Doo.

Cast:

Park Bo Young (Do Bong Soon)

Park Hyung Shik (Ahn Min Hyuk)

Ji Soo (In Gook Doo)

Jang Mi Kwan (Kim Jang Hyun)

Ahn Woo Yeon (Do Bong Ki)

Park Bo Mi (Na Kyung Shim)

Seul In Ah (Jo Hee Ji)

Lim Won Hee (Baek Tak)

General Thoughts:

It’s a cute little watch for sure, but it definitely had some tonal issues. The leading couple were all kinds of cuteness (and the reason I stuck with the show), but the whacky side characters and the extremely dark thriller-mystery murderer made me feel a bit like I was watching two shows smooshed into one.

What genre even is this?

It gave a good dose of tonal whiplash where I wasn’t quite sure if I should be squeeing with excitement from how adorable our hero was or screaming in terror because that villain was pretty dark for a rom-com drama that wasn’t taking itself too seriously.

I can sit through an episode of silliness just for this

I personally like mystery-thrillers so I loved the dark vibes the kidnapper threw into the mix, and kind of wish that the show had focused on him a little bit more, as the only character that was a part of he kidnapper’s story was Gook Doo. Bong Soon eventually came in to bring the bad guy down, and I adored the impact and the conflicts that arose from that- such as Bong Soon wanting her powers for seemingly the first time, and how we got a heroine being the one to do the saving. Not so much a fan of the way it caused Bong Soon to push Min Hyuk away and try and do everything herself, but whatever. Acting-wise Jang Mi Kwan did an excellent job with the role of the kidnapper. He was truly scary and had just the right amount of crazy. He stood out even more considering that almost all of the side characters were ridiculous and extremely overacted. Silver lining. The three leads were all delightful, as were their interactions with each other. The best parts of the show definitely involved one of the main three, otherwise I found it a tad boring.

An issue we all wish we had

The writing was pretty all over the place if we’re all bing honest, and it was for sure the actors that made the characters shine, and not the way they were written.

You guys are so ridiculously irrelevant

In addition to the odd tonal mashup, the story-lines just weren’t that good. A lot of story felt quite unfinished (like anything to do with twin brother Bong Ki), and some solutions just seemed to come too easily (like Bong Soon getting her strength back). The story seemed to rely heavily on the soundtrack to set the mood of a scene rather then using good storytelling to get us there- this also wasn’t helped by the quick switches from humour to suspense. I found the drama tended to rely heavily on its soundtrack during its mystery parts as if to say ‘a’ight guys, we’re being serious now’. It might work for some people, but I found it a bit obvious and intrusive. But that’s not to say that the soundtrack was all bad! During the cutesy moments the soundtrack was quite lovely, and I did enjoy ‘Superpower Girl’ whenever it came on. 

What Was Great:

OTP:

Pretty much all 6.5 points of this drama came from how wonderful the leads were. Park Bo Young is always delightful, so it’s no surprise that she was able to make Bong Soon a sweet and endearing character. She definitely has the right look for the visual comedy of the show (super tiny girl with super strength), and put a lot of emotion behind our heroine.

Bong Bong saves the day

Park Bo Young is such an excellent actress that I forgot for large chunks of this series that we don’t actually know all that much about Bong Soon that went deeper than her character profile.

Oh my gaawwddd you're cute

At times that did lead to some confusion (like why was she so intent on pushing Min Hyuk away that one time?), but it was mostly easy to overlook as while the writing didn’t necessarily make me believe that Bong Soon was a whole, complete, complex person, Park Bo Young did. This drama was really Park Hyung Shik’s drama to shine. I wasn’t blown away by him in ‘Hwarang’, but my goodness he was swoony in this drama. He nailed the loneliness and wackiness of the eccentric rich-boy character, and made deeply cheesy lines feel real and genuine. He acted with just enough silliness in the comedic scenes and had huge amounts of emotion in others. While I wouldn’t say that acting like Park Bo Young is cute is a particularly hard job (I mean just look at her), Park Hyung Shik sold it so believably. Watching the two together was just pure joy, and while I did feel a bit like I wanted them to hurry up and get together already, I didn’t mind the slow baby steps either.

Oh, you guys ♥

I also wouldn't have minded a bit more skinship between the two either, but it just goes to show how great the chemistry between these leads was- you could get happy and giddy just from watching them look at each other. I practically died every time Min Hyuk fanboyed and spazzed out about how adorable Bong Soon was because it was just so cute. It’s also usually the girls that spaz out over the heroes, so it was nice to see it the other way around. I adore Ji Soo, but this time I wasn’t even bummed that he didn’t get the girl, because Min Hyuk was just so sweet and loveable and so in love with Bong Soon. 

You know it's a good romance when we pick the hero over puppy Ji Soo

What Wasn’t:

It's just not my style

Tad Too Weird:

Overacting and over-the-top comedy just isn’t my style, and boy did this drama have it in droves. I thought (and hoped) that the ridiculous side characters would die down after the first few episodes, but unfortunately they didn’t. An alarming amount of time was spent on these stupid side characters and their stories, and they just weren’t that enjoyable to watch. I’m positive that the silly gang boss got more screen time than Bong Soon’s brother, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d actually snagged more screen time than Ji Soo too. That’s how much time we wasted on stupid characters that weren’t important to the plot. A lot of it felt like forced humour and filler. At least half of every episode was dedicated to the side characters, and that made the episodes feel long and unimportant. 

Tad Too Little Development:

This drama was a lot of fluff and not much meat. There wasn’t a lot of substance, and I wish that everything got more developed than it did. Although Bong Soon got some development (what with realising she wants her powers to help people and all that), Min Hyuk kinda got shafted in that department.

His development peaked at like Episode 6

I adored the way Park Hyun Shik acted the devastation after the betrayal of his most loved brother, but after that his development kind of screamed to halt. Not to mention that whole plot point was totally disregarded after that- after a stern ‘hyung don’t do that again’ from Min Hyuk there’s not another peep about his family issues, the inheritance, or most importantly Min Hyuk’s loneliness.

It always felt like Min Min cared just a wee bit more

A fallout of this meant that it seemed like Min Hyuk spent much more time chasing after, caring for, and supporting Bong Soon than Bong Soon did for him. So as adorable as the relationship was, it did feel pretty one-sided (or at least like Min Hyuk was more invested) for a good long stretch there. While Min Hyuk was a marvellous character, he didn’t really change from the beginning of the series to the end. He was always sweet and thoughtful and never took anyone for granted. He also always liked Bong Soon and saw her as a woman despite her strength- which was super charming, but admittedly left nowhere for his character to go. Because he was already perfect. Gook Doo was pretty absent from a lot of the drama when you consider that he’s he second male lead, and when he was onscreen he tended to be alone rather than interacting with Bong Soon or Min Hyuk. While the revelation that he’d always liked Bong Soon was super sweet, I would have liked it more if that had been revealed slowly through the show rather than dumped on us at the end. It didn’t give Gook Doo and Bong Soon enough time to work out their feelings and move past them. Rather than having a comfortable friendship at the end, it still felt like Gook Doo was pining for Bong Soon, as all the development came all too late. 

More badass scenes of Team Supergirl would have been aces

While the darker kidnapping plot was interesting, we did get slapped with your stock-standard bad guy. Sure, he was super creepy, but their was no clear motive behind his crimes.

Just your typical K-Drama crazy

Only that he was crazy. And I mean, wanting to kidnap seven wives seems like a weirdly specific crime for someone who was just your run-of-the-mill K-Drama psycho. I also lament what could have been with Bong Ki- he was such an interesting character. There was loads of heart and comedy to mine out of his character that the writers just…didn’t. I mean, he’s a man who’s grown up with a super strong sister, and that’s bound to change the family dynamics and the way this guy views women in general…but we didn’t get much of that at all. And Bong Ki’s relationship with Hee Ji was just weird. She was dislikable from the start as she was a girlfriend with roaming eyes (she was cracking on to Bong Ki while still dating Dook Goo), but there was potential there to use her to strengthen the relationship between Bong Ki and Dook Goo. But again the writers chose not to. Also I won’t lie, I was totally wanting Bong Ki and Kyung Shin to get together. Perhaps the lack of development in the support cast wouldn’t have bothered me as much if the drama was chock full of plot and just didn’t have time, but it spent episodes worth of screen time on the silly thugs, school kids, and office sunbae that it was a bit like salt in the wound. We had all this time for characters to grow and be explored and they just weren’t. 

An alarming proportion of this drama was devoted to the ridiculous thugs

Recommend?

I would recommend this drama purely because of how much everyone else seemed to enjoy it- it’s a drama that got a lot of love. So while it’s not my favourite rom-com, you can’t ignore what other viewers say, and apparently other viewers really enjoyed it. Though if you hate overplayed comedy and overacting I’d probably advise you give this one a miss.

Great chemistry, less great comedy