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...

Let's Eat 2

Let’s Eat 2

6/10

Let's Eat 2

Genre:                                 Episodes: 18                         Year: 2015

Romance

Comedy

Synopsis:

Gu Dae Young moves to a new town. One of his new neighbours is Baek Soo Ji, a girl he was friends with in elementary school who now holds a grudge against him. In order to sell insurance to the civil servants Soo Ji works with, Dae Young promises to help her get married to Lee Sang Woo, a man Soo Ji has liked for a long time who doesn’t even remember her name.

Cast:

Yoon Doo Joon (Gu Dae Young)

Seo Hyun Jin (Baek Soo Ji)

Kwon Yul (Lee Sang Woo)

Hwang Seung Eon (Hwang Hye Rim)

Lee Joo Seung (Lee Joo Seung)

Kim Hee Won (In Taek Soo)

Jo Eun Ji (Hong In Ah)

Kim Ji Young (Lee Jeom Yi)

General Thoughts:

I liked it but didn’t love it. It’s easy and mostly uncomplicated, but did kind of lack the airy cute feel that breezy dramas tend to need. It’s not that this drama wasn’t fun, but it did spend a lot of time focusing on a relationship that wasn’t going to last.

Yeeaaaahh...this won't last long

It’s pretty obvious that our main man Dae Young is going to be involved in some sort of romance, or the writers wouldn’t have mentioned his breakup with the girl from Season 1. That was basically a big green light for a second romance. And yet, even knowing this, for about 16 of the 18 episodes our heroine was either pining for or actually dating another guy. So that’s the reason there was minimal amounts of cute.

Cute, but not overwhelmingly so

Sure, there were some cute moments between Sang Woo and Soo Ji, but these were always marred by the fact that it was highly likely that they would break up once Soo Ji realised she liked Dae Young. And then there were cute moments between Dae Young and Soo Ji, but these were always marred by the fact that Soo Ji was dating a different guy. The rest of the characters were okay, but beyond the main three leads I didn’t really care much about the others. Grandma could be cute at times but she could also come across as nosey and obtrusive- particularly where Joo Seung was concerned. The landlady and her son just seemed money hungry and rude and it was difficult to find either of them cute. Joo Seung was far too busy being constructed as a red herring for the mystery to actually get any real development of his own, which left him in limbo as far as likability went- you didn’t want to become too attached incase he was a criminal, but you didn’t really hate him because there was no concrete proof. In Ah could be sympathised with, but her constant attempts at subtly putting Soo Ji down became grating the longer they went on.

Office scenes were rarely entertaining

The friendship that formed between the two was nice overall, but it was hard to really like In Ah after so many episodes of her snarky comments. Hye Rim and Taek Soo were really the only side characters that I had any affection for. Taek Soo was so pitiful and his loneliness and constant desire to be with someone made him easy to sympathise with. His clingy attitude towards Dae Young was funny more often than it was annoying, and most importantly the character never overstayed his welcome.

Hye Rim was the lightness this drama needed

He was present when he needed to be, but didn’t grab too much screen time. His appearances were spread out nicely and hit just the right balance of humour and sadness. Taek Soo wasn’t just comic relief, nor was he a constant downer, but sat nicely in the middle. Hye Rim was the youth that the series needed. At the start the characters were feeling a bit old- and while there's nothing wrong with that it did run the risk of losing the interest of the younger viewership. Hye Rim wasn’t an important character but her bubbly attitude and charm were refreshing in a series that had a surprising amount of angst (resulting from the love-triangle). Hye Rim’s relationship with Joo Seung, while not riveting was interesting enough, and balanced out the hardships Dae Young was going through. There were nice enough relationships between all the characters, but they never really drew together as a family the way I was expecting them to. In fact, a lot of the relationships felt like they were being maintained in order to gain something rather than simply because the two people liked each other.

Friends or no?

Dae Young and Grandma had a sweet relationship, but Grandma never seemed to warm up to Soo Ji the way she did with the boys that lived in the building. The landlady was so money focused that none of her relationships with her tenants felt like they would survive if any of the tenants moved out. Hye Rim seemed to only be pretending to like Grandma so that she could stay with her, and at times it even felt like Dae Young was pretending to be friends with Sang Woo just so he could help Soo Ji in her romantic endeavours.

Yoon Doo Joon is Dae Young- no one could fill his place

Dae Young never seemed relaxed around Sang Woo the way he was around Taek Soo, and while no two relationships are the same, it would have been nice to see him really relax into the friendship so that we knew he liked Sang Woo (which I’m sure is what the writers were aiming for). The acting was all okay. There was nothing exceptional, but there was no one that was glaringly bad either. Yoon Doo Joon once more made Dae Young come alive and settles into character well. He delivers both humour and heart and makes Dae Young a really loveable hero. Also, it’s weirdly fun watching Yoon Doo Joon eat, which is a total bonus. Soo Ji was a significantly less annoying heroine than last season (though I will admit that her inability to handle her finances drove me slightly insane), and Seo Hyun Jin gave a fair performance. She didn’t add anything dramatic to the chaacter that wasn’t already on paper, but she made Soo Ji cute and likeable enough. Her chemistry with Yoon Doo Joon was sweet and the two sold the friends-to-lovers dynamic extremely well.

Omg just don't spend money on stupid sh*t- it's not hard.

This was probably the most likeable I’ve ever found Kwon Yul- probably owing to the fact that he got to act a character that had a shred of personality. Kwon Yul nailed both the personalities of Sang Woo (the cool, calm worker and the playful, swearing kid), and made one hell of a second lead.

I'm glad neither had to suffer for the other's development

It was nice that Sang Woo was a character that was able to remain likeable to the end, and yet he never took away from Dae Young. K-Dramas can tend to let the character of the second male lead suffer in order to enhance the good qualities of the lead, but instead ‘Let’s Eat 2’ simply showed that Dae Young was a better fit for our heroine. There was nothing wrong with Sang Woo so it was enjoyable that the writers never felt the need to make him clingy, short tempered or rude just to explain why the heroine would choose another guy over him. As expected there was copious amounts of food porn, but the show focused a lot less on eating than it did last time. While the characters still obviously enjoyed eating and spent a good deal of time doing it, it didn’t feel as though 70% of every episode was watching people eat (the way Season 1 sometimes felt). Season 2 also seemed to explore a wider range of food than Season 1. The characters did go to restaurants, but the show also showcased takeaway Korean food, homemade Korean food and Korean convenience store food.

Yes, please, and thank you

There were also occasions where the show focused on international foods as well. It was interesting to see a Korean take on Thai or Mexican (it looked very different to the Thai and Mexican we get here in Australia). I will say this though, boiling that octopus alive was super off-putting. Please don't do that again. Ever.

What Was Great:

Love Swap:

I really enjoyed the romance of this drama, even if I do wish we’d gotten there a little quicker. The whole situation was so different from what we had in Season 1, which is a total relief, otherwise it could have felt too same-same. Rather than having two girls fall for our main man, we had the more standard rom-com triangle of two guys in love with the same girl.

Though for a time it did seem like they were fighting over Dae Young- which isn't bad either

It was a nice switch up as it meant we got to see different sides to Dae Young. This fit in nicely with the direction of Season 2- in the first season, Dae Young always remained a bit of an enigma with no one really knowing what was real and what was just salesman persona. Watching Dae Young discover his feelings for Soo Ji felt like we were getting to know him in a different, more in depth way than last time.

It felt like they actually liked each other (unlike last season)

Dae Young didn’t want to let his feelings show, so when they did we knew they were genuine. Dae Young also got to remain the cool guy in Season 1 where he could take his pick from the girls fawning over him, but this time around he showed a much more uncool, more relatable side of himself as he was pining for his friend’s girl- who he set up together no less. While it might not have been necessary to have Soo Ji and Sang Woo date for so very long, it was a direction the story needed to take. Soo Ji would never have learned that comfort and happiness were more important than looks and credentials if she hadn’t spent that time with Sang Woo. Realising that dating Sang Woo wasn’t enjoyable or comfortable was the exact ‘aha’ moment Soo Ji needed to be able to see Dae Young in a romantic light. It always felt natural between Soo Ji and Dae Young, whereas she could never be herself in front of Sang Woo for fear of disappointing him- and that’s a type of relationship that could never last. I do wish the writers had made it a tad more obvious that Soo Ji wasn’t actually having a good time dating Sang Woo, as occasionally it did seem as though the two were getting closer and more relaxed- such as when they would swear in the car together.

Ooooooo such angst 

Ultimately Soo Ji’s switch in romantic interests was very understandable and believable, but it could have done with being hinted at earlier. It's always a bit tricky to have characters from the main love-line be involved with someone else during the drama’s run, but thankfully ‘Let’s Eat 2’ handled the situation nicely, with both Soo Ji and Sang Woo coming to terms with the end of their relationship in their own way.

What Wasn’t:

Fake Mystery:

I think I was part of the minority that actually enjoyed the mystery of the first season, but the added mystery element in the second season felt forced and fake. While the first season mystery was more a question of who rather than what, the second season gave the answer of who but danced around what the what really was.

This guy reeks of red herring

Which isn’t an awesome set up for a mystery- particularly when the mystery isn’t the central idea of the drama. Rather than being intrigued by the character of Joo Seung, I just became annoyed whenever he was on screen. It was hard to gain an understanding of him as a character and thus hard to connect to him due to the writers purposely withholding information. As nothing bad was actually happening it was easy to dismiss all Joo Seung’s odd behaviours as red herrings- which they mostly ended up being. Because while Joo Seung’s actions were odd and suspicious, they didn’t actually hurt anybody, thus reducing any tension the drama was aiming for. Not having a phone, hiding a suitcase of cash and using someone else’s ID are strange behaviours, but they’re certainly not behaviours that cannot be explained into a less suspicious situation- which is ultimately what happened. Sadly, the mystery in the second season lacked any sense of threat, and didn’t add much to the series at all.

5 Minutes of Romance:

I was so onboard this romance that I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed when we got so little of it. The execution of Soo Ji’s feelings transitioning from Sang Woo to Dae Young was brilliant, but it all happened a bit late.

This show focused a lot more on Sang Woo than on the friends-to-lovers thing

You’d think that a 2 episode extension would give our lovers more time to, you know, be lovers, but that was not the case. Instead the breakdown of Sang Woo and Soo Ji’s relationship was streeeeeetched out. And then no one told Dae Young that the girl he’s been crushing on is finally single again?

And then the series ended

Lame. While the angsty conflict was enjoyable for a time, it was slightly marred by the fact that I could see the end of this drama fast approaching and the leads still weren’t together. Understandably Soo Ji needed time before she was ready to be in another relationship, but that doesn’t change the fact that the writers could have ended the Sang Woo-Soo Ji line a few episodes earlier and given us more time on the Soo Ji-Dae Young line. The last few moments of the final episode were really sweet, and I won’t deny wishing that I could have seen more on how Dae Young and Soo Ji’s new relationship went- I’m positive there would have been loads of laughs and entertainment there. At the end of the day, I just felt a bit robbed that after 18 episodes of cheering on Dae Young’s feelings for Soo Ji, we only got to see 5 minutes (or less) of their happiness together on screen. 

Recommend?

Uhhhh, this is a tricky one. If you liked the first ‘Let’s Eat’, you’ll probably like this one BUT you have to be mentally prepared to let go of the first season’s love-line. If you didn’t like the first season, then chances are you won’t like this one either. If you haven’t seen the first season it really doesn’t matter- you can go straight into season 2.

More Yoon Doo Joon as Dae Young is never a bad thing