Star power but weak story
16. That's the number. Well, sometimes, it's 20. But that's the standard number of episodes in Korean TV series. It's a challenge to fill and this drama, like many, doesn't quite do it. There was enough material here to make a decent 2-hour romcom movie but 16 hours was far more than could be filled up without recourse to a relentless cycle of rinse and repeat.What makes this drama bearable, indeed more than bearable, are two tremendous performances from the stars, Lee Min-ho and especially Son Ye-jin. The rest of the cast and the stock characters they play could easily have been recruited out of the chimpanzee enclosure at Seoul Zoo, but Lee and Son are just otherworldly in their performances and chemistry, enough to blow up the labs at MIT. Son has such terrific comedic range just within this show, able to display vulnerability and strength, naivete and common sense, kindness and, when necessary, backbone, and you never fail to believe her. What is asked of Lee is more limited but he delivers without holding back.
The plot line, the single woman who mistakenly believes the guy she ends up living with is gay and therefore "safe", is a little forced and acceptable (just barely) only because the show is 10 years old and predates more widely accepted norms about the place of homosexuality and other non-"straight" orientations in society. But even there, most of the characters are quite tolerant of divergence from the norm of the time and Son at one point offers up a heartfelt declamation that love, straight or gay, is love. There is one interesting secondary character, played with some finesse by Ryu Seung-ryong , whose struggles with being gay and finding a way to express his love to Lee (whom he not unreasonably believes is gay - after all, Lee actually says he is, er, straight out) are depicted with some delicacy.
The problem is that the magic number means that Lee must be made to miss chance after chance to set the record, er, straight about his orientation in ways that are increasingly forced and sometimes lame beyond belief. Similarly, just as the writer finds idiotic excuse after excuse for Lee not to explain things properly, he (or she - not sure which) is forced in scene after scene to portray Son as clueless long past belief. The deception is enabled with the usual tropes of untimely interruptions by phone calls, people barging in, non-emergency emergencies, and an endless series of manufactured lies told by everyone and his mother, all so the moment of discovery can be delayed long past the moment the audience's patience has been exhausted, all so that the magic number of 16 can be reached.
Similarly, the second leads, played by Kim Ji-seok and Wang Ji-hye, must replay their same basic scenes over and over. Kim, in particular, is a creepy character whom both Wang and Son rightly reject and yet he cleaves first to one then the other with essentially the same nauseating sophistries and, unfortunately, the absolutely loathsome arm grabbing that pervades Kdramas.
Tertiary characters are equally repetitious and even less interesting. Lee's right hand guy, played by the forgettable Jung Sung-hwa, is merely insufferable and Son's best friend, played by Jo Eun-ji, manages to detract from every scene she's in.
These dramas need to be shorter or more inventive. Not all of them have the maximum luminescence of stars like Lee Min-ho and Son Ye-jin. I could watch Son forever and I can see why female (and perhaps male) fans could do the same for Lee. But it would be great if the material were a little deeper, a little richer or, to put it more precisely, a lot deeper and a lot richer.
score 6/10
mjkarlin 26 July 2020
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw5944113/15149
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