My Week in Dramas 15 July 2023

My resolve not to watch currently airing dramas crumbled into a heap when I came down with this terrible bout of sneezing and runny nose these past two weeks. It came, went, came and then went. It felt like a bad case of allergies. But I couldn’t do a whole lot of actual work so… I started watching stuff.

At the top of the list in equal place with My 19th Life is Revenant. I wasn’t aware prior to watching it that it was penned by the writer of Signal, Kingdom and Jirisan. Although it’s been marketed as a horror show, it really isn’t that horrifying. I’m not even sure why it was billed as such. It would be better described as a supernatural thriller police procedural similar to Jirisan. Sure there’s eerie music and actors in bad makeup dotting the landscape plus the rare jumpscare, it’s not exactly Train to Busan or Sweet Home. What’s going for it is that it fills a niche in the industry catalogue. There aren’t that many of these types of fantasy-based police procedurals. Not everyone blends genres the way Kim Eun-hee does and she’s certainly carved out a reputation for herself in that regard. Her ability to ground a fantasy detective thriller in historical realities is one of her gifts to humanity.

The most surprising thing about jumping on this bandwagon to me is seeing a highly regarded character actor like Oh Jung-se play a conventional male lead. He’s usually the one chewing the scenery and it’s refreshing to see him so restrained in his manner as moves about trying to convince others that he has the ability to see ghosts. He’s a folklorist who is on the prowl for the vengeful spirit that was allegedly responsible for his mother’s death. But in order to get to that he has to touch base with Kim Tae-ri’s Gu San-yeong whose father was a folklorist who also met with an untimely demise.

Non-linear storytelling is all the rage now in K dramas and despite all the good intentions not all attempts at non-linear plotting are necessary, much less done well. In this case, there are good reasons for it. The leads and support acts are sifting through history in most cases to make sense of why a spirit might be linked to a series of suicides. The answers lie in the past and those who know what they are, are either dead or complicit in something terrible. What appears to be the common denominator in all this is greed or the lust for more that’s insatiable.

Remember Leverage? Remember The Pretender? I picked up Delightfully Deceitful largely because of Kim Dong-wook because I liked him in My Perfect Stranger. 12 episodes in and I’m still thinking that there’s a good show hidden in that tangle of threads somewhere. It’s not a bad show but I can’t in all honesty say it’s a must-watch either. While it certainly has engaging elements the show doesn’t know what its priorities should be. There a lot of characters and backstory that just aren’t needed except as obvious filler. There’s a lot of time wasting in the name of character development which could easily be incorporated into a 12 episodes drama with fewer characters and less exposition. I don’t mind the leads. I don’t mind that they have a slightly different type of childhood connection. I don’t mind that they both carry plenty of baggage up to this point which is why they struggle to work together. But there comes a point where all the obstacles become obviously designed as stop gap measures before the inevitable finale. The set-up gives the impression that this is another one of many Leverage copycats but then the show goes into conspiracy mode. And even throws in socialization theory for good measure.

Kim Dong-wook is Han Moo-young, an over empathetic lawyer who gets too involved with his clients. We know this because it is sledgehammered into the audience in almost every single episode. Although professionally this “illness” is a death knell, it does have its uses. It allows him to gain the trust of former delinquents who are (so the show tells us) desperate to be heard by a sympathetic ear. In one of his cases Moo-young is asked to defend the self-confessed killer of the murder of Lee Ro-um’s parents. Lee Ro-um herself was charged and convicted of said crime spending 10 years in jail. Moo-young does the unprofessional thing by turning in evidence against his client. This inauspicious encounter begins his tumultuous journey with Lee Ro-um and her ragtag gang of socialized criminals. Like The Pretender, they were prodigies adopted by a dubious organization known as Jeokheok Foundation that on the surface seemed to be helping underprivileged children but were secretly using the prized candidates to commit crimes. Now that she’s free, Lee Ro-um clamours for revenge against the foundation and an enigmatic figure known as “the president” who is responsible for everything.

As I said there are elements of a good story and I respect the ambition. But it could have been a less distracted show with a bit of trimming and a few rewrites.

Shadow Detective S2 is out and of course I had to have a little look. The first season was self-contained to a large extent and so is this. But continuity matters and it does assume some acquaintance with the previous season with some characters returning to the Geumo hellhole. Not every question was answered in the previous season so our titular character is still searching. I was reminded once again during my rewatch of the first season that the first episode contained the best introduction to a protagonist that I’ve ever seen in K drama.

Six months have passed since the events of part 1 and after a stretch of leave, Taek-rok is transferred to Women and Juvenile Affairs Department. There he goes without much of a murmur and notices that the new head of that department is keeping a sharp eye on him for one reason or another. There’s new management and all kinds of shuffling after what happened in the first series. As always Taek-rok plays his cards close to his chest because he doesn’t trust anyone and he doesn’t want his juniors caught in the crossfire.

The series which is richly political as it is procedural is likely not for everyone. Corruption in high places is not new territory for K dramas but the plotting here which covers a whole range of vested interests is a cut above most. Lee Seung-min is of course an acting heavyweight as seen in his much lauded performance in Reborn Rich. Here he is world weary figure who is always on his guard, uncertain of who can be trusted but also concerned for those he genuinely cares about. He’s a loner by choice because he is compelled to go where others fear to tread. He has chosen the harder road as he can do nothing else.

Lee Seung-min is accompanied by a whole parade of veterans. Choi Do-hyung joins the roll call in season two. So does Jung Hye-kyun and Lee Young-ho. I only recently saw Kim Min-jae in The Roundup: No Way Out as a different type of cop. Younger members of the cast Kyung Soo-jin returns as Seong-a and Lee Hak-joo as Gyeong-chan.

Because I’m subscribed to Viki, things pop up on my feed. And that includes the latest Yang Yang drama Fireworks in My Heart. I came for the firefighting side of things. Grubby men in uniforms… ya di ya ya… that sort of thing. While there’s plenty of the heroic stuff on display, Yang Yang’s character Song Yan is rather more of a loose cannon that I’m comfortable with for a man with so much responsibility lying on his shoulders. It makes for good drama but bad leadership. Song Yan has serious abandonment issues. Serious being the operative word here. Others have already alluded to Jane Austen’s Persuasion which makes perfect sense. Song Yan can’t move on but his pride won’t let him acknowledge publicly he can’t move on from Xu Qin (Wang Churan) who dumped him all those years ago due to parental pressure. Now that Xu Qin is back in town all of his personal baggage is spilling over in his capacity as team leader. His colleague and best buddy Jiang Yu (Vin Zhang) for family reasons is seeking to transfer but Song Yan sees this as another example of betrayal especially when he happens upon Jiang Yu’s personal effects.

I can’t fault the storytelling which is quite decent even if the leads lug around an inordinate amount of baggage while they navigate the hazards of their respective professions. With plummeting birth rates and increasing singleness it does boggle the mind that class differences would still be presented as an objection to any kind of match in this day and age. But okay. The show needs a reason to separate the leads. It makes sense when they’re teenagers with zero resources to make a life together but now that they’re adults… this Romeo and Juliet shtick feels tired. Of course it isn’t all about her parents forbidding the match that makes this frustrating — the leads need to get their act together too, decide what they want to do with their lives. Right now, parents notwithstanding, it seems that the leads need to regain their own sense of agency and stop this self-sabotage.

Other than that I’m enjoying the variety of tasks that firefighters are responsible for.

The Uncanny Counter S2 is just around the corner and I started rewatching S1 with my wayward offspring who missed the boat the first time round. It was still good second time round and she was sobbing her head off in so many instances. I think for me the highlight has always been the So Mun character and the family dynamics of the counter team. He’s such a lovely caring kid who a strong moral compass. A K equivalent of Spidey. Having now seen the teasers and trailers, I’m really looking forward to the second season of kickass action sequences and heartwarming moments.

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