Ep 4 of The Journey is out! Enjoy!

My obsession with Asian dramas has finally come to this. I subbed a Chinese drama into english. And by that I mean, I found someone as crazy as me to help me translate this thing and so far we’ve subbed two episodes of a twenty-four episode series. 

This is not really the usual type of drama for me, but so far I’m enjoying it a lot. I have no idea if any of you are interested in this type of thing, but I’m so proud of myself right now and I had to share. :)

Anyway, this drama is about a girl who travels back in time to stop tragedies from happening. Along the way, she meets vampires, emperors, celestial gods, and is a super goofball while doing it.

Obviously this show is not done yet, but it will be soon. In fact as I write this six more episodes have been released since I stopped watching this drama. I’ve stopped watching at episode 18 and I don’t plan to pick it back up again anytime soon.

This is straight up not a good drama. I wasn’t super fond of the way Princess Weiyoung was handled, but that drama is practically Citizen Kane compared to General and I.

Because I’m stopping fairly early in, I can’t give a complete review, but at the end of the day, the exact same situations have happened over and over and over, so I feel like I can say with fairly decent accuracy that the same things will keep happening over and over and over.

The basic plot here is that Chu Bei Ji(Wallace Chung) is a ‘God of War’ general who is apparently super awesome and amazing. Yet his own king(who we find out is also his half-brother) totally tortures the crap out of him on the regular, and no one seems to think that will fuel any kind of animosity. Like, Bei Ji looks like he’s been run through a meat grinder and everyone is like, jk lol, we cool rite?

No. We ain’t cool.

And then we have Bai Ping Ting who is played by the stunning Angelababy, and generally I don’t give a crap about people’s looks(I actually liked her in Love O2O), but here, her very modern features are actually kind of distracting because her eyes and lips are so big that she looks like an alien in comparison to the other actors. It doesn’t help that whoever did her make-up obviously doesn’t know how these things look in super HD, ‘cause her lip stain thing is just hideous.

As it is, Bai Ping Ting is a military strategist, who finds herself getting captured and tortured constantly(are we seeing a running theme yet?). I watched episode 17 and Chu Bei Ji was in the middle of getting tortured and I even commented on the episode page:

“Well, I guess it will be Ping Ting’s turn soon to be tortured.”

And sure enough the drama does not disappoint(or does it), and by the end of the episode, he’s free after she turns herself in and she’s got blood running down her mouth after being whipped. This show is literally just these two getting captured and the other sacrificing him/herself to save the other again and again.

And I haven’t even touched on the fact that this drama milks the hell out of one of my most hated tropes: That of the two love interests meeting each other as children and somehow ten to fifteen years later, one or both are still in love with the other.

That has to be the most paper-thin basis for a relationship I’ve ever heard of, and it’s straight up lazy writing. If the characters and actors don’t have enough chemistry to sell a story where they fall in love without the audience being bashed over the head with a childhood sweetheart trope, then what the hell are we doing here?

The fact is, that the writers had an opportunity to present us with a love story between a war strategist and a general on opposing sides who meet in battle. Through their knowledge and cleverness they can outsmart each other and hold absolute respect from both their opponents and the audience.

But no … we got Angela Baby looking into the distance wistfully and Wallace Chung doing his best batman impression while throwing himself head first into shitty situation after shitty situation.

Chu Bei Ji was a super badass the first couple of episodes and when he showed up in his black stealth armor to kill He Xia’s father, I was like, ‘duuuuuuuude.’ But the second that he recognizes Bai Ping Ting as the little girl whose father saved his mother when he was a kid, he’s basically done being awesome and he turns into a whimpering little baby who hates war and violence.

And it’s all down hill from there. He Xia(played by Sun Yi Zhou who’s basically doing the same thing he did in Bu Bu Jing Qing), the other ‘love interest’ isn’t a love interest at all and goes from being devoted to Bai Ping Ting to wanting to kill her in two seconds flat. 

Then we have the main antagonist chick(whose name I can’t be bothered to remember) who is another of these evil harem ladies who bathes in the blood of kittens(figuratively). She’s all pissy because Bei Ji doesn’t love her anymore(not sure that he ever did), ignoring the fact that she is married to another man. How dare he!

Everything is so contrived and flat. The only thing this drama does relatively well is the pretty imagery of the main leads and their love for one another. It’s not a gradual or realistic love, but it is two hot ppl getting together so there’s that. If that’s enough for you, go for it.

I wasn’t expecting Nirvana in Fire, but I’d kind of hoped for Sound of the Desert. The fact is that there is so much good tv on these days from all over the world that there is no reason to settle on something as lazy and half-baked as this drama.

Sophie’s Rating:

This will be another shortie(ish) review as there is basically only two plot lines to talk about and one of which I almost skipped entirely. Fiancee is a 20 episode drama about a girl named Xiao Yi, who moves to the big city to be with her boyfriend, Tian Fei, only to find that he’s cheating on her with his co-worker, Lu Lu.

Before that all goes down, she meets what has to be the hottest man to ever grace the planet, Huo Zi(played by Dennis Oh). He’s her boss when she moves to Shanghai and they immediately have a connection, but because she is with Tian Fei, nothing comes of it.

Fast forward to Xiao Yi finding out that her bf is cheating on her. Lu Lu lies and tells him she is pregnant so he leaves Xiao Yi to marry Lu Lu. As is the case with dramas, while Lu Lu is in fact not pregnant, Xiao Yi is. She decides to have the baby and it’s a cute little girl.

In the meantime, I think she really liked Huo Zi, but being a single mother in China is apparently something to be ashamed of.  And listening to the way people speak about the little girl, there is some expectation that should Xiao Yi remarry, that her daughter would not be welcomed and might even be abused. With this in mind, she makes a complete break from Huo Zi and for all intents and purposes, disappeared.

Three years later, Huo Zi is still carrying a torch for Xiao Yi and she is living as a single mother doing sales for a computer equipment company. Tian Fei is married to Lu Lu and he’s finally found out that not only did she lie before but also that she can never have children. This is where the bulk of the drama really begins.

Let’s start out by saying that Huo Zi is basically perfect. He’s got that amazing personality that is a pleasant combination of understanding but also passionate. He’s got a great job(he’s actually a company heir), is well off, and his family aren’t crazy.

This is in stark contrast to Tian Fei who has a drinking problem, is perpetually broke, has one of the foulest human beings ever for a mother, and is a cheater. I wish the writers hadn’t gone so crazy in trying their best to make Tian Fei into a terrible person. People can make mistake and do not-so-great things and not be caricatures.

Much of the drama is spent with Huo Zi making himself available to Xiao Yi as a friend, a shoulder to cry on, and pretty much a support system for her and her daughter. I’ve seen a lot of dramas where the female lead will leave the second male lead and the first male lead is all over the girl like a starving man on a banquet.

Huo Zi also has those feelings and we do see him when he’s speaking to other people about it, that he is quite serious about being with Xiao Yi and eventually marrying her. But even with all that, he doesn’t push super hard, and instead simply helps her when she needs it, and let’s her know what he’s there.

Xiao Yi, however does not want to drag Huo Zi down with her. She is not in a great position, socially, and marrying a company heir like Huo Zi can only hurt him, in her eyes. She doesn’t jerk him around which I appreciated. She’s very clear with him that she is not interested in being anything other than his friend.

While this is all going on, Tian Fei and his wife, Lu Lu are the stars of the secondary plot thread. To be honest, I skipped most of their parts because all they do is argue. Lu Lu is incredibly possessive of Tian Fei even while they’re making each other miserable. But since he’s a cheater, I guess she is right to keep a close eye on him. :/ During this time when he’s at his lowest, he finds out that Xiao Yi had a daughter, and now he suspects that Miao Miao is his child.

We all know pretty much where this is going so I won’t spend a whole lot more time on the conclusion, but I did want to say that this was a decent drama that didn’t annoy me, and let’s be honest, we can all watch Dennis Oh all day long.

I liked that Huo Zi was careful to keep himself contained and not to push Xiao Yi into a relationship. Where the disconnect occurs is when we are reminded that apparently a woman’s worth is tied to the man she is with. There were several instances where Xiao Yi was placed into bad/embarrassing situations only to have Huo Zi arrive, hold her hand and declare himself her fiancee, much to the astonishment and jealousy of everyone around.

I know dramas are all about romance and chivalry, but I’m also an older woman who cares about the messages that are being conveyed to the younger viewers who watch these shows. This particular instance was not nearly as bad as many other dramas, but it is something I wanted to note.

Drama Pros:

The romance is gradual and has a maturity to it. It’s not some whirlwind highschool wrist-grab relationship.

With the exception of a few outlandish people, everyone here was fairly normal and acted like adults with adult problems.

Drama Cons:

Depending on how you define a con . . . I skipped basically half the drama because I didn’t care about Tian Fei and Lu Lu’s screaming matches.

I don’t like the fact that Xiao Yi was ‘saved’ from embarrassment by the fact that she has a hot rich bf.

TL;DR: Mature drama for adult women showing a flowering relationship that starts as friends and then becomes a romance.

What a cute drama! I found this show while going between episodes of Moon Lovers and Moonlight Drawn by Clouds. This isn’t a serious drama and it isn’t a long one either—both things I appreciated because it showed that the creators knew what kind of drama this was and never took it in a strange direction.

This is a pretty straight forward drama about a wealthy chaebol heir who loses his memory and ends up being cared for by a poor girl who is looking for her brother. Well . . .It’s straight forward for a drama, but rereading that sentence, I’m like, “Amnesiac hot chaebol heirs grow on trees, obvi!”

Ji Sung(AKA Louie) is played by Seo In Guk and he does a pretty good job. I’ve never seen him act before but he’s got that wounded helpless puppy thing down to a science by the end of the show and everytime he cries out for ‘Bok Sil!’, I just start cracking up.

Bok Sil, played by Nam Ji Hyun, is a girl from the country who comes to Seoul looking for her younger brother after their grandmother passes away. She stumbles upon an amnesiac Louie, when she finds him wearing her brother’s jacket.

She also runs into Cha Joong Won, played by Yoon Sang-Hyun(whom I haven’t seen since Secret Garden). Joong Won is a marketing director working for the company that is owned by Ji Sung’s grandmother. He meets Bok Sil when she tries to sell him some ginseng and he apparently has a type cause he’s all up into that after just the one meeting.

I’m not a fan of what they did with his character. He was placed there in a lot of ways, just to highlight how great Louie is. Sometimes(such as during the company retreat), it was so on the nose that I was rolling my eyes like, “Yeah yeah, I get it! jfc!”

I pretty much like everyone in this drama because while there is a main antagonist who did something pretty crappy, neither he nor anyone else is like an evil mastermind. I’ve been rewatching Protect the Boss lately(highly recommend that drama), and Shopping King Louie reminds me of that drama in a lot of ways.

I really liked that this drama was that it did not fall into the drama-trap of Louie’s rich family telling him to dump the poor girl because she’s not good enough. His family are just regular people that happen to be wealthy. Bok Sil and Louie also never engage in those repetitive breakup/makeup fights that are just filler in other dramas. Bok Sil breaks up with Louie one time and tbh, I completely understand her motives behind what happened. It didn’t seem contrived in any way, which I appreciated.

What I didn’t appreciate was the way Louie acted while they were ‘broken up’. I get what the drama was trying to do, but IRL, at least in the US, that creepy shit would get you locked up. Breaking and entering isn’t cute and standing outside a girl’s window at night for hours watching her until she goes to bed isn’t sexy. Bok Sil’s lack of anger of his actions sends the wrong message to people about what is acceptable behavior for a romantic partner. 

Drama Pros:

No dumbass tropes of contrived break-ups.

The characters have a very genuine quality about them and the actors did a great job portraying them.

This is a short, sweet drama that does not meander along milking the viewers time to make money.

There are no hugely despicable antagonists.

Drama Cons:

If you aren’t into sweet fluffy drama, this is not for you.

As usual, the second lead was unimportant to the plot except to get Bok Sil a good job after the man inexplicably falls for her, almost at first sight.

Not a fan of how Louie’s stalking of Bok Sil was handled.

There is something towards the end regarding Louie’s and Bok Sil’s past(and a movie theater) that I was not into. Not everything has to be connected ala the Star Wars prequels.

TL;DR: Great drama that is a short and light and perfect to watch between serious melodramas.

Sophie’s Rating: 8/10

Like, I promise you, we ain’t that great.

I don’t normally watch movies(at least not ‘drama’ movies) because I generally prefer longer-form storytelling. This movie is sort of an example of why I prefer TV dramas to movies. This movie along with the TV show of the same name(REVIEW HERE) are both based on a novel that I have not read so I don’t have that backstory. That being said, the plot is similar(if truncated) to the drama so I’m not going to talk much about that.

I hadn’t intended to watch this but I happened to see it on the front page of kissasian.com and I thought, “What the hell. Let’s give it a shot.” Overall I was really pleased with this movie, but it also really brought into focus why I thought the drama version should have been 20 episodes rather than 30.

There are quite a few differences between the movie and the drama, characters are either completely not there or combined with others to shorten the plot. But even with that, this movie felt like it was jammed and unable to take its time telling the story.

Bei Wei Wei in this movie is played by Angelababy. I’ve heard of Angelababy, of course, but I’ve never actually seen her in anything. The first thing I’ll say is that she’s absolutely stunning to look at, but while the TV drama makes a big deal out of saying repeatedly how pretty Bei Wei Wei is(to the point of being slightly off-putting), the movie does not. She’s presented as just an average girl who has a really dorky obsession with playing video games, and I like her portrayal of the character better. I found her way more relatable because she was straight up goofy at times, rather than being so quiet and austere like the character is in the TV drama.

On the other side of the coin is the portrayal of Xiao Nai(played by Jin Bo Ran). I don’t know about him. Maybe I got attached to Yang Yang’s version on the TV drama, but Jin Bo Ran’s Xiao Nai just seemed sort of blah. He didn’t have the casual arrogance or undercurrent of possessive deviousness that Yang Yang’s version had.

I feel like the movie made a lot of really great choices when it came to which storylines to focus on and which characters to use to move the plot along. The only problem is that there simply wasn’t enough time to really savor the story and the milestones as they happened. I’m honestly not sure that I would have had any idea of what was going on if I hadn’t seen the drama first.

Movie Pros:

Angelababy’s acting and character choices make Wei Wei more relatable to the average girl.

Focused on the important characters and plot lines, rather than just doing filler that gets tedious fast.

Quick watch for those not wanting to commit to 30 hours for a drama.

Movie Cons:

Yang Yang’s acting as Xiao Nai in the drama had a lot more nuance to it than Jin Bo Ran.

Very fast paced so many plot lines were left behind.

Movie Rating: 7/10

Recommend to a Friend: Yes, but also try the drama as well.

I pretty much stumbled across this drama a couple of days ago while waiting for new episodes of Moon Lovers to pop up on Dramacool. It was billed as a Tarzan-esque drama about a boy raised by wolves who finds a girl and thinks she’s his wolf-mate. I read that and I was like, ‘Hells YES!’

But that’s not what’s going on here—or at least that’s not what happened in the first episode. I don’t know what kind of ‘vibe’ they were going for with this show, but it’s entirely ridiculous. I could barely sit through the first episode, never mind the thirteen more episodes that have already been subbed.

I honestly place the blame of this travesty of a drama entirely on the shoulders of the producers. The script is terrible. The set and costume design is terrible. Even the directing is terrible. Why do we have a guy who got lost in the woods, watching people and families that camp out but never thought to go to them to ask for help(instead he just takes the rubbish they leave behind and uses glass bottles to make vases??)? Why is he speaking nearly perfect chinese, despite being alone? Why is he able to somehow generate blue contact lenses and bend metal?

Why is he wearing cargo shorts and a tank top that look like they just came from the Gap? Why does he have a perfectly stacked and highlighted haircut? Like srsly, it’s so on trend, you’d think he just came from the salon. They couldn’t spring for a few extensions and then just hack them off when he returns to civilization? This is either laziness on the part of the production designer or the director, or perhaps even the cheapness of the producer. Speaking of production designer, why is his cave decorated with hot-house flowers placed into bottle vases?

Also, I’ve seen people say that they liked how vivid and beautiful the drama is. I mean, I’ll admit, the location scout they used to find the location of the cave was spot on. It’s quite lovely, but the cinematography is nothing to write home about and in fact the direction and placement of the shots at times was so sloppy that it took me out of the drama.

All of this is so distracting, that it’s hard to take the show in any way seriously. I’ve seen some comments that people like this show because it’s so pure and innocent, and maybe this was a drama designed to appeal to the youngest of viewers, but I’m not even sure about that because the first time the two leads meet, he’s buck naked. Plus this show airs at 10pm on Sundays in its native Taiwan. That’s like when Game of Thrones airs so no little kiddies watching that late on a Sunday.

So which is it? Pure and innocent or adult drama. It’s so all over the place that I found myself skipping around the episode in boredom and irritation. Because I only watched the first episode, I can’t speak much on the overall plot, but all I can say is if you are a drama fan who likes serious dramas where the people handling it actually take pride in their work, steer clear. This is a complete waste of time.

Alright, I know I haven’t posted a review in a while. It’s not that I haven’t been watching dramas, it’s that I didn’t really like many of them enough to finish them so I could review. I came into this drama late, and it’s probably a good thing that I did or I would have had the same problem here.

I feel like this drama could have been condensed down to 20 episodes, rather than 30, and this was true for me because I literally skipped episodes 12-20 and went straight to episode 21 because I was incredibly bored with how slow the story was progressing. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy this drama. But I am actually really glad that I did skip those episodes because that brought me straight to the good parts.

The first dozen or so episodes is basically Xiao Nai(actor, Yang Yang) stalking Bei Wei Wei(actress, Zheng Shuang) IRL while being married to her within an online game without her knowledge of his true identity. That all sounds very drama-esque, and while kinda shady, I can work with that. But it goes on for so long. Way, way too long. And to pad the story out they have nearly identical sets of ‘mean girls’ in both the game and IRL that seem to take personal pleasure in trying to make Wei Wei look bad.

But that’s really hard to do because Bei Wei Wei is perfect. Like goddess-level perfect, apparently. I wouldn’t really slot her under that title personally, but I guess she is the epitome of the beauty standard in China, maybe? Honestly, every time I see her walking around in shorts, I cringe because her legs have the circumference of a soda-can and it looks like she could be knocked over by a strong breeze. She looks gaunt to me, and not really healthy. Zheng Shuang looked much better in Chronicle of Life, IMO. 

I wouldn’t note her appearance here, if not for the fact that the drama itself makes such a big deal out of bashing us all over the head with how beautiful she supposedly is.

But she’s not only pretty, she’s also intelligent. Wei Wei is a computer science major at a well-known university, and a top student. She’s also apparently a giant nerd, which how she catches the attention of Xiao Nai, another top student and the best looking guy in school. He spots her playing his favorite game in an internet cafe. He’s the top ranked player on the server they are both on, while she is ranked as sixth but is the top female competitor. To be honest, things happen here that I’m sure is not really what the author intended, but Xiao Nai is not some nice guy who just lets things happen and hopes for the best.

He makes things happen.

Sometime around when he first sees Wei Wei IRL, her gaming husband, Zhen Shao Xiang, inexplicably dumps her for another player, who goes by the name Enchantress. This girl is allegedly the prettiest girl on the server, IRL, and she had been in Xiao Nai’s group prior to this happening.

Right after Shao Xiang gets married to Enchantress(in game), Xiao Nai shows up in front of Wei Wei in the game and asks her to marry him(in game). She agrees because it’s a beneficial arrangement to be married in the game. It’s around this time that we see Xiao Nai start to keep an eye on Wei Wei IRL. So he knows who she is and it’s very possible that when he ‘first’ sees her playing in that cafe, that he was already aware of her.

I’m not saying Xiao Nai set the whole thing up, and I have zero evidence beyond what I just presented to back up my theory, but I think it would be in line with what we’ve seen of Xiao Nai’s personality. He’s quite devious and arrogant when it comes to getting what he wants and he’s incredibly intelligent, so none of this would be terribly difficult for him.

Thing is though, Xiao Nai and Wei Wei are kind of perfect for one another. They are both super low key and soft spoken. This isn’t the case of bubbly, clumsy girl getting with the cold suave business man or whatever. Both Xiao Nai and Wei Wei stand on fairly equal footing and have very similar quiet personalities.

As it is, after I skipped eight episodes, at like episode 22, Shao Xiang finally discovers what Wei Wei is actually like IRL. She’s beautiful, smart, talented, and perfect. By this point, he and Enchantress have gotten together IRL, but he is so sick of her and her gaggle of horrifying gossiping friends, that he switches gears and dumps Enchantress to try and get back with Wei Wei. And TBH, I don’t blame him.

Enchantress and her main BFF QingQing are so trashy and unsubtle in their attempts to manipulate him into paying for everything(‘cause he’s rich) and their constant bad-mouthing of other people is just grotesque. They are complete caricatures, and only there to create conflict and make Wei Wei look better by comparison.

Same thing with the other ‘mean girls’ Yi Ran and Nana. While Enchantress and QingQing are crappy people associated with the game, Yi Ran and Nana are classmates of Wei Wei. Nana is constantly stirring the pot and pushing Yi Ran to do crummy things, but she seemingly doesn’t even like Yi Ran all that much. Yi Ran wants Xiao Nai, but she’s actually fairly benign unless Nana is there constantly poking her and shoving Xiao Nai and Wei Wei’s relationship in her face. Again, there to make Wei Wei look like the mature, perfect girl.

Then we have Cao Guang. He’s there to make Xiao Nai look good. He’s constantly jumping to conclusions about Wei Wei, without speaking to her. Instead he badmouths her for daring to not immediately return his feelings, and in the meantime he starts up an online gaming relationship with Wei Wei’s BFF, Er Xi, thinking that Er Xi is Wei Wei. That goes about as well as you would think.

One thing I will say, though. I LOVE that Wei Wei has all these girlfriends. She has three friends that she is with constantly, which is in line with how a girl like that would be in reality. I hate it when dramas present us with the perfect girl, but said perfect girl has no female friends.

The last thing I want to talk about is Hao Mei and KO. I spent the entire show, just watching these two guys and their developing relationship. I believe in the original novel, they end up in a romantic(or at least physical) relationship after KO moves in with Hao Mei. In the novel, KO tells Hao Mei that he will do the cooking, cleaning, dishes. He’ll do everything(including Hao Mei). When KO said the same thing in the drama, I was like, “YES!” but the show never revisits them really after the weekend trip in episode 29.  The novel is very clear about what happened to them but the drama is ambiguous.

Drama Pros:

Bei Wei Wei has lots of girlfriends and they constantly gossip and play around like real friends and also support each other rather than any of them turning into a back-stabbing love rival.

Xiao Nai makes the decision very early on that this is the girl for him and no matter what BS gets thrown at him with regards to who Wei Wei is, he trusts her and doesn’t ever turn away from her. Too many dramas rely on the leads flip flopping back and forth to generate conflict but Love O2O shows that there can be conflict in the show without it being between the leads.

No super-evil antagonists. Everyone here is fairly normal, barring a few of the side characters, and they act like normal flawed individuals.

It’s very sweet and mellow drama. You aren’t going to be on the edge of your seat during this drama, but it’s a very enjoyable watch overall because it doesn’t get bogged down by anything outlandish that would make you roll your eyes.

Drama Cons:

Speaking specifically about Enchantress and her BFF, QingQing; what a gross pair of girls. They are so stereotyped, and it’s just completely unfathomable in how oblivious they are. They are eager to dish it out but never seem to figure out that they can’t take it in return. There is a lot about this drama that is based in reality. These two girls are not.

The chemistry between Xiao Nai and Wei Wei is a little awkward. He really goes for it in the kissing, like he’s man dying of thirst and she his drink of water, while she stands there with her lips pressed together like a chaste maiden. I could believe that on the first couple of kisses but after being together for years, girl slip him a little tongue. He deserves it.

Very slow. I did skip a multitude of episodes and I don’t think I missed much, TBH.  

To be honest, I wasn’t terribly interested in watching Healer. I saw it recommended quite a bit but I’ve also seen Fondant Garden recommended before and that shit show just about ruined my life so I take these gushing reviews with a grain of salt. The synopsis for Healer never appealed to me and if not for the fact that Ji Chang Wook was in it, I’d have probably never watched it. He stole the show in Empress Ki so I’ve been interested in seeing other works by him and now I think Healer might be one of the better dramas out there.

That being said, I’ve become more enamored with his acting after watching this. He was such a brat in Empress Ki and he never truly graduated to being a powerful figure in his own right on that show. But Seo Jung Hoo is a very charismatic and strong character while Park Bong Soo is timid and twitchy. He plays both excellently. Even when I think he would be caught off guard and revert back to his true personality of Jung Hoo or when no one is necessarily looking at him, he doesn’t break character as Bong Soo. And there are scenes where you can see him shifting between the two men and it’s kind of amazing how well he so completely shifts. But then I guess that’s why they’re called ‘actors’.

Jung Hoo is what’s called a Night Courier. He basically takes on dubious/illegal tasks such as surveillance, moving packages and private investigation for large sums of money with no questions asked. He takes a job investigating Chae Young Shin, a small time newspaper reporter. The first time they meet is pretty traumatic for Young Shin and I’m surprised she was able to shake it off as well as she did. I’d have been curled up in a ball catatonic of some random dude did to me what Jung Hoo did to her. He didn’t hurt her but at the end of the day she couldn’t have known that he had no intention of seriously assaulting her.

Jung Hoo was hired to do this job by Kim Moon Ho. He’s a famous reporter that Chae Young Shin has admired for years and was her first crush. He had Jung Hoo attack her to take a sample for a DNA test. He’s been looking for a girl who is the daughter of his own first love. But as the series has gone on, that love has transferred the Young Shin. Moon Ho is an interesting character in that one is never quite sure of his intentions or his overall goals. He has no problem lying to people and throwing potential allies under the bus but he seems very genuine in his hope to keep Young Shin safe.

Young Shin had a terrible childhood. Like she has to take medication to combat her PTSD on occasion and the flashbacks are pretty terrible. She was abandoned (allegedly) as a five year old girl and then bounced around homes where she was beaten and treated terribly. She finally was adopted by a great guy who works as a lawyer and a coffee house owner. Young Shin is now working as a reporter for a small time online entertainment paper but she has big dreams to be a great journalist.

These dreams are what ultimately get her in trouble and get this story going. She publishes a story on her company website about a construction CEO using actresses in his B-level entertainment agency as prostitutes to bribe public officials. And apparently the way these big shady conglomerates deals with issues is to kidnap and murder people.

The whole thing snowballs until it leads back to the murder of Young Shin’s biological father and the suicide of Jung Hoo’s. I’m actually rather impressed with how seamless this drama was. There weren’t any out-of-left-field plot holes that had me rolling my eyes beyond how pathetic the antagonists are. The best bad guys are the ones who think they’re doing the right thing. Most dramas don’t bother with that and just make them over the top shitty people.

I give Healer props for actually trying to make the villains a bit more three-dimensional. However, the problem is that these guys can say they are trying to make Korea a better place and that the main characters are ‘too young to understand’ but at the end of the day, we are never shown why they believe this. Why do they think they are doing the right thing by offing all these people? What good things have they done that would make our heroes question themselves?

In episode 18, Jung Hoo straight up asks the main baddy, the Elder why they are doing this. The man spouts a bunch of empty words about how ‘the work they’re doing will save everyone in the end’ and that they ‘protect people’. But he never specifically gives any kind of example of this so the words are meaningless. We’re aren’t given anything about them besides the fact they they use black suited thugs to rough people up. Neither the audience nor the heroes are ever torn on whether they are doing the right thing. It’s not really a detriment to the drama when compared to other dramas but adding that extra layer might have made this a 10/10 for me.

Though one thing this drama does really well is end. A massive pet peeve of mine is when the drama can clearly end and end well but for whatever reason it continues for another five or ten episodes and it meanders along wallowing in its own irritatingly unneeded excess(see Prince of Lan Ling). Healer does not do that. It is a tight twenty episodes and it ends exactly where it needs to with all the loose ends tied up and the characters in a good place.

Drama Pros:

There aren’t any jealous crazy love rivals in this show. At least not revolving around our main cast. We don’t have any evil women plotting to make Young Chan look bad or nice guy second leads who try to subvert the main lead. At least not because of romance.

The action is great. I can not emphasize enough how good Chang Ji Wook was in this role, his fight scenes(man of which are def him and not a double) are believable and fluid as if he’s been doing that kind of thing his whole life. Again, a sign that he’s a great actor.

Yoo Ji Tae as Moon Ho was also really great. He’s got what I call ‘Nice Guy Face’. He’s just perfectly pleasant to look at and he has the classically handsome look and bearing. But that sort of blandly kind expression is so perfect for this role because when he goes for the jugular(verbally) and that kind face morphs into something so unpleasant, it’s just that much better.

Like overall whoever the casting director was for this drama should win all the awards. The guy they got to play Ji Chang Wook’s father, Ji Il Joo, has the exact same wide smile as Chang Wook and I was so sure they were actually related, like brothers or something because they have the same last name. Alas, they just look alike.

The story here is tight and well done. There’s no dawdling along for the characters because the antagonists do not give them time to rest. It can be a little convoluted but that just means you might have to go back and rewatch the episode(or the whole drama). Somehow, I’m okay with that.

I honestly am still having trouble reconciling the fact that the end didn’t go completely banana balls crazy like every drama under the sun. It didn’t meander along milking ratings and staying long past its welcome. It ended and it ended well.

Drama Cons:

I do wish Young Chan had some actual friends beyond Jung Hoo and Moon Ho. But she doesn’t. She was apparently alone before running up on these guys. I have never bought into the idea of a female lead with not female friends. Women naturally stick with one another and I don’t believe for a second that a girl who is actually talked about in the drama as being basically perfect with a good job herself, a well off father, and is stunning to look at(their words, not mine), would have no one else around her besides her dad’s friends.

Antagonists are kinda pathetic. They talk about wanting to make Korea a better place but there is no example of this. All we see are thugs beating people up and moving money around. It would have been easy for the writers to insert very real world ideas in here. Perhaps, they stopped a massive stock market crash that would have leveled the economy, or in some way thwarted a physical or cyber attack by the north ala something like the Stuxnet or the NK Internet shut down attack. But we’re never given or shown anything like that. Just an old guy saying his organization wants to protect people.

Drama Rating: 9/10