Third is the leading lady, who I already talked about. I do have to say that so far I am liking the vibe of this character for Hyo-Jin more than the one she played in The Master's Sun. I don't want to use the word stronger, but there it is. Anyway, other things we know about her so far...she's about to have her 300th day with her boyfriend, who we also know is cheating on her (and leading man happened to witness the cheating, though he doesn't yet know that the dude is her boyfriend). However, there's not much feeling of serious love between them, exactly. I mean, she said the words and you get the feeling the inevitable breakup will be not good, but also that it will maybe be a superficial wound. Maybe. We'll see. I could be extrapolating because I also know she'll wind up with fourth dude in the lineup.
Who is... Jang Jae-Yeol (played by Zo In-Sung). He's a successful novelist AND a DJ and has a bit of an "I'm so cool" complex, but that's probably also because everyone fawns over him like mad. Except Hae-Soo, when they meet as adversaries of sorts as guests on a talkshow. It also looks like he's in the middle of breaking up with his girlfriend. There's some weirdness there, but no idea what exactly yet. Like, they made a point of him locking the bathroom door and some other things and I'm just not sure what's up with all that yet. Something a little off. I must admit that I very much like the look of him, even if he is playing it a bit smarmy. And at least he's over 35.
Last dude is Han Gang-Woo (played by Do Kyung-Soo). He's a member of the Kpop group EXO in real life and at first I thought he was Shin Won-Ho from The Legend of the Blue Sea. Same kind of innocent puppy dog vibe. Anyway, he seems to be a writer and has some kind of bromance/mentor/hero worship relationship with Jae-Yeol. Other than that, no idea. Why are almost all the young idol boys like puppies when they're in dramas? I mean, really. You want to pet them and give them treats.
Okay. Anyway. So that's the main people I know of so far.
Here's what Viki says as a show description:
Our interest in our own bodies is near obsession. However, how many of us have interest in our own minds? Have you ever thought that your mind was acting strange and against your will? Everyone wants to be happy, but how many people disregard the importance of their own minds when the key to happiness lies in there? This drama portrays the story of people who are scarred because they do not realize or have hidden their mental illness. Through one another they learn that they are not the only ones hurting. They learn that they are not the only ones suffering and alone. They realize that humans are lonely and that they want to live, not die. This is a warm-hearted story that shows that everyone is special in their own way, and not at all strange.What the fuck is that on about? No idea. Netflix's description seems a bit more...er...succinct: Successful novelist and DJ Jae-Yeol and psychiatrist Hae-Soo are constantly at odds, but that changes when they start living in the same house.
Let's go with that. Anyway, so far, the first episode was very unexpected. It begins with some kinda scary looking dude being let out of jail. Then it hops to a party where Jae-Yeol is DJing and having a good time, kissing his girlfriend, etc, lots of champagne. Then the prison dude leaps in out of nowhere with a fork and starts stabbing him like a madman. Seriously. I'm sitting here thinking WTF is going on? Right before he passes out, Jae-Yeol is thinking to himself something along the lines of, oh, that idiot.
Yeah, so prison dude is his older brother. Why he wants to kill him, I dunno. Time jump to months and months later and the brother is back in jail, Jae-Yeol is breaking up with his girlfriend, and he and Hae-Soo wind up at odds on a talk show facing off against each other. She seems to intrigue him with her I'm not impressed by you attitude. For her part, she used to like his books, but thinks his latest ones are all kinda crap and just full of psychopaths now and that he appears to think way too much of himself (he does).
They coincidentally run into each other at a club later that night. He's trying to chat her up. It's not working. Then a former patient of hers with schizophrenia goes apeshit and tries to kill her. Jae-Yeol gets the guy off her, but she hits Jae-Yeol on the head to stop him from attacking the patient (because she can see the dude is obviously off his meds and having a full blown attack). Trying to make an already long story shorter, the two of them wind up in pursuit of the guy and through way more action-y car chase stuff than I had imagined would be in a show like this, they get the guy stopped. Ambulance takes him away, leaving our two potential lovebirds alone in the middle of nowhere.
He's kinda torn between WTH lady and being attracted to her. She's trying to fix his head, but can't use one arm because of the attack before (maybe broken, maybe dislocated shoulder, dunno). Then she passes out. End scene, he's trying to carry her back, wondering where the hell the ambulance they called is, and then he passes out too.
Yeah, I didn't expect any of that. That was a whirlwind. Whew.
Anyway, production value = good. Acting = good. Lead chemistry = good. Side characters = intriguing. I'm looking forward to this and hoping that it doesn't get screwed up somehow as my luck hasn't been very good with my latest picks. I'd really like a satisfying story here, please.
Edit: After episode 3. So, still liking it, I think. It has funny moments but it's definitely also about broken people. They've all got something wrong with them. Hae-Soo has intimacy issues (and hadn't ever slept with her now ex-boyfriend of 300 days...er, 299 days) because of her witnessing her mom's possible/probable affair with her dad's friend (her dad seems to have some kind of serious disability to the point where the sisters have to bathe him and he can't talk/acts a bit like a young child...guessing something happened to him at some point, no idea exactly what or when, but let's be honest, I can see where the mom is coming from if that's the case--she's still taking care of him, but there wouldn't be a relationship anymore...but I don't have all the facts there, so withholding judgement...though I can see how seeing her mom kissing some other guy when she was a kid traumatised her too).
But even though Jae-Yeol seems to have nothing more serious than OCD, I think there's a lot more to it than that. I'm starting to wonder if the EXO dude character Gang-Woo actually exists or if it is some kind of Fight Club manifestation of Jae-Yeol. Gang-Woo seems to be a high school student with issues (father beating him and his mother--echoes of what probably happened to Jae-Yeol) but I don't think I've seen anyone else interact with him. Just a thought. We'll see. And there's the stuff with the older brother in prison who insists that it was Jae-Yeol who killed whoever it was he was put in prison for killing (bad dad?). And the Gang-Woo/Kang-Woo character supposedly wrote a book (even though he's supposed to be in high school?) where it posits that Jae-Yeol is the killer and not the brother (which is what the older brother also insists on). So I'm guessing that Jae-Yeol may have actually been the one to kill the dad? And has compartmentalised it? Maybe it doesn't go that far. I dunno. But if Gang-Woo really doesn't exist, that's a pretty broken psyche right there and would take something big for a schism that big to happen. It could have just been the whole trauma of witnessing his brother kill the stepdad + whatever beatings he/his mom/his brother were getting.
I did look up whether or not the show ends happy and it looks like it will (I tried not to get any spoilers other than that...but I can't take an unhappy ending right now). But it does seem like even with as much humour as this show has, there's gonna be some dark times ahead because everyone is broken. So maybe Viki's description isn't that far out of left field.
Edit: End of episode 4. Now I'm sure. Gang-Woo doesn't exist. Jae-Yeol either killed his stepdad, who was probably beating the family, or witnessed his brother doing it or maybe they both killed him. Why the mother allowed the older brother to go to jail without any testimony is weird. I mean, there's something off about Jae-bum or whatever psycho brothers name is too, and I dunno that it's just the being in jail thing. Sigh. I'm liking the show overall but this is a higher level of drama than I was really wanting.
Edit: In Episode 8. Had to stop and take a picture. Remember how Jae-Yeol is a writer? They're in an airplane, going on a trip to Okinawa. He said he'd write in the plane while she rests. She won't shut up. Some of the other writing/publishing stuff may be off (unless the Korean publishing world is VASTLY different than the US/UK), but he's definitely got the correct face here. It's the FFS I'm trying to work here face. No one takes you seriously when you're a writer.
Edit: part way through episode 10. I'm very up and down with this show. Maybe the biggest thing is that it's hard to imagine any of the people who play psychiatrists are actually doctors. I mean, okay, I get it...they're supposed to be "human" too but they seem to make such poor choices, even in their treatment methods of patients. And I find myself a bit annoyed at the nature of Hae-Soo and her anxiety disorder even though it's the one that's closest to me. After the stuff that happened to me as a teen I still (even today) have issues about some things. It took me years before I could sleep without a bra on at night. There are times I still cringe. I can be very uncomfortable in my own skin. But I still find myself annoyed at her. Maybe some of it is that, at this point in the story, only the viewer knows just how screwed up and in trouble Jae-Yeol is. No one else knows that Kang Woo is all in his head. That he's hallucinating, putting himself in danger. But, at the very least, they do all know about how screwed up his family is; that his brother tries to kill him every chance he gets. And the mom! She's nice now, I suppose, but she was a shitty excuse for a mom back when. She was getting beaten up and I get the battered spouse thing, but then she was beating her oldest son. And (perhaps) inadvertently pitting her oldest vs. her youngest when she treated them so differently and beat the older one. And allowing the stepfather to beat her kids. That's the thing I really can't stand. Let's be honest. I could put up with a fair amount of things, right or wrong, directed at myself. But if someone laid a finger on little dude, that's game over.
That's a brain dump of feelings, I guess. But, dammit, eh, I dunno. I am enjoying Zo In-Sung though. As stereotypical as that is, he's my "type" -- tall, thin, hair made to be mussed up, and I love those moments when he's lost in the music. My sister wasn't totally wrong when she always thought I'd wind up with a musician type with lots of hair. Heck, I thought I would too. Ha. I thought I was going to be living in NYC in some kind of warehouse a la Flashdance, except without the dancing naked part. Hell if I know what I thought I'd be doing. And now I watch that movie and want to smack some sense into that girl. And the guy. They both kinda suck. But there's a part of me that will always wish I'd been some kind of Bohemian manic pixie dream girl kind of girl. Or maybe just with the eyelashes that go with that.
None of which has much to do with this show, I suppose. Just my reaction to it.
Also SO not liking Lee Sung-Kyung in this and her bit with the Tourette's guy was what made me start this show. But I didn't know that she was still a student (a drop out and 19, but still--she's too young for the dude, not just age but with mentality) or that she was such a manipulative get.
Edit: Just one episode left. Whew. This one really is way more depressing than I had any reasonable suspicion of it being. I mean, it's good overall but geez. Also, pretty sure all the characters playing doctors would be disbarred or whatever it is you do to doctors for the stuff they do. Very ethically ambiguous, shall we say.
Also, I feel sorry for the Exo dude who has had to spend the entire freaking run of the show without shoes on.
Edit: Finished. At least it ended well (& happy) and they provided closure for all the characters. It did have the forced separation thing but I think it kinda worked here -- it allowed Jae-Yeol's character to learn to live with his schizophrenia and how to manage it by himself and Hae-Soo to do the work she'd wanted to do and for her family to get over themselves. Not entirely sure it was necessary story-wise, but since this is, like, THE trope that will not die in Kdramas, at least it was reasonably used here.
Overall, I'd say I liked the show, but I do wish it had been more comedy/romance rather than tragedy/romance/comedy. That's probably more my current state of mind than a commentary on the show, though. I did really enjoy Zo In-Sung and all the housemates and I'm still liking Gong Hyo-Jin overall too. It was good to see her inhabit a very different character than the one in The Master's Sun. Would I watch this again someday? Um, I'm guessing no. Generally, if I re-watch something, its because of the touchy-feely moments, those pure feel-good scenes. And I wouldn't say this show had a lot of that exactly. That's not to say it wasn't romantic just...eh, I dunno. Just not a lot of those brilliant moments that make you smile without knowing it. Does that make sense? Maybe. Don't care. Am I glad I watched it? Yeah, I guess so. Discovered a new actor or two. Reasonably solid storyline (though it wasn't what I expected). So, yeah.
The real test, I suppose, is whether I look back on it with fondness in a few weeks.
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