Happiness (2021)

Not what the synopsis promised

We go into this drama with the promise of a world that focuses on the aspect of a new strain of virus spreading throughout the city with a social aspect between apartment levels. While the concept of it was unique, the execution of it was lack luster. The first two or three episodes start really strong, with the primary focus on the development of the virus. But then we move to the apartment, where you'd think there would be some sort of focus on the economical differences between apartment levels and how it affects surviving the spread of the virus, but it has little to nothing to do with the actual show.

We get a brief explanation that the floors 5 and below are public rentals, and that the ones above are for the people who paid for the apartment themselves. That's the end of the socio economical difference and plot, there's not dive into the extent of the difference between levels, there's no detail into any sort of survival advantage or perks that the higher levels get, no surprising twist as a result of the socioeconomically difference. I guess the higher level people get free access to the gym, and have a justification to incessantly complain that they should get more during resource division because they're rich. Again, very disappointed that they made this a point in the synopsis as it has no impact on the plot whatsoever.

Now that we've also shifted into the apartment scenes, we also seem to leave the entire zombie apocalypses as an after thought. All the residents are now trapped in their apartments as if to exemplify them vs the impending zombie doom. This quickly devolves into a 8 episode long slice of life drama where we constantly see random slice of life everyone's life (these slices never change either, it's always the same point) from the lawyer cheating on his wife with the woman who is constantly looking for a passcode to access the doctor's crypto currency all the way to the 3 person family where the mother is infected but is hiding it from everyone. We spend an annoying amount of time focused on the mother who tries to hide her infection as well. Which amounts to the promise of zombie goodness we had expected of this series. So basically nothing. We spend almost an entire episodes worth of time following this woman expecting her to turn and perhaps kill her family and start an outbreak into the apartment, but no she is basically written out from the entire show. It's like she never existed. The family goes on to live in the apartment barely attending the resident meetings that occur every episode as if nothing was wrong. I guess the son gets scared and eventually stays with other residents, but that's it. As for the apartment vs the zombie infested complex, that pretty much gets slept on as well. Nothing happens, nobody really tries to break in, it's like the rest of the zombies in their complex don't exist. We get one seen where one zombie gets in and "infects" on person and then we proceed again as if the entire zombie complex doesn't exist again. Just the discussion of locking up the person who got bit.

Then we have the researcher who obviously is trying to save his wife by developing a cure, but tries to pretend he's in it for the money. Literally fooling nobody, so when he finally shows that he's a good person at the end, it comes as no surprise to anyone. The writers also found it necessary to make illogical/unnecessary drama to make this cure. E.G. the researcher trying to deceive the main characters into getting blood transfusions and suddenly turning G.I. Joe to infiltrate the complex to extract the main character for the cure, but then saying nah it's okay you stay here. When a simple, "hey can we draw you blood, it could save the world," would be equally effective and then the entire drama would just be over.

There's a lot of time consuming, illogical, and boring build up and that always amounts to nothing. That pretty much sums up the entirety of the series. A bunch of half plots that ping pong back and forth that result into no progression. It's as if the plots were just there for the sake of being there. Another, minimum word count scenario where writers wrote the series to be a 2 hour movie, but were then told to extend it to 12 episodes so they just kind of filled in the gaps the night before and called it a wrap.

Overall this drama was meh at best and just every where all the time. It lacked any sort of identity. They just kind of threw out an interesting plot premise, added a strong and attractive cast, and proceeded to just cross their fingers. Now here we are (as of this review) with a score of 9.0 with a story that almost anyone could write so I guess the plan was successful. I can't wait for another drama to be overrated so that we continue the cycle of pumping out the next brain dead story with an attractive cast.

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