Untitled Park Ji Eun Project (2024)

I usually keep my reviews spoiler-free, but to explain the reasons why I found this drama disappointing despite liking it in the beginning I can't help but refer to parts and details of the show. Therefore, if you haven’t watched the drama yet, you may want to skip this long review.

From the very beginning, my interest focused solely on the sentimental dynamics of the two main leads. I wanted to find out when and above all how the love that had evidently led them to marriage had turned into total indifference or even hatred. I found all the rest kind of redundant and started FF very early on.

At first, the most problematic character from a narrative point of view was undoubtedly Baek Hyun Woo. He can no longer stand his wife or her family and so far no one can blame him. However, a normal couple would at least try to discuss it, or quarrel about it, but Hyun Woo's tactic is to turn away and go sob in some corner alone. If, like me, you are hoping for at least one outburst of anger or passionate frustration, it is better to find a corner where we too can go and sob alone, because turning their backs on problems is the recurring pattern, regardless of the characters involved. Bar the volcanic aunt, that is.
When the terminal illness bomb is dropped, Baek Hyun Woo's reaction is: surprise, hug with declaration of love followed closely by relief of being able to escape the marriage without consequences. Am I supposed to find this funny? Only two scenarios are possible: either he has never stopped loving her and his hatred is just the other face of the love coin, or the contempt is real and we are left with a husband actively rejoicing in his wife’s untimely demise.

Hae-In's character is fleshed out a little better. Despite her apparent indifference towards her husband, on several occasions she highlights his intelligence and professional ability, thus proving proud of him. It is easier for the viewer to understand why she chose this man for her husband. It's a shame that instead of continuing along this line, the screenwriter prefers to introduce the usual K-drama banalities: "you're beautiful, you're sexy, I'm jealous of anyone who breathes, don't let anyone look at you, wear a burqa, blah, blah."

Given all these premises, I would have expected a much more passionate sentimental dynamic and not two spouses who obviously shared a bed at some point but whose simplest touch appears now unnatural. For the first four or five episodes, we see Hae-In trying to get closer to him physically and him backing away or denying himself as if he feared contagion. The absurdity is stretched to the point that Hae-In asks her secretary whether it is normal for a wife to be physically attracted to her husband, to which the “wise” secretary decrees this woman must be clinically crazy. What universe are we in?
Suddenly though, we are told that the love between them is the deepest in the cosmos and we have to take that for granted without further questions or explanation.

The pace of the entire narrative is fluctuating. It alternates poignant, almost lyrical moments with others full of completely irrelevant events, apples or pears and over-the-top, frankly irritating characters. The male lead's sister and her gossiping clients, anyone? Not to mention the family who arrives with 4 helicopters at the hunting lodge - not even the royals of England - the bad guy who does whatever he likes without consequences or control, the self-made patriarch who lets himself be fooled by a greedy prune of a woman and this last who goes around with a bevy of bodyguards/minions in tow like the queen of Joseon with her eunuchs.

When all this is said and done, what annoys me the most is the repeated trick of giving us a cliff-hanger of paramount importance at the end of every episode, only to start the next with either a flashback of the past or a conclusion to said cliff-hanger that is deflating my expectations at best or insulting my intelligence at worst. A few examples [very spoilery]

- Ominous press conference with the whole of South Korea gathered, Hae-In shocks everyone not only by revealing her illness, but also exposing the villain’s threats and manipulations to the world, even claiming she has recorded evidence of it. Fantastic! Next episode: the villain is still strolling the Queen’s corridors without a soul questioning him or the press dedicating a line to his involvement. Where did the recorded evidence go?

- Hae-In gets in the car with the what’s-his-name villain thinking he is Hyun Woo. The whole sequence is truly well made, giving the audience small but undeniable hints and a suspenseful car chase until Hae In finally realizes her mistake. End of episode. Here I am all excited at the prospect of a true confrontation, but the next episode Hae In coldly informs her husband she will go along with Villain to visit grandpa and Hyun Woo makes no objection. What? Cliff-hanger over, as well as my sanity.

- Grampa made a panic room built somewhere inside the family mansion, but he didn’t see it fit to tell anyone, which clearly defeats the object of a panic room. I’m still laughing out loud at a friend envisioning a bunch of criminals breaking in and the family dying of panic attacks because they can’t find the panic room. Remember, this is the same distrustful and overly cautious patriarch who made an unrelated woman his tutor without ever checking her true credentials. One wonders how he made all that money… So we have this suspenseful scene in which the family descends into the room via an elevator and Hyun Woo immediately gets the trick. How? You think they are going to tell you the next episode? Guess what: no.

There are other instances of logic defeating situations, but unless you like to be spoilt you have already watched the drama and know exactly what I’m talking about. They have crammed a gazillion open threads to be finally knotted back in the last two episodes, and yet they still find the damn time to introduce new, totally useless, eczema inducing characters, a murder mystery, a trial and a good 10 minutes’ village party with quacks and barks. I promise you, I almost got that eczema.

In conclusion, since the plot has got more holes than Swiss cheese and clichés abound, I watched and completed this drama because of the main leads. Alas, more often than not they disappointed me too: they never felt real as a couple of adults, despite their roles as individual characters being brilliantly acted. There isn’t a mutual alchemy between them, no sparks flying around: they exist as individuals who happen to repeat they love each other ad nauseam. There is no real in-depth conversation between them: why didn’t it work? When did we start to drift apart? Let’s be honest; if you don’t clear up the misunderstandings, they are definitely going to be repeated, no matter how many times you’re shot, driven over by a car, get tumours, surgeries or whatever catastrophe a scriptwriter can come up with.
There’s a beautiful dialogue sometime by the middle in which Hyun Woo comments: “what if we had applied a balm on our wounds every time we hurt each other in the past? How would our marriage be now?” That was such a wonderful cue, the type of conversation I would expect from an adult couple in a crisis. But what does Hae In reply to that? “No, we should have stopped by the ice-cream and put an end to our relationship then and there. We wouldn’t be in this situation now.” What kind of superficial, immature response is that?
Better we were never born, so we wouldn’t be suffering now, sort of clever philosophy.

I decided early on that I would add one point to the drama if they made Hae In and Hyun Woo finally sit down and address the elephant in the room: October 31. As it stands, the drama gets one point less for turning a promising story of healing into a buffoonish makjang.

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