flunderingchipper
The Smile Has Left Your Eyes
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I haven't seen the Japanese source material for The Smile Has Left Your Eyes, but I don't think any of my criticisms here would be ameliorated had I seen that version beforehand. I guess it's possible for me to exonerate the South Korean version of its faults and just attribute every outrageous plot point to bad writing elsewhere, but for the love of the gods above, can't we get an adaptation that improves upon its source rather than a beat-for-beat reconstruction of popular garbage just because?Here's where I provide full disclosure: I only started watching this because I generally like Seo In Guk's work, and I've liked several other cast members' work in other dramas. I don't seek out the thriller and mystery genres, I tend to stick with art house cinema or comedy romance shows, and I stray out of those areas when I feel like I'll be rewarded for experimenting or when I'm feeling tired of the same obscurantist shit or poorly written bubbly junk food. This show was unbelievable, and it was unpleasant, and it encouraged me to return to my usual fare for a while.
Spoilers, obviously. If you haven't clicked out, this is your final chance.
The characters' motivations, actions, and the consequences (or lack thereof) were outlandish to the point of offense. Irrespective of Moo Young and Yoo Jin's uncontrollable lust for one another, the fact that Yoo Jin even entertains the idea of shacking up with Moo Young after he emotionally cheated on her best friend WITH YOO JIN and openly bore some responsibility for her death is LUDICROUS. Moo Young's infuriating antagonism when he's being investigated in a murder case is absolutely insane. That Yoo Jin was even willing to be in the same room as her brother after he stabbed her super special boyfriend and miraculously didn't even lose his cop job is incredibly ridiculous. Why did Yoo Jin agree to date Moo Young ONLY on the condition that he actively self-improve, and neglect to provide any sort of schema or apparatus for Moo Young to achieve whatever it is she's envisioning, if she was just going to essentially drop the subject entirely as Moo Young continues to lie to her? Why does her character turn from observant and assertive to naïve and acquiescent to the whims of the guys?
I couldn't buy into the drama, because the premises and conclusions were nonsensical and inconsistent. The people in this universe don't seem to understand the weight of others' transgressions, or else SOMEONE in the police department would have pulled Jin Kang's murderous stabby-mc-stabber brother in for questioning. I don't know any decent person who would get involved with their dead BFF's unfaithful, manipulative ex. Even a sociopath would know that they have to make some claim to their innocence when a cop starts stalking them. It's like the showrunners thought that suspense equates with whimsical, destructive, unchecked trickery on the part of the characters.
Stories only remain suspenseful insofar as the viewer can suspend their disbelief and immerse themselves in the urgency of the situation. But nothing here had any repercussions until everyone started shooting each other. The moment some threat was posed to any of the main or supporting characters, it was immediately quelled by folks who are disturbingly comfortable with their loved ones' violent urges or that thread was dropped entirely. Yoo Jin would be in fucking therapy for what went down with Seung Ah, is what I'm saying. Sleeping with a dude your friend fucked is awkward enough, never mind the weird-ass sociopathic shit and the death.
I couldn't buy into anything this show was selling. Basically, its overarching mysteries were boring and predictable (obviously Moo Young isn't the killer??? He's not the one stalking random people?? You can clock most of the murderers in this show based on how many people they're stalking until episode 15) and its twists were so stupid that they divested from whatever wisp of a suspenseful tone the rest of the plot succeeds at sowing. The whole thing plays out like a sensationalist novel that started out as erotic fan fiction on the internet. It's like there's no need to reconcile the various parts within the whole because it's more important to use to just throw out whatever shocking crap we can to keep people tuning in every week.
The sixteen episode standard didn't benefit this narrative either. It DRAGGED, and from what I understand, the Japanese version was only 10 episodes long. Cut the flashbacks, cut the repetitive conversational loops and cut to the chase: are these sociopathic weirdos gonna bang or nah? That's infinitely more intriguing than drawn out conversations while people sit around tables and cry intermittently, running in and out of that top-floor apartment incessantly because we couldn't afford another set.
Waiting for Moo Young and Yoo Jin to finally seal the deal was excruciating, because they had to play out a coy dance as if Yoo Jin ACTUALLY cared about Seung Ah, as if anyone was actually thinking about Seung Ah (including the writers). Yoo Jin had a thousand chances to be a good friend, or a decent human, to Seung Ah before she finally agrees to bang Moo Young, and she never rose to the occasion, so I don't understand why there had to be this pretense that Yoo Jin was conflicted for eight episodes when she clearly wasn't??? She literally sexed her dead best friend's boyfriend like two days after she died??? So cut four of those episodes out! Seung Ah dies, boom, we get the nookie. There you go. Millions of dollars, saved.
Oh, I figured it out - the real monster is Yoo Jin. She pretends to have emotions and morals, meanwhile she somehow pulls together a bunch of murderous wankers to annihilate her messianic, perfect, lovely friend before they burn the world down, and her with it.
I feel like I wasted my life. I'm giving this a 10 in rewatch value because I think it'll be great material for a drinking game with my friends.
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Not a show/10This was meandering garbage, it was an improv-exercise. I could be convinced that it's a show if you were to argue that it's supposed to be viewed as a horror series, wherein the characters seem to be trapped in psychological and social circles with no hope of escape. But it wasn't. It was supposed to be a slice of life drama.
The director seems to have identified everything that was wrong with Something in the Rain before amplifying it and omitting any and all ideas that weren't shit. I watched this whole thing with my family as each episode was released on Netflix, and we unanimously agreed it was the most aggravating Korean Drama any of us had ever seen, hitherto surpassed only by The Smile Has Left Your Eyes. At least with the latter there was some comedic value, because its premises and conclusions were so ridiculous. This one is offensively bland. Profoundly boring. Like, I'm taking it personally here.
I just want to address the music composition straight away, because whoever is in charge of timing musical cues in Ahn Pan-Seok's dramas is UTTERLY incompetent. The showrunners choose these obnoxious covers of pop and folk songs that beat you over the head with their messaging; the songs play at random - like you might get one while a character makes some food or punches someone in the face - so they're often tonally dissonant with what's actually happening on screen. Plus, these fucking things sometimes play *multiple times per episode*. By the fifteenth time Rachel Yamagata breathlessly whined, "we could still be happy" my group was just about ready to turn the t.v. off and give up on episode 4 altogether.
The editing was generally terrible, though, so maybe the decrepit state of the drama's soundscape can be chalked up to whoever was charged with editing the fucking endings. Episodes would end in silence, with Ji-ho walking towards Gi-seok, building and foreshadowing some sort of tension, only to lead to a hilariously banal opener in the next episode. We actually started laughing when episodes would start, because the only time we were ever interested was when episodes ended, and when they began we wished we hadn't bothered. The word 'cliffhanger' barely describes these endings. They were more like wet farts that get progressively quieter and increasingly smellier.
We were intensely bored and annoyed by the acting and dialogue. Some dramas have very kinetic acting, with characters moving while they talk to each other, but this one falls into the category of shows wherein the audience is challenged with the task of guessing when the showrunners have replaced the actors with cardboard cut outs. EVERYBODY JUST. STANDS. Staring at each other. It's one of my issues with J-Dramas and older Korean dramas, and when you combine that flaw with the weirdly long delays between Jeong-in and Ji-ho's sentences (seriously, count the number of seconds that pass after someone speaks to them before either of them makes a sound... it's awful when they're together) you get extremely low energy on screen at all times. The lead actors had absolutely no chemistry, either. They've both played charismatic characters in the past, but it's like they were a little high throughout the entire show. That might explain the delayed response times, actually.
Their lack of chemistry wasn't entirely the actors' faults, though. Ahn Pan-Seok has a problem with dragging out specific plot threads long after they should have been tied up. His strategy for ameliorating the inevitable fucked up shitty pacing that he produces is to have characters repeat the same conversation endlessly until the last two episodes. That's when people bend, and fight, and start acting randomly compliant where they had been obstinate for fourteen episodes.
The story line with Gi-Seok, for example, should have ended midway through the season. He stalked Jeong-in for basically the entire series, to the point where even the dads were, like, confused about how deluded he was about forcing Jeong-in to marry him. He has this weird misogynistic rivalry with Ji-ho that was so stupid and chauvenist I actually started wishing Jeong-in was just end up single by the end, but there's no resolution! The rivalry is built up for basically 16 episodes and it doesn't end with Gi-seok and Ji-ho confronting eachother to the end that Gi-seok finally relents, it ends with Gi-seok eating dinner with a rapist and going, "nah dude, because the series needs to end I'm just going to chill out now," before just, like, walking away?? Wtf
Jeong-in and Ji-ho's relationship was unbelievable too, so we couldn't get invested into the OTP vibe shit that (let's be honest) most of us watch this shit for. Since 90% of the conversations anyone has in this show are ABOUT those two, this wasn't just a minor problem. They meet and basically fall in love instantly. Ji-ho sets some clear boundaries, and then they both start acting like being apart is the WORST form of torture annnnyone could have cooked up. How about a few episodes where they get to know each other? Where they just vibe as friends, run into each other in public with their friends and family? How about SHOWING us Gi-seok joking about breaking up and hurting Jeong-in's feelings, or how his dad disapproves of her, rather than dumping that information into exposition? How about some new sideplots? I JUST NEED SOMETHING TO MAKE THIS SHIT FRESH. I need SOMETHING to suspend my disbelief when Gi-seok randomly starts suspecting Ji-ho is sliding in on his girl. He sees Ji-ho's shoes in her apartment with multiple other pairs ONCE and he's immediately convinced something is afoot. GI-SEOK IS NOT THAT SMART. None of these characters are believable! Everyone's life revolves around Jeong-in and Ji-ho! And the only side plots are Jae-in's flirtation with her buddy-bae and the eldest sister's fucking traumatizing ass story line. Basically all the dialogue is arguments!!! I can't listen to these people argue about Ji-ho and Jeong-in anymore!!!! holy fuck!!
TL;DR - all the conflict that's introduced in the first episode is basically all that you get until episode 14. It does not develop. It's completely inorganic, and it's a case study in a screenplay for a film stretched thin over 16 hours worth of content.
The delays in the acting, the dragging plot, and the illogical and inconsistent characterization feel like they're consequences of something being made up on the spot. Like, instead of giving the actors scripts, they gave them general subjects to have an argument about, so the leads are constantly pausing to figure out what the hell they're going to say next. There's no imagery as strong as the umbrellas in Something in the Rain, and the spring metaphor was shoved into random meeting scenes at Jeong-in's work. They're ALWAYS meeting up at night time, which spring night is the significant one, exactly?
This one is my new bottom. Er, of the list. Bottom of my list. OF MY LIST.
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Make the eyebrows stay still!
Camp! Puerile camp! But the source material was softcore porn, what can you do. I will say every single actor in Koi to Dangan did way too much with their eyebrows. Stop! Stop cocking those eyebrows!I do think this show is proof positive that MDL has a problem with only upvoting reviews that praise the property, no matter how shite the thing is. We really need to be honest with ourselves here. Were none of you looking at Toshiomi's eyebrows??
And another thing, MDL wants me to write at least 500 characters for this review. This is why the review culture on MDL can't compete with Letterboxd. We're not silly enough on this website, we have to take everything seriously and pad out our reviews of actual garbage like we're writing essays on the characteristics of Baroque painting. Let me be me! We need some dissent on this website and we need some good jokes. Why is everyone taking Koi to Dangan seriously!!
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Holy Fricking Shit This BLURSED Shit Rocked My World
Let me clarify here: this show was - without a doubt - written by two people who either snorted something or developed episode ideas by chucking absurd one-shot pitches into a hat and drawing them out at random. Strongest Delivery Man is a steaming, reanimated Frankensteinian corpse of a drama. AndI LOVED IT.
Many dramas delve into the harrowing, alienating world of the corporate drone, the working class shmuck, and the rich heir. All the ones I've seen that have contradictorily shown their characters squirm under the acute and malicious thumb of wealth inequality and given them a way out by like, doing capitalism "the right way" by starting a company and just being super nice and friendly or marrying out of poverty and never thinking about how sucky that shit was anymore. That is, they identify a social problem, and rather than grapple with the contradictions of the ideology they live under, they buy back into it. Dramas don't have to find solutions to the prevailing issues of the day of course, but if your characters are driven because of their socioeconomic status and the drama pretends the issue isn't latent in the society the character lives in, it's trying to have its cake and eat it too. You don't get to write a social drama without the social criticism.
This drama, with its plot constructed through word association games using fruits at a supermarket, actually looked at one of the core contradictions in Korean society and showed an honest to god alternative way. Dan-ah wants to leave the country. She hates toiling away and dealing with the country's competitive and thankless atmosphere. Kang-soo, literally Jesus, has assembled an actual army of delivery men by saving their lives in near-fatal traffic accidents around Seoul to earn their loyalty. They pair up and start a Door Dash/SkipTheDishes type company that's organized HORIZONTALLY. Everyone gets the same wages and has a stake in the company! They don't charge ridiculous commissions from the restaurants they deliver from and BY THE WAY the delivery guys are working with independent mom-and-pop shops to fight off a predatory chain restaurant that's trying to drive away its competition (a real thing that Starbucks did to kill the independent coffee house culture of the USA). It shows the community coming together, leaving competition behind and thriving for it.
That said, though, this show is complete, utter, catnip. I lost my shit while watching it. I've never had so much fun with pure shenanigans, of which this show is UTTERLY, 100%, UNDISTILLED SHENANIGANS. You could feed this to me and it would have the same effect as steroids. It's not GOOD by any stretch of the imagination. It is bloody entertaining.
The first episode is basically a remake of the Fast and the Furious movies. It's billed as a rom-com, right? Well in the first, like, 10 minutes of the first episode you see a delivery guy on a scooter get fucking nailed by a driver while he's parked next to the main character. Blood on the ground and everything, Kang-soo LEAVES THE MAN BLEEDING IN THE STREET TO CHASE AFTER THE CULPRIT WHO HIT HIM. He calls he poor guy an ambulance and CHASES AFTER - DUDE YOU ARE NOT A TRAINED PROFESSIONAL.
Throughout the rest of the first episode there are MULTIPLE accidents or near-accidents, there's a street race somewhere in there - and bear in mind, this is before the audience has any idea that this show is going to be Uber Eats in Itaewon. Kang-soo POPS A FRONT WHEELIE to avoid colliding into his soon-to-be love interest, and then you're supposed to accept that this man is going to be doing his own stunts for the rest of the show. This insistence on sporadically and randomly inserting wild action scenes culminates in an offensively hilarious one where Dan-ah and her boss lady track down boss-lady's boss-husband to a mafia hide out and Kang-soo, with a band of delivery men, storm the hide out and FIST FIGHT ARMED MAFIA MEMBERS TO RESCUE THEIR FRIENDS 3 TO 1. THEY'RE OUTNUMBERED AND THEY WIN THE FIGHT. WHAT A WORLD.
REMEMBER, THIS IS A DRAMA IMAGINING WHAT DOOR DASH WOULD BE LIKE IF IT WAS OWNED BY A WORKER CO-OP.
Kang-soo is able to muster every delivery man in Seoul on a whim. PHSYICALLY. When he wants to tell them something, he texts 327 delivery men in a group chat to meet him by a floodway and every single one of them will ride to him on their identical scooters like it's a battle scene from Lord of the Rings and SIT on the vehicles until he's done his speech. This show has a weird tendency to center technologically-mediated communication AND treat it like a superfluous detail in its world at the same time. Kang-soo calls his warrior delivery boys to him to ask them to delivery flyers that encourage pedestrians to VISIT A WEBSITE. JUST ADVERTISE ON INSTAGRAM, KANG-SOO. WHY can't he tell them what he wants to say THROUGH THE GROUP CHAT? WHY is he mustering them so they can sit, peeking out of their helmets, like their scooters are horses and they're the king's knights, WHEN HE CAN JUST --- TEXT THEM --- THROUGH. THE. GROUP. CHAT?
The delivery men are extremely loyal to Kang-soo because, again, he's saved each of their lives and lacks the ability to type on a keyboard with more than one finger at a time. Kang-soo ends up in prison after he's wrongfully accused of his friend's actions, which were attempting murder on an heir who street raced and blocked a road that could have been crucial to sparing their friend WHO GOT HIT BY A CAR from falling into a coma. When Kang-soo gets out of prison, that friend is there to greet him AND THEN GOES BACK TO THE HOSPITAL FOR MANDATORY BED REST. He's also KANG-SOO'S HALF-BROTHER ON KANG-SOO'S LONG LOST MOTHER'S SIDE. The feud between Jin-gyu (the heir) and Kang-soo threatens to lead to an all-out war between the delivery men and the chain restaurant until a grandma steps in and says, "hey guys, let's stop now because there's no other way for the writers to feasibly restore the levity we're hoping for." And that's how the revenge cycle stops. OH, and Jin-gyu and Kang-soo are part of a love square.
I want you to be skeptical of the people who reviewed this show and said they could relate to it, because I haven't even spoiled half of this show's high octane ludicrousness for you. Every possible trope a K-drama could have is introduced and used up in the span of SECONDS in this show. Itaewon Class could NEVER.
Dizzying, that's what this show was. It was dizzying. It's the fact that it took itself too seriously and completely facetiously at the same time. The fact that it pulled the mafia and the corporate world together around socialist SkipTheDishes. Maybe it's the way Kang-soo slaps down his ancient manuscript business bible like he's got the answers to humankind's deepest questions when it's a handwritten notebook that just says "DoorDash, but more equitable." There's hallucinations, death, flirty jokes and climactic kiss scenes, off-the-wall stunts, delivery boy cavalry, HORRIBLE MUSIC - the whole package. Everything you could never know coexists in this blursed drama. And let's be real, people, there's no other word for this shit. it's BLURSED.
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