Very, very funny

If you have ever wondered how and why your heart and mind and body react in certain situations, here’s your answer. Yumi’s Cells portrays the inner debates going on inside of us through cartoon characters representing love, reason, anxiety and everything else which makes us who we are. The interaction between the cells is absolutely hilarious and I laughed out loud several times, especially when the male lead’s cells showed up. Very, very funny stuff and very well written.

Surprisingly, despite the cartoon parts, this show offers a more realistic depiction of a relationship than many dramas that are entirely live action based. The two main characters fall in love (so cute!) but then struggle communicating. Love and betrayal, pride and miscommunication are all very realistically portrayed. We see the situations our couple find themselves in from the cells’ perspective, and they don’t always agree on what to do or say. Ultimately, a lot is left unsaid and a lot is left undone. (I would definitely recommend watching the first few episodes of Season 2 as well, because a lot of the events in the first season are explained further.)

The acting was phenomenal. Kim Go Eun’s Blue Dragon award was well deserved for her portrayal of Yumi, and Ahn Bo Hyun was just perfect for the role of her boyfriend. Give the cells an award too! They really were the stars of the show. I thoroughly enjoyed Season 1 and can highly recommend it.

Leia Mais

Entertaining drama with a few plot holes

I have not watched the original Spanish version so this review is solely based on the Korean show. Overall, I quite enjoyed it. One of the criteria of a good drama is looking forward to the next episode and not having the urge to fast forward through the boring parts, so in that sense, it was a good drama because there were no boring parts and it definitely kept me entertained. The plot is interesting despite a few holes – more about that below – and the premise of a reunited Korea was used well in the story, with some tension between characters from the North and the South as part of the plot.

The beginning of each episode has a little backstory that helps the viewer’s understanding of the main characters. This avoided the typical long flashbacks in the middle of the action, allowing the story to flow very smoothly as it was told. Very brief flashbacks to the planning of the heist enhanced the suspenseful cat-and-mouse game. Did the robbers foresee what just happened? Plan for it? How will the police react? That part was really well done.

The acting was fine, especially by Park Hae Soo as Berlin and Kim Ji Hoon as Denver. Wish the intimate scene catered a little less to the American market but hey, I’m not exactly complaining.

Now about those plot holes! They were significant and may have been in the original script as well, but that’s no excuse. The most glaring one was a civilian barging into the makeshift police headquarters. Pfff, like that would happen. Find another way to get the character the information he’s using later on. That scene really annoyed me because it was so illogical.

That said, I have no problem recommending this drama if you are looking for six hours of being well entertained. I will definitely watch Part 2.

Leia Mais

Outstanding

The Worst of Evil is an outstanding Kdrama, and not just in the noir genre. It is a fascinating story with captivating characters, stellar acting, great action sequences, THAT KISS, a touch of classic tragedy and a real departure from simplistic black-and-white storytelling. Very few of the characters in this drama are actually good, some are very very bad, and most of them fall somewhere in between.

The intriguing plot revolves around our policeman hero who goes undercover, partially to impress his wife’s family who think she married the wrong guy, and ends up working for his wife’s ex-boyfriend who is now a gangster and decidedly not a good person - though we forget that pretty quickly thanks to his charisma. The wife, anxious to help, gets involved with her ex, while our hero catches the fancy of a drug lord’s daughter, and is torn between real affection for the girl and loyalty to his wife. This is where the element of a classic tragedy comes into play. The wife only gets involved to help her husband, who only got involved in the first place to get her family off her back, and in a bitter case of irony, that is what destroys their marriage in the end.

The characters are so well written that I found myself rooting for the bad guys on numerous occasions. When their bag of drugs is stolen, my first thought was Oh No! before catching myself. These people make a living off the misery of others, but we don’t really care, do we, since many of the “bad” characters are really charming or have redeeming qualities. The drug lord’s daughter easily could have been a cliched figure, but she is ultimately just a girl unloved by her father, who’s a constant threat in the background, with her bodyguard / replacement father figure the only person she trusts until she meets our hero. And while not all if the gangsters are really bad, many of the “good guys" are not good at all. There is so much corruption and blind ambition displayed by some of the policemen that it is clear that the line between good and evil blurred a long time ago.

I can highly recommend this show to anyone who enjoys the crime & mystery genre, great storytelling, or just something very far removed from the bubbly secretary and chaebol heir type of stories (though I quite enjoy these stories too). My one and only point of criticism was actually the wife’s character. Not that she hooked up with her ex, because she had a good reason. No, I thought she is way too passive during the big fight, especially as a trained policewoman. Generally speaking, nothing riles me up more than the female character just standing by while her boyfriend gets beaten up, or falling over in a dead swoon as he comes to her rescue. This is a recurring theme in Kdramas, Hollywood movies, fairytales and just about everywhere else, and it’s bloody annoying. Other than that, this drama was a perfect 10.

Leia Mais