My Demon: A Promising Premise, Disappointing Execution

I went into this show positively. I loved the visual chemistry of the leads, the idea of a supernatural romance, and the use of the fake marriage trope. I was also excited for this knowing that the writer behind Mr. Queen (one of my favorite dramas of all time) was on the production team. However, when it got down to watching the actual show, waiting week after week for those two new episodes, I found myself utterly frustrated and disappointed with the outcome to a show that held so much promise.

I'm going to start with the positives. Kim Yoojung was pretty solid in this. The banter in this show was entertaining. The chemistry between the leads felt organic and not forced. The family business power struggle storyline was pretty interesting, as with the whodunit aspect. The gang was a super fun addition and their presence wasn't too overbearing or too missed. Overall, the direction wasn't terrible and the story finished in a way that wasn't super unsatisfying. An average k-drama at best.

Now, with the negatives. I can't fathom how this script was approved with a 16 episode format in mind. This dragged IMMENSELY, especially in the second half. It tries to juggle so many storylines that they introduce pretty early on in the show and are left in the air until they dump it all to you in one dense chunk of an episode(I'm talking about Guwon's past, which was so obvious as soon as they introduced it). And you'd think that these stories could have filled out this runtime well, but no! We have so much unnecessary fluff to endure to pad out these 16 episodes. This show did not make me care about the secondary characters at all and pretty much everything that didn't have to do with Dohee and Guwon bored me to tears. And somewhere around episode 12, I started asking myself, "How is this not over yet? What else needs to be addressed?", and that thought became more and more frequent as the show progressed. You know how these plots progress? Dumb character decisions that make no sense and have zero motivation other than to extend the time spent on the plot. This show STRUGGLED with its episode count and it shows horribly.

And as much as I love the guy, Song Kang can't act (yet). I thought he'd be great as a intimidating demon character given his previous work in Sweet Home, but his line delivery was so stiff and awkward 90% of the time. I think the only times I found him charming were his scenes where he's playing this almost puppy dog-like character with Dohee, and some of his comedic bits actually worked for me. It's a shame the story focused so much on him, because at the moment(I sincerely want to see him improve, really), he is not fit for this role technically. But visually, 10/10, def pulled off the look of a supernatural entity.

While we're on the subject of the supernatural, the lore/world-building set up by the writer sounded super interesting to begin with. I loved the idea of a morally-deattached immortal finding his reconnection with humanity, but the rules of the extent of his powers were so loose and confusing. His powers just felt so loosely defined, as if they could be whatever they want for the sake of plot convenience. The idea that he must make contracts continuously or he'll start to combust also just felt very inconsistent. It's probably the weird pacing of the show(what is the exact timeline of all these events? weeks? months? i dont know anymore), but they only addressed the point of contracts/combustion like twice in the show, because if they did address more, Guwon would not be around Dohee as much and therefore limit the main plot's progression. They made a big deal about these contracts in the beginning of the show, too, only to be an afterthought later in the show. Disappointing, to set up such an interesting set of rules for your main character's species, only to underdevelop important parts of it and over use the parts that make the plot move more conveniently.

In the end, I can't say I'm angry at this show. It had me invested at times, gave me something to giggle at once in a while. If I didn't have such a hype for this show beforehand, I might give drama a worse rating, but at the moment, I just feel let down by something that should have been so good. And personally, I think it lies almost entirely within the script. I won't blame anyone for liking this show, but I just can't get over its lost potential.

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