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Head Over Heels — When the Explanation Comes Too Late for the Emotion
I will admit immediately why I started Head Over Heels: Choo Young-woo. I first fell for him back in 2021 when he played Song Si-on in the Korean BL You Make Me Dance. It was his first leading role, and even in such a small production there was something about him that stayed with me. Since then, watching his career grow has been rather satisfying. School 2021, Once Upon a Small Town, Oasis, The Tale of Lady Ok, The Trauma Code... By the time Head Over Heels arrived, he had even won the Baeksang Best New Actor award for The Tale of Lady Ok. So yes, I came for Choo Young-woo, but thankfully there was considerably more here to enjoy than simply looking at him.
The basic idea is actually wonderfully simple. Park Seong-a is an eighteen-year-old student who secretly works as a shaman. When Bae Gyeon-u enters her shrine appearing upside down, she immediately understands what that means: he is going to die. Unfortunately for her, he is also exactly her type, so she decides that fate is going to have to find somebody else. That beginning is funny, romantic and extremely easy to understand. The official description even sells the drama simply as two eighteen-year-olds trying to defy fate together. Somewhere along the way, however, Head Over Heels becomes considerably more complicated than that.
Suddenly I was trying to remember who was spiritually connected to whom, which shaman had done what, who was protecting somebody, who was hurting somebody supposedly because they loved somebody else, which spirit belonged where, and whether the person I was currently watching was actually the person whose face I was looking at. There were several moments when my brain basically went: “Wait... what? ... Haaaaa! Now I understand!” Unfortunately, sometimes that understanding arrived several minutes after the emotion. That was my biggest problem with an otherwise very good drama. If I have to spend an emotional scene trying to reconstruct the supernatural rules, I am not completely feeling what the character is feeling. Once I finally understand what happened, I can appreciate why the scene was sad or important, but the immediate emotional impact has already passed.
And I don't think that was simply me not paying attention. The supernatural relationships genuinely become dense. General Dongcheon is Seong-a's spiritual mother, but she also has a complicated maternal relationship with Yeom-hwa. Yeom-hwa manipulates Bong-su, Bong-su possesses Gyeon-u, Gyeon-u can sometimes re-emerge from within that possession, and eventually the question of whose body contains whom becomes part of the plot itself. By the final episodes, love, possession, sacrifice, guilt and spiritual obligation are all operating simultaneously. Even contemporary viewer reactions repeatedly asked exactly the sort of questions I found myself asking.
Knowing that the source webtoon contains 156 episodes makes this make considerably more sense to me. Twelve television episodes are not necessarily too short, but when you are adapting such a long supernatural story—and changing major elements of it—you need extraordinary clarity. The original webtoon and drama do not even use Bong-su in exactly the same way, and General Dongcheon's fate is different. The adaptation therefore wasn't simply shortening a story; it was rebuilding parts of it. That ambition is admirable. The execution occasionally needed another pass. Thankfully, the actors carry us through much of the confusion. Choo Young-woo was obviously the reason I arrived, and Head Over Heels gave me another reason to stay. Playing Gyeon-u alone would have required enough emotional range: this is a young man whose entire life has been shaped by inexplicable misfortune, loss and an understandable hatred of shamans after years of adults exploiting his family's desperation. But then Choo effectively has to share the same face with Bong-su. And they don't feel like the same person. The posture changes. The expressions change. The confidence changes. Even the way he looks at Seong-a changes. At points I didn't need the drama to explain whether Gyeon-u or Bong-su was present because Choo Young-woo had already told me physically. Considering that the screenplay itself sometimes made identity confusing, the fact that the actor could make it clearer through performance is quite an accomplishment.
Cho Yi-hyun was equally important because Seong-a could very easily have become exhausting. She falls for Gyeon-u almost immediately and spends an enormous part of the series trying to save him, which in weaker hands could have made her feel like a character whose entire existence revolves around a boy. Instead, Cho Yi-hyun gives her enough personality, humour and stubbornness that I believed this girl would genuinely look at destiny telling her “no” and answer, “I don't care.” And there is something amusing about seeing Cho Yi-hyun and Choo Young-woo together again after School 2021. Back then, Choo Young-woo's Young-joo was the other boy in the romantic equation while Cho Yi-hyun's Ji-won ultimately belonged with Kim Yo-han's Ki-joon. Cho Yi-hyun and Kim Yo-han even won a KBS Best Couple Award for it. Four years later, Choo Young-woo finally comes back and gets to be her actual romantic lead. So perhaps Young-joo just needed to wait for another drama. The 2021 award was perfectly deserved for the couple being judged at the time, but retrospectively the reunion makes the history rather funny.
Then there is Kim Mi-kyung, who is one of those actresses whose appearance automatically reassures me. Her filmography is enormous, and she has spent decades playing mothers, mentors and women who can make supporting characters feel essential rather than decorative. General Dongcheon could have been little more than the experienced shaman who explains supernatural things to younger characters, but Kim Mi-kyung gives her genuine maternal weight. The writer even revealed that the performances of Kim Mi-kyung and Choo Ja-hyun during the test shoot were so charismatic that he went back and rewrote the shaman scenes. That does not surprise me at all. Those relationships are actually where Head Over Heels becomes more interesting than its cute premise suggests. Almost everybody is trying to protect someone, but protection continually becomes control. Love becomes sacrifice, sacrifice creates resentment, grief creates obsession, and people start hurting others because they have convinced themselves that what they are doing has a greater purpose.
The problem is that the drama sometimes gives us all of this at once. There is a very good story underneath it about accepting that loving somebody does not give you ownership over their fate. Seong-a begins by wanting to change Gyeon-u's destiny because she loves him. Other characters also interfere with destiny because of love, loss or grief, but gradually we see how differently those motivations can develop. One person protects; another manipulates. One sacrifices herself; another sacrifices somebody else. The distinction between love and possession becomes both figurative and, in this drama, very literally supernatural. I liked that. I just wish I hadn't sometimes needed a diagram. The unusual thing is that despite these problems, I still enjoyed Head Over Heels. It is beautifully produced, often genuinely funny, romantic when it allows the central couple enough space, and filled with actors capable of making complicated supernatural material feel human. I understand why some viewers became frustrated, particularly in the second half when Bong-su occupies so much of a story that originally appeared to be about saving Gyeon-u from his fate. That criticism was common even while the series was airing. But I don't think the drama collapsed. I think it became overcrowded.
Final Thought
Head Over Heels gave me a slightly unusual viewing experience. Usually a drama makes me feel something and I understand immediately why. Here, several times, understanding came first only after I mentally replayed what had just happened.
“Oh... THAT'S why she did that.”
“Oh... so THAT'S who she was protecting.”
“Oh... THAT wasn't actually Gyeon-u.”
And only then did the sadness arrive. That delay stopped the drama from becoming something exceptional for me, because emotional storytelling should ideally allow the audience to understand enough in the moment to simply feel. But when Head Over Heels was clear, it was very good, and its cast repeatedly compensated for a screenplay that occasionally asked us to keep track of one spirit, two bodies, three shamans and several generations of emotional damage at the same time. I came because the BL actor I fell for in You Make Me Dance was starring in it. I stayed because Choo Young-woo has become a considerably better actor than the young man I discovered in 2021 and because Cho Yi-hyun, Kim Mi-kyung and the rest of this cast gave me enough reason to keep chasing the story even when I wasn't entirely sure which ghost I was chasing.
The basic idea is actually wonderfully simple. Park Seong-a is an eighteen-year-old student who secretly works as a shaman. When Bae Gyeon-u enters her shrine appearing upside down, she immediately understands what that means: he is going to die. Unfortunately for her, he is also exactly her type, so she decides that fate is going to have to find somebody else. That beginning is funny, romantic and extremely easy to understand. The official description even sells the drama simply as two eighteen-year-olds trying to defy fate together. Somewhere along the way, however, Head Over Heels becomes considerably more complicated than that.
Suddenly I was trying to remember who was spiritually connected to whom, which shaman had done what, who was protecting somebody, who was hurting somebody supposedly because they loved somebody else, which spirit belonged where, and whether the person I was currently watching was actually the person whose face I was looking at. There were several moments when my brain basically went: “Wait... what? ... Haaaaa! Now I understand!” Unfortunately, sometimes that understanding arrived several minutes after the emotion. That was my biggest problem with an otherwise very good drama. If I have to spend an emotional scene trying to reconstruct the supernatural rules, I am not completely feeling what the character is feeling. Once I finally understand what happened, I can appreciate why the scene was sad or important, but the immediate emotional impact has already passed.
And I don't think that was simply me not paying attention. The supernatural relationships genuinely become dense. General Dongcheon is Seong-a's spiritual mother, but she also has a complicated maternal relationship with Yeom-hwa. Yeom-hwa manipulates Bong-su, Bong-su possesses Gyeon-u, Gyeon-u can sometimes re-emerge from within that possession, and eventually the question of whose body contains whom becomes part of the plot itself. By the final episodes, love, possession, sacrifice, guilt and spiritual obligation are all operating simultaneously. Even contemporary viewer reactions repeatedly asked exactly the sort of questions I found myself asking.
Knowing that the source webtoon contains 156 episodes makes this make considerably more sense to me. Twelve television episodes are not necessarily too short, but when you are adapting such a long supernatural story—and changing major elements of it—you need extraordinary clarity. The original webtoon and drama do not even use Bong-su in exactly the same way, and General Dongcheon's fate is different. The adaptation therefore wasn't simply shortening a story; it was rebuilding parts of it. That ambition is admirable. The execution occasionally needed another pass. Thankfully, the actors carry us through much of the confusion. Choo Young-woo was obviously the reason I arrived, and Head Over Heels gave me another reason to stay. Playing Gyeon-u alone would have required enough emotional range: this is a young man whose entire life has been shaped by inexplicable misfortune, loss and an understandable hatred of shamans after years of adults exploiting his family's desperation. But then Choo effectively has to share the same face with Bong-su. And they don't feel like the same person. The posture changes. The expressions change. The confidence changes. Even the way he looks at Seong-a changes. At points I didn't need the drama to explain whether Gyeon-u or Bong-su was present because Choo Young-woo had already told me physically. Considering that the screenplay itself sometimes made identity confusing, the fact that the actor could make it clearer through performance is quite an accomplishment.
Cho Yi-hyun was equally important because Seong-a could very easily have become exhausting. She falls for Gyeon-u almost immediately and spends an enormous part of the series trying to save him, which in weaker hands could have made her feel like a character whose entire existence revolves around a boy. Instead, Cho Yi-hyun gives her enough personality, humour and stubbornness that I believed this girl would genuinely look at destiny telling her “no” and answer, “I don't care.” And there is something amusing about seeing Cho Yi-hyun and Choo Young-woo together again after School 2021. Back then, Choo Young-woo's Young-joo was the other boy in the romantic equation while Cho Yi-hyun's Ji-won ultimately belonged with Kim Yo-han's Ki-joon. Cho Yi-hyun and Kim Yo-han even won a KBS Best Couple Award for it. Four years later, Choo Young-woo finally comes back and gets to be her actual romantic lead. So perhaps Young-joo just needed to wait for another drama. The 2021 award was perfectly deserved for the couple being judged at the time, but retrospectively the reunion makes the history rather funny.
Then there is Kim Mi-kyung, who is one of those actresses whose appearance automatically reassures me. Her filmography is enormous, and she has spent decades playing mothers, mentors and women who can make supporting characters feel essential rather than decorative. General Dongcheon could have been little more than the experienced shaman who explains supernatural things to younger characters, but Kim Mi-kyung gives her genuine maternal weight. The writer even revealed that the performances of Kim Mi-kyung and Choo Ja-hyun during the test shoot were so charismatic that he went back and rewrote the shaman scenes. That does not surprise me at all. Those relationships are actually where Head Over Heels becomes more interesting than its cute premise suggests. Almost everybody is trying to protect someone, but protection continually becomes control. Love becomes sacrifice, sacrifice creates resentment, grief creates obsession, and people start hurting others because they have convinced themselves that what they are doing has a greater purpose.
The problem is that the drama sometimes gives us all of this at once. There is a very good story underneath it about accepting that loving somebody does not give you ownership over their fate. Seong-a begins by wanting to change Gyeon-u's destiny because she loves him. Other characters also interfere with destiny because of love, loss or grief, but gradually we see how differently those motivations can develop. One person protects; another manipulates. One sacrifices herself; another sacrifices somebody else. The distinction between love and possession becomes both figurative and, in this drama, very literally supernatural. I liked that. I just wish I hadn't sometimes needed a diagram. The unusual thing is that despite these problems, I still enjoyed Head Over Heels. It is beautifully produced, often genuinely funny, romantic when it allows the central couple enough space, and filled with actors capable of making complicated supernatural material feel human. I understand why some viewers became frustrated, particularly in the second half when Bong-su occupies so much of a story that originally appeared to be about saving Gyeon-u from his fate. That criticism was common even while the series was airing. But I don't think the drama collapsed. I think it became overcrowded.
Final Thought
Head Over Heels gave me a slightly unusual viewing experience. Usually a drama makes me feel something and I understand immediately why. Here, several times, understanding came first only after I mentally replayed what had just happened.
“Oh... THAT'S why she did that.”
“Oh... so THAT'S who she was protecting.”
“Oh... THAT wasn't actually Gyeon-u.”
And only then did the sadness arrive. That delay stopped the drama from becoming something exceptional for me, because emotional storytelling should ideally allow the audience to understand enough in the moment to simply feel. But when Head Over Heels was clear, it was very good, and its cast repeatedly compensated for a screenplay that occasionally asked us to keep track of one spirit, two bodies, three shamans and several generations of emotional damage at the same time. I came because the BL actor I fell for in You Make Me Dance was starring in it. I stayed because Choo Young-woo has become a considerably better actor than the young man I discovered in 2021 and because Cho Yi-hyun, Kim Mi-kyung and the rest of this cast gave me enough reason to keep chasing the story even when I wasn't entirely sure which ghost I was chasing.
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