Anjelle
Hyde, Jekyll, Me is a kdrama centred on a character with DID that came out at the same time as the much better received Kill Me, Heal Me. Because they share similarities in concept and came out around the same time, these two dramas are held up to one another automatically, so I think it's important to recognize how and why KMHM had such good reception when HJM couldn't pull in ratings. Other reviewers have mentioned the similar time slots, so I won't get into that. Instead, let's focus on HJM's shortcomings.
The story is about Goo Seo Jin, a rich chaebol heir who was kidnapped as a child alongside his friend--check off another similarity to KMHM. The trauma from that event and his inability to do anything about it eventually birthed Robin, his heroic, kind-hearted alter ego. But the story doesn't start with Robin's birth and instead, we're shown Seo Jin's position later in life, his bad personality and selfishness as he meets ringmaster Jang Ha Na and the two clash. One big drawback to the series is the very start of it. It took me two attempts to get through the first episode, and another two to make it past the first four. The beginning is clunky with weird pacing, an even weirder setup, and not a lot to suck you into the story. The first introduction to Robin as a character is cringy. He feels less like a person and more like a comic book superhero someone came up with in middle school. Both he and the main personality feel like caricatures, and it's painful to watch. Getting into this drama is hard, there are no two ways around that. But does that mean it's not worth watching? Well... I have a story for that.
I started watching HJM coming off of a few really great dramas. I absolutely fell in love with those dramas back-to-back and once they were over, I couldn't bring myself to get invested in any of the other good-looking shows out there. Ah, I thought, the dreaded burnout. That's when I looked back at my 'dropped' list and saw the name Hyde, Jekyll, Me. I went into it wanting a trashy, badly-written drama that I could laugh at. I only paid half attention, especially to the earliest episodes, and it worked out exactly as I expected it to. The plot was cliche, a bit stupid, with some moments that didn't make a lot of sense and a bit of dragging towards the middle that I was used to seeing at the halfway. Every now and then, I would put the drama back on hold again and would switch to series that I was invested in until the burnout came and I would inevitably need my 'trash drama' once more.
But something strange happened amidst all that. The writing wasn't good by any means, even when the acting was decent, and my wife and I would mock and laugh at some of the things that they were doing, but then it came time for the final episodes. The main conflict was over, the antagonist was gone, and there were still a few episodes to go. All that was left to settle was the conflict of the dual personalities, something that, remembering KMHM, I expected to take maybe half an episode. But it didn't. And as I watched the characters go through their days and saw the inevitable end creeping up on them, I realized that I actually cared about the characters for some strange reason. The characters I thought of as caricatures grew on me when I wasn't looking and suddenly they mattered to me. And sure, what happened from there on was predictable, but I was still invested.
Just like how production values don't make a show, you don't always need a solid story to love something. Sometimes all you need is time and a little bit of passion. HKM is nothing of a masterpiece, but that doesn't mean it did everything poorly. Instead of focusing on the outward appearance of DID like KMHM did, it put time into the internal effects that the illness had on both Seo Jin and Robin, and the ripple effect it had on the people they surrounded themselves with. Even while its handling of the issue was silly, with hypnosis sprinkled in for added effect, and even with Robin being a better person than Seo Jin and more likeable to boot, it remembered that the root of everything was mental illness. It took the time to make Robin a person instead of a stereotype the way that KMHM treated its alters, and it respected its characters enough to give them a proper end.
The production is a bit of a mess, the writing is sloppy and premise is weird, but it's a drama with heart. Don't take it seriously, and you may be pleasantly surprised.
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Nothing new and yet I watched it from start to finish.
As of today, True Beauty is the only drama from this season that I've finished despite many others finishing earlier on in the season. Other than Mr. Queen, it's the only one I consistently kept up with. This is despite the fact that it had the weakest, most basic story of every other drama that I was watching. And that isn't to say the others were bad - there were plenty of unique, fun dramas that grabbed my attention more. And yet here I am. Let me explain.I went into True Beauty without the intention of liking it. I only wanted to try it out because I tend to give most dramas a one episode trial before deciding if I should watch them, and to my shock and horror, I kinda sorta enjoyed the first two episodes. It was that turn-your-brain-off kind of show that I need every now and then when work gets hard or life gets stressful. While the pandemic and 3-month-and-continuing lockdown messing with my mental health, this drama was so far from reality that it allowed me to forget for 2 1/2 hours of the week everything that was going on outside my door. And so I kept watching it. When other dramas started to lose their humour in favour of telling a story, when plots grew bland and lost what I was enjoying in the earlier episodes, and whenever I needed a pick-me-up, True Beauty came around midweek and gave me that happy moment that I couldn't find anywhere else.
True Beauty is nothing new. The plot is small and shallow and, having read about half of what's out of the webcomic previously, they changed a lot of aspects of the original story. And I mean a lot. I understand how upsetting that can be to fans of the source material because there were points that I, myself, went "wait, but that shouldn't happen, he was like THIS in the comic--" It's easy to get frustrated by that, but it's also easy to see why that was done. The story that needed to be told had to fit entirely within a 16 episode window. Webcomics aren't really known for their well-contained stories, and to keep it clean and simple changes are always made. After the first few weeks, I didn't really mind the changes. It's important to separate the webcomic and the drama going into either one of them. You can enjoy them on their own, but comparing them might leave you frustrated.
The plot is simple and basic but it stays fun and engaging throughout. Coming from the director that worked on Extraordinary You, it maintains that fun, silly atmosphere that makes both shows a treat to watch, even when nothing is happening and we're just watching characters go throughout their days. It doesn't take itself seriously, and that makes it easy to like. When watching it, I honestly felt like the characters were living in the world of a webtoon just as they were in Extraordinary You, and suddenly all the silly comments and over-the-top gestures made a lot of sense. The characters, while different from the source material, were charming. Whether it's the romance between her older sister and teacher who play role-reversal with typical kdrama stereotypes right up until the bitter end, Seo Jun and Su Ho whose friendship is one of the most easygoing and likeable I've ever seen between rivals in a love triangle, or any one of the students who are shown throughout, it was hard to dislike anyone. Even if they were cringy and hard to watch at times. I think the characters are one of the drama's strengths. They may not be too deep and their stories are ones we've seen before, but even as paper-thin as they are we see character development and changes throughout their stories. And can I just say props to Seo Jun for being one of the least petty SML I've seen in a long time.
Let's be honest, it's not for everybody. It's not a melodramatic love thriller. It's not a serious high school romance. There's no fantasy, even if it feels like the characters are living in a webtoon. The issues brought up are only lightly touched on and aren't delved into too deeply. If you're looking for something that will move you emotionally, you're not going to find it here. But if what you want is something stupid, silly and fun to take you away from the sorry state of the world in a time where we're spending our days staring at the same four walls, I think this is the perfect fit.
It's a story that does cliches well, that has a lot of heart and just a little plot, and I loved every minute of it.
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Don't sleep on this one. It's short and sweet and will put a smile on your face!
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This review may contain spoilers
Before it's a thriller, it's an exploration into what it means to be human
For the first section, I'll keep it spoiler-free!The first thing that intrigued me about Happiness was the way the virus functioned. Despite the zombie-esque premise, the infected are alive. Once their episodes pass they return to themselves, they can think and feel and communicate. Despite having the same hunger and urges that your everyday zombie has, they're still people. And sure this isn't the only time this has been done in media, but in a genre oversaturated with dehumanized corpses, it provides us with a much lesser shown perspective. Humanizing the infected made the situation both hopeful and bleak as we're shown them in both their frenzied and calm states. But their living state doesn't necessarily grant them compassion from every character, and the lines between what is okay and what isn't start to blur.
To start from the beginning, Happiness is less a monster thriller and more an exploration into the different forms of happiness, what they mean to those who seek them, and what lengths those seekers will go to reach them. Yoon Sae Bom's motivation at the start of the series is to have her own home, a place that is entirely hers, after growing up never having her own space. She had a rough go of things when she was younger and is now desperate to take her first steps towards that long-sought goal, so much so that she even takes Jung Yi Hyun, a long-time friend, to be her fake husband in order to get the apartment that she wants. JYH, for his part, reached his lowest point in high school when an injury took his future in baseball away from him, and it was YSB who pulled him out of his thoughts and allowed him to think clearly.
But Happiness isn't just about these two characters. Over the 12-13h runtime, we get the stories and motivations of about a dozen other characters, each in pursuit of happiness of their own, be it in the form of money, companionship, lust or family. The pursuit of happiness isn't always a noble battle, and what means the world to one person could mean nothing to the next. In this way, the drama explores the darker sides of greed, envy and lust very thoroughly. Because of that, there are more characters you don't like than those you do, and even the ones you've enjoyed early on can infuriate you later. For me, that was the beauty of it. It felt very human, if exaggerated. Let's be honest, it can be a bit much. In around two weeks, we see people fall to newer and deeper depravities to get what they want. Desperation can do a lot, but the sheer number of people who break apart so quickly in this series is staggering. But, well, the pandemic showed us just how quickly panic can bring about stupidity.
So on one hand, we have a bunch of people infected with a rabies-like virus who still retain their humanity. On the other, we have a bunch of people with different beliefs, motivations and moral compasses all stuck in a building together. From cops and bickering siblings to murders and scammers, they either try to sway the rest to their side or try to determine who they should trust. At the end of the day, if they all stayed in their units and had appointed a few people to bring their food and water to them, then this story would have had half of the blood and death in it that it does. But we've all experienced quarantines and know how big of a hit they can take on mental health, even if there aren't zombie-like people trying to break into your building. And we all know those people who just won't follow the rules and stay indoors. Not everyone listens. Almost everyone is scheming. The entire story is a mess and I love that about it. I even love how angry it made me and how many times it sent me on tangents complaining about the characters. Because, for all of the annoyance it caused me, I liked how it actually felt like characters other than our leads were moving the plot along.
Spoilers ahead!
Happiness, like its concept, isn't perfect. Sometimes the leads made stupid or reckless decisions. Sometimes the other characters did, too. I can't really hold that against it, though, because humans by nature aren't very logical. We panic, or we're hasty, and we make bad choices. We mess up. It happens. Naturally, there were some things that I didn't like beyond that, as well. The first is the serial killer story that developed in the latter half of the series. While everyone could see what was going on with Andrew from a mile away, I did feel like his identity-stealing serial killer subplot felt a bit out of place and tacked on. They needed to up the stakes for the last few episodes to make it interesting, but suddenly bringing in a serial killer who doesn't have anything to do with the main conflict of the virus was a bit too left-field for my liking, even if their goal was to show that humans themselves are more dangerous than any monster. If they were going to add it then I wish they went deeper into his story and the plot surrounding him to make his story feel more grounded.
What really bothered me was what they did to Kim Se Hoon. From the very start of the drama, he was an interesting though very rarely seen character that I wanted to see explored more. He was a paranoid, doomsday-conspirator survivalist right out of the gate and I loved that about him. Despite his very radical beliefs and his concern over catching the virus, he was kind and considerate not only to our leads but to the other characters as well (even if under YSB coercion). He came down to place his vote on whether to kick Kim Seung Beom out of the building even when he didn't want to leave his apartment until the quarantine was lifted and shared his food, even considering to share it with the rest of the people living there despite not really wanting to. I really wanted to learn more about him and see him survive until the end, but instead, he's killed off-screen (though I believe there was a flashback later) and his body is dumped. Not only is he ultimately a tool in the Andrew subplot, but he's left forgotten until they need to use moving his body as an excuse for one last high-stakes conflict. They could have done more. I wish they did, but that's what we're left with.
I think Happiness could have done well with either an extra episode to properly resolve everything, or a restructuring of the plot to allow more time in the end. It felt too rushed and there were a lot of loose ends that needed to be tied. We saw that Han Tae Seok's wife survived, but what about their child? It never showed the child being born or passing away despite being so heavily referenced in his scenes. We never had YSB visit her mother in the nursing home even though she voiced her regrets over not doing so before the quarantine. We don't know if Park Seo Yoon's father made it out (they mentioned severe symptoms for him, but we never saw the family fully reunited), or if Kim Jeong Gook was okay after being treated or if his wife was okay (we can assume, but we don't see him after recovery and we never see his wife despite, again, mentioning her throughout the whole story). These are just the ones that stand out in my mind, but there are probably other loose ends left hanging. Dramas can't always close off every little thing, but even having ten minutes at the end of the episode to show these characters finally reunited with their families would have been a nice way to close things off.
So yes, I have a lot of gripes. But even with all of that, which would normally bump this drama down to an 8, I have to give it a 9. It may not have closed off as nicely as I would have liked, but the relationship between YSB and JYH was beautiful. From episode 1 their chemistry was great, I loved their dialogue and their scenes together were my favourite, but by the end, I really felt how much they meant to each other. JYH was willing to do everything to protect YSB. They trusted each other unconditionally, and the only time we ever see someone talk an infected down from an episode is between them. It isn't just them, though. The old lady, despite being one of the first ones infected, never has an episode (to our knowledge). Her husband is harsh with his words and bickers and complains, but after finding out that she's been infected, he quarantines with her in their apartment and stands guard outside the bedroom door at night to watch over her. He never leaves her, and she's never put in a situation stressful enough to attack. She has the willpower to control it the whole way through the drama. And even her son, one of the stupidest, most obnoxious characters, experiences character growth by the end. After abandoning his family when he found out that his mother was infected and stealing their food, he returns in the end and reconciles with them, and they wait there together for the soldiers to arrive after the quarantine is lifted. Another woman gains the courage to leave a man who clearly doesn't value her, and a brother and sister whose relationship was strained reconnect after almost losing one another.
So, okay, it's not perfect. I hate a lot of people in this. My quibbles are endless. But somehow this is still one of the dramas I enjoyed most this year, and I'm happy to have experienced it.
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