With an extremely interesting premise and a badass, strong female lead, and the director of Extracurricular (my all time favorite drama), My Name was very promising from the start. It has very well choreographed fight scenes and a Netflix budget to boot. It had all the ingredients necessary to be a very good drama.
It started off extremely strong. Although at first I wondered why Jiwoo would go this far to avenge a dad who hadn't been there for her, the story quickly filled in the gaps to my satisfaction. I also thought that the writers handled being a woman in male dominated fields very accurately. Jiwoo being a double agent for the gang was also really interesting to see, the whole time I was nervous for her identity to be revealed. I loved that this drama had a premise of "the good guys are actually the bad guys and the bad guys are the good guys".
When it was revealed that Jiwoo's dad was actually an undercover cop I was a bit disappointed but retrospectively it was a cool twist rather than a cliche "cop kills the gang member because he's a criminal" thing.
However, then it turned out that her dad's killer is actually Mujin and his motive was a simple and typical revenge for betrayal. I felt like this was such lazy writing and it would've been much cooler to have this drama explore topics of corruption within the police force and Donghoon being killed by a fellow cop. I also don't understand why Mujin took the time and effort to train Jiwoo if he knew that eventually she'd betray him once she found out the truth. I understand that he wanted to use her to kill Cha Giho but if Taejoo was able to kill him with ease then there was no reason for him to involve Jiwoo. Although I understand that tricking her could be seen as the ultimate revenge against Donghoon, he seemed genuinely disappointed when she "betrayed him" and I felt like that was stupid of him to do when he knew it would eventually be coming.
I also have a problem with the ending scenes, I felt like forcing a sort of happy ending to this drama was unnecessary and Jiwoo dying in the tunnel after finally getting revenge for her dad's death would've been much more fitting.
Finally I want to talk about the sex scene in episode 8. I feel like when it comes to k-dramas, fans are way too prude and have almost a fetishistic mentality about the lack of sex scenes in kdramas. I think the sex scene wasn't out of place considering he had been pining after Jiwoo since the first snowfall, and she finally had a person she could truly depend on without requiring anything in return, unlike with Mujin. Emotions were running high considering they were previously running away from the Dongcheon members. I think it's a physical manifestation of Jiwoo deciding to trust Pildo, considering she's a fighter and letting her guard down in such an intimate way is proof of that. She's also the one to initiate the kiss. We have to consider that prior to this episode, she lost everybody she could trust. She was a cop who was now a fugitive, and the man she'd trusted with her life turned out to be her father's killer. I also think this scene mirrors the scene where she first let her guard down around Pildo, on the day of the first snowfall when he sees her fathers urn and learns of what Gangjae almost did to her. In that scene he pulls her apartment's blinds up, a metaphor for her letting her guard down (she probably has the blinds down so people can't see in to her apartment). When he leaves, she pulls the blinds back down. I also think it was necessary to give her the conviction to go after Mujin once again after he murders Pildo.
Overall, this was an action packed drama with a cool premise but not much to hold it up. I finished it because it kept me hooked, but I doubt I will rewatch it. I feel like it could've done better if it had a longer run time or if it had kept its original premise.