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The First Responders korean drama review
Completed
The First Responders
6 people found this review helpful
by vercetrix
Jan 7, 2023
12 of 12 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 7.0
Story 7.0
Acting/Cast 7.0
Music 7.0
Rewatch Value 7.0
This review may contain spoilers

Throw out your brain

To enjoy this drama, you must forget all knowledge and common sense about how police, firefighters, paramedics, doctors, nurses, gangsters, lawyers, prosecutors, and criminals behave. Once you have done that, you'll be able to enjoy an entertaining crime/action series with pretty slick production, fun performances, and (mostly) interesting stories.

This series works best in a case-of-the-week format. The individual mysteries are all quite well planned out and it's fun watching the characters solve them. These episodes are all fast-paced and fun to watch. However, when the show tries to do the corruption/gangster conspiracy storyline that seems to be compulsory in every crime drama, it fails. I am not a fan of these storylines, as they are usually pretty cookie-cutter and boring. These storylines can make for exciting dramas if done well. But that is not the case here. The conspiracy storyline seems half-baked and doesn't add anything to the drama. Fortunately it doesn't take up much screen time so it's not that big an issue in this season. Fingers crossed that they continue the episodic format in season 2.

My other gripe with this is that the drama focuses too much on the police, despite being billed as a story about the collaboration between paramedics, firefighters and cops. I hope next season the firefighters especially get more to do.

Acting wise, Kim Rae Won is the MVP. His character Jin Hogae is the biggest reason to keep watching this drama. He's funny, irreverent, and just a delight to watch. Since the firefighters don't get much screentime, Son Ho Jun is sadly underutilised. Hope to see more of him next season.

Overall, this drama is quite a good way to pass the time if you want an exciting watch that you don't have to think too much about. But if you like your dramas to be logical and not have any plotholes, this might not be the drama for you.

PS. One pet peeve I had is that there's way too many characters with unique surnames in this. How can there be so many people with double character surnames in one police/firefighting precinct??
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