What do you get when you cross a medical drama with a zombie flick? Something a lot like The End of the World, a show whose dark, twisted DNA owes more than a little to the horror genre. Speaking of dark, twisted DNA, the show revolves around a virus that not only kills its victims, but has the nasty side effect of making them want to kill others. This would be grim enough, but the show also goes a step further, suggesting that the virus is merely a particularly gruesome manifestation of the vindictive self-centeredness lurking in all of us. The infected folks do nasty things, but the uninfected folks are often worse, with the show trotting out an alarming line-up of cowardly bureaucrats, backstabbing academics, corrupt businessmen and murderous moms. There are a few “good” folks in the mix, but even their motives are frequently suspect as they try to sort out who should live or die.

All this makes for gripping viewing, in a train-wreck sort of way, but the unrelenting darkness made it hard for me to really engage with the characters or their world. Some of this may have been due to the unexpected cut in the show’s length, as plot was prioritized over character development, but much of it stemmed from its deep pessimism about human nature. Certainly there are plenty of examples of people behaving badly in times of crisis, but I’d like a drama to leave me with more than “most humans suck” as a final message. Because, really, do you want your audience rooting for the virus?

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I started Sungkyunkwan Scandal expecting fluff and eye candy. The pretty cast and brightly colored posters suggested college hijinks with hanboks, and there was indeed plenty of cute, anachronistic fun. What I didn’t expect was solid writing that would use the not so light and fluffy realities of the show’s historical era to poke a sharp stick at Neo-Confucianist ideas about gender, class, sexual orientation and filial piety. The four central characters are given multidimensional, compelling relationships, and while I wish the two leads were played by more dynamic actors, Yoo Ah In and Song Joong Ki are marvelous. The show recognizes that while college in any time period may contain lots of frivolity, petty rivalries, romance, and odd initiation rites, it is most crucially the place where young idealists take aim at the cynicism and corruption of their elders.

Unfortunately though, while the show is willing to raise provocative issues, it’s unwilling to really deal with the ramifications of those issues. A world where being an educated woman or a gay man is a capital crime is hardly likely to provide a happy ending for nonconformists. Instead of confronting this head-on, the drama drifts into fantasy in its final episodes, substituting feel-good platitudes and miraculous solutions for the difficult problems it has so compellingly presented. This allows it to maintain its romantic comedy credentials, but at the cost of what could have been a much darker, but also much more honest show.

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Punch is well-written, well-acted, and well-directed. It’s also a show that never fully emotionally grabbed me. I could appreciated its slick visual look, all shades of grey and brushed metal, just like its steely, morally murky characters. I could enjoy its tight plotting, elaborate metaphors, and sharp timing. The cast is terrific navigating the script’s hairpin turns and landing its incisive dialogue. However, I always felt rather removed watching its endless double and triple crosses. The show claims that bigger concepts like “justice” and “the rule of law” are in play, but its craven, narcissistic characters mostly just claw at each other in a race-to-the-bottom battle for survival. There are token nods towards the idea of fighting for a better world, but the characters’ motivations are essentially personal, lowering the stakes and making it tough to justify their “unconventional” strategies. I also had a hard time buying that people would instantly switch from paragons of virtue to irredeemable scoundrels. Once folks started trotting down the primrose path to hell they seemed remarkably unconflicted about their choices, making them formidable opponents but not particularly believable human beings.

The show’s overall worldview bothered me as well. Since making morally “good” decisions tends to get folks squashed like ants, the drama, perhaps unintentionally, leaves viewers with the problematic suggestion that, since the game is rigged and everyone is cheating anyway, it’s better to choose open corruption over hypocrisy. I’d personally vote for “not corrupt” but that isn’t presented as a viable menu option. There are lots of strong moments, but I wanted to care more about the final outcome, rather than being forced to pick, as one character put it, between a “bad person and a slightly less bad person.” Because even a slightly less bad person is still, well, bad.

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Time between Dog and Wolf has a lot going for it. It’s beautifully directed, with striking visual storytelling, and it’s the rare k-drama that actually uses a foreign location shoot as more than expensive window dressing. Bangkok pops off the screen, its luminous temples and seedy clubs setting up key story moments in addition to providing grit and grandeur. The characters, “good” and “bad” alike, are three-dimensional, complex human beings and unlike many action-driven shows, the drama takes the time to develop their relationships before setting them on collision courses with each other. It also features a heroine who manages to be self-assured, sexy, morally grounded, and willing to call out the men around her when they lapse into testosterone-driven stupidity. Throw in Lee Jun Ki and Jung Kyung Ho as brothers-in-arms (and occasionally brothers armed against each other) and a great supporting cast of seasoned veterans and there’s much to celebrate.

The show’s strengths though have the unfortunate effect of making its flaws more glaring. Believable characters are wonderful until they’re suddenly asked by the script to act in completely unbelievable ways around the show’s midpoint. The logic gaps are jarring, but the bigger issue is the show’s ambivalence about what to do with its antiheroes. On one level, it wants us to feel the horror of its characters’ violent choices, but it also revels in the cool swagger of its pretty boys with guns. Forgiveness and understanding for their “lapses” come a bit too easily, undermining the impact of the story’s darker moments. The ending reflects this, with a rushed conclusion that tries to be simultaneously tragic and redemptive but falls short of both as it dodges the more unruly moral elephants in the room. If you’re content with a stylish action thriller, it’s an entertaining watch, but it’s frustrating because it comes close to being so much more.

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I started The Devil hoping for a smart, edgy revenge thriller and got one. The premise is intriguing and well executed, the writing is packed with allusions to art, literature and myth, and the show grapples unflinchingly with the real, lasting consequences of violence. Elegantly simple in its construction, it takes a bad man clawing his way towards redemption and sets him on a collision course with a good man tumbling into hell.

I expected the show to deliver twists and thrills. I did not expect it to break my heart. I did not expect a piece so steeped in vengeance to become a story of forgiveness. Not easy forgiveness or safe forgiveness or cheap forgiveness, but the kind you buy with flesh and bone and blood. There are supernatural elements built into the plot but there is nothing magical in the way the characters wrestle with their demons. Uhm Tae Woong is solid as a scruffy detective and Shin Min Ah is radiant despite a somewhat underwritten part. However, the show ultimately belongs to Ju Ji Hoon, whose ferociously controlled performance as Oh Seung Ha is simultaneously terrifying and deeply moving.

Shows that succeed within the conventions of their genre are rare. Shows that transcend those conventions are rarer still. The Devil does both. It holds a mirror up to evil, but finds sparks of grace reflected in the dark.

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All the Feels

It seems so simple. Create nuanced characters that don’t slot neatly into standard role types. Give them time to build relationships. Make their choices hard. And yet, it’s rare to see shows do these things, and even rarer when one does them well. And, holy mother of demons and deities, does Love Between Fairy and Devil do them well. It understands that a show about emotions works best if it can make the audience feel every single one of them, and it uses carefully crafted storytelling and skilled directing to ensure just that. Whether it’s a moment of laugh-out-loud humor, sexy skinship, or heartrending grief, this team ensures that it lands, and lands hard. It’s a good old-fashioned melodrama in the best sense – one that recognizes that what we feel is the defining fact of who we are.

The show may be a fantasy, but when it comes to matters of the heart, it gives its characters no magic ways to fix things. Love is not instant, trauma lingers, and all loyalties cannot be honored equally. The cast’s skill levels vary, some of the visuals can be alarming, and the female lead makes a strong case for voice dubbing, but the show gets things right when it counts. While it may cop out ever so slightly in the final seconds, it argues that our real power comes not from what we cling to but from what we’re willing to sacrifice, and that while love may not conquer all, no conquest is worth a thing without it.

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Silly title aside, Shut Up Flower Boy Band boasts a surprisingly strong script. While it hits many of the expected plot points (the boys from the wrong side of the tracks vs. the entitled rich kids, the battle-of-the-bands face off, the hit single) it moves beyond them to weigh the joys and costs of a life in music with remarkable honesty. Unfortunately, the young cast often lacks the skills to fully realize the moments the writer provides. Lee Min Ki makes the most of his limited screen time and Sung Joon does a fine job smoldering with inarticulate passion, but the rest of the band members default to bland, fresh-faced niceness. While relatively inoffensive, this undermines their credibility as ruffians and turns what should have been meaty, differentiated characters into cardboard-cut-out clones. Much of the subtext gets lost in flat line delivery and awkward timing, and scenes that should crackle with tension fizzle out.

Sweet is better than grating, though, and if you can overlook the missed acting opportunities, the show has a scruffy, heart-felt appeal that manages to be endearing without ever becoming saccharine. Like a catchy garage band rock song, the show makes up in enthusiasm what it sometimes lacks in craft.

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Like the driven business professionals it chronicles, Misaeng pays attention to detail. It understands the importance of the little things, capturing its characters’ everyday epiphanies with the lapidary precision of a miniaturist. Some are painful, some sweet, some hilarious, some surreal, but all are written, acted, and filmed with care. The tight ensemble cast mixes promising newbies with skilled veterans to create a lived-in world that feels larger than the cramped cubicles that define it. There are also refreshingly few drama clichés as the show builds a love affair between a renegade manager and his star-struck young temp that, while completely platonic, is every bit as fraught and passionate as a standard romance.

While Chief Oh and Geu-Rae’s relationship forms the backbone of the show, the overall structure is fairly loose. This fits the slice-of-life style, but can make the drama a slow watch. It also means that issues and characters come and go, sometimes drifting away with little resolution. Individual episodes are gems of close observation and visual inventiveness, but don’t always build into a single compelling through-line. For me, the small moments resonated far more than the drama’s grander pronouncements about life, the universe, and everything. But, then again, maybe that’s the point. Perhaps a show about incompleteness can be forgiven for being more compelling in its fragments than for the bigger picture that it tries to draw.

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Capital Scandal was an unexpected delight. Part jazzy, Technicolor rom-com, part serious look at the physical and emotional toll of occupation, it gracefully balances humor and heartbreak. A romance, especially a funny one, set during the Japanese colonial era sounds like a recipe for disaster, but the show does a remarkable job of finding lighter moments without ever glossing over the atrocities of the age.

Visually and aurally, the show evokes vintage Hollywood, complete with swing tunes, flashing neon, and heightened acting that occasionally slips a bit too far towards the cartoonish. The Japanese characters are mostly broadly drawn, grating caricatures, more inane than sinister. The real conflicts in the show are between the Koreans, as they weigh the options of collaboration or resistance, betrayal or heroism, survival or sacrifice. To its credit, the show makes these struggles complicated, rarely drawing clear cut lines between “good” and “bad” as it examines the varied ways people endure a time of terror. While some plot elements require significant suspension of disbelief, particularly a final episode more grounded in wish fulfillment than reality, the show isn’t afraid to venture into darker territory, both psychologically and dramatically. It also features strong female characters who equal and often exceed the men in smarts, courage and conviction.

Most shows choose primary colors or shades of grey. Capital Scandal celebrates both, letting its surface flair complement rather than overwhelm its deeper themes. It thrives on contradiction, throwing its moments of joy into stark relief against a background of injustice, pain, and loss.

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Film and television rarely take teenagers seriously. They’re treated as naïve innocents or hormonally crazed lunatics or slotted into a handful of predictable stereotypes (the jock, the geek, the prom queen). What I appreciated most about the writer of White Christmas was her willingness to make her adolescent characters smart, complicated individuals. She captures the emotional intensity of the age without ever losing sight of the intellectual growth that accompanies it. These young people may not always act wisely but they don’t act thoughtlessly. She also captures youth’s unique combination of idealism and cruelty, that odd result of too much knowledge and too little experience. It is hard to judge the cost of anything until you have lived long enough to lose it.

While I found the characters compelling, the narrative structure was bumpy at times. The first several episodes felt taut, chilling and inevitable, but things got rougher in the second half, with builds that didn’t quite pan out and plot holes large enough to drive a killer truck through. Also, for all the inherent darkness of the premise, the writer seemed hesitant to poke around in its more controversial corners. There was a lot of odd sexual innuendo that never really went anywhere (unless we’re supposed to read popping champagne corks as metaphors for other types of explosions), and while I’m glad the show didn’t go the slasher film route, really raising the physical stakes instead of simply pretending to would have heightened the psychological stakes as well. Some of this may have been producer-imposed censorship given the age of most of the characters, but it felt a bit safe in the context of the story. Finally, the philosophical questions about the “making” of monsters seemed rather academic when exploring what one does when actually confronting a monster. Choosing to do evil in a vacuum is a very different thing from making morally problematic choices when someone is actively trying to destroy you.

Despite these issues though, the show remains a beautifully filmed, haunting piece that’s at its best when it’s exploring the hidden strengths and horrors of the adolescent mind. Its young cast brings varied skill levels to the table, but their schemes, betrayals, alliances and desires are fascinating to watch.

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Flower Boy Ramyun Shop understands exactly what kind of show it is. Rather than aiming for “deeper meaning,” it’s happy to frolic in the world of sunny farce, parodying and rehashing drama clichés with gleeful abandon. The initial episodes are a bit cringe-inducing, but once the drama jettisons its questionable teacher-student dynamic, things improve tremendously. The plot meanders, but the cast is charming, and the writing actually gets better towards the end, with a final episode that is both roll-on-the-floor hilarious as well as a remarkably clever encapsulation of the show’s themes. That those themes include the world’s longest extended poop metaphor is, depending on your tolerance for such things, either a stroke of genius or a reason to run.

It’s also fun to see a heroine blast the Cinderella archetype to smithereens. There are no damsels in distress here, and the show dares to suggest that following your hormones instead of your head can be not only psychologically healthy, but, gasp, a whole lot of fun as well. Soulmates are nice, but sometimes good old fashioned lust works just fine too.

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I never expected to write that one of the best acting ensembles I’ve encountered in k-drama consisted almost entirely of twelve-to-fourteen-year-olds. Placing child actors in major roles is always a risk. Asking an entire class of them to carry most of the dramatic weight of a sixteen episode show is lunacy. And, yet, in The Queen’s Classroom, that’s exactly what they do. Obviously, Go Hyun Jung is on hand with her megawatt star power, but she’s not the protagonist. That honor belongs to the dogged Kim Hyung Gi and the three frighteningly talented young actors who play her comrades-in-arms in their struggle against their dreaded new teacher. These four tweens display emotional range and dramatic presence that would shame performers twice their age.

Their skills are needed, as the script tackles bullying, broken families, academic pressures, personal tragedies and class conflicts of both the educational and social varieties. The characters may be children, but the issues they face are alarmingly adult. The writing occasionally dips a bit too far towards sensationalism or sentimentality, but most of the time it stays grounded in a difficult but psychologically honest place. This is a show that understands the exquisite awfulness of middle school, and it lets its young cast shine as they struggle to survive its ravages.

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In The Poetics, Aristotle noted that beginning dramatists tend to be adept at creating believable characters and moments, but often struggle to fit them into tightly constructed plots. City Hunter, oddly enough, suffers from exactly the opposite problem. The overall story structure is fairly sound, with a compelling through-line and decent pacing. Unfortunately, the devil is in the details. Individual scenes make little sense, with character motivations that shift on a whim depending on the screenwriter’s immediate needs. It doesn’t help that the characters themselves (and, in the case of the leads, the actors who play them) seem completely out of place in the world the script tosses them into. For the sake of the Republic of Korea, I hope that the HR department at the real Blue House is a better judge of competence than whoever assumed that Park Min Young would make a great secret service agent or that Lee Min Ho was an MIT-trained PhD. I’m willing to suspend disbelief to an extent, but when the character who’s supposed to be the show’s resident super genius resorts to dropping flowerpots on his beloved’s head in an attempt to incapacitate/flirt with her I’m out.

The sheer incompetence on the micro level is particularly frustrating because on the macro level the show is dealing with genuinely relevant and intriguing problems, ranging from age-old questions of justice vs. vengeance and vigilantism vs. the rule of law to more modern issues of affordable health care and access to education. It’s a show that could have worked, and worked really well. The narrative architecture is there, but perhaps they should have brought in a novice writer to do the decorating.

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I really wanted to love this show. It has sexy, charismatic leads. It has fist-pumping sports action. It has power ballads! Oh, it has gender politics from the last century . . . heck, maybe the last millennium . . .

I was fine with the rehashing of sports drama clichés – hey, look, it’s the underdogs taking on the underhanded champions! – and the occasional random plot twists (fear the escalator), but the show’s inability to shake its nostalgia for a time when men were men and went out into the world doing manly things while women stayed home faithfully tending the hearth was, well, frustrating. Sure, these modern warriors are tough on the outside but vulnerable on the inside, and may need to stumble by for a shoulder to cry on every few years, but the whole Odysseus/Penelope trope felt so eight century BCE. And even Penelope never considered marrying one of her thuggish, abusive suitors.

The writer keeps stating that blind allegiance to absent men isn’t really the ideal, but in the end, that’s pretty much what the women choose. They wait, they nurture, and they take back the guys who for some baffling reason don’t seem to know how to operate a phone or send an e-mail. If you can turn off the critical part of your brain, the show has a fun summer popcorn flick vibe, but I was hoping for more than Top Gun on skates. I was also hoping that the women might eventually get fed up and whomp their errant men upside the head with a hockey stick. Just once. Maybe . . .

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This show completely didn’t work for me. I love Korean historical dramas and the X-Files is one of the few American TV shows I watched avidly when it was airing. Melding them should have yielded my perfect drama crack, and yet . . .

There were intriguing moments, especially in the episodes involving geomancy and other time- and place-specific mystical traditions, but as soon as the cheesy glowing space balls started flying around I began reaching for the remote. At forty-five minutes long, the stand-alone episodes felt too short to allow for much emotional engagement and the monster-of-the week plots weren’t especially original. The overall mythology was potentially intriguing, but the writers, perhaps angling for a second season, seemed hesitant to actually “reveal” anything, settling for atmospheric vagueness instead of genuine narrative payoffs. There was lots of artsy hand-held camera work and an effusive fog machine, but I never felt there was much substance behind all the smoke and shakiness. The truth may be out there, but you’ll have a hard time finding it in the oblique writing and the dimly lit, bouncing frames.

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