The Obsessive Dilettante

I need a gif of when the woman slapped Sung Joon’s face with her purse and made his nose bleed, ‘cause that pretty much sums up how I feel about this drama. I can’t root for a show when I want to watch one of the leads go down in flames. Even if supposed “character redemption” is part of the plot, if I don’t like the character, I’m not gonna care about him being redeemed.

Also the whole episode felt totally flat. There was no spark, nothing to grab me and capture my attention and make me want to root for any one. I didn’t anticipate sticking with this drama in the first place, but I thought the first episode would start out a little bit better. The direction, surprisingly, feels the weakest to me – none of the characters feel lived in. It feels like actors reciting their lines. That probably disappoints me the most (well, second most after the rage-inducing “experiment” of the first few minutes… okay maybe third-most because seriously there’s no reason for the random white dude. There are universities in Korea, c’mon now). The concept sounded like it had such potential, but the show feels like any typical drama stereotypes, just gussied up in a different premise.

I feel like I could really like Han Ye Seul’s character, but she also didn’t feel a fully realized character – more like the writer was just checking off boxes in a description to give us the short-hand of what she’s supposed to be like (messy, poor, etc.). Which, again, is far from being a novel character, but I thought with the whole “being able to channel the spirit of Marie Antoinette” she’d be a little more… unique.

I’m especially grumpy because I used this hour that could have been better spent on the Signal premiere, but I thought I’d be “productive” while I waited for that download and now I’m just angry at Dramaland, which is not a good place to be when you want to watch a show you’ve been anticipating for months.