It’s a packed set of premiere episodes as we’re introduced to our offbeat heroine Shin Hye-sun’s two lives and everyone in them. There’s a lot going on in this drama, which at times leaves everything feeling a bit chaotic and rushed. The fast pacing and odd tone makes it hard to settle into the story and turns our heroine’s serious situation due to a mental health condition into a farcical issue that feels skirted over and mined for dramatic (or comedic) effect. Not the start I was hoping for, but it’s early yet.
Editor’s note: This is an opening review only. For a place to chat about the entire drama, visit the Drama Hangout.
EPISODES 1-2
Like many, I came into this drama primarily excited by the cast, director, and screenwriter trifecta that promised skill a plenty. However, when I realized the main character has Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), I got concerned. Dramaland doesn’t have the best track record of handling mental illness in a sensitive, accurate way – and when it comes to DID, neither does most any media. Still, I wanted to give it a try. Unfortunately, the handling of DID was as I feared. However, the rest of the drama was not quite what I expected, and I don’t know how to feel about it.
We’re first introduced to an exuberant and playful JOO EUN-HO (Shin Hye-sun) in 2015 when she and her boyfriend JUNG HYUN-OH (Lee Jin-wook) are happy and in love. Fast forward to now, and they’re barely civil to each other at work, a broadcast station, where they’re both announcers. He’s considered the more talented one with a future as an anchor, while she has remains largely in the shadows. Despite their constant sniping, they end up hosting a program together, much to Eun-ho’s chagrin.
That said, it’s clear to everyone that the exes are not over each other. Eun-ho talks about how much she hates Hyun-oh a little too much, and he somehow always has a reasonable excuse to throw jobs her way that could help boost her career. While insisting he can’t stand her, of course.
Eun-ho is a wild card, which doesn’t endear her to everyone. She’s brash, hotheaded, and can be petty if she feels slighted. But her spiritedness and unpredictability have earned her a fan in her younger colleague MOON JI-ON (Kang Sang-joon) who has been chasing after her for a while. He’s stunned when she, rather apathetically, agrees to go on a date that turns into a work excursion.
Since Eun-ho isn’t the type to exploit someone’s feelings for her, she tells him outright that she only “hates” Hyun-oh because she can’t have him. They dated for eight years, and she wanted to get married. He had no interest in marriage. Hating him is the only way she can handle interacting with him.
Even knowing Eun-ho’s feelings for Hyun-oh remain, Ji-on wants to give a relationship with her a shot. He kisses her one night… and we’re suddenly transported. It’s now daytime, and we meet eccentric JOO HYERI as her parking attendant colleague asks if she fell asleep and was dreaming again. Hyeri has been having dreams of being this announcer named Eun-ho who has her same face.
Hyeri shakes her weird dream off in favor of dealing with more pressing matters, like her crush on news announcer KANG JOO-YEON (Kang Hoon) who she sees regularly in the broadcast station’s parking lot where she works. She’s bored and in desperate need of excitement, but she’s also timid and unable to talk to Joo-yeon directly. Despite her gloomy demeanor – likely due to quite literally hiding behind her hair most of the time – she takes an optimistic approach to life.
Soon, Hyeri gets the chance to make an impression on Joo-yeon. And oh, does she make an impression. She sees a protestor in the station’s lobby attacking her beloved Joo-yeon with a freaking pickax and springs into action. She slaps a box over the assailant’s head and drags Joo-yeon out of the lobby to hide until the woman is apprehended.
All that adrenaline must go to the girl’s head because instead of finally talking to Joo-yeon, she adds to the poor man’s shock by kissing him with no warning. Then she turns and walks away without a word. Suffice it to say, Joo-yeon has had a day.
Amidst these shenanigans, Hyeri has been seeing a therapist regularly. She talks of her memory loss (she can’t remember anything about her past) and vivid dreams of this Eun-ho’s life. Her therapist breaks it to her that she is Eun-ho and has been diagnosed with DID. And here’s where we start to go off the rails.
The therapist (and drama) acts like Hyeri and Eun-ho are two entirely separate people who live in one body, hinting that Hyeri is a fictitious identity created by Eun-ho. We don’t get the whole story yet, but we do see flashbacks of what seems to be Eun-ho and her sister Hyeri, so I’m assuming Hyeri died and Eun-ho supposedly adopted her sister’s identity due to grief which… is not what DID is. *sigh*
Honestly, why even call her condition DID? Just make up a fake condition or leave it unnamed rather than misrepresenting a real disorder to fit the premise. I won’t go into all the questionable details about how DID is portrayed, but some things are too unrealistic to even make sense. You see, Eun-ho and Hyeri switch at exactly 4:00pm and 4:00am every day. I guess having her DID work on a convenient schedule is the only way her two lives wouldn’t intersect. I don’t see how that’s even possible when she was dating, and seemingly living with, Hyun-oh for eight years. Maybe the drama is suggesting she didn’t have DID then, which again, is not how that works. Either that, or Hyun-oh is ridiculously oblivious.
Back to Hyeri, she tries to avoid Joo-yeon after her attack kiss, but he manages to confront her. He’s pretty calm about the whole situation, but he does demand to know why she kissed him. All Hyeri can do is burst into tears. She’s so distraught she can’t even form words. Somehow, his justifiable anger surprised her. At least she does now understand that what she did was disrespectful and could even get her sued for assault.
She folds him a bunch of paper stars and writes him a letter to answer his question by confessing her feelings. He once again seeks her out, and this time she apologizes. For some reason, he also apologizes for being too angry. He doesn’t seem particularly upset that she kissed him and instead finds her intriguing.
Not only does Joo-yeon forgive her, but he invites her to his home to chat more. (WHAT.) This man is notorious for being cold and stoic, yet he trusts this random woman who assaulted him enough to let her into his house and tell her about his dead brother and his ensuing survivor’s guilt. It’s only their second conversation and he’s already opening up about his family trauma. Then, he lets her sleep at his house because it’s late. I have no idea what is happening.
Adding to the already confusing situation, the switch happens like clockwork at 4:00am. Eun-ho wakes in a strange place and sees a man she’s never met sleeping on the couch. She hightails it out of there but does manage to glimpse his work badge and get his name on the way out.
Rather than dwell on her mysterious situation, Eun-ho dives into work by agreeing to do an expose on a fishing transport operation. It’s a crappy gig, but she’s willing to take anything at this point to help her climb up the career ladder. Including secretly taking photos of fish in a refrigerated truck.
When she enters the freezer container with a camera, she finds a dead man on the floor. (We’ve really got a lot going on in this drama.) She ends up locked in with the body and her colleague on site isn’t answering the phone. She does, however, receive Eun-ho’s hilariously matter-of-fact text about being locked in the truck alongside a photo of the dead man. However, it’s Hyun-oh who shows up to save the day, and we get a long staring sequence from the two exes who absolutely, most definitely, hate each other.
I should never be surprised when a murder mystery enters the chat anymore in a drama. At this point, I’m not clear on what this drama is trying to be. A romcom? A workplace drama? A melo tale of a woman’s trauma? There’s a lot going on, and it’s not managing to fully come together for me yet. I don’t know if even this strong of a creative team can wrangle all these pieces and turn them into a cohesive story.
My main issue, besides the problematic DID portrayal, is that I don’t care about any of the characters. Shin Hye-sun is great, as usual, but I find both Eun-ho and Hyeri rather unlikeable. It’s hard to care about what’s going on when I’m not attached to anyone. And things just didn’t make much sense, including the bizarre, lightning speed relationship between Hyeri and Joo-yeon. I can’t get over how creepy she came off – like almost stalker level – yet he acted like it’s cute somehow? If she weren’t a woman, no one would find that behavior cute.
What really threw me was how fantastical everything felt. I expected a more grounded story or at least a more serious vibe. This almost felt… zany at times. I wish they had gone all in on the unbelievability and made Eun-ho/Hyeri’s situation some mysterious scenario a la the body switches in The Beauty Inside. Then, the dual identities could’ve been played up for laughs or drama without feeling insensitive or tonally jarring.