If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if Encanto and Parasite made a baby, wonder no more. The Atypical Family is the answer to your question! Who will come out tops when a family of con artists targets a family with superpowers? Let’s dive into this drama and find out.
EPISODES 1-2
The first time we meet our atypical family, they’re perched atop dramaland’s favorite cliff, and that’s as good a way as any to indicate that this show/family is anything but typical. But before we go any further, let’s introduce the superpowered family — or should I say ex-superpowered family, since they’ve all lost their powers.
Our hero, BOK GWI-JU (Jang Ki-yong) could time travel to happy moments from his past by recalling the memory of those moments. But after losing his wife seven years ago, he became depressed and lost his powers since he can no longer recall happy memories. His sister, BOK DONG-HEE (Soo-hyun), used to fly — a cooler superpower — but since she gained weight, she hasn’t been able to take off. As for the Bok family’s matriarch, BOK MAN-HEUM (Go Du-shim), she could see the future in her dreams — the coolest of the powers — but she’s got insomnia now, so it’s farewell to sleep and precognitive dreams.
The Bok family’s excursion to the cliff is abruptly cut short when Gwi-ju ends up in the water, and who better to save him from drowning than our heroine, DO DA-HAE (Chun Woo-hee)? But if this was supposed to be a meet-cute at the beach, the only person interested in the interaction is Man-heum.
Man-heum and Da-hae meet again as insomniac client and masseur respectively, and after a cup of tea and a massage, Man-heum is finally able to sleep. Our matriarch is impressed with Da-hae’s skills, and even more so when she recognizes the masseur as Gwi-ju’s savior. As a result, she invites Da-hae into the Bok mansion under the auspices of home services.
Once Man-heum learns that the twice-divorced Da-hae doesn’t have a family, she’s only too happy to matchmake her with the widowed Gwi-ju — even though Gwi-ju would rather relate with alcohol than with humans. And when Man-heum dreams about Da-hae wearing the family’s ring, she’s more convinced than ever that Da-hae is the key to restoring the family’s superpowers. Family ring aside, it’s not hard to see why Man-heum arrived at this conclusion. I mean, hazy or not, it’s the first time our precognitive matriarch has had a dream in ages!
But Man-heum’s non-superpowered husband, EOM SOON-GOO (Oh Man-seok) is quick to point out that her interest in Da-hae stems from the fact that the masseur has no family that’ll look for her if something were to happen to her in the Bok family. Interesting.
Man-heum invites Da-hae to Gwi-ju’s daughter’s 13th birthday party, but Gwi-ju does not take kindly to the presence of another woman in the house on what seems to also be his late wife’s death anniversary. Man-heum claims she wanted to help her son move on because he’s “too obsessed with his dead wife to pay any attention to those around him.” But then she adds that Gwi-ju’s wife would never have died if he hadn’t stubbornly gone ahead to marry her — despite the warnings that she (Man-heum) didn’t see a future for them. Ouch! And she wonders why her son hasn’t moved on.
It’s one thing to spill family tea in the presence of a guest — it’s another thing to spill it within the hearing range of the birthday girl. But BOK YI-NA’s (Park So-yi) barely reacts to this revelation. On the surface, she might seem unaffected by the gloom and misery that envelopes her family, but deep down she blames her birth for being the start of the family’s misfortune. It sucks that all the adults in the family are too wrapped up in their problems to see that there’s a kid under their roof who needs more than sunlight and water to grow. And then they wonder why Yi-na prefers to bury herself in her smartphone than interact with them.
Yi-na was also in the car accident that killed her mother, but I doubt the family did anything to help her overcome what must have been a traumatic moment. I mean, is it Man-heum who questions Yi-na’s parentage — because she hasn’t developed a superpower — that would step in to help her heal? The same woman who believes that the cure to Gwi-ju’s depression is marriage? Seven whole years of depression-induced alcoholism and nobody thought of therapy. Tsk. Oh well, this is dramaland where love is the magical cure to all trauma and ailments.
But lest we feel sorry for Da-hae who is seemingly being used by the Bok matriarch, the drama wastes no time in revealing that little miss naive masseur is, in fact, a con artist whose current target is the Bok family! So, who exactly is using whom in this equation? Lol. Da-hae also belongs to an atypical found family of scammers: SAUNA MOM (Kim Geum-soon) — from whom Da-hae learnt her massaging skills (although I don’t know where she learnt how to slip suspicious stuff into her clients’ teas to make them sleep off); GRACE (Ryu Abel), a fitness influencer who has infiltrated the Bok family’s gym as a personal trainer; and ROY (Noh Hyung-tae) whose job it is to shadow the Bok family and investigate their lives.
Because spilling tea is hereditary, Yi-na tells Da-hae about the family’s superpowers — in a bid to warn her to stay away from them for her own good. But our con artists are more interested in Man-heum’s promise to hand over the gym’s building to the first of her children to get married than in some nonsensical story about superpowers. To achieve their goal of securing the building, Da-hae leads Operation Marry Gwi-ju, and Grace leads Operation Stop Dong-hee From Getting Married — by making a move on Dong-hee’s fiancé.
While Mr. Fiancé hasn’t crossed any lines with Grace yet, his actions kinda indicate that he has checked out of his relationship with Dong-hee. And I think Dong-hee’s hurry to get married has more to do with being in denial of her fiancé’s change of heart than the building she stands to inherit. Dong-hee’s insecurities flare up with Grace’s arrival, and she becomes determined to lose weight.
As it stands, Gwi-ju is the only one left in the “can’t be bothered to restore my superpower” corner. But I’d be unbothered too if my superpower meant I can only relieve past moments; I can’t touch anything in the moment or alter the past. So even if Gwi-ju could go back to the moment his wife died, there’s nothing he can do to protect her. To Gwi-ju, his power is more of a curse than a blessing, and the power is also intertwined with a sense of guilt because his happy moments could also be sad ones for others. Interestingly, Da-hae also developed survivor’s guilt after someone saved her from an incident — which I think is related to her fire trauma.
Da-hae tells Gwi-ju that he reminds her of the man who saved her life — her usual pick-up line for targets, by the way — and she’s probably on to something since Gwi-ju used to be a firefighter. And when he mentions that he can’t protect anyone, she reminds him that he ended up in the water (at the beginning of the drama) because he went to rescue a little girl’s stuffed bunny from drowning. I may not be a fan of Da-hae’s engineered insertion into Gwi-ju’s life, but maybe he needs someone to remind him of the people he protected, so he can feel less guilty about the ones he didn’t protect. I mean, even the Avengers combined cannot save everyone.
Da-hae engineers another run-in with Gwi-ju at the mall, but plans go south when the fire alarm goes off and her trauma kicks in. Da-hae remains frozen in her crouched spot until Gwi-ju returns to hold her hand, perhaps, in firefighter reflex. But he disappears as soon as it’s announced that the fire alarm malfunctioned. Curiously enough, when Gwi-ju returned to hold Da-hae, there’s an injury on his hand that we didn’t notice in their earlier interaction.
When Yi-na suddenly ducks into a public bathroom on her way home from school, I assume it’s because Roy has been stalking her on his motorbike. And it’s telling that her dad is the last person she calls after trying to reach her grandparents and aunt in vain. Da-hae picks up the call because Gwi-ju is drunk, but Gwi-ju manages to drag himself to his daughter’s location. Roy almost beats Gwi-ju up when the latter charges at him, but Da-hae gestures to allow Gwi-ju get a punch in. Although Gwi-ju sustains a familiar injury on his hand after punching Roy’s helmet, he’s proud of himself for protecting his daughter — only, Yi-na was in the bathroom because she got her first period, and not because of Roy. Oops!
Father and daughter are grateful to Da-hae for handling period-related matters, and Gwi-ju extends his gratitude by inviting Da-hae to grab a drink. I wonder if his superpowered blood makes his liver immune to all that alcohol. Gwi-ju notes that his daughter needs someone because he’s never there for her, but he doesn’t want to put Da-hae in that position. “Don’t make me want to hold on to you,” Gwi-ju says, but Da-hae reminds him that he already held her at the mall. Da-hae jokes that Gwi-ju probably came from the future to hold her hand since he can’t remember the incident. And when Gwi-ju closes his eyes at home to ruminate on the possibility, he time-travels back to the moment Da-hae was crouched on the floor at the mall!
In a surprising twist, Gwi-ju is able to touch Da-hae and she sees him. Now it makes sense why he was injured in the mall when he didn’t sustain the injury until the helmet punch at a later scene. Gwi-ju had actually come from the future to protect Da-hae! Learning the rules of time-travel as it applies to each drama is my least favorite part of the genre, but it looks like our past-travelling superhero has not only regained his power… he has unlocked another level of future travel. Now I wonder who the hell Da-hae is and how she’s connected to the Bok superpowers.
One week in, and while I’m kinda intrigued by where the plot is going, but I can’t say the same about the characters. Aside from Yi-na, and maybe Dong-hee, none of the others appeal to me yet. My major problem with Gwi-ju is that while I understand his grief, it’s hard to sympathize with a man who places his grieving husband duties above present fatherhood duties. It’s evident that Gwi-ju cares about Yi-na, but there’s only so much a drowning man can do to save someone else — and there’s only so much a third party can do to save someone who doesn’t want to be saved. Until I see an indication that Gwi-ju is ready to work on himself and his relationship with his daughter, he remains on my unappealing list.
Da-hae and her family of scammers reminds me once again why I opted out of Delightfully Deceitful. I won’t mind as much if the family restricted their targeting to Man-heum since she’s also trying to use Da-hae on a much smaller scale. But when innocents like Gwi-ju and Dong-hee are dragged into the equation, then I have a problem. I especially draw the line at manipulating a child, and Da-hae’s plan to win over Yi-na in order to get to her dad rubs me the wrong way. The scenes with Roy watching Yi-na made me super uncomfortable, and I did not think anything could make me feel worse than Dong-hee’s fatphobic storyline.
The Atypical Family has its work cut out for it by presenting us with these flawed characters who are going to have to work extra hard for us to warm up to them, and for them to get earned redemption arcs. Anything short of that will result in a bunch of unlikable characters running around the show, and who wants to stick around for that?