KakaoTV is back with its next drama offering in the shape of a short, wacky little drama called Mad for Each Other, which takes its hot-headed themes quite literally. I went in with a grain of salt, but wound up pleasantly surprised by the balance of comedy and heart.
EPISODES 1-3 REVIEW
As with other KakaoTV dramas, the format and airing schedule for Mad for Each Other feels a bit experimental. The drama airs its short 30-minute episodes on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and there are 13 of them, which gives us a total running time that’s even shorter than half our usual drama run. This sort of structure can be great when it serves the drama’s storytelling, and if the first week of Mad for Each Other is any indication, I think it’s a boon for this particular production.
Dramas that are unabashedly about social and emotional issues, and/or mental health, often give us a moment of pause. And Mad for Each Other, with its hero and his anger management problems, certainly might give us cause. However, in execution, I was actually quite touched by how it was handled. There’s enough comedy to keep things light, but enough heart, pathos, and context to make it all more than a gimmick.
Both our hero and heroine are people who have been scarred, and when we meet them, those scars are already affecting their actions (and more broadly, the quality of their lives). To their credit, though, both are seeking psychiatric help, and earnestly trying to heal. They know something’s wrong, and they’re trying to fix it. How can you not get behind characters with this kind of self-awareness and desire to be better, in all senses of that word?
We meet our hero first — he’s NOH HWI-OH (Jung Woo), a man who has basically hit his breaking point. The drama wastes no time showing us how the daily stresses of his life, and an endless string of bad luck, has basically crushed his ability to be resilient and deal with his emotions properly.
When we first meet him, he’s trying to keep his cool on the bus next to a woman who’s yapping on the phone in his ear. He misses his bus stop. It starts to downpour, but he finds an abandoned umbrella when he finally gets off the bus. That abandoned umbrella is broken, but provides some shelter… until it flies inside out in the wind. Hwi-oh then rushes under an awning for shelter, but the wind rustles the awning and he’s doused with cold rain water. This is how his life seems to go lately.
The above is just one example of Hwi-oh’s daily experiences with anger and stress, but I actually liked how it pointed out the weight of cumulative stress. One of those things might be annoying, but the string of them, one after the other, weighs him down. Even with all his breathing techniques and self-talk, Hwi-oh winds up screaming in the streets like a madman, trying to blow off some steam.
We don’t know much about Hwi-oh’s personal life at this point — just his personality as he vents to his psychiatrist. It’s not till later that we learn he’s a well-known cop who has had to step down after his anger management issues became a problem on the job. Hwi-oh has a tendency to fly off the handle for sure, but when we see him (via flashback) as a cop on the street trying to nab an elusive drug dealer, we can’t help but see Hwi-oh’s side of things, even as the situation goes south. He has the best intentions, despite them coming out wrong sometimes. Hence, therapy.
As the drama quickly colors in Hwi-oh’s personality and history, we also get a glimpse of his home life, and it’s full of the same earnestness that we get from Hwi-oh himself. He lives alone in a big apartment complex, is a little schlumpy, and seems to evoke mostly pity and concern from his parents.
Now I’m no great fan of bathroom humor, but I can’t say I’ve ever seen a running-for-the-bathroom scene that packed quite as much pathos into it as Hwi-oh’s does in Episode 1. Comedy is one thing, but evoking humiliation and brokenness is another, and this scene is a great example of how Mad for Each Other somehow pulls off both.
While Hwi-oh’s mother is washing his soiled clothes, they talk about his therapy and attempts to work on his anger. She tells him that, “You’re burnt black like charcoal. You need some water energy to subdue the fire.”
And who might embody that water or yin energy? That’s where our heroine comes in. LEE MIN-KYUNG (Oh Yeon-seo) dresses eccentrically and stands out in a crowd — but rather than to attract attention, she does it to appear strange, so that people will keep their distance.
We don’t have to follow Min-kyung for very long to notice that she’s highly paranoid. Not only does she suspect everyone of stalking her, but she obsessively checks to make sure her door is locked, her stove is off, and that there’s no suspicious characters lurking nearby. Soon, we see her official diagnosis from her doctor: paranoid delusions, post-traumatic stress disorder, and obsessive compulsive disorder.
But, like Hwi-oh, Min-kyung is much more than a stereotype or a “crazy” person. She’s clearly a woman who’s reeling from some trauma in her past (we don’t have the full story yet, but it looks like she was betrayed, humiliated, and abused by the man she loved, to start). And, like Hwi-oh, she’s seeking professional help — and that’s where the two characters’ storylines begin to intersect.
When they first meet, it’s rife with misunderstandings, and these two — like the fire and water they are — clash at every turn. Min-kyung thinks Hwi-oh is yet another stalker, and she’s equal parts petrified and combative whenever they run into each other. She beats him back with an umbrella, stomps on his car, and flings all sorts of insults. You can imagine how this is received by a man who’s desperately trying to get a handle on his anger.
At his psychiatrist’s advice, Hwi-oh avoids all contact with Min-kyung, since he recognizes that her mere presence stresses him out (and he’s trying to remove stressors to find his equilibrium again). However, this is not as simple as it sounds, since they soon discover that they not only visit the same clinic, but live in the same apartment complex, and are literal next door neighbors.
But this is still dramaland, and that means no matter how much these two avoid each other, they still cross paths at an alarmingly frequent rate — there are elevator meetups, hallway sightings, and much scurrying around the apartment complex and neighborhood. Of course, the story is mostly in those moments when they do run into each other, so despite the friction, we find ourselves waiting for those meetings and their repercussions.
The lead couples’ moments of fighting, bickering, pleading, avoiding, etc., again show off the drama’s well-pitched balance. On the surface it’s a wacky, darkish comedy, but then there’s that additional layer of depth where you feel for these characters, and can sense the desperation behind their antics.
A story that leads with its characters is always a win for me, and the premiere episodes of Mad for Each Other do a nice job of characterizing our leads. Despite their issues, they’re likable. Rather than being off-putting, they’re easy to root for. And if we squint really hard, we can see how they’ll be able to balance each other out, and help each other heal. That’s the strength of the story, after all — it’s full of anticipation for how their relationship will play out, and how mad at each other will turn into mad for each other.