Do they mean to cast this role ironically? Because when I think of Gong Myung (Bride of the Water God 2017), wonder kid genius professor is not exactly the first thing that comes to mind. He’s currently considering an offer to star in the new KBS drama Mad Dog, which is about a special investigations team made to catch white-collar criminals that specialize in insurance scams. If he signs on, he’ll be going to work for Yoo Ji-tae (The Good Wife), who has been offered the role of the Mad Dog team leader.
The new series is a cat-and-mouse chase drama, except here the metaphor is dogs chasing cats—more specifically, the Mad Dog team of investigators who will hunt down the “copycat” criminals who repeatedly use the same scams to defraud people of their hard-earned money. It promises sensational thrills and large-scale insurance cons based on real-life crimes. Yoo Ji-tae is being courted to play the leader of the investigation squad, a veteran detective with twelve years of experience and a near-perfect track record for catching the bad guys.
Gong Myung is up to play a leading role as Professor Kim, a young geeeeeeenius who has a degree in physics from The Technical University of Munich, a master’s from Oxford, and is a professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine. I’m trying to keep a straight face, I swear. The character is an expert in the human brain, and he’s handsome and athletic to boot. On the Mad Dog team, he’ll use his exceptional skills to analyze and solve cases that detectives with decades of experience can’t even crack, and they’ll be forced to acknowledge his abilities.
I actually had positive things to say about Gong Myung when he played cute puppy dog characters in Entertainer and Drinking Solo, and I heard he was good in the mini-drama Individualist Ji-young too. But his recent stint as a wind god in Bride of the Water God 2017 often has me cringing, because he makes a mighty deity seem like a whiny teenager, which I don’t think is intentional. I can only hope he’s better sticking to human characters and will fare better in his next drama. I just have this image in my head of Yoo Ji-tae facepalming at every Mad Dog team meeting. Who knows, maybe it’ll be a light capery comedy and I’ll have worried for nothing.
Mad Dog will follow Manhole on Wednesdays and Thursdays beginning in October.