Yong Pal: A Cautiously Optimistic Crush

(Mild spoilers for episode 1 – 4) 

There comes a time in every live-watch experience when you’ve decided you like a show enough to commit to watching it all the way through, a time when your heart wants to leap headlong into full-on crush mode, but your head tells you to stay cautiously optimistic because you don’t want to set yourself up for disappointment.

This is the state I’m in with this show now, my friends. I want to crush so badly on Yong Pal. SO BADLY. Because there are a heck of a lot of reasons to.

First, there’s this:

Kim Mi Kyung! Nobody told me she was in this drama! I still have so much residual affection for her Ahjumma in Healer that I literally squealed when she appeared on screen as the head nurse in Yong Pal’s hospital, and being all very Ahjumma-like towards him to boot. And I was like, thank you so much show for not just giving me Kim Mi Kyung but for giving her what looks like a pretty great character as well. She’s going to be his moral compass, possibly his surrogate mother figure. I AM EXCITE.

And then there’s this magnificent creature:

Cynthia Park, or as I call her, SHEEENTHIYIAAAA (you gotta say it like you’re thirsting, but not like, in a creepy way). Where do I even start with her? First, her dimples took over the screen. And then she sized Tae Hyun (that’s Yong Pal by the way) up and took him on that makeover like a bawse. The clincher was when she flew down the streets of Seoul in an blood red sports car like an Formula 1 driver in pole position. You probably don’t know this, but I have a thing for women who literally take the driver’s seat in a K-drama, and this takes me right back to when my darling Go Eun Chan gave Choi Han Kyul a ride on her scooter in Coffee Prince. But this is a whole other level of driving that I’ve never seen before. I was dying. A hot, badass woman who knows the game and how to play it, she will guide him, and will probably fall for him too. I AM VERY EXCITE.

And that’s not all, because the show had another surprise up its sleeve–Evil Bro’s wife! I can’t remember her name, but she’s played by Coffee Prince‘s Joo Yoo, and she takes the scheming wife trope and turns it on it’s head. Is she Tae Hyun’s ally? Or will is this an enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend type of deal?

And there’s a Sleeping Beauty who isn’t actually sleeping at all. Yeo Jin’s body may be inert but she is fully conscious. And she fights to awaken by replaying the trauma of her accident over and over again in her mind. And I love that she’s angry and vengeful and it’s so awesome that this is a show in which a heroine trying to kill herself feels like a gigantic fuck-you instead of a weakness.

And speaking of suicides, that meet-cute with Tae Hyun that most certainly was not cute at all, must be the bloodiest OTP first-meets in the history of K-drama. But boy, I was riveted. Their beautiful eyes! That scene was all eyes, and hands reaching out, and it was so intense my insides curled. I loved that he doesn’t hesitate for an instant.

Which leads me to Tae Hyun himself, possibly the most interesting hero I’ve come across in a while.  I did not expect this. I didn’t expect him to be so…conflicted, mercenary, and pretty fucked up. But thank goodness he’s not the tortured, brooding egomaniac he could so easily be. He loves, and loves fiercely, and his instincts are always to save and to heal. But he’s enmeshed in a system that has made him weary and self-hating and two-faced, and he doesn’t even seem to realise it. And now that he’s firmly entrenched in the horrific machinations of the 12th Floor of Evil, and has become not just complicit but vital to its operations, what will he do?

Though his troubling speech in episode 4 did gave me pause, and I wrote up some thoughts on that elsewhere (TL;DR I think he was projecting, and I hope that the show was trying to make a wonkily-executed point about the explosive rage of those denied justice, and the violence that the capitalist-patriarchy wreaks on those on lowest rungs), I just really really hope he becomes the righteous hero I feel he could be.

And Joo Won is totally HOT. Though he and Kim Tae Hee barely said two words to each other my body is so ready to die over them. Bring on the swoon, show I beg you.

So all in all, there’s him, there’s her, and all these ladies who feel like they could really be characters who will do significant things and make complicated choices. And unlike most dramas, the canvas feels rich and wide enough to accommodate a story that will stretch to 20 episodes without feeling like it overstayed its welcome. There’s a lot of meat here. Literally.

Can you see why I’m excited about this show? Can you?

But then again, I can hear alarm bells ringing. The first two episodes were a bit haphazard. I kinda got the feeling that they blew a huge chunk of their budget on the car wrecks and gangster fights. The editing has been a mess, and they are already in live-shoot mode which is apparently according to Jung Woong-In who plays the baddie boss doc, it’s not smooth sailing.

We all know what this means: we are now in extremely dangerous territory. The dip in production quality could be imminent. It could all go off the rails very soon.

So I’m holding back just a little bit, and I remain just VERY VERY EXCITE!

 

 

• Joo Won
• Kim Mi Kyung
• Kim Tae Hee
• Yong Pal