David Dubrow

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Squid Game and Other South Korean Diversions

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Few things in life are more enjoyable than sharing one’s interests. So it’s awesome that the South Korean show Squid Game has become such a big thing. Since eschewing Hollywood as a source of entertainment I’ve had to go further afield for screen entertainment, and South Korean dramas more than fill the gap.

Some time ago I wrote a roundup of some of my favorite K-dramas for the site Hollywood in Toto, and I’ve discussed other shows here. In light of Squid Game becoming Netflix’s top streamed show at the time of this writing, I wanted to do a brief review and recommend other shows connected to Squid Game. You know, like tentacles from a squid’s body.

Who doesn’t like calamari?

Squid Game: The Death Game subgenre of horror benefits greatly from this K-drama treatment, with its heavy focus on plot and character development. The genre doesn’t work if you don’t care at least a little bit about the characters, and the K-drama format excels at making even the antagonists sympathetic. Squid Game does a great job of keeping you watching episode by episode, building dread, and even if there aren’t a lot of surprises, you can’t turn away. Extremely gory, with an unnecessary sex scene for the American Netflix audience, it entertains throughout. Just don’t expect a fully satisfying ending.

Lee Jung-jae, the male lead of Squid Game, starred in a terrific show called Chief of Staff. Here he plays the polar opposite of the scummy character from Squid Game: a refined, educated chief of staff to a particularly disgusting lawmaker. A lot comes together in this show: politics, the press, espionage, and class distinctions. If you’re not familiar with South Korea’s politics (I’m not), some of it can be a bit confusing at first, but the emphasis on personal relationships, character, and ethics makes it a gripping watch. Two seasons, ten episodes each. Definitely worth your time if you dig high intrigue and politicking.

Wi Ja-hoon, who played the cop in Squid Game, starred in Something in the Rain, a romantic drama in which he played the female lead’s younger brother. Something in the Rain tells the story of an older woman (early 40’s) who gets romantically involved with her younger brother’s best friend, and the complications that arise from it. Themes of socioeconomic class, family responsibility, and social pressure take center stage. There’s a subplot about workplace sexual harassment that kind of goes nowhere, and the middle-to-end of the 16 episode-long story drags until it runs out of ideas. I kind of liked it, I watched all of it, and I wish it had a better conclusion.

O Yeong-su, who was Squid Game‘s player 001, had a smallish part in the romantic K-drama Chocolate as, what else, a very old man at death’s door. I really wanted to like Chocolate. It was about food and medicine and family discord and romance, but it did none of them well except for the food. I wanted to like it so much that I endured all 16 episodes of it. But it just never ignited. The female lead was entirely passive, even somnolent throughout, and the male lead didn’t manage to develop any chemistry with either her or the viewer. You’d think a show featuring a former brain surgeon who reluctantly goes to work at a hospice would excite some affect at some point. It didn’t. Still, the views of Greece were nice, and the food photography was vibrant.

There’s a lot more from South Korea besides Squid Game, and if you dug that, you’ve got a lot of great TV to watch.

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Bits and Pieces 2/28/2020

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Between recent illness and attendant insomnia, I’ve found a bit more time over the last few months to take in media. My sleep loss is your gain when it comes to media reviews, so let’s hit it.

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Memories of the Alhambra: I tried like hell to like this, but could only get through the first episode. It had some interesting ideas: a disappearing programmer, an immersive augmented reality game, the mingling of old-world Spain and modern technology. And yet it didn’t do it for me. Not sure why. Call it the one K-drama I didn’t like. I may try again in the future.

Save Me: I gave this a brief mention in my K-drama rundown on Hollywood in Toto, but it bears mentioning here. This is a very dark show, and goes places with the characters that I’ve never seen on other television programs. The plot involves a cult called The Mighty New Sky, and how it tries to take over a town in South Korea. It’s full of disturbing moments involving a nice family’s seduction and destruction, horrific betrayals, and bizarre rituals with a creepy cult leader. A bit too long, but full of unforgettable moments. The themes of friendship, familial love, and aging cynicism vs. youthful idealism really make this a show to watch.

Ultraviolet: A Polish crime show set in Lodz, focusing on a group of vigilantes solving both cold cases and new crimes using social media hacking, much to the chagrin of the local police department. The characters are likable, and there are some genuinely funny moments, but no surprises to speak of. The culprits tend to be rich industralists, Polish nationalists, and other such stock heavies. Still, it’s fun and fairly lighthearted. As good as any cop show you’ll see on American TV, though with similar social commentary.

Unit 42: A Belgian crime show, this one about a team of cops solving crimes that have a technological angle, like internet-connected pacemakers that explode and semi-autonomous vehicles chauffeuring corpses. A bit heavier than Ultraviolet, which gives it a more gripping style, but like Ultraviolet, there are no surprises. An alert viewer will figure out whodunit long before the cops do, which is a problem: the episodes often only make sense if you ignore the massive plot holes throughout. You will be entertained if you turn off your brain before watching.

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I also read books, on occasion.

Salt: A World History: The title says it all. It’s a history of salt and its effect on various cultures throughout the world. A dry subject, naturally, that edifies and occasionally entertains. I like how it destroys myths about salt and explains its value to civilizations both ancient and current. Author Mark Kurlansky has books on other foodstuffs, including Cod and Milk. And Paper, if you are inclined to eat it. For my part, I’m full.

A History of the World in Six Glasses: Author Tom Standage provides a sweeping history of six world-changing beverages: beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola in a book that’s far more than the sum of its drinks. Who knew how important coffee was to The Enlightenment? What was the first beer made of, and how important was it to early man? The parts on Coke are a little more anemic compared to the section on tea, for example, but that’s more due to Coca-Cola’s place on the world stage than a weakness of the text. A lot of fun to read. Think of it as a history book for people who hate history books.

American Pie: My Search for the Perfect Pizza: I’ve had a lifelong interest in baking bread, and when my wife got me a copy of Peter Reinhart’s book Artisan Breads Every Day more than ten years ago, it helped kick-start my bread making to the level I’d always wanted: artisan loaves with the big holes. While American Pie isn’t a new book, published in 2003, it’s nevertheless a terrific travelogue of Reinhart’s quest to find the best pizza in the world. What constitutes the perfect pizza and if he actually finds it will have to be read about in the text. Full of recipes for both dough and toppings, Reinhart promulgates the idea that the quality of any pizza starts with the crust: 80% of the grade, so to speak. So even a pizza with mediocre sauce can be saved by a great crust. Obviously, this is a cookbook in large part, so factor that into your buying decision. If you want to know how to make tasty pizza at home, from lean Neapolitan pies to the more substantial New Haven pizzas, this is the book you need. My only problem is the disappointing paucity of pictures. All that reading makes my lips hurt.

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K-Drama Rundown at HiT

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I have a piece up at Hollywood in Toto, offering binge-worthy Korean television series as an alternative to Hollywood:

To misquote Mark Twain, “Everybody complains about Hollywood, but nobody does anything about it.” From the bloated, ossified franchises kept alive by Boomer and Gen-X nostalgia dollars (hello, Marvel/Star Wars) to woke studios that produce unwatchable tripe in service to progressive social engineering (hello, anything that’s won a televised award in the last ten years), Tinseltown, for many of us, is no longer a viable source of entertainment. And yet we, as Americans, have more leisure time than ever before, and we like to watch things on screens.

So what do we do about it? Where do we go?

Try South Korea.

Click to get the rundown on the best K-dramas available on Netflix!

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An Update and Two Reviews

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Even though I quit using Twitter, it doesn’t mean that you should be robbed of my short, pithy little comments (to be read with a lisp or not, as you like). So I’ve created The Chirper, available on the sidebar. It’s like Twitter, but so much better. Now you can come here and read the contents of my sick, bloated id without having to go anywhere else! I’ll update it throughout the week. (I stole the name Chirper from my son’s favorite program, The Thundermans, which parodied it as a social media platform for teenage girls. As Rosa Blasi said, “Chirp chirp, girlfriend!”)

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The South Korean cop show Tunnel is a K-drama for people who like K-dramas. A little less polished than Possessed, it still has a bizarre charm that draws you in. In an inversion of the British cop show Life on Mars, Tunnel tells the story of a cop in 1986 who is attacked by a serial killer and finds himself sent thirty years into the future, to 2016. There’s an understandable culture shock, particularly concerning the advancements in forensic science in the intervening decades. Some of it’s played for laughs, with inconsistent results. Much of the plot concerns itself with the protagonist dealing with this temporal dislocation, the grief of losing his wife in the past, and trying to catch the same serial killer…or his copycat.

Park Gwang-ho, the time-traveling protagonist, is portrayed as an old-fashioned dinosaur, and his anachronistic way of speaking, acting, and performing his law enforcement duties works well. He’s just clumsy enough to be excused from being subject to assault charges in 2016’s more sensitive times. The actor Choi Jin-Hyuk does a decent job with the role, though his ability to project sadness is a little less convincing.

I call it a K-drama for people who like K-dramas because it takes some dedication to get through the earlier episodes before the show grabs you. Two of the principal characters are amazingly unlikable and opaque, deliberately so, and this tended to be a turn-off until the events of the plot caught up. One character pops in and out without him going anywhere story-wise, which was jarring. Some of the more graphic parts were blurred out for censorship reasons (I imagine), a choice that took one out of the show from time to time.

Despite these quibbles, the show does everything else right. The end is satisfying, the whodunit aspects of finding the serial killer work, and you care what happens to whom. Once you get into it, it gets its hooks into you and won’t let go.

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I’m a bit more ambivalent about the K-drama Life, but that may have something to do with the show’s political/social aspects than its quality. I’m sure I’d appreciate it more if I lived in South Korea or had personal experience with the issues the show brings up, but other online commentary says that its depiction of life in Seoul is accurate.

It’s a medical show, but unlike most American hospital dramas, the focus is less on the patient of the day than it is the power struggle between the medical staff and the new executive brought in to make the hospital more profitable. This emphasis on the bigger picture allows the plot to address ideas like privatization and its attendant changes to medical care with more detail, instead of tacking them onto the beginning and end of each episode the way other dramas might. It would be foolish to draw parallels between South Korean medical care and American health care, so I won’t bother. Suffice it to say that Life has a point of view, but it doesn’t let that bias change a good story.

The protagonist Ye Jin-woo, played by Lee Dong-wook, is kind of an unknowable figure, even after close to sixteen hours of watching him. I’m not sure if it’s a function of the performance or the writing, but you never really understand why he does things; his motivations are unclear. Not terribly likable, he simply plays a role and that’s that. His handicapped brother Sun-woo is a more accessible character who comes right up to the edge of becoming tragic without quite getting there. What really shines is the relationship between the two, which is multilayered and complex.

Ye Jin-woo’s opposite number is the hard-charging businessman Gu Seung-hyo, who’s not quite a villain and not quite a decent fellow, but you get to know him and even like him a little, despite yourself. He’s played by Cho Seung-woo, who had also portrayed the emotionally distant protagonist in the legal drama The Stranger. Here he shows a little more range; he’d almost have to. Yoo Jae-myung, who was also in The Stranger, does a turn in Life as a surgeon with a somewhat troubled past, and invests depth and pathos into the character that’s desperately needed.

More a slice-of-life story than a tightly-plotted narrative like other K-dramas, Life provides a window into South Korean health care, journalism, and big business that’s interesting, but not compelling.

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Black: K-Drama Review

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I like things to be tight. Joseph Simonet, a tremendously skilled, thoughtful martial artist with a terrific sense of humor, said in one of his instructional videos, “In martial arts, like in everything else, tighter is better.” Those of us who know Joseph know what he meant by that. It’s the same thing writing fiction: you want to cut out extraneous words and have your characters move the plot forward through their actions. Nothing wasted. That’s tightness.

As great as a tightly-written story can be, too much tightness can choke the reader. This is the case with the Korean urban fantasy drama Black, available through Netflix. Compelling, well-produced, and hopelessly over-complicated, everything in every episode is connected to something else, turning it into the television version of a Klein bottle with about seventy-seven openings.

Describing the story is simple, but the plot gets so convoluted that it defies explanation. It’s about a young woman with the ability to see who’s about to die, and, if she gets close enough, how. She meets a detective who is murdered, gets possessed by a Grim Reaper (a Grim Reaper is a ghostly being who escorts newly-disembodied souls to the afterlife), and spends the rest of the 18-episode run trying to figure out who killed him and why.

Ara Go plays the death-seeing young woman Ha-ram with workmanlike competence. Physically she fits the role well, but invests little into her performance. The stand-out is Seung-heon Song as Black/Joon/the Grim Reaper 444: he starts with appropriate amorality and arrogance, and over time develops enough humanity to turn him into a sympathetic, understandable character. Both are likable, as are the dozens of side characters who attain admirable depth; you care about what happens to all of them. After over twenty hours of the show, you have no choice, really.

Black‘s complexity forces you to pay attention to everything; its attention to detail leaves you with no room to breathe. This minor figure turns out to be a major figure who is tragically killed off just when he gets interesting, but you see what he was up to in flashbacks involving other minor characters, who end up becoming much more important characters later on because of things they did in other flashbacks. With so many people running around, the names can get very confusing; this is a South Korean show, after all, and names like Man-shik and Woo-sik don’t stick in the American memory the way Frank and George might. Can’t be helped.

During the show, the character Black is occasionally helped by a pair of Grim Reaper colleagues whom nobody else can see. They always steal the show, mixing gravity, pathos, and humor in entertaining ways.

In tone, Black is all over the place, which can be jarring, even off-putting. Slapstick humor sits cheek by jowl with brutal violence, and at times you’re not sure if you should laugh or not. Certain scenes are extremely hard to watch: stuff that wouldn’t get past American censors. It isn’t the violence, but who the violence is occasionally performed upon that can be disturbing. As is typical for the K-dramas I’ve watched, familiar themes of suicide, familial relationships, and government corruption figure prominently throughout. Children in Black are abused, abandoned, adopted, and even murdered; even though it’s clear that death is not the end of existence, it’s still tragic and to be avoided. The attempts at romance between characters fell flatter than a lead dirigible. There’s chaste and discreet, and there’s distant and awkward. Black fell into the latter category.

The last episode is extremely bad. Particularly the last ten minutes. People familiar with the production say that Black was intended to be a 20-episode show, but it had to be cut to 18, and the original writer couldn’t/didn’t do the final wrap-up. Everything got hurried. With so many moving parts, several issues were left unaddressed by the closing titles. I can only judge the output, not the intentions. So the ending was the kind of failure that leaves you writing the finale in your head later on and pretending that’s what happened.

I enjoyed watching Black, but I don’t know if I can recommend it. Binge-watchers who want to turn their brains on instead of off will dig it and overlook the final episode’s shortcomings. If you decide to give it a try, just know that the slapstick humor does start to taper off in the early episodes, and it gets quite dark later on.

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