Cute dogs! Cute Hae-na! Cute Hae-na’s family! Cute couple! Cha Eunwoo’s cute face!
All the dogs deserve praise and of course the two main ones should be singled out for more doggy treats! However, there was too much use of CGI and the dogs looked too fake in those moments.
Park Gyu-young (Han Hae-na) is delightful in this and so is Cocoa, as well as Hae-na’s voiceovers when she is in dog form. I think there is a template used for actresses people don’t like – it says that so-and-so will never be a good actress, she has only one facial expression the whole time and has no chemistry with the male lead. I saw a couple of such comments about Gyu-young for this show, but I’ve seen almost exactly the same points made about Shin Se-kyung, Moon Ga-young, Nam Ji-hyun and Park Eun-bin. Well, people copying and pasting these comments, I don’t agree with you at all!
Eunwoo (Seo-won) is the one with a single facial expression but his handsome face sometimes makes you overlook his weak acting. Ha. I would love to see his acting improve but I don’t see this yet, though there are fans who believe it has happened. You can tell he takes his work seriously, so I hope his efforts pay off eventually. To his credit, he put dog treats in his mouth so that he could kiss Cocoa properly. How many actors would do this?! (He said the dog treat tasted awful.) Other than that, it was like replaying a diluted True Beauty, with him as a teacher now. He hardly contributes to the humour except for the time he played the absolutely boring black and white film to get Bo-gyeom (Lee Hyun-woo) and Yool (Yoon Hyun-soo) sleepy!
Hae-na’s immediate family is very amusing when they appear as a family – didn’t think any of them was all that funny individually. Ryu Abel has a far better role here than she did in Run On but I think she overplayed her portrayal of Yoo-na. This was probably the only time I thought Jung Young-joo (the mum) had a decent character to play. By far, Jo Jin-se did a better job than the family, natural and funny as old friend Woo-taek.
Uncle golden retriever (Kim Hae-joon) was hilarious and so expressive. I especially liked the scene where he was talking non-stop after getting his speaking skills back and the family was tired out listening to him! Scene stealer Level 2, along with the dogs!
Scene stealer #1 is Kim Yi-kyung, playing Ji-A – fantastic job with the mysterious, shaman-ish mystique, and it's cute that she becomes pally with Yool and Jin-seo (Shin Joon-hang). She easily took on the sageuk aura, too. It was just that Cho-young was a totally BLAND character. She was such an aunty, although young! I’m not sure why she doesn’t appear in the promotional events with Gyu-young, Eunwoo and Hyun-woo. She should! I feel she is the heroine of the story, saving everyone by saving Bo-gyeom from himself. After centuries, finally a voice of reason tells him to let go and move on.
The tiger-mountain spirit is a most childish, mean-spirited spirit (who doesn’t look like a tiger at all)! All he needed to do was to find out how exactly Cho-young died, which should not be too tough for a mountain spirit, but no, he just launches himself into bitterness and vengeance. To think that after generations of [Hae-na and Seo-won] routinely getting together, he STILL wants to carry out his revenge! His curse is stupid and unwarranted. It isn’t explained in the show why he shows up now and then to protect or avenge the couple, such as against Seo-won’s bully. Additionally, the two bully segments don’t fuse well with the rest of the story in the first place.
At least the vice-principal fox spirit (Yoo Seung-mok) is funny!
A major complaint I have is the inappropriate teacher-student combinations. I thought Hae-na is too close to Yool, and that it was plain wrong to have Yool handling little Cocoa-his teacher, AND to have the dog-teacher sleeping in his room, where Hae-na will awake without clothes on! The Bo-gyeom and Ji-A combi is worse. Why have Cho-young come back as a student when she has to talk to Bo-gyeom as an ex?? Nothing terrible happened in these situations in the end but they just don’t sit right.
My other big complaint is the constant repetition of scenes. Yes, there were many instances when scenes had to be repeated because new info was being inserted but there were too many of these, not to mention the scenes that were repeated for nothing. Once more, we have students performing the content of the show that we already spent weeks watching! Oh dear, have we run out of ideas for student performances or what? Why not have Hae-na use more imagination and script a sageuk-esque skit, for example?
Overall, though, this was a very enjoyable show, and I also loved all the sweaters, cardis and Hae-na’s tops! They added a lot to the pretty, colourful and lively, well-composed visual tapestry of the plot.
A good day to be a dog
14 episodes, MBC
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