Unusual combi of three leads, with one of them the villain! You’d need a closely connected script and well-written characters for this to work well.
Main reasons to watch:
Seo Kang-joon as Jung Hae-seong and Kim Shin-rok as Seo Myung-joo
Seo Kang-joon does well as the Stephen Chow undercover high school student, son of lost father, NIS agent and half of the couple, covering the whole range of being funny, cute, intelligent and emotional.
Kim Shin-rok is superbly creepy and unhinged.
Who else was entertaining
Domestic Team 4: amusing as a group
Boss Ahn (Jeon Bae-su) is predictable but has some punchy lines. Senior lady Mi-jung (Yoon Ga-yi) and junior Young-hoon (Jo Bok-rae) deadpan well. That Young-hoon is 26 years old makes me laugh every time he appears. I liked how Hae-seong’s being an outstanding agent doesn’t overshadow the others too much and they all have their strengths.
The students: such an interesting lot, well acted by the younger cast
Especially impressive were Park Se-hyun portraying all of Yoo-jung’s tears, fears and confidence; Kim Min-joo drawing out Lee Ye-na’s troubled, pensive insides; and Shin Joon-hang brilliantly playing Lee Dong-min.
Joon-hang is my scene-stealer here. From being trampled on to loving grandma, to caring for friend Hae-seong, to blossoming after the bullying was taken care of, he played every part wonderfully. It was also funny how the two idlers gravitated to Hae-seong and him, and I loved how Hae-seong cared for him from the start.
Vice-principal Baek (Oh Yong) was silly-funny, teachers Lee Joon-ho (Ro Jong-hyun) and Kim Ri-an (Lee Min-ji) were occasionally funny. Teacher Joon-ho having had a hand in the cheating was a surprise and potentially an exciting side plot but it fizzled into nothing.
Female lead eclipsed
Oh Soo-ah was buried by all of them, disadvantaged by a weak role. She is cute and funny once in a while but her character lacks substance, especially when juxtaposed with Hae-seong and Myung-joo. Myung-joo is multi-faceted, intriguing, awful, mother, boss, wreck… all of this handled fabulously by Shin-rok. Soo-ah is sweet but nothing about her stands out, not even her earnestness to become a permanent teacher. Hae-seong is so right to ask if she is dense or doesn’t care enough for her students. It’s both. It’s obvious that Park Tae-soo (Jang Sung-bum) is bullying Dong-min but she has no clue. Even after partially witnessing the bullying and questioning them, she is still unclear about it. Of course, the other students and teachers must share some of the blame for allowing the bullying to carry on but this is also the result of the teacher not knowing her students well enough. She didn’t get it right either about Yoo-jung and Ye-na. It wasn’t simply a friendship between high school girls issue, as she confidently tells Hae-seong. Good thing she goes for her course on education in the end. If not, she would need to explore other career options.
Now, her mother. Kim Young-ah was alright in her partly comic role, especially when sidling up to Hae-seong when he’s at her eatery! The part about her being a former gangster boss was wildly random.
Next, a word on the romance. When the childhood scenes started appearing, my mind went, “No, please, don’t…” but we went right ahead into… childhood connection! This plot device almost always dilutes relationships, and for sure it was the case in this already dull relationship, and not just that, there had to be a children’s kissing scene. Can’t writers think of better ways of couple development?? Thankfully, Hae-seong and Soo-ah didn’t know the other person was that classmate from the past till late in the show, so they managed to have many episodes of getting to know each other. At least Yoo Ji-wan was lovable as young Hae-seong.
Finally, the missing gold. It was fun at first to have a mystery to solve right from the start. Myung-joo’s obsession with the gold killed it somewhat – it didn’t make sense to want the gold so much as to commit fraud, murder and other extreme actions, together with sumo Principal Park (Park Jin-woo)! Didn’t she have enough money for her Edu-city, which didn’t sound like a good idea at all, from those wealthy parents?
Overall, this is fast-paced and exciting, and thankfully the pace carries through the last two episodes as well, because they were a mess in terms of substance! There was so much that made little sense, such as:
- why is Myung-joo allowed into Hae-seong’s interrogation room
- why is she allowed to threaten him and his loved ones, with no consequences
- why is Hae-seong allowed to just walk out of the interrogation room after being interrogated
- how is Soo-ah’s handwritten poster, put up on the wall using tape, any use in countering the impending changes in school policy (fully agree with Myung-joo that it is a pathetic poster)
- why is she so immature right to the end?
- why does Myung-joo want to burn everyone and the school? is it just because the gold is not there?
These two are my most important questions because surely evildoers must have reasons why they are evildoers:
- what made Myung-joo this maniacal?
I thought we would get a look at her past or some traumatic experience(s) that led to her inexplicable drive for the gold and for that elite school (like maybe she was the student who kept losing out to the first-place girl or her peers looked down on her or something) but nope, no reasons were offered.
- why was sumo Park so devoted to supporting her evil deeds?
Okay, he’s grateful to her family for taking him in but that was when he was nine!! Why did he, in adulthood, need to murder just because she told him to?
The last question – why does Hae-seong become a teacher at the end? I assume this is his new undercover high school assignment…
MBC, 12 episodes
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