Heart-warming, tear-jerky, sometimes funny, well-acted! There were lots of plot-lines, because there were all sorts in ‘heaven’ and in ‘hell’, so it is challenging to manage and keep everything together.
Having a strong lead couple helps! Hae-sook (Kim Hye-ja) complains about her and Nak-joon (Son Suk-ku) looking like mother and son, but it never feels like they’re mother and son. Throughout the show, you think of them as a couple. Well done, both!
Ryu Deok-hwan, playing the pastor, is impressive portraying different emotions and moods, especially when he has to come to terms with Hae-sook's identity. However, he has major question marks. How is he an adult here when he died as a child? In fact, how did he become more mature and perceptive than many others?
People probably found Som-yi (Han Ji-min) exasperating, puzzling, disturbing or even hateful. Smart plot move to make us wonder what her role is in everyone’s lives. Wondered why the mother-in-law did not recognise her, not to mention Nak-joon, Hae-sook herself and the pastor/Eun-ho (didn’t he get a fleeting view of her?). I can understand her being in the same clothes the whole time but why that outfit? Young Hae-sook dressed very conservatively and Som-yi’s weird outfit with holes is too modern.
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| bye, Som-yi... |
On the other leads, I’m not sure why the President (Cheon Hi-jin) is styled like a scammy cult leader, somehow coming across like a crook even in his all-white attire, although he was pretty much a trustable chap. He was much more interesting playing King Yeomra (of hell).
Young-ae (Lee Jung-eun) was another strangely styled character. I didn’t find her critical for the plot, and definitely not her characterisation and development, especially her pursuit of the president!
Perhaps scene-stealing cat Sonya, superbly rendered by Choi Hee-jin, could have been given a bigger role in the couple’s life instead!
Doggy Jjajang was amusing, and well played by Shin Min-jae. I think the dog trio would have been enough – there were too many other dogs, and the whole pets-over-the-rainbow-bridge concept wasn’t relevant to the main plot. Only Sonya was needed, and the dog trio in a minor way.
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| Mandu, Jjajang and Jjampong! (Yoo Hyun-soo, Shin Min-jae, Kim Choong-gil) |
Now for the plot. The show is more about sorting one’s life issues than about the afterlife, just that they’re sorting these out in the afterlife!
There was too much on reincarnation, with so many permutations of people being stuck with each other in different ways for endless cycles, but since it was part of the plot, it would have been nice to know what happened to Nak-joon’s mum and to the pastor at least. We see what happened to the dogs so why not the humans? Why does Jjajang become a cute female, Beauty? Is it supposed to be an upgrade for him??
In any case, many things don’t add up but I suppose we just have to let the story do its telling instead of getting bogged down quibbling about what makes sense or not. One of my biggest questions is about Hae-sook’s reincarnation. For sure, it was one of their moving, self-giving decisions – Nak-joon doesn’t join her in reincarnation because he knows that she suffered in every cycle being bound to him (while she says she doesn’t mind at all) and wants to free her from this. She does get a ‘better’ life as it looks like she has a family and they’re wealthy. However, her new life doesn’t solve the problem, does it? He’s still there to receive her when she dies and she’s concerned about his assessment of her ‘new’ life – they’re still bound to each other. What happens when this new husband and their children die and they meet in ‘heaven’?? Doesn’t this make their web more complicated?
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| poignantly leaves her name on their gate |
On ‘hell’, it’s ridiculous that Hae-sook and Young-ae are on the borderline for hell, hence their short trip there. I did like, though, how Yeomra and his assistants are fair and understanding!
The show was very interesting, much more intense than I had expected, but it made me appreciate better Son Suk-ku’s superb acting!
JTBC, 12 episodes
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