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COMMENTS
Overall, quite a well-done premiere. It was as strong as I was thinking it would probably be, although I was a little surprised that it was strong for different reasons than I expected. For one, the drama isn’t actually that scary or grisly, which I’m perfectly fine with. Those of you who wanted Dexter, however, will probably be disappointed.
The first hour was quite character-grounded, which was great in that I absolutely love our hero and find the rest of the characters intriguing. It wasn’t actually that plot-heavy, which is a choice that may not be a bad one but leaves me still wanting more, because right now this serial-killer case seems rather simple. I want to get to the part where we’re amazed at Gap-dong for escaping capture for so long, instead of thinking the cops bungled it with their blind insistence that it was one guy when it clearly wasn’t. And for that, we have Sung Dong-il to blame, and he does such a fantastic job being a sneering jackhole that it’s quite easy to blame him. (Really, I hate Chul-gon. So, so much. I want to slap him every time he smiles or laughs or breathes, because he is the worst kind of everything to Mu-yeom, especially when he was a child.)
Mostly I want the show to ensure that there’s a complex mystery here, and I hope we get that in the next episode because there’s got to be more to Gap-dong than him being locked up for twenty years. That does give us the chance to explore the interesting case of Tae-oh, who is a charismatic character inasmuch as psychopaths are charismatic. I’d love to know why he has such psycho-killer tendencies, and what that has to do with his father issues. Is he Gap-dong’s son? Although I suppose he’d know if he were, wouldn’t he? But why else would he resemble him so much?
But on the score of our hero, the show has done such a great job that I could imagine the entire show being upheld by him (and by extension, Yoon Sang-hyun’s performance). I’ve always enjoyed Yoon Sang-hyun’s acting whether dramatic or comedic, and have thought he just needed to pick better projects on the whole. This one suits him perfectly, and I love that crazy wild streak to him, which does contribute to his doggedness as a detective. He calls it forgetting your fear, but his wildness seems to go beyond that—self-loathing, perhaps, or rage at the world turned inward.
And yet he also has that deeply compassionate side, taking care of “my kids” at the temple and trying to give delinquents fair chances to improve their lots. He’s picked up a ragtag team of discarded kids, it seems, and you can’t help but love someone who does that. Plus, it’s really not too hard to side against whoever Chul-gon is going after, frankly. It makes you want to go after Gap-dong with everything he’s got and rub Chul-gon’s face in it, even though I sort of fear for what happens to his life after Gap-dong’s case is closed, since he’s lived his whole life with that one driving motivation.
But that’s a worry for another day. For now, the murder chase is on, and time’s ticking.
Dramabeans recaps
http://www.dramabeans.com/2014/04/gap-dong-episode-1/ |
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发表于 2014-4-12 09:54
