At one time or another all K-Drama viewers have been inflicted with it: a lame, tiresome redundancy due to an episode-quota that the story arc set in motion can’t carry.
In Wonderful Days, a Seoul prosecutor, who is estranged from his family, reluctantly returns home to solve a murder case. Initially, with the aid of flashbacks, the drama delves into the cause of the prosecutor’s estrangement from his family, relegating the murder case on the back burner. The estrangement aspect is done so well, one almost forgets about the murder case which is actually very cleverly embedded in the developing events. The problem is that the murder case is resolved at around the drama’s midpoint, solely putting the burden on the estrangement aspect to carry the drama, to its end.
And here, Wonderful Days resorts to all sorts of convoluted complications to ratchet up the estrangement angle only to undermine the great job it had already done: What had been dramatic, funny, clever, and light becomes melodramatic, silly, tiresome, and heavy.
Of course, having already invested so much of my time in it, I had to see Wonderful Days to its end. And typical of K-Dramas it delivers. It delivers the sort of “feel good” send off to make up for the preoccupation with Han, the Korean culture specific conception denoting guilt, resentment, and resignation that most, if not all, K-Dramas exploit, for better or worse.
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