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The 2017 Korean drama starring Ji Chang-Wook as Noh Ji-Wook, and Nam Ji-Hyun as Eun Bong-Hee.
Brief summary: Eun Bong-Hee prides herself in her martial arts skills and pursuit of a law career, but things are thrown out of order when her boyfriend cheats on her and she meets Prosecuter Noh Ji-Wook. When her ex-boyfriend is murdered, Bong-Hee finds herself entangled in something much bigger than the challenges she encounters trying to achieve her law dreams. And Prosecuter Noh Ji-Wook is going to have to change his cold and somewhat heartless demeanor if he’s going to get along with the bright Eun Bong-Hee, who apparently won’t leave him alone! Will the two of them be able to tolerate each other as they work together?
Honestly, I had high expectations for this drama and they were not met, although it was still cute. Because the drama was promoted as Ji Chang-Wook’s final project before military enlistment, his should have been the main role we were watching, but as the drama was introduced by Eun Bong-Hee’s character, it suddenly became that we were watching Eun Bong-Hee’s life instead of Ji-Wook’s. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it takes away from the emphasis that probably could have been geared toward Ji Chang-Wook’s character.
I think we can all agree, however, that Ji Chang-Wook’s hair was just amazing throughout. And ah, that smile :)
Another significant mistake was using only the law concept. When choosing the law concept, I’m sure the writers thought that it could introduce some of the suspense we can find in detective/crime dramas. It should not be assumed, however, that the law concept and the detective/crime concept are the same thing. The law dramas can borrow some of the suspense, but detective/crime dramas offer much more of it and often have action interwoven into it. There are other dramas that chose a law/lawyer concept, but those dramas also required a little something extra in order to keep the audience thoroughly engaged. In the drama “I Hear Your Voice,” law was an overarching concept, but the main male lead’s character also had supernatural abilities to hear others’ thoughts. Another drama “City Hunter” also sports a legal theme, but this theme is only secondary to the action-fraught contemportray Hong Gil Dong. I think “Love in Trouble/Suspicious Partner” definitely needed something more dynamic, whether it be in the characters, or in the plot.
The drama was a little predictable. It could have been better if a) Eun Bong-Hee and Noh Ji-Wook were not living together, or b) the villain wasn’t found out so early.
A) If Eun Bong-Hee and Noh Ji-Wook were not living together, there would be more suspense because of the sheer anxiety caused by the distance and fear for security. This could have played up the drama a bit more, grabbing viewers heart strings and playing around with that suspense. It also would have necessitated a romance of progression, instead of the pressure for Ji-Wook and Bong-Hee to end up together that came from their cohabitation.
B) The villain was revealed a little earlier in the drama. We found out who it was pretty easily, but the suspense could have been played up if we hadn’t known until the last three episodes or so, or if the villain had been someone closer to the main characters, a character we grow to love and trust and then that love and trust stabs us in the back as we learn of his or her malicious intentions. Unfortunately, neither of these were the case in “Love in Trouble/Suspicious Partner,” and we just knew who the villain was but didn’t really have an emotional connection to them.
What I did like about this drama, though, were how skilled the actors and actresses were. It wasn’t bad acting at all. In one of the episodes, Ji-Wook is briefing Bong-Hee on how they should be behaving at work. At this point, Ji-Wook has confessed his feelings for Bong-Hee and has been practically begging for every chance to be with her, but in the workplace his position is superior. When he lays that out, there is an almost automatic shift in the character roles. Ji-Wook’s character changes from submissive to authoritative and Bong-Hee’s changes from superior to humble. It’s an interesting shift to watch and you know that it could only be pulled off if the actor and actress were sufficiently skilled.
I was also pleased to see Ji Il-Joo as a sub character, even if he did have the role of a perpetrator in episode 6. He’s been around in the Hallyu world with various acting roles, but I wish we could see more of him as a main character. If you’ll remember, he and Ji Chang-Wook worked on the same project before- “Healer.”
All in all, this drama was cute, so I still give it 4/5 stars, but had greater potential than what was realized. It just needed to be a little more dynamic. It was still adorable, though! Don’t let it’s flaws (opinionated, at that!) keep you from watching :)
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