Come and Hug Me 이리와 안아줘 Review

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The 2018 Korean drama starring Jang Ki-Yong as Chae Do-Jin/Yoon Nah-Moo, Jin Ki-Joo as Han Jae-Yi/Gil Nam-Won, and Heo Joon-Ho as Yoon Hui-Jae.



Brief synopsis: Yoon Hui-Jae hides a deep dark, terrible secret: he’s a psychotic murderer. His sons, Yoon Nah-Moo and Yoon Hyeon-Moo, think that they’re going to have to live their lives hiding his crimes forever. Until a new family moves into town. The new family’s daughter takes a shining to Yoon Nah-Moo and shows him how life is meant to be lived. But Yoon Hui-Jae isn’t going down without a fight.





I didn’t research much about this show before I started. I didn’t spare so much as a glance at the synopsis or theme categories before I jumped into the first episode, so I was surprised when I realized I was watching a crime/mystery thriller. So much more intense than I thought it’d be!



But this drama really is fascinating. The characters have to figure out what makes them so different from the antagonist Yoon Hui-Jae when he consistently tries to bring them into understanding his world and bombards them with “You’re no different than me.” This is a theme we find often in media about psychopaths, but these characters spend 32 (half-hour) episodes on it.



My favorite line is “Eliminating what makes me weak is not the way to become strong. It’s when you want to protect something” (Nah-Moo, ep. 4). Throughout the drama, we flashback to the night Yoon Hui-Jae tried killing Gil Nak-Won in front of Yoon Nah-Moo, telling him that this was helping him become stronger, by getting rid of what made him weak. We watch Nah-Moo firm up his resolve to disagree with the belief that strength doesn’t come by getting rid of weakness, but rather building yourself up to protect what you want to protect. This is where Chae Do-Jin draws his strength from henceforth in every episode until the finale.



I was also very fascinated with the supporting characters, especially Yoon Hyeon-Moo. It’s clear as we keep watching the drama that Hyeon-Moo is only rough around the edges, but inside he’s a lot softer than he and others want to believe. It seems that only his aspirations were a little misdirected, although not entirely wrong. He wanted parental attention and approval which is something completely understandable, but he lived his life seeking it from the wrong parent and it led him to all sorts of unnecessary trouble. This is what made Ok-Hee so special— she came into the picture and gave Hyeon-Moo the care and appreciation he couldn’t receive from Yoon Hui-Jae. In fact, her nurturing presence was such a shocker for Hyeon-Moo that he would totally freeze up, immobilized. Evidently, Ok-Hee was a much larger part of both boys’ development than we initially thought.



I would have liked to see her end up happily with Chief Go, but apparently the writers had different ideas 😭



I enjoyed watching Come and Hug Me, even if it’s not likely to be on my list of all-time favorites. I loved watching the cast stretch their talents to cover the range of emotion this drama called for. Definitely impressive! 4/5 stars!