SPOILER WARNING: DO NOT READ IF YOU STILL PLAN ON WATCHING THIS SERIES OR HAVEN’T FINISHED IT YET!!

Jugglers
(저글러스 / Jeogeulleoseu)
MyDramaList rating: 7.5/10

Hello! Yes, it’s been maybe a week since my previous review but I went through this really fast. It was on my list for a while and I was looking forward to watching it. I have to say it brought back the fun of watching K-Dramas for me. After all the Netflix watching it was hard to find my way back to K-Dramas, but now that I kind of finished my Netflix binges, I am ready to tumble back into my previous addiction.
This was a nice throwback to a simple and cute love story drama.

In short, the 16-episode drama Jugglers is about Jwa Yoon Yi (played by Baek Jin Hee), who works as a personal assistant for a manager at a big advertising company. Yoon Yi has kept this job for 5 years although her boss is a jerk and makes her cover up his many affairs and keep his wife from finding out. Besides her diligent work as a secretary, Yoon Yi also manages a blog for other personal assistants with terrible bosses to vent their frustrations. When due to a misunderstanding her boss’s wife drags Yoon Yi out for having an affair with her husband, her boss does nothing to clear things up and Yoon Yi is fired. As it turns out, her boss is the one who uploaded a post on the forum framing her as the one who seduced him.
He leaves her behind and gets promoted to the chairman’s office.
In the meantime, Nam Chi Won (played by Choi Daniel) becomes a managing director at the same company. Due to a fire incident-trauma from his past he is closed off from others and doesn’t seem interested in making new friends. He is also once divorced and not looking for new relationships, even though his ex-father in law (also the Vice President of YB) (played by Kim Chang Wan) and the young director of YB, Hwangbo Yool (played by Lee Won Geun) try very hard to make him more social.
When Yoon Yi is jobless and there’s an open position at Chi Won’s assistant desk (although he specifically doesn’t want an assistant), an opportunity comes where, of course, Yoon Yi gets the job. The two met before in a not so friendly situation where he almost hit her with his car and she kicked him in the shins. So they don’t start off very well. But, as we all know from episode 1, this will change.

Apart from their growing bond, there are other storylines surrounding the so-called ‘Jugglers’ as Yoon Yi describes them in the first epsisode. The term ‘Jugglers’ is used to describe the personal assistants like herself who need to multi-task and fight for whatever their bosses require of them. The boss is incomplete without his assistant, and it is their duty to support him in his climb to the top, because after all, if the boss goes up, so will they.
In most cases, anyway.
I was curious as to why the drama was called Jugglers but it’s a nicely found term. Do I agree with their mindset of following their bosses whatever it takes even though their bosses are all awful and don’t give them any credit in return? Not so much.
I personally just got out of a job as an assistant for a boss who was insufferable, so seeing the bosses in this drama kind of gave me flashbacks. Luckily with me there was no kind of direct harassment involved, but the part where the assistants don’t get any validation but just nasty comments was very familiar. But enough about me.

The other Jugglers in the story are two of Yoon Yi’s friends, Ma Bo Na (played by Cha Joo Young) and Wang Jung Ae (played by Kang Hye Jung). Ma Bo Na, like Yoon Yi, has been the personal assistand for an executive director for years, but all he cares about is his own reputation. Bo Na literally works her ass off for him, but with one single mishap her boss would already yell at her for being a failure. When her boss gets closer to becoming promoted, her ambition takes over so much she’s even willing to go against her friends.
Wang Jung Ae is a young mother -honestly the first couple of eps I thought she was Yoon Yi’s older sister because she always called her and Yoon Yi called her ‘eonni’, but it turns out she’s the older sister of one of Yoon Yi’s high school friends? Or something? Anyways, Wang Jung Ae is a naive and airheaded 30-something housewife whose husband abandoned her and her teenage son for another family. Loan sharks are after them and she wants to be able to make a living for herself so she starts to look for work.
Yoon Yi then introduces her to Director Hwangbo Yool, because he is in need of an assistant as well. However, Yool is such a kid at heart that he’s already fired 88 assistants because they couldn’t handle his whimsical behavior. Although his conditions for an assistant are single and around age 20, Jung Ae uses the identity of her younger sister Mi Ae and starts working for him. As it turns out, her motherly warmth is exactly what Yool needs to mature. But she still has to keep her real identity a secret.

I want to say something about the casting, because that’s something I really liked. Recently I’ve been enjoying watching dramas about contemporary work life for some reason because they give real insight in the ambitions and reputations and pretentiousness and harassment and other things we’re not supposed to talk about but are a seemingly indispensable part of working at a company, I guess.
I knew Baek Jin Hee only from Missing Nine where she played a character that couldn’t have been more different from Jwa Yoon Yi. It was really nice to see such a different side of her. I didn’t even recognize her as the same person at first. Because she’s tiny and with a very petite posture, you would think she’d pose well as a little shy girl, but the confidence and bubbliness that Yoon Yi exuberated made her character really fresh and modern. There were moments when I found her a bit selfish or tsundere, but it didn’t make her unlikeable. It differentiated her from the typical K-Drama heroine who just does whatever the male leads tell her to do.
Okay, and this is my first and foremost reason why this drama was on my list in the first place: I love Choi Daniel to bits. It’s been ages since he last appeared in something and he just recently came back from the military (THANK YOU) and I just love him. Ever since I saw Baby-faced Beauty I can’t help but smile whenever he appears on screen. So yeah, that was a big pro for me. And he also showed a different character than before. Cold and distant, but as soon as he opens his heart he becomes the adorkable giant teddy bear that he is. I’m sorry, I’ll try to contain myself.
There were a lot of actors that I didn’t know, but that made it even more refreshing to watch. When I know actors and you know their acting styles I automatically start looking for patterns.
My favorite side characters were definitely the Video Editing and Advertising teams because even though they were background characters, their timing and humor just made the series for me.

I would like to give some comments on a few things that I found a bit lacking or debatable. First of all, Nam Chi Won’s troubling past which seemed like such an important asset to his story. When Chi Won was really young, he and his family got into an accident which only he survived. For some reason people were bitches and everyone talked bad about him, how only he survived, that he was better off dead like his family, and no one wanted to have him. These memories still haunt his dreams and play a part in his secluded behavior. Nevertheless, a very kind uncle took him in. When Chi Won was a teenager, a fire broke out in their rooftop apartment and his uncle helped him escape but got stuck himself and was unable to get out in time. The one person he had left that had felt like family to him was now gone as well. As a result Chi Won has developed a great fear of fire in whatever form, even lit candles on a birthday cake.
Discovering this truth about him, getting to know his past is what drives Yoon Yi closer to him in the first half of the series.
It almost looks like Chi Won has a form of PTSD at certain moments. However, once the two of them get together, this whole story -the story about Chi Won’s past and fear of fire and his sad family history- is completely wiped from the next half of the series.
Honestly, when in the last episode they make a remark about how not scaring away from fire anymore, I’d almost already forgotten his fear of fire. It was as if everything that once bothered him was literally washed away and forgotten when he fell in love with Yoon Yi. And maybe that was the point, but I found it a bit weird that that was it for his character development. It just ended there, never to be even mentioned or shown again. And also how Chi Won’s whole character seemed to change suddenly from cold and distant to super smily and lovey-dovey. He’s suddenly smiling all the time and being giddy, which didn’t seem like the Chi Won from the first couple of episodes at all. But hey, maybe that’s what being in love does to you? I don’t know, but the change was kind of sudden.
Talking about finished storylines, this also includes the whole coincidence story of Yoon Yi now living in the same house where the fire broke out and Chi Won moving back in. I mean, I thought his reasons for moving back in (because this was before he was fully interested in Yoon Yi) would play a more important part in terms of his character development, that he would face his past or something. But it wasn’t mentioned again after the storyline of them falling for each other was completed.
On that note, I think this is an important division we can see in this series: it’s clearly divided into two parts. The first part is simply the love story between Yoon Yi and Chi Won. Once this first chapter is concluded, the second part moves onto the cooperation and action needed to ‘defeat’ the two nasty bosses. And there was no more character development in that part except maybe for Bo Na, because her father is introduced, but it didn’t really contribute to her character as ‘development’. It just felt like a tiny insight without much necessity. A parental character using sign language is always a bittersweet asset, but nothing was revealed about Bo Na’s upbringing that made it feel necessary for her father to be deaf. If it was such a defining element of the way she was brought up, she should’ve gotten more than that in my opinion. Because now I didn’t have enough proof of her goodness and positive resilience to empathize with her fully. Even after they made up I was just confused about their (Bo Na and Yoon Yi’s) friendship. Thinking like a normal person, it seemed weird for Bo Na to choose her jerk boss’s side over her friendship so easily. It wasn’t just ambition and fighting for her way, she actively helped in sabotaging Chi Won and Yoon Yi’s reputations. She just suddenly became this rivaling frenemy, kind of bitchy even, which really puzzled me because forever being the willless shadow behind a manically laughing douchebag or cherishing your best friendships shouldn’t pose that big of a dilemma. But maybe I’m underestimating the pressure executed on these assistants. The mere fact that so many women (because as this drama depicts it’s all female assistants for male bosses) would give up years of their lives to run meaningless errands and making meaningless efforts for someone who doesn’t even look back at them while telling them what to do is just very dissatisfying.

Another recurring thing that honestly baffled me, maybe it sounds silly but DOES NO ONE OWN A PENCIL SHARPENER? All these people in the office using actual knives to sharpen their pencils… I don’t know about you guys but there’s a perfectly simple and way less dangerous method to sharpen a pencil. It’s called a pencil sharpener. There’s an actual tool for it, people. And you won’t have to risk losing a finger when using it.

Let me go back to the relationship between Hwangbo Yool and Wang Jung Ae (although she’s posing as Wang Mi Ae). I think this is one of the more interesting relationships in the series. At a certain point I started finding their bond more fun to watch than Chi Won and Yoon Yi’s. Because the build-up in Chi Won and Yoon Yi’s relationship stops as soon as they get together. After that, they’re the perfect couple. No fights, no arguments, just happy lovey-dovey stuff, snuggling up to each other, pecking kisses in secret etcetera. Their relationship didn’t change after it was established.
However, the relationship between Yool and Jung Ae was constantly changing. At a certain moment I was actually wondering whether or not it would still become a romance, but in the end the mother-son parallels were too obvious. It didn’t need to happen for their bond to be beautiful.
Hwangbo Yool lost his mother at a young age and has since been bossed around by all the old men in his family (and the board of directors of YB). Rebelling against this, he comes to work on his motorcycle, he only comes to work to eat and he drives his assistant crazy by asking her to run the most ridiculous errands. He acts really carefree, but he’s secretly plagued by trust issues because he feels like he doesn’t truly have anyone he can completely trust and like his assistants, everyone leaves him in the end. I think Yool is one of the more layered characters in the series. Of course, at one point the truth about Jung Ae comes out – she’s not who she says she is – and he momentarily loses all trust in her. He yells at her and says a bunch of mean things and we see Jung Ae just crumble away with guilt, but she doesn’t get a chance to defend herself. In her defense, Yool doesn’t know what happened with her husband so if he’d known that he might have not fallen out to her like that. In the end he does reflect and decide not to hate her and insists she now comes to work as Jung Ae, not Mi Ae.
Wang Jung Ae seems to be the breath of fresh air necessary because she does everything she’s asked (although that might also be because she’s not that smart and she assumes everything’s just part of the job). However, she’s the first assistant who’s not driven mad by Yool’s behavior and she grows on him when she starts showing more effort and guts. At times she manages to soothe Yool when no one else can, for example when it’s his mother’s death anniversary and when she cooks him meals. Yool is taken aback by his warmth and I think it does somewhere remind him of his mother, the way she takes care of him. That’s why eventually he opens up his heart to her and lets her into his private house and stuff. As I said before, Jung Ae’s warmth might’ve been exactly what he needed to mature.
If Yool’s the most layered character, Jung Ae is definitely the character with the most character development of all. We see her turn from a clumzy, naive woman who knows nothing of the world except household chores into a confident Juggler. And all she did was be true to herself. It’s because she is naive and airheaded that she turns out the way she does. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. It may take you to good places if you’re surrounded by the right people.

There is one more person in Yoon Yi’s group of friends, Park Kyung Rye (played by Jung Hye In), who is not a Juggler – or used to be but quit because she couldn’t handle the boss (there’s a mention of it somewhere). I thought her look was very cool, very androgynous. She works at a local coffee bar that all main characters seem to frequent. Kyung Rye is the friend that’s just always there, mediating. She’s not on anyone’s side, she just wants everyone to get along. She’s always there at the girl gatherings, when either Yoon Yi or Bo Na is feeling down, she comes to the rescue when Jung Ae’s identity is about to get exposed, she helps sabotaging the nasty bosses etcetera. She always everywhere, the cool and funny friend. But she didn’t get her own story, which I think was a pity. We don’t learn anything about her except for outside stuff. I would’ve liked to get more story from her character.
Same goes for Oh Chang Soo. Oh Chang Soo (played by Min Jin Woong) is Yoon Yi’s ex-boyfriend who starts working in her team and keeps making effort to win her back, although she despises him. His introduction was hella random. We did not see him before, he was not mentioned in Yoon Yi’s memory or flashback yet he was introduced as if we were supposed to know who he was. Even when he is introduced, we don’t get any evidence of how Yoon Yi knows him and only through dialogue find out later that they used to date. But they made him such a present love rival that it would’ve made more sense to me if they’d given him a proper introduction. As in, show us the history between him and Yoon Yi before re-introducing him, like with her former boss. It would’ve made more sense to me if they’d shown the guy from episode 1 who used to be Yoon Yi’s boyfriend, then at least it would’ve been like ‘ohh that guy again’. But in this case the guy was introduced as an unknown former boyfriend that was never mentioned before, and his efforts were so fruitless that in the end he just became a bit of a comical character. Which is a shame because Min Jin Woong is a good actor. (I only know him from Drinking Solo where he was also the comical character but with a sad layer behind the jokes.)

And now, let me move on to the villains of the hour, the two nasty bosses who get their asses handed to them in the end. Bong Jang Woo (played by Choi Dae Chul) and Cho Sang Moo (played by In Gyo Jin). Bong Jang Woo is Yoon Yi’s previous boss who dumps her after a self-inflicted scandal and moves up to the chairman’s office. When he returns as a managing director, Yoon Yi is well into her relationship with Chi Won. For some reason Bong insists on having Yoon Yi back as his assistant. When he does, he just starts treating her like he did before as if nothing had changed, still asking her to secretly buy lingerie for the women he was seeing and stuff. It was painful to see how Yoon Yi was thrown around by the company in the last couple of episodes. Luckily, she now had Bong’s wife on her side and they make a plan to reveal his behavior to the press by calling all his previous assistants who went through the same thing.
I knew the actress who played Bong’s wife but I just can’t seem to remember from where. I believe I saw her in the role of a housekeeping lady but I can’t remember which drama it was. Anyways, her name is Jung Young Joo and she slays. Yoon Yi nicknamed her ‘Misery’ and whenever she called there was this doom-sound ringtone which was hilarious.

This drama had multiple sequences in slowmotion that kept recurring. One of them was when Misery walked into the room, it would be in slowmotion with some hiphop song in the background. Another case would be people making their way out of the office and epically putting on their coats as they walked. One of my favorite sequences was when the entire Video Editing team did it in a wave and for a second it seemed like the Advertising team would follow, but then it was just one person who wanted to look cool, lol.

Cho Sang Moo wasn’t so much a harrasser as someone who played dirty. From Bo Na’s perspective, he used to play fair and she used to respect him for the way he worked his way up by himself, but at a certain moment he started pulling strings and blackmailing people.
In the end, when he’s out to oust Chi Won and Yoon Yi for good, Bo Na’s conscience finally catches up with her and she decides it’s been enough. She then sacrifices her whole career to help Yoon Yi expose him and he’s sent to jail.
The only thing that confused me in the end was why they suddenly wanted to make him look like a good person after all. The whole series long he’s the wicked boss who only cares about his own promotion to director, he doesn’t look back at Bo Na even for everything that she does for him, and then at the end Bo Na visits him in jail and suddenly he’s like ‘you were always so great I should’ve respected you more, you’re better than me’ blabla. They still tried to show a more human side of him in the end but for me that wasn’t really necessary because all we’d seen from his as a character was greed and self-centeredness so why would we suddenly need to see him as a good guy? If he was he should’ve acted like that in the first place. I don’t know, it came a bit out of nowhere for me.

Anyways, overall I enjoyed watching this drama, it was like a stroll down memory lane – the style was kind of typical romance K-Drama but the setting was modern and contemporary. It’s interesting how it showed women’s strength through a position where it’d seem they have no strength at all. I hope it serves as an inspiration for personal assistants struggling with his life in reality.
I will move on now to another drama I’ve been eagerly waiting for.
Until next time!

SPOILER WARNING: DO NOT READ IF YOU STILL PLAN ON WATCHING THIS SERIES OR HAVEN’T FINISHED IT YET!!

Kill Me, Heal Me
(킬미, 힐미 / Kil Mi, Hil Mi)
MyDramaList rating: 7.0/10

Hello everyone, I’m back with a new review! I took my time watching this and also reviewing this, because there’s a lot to see and say about this drama.
First of all, it was on my list as a ‘golden oldie’ (even dramas from 2015 fall under this category now) and also a must-see classic, like for example Another Oh Hae Young. I knew from beforehand that it was about D.I.D. because when I was watching Jekyll, Hyde, Me (also about D.I.D.), this drama was recommended in the comments a lot as well.
I knew that namely Ji Sung was very famous for his role in Kill Me Heal Me and the only thing I’ve watched of him is Wife I Know (find my review here), so I was curious as to his performance here, which was of course 4 years earlier.

Okay, let’s start with a summary. The 20-episode drama Kill Me Heal Me is about Cha Do Hyun (played by Ji Sung), a chaebol heir to his family’s company who suffers from D.I.D. (Dissociative Identity Disorder). After experiencing a traumatic fire in his childhood he has developed no less than 7 different personalities he can barely control. The only people aware of his disorder are the psychiatrist who treated him in America and his secretary. Until he meets Oh Ri Jin (played by Hwang Jung Eum), a rookie psychiatrist who is under the guidance of Do Hyun’s psychiatrist. Right after they meet Ri Jin is confronted with one of Do Hyun’s personalities and, taken by her curiosity, she starts getting involved and seeks information by her superior who has treated him. Oh Ri Jin also has a twin brother, Oh Ri On (played by Park Seo Joon), who is a mystery novelist using the name ‘Omega’ and who is secretly researching Cha Do Hyun’s family history.
Oh Ri Jin eventually becomes Cha Do Hyun’s personal caretaker and their bond gradually deepens, but there is a whole history between them that neither of them remember as both their memories of their childhood are very fragmented. Do Hyun is missing the memory of one year of his childhood, when he was 7 years old. Ri Jin doesn’t have any memories of her childhood preceding age 7.

I want to say one thing before I go on. I really don’t know why, but I have a problem with Hwang Jung Eum as an actress. Of course I watched She Was Pretty not too long ago (see my review here) and her hysterical acting seemed fitting for her character there, but in this drama it became a bit too much for me. For me it seemed like she was screaming and acting out randomly and being loud for no reason a lot. I don’t know, I think I just can’t handle her acting very well.
I will try to remain as objective as possible in this review, but I just wanted to comment on that fact.
I will also say one thing about the acting in general: I felt it was very over the top. I lack knowledge about D.I.D. and what it does to a person, but I felt like they exaggerated a lot in this drama. For example, whenever Cha Do Hyun had an attack and would change personalities, he would first get an intense fit, gasping and grabbing his head and collapsing on the floor – and when he changed personalities they made it look like his eyes changed colour for a moment. When he changes into Shin Se Gi, a tattoo appears on his neck. I’m not sure if this is completely accurate to true D.I.D. symptoms (I can’t imagine tattoos appearing and disappearing and eye colours changing to be realistic), but they mostly seemed a bit dramatized to me.
In Jekyll, Hyde, Me, I felt like the changes were a lot less intense. Then again, I’m not sure how the real deal works. I wonder if it truly is that painful in real life or if the personality change happens more calmly or if it changes per person. Anyways, there was a lot of screaming and seemingly painful inner transformations.

As I mentioned before, and I also mentioned this in my review of She Was Pretty – which is from the same year as this one – this drama really gave me the oldschool Korean romantic drama vibes. I feel like the dramas these days have developed in quality a lot, so when watching an older one now, everything seems extra corny and dramatic. Again, I can’t really pinpoint how and what, but it just felt like it was another oldschool 20-episode K-drama.
The very first thing the drama shows is a short summary of what happened in Do Hyun’s family. When he was 7 years old, there was a terrible fire and Do Hyun was saved by his father. Consequently, his father has fallen into a coma and hasn’t woken up yet (21 years in now). After that we see Do Hyun’s grandfather, the head of Seungjin Group, and his daughter-in-law (Do Hyun’s family register mother) passing away in a car accident.
What connects all these things only becomes clear when nearing the end of the series. And then we realize that the series isn’t solely about Cha Do Hyun and his ‘illness’ – it’s just as much about Oh Ri Jin and her origin (yes, I did that).

Cha Do Hyun is a rather docile male character. He seems to be quite introvert, and he prefers not to be around other people when he gets an attack. When he is himself, he is kind and meek. He seems to fear his personalities, especially because he can’t control them when they come out. There are gaps in his memory, so he doesn’t even remember all the details about how his personalities came into existence.
I found him to be quite fragile. It seemed like after every serious conversation he had there would be some sort of trigger causing him to have a fit and be taken over by another personality.

Oh Ri Jin is a rookie psychiatrist. In the first few episodes of the drama, we see her walk around a hospital, mostly concerned with one patient who keeps escaping (gotta love Kim Seul Gi for her glorious cameos). However, after she decides to become Do Hyun’s personal caretaker, she leaves the hospital. So we actually don’t see her in action as an actual doctor. Except for when she’s ‘taking care’ of Do Hyun, but this caretaking consists more of running after him when he changes and gets away and being by his side rather than prescribing him pills or anything like that.
Another thing I found peculiar was that, although as psychiatrist I’d imagine you’d stay calm in situations when a person is showing strange symptoms and character changes, Oh Ri Jin seemed very hysterical to me. Whenever Do Hyun would shows changes in his behavior, her first reaction included yelling a lot and shaking him by the shoulders, asking ‘what’s wrong??’ about 50 times before calming down an realizing he wasn’t Cha Do Hyun anymore. Furthermore, whenever she assumed she was being attacked or she witnessed for example Yo Na ambushing, she would first pull some weird facial expressions and -again- yell a lot.
Again, I’m not sure what the conditions of being a psychiatrist are in real life, but her personality seemed a little too hysterical and intense for me to completely take her seriously as a psych in the making. I also had some trouble accepting her personal behavior, because I thought she acted quite childishly sometimes. Anyway, this might have to do with me having trouble with the actress as I mentioned before.

It took me a while to place all the members of Do Hyun’s family – because Korean dramas love family complications, especially when it comes to rich families with all their dirty secrets. To explain, I will write it down as simple as possible:
First there is Cha Gun Ho, the grandfather and head of Seungjin Group. He is married to Seo Tae Im, the grandmother. The two of them had two sons, Cha Joon Pyo (Do Hyun’s father) and Cha Young Pyo (Do Hyun’s uncle).
Cha Young Pyo is the father of Cha Ki Joon, Do Hyun’s cousin and sort of rival for inheriting Seungjin Group.
Cha Joon Pyo was married to Min Seo Yeon (the daughter-in-law). Min Seo Yeon quickly became grandfather’s favorite and she climbed up in the company more than her husband. Their marriage was not a good one.
Cha Joon Pyo had Do Hyun with Shin Hwa Ran (Do Hyun’s birth mother), who wasn’t welcomed into the family even after he fell into a coma.
Min Seo Yeon had an extra-marital child with her first love. The secret of this child was hushed throughout the family, and Min Seo Yeon lied to grandmother that the little girl was Joon Pyo’s child. But Joon Pyo never acknowledged her, on the contrary: he threw her in the basement and started abusing her. He tried to warn his son to stay away from her and make no mistakes – eventually even when Do Hyun would make a mistake in his piano lesson or maths problem, his father would hurt the girl as a punishment to Do Hyun as well.
In other words, Do Hyun and the secret child/little girl (who turns out to be Ri Jin) knew each other as children. The girl was abused for being an illegitimate child and Do Hyun took on her memories of being abused as his own. Through this experience his first personality Shin Se Gi was born. In fact, this personality is the one who instigated the fire. This solves one mystery, the disentanglement of Cha Do Hyun’s memories of being locked up in a basement and shrinking back for his father’s raised hand; his memory of being scared of basements itself turns out to be a manufactured one that actually belongs to the little girl. As it happens, Ri Jin has been scared of basements since she was a child.

In the end, it turns out that uncle Cha Young Pyo is the one responsible for the ‘car accident’ in which grandpa and Min Seo Yeon died.
In short, Cha Joon Pyo and Min Seo Yeon were married but they broke up and both had an illegitimate child with someone else. Min Seo Yeon is Ri Jin’s birth mother. Ri Jin’s adoptive mother was Min Seo Yeon’s good friend who saved Ri Jin from the basement during the fire and raised her alongside Ri On as her own child.
You still following? Haha.
Oh, and most importantly, it turns out that Cha Do Hyun was actually Ri Jin’s name. Cha Do Hyun’s real name is Cha Joon Young, but after the fire he started claiming it as his own name to keep the little girl’s existence alive in the family register, feeling guilty that he couldn’t save her.

I think the build-up in explanation of what happened in Do Hyun’s family was very well done. First you would get bits and parts of it, and there’s even a time where you’re steered the wrong way before everything falls into place. In the beginning I didn’t even think the whole Cha family history would be that relevant or that I would have to remember it in detail, but it turned out to be the center of the plot of the drama itself.
Also, I think it was very clever that we’re first led to believe that Min Seo Yeon’s secret child is Ri On, because every time a dialogue about it occurred the shot would very subtly change to Ri On. He also dropped hints about one of them being adopted. At least I first thought it was Ri On. If they indeed did that on purpose, it worked. It’s only until Do Hyun remembers the reason why he’s afraid of basements, we see that it’s a little girl with him, not a boy. Also his personality Nana turned out to be the name of her teddy bear, not herself.

I think it’s time to describe all Do Hyun’s personalities and how they came to be. I’ll list them in order of appearance.
First of all, there’s Shin Se Gi. Shin Se Gi is the first personality that appeared in Do Hyun. He’s the one who started the fire. Shin Se Gi is recognized by his wild look, including a tattoo in his neck and earrings. He is the most agressive of the personalities. Shin Se Gi was created when Do Hyun couldn’t handle the pain of not being able to protect child Ri Jin anymore from his father’s abuse. When he changes the first time, he sees a toy laying on the ground with something written on it, something with ‘new generation’ (‘shin segi’ in Korean), and that’s how he got his name. Shin Se Gi carries all the memories Do Hyun lost, the memories about his past with Ri Jin and he also recognizes her immediately when they first meet as adults. Shin Se Gi is in love with Ri Jin from the get-go, so when he appears he is always trying to make advances on her.
Secondly, Perry Park. Perry Park is an older guy who lives carefree and likes fishing and booze. He distinguishes himself by wearing Hawaii shirts and has a satoori dialect. His name comes from a promise young Cha Do Hyun (still Cha Joon Young then) made with his dad when he was still a nice father. Because at that time Joon Pyo was hiding from his family, everyone called him ‘Mr. Park’. He also liked fishing a lot. Do Hyun promised his dad that he would buy him a boat some day and after asking him what he’d like it to be called, his father says ‘Perry Park’ (actually meant as the Korean pronunciation for ‘Ferry Park’).
Thirdly, Ahn Yo Seob. In high school, Do Hyun tried to commit suicide once. From that event, Ahn Yo Seob -the suicidal personality- was born. Ahn Yo Seob is a 17-year old boy who values art and classical music.
Almost simultaneously, as a counter against Yo Seob, Do Hyun’s will to live created Yo Seob’s twin sister Ahn Yo Na. Ahn Yo Na is a typical teenage girl who loves make-up and accesories and fangirling about handsome boys. She is one of the most troublesome personalities as she likes to run away. Eventually, Ri On becomes the focus of her infatuation, much to his dislike.
And then there’s Nana, who only appears in the last episode of the series. Nana is basically little Oh Ri Jin when she was hiding in the basement. She has a huge teddy bear whose name is Nana, but in the end she reveals to Ri Jin that her name is Cha Do Hyun.
The last personality that comes out is Mr. X. Mr. X only appears in the last episode, after Perry Park has already disappeared. He turns out to be a manifestation of Nana’s father – Ri Jin’s biological dad whom she never knew. He shows himself in a magician’s costume, claiming that this is probably what a little girl would imagine her father to look like, and expressing his relief for not looking like Superman. In the end his only action is to accompany Nana to disappear from Do Hyun’s mind, because she couldn’t leave by herself.

All in all, Ji Sung does a very good job in portraying the 7 different personalities. Of course their changes in costumes and hairstyles help, but each personality has a completely different vibe. Personally I liked Perry Park and Yo Na because they were so different from Do Hyun’s own character that they jumped out the most. Also the change in nuance in his way of talking and the way he carried himself as every one of them: my compliments.
One thing I found a little unnatural though was the build-up in the relationship between Do Hyun and Ri Jin. I first felt like Ri Jin was warming up to Shin Se Gi because he was always making advances at her and even kissed her before. When he would change back, Do Hyun would always hastily get away from her again. In any case, the first time they kissed as Do Hyun and Ri Jin felt a bit soon to me. Of course we know that they’re going to end up together, but as I saw it they were still in the middle of working the whole ‘you can trust me, I’m on your side’ phase. Ri Jin was only telling him to try and not be too hard on the other personalities and then suddenly he kissed her and I was like ‘oh wow, that escalated quickly’. And then suddenly they were mutually in love. I don’t know, it was a bit quick in my opinion.

I honestly thought Oh Ri On would have more to do with the whole plot of the story. He’s Ri Jin’s protective older brother who secretly harbors more than brotherly feelings for her. However, it never once occurs to him to try and make those feelings a reality. He’s come to terms with the fact that he’ll always be her brother and he has decided he will always try to protect her. Initially this includes keeping her away from her past. From childhood on, whenever she would have nightmares about her past, he would ‘interpret’ her dreams as funny stories. He keeps his research of Do Hyun’s family a secret from her as well.
Her adoptive parents tried to help her overcome her fear of basements by sending her on errands and fetching stuff from the cellar and Ri On would always go with her, allthewhile claiming that he was scared of basements too to keep her company.
However, when he notices he can’t keep her from Cha Do Hyun and her involvement grows bigger, he starts accepting that as well. In the end Oh Ri On reluctantly helps them get together and ultimately even records their story in a new novel whilst still being chased by memories of Ahn Yo Na (haha).
I read a lot of comments saying they disliked his character because he tried to keep the truth from Ri Jin, but I just couldn’t seem to dislike him. Then again, Park Seo Joon would need to try really hard to do anything I don’t like (I can’t deny I’m a bit actor-biased, I’m sorry). But it was so obvious that he did everything out of love and care for her, and she also forgave him because she knew that. And kudos to their awesome parents who raised her like their own child. Their parents deserve an award, honestly. The fact that Ri Jin found out by herself that she was adopted and never held a grudge at all shows how close their family is.

Now that we’re on the topic of family, I think this is a fairly important theme in this drama. Apart from the Cha family drama, there’s some interesting things to note about this theme that I wish to share.
I found it interesting to see how two children who used to play in the same basement ended up in two entirely different environments.
Cha Do Hyun grew up without family who had his back – he is only on the family register because of his father, but he is still also an illegitimate child, his birth mother is still ousted from the family and his grandmother, uncle and cousin all treat him coldly. When they obtain information about his condition, they’re all more concerned with the future of the company than with Do Hyun. Carrying the burden of his disorder all by himself, Do Hyun doesn’t have any friends – rather, he’s scared to make friends because he fears he will only hurt them when he changes personalities. His secretary Ahn Gook (played by Choi Won Young) is the only person close to him, but even he doesn’t fully know how to take care of him when he changes.
The only person who might be able to help is Dr. Seok Ho Pil (nicknamed Dr. Scofield) (played by Go Chang Seok). He knows about all the personalities but doesn’t know how to treat him well.
On the other side we have Oh Ri Jin who, despite her background, grew up in the most warm family environment ever. Two loving parents who raised her without hesitation as their own child and a loving big brother whom she gets along with great. They have a golden retriever (gotta mention the dog) ; basically, the ideal happy family. Because of her upbringing Ri Jin grew into a very happy and energetic woman. Even when she remembers her past, it’s painful at first, but her attitude towards her adoptive family doesn’t change at all. Overall she remains quite calm even after remembering everything. She keeps expressing her love and gratitude for her family.
So in the end it turns out that the person surrounded by his real family is much less happier than the person surrounded by her adoptive family. It changes the perspective of family; in the end it’s the people you choose it to be. Cha Do Hyun has a lot of blood-related family but he doesn’t feel like they are his family at all since all they’re after is his heritage to Seungjin Group. On the other hand, Ri Jin doesn’t have any blood-related family but feels so at home with her foster family that she doesn’t even get angry at them for not telling her the truth about her background.
Sometimes you choose your own family.

Of course, you would think, according to the Cha family register Do Hyun and Ri Jin would be family. However, Ri Jin was never registered and Do Hyun took her name and they are not blood-related so no problem there.
But in a sense they found a family in each other, even when they were kids. They played together, made each other promises, held hands, even played house together (ohoho) before they even fully understood who the other was and what their relation was to each other.
Both of them came from messed up family situations and ended up right where they belonged – together.
At first, Ri Jin encourages Do Hyun that all his different personalities are a part of him and that all those different parts make that one great person called Cha Do Hyun. But in the end, all the personalities still disappear. Cha Do Hyun gets better and doesn’t need them anymore because now he is finally able to carry his own pain and loses his desperation. These disappearances have a big emotional impact on Ri Jin because she did get along with all of them. So maybe to her that also felt like losing a kind of family.

I’m realizing I’m forgetting one character that I think was supposed to be ‘the second female lead’ but the fact that I almost forgot about her I think is enough to show what little impression her character made on me.
In the beginning, Cha Do Hyun’s first love appears as the fiancee of his cousin. In this stadium it still seemed to me like his cousin and this girl were going to be really important in the story but in the end they barely appeared anymore. So, Han Chae Yeon (played by Kim Yoo Ri) is Do Hyun’s first love and she is engaged to his cousin Cha Ki Joon (played by Oh Min Seok). But clearly their relationship isn’t heartfelt, and some intentional swaying from Shin Se Gi drive Chae Yeon away from Ki Joon and break up the engagement. She wants to get back with Do Hyun, but by then he’s already fallen for Ri Jin.
He even admits to Ri Jin that he probably was never really in love with Chae Yeon but simply yearned for the idea that he, even with his disorder, was still able to love someone. But even Chae Yeon didn’t know about his past. She is now merely a pawn in Ki Joon’s side of the family’s plan to gain leadership of Seungjin Group.
All in all, except for some vainly executed talks with Do Hyun (even randomly butting in while he was having a blind date, that was a big ‘none of your business much?’ moment for me), her character didn’t really add anything to the story for me.
I feel like Ri On and Chae Yeon were weak attempts to creating a sort of potential second male and second female lead, but they never even entered the love square.
Same for the cousin, he was kind of the intended ‘rival’ for Do Hyun but in the end he got completely stuck behind his father and couldn’t do anything to really stop Do Hyun from inheriting the company after finally getting grandma’s permission. So as a back story that felt a bit irrelevant for me. Do Hyun’s family situation was already complicated as it was. The only thing that needed to become clear was that Ki Joon’s father planned the ‘car incident’ in order to inherit the company instead of Min Seo Yeon.

One last thing: the final confrontation with Do Hyun’s father. At the very end of the series, Cha Joon Pyo finally wakes up from his coma, only to be confronted by his now adult son asking him to confess who planned the car accident. After that, that same son (as Shin Se Gi) tries to strangle him.
Now I have to say that I actually felt a little bad for the father. Of course, he did terrible things and was anything but the perfect son-in-law (even though his mother would never acknowledge that). He did lock a little girl up in a basement and abused her. But when he woke up and met with adult Ri Jin, the first thing he did was get on his knees to apologize. It was so obvious that he felt incredibly guilty about his actions, but they completely made him into the bad guy, saying this like ‘don’t force your apologies on me’ and stuff and I was just like, ‘he is not forcing anything on you? let the man apologize? he’s been unconscious for about 20 years? isn’t this kind of harsh?’ Before the whole thing started he was shown as a really nice dad, he just snapped at some point but the fact that he showed regret was good, right? I don’t know, it felt like that the two of them needed to confront him with what he’d done for their own peace of mind before they took off and lived happily ever after, not caring about whether he’d show repentence or not. But I guess that was another step in order to ‘leave the past behind them’.

There was one comment that I saw that I thought was really nice and that kind of answered my thoughts about Ri Jin’s way of ‘treating’ Do Hyun.
The comment said that the person appreciated the fact that Do Hyun’s disorder wasn’t treated like an ‘illness’ as in that he was kept in a hospital or received prescriptions for pills (he did have pills but he was never able to take them as he always managed to knock them over while Se Gi was trying to get out lol). His ‘treatment’ consisted of actual caring. It suggested that the best way to ‘treat’ D.I.D. was to stand by the person and give them love and care and warmth to make them as comfortable as possible. In the end it was Ri Jin’s unfailing determination and love that made Do Hyun come to terms with all of his personalities and himself in the end. All he needed was someone to truly care for him and I think that’s really nice.

To sum it up, I’m glad I saw this drama, although it was a bit more fictional than I’d hoped. I’d expected a more realistic depiction of D.I.D. and I felt like some of the personalities such as Yo Na were there more for comic relief – but in contrast that made it more bearable to watch in-between all the angstiness. A lot of tears were spilt in making this drama, evidently.
After this I’m craving for some happy stories, so I’m going to continue with another one that’s been on my list for a while that I’ve been really looking forward to.
I hope my reviews remain interesting to read!