Hyde, Jekyll, Me (2015)

Intersting take on multiple personality disorder, too long and drages in key spots

6/10 is my rating. This is a 2015 South Korean Romantic comedy drama with 20, 60 minute episodes

Being a chaebol with a dissociative identify disorder (multiple personality disorder) Gu Seo-jin (Hyun Bin), leads a very complex day to day life where he focuses on his health to an obsessive degree. He tenaciously holds onto his inherited wealth and position by keeping careful control of his alternate personality, Robin, who is his polar opposite. Where Seo-jin is cold and ruthless, Robin is warm hearted and giving. Robin emerges whenver Seo-jin's heart rate exceeds 150 so this adds to Seo-jin's determination not to do anything that would accelerate his heart rate. He sees Robin as a weak character and an embarrassment to his family which would form an obstacle to his ambitions. Jang Ha-na (Han Ji-min), is the daughter of one of Wonderland's fomer employees who was the ring master of the park's circus. As the owner of the park, Seo-jin would like to get rid of that component as it has not earned sufficient ticket sales and interest to make it profitible. However, Ha-na just returned from many years in the United States where she worked with Cirque du Soleil to learn new ways to bring fresh esntertainment for a dying industry and want her chance to lead it to success. Her first challenge is to convince, or coerce if she must, Seo-jin to renew his contract with the circus. Interestingly, after years of keeping his alternate supressed, Ha-na has a way of spawning events that accelerate Seo-jins heart rate and bring Robin out. Ha-na has an immediate dislike for Seo-jin but develops romantic feelings for Robin.

Spoiler altert. What was most suprisiing to me about this one was that many people really liked it. There were those, like me, that did not like it but there were a surpising number of people that liked it enough to rate it a 9 or even a 10. I liked the basic premise. Having someone with dissosiative identity disorder that really only had 1 alternative personality is very unique. Especially when the alternate personality is good but the main personality is somewhat cold and heartless (evil). I thought Hyun Bin did an amazing job of acting like two totally different characters. It was amazing because they really did look and act so totally different it was easy to buy others thinking they were different people. I loved the secretary, he was so supportive of the male lead regardless of whether he was Seo-jin or Robin. He was just a really nice character. There was a cute secondary romance. I liked, early on, when Robin and Ha-na were almost super hero like in their acrobatics and I thought that would be a component of the story. But it was only a weird aside because it was only an episode or so where they were being very energetic and acrobatic. Later she would be trapped in places and I would wonder why she didn't just use her circus skills. They also set up about how she was going to change the show and it was going to be new and spectacular but we only saw a snippet. And Robin's character also underwent a dramatic change from this hero like savior to just the nice guy once he and the main girl started having their romance. In the beginning Ha Na thought that Robin was Seo-jin's brother but when she knew that he was an alternate personality she still treated him like he was completely separate. When Seo-jin started to get better she was adamant that she only liked Robin to the extent that Robin did not integrate and Seo-jin willingly remained mentally ill so that she would have Robin. It was obvious she also liked Seo-jin but she would be such teenage girl like fixation with Robin that she was actually cruel to Seo-jin in her insistence that she only loved Robin. I thought it became very annoying how she continued to treat Robin as a completely separate person and even did things to solidify that additional personality. I hoped she would accompany Seo-jin as he was developing that other side of himself and realize that he really was also Robin as well. In the end she did but it would have been better, in my opinion, if she had watched the movies with him and observed that evolution. There were parts where the plot seemed to drag, particularly after all the major conflicts had resolved and it was just about her relationship with the male lead. I found it hard to like her when I felt like she was almost Munchausen with him and his mental illness. It was very selfish for her to insist that Robin stay and that she was only in love with him. If you can imagine sometime when you had no recollection of an event, such as black out drunk, and how distressing it is to wonder what you did during that time. For DID patients that is a common occurance. So for her to encourage and insist on the alternate personality was cruel to Seo-jin who had to experience those blank time periods. I also felt it was stretched to 20 episodes, like there was only content for about 16 episodes but it was stretched to 20. It ended well with her together with Seo-in and he was cured. I recommend this series to those that like mental health shows. It has a different take on certain aspects of the disorder than "Kill Me, Heal Me." Very unique concept in there being only 2, essentially, personalities, and the main one is the "evil" personality.

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Maybe I'm just easy to please or my intrigue with K-dramas and C-dramas is so new that I love them all but I personally enjoyed the story line. It wasn't typical. It took Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and flipped it and I completely loved it. The love story was awesome. Even the story line surrounding the trauma. I don't know enough about DID other than what I studied as a psychology major to be annoyed with whether the portrayal was correct but I believe the writers did enough research to know what it looks like to have two completely personalities dwelling within one person. The male lead is gorgeous and Sung Joon's portrayal of his character is amazing. His voice is soothing as it should be as a doctor in his profession. He lulls you into a sense of security with him and then. There are things to complain about but I found more to love than complain. It was a love story through and through but not the typical one. Watch it!

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THE MOST UNDERRATED DRAMA

For an unkown reason this drama received a lot of criticism. The story line was really good it comfortably took care of every aspect of falling in love with personalities of the same person. Hyun Bin was amazing in portraying both roles. Agreed they dragged it a bit but even then this was a well planned out drama and definitely needs to be watched. It's unfortunate it released along with kill me heal me. While i like that too i think it took on too many personalities and had too less time to deal with them properly. While that feels nice but leaves you confused by the end of it. This leaves a good feeling while making us sad. It leaves behind a satisfied feeling. On the whole this deserves a watch.

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I never wanted to watch this when it first came out simply because i foolishly didn't like the glasses image of Hyun Bin. Just recently I became curious and turned out their ratings flopped so bad for a drama with such casts. Probably because of the bad reviews and low ratings, I was intrigued, started watching with very low expectation and ended up finding myself hooked to the drama. There are some parts which were a bit draggy, but it was actually a well-written drama. The way the writer actually put emphasis on both Hyde and Jekyll characters, and managed to slowly integrate them was indeed applaudable. It was psychologically interesting. I have seen people commenting that some scenes are illogical but if you look closer, those scenes depicted real life situations for a fact that human mind is complex and each one of us manifests pain differently

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Before you see this KDrama research D.I.D. disorder so you will understand and rate this movie correctly because I don't understand the low ratings that I'm seeing on this website or others. The comments about the screenwriting being *shitty* are absurd.

I am so glad that this KDrama is not similar to what the U.S. profiles Jekyll and Hyde. The U.S. version is scary and gruesome. I believe that the writers took D.I.D. to another level and didn't twist this mental illness. I thank the writers for bringing a very important but sad mental illness to the Korean Screen. I noticed that some Korean Screenwriters bring a lot to the screen when it comes to mental illness with importance and bring about awareness.

Hyun Bin with his character playing two different types of personalities must have been difficult and he did that with excellence. I applaud Hyun Bin! He did so great that I even thought they were two different people but in the same body. How difficult is that! Han Ji Min who played her character had to deal with a personality whom she deeply loved and the other personality she had to tolerate was perfection and believable. To see their personalities merge was very emotional.

*Standing Ovation* for the whole Hyde, Jekyll, and Me team, cast, writers, producers, visual, costume, and sound.

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I'm sure there will be some people that like this drama but for me it was just ok. Another example of a drama that had potential but then falls into the quagmire of "too much is not a good thing". For one this probably should have been a 16 episode drama, not 20. It really did not need 4 extra episodes worth of, well, for lack of a better word, "drama", or "perceived drama". Which is really a shame because Hyun Bin and Han Ji Min are good actors with great roles under their belt. And they did good at portraying the characters in this show. My personal feeling is there was too much romance drama, so much so that after a while it became repetitive and unnecessary. I can't say I would recommend this drama to anyone unless they really like the leads enough to watch it.

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Potential lost on those additional episodes

WARNIG, this review contains some massive spoilers!

This drama gave me a lot of mixed feelings. For the most part it seemed very interesting and actually well written. I think I should be warned beforehand by really bad reviews, but at first I didn’t understand why it was so criticised, as it seemed to be actually entertaining. But then something happened.

Let’s start from the beginning. The idea is simple and actually well known. Gu Seo Jin is a young chaebol, director of amusement park. He is very composed, everything must be according to his words, he rules his company in a very stoic manner. And there’s a very good reason for it. Seo Jin has a DID, dissociative identity disorder. And his other identity, Robin, who’s name everyone avoid, can appear when Seo Jin’s heart rate will go too high. So no excitement for Seo Jin. But his five year steak of being Robin-free is about to be broken when Ha Na appears on the scene. Young circus actress work on Robin in mysterious ways and soon he appears.

And honestly, that’s a neat idea, and how it was done was also interesting. The comparison with Kill Me, Heal Me comes naturally, so I’d only say that transformation lacked weird effects, like change of eye colours, magically appearing tattoos or eyeliners (as it was in Kill Me Heal Me). It all seemed a bit more natural here, but of course it wasn’t perfect either.
And at first I really liked this drama. It all seemed pretty well. Production-wise it might’ve not be the best looking, there were some weird, pretty ridiculous moments, but not bad at the end. Main characters were interesting and well played (I mean, duh… Hyun Bin, right?).

It was sometimes painfully cliche. Because of course, and here comes major spoiler, so be aware, Seo Jin’s trauma from the childhood was caused by kidnapping. And of course, the child that was kidnapped with him is now a perp who kidnapped Seo Jin’s therapist. And Seo Jin wanted to save the kid as well but wasn’t able to do it, so that’s why Robin has a need to save people.

But aside all those things, up to some point this drama was pleasant to watch, just like that. Wasn’t the best, but I wasn’t bored, I felt somehow even invested in the story. Characters were interesting, there was some king of plot, even though writers seemed to forget about some motives and they brought them back out of spite.

What you can see from the beginning is cheap production. It’s maybe not incredibly obvious but I laughed my butt off when I’ver seen how they’ve changed car for accident scene. Brand new Mercedes shapeshifter into old Nissan. I mean, color was the same so I guess it’s all fine. But you can see after scenes like this that it’s not all perfect here. At least CGI gorilla wasn’t the worst.

So I actually enjoyed watching it, it all seemed very good, aside of those minor flaws that can be overlooked considering that this drama is not that new.

But you may ask, what happened then? Why am I writing good things about drama that I’ve marked so low?
Well… it all happens somewhere in the middle of the series. I’m always a bit sceptical towards drama that have more that standard 16 episodes. I’ve learned that many times writers just don’t use this additional time perfectly. And it happened here again. For four episodes we have an absolute chaos that doesn’t really changes anything. There’s a lot going on, but it doesn’t have any effect on the main plot.

A lot of new motives were brought then and some were totally forgotten about (third identity, anyone?). And yet, there were just too much information, too much was happening at the same time but the issues were not solved. There was no real plot development.

There was one episode that I swear was just dialogues. Nothing real happened, there was just exposition talking. Who’s who, and what could happen, that sort of things.

And the villain, interesting at first he grew into this exaggerated, over the top bond-type villain, who can do anything and cannot be captured. There were moments that I was wondering if he’s invisible because despite doing pretty obvious things, police still couldn’t figure out that it was him all along.

And don’t start me on the hostage situation episode. Yes, EPISODE. The whole episode when we had exclusively hostage situation. Nothing more happened, just talking about kidnapper. How it ended? I have no effing idea, it was so chaotic that I actually I haven’t catch all of it.

After this we had stretching motives till the very end. One issue had to be talked through by everyone and before anything happened my curiosity was long gone.

And only at the end, last two episodes we had some sense back, those two episodes brought my faith in this drama back a bit, but nothing could bring back my time that I’ve lost before.

So… I’m a bit in a pickle here. I really wanted to like this drama. Despite all of its flaws, ridiculous solutions and poor production. I liked main characters and I really liked how it all ended between them. But the truth is that Hyde, Jekyll, Me should have 16 episodes, no more. That’s it, thank you.

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It was a pretty good drama. Hyun bin played the main lead who has a severe case of schizophrenia and has an alter ego that saves people where Hyun bin himself is laden with guilt from his past and gets strange symptoms like anxiety. I liked all the characters the romance was swoon worthy and Hyun Bin is so handsome. Interesting plot with cliff hangers that keep you engaged. Fun and romantic and hilarious at times. I absolutely enjoyed watching. The female lead started out a little outrageous but seriously this is a guilty pleasure drama so the outrageous stuff didn't bother me.

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This is a great character based drama that depicts a male lead with Dissociative identity disorder (DID) stemming from a traumatic event in his childhood! There is no good vs. evil, the main lead’s persona split into two personalities, one that is cold hearted and cowardish in order to protect himself and one that is warm, understanding, and brave. The lead male actor (Hyun Bin as Gu Seo Jin/Robin) did such a great job that one totally forgets that he is still one person. This drama’s plot starts with Gu Seo Jin unexpectedly meeting Jang Ha Na which becomes the trigger to Robin’s (Gu Seo Jin’s alter ego) reappearance. From henceforth, and through a series of unfortunate events, this man starts on his way of healing, reconciliation, and falling in love. It has a good ending but the drama could’ve used one more episode to strengthen the lead couple’s relationship. Still, it is a great drama with many good actors playing their characters very well and a fantastic antagonist. Enjoy it!

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After two years of dropping and putting this drama on hold, I've finally finished it and am baffled to say that I really did enjoy it.

Hyde, Jekyll, Me is a kdrama centred on a character with DID that came out at the same time as the much better received Kill Me, Heal Me. Because they share similarities in concept and came out around the same time, these two dramas are held up to one another automatically, so I think it's important to recognize how and why KMHM had such good reception when HJM couldn't pull in ratings. Other reviewers have mentioned the similar time slots, so I won't get into that. Instead, let's focus on HJM's shortcomings.

The story is about Goo Seo Jin, a rich chaebol heir who was kidnapped as a child alongside his friend--check off another similarity to KMHM. The trauma from that event and his inability to do anything about it eventually birthed Robin, his heroic, kind-hearted alter ego. But the story doesn't start with Robin's birth and instead, we're shown Seo Jin's position later in life, his bad personality and selfishness as he meets ringmaster Jang Ha Na and the two clash. One big drawback to the series is the very start of it. It took me two attempts to get through the first episode, and another two to make it past the first four. The beginning is clunky with weird pacing, an even weirder setup, and not a lot to suck you into the story. The first introduction to Robin as a character is cringy. He feels less like a person and more like a comic book superhero someone came up with in middle school. Both he and the main personality feel like caricatures, and it's painful to watch. Getting into this drama is hard, there are no two ways around that. But does that mean it's not worth watching? Well... I have a story for that.

I started watching HJM coming off of a few really great dramas. I absolutely fell in love with those dramas back-to-back and once they were over, I couldn't bring myself to get invested in any of the other good-looking shows out there. Ah, I thought, the dreaded burnout. That's when I looked back at my 'dropped' list and saw the name Hyde, Jekyll, Me. I went into it wanting a trashy, badly-written drama that I could laugh at. I only paid half attention, especially to the earliest episodes, and it worked out exactly as I expected it to. The plot was cliche, a bit stupid, with some moments that didn't make a lot of sense and a bit of dragging towards the middle that I was used to seeing at the halfway. Every now and then, I would put the drama back on hold again and would switch to series that I was invested in until the burnout came and I would inevitably need my 'trash drama' once more.

But something strange happened amidst all that. The writing wasn't good by any means, even when the acting was decent, and my wife and I would mock and laugh at some of the things that they were doing, but then it came time for the final episodes. The main conflict was over, the antagonist was gone, and there were still a few episodes to go. All that was left to settle was the conflict of the dual personalities, something that, remembering KMHM, I expected to take maybe half an episode. But it didn't. And as I watched the characters go through their days and saw the inevitable end creeping up on them, I realized that I actually cared about the characters for some strange reason. The characters I thought of as caricatures grew on me when I wasn't looking and suddenly they mattered to me. And sure, what happened from there on was predictable, but I was still invested.

Just like how production values don't make a show, you don't always need a solid story to love something. Sometimes all you need is time and a little bit of passion. HKM is nothing of a masterpiece, but that doesn't mean it did everything poorly. Instead of focusing on the outward appearance of DID like KMHM did, it put time into the internal effects that the illness had on both Seo Jin and Robin, and the ripple effect it had on the people they surrounded themselves with. Even while its handling of the issue was silly, with hypnosis sprinkled in for added effect, and even with Robin being a better person than Seo Jin and more likeable to boot, it remembered that the root of everything was mental illness. It took the time to make Robin a person instead of a stereotype the way that KMHM treated its alters, and it respected its characters enough to give them a proper end.

The production is a bit of a mess, the writing is sloppy and premise is weird, but it's a drama with heart. Don't take it seriously, and you may be pleasantly surprised.

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