I didn’t really given much thought choosing this drama as my next watch. I’ve just finished a series of long and sometimes pretty bad dramas and just needed something light to watch for my enjoyment. And I must say, Welcome to Waikiki does its job absolutely perfectly.

Don’t expect too much tough. It’s not flashy, it doesn’t have epic plot, it’s just simple as it is and it’s a solid piece of sitcom laugh.
The main strength that I noticed from the very beginning are the characters. We have a bunch of amazingly written unique personas that are not without the flaws, but it makes them even more relatable. And even if you’re not aspiring actor or a bearded woman, you’ll quickly feel in guesthouse Waikiki just like home.

And a laugh part? This drama has one of the most ridiculous humour that I’ve seen in a while. It has everything to make you at least smile like crazy. It’s a bit more balanced humour than I’ve seen in Sound of Your Heart (since that seems like a closest comparison from the drama that I’ve watched) but still manages to provide some fart jokes. So if you’re not into crude humour, you should still watch it, but maybe squint from time to time. Take a break, you know.

This drama doesn’t really have a main character. There’s not really main couple, everyone will find something to their liking and I think that’s a very strong side of this series. It’s just about pure enjoyment, and when you don’t really like one of the characters? No worries, there’s still plenty to choose from.

Also, pacing. That’s what this drama is doing great. All of twenty episodes are divided into two stories each. So the pace is really good, you hardly feel the passing of time and suddenly you need to click this “watch next episode” button.

Acting? Perfect, I haven’t seen one bad actor here, even characters that appear in one episodes are truly fantastically played (nearly deaf sound technician? Count me in, I want to see more of this story!). The main group of characters are partially played by actors that I already knew and they certainly delivered.

Overall that was a nice breath of fresh air in my drama schedule. I’m not regretting adding it to my list.
And in those tough times it brings very important message, that everything is gonna be gwenchana, gwenchana…

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Grass is always greener on the other side

Writing this review took me more that I care to admit. For a long time I wasn’t sure why, but it dawned on me, that the reason is fairly simple. This drama didn’t bring any emotions to me. It was just as average as it could. And it’s not exactly wrong thing.

Let’s start from the beginning, Cha Joo Hyuk, our main character is just an average bank employee. No-one really special. The problem is that he’s not really happy with his life, especially with his wife, who changed throughout the years and become very mean and even brutal person towards him. Having two little children doesn’t really make his life easier, especially that his private life really takes its toll on his work.

So it’s fair to say, he wished his life was different. And luckily he gets his chance of changing the future when he goes back in time to the day that changed his life. So the next day he wakes up in different house with different woman by his side. But is this change really for better?

This is the question that follows our main character, Cha Joo Hyuk, for the whole drama. There’s this old saying that came to my mind when I was watching the series: “life is always greener on the other side”, which means that we always find things that we don’t have more desirable. And this is basically the moral of this story. Because Joo Hyuk’s new life is not so perfect either. Soon he discovers that his wife, that he complained so much before was like that mostly because of him. When he meets her in this new life, she seems completely different, more likeable person. And his new wife is not so perfect as he thought she would be.
Joo Hyuk finally realises that problem with his marriage wasn’t his wife but rather what their relationship made of her and he’s sure that he doesn’t want to make this mistake again.

This is also a story of how our life choices matter and how we influence with our behaviour life of others. About mistakes of the past and understanding their consequences. It’s a story of how the grass is always greener on the other side.

The characters very strongly develop throughout the series and not only because of changes that Joo Hyuk makes in the past. Their choices have real influence on their character and later actions.

The thing that really didn’t stand out was the music or lack of actually original soundtrack. All we get is mostly generic background tune. So there’s not much to talk about here, but honestly I’ve noticed it in the middle of the drama and it wasn’t really nothing bad here.

I love how Joo Hyuk’s coworker’s attitude changes towards him in different scenarios. At first he wasn’t liked because he was always late and unreliable. Then they were nice to him because he married to influential family and basically he could do anything without consequences. They were finally truly friendly towards him when he was consciously himself and wasn’t burdened by problems in his relationships. He was most liked when we was literally the best version of himself.

There’re some good things I can say about this series, it has this absolutely amazing main idea, that I loved from the start. The only problem is that I don’t think it was used well enough. At the end we’ve got very solid drama, with good cast, but after finishing last episode I’ve felt a bit disappointed. This is just not one of those highly memorable dramas that you think about weeks after finishing it.
But on the other hand, it doesn’t have to be. What it is, is just enough.

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Fantastically paced show, shame that only in the second half.

Honestly, if this series started on 6th episode or if the pace of the action was the same throughout the whole show rather than only during second half, I’d gladly gave it a ten point score. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. For the first half of the show we can observe festival of very poor CGI (honestly, couple of times I had to check when this series was made, because for a moment I assumed that in late nineties) and very two dimensional characters. I call them “one line characters” these are the ones, that you can describe only by one line. For example “This is John, he’s the drone guy”. And we have around five characters like this introduced in one scene. This is luckily corrected on the second half of the show (two dimensional characters, not the CGI, this is poor till the very end) but I felt that it was way too late for that. And shame, because on about 6th or 7th episode this show starts to be amazing. We finally get some depth to the characters, action gets on its track and motives are finally clear.
I’d get back to the beginning of the show once again. Let’s talk about how this show is made. Because for some time we have a plethora of singe scenes that seemed to be cut in half. And there’s like a hour long break between those halves, which results of situations like this:
In first half of the scene enigmatic character enters the restaurant. The owner is suprised, since she haven’t seen him for ten years. We don’t see the face of the character, he doesn’t say a word. Cut.
Second scene, about half of the episode later, we finally see the face of the character, he sits by the table and orders. Brother of the owner explains that this is that guy who haven’t beed visiting the restaurant for a couple of years. We get the name. How it’s relevant to the story? It really isn’t, we get a bit of more explanation at the end of the series, but it’s not so important to make viewer figure out who this guy is for half of episode.
Plus he have a lot of characters to follow, a lot of threads that happen simultaneously (or at least that’s how they’re shown), we have characters from the past and their present versions. I was watching it on Rakuten, where you can turn on comments from the viewers, and trust me, not only me had problems to follow what’s happening on the screen.
The problem is, that if I would have some more of social life or we wouldn’t be in the middle of the pandemic, I’d decide that my time is too precious for this. And that would be a big mistake, because last five episodes are amazing. At this point we finally have some character development (finally we can clearly see who’s who). Scattered pieces of the plot finally come together. All lines are connected. And even silly moments don’t hurt so much (I mean fighting using Samsung phone, because you know, product placement, we need to show how durable this thing is).
To finalise, I can say that it’s either great show with poor beginning or average show with very good ending. I guess it all depends of which perspective you’ll get.

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Happiness is the feeling you get when you know this drama is good

I don’t know why I haven’t heard much about this drama, but this is a terrible shame. Because what would we get from mix of High Rise and #Alive (pardon my limited library of zombie themed series)? Well, apparently something very very good.

Young couple Sae Bom and Yi Hyun moves into newly built apartment complex. We have a vast variety of characters and the higher we go the weirder they get. But the titular happiness doesn’t take long, soon the media report about new virus called Madman Rabies. People infected have very strong craving for human blood and being bitten means fast infection. Our main characters are already familiar with new virus but to save themselves from it they’ll first have to fight human stupidity.

The strong side of this drama are certainly characters. Without it, drama set mostly in closed off building wouldn’t be half as interesting. And we have very broad spectrum of the worst and most annoying characters you’ll meet. And even decent people that we meet at the beginning soon begin to be not so nice faced with greed and need of self preservation. They’ll do horrible things to end up on top (literally considering the building and figuratively).

The thing is that soon we’ll learn that zombies are not the biggest danger here. They’re easy to avoid and most of the times harmless. But normal people, completely aware of what’s going on, blinded by their own needs and flaws are the ones we should run away from.

Because apart from our main couple, Sae Bom who works in military and Yi Hyun who works in police, the rest of the tenants are completely unaware of the danger lurking outside the building and soon this would be first problem. Because try to explain something to the people so entitled that they value others by the number of the floor they’re living on.

Even though the drama is set in one place and there’s not really a lot to see here, it manages to keep the viewer interested all the time. A lot of things are going on here but on a small terrain so sometimes viewer might feel a bit detached. Add to it an eerie music that just seems to warn us that something can happen any moment and we have very unique feeling.

Somewhere in the middle of it I was sure I’ll just binge watch it till the very end. This is one of those dramas that viewer don’t feel the passage of time. The constant action is so entertaining that suddenly we reach the end of the episode. And it’s hard not to watch the next one right away.

I have two “buts” without which this drama would be one of the best I’ve watched recently.
One is a villain that emerges in the second half of the story. First, he’s not really needed here. We have enough bad characters here to fill another two seasons. Second, he’s in my opinion not developed enough. We don’t have him for long enough to know his motives. With all of the rest characters we can gradually get to know them and explore their personalities. He’s like a jack in the box. He jumps out of nowhere (well, not exactly, but in a sense, yes) and here he is, the evil one. We have a brief explanation but I feel that it wasn’t enough. His character just seemed rushed and without proper explanation of his actions.

Second issue here is with the montage. I don’t know what happen, but we have several situation that we have a sudden freeze frame before the cut. I think this could be a place where commercials would start, but this is a first time I see it done so sloppily. It was really noticeable and didn’t look good.

But overall, this is amazingly well pace, dynamic drama. With interesting characters and well written plot. From start to the finish it doesn’t let the viewer rest even for a bit. We feel like a part of the story being locked up in the building.

That was very enjoyable drama and great comeback of Park Hung Sik after his military enlistment. May his future projects be equally good.

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