Synopsis:
Hong Hee Joo, played by Chae Soo Bin, is a talented young sign language interpreter who has been secretly married to one of the most public figures in South Korea, Baek Sae On, played by Yoon Yeon Seok. Their marriage is strained, and the two are mostly estranged, until Hong Hee Joo is kidnapped. Baek Sae On and Hong Hee Joo find themselves in a whirlwind spiral that will unravel everything they’ve known about each other and the people around them.
Review:
Hello dear reader! Happy holidays and happy new year! I hope your Christmas was relaxing and you had a wonderful time with family, I know I did. I hope you all have been watching these dramas lately, because oh my word we’ve had some great dramas this year. So, as you can expect, this review is going to be packed full of praises for this series.
If you are new to my reviews I rate my dramas on mainly two categories: storytelling, and direction. Under Storytelling, I take into account not just the acting, but the writing, and music as well. It is usually presented as a percentage. Under the category direction, I consider both editing and direction, editing counts for 2 points while direction counts for 3. It'll be out 5. I call them my sticky notes because that tends to be what I write my thoughts on when I'm watching. For When The Phone Rings, I have the story telling at a 92%. Under direction I gave this a 5/5.
This was just like Shop For Killers, a noir series at it's best. Except, When the Phone Rings is much less bloody than Shop For Killers. When the Phone Rings leans much more on traditional noir, more detective work, less blood, and a great deal of suspense. This is what I'm talking about when I want a well thought out drama, minus the saggy, slow middle. Since the drama was so thought out I was thoroughly engaged the entire series and I didn't even mind the plot twists.
If you haven't listened to my new podcast, dear reader, I mentioned that the recent ongoing plot twists have been bothering me lately. This is mostly due to the fact that the plot twists seem to just come out of nowhere and they haven't been making sense to the overall plot. It feels like the plot twists are written in for the sake of having a plot twist, and nothing more. This series has honestly been a breath of fresh air for me.
Another little tidbit that I loved in this series was the call out to K-Media at the opening scene. For those of you who aren't aware, the Korean Entertainment industry, mainly the actors and actresses, are greatly disgruntled with Korean Media. Time and again their yellow journalism has represented a problem throughout the years. Recently, K-Medias mass revelation of a certain celebrity's problems caused him to be cancelled in a blink of an eye. The mass circulation led to his rapid downfall and eventually lead to his death. Korean actors had yet to speak out against this yellow journalism, but they've started to after the actor's unfortunate end.
Another aspect I liked was their minimizing the misunderstandings between the main couple, after the reveal of the initial big secret. Baek Sae On is supposed to be one of the most brilliant minds in South Korea, and since his job consists of being a hostage negotiator and war correspondent he'd have to be good at getting into the minds of his opponents. To the writer's credit and to the actors credit the character does just that. In fact, he's so understanding and invested in the caller/ blackmailer's words that he figures out the culprit (one of them, specifically the caller) fairly quickly. Thank God, because had they dragged the issue out I was going to be annoyed. It would have killed the whole vibe of the show, much like it did with Miss Night and Day.
That being said, I need to put aside a paragraph to spread my love for how well this female lead was written. She is smart, she is strong, she is impulsive. She is not a
common heroine we see in a K-Drama. This character was so well written and a breath of fresh air. The actress to her credit does an excellent job at conveying a soft spoken, but brave individual who will do anything to protect those she loves and herself. I love this character. I think Hong Hee Joo may just be my favorite character of the year. This might be my favorite drama for the year of 2024.
I know lately I've also made a lot of complaints about the end of series breakup cliché. This is one series where I was okay with the "breakup.” Mainly because the way the writer fit it in made sense to the overall plot. This wasn't a forced, "breakup" like almost ever other drama. Not every story needs a break up (*ahem* 25/21, I’m still salty). To be honest, I may not be too angry at it because it's not a regular breakup.
I did have a couple of aspects to the story that confused me, which is the reason I didn't give this series a higher score. During the first initial call the cadence of the caller and the inflection are completely different from that of the second call. There was an obvious stutter on the original caller, but Baek Sae On didn't seem to notice the change in speech. Another aspect that I found weird was the missing kids case. Somewhere along the way I feel like they forgot about it and then somehow snuck it in because they forgot about it and it just so happened to wrap up the show nicely.
Also, I know that they wanted to make the villain as bad as they could, but I don't know if they had to go to the extreme rout they went. His situation was bad enough already. The villain's maniacal laughing is another villain cliché I wish could die. We get it, you're evil. But if you can only show us your evil by maniacal laughter then I think you need to rethink or study some more unhinged, evil people. Give the audience a new fresh idea of what unhinged evil looks like.
As always thank you for joining me on this review, dear reader. These were just some thoughts I had on this series, please leave a comment below on your thoughts. I do love to hear from you. Until next time dear reader!
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