Strong Women Do Bong Soon: Two stories clamped together.

Strong Women Do Bong Soon: *** stars

Korean Drama | Fantasy | Thriller | Romance

Cast: Park Bo-young; Park Hyung-sik; Ji Soo;

Aired :JTBC : Feb to April 2017| 16 + 1 Episodes | 90 minutes

Plot: (Wiki)

Do Bong-soon (Park Bo-young) was born with superhuman strength. Her strength is hereditary and passed along only to the women in her family. Her dream is to create a video game with herself as the main character. She desperately wants to become a willowy and elegant woman, which is the ideal type of her crush, In Guk-doo (Ji Soo), a police officer. Thanks to her strength, she gets the job of a bodyguard, to a rich heir Ahn Min-hyuk (Park Hyung-sik), the CEO of a gaming company, Ainsoft. Contrary to Guk-doo, Min-hyuk is an odd man who is playful, a little spoiled, has no regard for rules, and dislikes policemen. He has recently received anonymous threats, blackmails, and has even been stalked at an occasion.

One day, a series of kidnapping cases break in Dobong-dong, the district Bong-soon lives in, and she is determined to catch the culprit after her friend was targeted. Under the help and training from Min-hyuk, she manages to control her strength to use it for good causes. Min-hyuk and Bong-soon find themselves and their relationship growing into something more.

Review:

The titled gives the away the essence of the story, there are no secrets here. Do Bong Soon from Do Bong Dong (which you will hear alot) is gifted with Superhuman strength genetically. She isn't edgy or tomboyish but actually is a lot like a regular female, shy sweet and girly. She refuses to use her powers, to impress her childhood crush. She is forced to use her powers for work when Ahn Min-hyuk, who has been receiving threats hires her as his bodyguard.

While they are going on about their regular life, a psychopath (Kim Jang-hyun) is haunting bong soon's area. He abducts young skinny girls to get married to based on h is obsession over a play.

This is the basic plot, it all goes down hill when they start introducing more people and sub plots into the story.

The best parts of the show are, Do bong soon and Ahn Min hyuk's love story. How they come to accept their feeling for each other in spite of her opening being in love with Guk-doo. I would giggles and smile and laugh with them with almost every scene. Next best is interaction between, Ahn Min hyuk and Guk-doo, their heated conversations, arguments and agreements through out the show, is one of the reasons I stayed with the show till the end. Third, the actors themselves, Park Bo-young; Park Hyung-sik and Ji Soo have single-handedly carried the weight of entire show on their shoulders.

If the show focused only on these 3 and developing their back stories this would have easily been one of the best shows in 2017. (for some it already is.)

Instead, the show has 3 different sub plots that include Gangsters (Baek Tak Party) , high school kids, a monk, and family issues. In case you stop to think between the show, you will feel lost and disconnected. People loved the show thanks to the actors, the scripts humor and the action. But it is hard to keep track of them all, since the screen time of the sub plots seemed higher than the main characters. The sub plots are shown deeply enough to create a comic show in itself.

The story returns to its original agenda a little too late. It was for Do Bong soon to accept her powers and become the savior she was destined to. In the last few episodes, (Kim Jang-hyun) toys with the police and sneaks up on them every single time. Which actually was a very cool part of the show, ,but it lasted for a very short while.

At some places the show even forces things to just fall into place. like, Bong Soon gets her powers back. The show teased the possibility of it but still, to me it felt out of the place.

Verdict: I didn't hate it but I didn't love it too much. I enjoyed binge watching the show for sure.

*** stars.