Halfway Report: Master's Sun

Yep. I have, indeed, found my crack for this year. So far, at least.

I'm so glad the Hong sisters have found better footing with Master's Sun because the last drama they penned, for the lack of a better term, sucked. Big sucked big time. And as a Hong sisters fan, I was extremely disappointed. They had Gong Yoo acting like a high school student trapped in a body of a grown adult! That premise in itself was a huge amount of fodder for comedy gold. Unfortunately, they bit off more than they could chew when towards the end of the drama it felt like they had no idea how to resolve anything.

The same cannot be said about Master's Sun, thank ye drama gods. A girl who can see ghosts and falls in love with a chaebol is an easier premise than, say, having your twin frozen as an embryo to later be allowed to grow up so he can provide you with healthy organs, but then you switch bodies and while you're trapped in your twin's comatosed body he falls in love with your fiancée... and if that short description did not just blow your mind - in the worst ways possible - I don't know what will.

Aaannnnyway. Suffice it to say, Master's Sun is doing a better job at showing us what the Hong sisters are made of and it brings us back to some of their greatest hits (i.e. My Girl, You're Beautiful, Greatest Love). Sometimes, literally.

In Master's Sun, we have our lead girl Tae Gong-shil, played spectacularly by Gong Hyo-jin (Greatest Love), who is down and out after an accident leaves her with supernatural tendencies to see and interact with dead people. This paranormal skill has her on the edge all the time because ghosts tend to gravitate towards her, some even nagging her to act out favors for them. Not only are her ghosts scary, they've also caused her several job opportunities.

Enter Joo Joong-won, played by the ever so handsome So Ji-sub (Phantom), the president of Kingdom Group. He's self-centered, arrogant, and driven by money. He's also hiding a secret about his dead first love who passed away as a result of a traumatic kidnapping incident when they were younger - the same incident that left our leading man with dyslexia.

Things get interesting when Gong-shil realizes that her ghosts disappear when she gets into physical contact with Joong-won. So she ingratiates herself to him in order to keep a job at Kingdom Mall and to ensure he's always in her vicinity for her to touch (to make the ghosts go poof, of course) in case things get too frightening. In return, Joong-won needs Gong-shil to communicate with his dead ex-girlfriend to track down the ₩10 billion ransom paid in the form of Joong-won's mother's diamond necklace during the kidnapping incident.

Keeping someone close by, no matter how much they annoy you at first, will always lead to them realizing they have feelings for each other. This is the law. In dramaland, at least. So right now, in the timeline we're currently in in the drama, Joong-won has finally accepted the fact that he might be in love with Gong-shil and actually finds her to confess.

This complicates matters for Kang Woo, played by idol-actor Seo In-guk (Reply 1997). Kang Woo is the strait-laced head of security at Kingdom. He is also playing spy for Joong-won's absentee father. He was planted at Kingdom Mall in order to feed information to daddy dearest about the people who surround Joong-won and if any of them might have anything to do with the dead first love and/or the kidnapping. In the course of his spy work though, he ends up falling for Gong-shil.

Right now, what I'm loving the most about the drama is the sizzling chemistry between our leads. So Ji-sub and Gong Hyo-jin play off of each other very well and their onscreen romance has me squealing at my screen at every turn.

Also, two happy thumbs up to the Hong sisters for being able to bring in familiar elements from their previous projects but giving them a fresh touch. What's a Hong sisters drama without a symbolic trinket? Or meta jokes? Or metaphors upon metaphors upon metaphors?

Each episode has me feeling every spectrum of emotion available because this is a drama that dared mix rom-com with horror. And while some of the ghosts are played for laughs, most of them are indeed frightening. Who would've thought that those two genres would ever be compatible with each other?

So despite some some faulty editing, several re-hashed plotlines, and So Ji-sub's Joo Joong-won being a bit similarly played to Cha Seung-won's Dokko Jin (from previous Hong sisters drama Greatest Love), this show has me wanting more. I'm so glad the Hong sisters are back and rocking it. If this is anything like their better works, we have so much to look forward to. Hong sisters, fighting!

What are your thoughts on the drama? Let me know in the comments.