Drama Queen/I Have Notes…for Black

See—this is why I keep old journals….so I can go through them and self-plagiarize for this blog. Until I found that journal, I forgot how angry the ending of Black made me when I watched it in 2018, so I couldn’t be happier about doing an “I Have Notes” post on it. This is also somewhat of a momentous post for my “Drama Queen” series because Black was, ((sniff)), my first ever K-drama. The only titles I had seen up to that point were gooey romances with people half my age, so I wasn’t interested. But Black caught my eye, and not just because the male lead (Song Seung-heon) is one fiiiiiine-looking gentleman. No, I’ve always been a sucker for dramas that engage the thought experiment of what it might be like to be a grim reaper: which is how I lost 3 hours of my life I’m never getting back to the execrable Meet Joe Black. And why I played Spiritfarer. And why I’m biting my nails until the final installment of the Bleach epic, Thousand-Year Blood War Part 3, drops in a few days. Anyhoo, that’s what Black is about—except for of course because this is a K-drama, there’s a love triangle (quadrangle? pentangle?) and a crazy ol’ plot twist that I’ll do my best not to spoil for you. I don’t think I’ll have to because all of the above is quite fine; it’s the final episode that’s absolutely crackers. There’s a reason for that: apparently, the show runners thought they had like 9 more episodes to film, and then they were informed, because ratings were slipping and the production company was out of money, that they had 1 episode to wrap everything up. If you’ve watched Black, you know exactly what I’m talking about. If not, I’ll do my best to explain without too many spoilers until we get to the changes I would make to the finale.

Synopsis: Kang Ha-ram (the amazing Go Ara) is a young woman who sees death; specifically, she sees a dark Shade hanging around people who are about to die. This makes her no fun at parties. Meanwhile, Black is an experienced grim reaper (#444) whose new partner (#419) pines for the mortal world he has left behind and makes a break for it by jumping into a body just as the soul leaves it. Black is tasked with tracking him down for punishment by the Death Squad (yep), and impulsively jumps into the body of the inept detective Han Moo-gang to do so. Problem is, in his mortal form he doesn’t have the ability to see spirits, so he can’t track #419. Lucky for him, Ha-ram was childhood friends with Han Moo-gang and shows up at the hospital to console him. He quickly recognizes her powers and strings her along to help him find #419 under the guise of getting to the bottom of what happened to her childhood love and his half-brother Kim Joon.

They both get what they want in the end—and find out that it’s the last thing they actually wanted. That irony is generated by more than the usual run of K-dramatic twists and turns. There is (of course) a serial killer who left a series of cold cases in his wake, one of which is the murder of Ha-ram’s father when she was a child, which has left her mother mostly drunk and 100% emotionally unavailable. There is a love polygon with Ha-ram and Moo-gang at opposing points and Kim Joon and Moo-gang’s fiancée-with-a-dark-secret Soo-wan in between, as well as Man-soo, the good-hearted scion of a corrupt construction chaebol CEO who’s friends with Soo-wan and friend-zoned by Ha-ram. His dad is involved in a dark ring of insurance fraud and sex trafficking (cue Soo-wan’s dark secret) run by Congressman Chen, who’s the dark node at which all of the show’s mysteries intersect. Naturally, there are incriminating tapes floating about until it’s time for them to enter as plot devices. There are several extra reapers hanging about the wings, too: not just #419, who’s now living in the body of a K-pop star, but the hilarious #007 and #416, who are supposed to be helping Black but who mostly spend their time living it up in a Seoul they never got to experience in their mortal lives; also, a creepy doctor who knows something about Kim Joon’s death, and a shaman who provides a critical clue that leads Black/Moo-gang to the revelation of the Big Twist. After that, if I don’t want to spoil, all I can say that almost everyone else gets what they deserve, one way or another. And we do find out why Han Moo-gang died and that Kim Joon didn’t vanish—at least not in the rubble of a shopping-mall collapse as reported.

What I would keep: Everything up to Episode 18. I mean, it’s batsh*t crazy, but in a good way. You find yourself rooting for all the various side characters and their stories as much as you do for Black and Ha-ram, who have 1000% more chemistry when they hate each other than when they start falling in love BTW. The acting is generally very good, particularly by Go Ara and the veteran Jo Jae-yun (#007). The Big Twist is legitimately a gasp, deeply spooky and heartbreaking, and it’s set up quite well. And have I mentioned how pretty Song Seung-heon is? OK, fine then.

What I would change: Episode #18. **SPOILERS AHEAD** Plus, not much of this is going to make any sense to you whatsoever unless you’ve seen the aforementioned terrible final episode. So, go watch Black and then come back 🙂

• Ha-ram shooting Kim Joon. This makes zero sense even given the writers had 1 episode to tie up all the strings. Her mother would never let her run off after her father once she’d seen his Shade, she would never have just found that gun laying around, much less pick it up, she would never have randomly shot at a silhouette not knowing who it was, and no 10-year-old who’s never shot a gun could shoot that accurately at that distance.
• #419 appearing by the boxcars at the right time to lure Black into the chase and the wreck—deus ex machina.
• The mayor killing Kim Yoon-seok and running Chen corp. Too much and doesn’t drive anything forward that needs driving.
• Young Ha-ram getting hold of the birthday tape that Joon recorded for Soo-wan; unbelievable coincidence.
• All the nonsense about Black/Joon asking the Death Squad for the ultimate punishment of never having existed for the crime of killing a mortal: the Death Squad has shown no evidence of having that kind of power, it’s a wildly excessive punishment, and it doesn’t actually fix any of the problems that need fixing. It’s just a Hail Mary attempt to generate heartbreak that lands flat.

What I would do instead:

• Black gives the laptop with the evidence to the police, and they find Joon’s body in the ocean.
• Chen comes after Ha-ram for the tape and Black kills Chen to save Ha-ram. They’re going to live Happily Ever After, but Kim Yoon-seek shows up and kills Black. Everyone thinks he’s just vanished given the situation.
• Ha-ram turns in the tape and Kim Yoon-seok goes to jail.
• Dr. Han commits suicide when Black/Moo-gang is killed and reveals everything in her suicide note, including that she killed Joon after he was injured in the shopping-mall collapse to save Moo-gang with his heart.
• Joon’s ashes are buried by his mom and Soo-wan before they go to the U.S. together.
• Ha-ram marries Man-soo and has surgery so she can’t see shades. She lives a happy life and wears the bracelet she gave Joon and got back from the time capsule with the tapes.
• We also see Captain Bong promoted to commissioner, Kim Sun-young and Mrs. Kim happily living in the U.S. and Ha-ram’s mom plying with her grandkids.
• When Ha-ram finally dies at a ripe old age, Black/Joon comes to greet her wearing the bracelet she gave him, and she realizes what happened when Joon’s heart was transplanted into Moo-gang. The Death Squad prevented Black/Joon from vanishing since he killed in defense of a human life, and since he wasn’t technically a reaper when that happened as Joon’s body was found before Black killed Chen. Ha-ram and Joon live Happy Ever After(life).