269. Golden Cross 골든 크로스 (2014) Korean

Kim Kang Woo Lee Si Young, Uhm Ki Joon, Han Eun Jung, Jung Bo Suk

Drama Rating: 3/10     Neck Score: A+++

Let's take a guy with a normal family who has struggled a bit because they are as good as they are normal, even though they fight and stuff and don't get why they have to suffer when they are good, and then let's ruin their lives completely just to give us the premise of this show: a secret chaebol organization that steps all over normal people for their greedy, economic controlling power.  There, we have the set up for a perfectly normal revenge drama.  Prosecutor in training, who also happens to be a former Taekwondo star, whose family struggles because of his super upright, honest banker dad, losing everything when his said upright, honest dad is framed for murdering his little sister.  It's obviously set up so this prosecutor will go on a holy rampage and take this secret organization down with his smart brain and snazzy taekwondo skills.  His crush is both the villain's daughter and the prosecutor of his father's case, that's going to lead to a bit of drama, exciting!  Typical revenge melodrama, right?  Well, let's take this typically set up plot and logical progression and do the opposite of everything logical.  That equals this show.  I was so disappointed.



I admit, I should have looked up reviews and stuff before I just watched this show.  I picked it purely on the merit of the cast, which is not always the best idea.  I shouldn't have watched it just because  my grumpy cat (Uhm Ki Joon) was in it, or my girl, Lee Si Young.  Not for Kim Kang Woo's neck, which is so fine, or even the Julian Kang cameo.  I loved the cast members, but this show was a piece of shiz.  It baffled me each episode with how ridiculous it could get.  What a waste of talent, both the actual kind and the visual kind.  It was 100% not what it could have been even if it had the typical writing it deserved.  I'm not even asking for stellar writing, just normal, somewhat logical writing.  Nope.  None of that.  it was just a bag of crazy nonsense.

Our prosecutor in training wasn't smart.  He was just a dude who freaked out and yelled all the time.  He also wasn't even good at taekwondo.  The fighting in this show sucked, and he did no beating up most the time, but just yelled and got beat up more often than not.  I was constantly shouting: "trying fighting for once, Taekwondo," or "wow, good job finally getting a hit" which is just nonsense.  It didn't have any action worth mentioning.  It was way more melodrama.

But if it's melo, don't we expect a good tragic romance?  Well, they looked like they would go that way, but none of the romances were ever worth mentioning, since they lacked the emotional backing.  We are meant to believe he liked or even loved the prosecutor daughter- but I only believed he was using her to both get at her murdering father or even just to investigate the case, since she was the only one who would do it.  That's fine, if they hadn't tried and failed to set up a more than that romance.  Was he supposed to really love her?  I think that's what they were trying to insinuate.  Then we have the turncoat other girl, who is using him as her black knight in this fight.  Why she needed him, I will never know.  She could have been bad-a enough to do it on her own, but they deprived us of that strong female character, and had her fall for our lame Taekwondo, and then be a super lame attempt at a tragic romance as well.  That would not move me to anything but a bit of laughter and then a sigh.  What a waste of talent, she could have been awesome.

They totally didn't use Grumpy Cat like the could have.  I wanted him to be THE bad guy, but in the end he was just a pathetic excuse for a second male lead.  He had the makings of a wonderful puppet master villain, pulling the strings behind the crazy murderer who wanted to cover it up.  But, the crazy murderer WAS the main bad guy.  The accidental murderer who then fooled himself into believing he was innocent, because "we can make the truth what we want."  The worst kind of villain possible.  He also overdid the crazy eyes face twitch thing.  Hammed it up way too much.

All these were just made worse by the fact that the plot followed no logical progression.  The pace was terrible, and it just kept escalating until you wondered if everyone was just on crazy pills and going to end up in an institution.  So much jumping the gun, and futile efforts until we came to a crazy climax way too early, only to have a life and death save that lead to a 3 years later time jump, where it started all over again, leading up to the same ridiculous build up with jumping the gun, futile efforts, craziness at gunpoint, no logic whatsoever, and then a lame lackluster resolution which they could have just done in the first place, but no they had to be irrational first.  All that crazy just to do what they were going to do anyway?  Pathetic.  Plus, Grumpy Cat was not on screen nearly enough.

Then, they had to ruin any semblance of a bitter sweet ending by making the last thing we see leave a sour taste in our mouths.  It wasn't Grumpy Cat, is was the lame villain no one liked or wanted to see.  Rude.  I clearly just had way too much expectations of this show.  I expected it to be logical.  Woops.