411. Signal 시그널 (2016) Korean

Lee Je Hoon, Kim Hye Soo, Cho Jin Woong, Jang Hyun Sung, Jung Hae Kyun

Drama Rating: 9/10     Neck Score: B

I honestly don't remember why I didn't watch this one as it was airing. The two possibilities are that it was either not subbed on a site I subscribe to (I think that's the most likely) or that I was watching too many heavy/dark dramas at once and I couldn't. I do usually need to watch like 3 fluffy types to every 1 heavy one. Call it escapism. Anyway, once I miss the concurrent airing window, it's way easier to put it off in favor of currently airing ones, so even when I knew it was available on the Netflix, I still waited until my love of Kim Hye Soo made me finally just do it. (You'd think my love of Lee Je Hoon and Cho Jin Woong already would have, but I guess not). It's all about timing. Anyway, it's one I always wanted to watch, heard so much good about, and now finally did. It was worth all the praise too. It literally wrenched every emotion from me. Every single kind. All the feels! It was good.



The premise is this. A young punk police lieutenant who happens to hate the police (irony there) finds a walkie-talkie that lets him talk to a police detective from the pass, and together they help solve cold cases (spanning from like 1989-2000)- in either the past or present. The cool thing is that some of these cold cases were based on real cases in Korea, which lends a level of reality to it that was super cool. Also, the two perspectives on the case, from a detective currently in the thick of the crimes, and a profiler looking at the cold case files, which even lends a personal touch to the cases, humanizing the victims and even the perpetrators to a point too.

You end up getting really really attached to the characters too. As much as the two detectives on the walkies are building a strange relationship with each other, you are building one with them too. I got so attached. They made me cry so many times. It's surprising how close they all get when they only get minutes to talk at such random times. Obviously we get to see what is happening in the past and present, so can see more, but they also have that to an extent. There is obviously a lot of past there, and they are all strangely connected. I love that the show doesn't give everything to us at once, but we get to figure out everything a bit by bit, and a lot is just lost, like the clues of a cold case. So when we make a breakthrough and get to find out more about a character, it makes you extremely excited, even though it's also usually heartbreaking. This is a crime show. There is a lot of murder/rape/suicide, etc. And yes, most of the murders are serial murderers, because those are more likely to end up as cold cases, because they kill for a very different motive than the average murderer (listen to me sounding like an expert when I watched one show 😆).

All the feels. Laughing, bawling, yelling, on the edge of your seat anxious, scared, angry, happy, crying, more crying, all the crying, your face will hurt crying, more happy, bitter sweet, hope... I did mean all the emotions. It actually messed up with my sleep that night because I binged the end, forgot the episodes were 90 minutes not 60, tried to go to bed right away, and ended up not falling asleep because my head was still trying to process everything, because it's a lot. I hear there is a sequel coming, which is good, because while the ending is still good, it's open for more. There is room for it, so they better really be taking it, and it better be as good as the first.

PS, Lee Jae Han is a freaking angel 😍😭😍😭.