Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Starring: Kim Young-Kwang, Jin Ki-Joo, Kim Jae-Kyung, Koo Ja-Sung

Streaming on: Netflix

To watch or not to watch: A light-hearted, funny watch

Do Min-Ik (Kim Young-Kwang) is a director of a big company. He is extremely intelligent and hard working, with a knack of reading people’s faces to know what they are really thinking – but doesn’t connect with people at a personal level. He has only one friend Ki Dae-Joo (Koo Ja-Sung) who is also a Director at the same company. He also relies a lot on his secretary Jung Gal-Hee (Jin Ki-Joo), works her to the bone, but also doesn’t trust secretaries in general and gets a new secretary every year. Due to a freak accident, he hurts his head and develops prosopagnosia, or the inability to recognise faces, and the only one he is able to recognise is his secretary, because of her unchanging appearance through the year. This leads to him mistaking her for a heiress, and she goes with it.

Even though this K-drama is not rated too high on IMDb, it is actually pretty good. It tackles class issues, impact of loss of family at a young age, dreams and aspirations of people and how they work towards it. It is also humorous. The dynamics shift between Min-Ik and Gal-hee is contrasted beautifully between two situations. As most K-dramas also have a sub-plot to add thrill to the romance and comedy, this one has one too, and it is also not too shocking, but keeping with the theme of classism and equality.

The common objection people might have with K-dramas is the sometimes and somewhat toxic behaviour passed off lightly. This series is better on that front – Gal-Hee’s deception of Min-Ik is taken seriously. Same with Min-Ik’s treatment of his secretaries. Gal-Hee felt like an equal to her boos for the first time, and she was treated with respect because she was not being herself. Most importantly, she treats herself with respect in front of Min-Ik and that changes his attitude towards her in real life too. This is subtly done, not explicitly called out, and stays away from the making the series one about self-improvement and social issues.

The side characters are also close to reality. Like Kim Jae-Young’s character Veronica Park is born into wealth and doesn’t know how the other half lives. Whereas Dae-Joo has worked his way up and knows the value of what he has. Also, the ending is pretty cool, and the protagonist is not the end-all be-all of business and personal life. The only reason it loses on one star in rating is small plot holes which are not closed, no matter how insignificant to the story line they be. Highly recommend to watch this one. And the pretty faces on screen don’t hurt either.