Story line
Who Are You? is a 2013 KTV melodrama about a female cop with amnesia who sees ghosts and has to solve a mystery and resolve her personal issues.
This show blows!...There's another 'girl that sees ghosts' K-drama that aired the same time this show did called "Master's Sun"; I recommend that show instead, as it's significantly more polished and just better in every conceivable way.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
Your story here has your main lead and her fiancé cop get into some trouble while investigating a smuggling ring. He gets killed, she's in a coma. She wakes up years later and can't remember what happened, but now she can see ghosts. She goes back to work for the police force and gets put in charge of the Lost & Found division. She comes into contact with objects associated with the dead while there, which brings out the ghosts that need her help getting on to the afterlife. Along the way, she tries to figure out what happened to her and her fiancé years ago while slowly recovering her memories.
This show plays like a crime procedural/love story for the most part, but it has a lot of problems (chief among them being the pacing and writing, which are both abysmal). The series consists of sixteen 45 minute episodes; unfortunately, there's only enough material to fill half that time. As such, this show moves at a snail's pace trying to fill in the gaps. The plot repeats itself endlessly, many scenes go on and on without accomplishing anything or furthering the story, conversations continually go nowhere, and there are numerous tedious scenes that feature a long pause, a slow walk, a stare off into the distance, someone reminiscing about the past or a scene that just happened, etc. This is excruciating!
The storytelling is laughable at times; the police force resembles the Keystone Cops, the Lost & Found chief is an incompetent clown, and nobody does any work at all. The squad spends a few minutes each day staring at a computer and putting away stuff, then it's off to eat & drink, stroll around, goof off, take care of personal matters, etc. Seemingly, the entire department even has time to go on group vacations together to play in the river, take part in scavenger hunts, etc. This is absurd!
Fortunately for the coppers, the criminals are equally inept; they're trying to silence the primary character before she gets her memory back and exposes the truth. They could have easily just pulled the plug on her while she lay in a coma for 5 years, but they instead wait until she recovers in order to concoct the dumbest of plans to get rid of her (such as trying to abduct her and bury her in the woods while she's at a retreat with 30 other cops), and, they fail miserably at every turn. Her idiot police comrades (except her trusty partner) completely ignore the fact that she's continually getting assaulted, kidnapped, set up, threatened, or what have you, on an almost daily basis. You would think the police would try to investigate these incidents or at least keep an eye on her, but they just chalk everything up to random bad luck, when in fact, an infant could connect the dots in regards to what's going on here.
Writing issues pop up constantly that just make you shake your head. The primary ghost is the lead character's dead fiancé, and as the shows progresses, the mystery behind their back story is told via flashback. He's (SUPER SPOILERS) on a dangerous stakeout when he decides it's perfectly reasonable to invite her over to propose to her (instead of waiting until his shift ends an hour later to see her). She shows up at the scene with couples' shirts, which is simply a weak contrivance for him to remove his bullet proof vest right before he gets shot. This is grade school level writing at best!
There are plenty of inconsistencies about the ghost angle story as well. I can usually forgive a few of these variances in these fantasy genre shows, but only if the show is halfway decent. Either way, there's only a certain amount of this stuff you can get away with before your story starts to lose all credibility and continuity. After a while, you start noticing more and more of these issues with this show and it's really annoying. My favorite "issue" is the ghost fiancé having a different hairstyle then he did when he was alive for some reason; this only leaves one to wonder if he's been visiting an "afterlife hair salon". Eventually, the heroine stops seeing ghosts altogether for the most part, except whenever it's convenient for the ghost fiancé to show up and help out while he stares at her like some kind of creepy sad eyed zombie stalker.
Your primary lead is So Yi Hyun. She's been more than sufficient as secondary characters in many other K-dramas, but I'm not sure she's leading actress material. I would think that she would be, however this is a very poor vehicle for her to demonstrate whether she is or not. Your male lead is played by KPop hunk Taecyeon (who plays Yi Hyun's younger assistant and "sort of" love interest). To be as polite possible, I will just say that Taecyeon is not the greatest of actors yet. He has loads of stage presence and a natural charisma, but he's still a very raw actor who appears to be quite limited in range. As for the bit parts; Don't Ask!...There's nobody that excels (particularly the younger ones), and none of them are interesting on their own, or given anything meaningful to do other than portray either bland or pointless stock supporting roles.
Bottom Line: There's very little here that's worthwhile; this is a show that fails on mostly every level (from story to writing to direction to performances). It's also utterly boring!...Feel free to skip this series!
4 out of 10 stars!
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Country of origin: South Korea
Language: Korean
Country Released: South korea
Filming Location:
Production Costs
Budget ( overall series ): USD
Technical specs
Color Format
Color: color