REVIEW: The Smile Has Left Your Eyes
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Re-watch value: 2 out of 5 stars
Synopsis
*partially taken from DramaList*
A TV series centered around the unfolding relationship between free and unpredictable yet dangerous Kim Moo Young, who is called a "monster". He is the first assistant in a Korean beer brewery who becomes a suspect when a woman's suicide turns out to be murder. His life begins to change when he meets a kind, warm advertising designer named Yoo Jin Kang, who wishes to be Moo Young's safe haven. She bears as many emotional scars as him. Yoo Jin Kang also has a brother, a homicide detective named Yoo Jin Gook, with 27 years of job experience. He strives to "reveal" who Moo Young really is and attempts to keep his sister, Jin Kang, away from Moo Young, with whom she begins to know. This is a remake on a Japanese series called Sora Kara Furu Ichioku no Hoshi.
Rambling
*beware of spoilers*
Honestly, like wtf just happened? I'm 5 minutes removed from catching that swift Shakespearean ending, and I'm just stunned. Emotional. Angry.
But let me take a step back and tell you how biased I came into this show. I caught wind that Seo In-guk was doing a new melodrama, and I was super interested. He's got such an interesting, sultry-looking face (and I've been madly in love with him since Reply 1997). Judging by the show's poster and some spoiler-y Instagram posts I saw, I thought Jin-kang was depressed and that "the smile had left her eyes" because of the initial murder (the girl who was pushed off the roof). I even went so far as to imagine that they were sisters. When I saw another spoiler-y post with someone saying "these two better not be siblings," I already knew that our two main leads were not biological brother and sister.
HOWEVER, I DID NOT SEE THAT ENDING COMING. NOT BY A MILE.
Oh, what a tangled web of murder we weave.
I'll tell you what I didn't like first. Large swathes of the drama are spent (1) going back and forth between the same two houses in the same neighborhood, (2) not-so-surprising late-night visits to hash out whatever drama or misunderstanding just happened, (3) Jin-kang's adoptive brother Jin-gook throwing tantrums over Jin-kang dating Moo-young, (4) Sung-woong and his girl friend Tak actively lying to Jin-kang to hide her past, (5) annoying subplot of Jin-gook with Tak, their inability to cross the friend-zone divide [I absolutely hated the would-be romance and flirtations; it was either boring or grating], and (6) the stupid, inconsequential initial murder of blackmail-bitch-whose-name-escapes-me. All of these things brought down the drama.
The majority of the drama was fairly predictable. In episode 5, Jin-gook finds some black box footage of Moo-young outside the murder house standing in the rain under the brewery's umbrella. I never believed that he committed the murder and from even episode 1 guessed that he only cleaned up the job. It was even more predictable that the suicidal girl Im Yoo-ri was the real murderer.
I feel like some character reactions and dialogue was bizarre. In episode 7, Jin-gook fully blames Moo-young for Seung-ah's death. Literally no one talks about the raging drunk Jang Woo-sang who purposely rammed into her car, killing them both. That entire scenario was pretty infuriating. Seung-ah was killed because of her witchy fiancéhad a bad case of fragile masculinity (although his awful sister goaded him and belittled him).
In episode 10, Jin-kang again tells Jin-gook that she won't break up with Moo-young, and when he starts on another rant to make her feel guilty, she unleashes her true feelings about how she's felt suffocated by his mere presence since her adolescence and so sorry toward him because she owes him so much. Tak later tells her to apologize for hurting his feelings, and Jin-kang agrees that she was in the wrong. Uhhh what? Why is Jin-kang at fault for telling her true feelings and saying some hurtful things for a change? Jin-gook spouts whatever the hell he wants!
RE: Seung-ah's death. I couldn't understand the line "Don't get caught." Moo-young says this to Seung-ah and then they immediately crashed. Did he say this to her to distract her from driving? Did he say this more to himself? Did he tell her this sincerely? It was top of mind again when the evil Se-ran said she was just tickled by his statement when she heard it on the black box footage. Why did he even think to tell her in that moment not to get caught? What was up with this "we'll never be taken alive!" mentality? Am I missing something?
OK, but let's talk about the romance between our two leads for a sec. It got off to such a weird start because he half-heartedly dated Jin-kang's best friend Seung-ah, who was most likely infatuated with him. Flying in the face of K-drama rules, he even has sex with her, way before their entire relationship blows up in their faces with the car crash in the rain. Moo-young survives the crash, signs a non-disclosure from her family as soon as he recovers, and easily walks away with some cash. No remorse, no regret, no mourning for Seung-ah.
He was a clinical sociopath. Here are some symptoms, which 100% describe Moo-young:
Behavioral: antisocial behavior, deceitfulness, hostility, irresponsibility, manipulativeness, risk taking behaviors, aggression, impulsivity, irritability, or lack of restraint
Mood: anger, boredom, or general discontent
The first thing Jin-kang teaches Moo-young is how to feel. How to be human. He spent his whole life observing people, removed from all emotions. Anything that caught his interest, he pursued until he got bored again, a little game he kept playing until Seung-ah's death.
Once the romance got going, I liked it. They seemed to really fit well together, their chemistry was vibrant, and (breaking all K-drama rules) they had sex. Let me just say that I actually looked at a non-existent camera Office-style when he delivered that "I want to sleep with you." Geez, what a segue! Their foreplay was super sweet, with them playfully removing one another's clothes.
Sidenote: Over the course of their relationship, Moo-young shows Jin-kang a family portrait he drew in crayon as a child, saying that he imagines himself as a lost boy instead of an abandoned child. This distinction was so poetic to me. To shield himself from further heartbreak, he keeps hoping that he's just been misplaced, lost instead of actively abandoned by his parents, his father especially. And if he's a lost boy, is he the Peter Pan variety? The ones who have a ton of agency and choose not to be found? But I digress...
I'm going to skip over the bulk of the melodrama involving (1) Moo-young recovers his memories, (2) Jin-gook STABS MOO-YOUNG IN THE FREAKING STREET LIKE A PSYCHO, (3) Moo-young confronts Jin-gook at gunpoint about him killing his father, (4) Se-ran—a fellow sociopath—tells Moo-young that his father was a murderer [true] and Jin-kang is his biological sister [false].
I fully did not think that Moo-young was going to shoot Se-ran in the chest three times. And it played out so damn well, with him low-key going to the drawer to get the gun as she's continuing to taunt him, even imitating her would-be conversation with Jin-kang, and then BANG! BANG! BANG! (Big Bang song, anyone?) It was actually quite a relief to see that character die. Both her and her brother Woo-sang were just rotten.
Jumping to the finale with Jin-kang and Moo-young in the cabin in the woods. That was heavy. She pleads with him to not kill himself. Then she uses herself as leverage, putting the gun to her own head. I was a wreck when he tells her to just go. She says, "Go where?" He replies, "To how it was before me." Jin-kang tearfully says, "But you were with me from the beginning." Just as he finally agrees to live, they're interrupted by the Jang family secretary/henchman who shoots them both dead.
They never get to live the rest of their lives together. They die right where their parents died, where it all began.
I've had maybe an hour to process this, and I've concluded that this drama was simply a tragedy. And as such, I can only accept what happened, as it was always never going to have a happy ending.
I recommend this drama to anyone who can stand a boatload of murder, sociopaths, glimpses of redemption, sweet kisses, and a depressing ending. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If you've made it this far, what did you think of The Smile Has Left Your Eyes? Let me know in the comments below!
Follow us!