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[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Happiness - Drama" Episode 9

Jeong-gook (played by Lee Joon-hyuk-I) is the hapless elder police associate of Sae-bom and Yi-hyeon who's been stuck in the apartment building with them this whole time because that's where he happened to be when the lockdown started. Last episode Representative Oh successfully manipulated him into pulling a gun on his associates because of the possibility they were infected. The evidence being, mainly, just that Sae-bom has unhealed wounds.

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The COVID-19 metaphor is back in full force. Sae-bom quickly loses patience in Representative Oh's obviously contrived motives and calls her out by coming up with a crude, but indisputedly effective test for confirming whether someone has contracted madman rabies. I was very struck by the sheer absurdity of everyone loving to talk about quarantining people they don't like, in the name of combating disease spread, while being excessively squeamish of using an empirical method rather than arbitrary guesswork to decide who warrants what kind of treatment.

The efficacy of using Sae-bom's technique is itself kind of questionable, given that it provokes symptoms. But Representative Oh's for continuing to hold meetings and continuing to pick fights over the question regardless of how self-destructive these actions are forces the issue. Se-hoon's position of just sitting on his literal throne and avoiding interaction with other tenants at all is looking more reasonable by the episode.

This isn't to say I'm entirely happy with the way Sae-bom and Yi-hyeon solve problems. Yi-hyeon remains far too reluctant to just explain what's going on with Joo-hyeong, or at least try to. He tried to poison everyone for no reason at all as far as I can tell, an event that Sae-bom is oddly interpreting as a clue to possibly explain how and why the virus spreads the way that it does. Colonel Han in his brief appearance notes that the virus is inexplicably good at hiding, to a greater extent than we had been led to believe, and figuring out why will likely be critical to explaining how to fix it.

Some aspects of the exact logisitical situation remains unclear to me. Apparently the apartment building does not have power. The rooms being so well-lit threw me off on that, although a very late and very dark scene effectively represents this visually. The water shortage has a better contextual explanation. Apparently everyone aside from Sae-bom, Yi-hyeon, and Se-hoon hasn't been bothering to manage their supplies. I liked the bit where Joo-hyeong complains about being scalped for cash having made such a big point of his having a lot of it earlier in the story for no reason. Especially since he wastes what little is left on shampooing his hair.

Review by William Schwartz

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"Happiness - Drama" is directed by Ahn Gil-ho, written by Han Sang-woon, and features Han Hyo-joo, Park Hyung-sik, Jo Woo-jin, Kang Ji-eun-I, Lee Joon-hyuk-I, Park Joo-hee. Broadcasting information in Korea: 2021/11/05~Now airing, Fri, Sat 22:40 on tvN.

 

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