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[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Poong, the Joseon Psychiatrist" Episode 6

As "Poong, the Joseon Psychiatrist" moves into its final week, I figured I'd take a moment to get into why I lost interest in this drama. "Poong, the Joseon Psychiatrist" has lots of good fundamental elements. The cast has great chemistry, the premise is unique, and the set design is consistently excellent. What the drama is lacking is any kind of serious follow-through to its mysteries. This is a devastating problem, since the story is structured around mysteries.

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In episode five, we were introduced to a sleepwalking, dehydrated little boy coming from an awkward family situation. Poong concluded that someone in his home must have found some esoteric means of poisoning him. The possible suspects include his father, his father's first wife, his two older half-brothers, his very pregnant mother, and possibly the household servants. The mother is the most likely suspect, but only because of how she's presented. The other family members are the only ones with clear motives.

A good detective story has to do a few things here. It can't just solve the mystery of who poisoned the boy. It needs to explain why his mother was acting so strangely. Was this because of the crime? Just a red herring? The fact that she's pregnant is also a detail too obviously explicit to be in the story for no reason. Well, "Poong, the Joseon Psychiatrist" tells us that the mother did indeed do it. Why? Because she's evil and crazy.

I'm not being facetious, that really is her motive. I think the pregnancy might have been to indicate that she thought of her son as disposable since she had a backup. Except simply being pregnant was no guarantee back then that you'd still have a living kid in a year. Also, if she had a daughter instead of a son, then her usefulness as a concubine would plummet. The woman is so blithely irrational it's honestly not clear the father did tell her that she could replace his wife one day.

We're supposed to see this as plausible because "Poong, the Joseon Psychiatrist" goes out of its way to emphasize that the man is a superstitious, sexist brute who might have said such a thing. Yet by ignoring actual Joseon era gender norms, "Poong, the Joseon Psychiatrist" manages to ignore the one element of cultural misogyny that would be relevant. All of this, just to lead into a very contrived and unsatisfying happy ending.

Review by William Schwartz

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"Poong, the Joseon Psychiatrist" is directed by Park Won-gook, written by Choi Min-ho-II, Lee Bom-I, Park Seul-gi-I, and features Kim Min-jae-I, Kim Hyang-gi, Kim Sang-kyung, Ahn Chang-hwan, Jeon Guk-hyang, Yeon Bo-ra. Broadcasting information in Korea: 2022/08/01~Now airing, Mon, Tue 22:30 on tvN.

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