Nice Guy
세상 어디에도 없는 착한남자 / 
No Such Thing As Nice Guys / Innocent Man
(Sept – Nov 2012)

who’s in it
Song JoongKi (Tree With Deep Roots, Sungkyunkwan Scandal)
Moon ChaeWon (The Princess’ Man, It’s Ok, Daddy’s Girl)
Park SiYeon (Coffee House, A Man’s Story)
Lee SangYeob (I Live in Cheongdam-dong)
Lee KwangSoo (City Hunter, High Kick Through the Roof)
Lee YooBi (Vampire Idol)

what’s it about
Here’s the crashdown: a brilliant young man with a promising career in medicine voluntarily tosses everything into the life gutter when he takes the fall for a girlfriend who accidentally kills someone. There’s either a really sad country song (‘I loved her but she murdered a man’) or a super angry hip hop track in here somewhere (‘Ho be ruining my life!’), but either way, when Song JoongKi finally gets let out of prison, he realizes he’d been played for a fool. You see, the girl he totally Bruno Mars’d his life over (‘I’d catch a grenade for you!’) had hitched onto a rich sugar daddy and moved on.

This girl of his youthful passions has now become a calculating woman of grand ambitions, and Park SiYeon is a rich bitch who has tasted the good life, has gained it all, but still wants more. The only obstacle in Park SiYeon and her adolescent son’s path to industrial super wealth is Moon ChaeWon, the sulky and furious biological daughter of her new husband, a stepdaughter who sees her new gold-digger slut stepmother as the reason for her own bio-mother being kicked to the curb, then dying in the middle of nowhere by herself, abandoned.

When Song JoongKi and Moon ChaeWon respectively decide that the other person might be the best means to exact some mega-revenge on Park SiYeon, they find themselves on an unexpected side journey that may end up destroying not only their intended target, but more devastatingly, their own hearts in the process. 

commitment 
20 episodes

network
KBS2

directors
Kim JinWon
Lee NaJung 

screenwriter
Lee KyungHee (Will It Snow At Christmas, A Love to Kill)

first impressions
Look at this boy (above). Song JoongKi, pretty boy bunny, in a story about revenge and murder? Hmmm. I dunno. But this one was getting hella impressive good press, doing well in the ratings, and winning international audiences over. I still thought it was likely that I would dislike it very much but all the hullabaloo around it piqued my interest. If you’ve read my 2012 Year in Review, you’ll note that Nice Guy was my favorite drama of the year. Not only that, but it made my all-time drama fave list, which trust me, is a rarely updated roster. Whaaaa-daaa-who-huh? How did that happen? Sorry, I’m jumping ahead and giving away my conclusion.

Even from the very first twenty minutes, I was hooked. I found myself drawn into the immediacy of the crazy. This show didn’t give a girl a chance to think, it immediately went for the “holy crap” factor and grabbed me by the face and smacked me into the tv. Almost instantly, the story snarled around my emotions, I found myself yelling at Song’s main character, “No, don’t do it! No don’t do it! Noooo!” Even after only the first hour, I already cared too much about this poor shmuck! When Song JoongKi’s nice guy unfairly gets sent to jail, the injustice of it kept me in my seat, still yelling at the tv (like a lunatic sitting at home yelling at her tv while her roommate looks on with rolling eyes). I was totally under water, mesmerized, gasping for breath like a goldfish yanked out of the tank by an eight year old.

Hm, I kind of made my own head spin a little. Was the “gasping for breath like a goldfish yanked out of the tank by an eight year old” too much a weird visual? Yeah, yeah, I’m a little bit painting the lie, but the point is, I really liked it. And, it’s no falsehood when I say I have a roommate who often looks at me like I’m crazy when I watch kdramas, because I’m kind of a noisy tv-watcher. You know, I like to inform characters of their options even when I know they don’t care about my opinions: “Kiss her, stupid!” “Don’t do that!” “Why are you crying!?” “Kick him in the nuts!” Well, you get the picture.

Anyway, Nice Guy:
Likable, pitiable hero. Check.
A killer ‘what would you do in his shoes?’ story. Check.
Possible mega villainess in the works. Check.
Strong, kickass female lead. Check.
Brisk, brisk pace. Check.
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