Healer

Healer

THE SHORT VERDICT:

Healer is that special snowflake of a drama that manages to combine action, romance, and some nice spots of comedy, all in one tight little show. And it’s a mighty successful combination too, I might add.

Sure, the backstory runs a little bit melo and may not appeal to everyone, but the blend of adrenaline-pumping thrills, a truly sparky, heartfelt OTP, a deeply melty – yet flawed and believable – hero, and a courageous, strong heroine, makes for an exhilaratingly heady combination of feels that just sends my heart in multiple directions all at once.

Add on Show’s highly polished camera work and its very effective, very immersive OST, and it’s a combination that’s pretty darn hard to beat.

Specimen A: One Seriously Melty Hero. Swoon.

Healer OST – 힐러

THE LONG VERDICT:

There is no such thing as a perfect kdrama, but Healer checks so many of the right boxes that it’s not only easy to forgive its flaws, but it’s also really easy to lose your heart to it. I know I lost my heart to this one, and really fast too.

For the record, I acknowledge that not everyone loved this show. In fact, Show received rather low ratings when it aired in Korea (sniffle). But those of us who loved this show, loved it dearly, and I count myself among this show’s fans. Unabashedly. Unreservedly. And wholeheartedly.

This show is consistently cracky, and hits so many right notes all the way through that I couldn’t help but be hooked. It’s fast-paced, tells a solid story, and manages to be very engaging while it does so. The people feel real, the feelings feel real, and therefore the squee feels real, too. Plus, there’s superhero-flavored cool on top of everything else, and in generous helpings to boot. Eee!

Yes, there would be flaws to be found if you looked for them, but why would you want to, really? (Ok, fine, I will list some of those flaws in this review, but still. I maintain that Healer’s fab in spite of them. )

OVERALL STORYTELLING AND VIBE

The thing that strikes me about Healer, is that it gets cracky real fast.

Right away, we are quickly immersed in Show’s drama world via its cinematic, stylish, fast-paced introduction, complete with tracking shots and dolly zooms that throw us headlong into the unfamiliar, disorientating world of Healer.

With its thrills, spills, and bits of comedy interspersed in between, Show manages to be a snazzy, polished beast that’s shiny and action-packed on the outside, while possessing an extremely keen and sensitive heart on the inside.

Immediately, from the very beginning of the show, I loved that characters and their existing relationships are fleshed out in nicely measured stages. People are put in one another’s orbits in plausible, narratively cohesive ways, and there’s a backstory mystery that offers up its truth, one little obtuse nugget at a time.

Additionally, I love a hero who’s a superhero, and to have our story’s hero literally leaping off tall buildings and being completely, awesomely kickass, just makes my day, really. Honestly, every time Ji Chang Wook parkoured off a building, I swooned.

So. Bad. Ass.

Spazz.

It all comes together to make this show feel like a fantastic mashup of action, mystery, romance, and superhero origin story, all in one. Sorta like City Hunter, in a way, but cooler, edgier, more grown-up, and bringing way more feels. In my opinion, anyway.

Perhaps best of all, is how Show confidently drives the story forward. Show is densely packed and for the most part, moves along at a pace where I feel like it’s dragging me along, arms flailing, whether my heart is ready or not. Through Show’s run, I consistently felt like I was teetering on the edge of my seat, and usually on multiple levels, too. Show kept going in directions that I didn’t quite expect, and consistently took our story further than I expected it to, sooner than I expected it to.

Not only that, Show even lives up to the cliffhangers that it builds for itself, a feat that I don’t take lightly. So often, I’ve felt cheated by dramas that resolve their cliffhangers with a fakeout in the following episode. Not so Healer. This show consistently stands up to the cliffhangers that it builds for itself, thereby proving itself to be a confident beast that knows where it’s going. Not only does it stand up to the expectations left by its cliffhangers, it often even surpasses them, effectively blowing me away.

Watching this drama, I often felt like my heart was about to implode. Or explode. Or both. Which, basically, is a very, very, very good thing.

OVERALL PREMISE

There’s an overarching backstory that drives everything forward, and I’ll admit that on my first watch of the show, I wasn’t terribly interested in the story behind this photograph; a photograph which, in my opinion, showed up far more frequently in the show than I was interested to see.

Additionally, the fragmented nature of the information we do get, confused me as well. It was hard to keep up with the mental jigsaw that was necessary, in order to at least try to keep all the little bits of information halfway straight in my head.

In spite of my relative lack of interest in the backstory of our characters during my first watch, I did manage to love the show to pieces, thanks to the interesting characters and their wonderfully engaging relationships.

To be fair to writer-nim, though, I must say that during my second watch, I had a much better appreciation for the backstory, and how it affected my beloved characters. For the record, the fragmented pieces of information actually do fit together neatly, so working to keep them straight in your head would not be a futile exercise (as it sometimes is, with other dramas).

Also for the record, this show was just as cracky – if not crackier – on my second watch. That’s No Small Deal, especially given the fact that I’ve watched way more kdrama than most people would consider healthy.

CHARACTERS

Despite this show possessing a fairly dense story, with lots of action to drive it forward, it’s really the characters and their relationships that ground everything and give the show heart.

I particularly love how writer-nim treats the characterizations and relationships, in the sense that everything and everyone (well, everyone that mattered to me, anyway) feels organic and interesting, without feeling like too little is served up, or too much.

In this section, I’ll be talking about the main characters, including special spotlights on my favorites.

Healer OST – 눈이 하는 말

Audio Player

Ji Chang Wook as Jung Hoo

Thanks to my lack of interest in any of his prior projects, this was my introduction to Ji Chang Wook, and what an introduction that turned out to be! Let’s just say that my fangirl appreciation rocketed from zero to well, ..about a thousand, within just a few episodes.

Firstly, I was super taken with the matter-of-fact badassery. Jung Hoo’s ability to kick ass, often on a many-to-one sort of scale, is just so freaking cool. Plus, all the cool parkour sequences just took everything to a whole other level. Altogether, our quick-thinking, swift-footed hero had me weak-kneed and squee-ready, pretty much at all times.

Secondly, and more importantly, Jung Hoo turns out to be a faceted character with layers of angst that are not immediately apparent. I found the bit-by-bit reveal of who he is, and what he’s all about as a person, fascinating and completely engaging. As I learned more about Jung Hoo’s inner angst and vulnerabilities, my heart couldn’t help but go out to him.

In both the badassery and the deeper nuances of Jung Hoo’s person, Ji Chang Wook delivers so solidly and believably, that I legit wondered where he’d been all my kdrama life, even as I fell headlong in love with Jung Hoo as a character.

[SPOILER ALERT]

I have to give serious props to writer-nim for creating such a faceted character in Jung Hoo, and equally serious props to Ji Chang Wook, for capably showing us all of those facets, in a way that I found completely compelling.

There are literally so many different sides to Jung Hoo, that I find it difficult to condense them all into this section. But because I find Jung Hoo to be such an absorbing character, I’m gonna attempt to flesh him out, at least a little bit.

Badass Healer

I freaking love Badass Healer. The way he offhandedly infiltrates tight security and leaps off tall buildings is just so breathtakingly cool.

Jung Hoo’s daring badassery regularly had me dropping my jaw and swooning into a puddle, often at the same time. I mean, the way he deftly enters a room while people are in it, and slips in and out unnoticed, is the stuff of legends. Of course, it stretches the believability a little, but well, Healer is supposed to be a legend. And the amazing parkour moves make Healer seem like a sageuk assassin-warrior come to life, except he’s plugged into high tech wizardry that no sageuk warrior ever had.

From small moments – like him kicking a can just so in episode 2, in order to engineer the collision of the bicycle with the fruit stand – to the big dramatic moments, Badass Healer had my heart in his easy grasp. In terms of the more dramatic moments, I love the scene in episode 3, of Jung Hoo leaping off rooftops and chasing Moon Ho’s (Yoo Ji Tae) car on foot, ON ROOFTOPS. It literally gave me shivers; it was just all so thrilling.

And I love too, the scene in episode 4, when Jung Hoo goes back to save Young Shin (Park Min Young), and fights off a whole bunch of his contemporaries. I found that detail extra impressive, coz as his contemporaries in the same business, those guys ought to have a solid level of skills too, but Jung Hoo takes them all down, and pretty easily too.

Later, when Jung Hoo goes undercover as dorky Bong Soo, I love that he has to be extra smart with how he intervenes, so that he can save the day without blowing his dorky cover.

All in all, I love that Jung Hoo is this good at what he does. I mean, I always love a man who’s good at what he does, but when what he does involves badass ass-kickery and amazing-yet-effortless parkour wizardry, it just takes it all to a whole other swoonier-than-swoony level.