After wrapping up my weekly review of Cheese In The Trap, I had every intention of just walking away and never looking back and in all honesty, that’s probably what I should do. But the more I think about it, the more I feel like it’s my duty to warn those poor unsuspecting souls out there who might come across this drama and think it’s something worth watching and well, I just don’t want anyone to suffer the pain I’ve suffered from this drama so I’m sitting here now, ready to write a review which will probably bring me a lot of grief but whatever. I’m writing this warning for the greater good, to spare fellow drama lovers the unnecessary pain that will inevitably come from watching this drama.
Originally airing on tvN from January 4-March 1, 2016, Cheese in the Trap is the story of Hong Seol (Kim Go Eun), a hard-working college kid with a bit of a victim complex and Yoo Jung (Park Hae Jin), an entitled college senior with a psychotic dark side that likes to manifest itself in rather scary, and often life-ruining, ways and how these two get together and manage to make the lives of everyone around them miserable. Hmm… Is that a bit harsh?
Okay, so let’s try this again. Cheese in the Trap is a kind of slice-of-life, college drama that focuses on a group of juniors and seniors and explores their relationships both on a colleague/professional level and a romantic level. There are actually quite a few characters whose stories unfold as this drama progresses but the main story follows the relationship between Hong Seol and Yoo Jung. As with any good drama, Cheese has a fantastic second male lead, Baek In Ho (Seo Kang Joon) who steals the show (and my heart) early on and ends up becoming more of a main character as the drama progresses. Which is weird for a second lead role in a drama but as Cheese had quite a bit of off-screen controversy going on during shooting, the script was changed to focus more on In Ho and less on Yoo Jung which pretty much ruined the entire drama. Not that I was sad that In Ho got more screen-time, I was just upset that a drama which started of so well ended up finishing so very, very poorly.
Real-life drama aside, this story was very much a disappointment on so many levels. Hong Seol started out as a very strong, intelligent, independent, admirable character who could see the falsities in others that most people never pick up on. It was this keen sense of perception that caused her to dislike Yoo Jung so much at the beginning. She could see in him the darkness that everyone choose to ignore and that was awesome. However, after a year or so of hating each other, Yoo Jung decided he actually liked Hong Seol, simply because she never wanted anything from him. (Which, in his head is a very rare thing because he believed everyone around him was only by his side because they wanted something from him.) After much childish, albeit kinda cute, flirting, Yoo Jung managed to woo Hong Seol and therein lies her demise. After telling herself for over a year that Yoo Jung is mean and manipulative, Seol decides it’s okay to overlook his darkness because he only uses his dark side to manipulate things in her favor and since his crushing of people’s souls and ruining lives is all done to benefit her, it’s all okay.
And that is my biggest problem with this entire drama. Well, that and the fact that only ONE out of an entire cast of characters, ever learned any valuable life lessons and made any effort to improve themselves and their situations. That’s right. ONLY ONE. Every other character in this story either stays as flawed and as they were originally or they digress to become something worse. Now I know there are some of you who will say, “But Yoo Jung left to better himself so that he could be worthy of loving Hong Seol.” And to that I say, BULL! Yoo Jung’s leaving was as selfish as move as any he’d made throughout this drama and the fact that he chose to run away when Seol needed him most, proves that he cares for no-one but himself. But why bother getting into the minute details of this drama when I’ve already done that in my weekly review?
The point is this drama is SEVERELY flawed and it’s so darn painful to watch, I can’t even recommend it. I don’t even want to think about it anymore. Every character hurt me, in one way or another, and even my undying love for Seo Kang Joon isn’t enough to make me ever want to even think about this drama again. It hurts that much. For a drama that started out with so much potential, it crashed and burned so bad all I can do is drag myself away from the wreckage and hope the wounds will heal in time.
I’m sure there are people out there who loved this drama and I’m happy that you could find something in these 16 episodes worth watching but I could not. I wanted to find the good in this show. I wanted to love it as a whole as much as I loved In Ho. I wanted there to be some sort of happy resolution where Yoo Jung learns all sorts of valuable life lessons and Seol stops being a weak and pathetic cry-baby. I wanted In Ha to get the professional help she needed and not just be thrown into a mental institution as a way of manipulating the justice system. I wanted In Ho to run far, far away from Korea as he pursued his music career and I wanted him never to look back. But none of that happened so there was no happy ending for anyone, characters and audience alike.
So if you’re considering watching Cheese in the Trap, please, think long and hard about it before you do because this one will hurt you. And make you cry. And cuss. And question why you ever started watching dramas in the first place. And it will take you a very long time to be able to go watch another drama because you will be afraid that this new drama will hurt you as much as this one did. Just trust me on this one. There are MUCH better dramas out there for you to watch so don’t waste 16 hours of your life on this one. If you really wanna know the story, go read the webtoon. You’ll be much happier, I promise.
Okay, I’ve said my peace and probably upset a lot of people in the process but that’s an inevitability that comes with writing reviews. We can’t always agree on everything all the time and I feel better having attempted to save humanity from this drama horror so now I can move on with my life. Woot! Of course I’d love to hear what you thought of Cheese in the Trap so feel free to leave me a comment below!
It has been a while since I felt so let down by a drama. Usually if I hate a drama I just stop watching it, but in this case the beginning was so good and it had so much potential that I actually watched all of the episodes. I think the last time I felt so let down by a drama that had such a good beginning was “Fall in Love with Me” starring Aaron Yan. I’ve watched some dramas with bad endings (Fashion King and Mirae’s Choice), and some that were just kind of flat all the way through (She’s so Lovable and Iron Man) and a few that were so bad I decided not to finish them (Madame Antoine and Boysitter), but this one was a slap in the face. There was a great cast and the characters were all written leaving much room for growth, but they never grew at all. It was awful.
Don’t waste your time on this drama. There are a lot of great dramas that are much more enjoyable. “Descendants of the Sun” is great! I’m mostly enjoying “Come Back Mister”, but the latest episode had Rain’s character behaving in an unforgivable way, so I’m not sure if I like it anymore.