FRIDAY NIGHT DRAMA: Who Are You

This week’s drama is full of detectives, unsolved mysteries and one of the most good-looking ghosts you’ll ever see which, in and of itself, is more than enough reason to recommend Who Are You as your weekend drama to marathon. ㅋㅋㅋ

Originally airing on tvN from late July – mid-September, 2013, Who Are You is the story of a detective, Yang Si Ohn (So Yi Hyun) who wakes from a six-year coma to find that her time spent near death has allowed her a strange new power, the ability to see ghosts, particularly those connected to random objects. Determined to get her life back to normal, Si Ohn goes back to work, taking on the responsibilities of managing the police department’s lost and found department with a rookie detective, Cha Gun Woo (Ok Taec Yeon), who’s been sentenced to the lost and found as a reprimand for reckless behavior. While the lost and found may seem like a safe enough place for a hot-headed rookie and a veteran who sees ghosts, it ends up being a place of terror for Si Ohn as the items collected often bring with them the unsettled spirits of the deceased. Unable to escape the presence of these ghosts, Si Ohn uses her new-found ability to solve cold cases and bring peace to those who have passed but there’s one ghost who haunts her more than any other, that of her deceased fiance, Lee Hyung Joon (Kim Jae Wook). With both Gun Woo and Hyung Joon at her side, Si Ohn sets out on a dangerous quest to find the truth behind her fiance’s death and the accident that put her in a coma six years ago.

For those of you who loved the The Master’s Sun, you’re probably going to watch Who Are You with a skeptic’s eye, as the two are incredibly similar. Both dramas focus on a ghost-seeing heroine who devotes her life to putting the unsettles spirits around her at ease while unraveling a bigger mystery but they go about all of this in very different ways. Unlike Tae Gong Sil, Yang Si Ohn can find no escape from the ghosts around her and she finds no peace in being near her leading man as Cha Gun Woo provides about as much comfort as a snuggly porcupine. At least at first… In typical Drama Land fashion, Si Ohn and Gun Woo’s relationship starts off pretty rough but at the story progresses so does their relationship and I have to admit, Gun Woo is pretty darn adorable once he decides to take on the responsibility of protecting Si Ohn.

While the basic premise of this story is pretty predictable, seeing ghosts, solving their cases, moving on, there was at least one unexpected element that I really enjoyed and that was the presence of Hyung Joon and the interesting conflict he brought with him as an unusual side to an otherwise predictable love-triangle. With Si Ohn waking from a six-year coma, to find that the man she loved was dead, it gave her an interesting perspective on Hyung Joon’s presence. While the rest of the world has moved on from the death of a friend and colleague, Si Ohn has only just begun when Hyung Joon appears. Unable to fully process his death, Si Ohn welcomes the presence of the man she’s always loved and isn’t eager to let him go as it means having to accept his death and move on. Of course having a dead fiance’s ghost hanging around provides some interesting challenges to Gun Woo as he comes to accept his feelings for Si Ohn and tries to decide how to act on them. I mean, it’s not really easy to make a move on the girl you like when her dead fiance is watching.

Beyond the love-triangle, Who Are You provides a fairly decent mystery as Si Ohn and Gun Woo begin to unravel the mysteries surrounding her accident and Hyung Joon’s death. While I wouldn’t call this mystery all that mysterious, as it really didn’t take long to unravel, it was still an entertaining story and I enjoyed the break from the fluffier dramas I was watching at the time. I really want to say something about some of the other characters in this story but in doing so I would ruin pretty much everything so I’m just going to say that there is one particular character in this story that really drive the plot and without this character, things would have fallen flat in a hurry.

If you’re looking for a drama with interesting characters, a decent plot and more than a couple ghosts, then you might want to give Who Are You a try. The story moves quickly enough, there’s not a lot of table flipping as you watch and it has an ending that won’t leave you banging you head against a wall which means, overall,  it’s a pretty good drama. Of course what I say and what you think are two entirely different things so be sure to let me know what you thought of Who Are You by leaving me a comment below!