Happiness

12 episodes of highly entertaining madness

I didn’t really know what I was getting into when I started watching Happiness, I saw one clip of it online and decided to watch it from that. So I wasn’t exactly expecting a zombie apocalypseesk (but not quite), romance thriller, but that what I got, and I enjoyed every second of it.


Okay first off, I usually watch K-dramas for the romance, which this show has, but it doesn’t exactly take center stage for most of the show. Instead the romance is ever present, but comfortably in the background. Having said that Sae-bom and Yi-hyun still manage to make the charts as one of my favorite K-drama couples ever. Their relationship was startlingly stable, and I loved every single interaction they had with each other, even if it wasn’t necessarily a romantic one. They just played off of each other perfectly.


All of the thriller aspects of the show were really well done as well. And I often found myself more concerned about what the absolutely insane residents of this apartment building were going to do to each other, rather than being concerned about the infected people attacking them.


Every resident in the apartment building had enough character to be interesting in their own right, some of them I wanted to kill, some of them I loved to death, but each of them was well portrayed.


I thought the cast was pretty much perfect, both for the main characters and every side character. And Park Hyung-sik was absolute husband material here, 10/10 husbanding. It’s been quite a while since I finished this one and I’m still madly in love with his portrayal of Yi-hyun. Also like, I’m not into women but if I was I’d definitely be into Sae-bom.


Theres so many good intense moments in Happiness, and some pretty good jump scares too, I would not recommend watching it at night in the cupboard under the stairs like I did. And the music really adds well to the tone, it doesn’t have many full songs like most K-dramas do, but the music always suits the mood really well.


I wish we had gotten more at the end of the show, just a little more after the conflict resolution since it’s a little abrupt, but I won’t complain too much. That does tend to happen in 12 episode dramas that have a lot to be resolved. And I have a few other very minor gripes with it, most of which didn’t detract from my overall enjoyment, so I don’t think I’ll really go into them.


If you haven’t watched it yet, give it a shot. Happiness is just pretty freaking good.

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Great Opening Hook and like One Kiss

This drama has one of the best opening hooks in a television show. It's a meet cute and a falling in love at first sight (literally) all in one, and it's accompanied by a sweet song that will have you rewinding that scene a few times because it's very cute. That hook is what reeled me into Happiness, but unfortunately I wanted to unravel myself from that noose after I got to the 10th episode. Overall the show is entertaining and it has a lot of positive things going for it, like the acting, OST, and some decent directing. It seems like this may have been filmed during the pandemic as there are several reference to Covid-19, which of course makes this drama very meta to our current times. Again, there s' a lot to like, but what doesn't work is the story and characters. I've never met a zombie story without plot holes the size of the Grand Canyon, so that's not my main complaint. My real issue is the theme of the drama is lost amongst the repeated antics of characters who surround the main couple, and because of that there are only three likable characters in the ENTIRE drama. The ML, the FL, and the Kid. You start actively rooting for everyone else to die around episode six if you have a heart, and far earlier if you're heartless like me. By episode 10 I started leaning on the FF button because I was ready to get to the end, and to my disgust far too many of the unlikable characters were still alive by that point. The sweet moments between the main leads and my desire to finish this in drama in its entirety kept me through to the end. It wasn't a bad ride once all was said and done. The acting was was top notch, which is why I hated so many of the side characters. They did a good job of making me hate them, and of course the ML and FL have really good chemistry, which was shown very well throughout all the times they worked together as a team, and during their one kissing scene...lol. Would I watch this again? Probably not, but I would watch the actors again in another drama.

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SO MUCH POTENTIAL...WASTED

Happiness was a genuinely enjoyable show to watch. I had a lot of fun with it, even though I got incredibly stressed by the stupid decisions the characters made throughout the drama. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough. What could have been a groundbreaking drama in its genre turned into a typical zombie plot, riddled with plot holes halfway through, and capped off with a nonsensical ending. Here are the things I liked and didn’t like about Happiness:

What I Liked:
-The acting: Most of the performances were top-notch, with convincing and memorable characters. In particular, some supporting roles stood out, like Oh Yu Hyun (Baek Hyun Jin) and Oh Yeon Ok (Bae Hae Seon). They made me feel levels of frustration I didn’t know were possible. Honestly, I felt like all the apartment residents were completely insane—some of the worst people humanity could conjure up.
-The portrayal of the disease: The visual representation of the infection was well-executed. The makeup and the performances of the "zombies" were incredibly convincing. Even the infected characters felt believable to me.
-Overall engagement: The drama was smooth and captivating to watch. I was never bored and stayed hooked until the end. I genuinely wanted to see how the story would unfold, even though the evolution of the plot and its conclusion were ultimately disappointing.

What I Didn’t Like:
-The main couple: Sadly, the romance, chemistry, and the process of them falling in love felt underwhelming. I didn’t feel any sympathy for them during the emotional moments or hardships they faced as a couple. Whether they stayed together, broke up, or one of them died, it made little difference to me. This was especially true for the female lead. Despite Han Hyo Joo being an excellent actress (as proven in W), her performance here, particularly with the male lead, felt plain and shallow. The romantic moments lacked impact and emotion, leaving me completely unmoved.

-The serial killer subplot: This part of the story left me completely baffled. It took the narrative in a direction that felt disconnected from the main plot. It raised so many questions: Why did he only start killing in the second half? Why didn’t he kill everyone who knew he was a serial killer? Why did he occasionally help the main leads if he lacked empathy and enjoyed causing pain? To me, this subplot only existed to justify why the character constantly wore a mask and goggles. It felt like filler to pad out the remaining episodes. Instead, the show could have used this time to address more important aspects of the story, such as:
- How the virus worked.
-The timeline for the infection spreading through the body.
-Why Sae Bom was the only one with antibodies capable of producing a cure.
-The political implications of the cure or even how food and water were managed during the lockdown.
These would have been far more relevant and interesting than a serial killer roaming a building filled with egotistical, selfish people.

-Plot holes about the infection and the virus: This was the most disappointing aspect. For a zombie drama where the central plot revolves around a deadly virus threatening the world, it was frustrating to see the disease become almost irrelevant halfway through the story. The explanations we were given felt shallow and unconvincing.

For instance:
-At first, the virus was portrayed as highly contagious, potentially leading to a global apocalypse. But by episode 11, it seemed like the only people still in lockdown were the apartment residents. How did the rest of the world suddenly recover and go back to normal?
-In the final episodes, everyone seemed eager to become blood-drinking zombies to avoid death and gain "power." Yet, no one addressed the consequences of those actions. Strangely, the pills didn’t infect everyone who took them, contradicting the earlier episodes that implied the pills were a primary cause of infection.
-The inconsistency in controlling the infection was also baffling. Early episodes emphasized how hard it was to resist the thirst for blood, with infected individuals losing all moral sense at the sight of it. But later, characters like Sae Bom could "de-monsterize" infected individuals, like Jin Yu Hyun, just by talking to them or patting them on the back.
-The rushed ending only made things worse, especially the female lead's decisions. The "happily ever after" conclusion felt forced and left many unanswered questions like:
What happened to those who took the pills, did they transform?
How did Jin Yu Hyun magically recover, so the found the cure?
How did the world return to normal so quickly? wasn't the virus spreading like crazy?

In the end, Happiness was a watchable drama that kept me hooked for all the wrong reasons. While I enjoyed it overall, its wasted potential and focus on irrelevant subplots were disappointing.

That said, despite my rant, I still recommend giving it a watch and form an opinion for yourselfs

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"Happiness" is a drama about a group of people trapped inside an apartment complex, trying to survive an outbreak of an unknown virus.

Sae Bom and Yi Hyun have been best friends since they were teenagers and this friendship has continued even after they became adults. In order to get an apartment in the most famous place in the city, the two get married only on paper to have priority access. It all seems like a dream come true and Yi Hyun plans to confess his feelings for Sae Bom, taking advantage of the opportunity of now being married, but everything changes completely when a psychotic outbreak causes people to attack each other for no apparent reason. An infected person is released in the condominium and begins to infect others. Sae Bom and Yi Hyun, along with other residents, enter a battle for survival... the problem is that the infected are not the only danger.

Do you know what message this drama conveys?! Human beings are the real monsters.
When watching this drama, it was impossible not to make comparisons with the movie "The Mist", because both have a very similar setting and narrative. They are about people who are trapped together during a situation that is out of control, in the case of the drama, an outbreak of a virus that turns people into a mix of vampires and zombies. But the biggest problem they have to overcome in reality is not the infected, but the people who are by their side.

There are so many horrible things that happen, that it makes you rethink before trusting anyone, because in the beginning everyone was nice, but as soon as things started to get worse, their true faces began to appear. The killer doctor and the so-called "representative" of the building, it is easy to identify that they are sociopaths, so everything they did during the drama was no surprise, but some characters surprised me. The son of that older couple telling everyone that his mother was infected and then stealing all the food?! Bastard. The worst of all was when they all joined up with the killer to force Yi Hyun and Sae Bom to turn the power back on. People are really the worst.

Yi Hyun and Sae Bom are absolutely adorable. I wasn't expecting romance, but the drama is full of moments between them, the couple is the central basis of the story and everything else is secondary. Every time Yi Hyun saved Sae Bom, it was a confession of his love. The scene where Sae Bom finds out that Yi Hyun is infected is amazing, her expression when she sees him holding the door and seeing that none of the infected wanted him, not even at that moment did she give up on him.
And when she returns to the apartment looking for Yi Hyun, that kiss was incredible, a scene that showed both the love between them, as well as the way Sae Bom trusts Yi Hyun, since he was infected at that moment.

This was one of the best dramas I've ever watched, it has everything. Great characters, a very well constructed narrative and impeccable development.

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There were some things that were brought up briefly in the show that seemed as though they were going to be important but then they were never brought up again. Such as the building manager losing hair. There were also some characters that I would have liked to see how they turned out after everything and would've like to have gotten some sort of resolution for such as the doctor who was just a horrible person. In all, the ending felt just a little rushed to me. I also felt like I wasn't really that connected to the characters. It was a very slow burn but I think it was a cool concept for a zombie-type show as it isn't something that we have really seen before in many ways. (Also, the reason the rewatch value is so low is because I do not really rewatch things so that can be ruled out.)

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Well, by God, couldn't they have filmed a whole episode for the ending as usual? How is it that in doramas about sissy pussy, they devote a whole episode, practically nothing to the ending, and here there are so many omissions, and they spoiled my entire impression of the dorama with such an ending. At the end I was just like "what? What do you mean everything? What about that one, and that one, and what about them? "But that one and that one didn't show symptoms either, do they also have antibodies?" It feels like they just pulled the plug and told them to get off this drama as soon as possible. Sorry, I'm indignant because overall I really liked the drama. It was really gripping from the first episode. I rarely watch zombie movies, but this one had such a scary but pleasant tension that I just wanted to keep watching. However, these infected are like vampires, because they drink blood, and when their thirst is quenched, they calm down. It's strange that the director didn't immediately call them "vampires" (I'm kidding, if that were the case, the atmosphere would have been different). The acting is certainly top-notch. The plot is also just a bomb, it made my stomach twist. Eh... but the ending... it really let me down. It's a shame...

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The series is really about stupid characters wanting to get rich

Watched the Train to Busan and Kingdom, thought it would be at least good but this was so so bad.
The writers were probably having a competition to see who could write the worst and stupidest character because there was not one decent character in the series. The smartest character in the series was probably the old lady that got a scratch on her back ( she kept an eye on her symptoms, gathered information and laid low ) other than her the rest are complete idiots.
Yoon Sae Bom is one of the worst characters I've seen in a long time, if she was in charge of finding a cure and keeping the ,,infected,, isolated from the healthy people in the general population most people would be infected in a few days. If she did not have ,,plot armor,, she would die in ep. 3.
There is no tension, characters keep their backs to open doors, they never keep their guard up, look worried that an ,,infected,, might be behind a corner, getting sick is even seen as a solution to fixing problems. Characters are more concerned with getting rich rather than keeping themselves safe.
As an action series it fails so hard, the main characters do not act as trained professionals, the ,,stunts,, are too obvious, they try to make scenes dramatic but they look silly.
There is no romance, the main leads are very cute but have no chemistry, their ,,love story,, never develops but we are told they love each other . Watch ,, Containment,, made in 2016 if you want to see a couple that has so much chemistry when they never even touch each other, that is how it is done but even that series is not great.
Would have been a lot better as a movie ( a mediocre movie ), I regret watching all of it, should have dropped it after ep 3 but had the morbid curiosity to see how bad the series really was.

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If conforming to madness is a way to achieve happiness, you can give this a try.

/ Actual Rating: 7.5/10

/- I find it a long drag determining the turn of events between the chaos and the development of the characters during their lockdown. The writers probably cannot figure out where they will put the plot twists especially with the "psychopath stereotype" fiasco it had at the latter part of the show. I seemingly thought I will have the suspense of what I had with Money Heist Korea (might just be the intro similarities).
/- Nevertheless, they missed the opportunity to develop Kim Se Hoon's character. Poor guy.
/- Lastly, Lee Bo Ram had the chillest role on the rooftop.

P. S. Commendable if this was filmed at the height of the emerging CoVID-19. They did a great job with the normalcy of the setting.

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