Strikes, Balls, & Prison Walls °8.4° °Excellent°
No sleep. Bad food. Never enough hot water. Smelly, downright mean cell mates. It's cold. It's dangerous. The bullies are too much. Prison is not where anyone wants to be.
Park Hae Soo (Six Flying Dragons, Squid Game-8.4, Yaksha: Ruthless Operations) is our ML, Kim Je Hyuk. He's brilliant. At ⚾baseball. He is, otherwise, a complete dunderhead. (“He's just acting dumb,” says his BFF. “No, he really is stupid about everything but ⚾,” insists his manager). He is capable of occasional flashes of brilliance. He's a simple man, and there can be a brilliance to simplicity. As a top-tier player he's living a top-tier life. Im Hwa Young (Signal-8.6, Birthcare Center-8.2) plays Kim Je Hee, his younger sister. Hyuk is found to have used unnecessary force when he defends Sis against an assault. He proceeded to chase the fleeing brute and smash a 🏆 on his head - fatality. Jail, it is.
There, he's killer at woodshop. I mean, he literally almost /killed/ the woodshop. They move him to gardening. Eventually they set up a training area for him. He has injuries to work back from, he'll be released in a few months, and he's a very popular player. Watch actor/Park closely: His facial expressions make the show. He'll look positively constipated and then spring into affability when forced into a corner. Up until the very last second, the viewer expects him to (maybe) go a different way.
PP is a 2017 release that is rated 90 on AWiki. It is 1 season consisting of 16 90-minute episodes. All the acting in this show is a delight. We follow Hyuk through his prison odyssey, meeting cellmates and various officers, getting most of their backstories. Jung Kyung Ho (Hospital Playlist-9, Crash Course in Romance) is Lee Joon Ho/JHo. He's so wealthy, he's living a top-tier life among those who live top-tier lives. JUST KIDDING! He's a CO - corrections officer - one of the worst ways to make money on the planet. He's Hyuk's long time friend. In fact, he requests a job transfer so that he can follow Hyuk to another prison and keep an eye on him. Kim Kyung Nam (The King: Eternal Monarch, Connection) is Lee Joon Dol Joon, JHo's brother. Jung Woong In plays CO, Paeng Se Yoon. He has a gruff exterior, but on the low-down he helps the inmates more than anyone. I've seen this actor play a ruthless politician in My Sassy Girl-8.5. He's completely different here, much to his credit.
Let's meet Hyuk's cellies.
Jung Min Sung (Record of Youth-5.8, Racket Boys-8.3) is a white collar criminal, Doctor Ko. Dr. Ko was convicted of embezzling 10B won, but we see that his company is the true criminal element and they mistreated him horribly. He actually took the fall for a high level manager. Here's a guy who understands that the pen is mightier than the sword. He will not tolerate violations of the law, ironically. They only get chicken necks and their dinner? That's maltreatment. He files a petition. He needs a book that's not in the prison library? Petition. The guards are cursing at them and being rude? Human Rights violation complaint. Every prison has jailhouse lawyers. They have nothing to do but read the law books all day. Most of them are smarter than most of us. Doc Ko doesn't just hold /officers/ to the rules. He will recite them to his cellmates as well, which often gets him beat up by the most short-tempered of the cellies. In one scene a body comes flying in from off camera onto him. They do that as a running bit in the hilarious show, Arrested Development-10. No doubt, Arrested Development picked it up from cartoons.
Choi Moo-Sung plays a gangster doing a murder stint. He's big and powerful. I've seen him in Han River Police-7.4 (he's a bad guy) & Reply 1988-8.6 (he's a loving dad). In this, he's both. Good, bad, or otherwise, he's always a teddy bear. Jung Jae-Sung is the first cell leader we meet. He's often casted as an @$$h0le w/ power. I've seen him in Hospital Playlist-9, Flower Crew: Joseon Marriage Agency-7.4, My Mister-9.5, Clean w/ Passion For Now-7, The King's Affection-8.3, Pandora-3.9 & Big Mouth-7.4. He's different here. More polite and contained, but, appropriately, there's something /off/. Ahn Chang Hwan (Fiery Priest) as "Crony" is the perfect thug.
Lee Kyu Hyung plays goofy druggie, "Loony”. He's really funny. In Uncle Samsik-8.4 he portrays a beautiful (looking) man who is ‘beautifully’ corrupted and deranged. In Doctor John and Hi Bye, Mama-6.5, he has more serious roles. This dude is an ACTOR. The show wouldn't work the same way without him. He gets some of the best scenes and the best lines. He's childlike, and they all seem to understand that. He's also tired all the time, especially when he tries to break his drug habit. They all end up letting him sleep on their knee or their leg. He's like encroaching flood water, at some point they stop resisting and just let it flow.
Jung Hae In goes to prison. This actor's a national treasure, appearing in hits such as Something in the Rain-8.6, One Spring Night-7.8, D.P.-8.4, While You Were Sleeping-7.3, and so much more. He's a superb romantic ML. When we meet him in PP he's a volatile inmate - He's scary. There's nothing lacking in his performance, I just don't love seeing him this way. Is he my favorite? Not quite: Seo Kang-joon, Song Seung-heon, and Jo Jung-suk are occupying my top 3. Do I put him ahead of Song Kang? Hmmmm. I have a special place in my heart for the teddy bears, too, like Ma Dong-Seok… Well, he's definitely a top 5 for me. In fact, regardless of where I place him in my personal order, his raw natural power of attraction is indisputable. I'm thinking of changing how I refer to him to something like: ‘Jung Hae In…um-Um-UM’ and shaking my head slowly every time I say or write his name😜. Jung Moon Sung plays his brother. He doesn't have any scenes with his Hospital Playlist co-star here, but in HP, all of his scenes are with Jung Kyung Ho.
Krystal Jung (Sweet & Sour-7, The Heirs-7.3, The Bride of Habaek-7, and the enormously fun Crazy Love-7.8) plays Jihoo, Hyuk's ex. They never told his family they broke up, so she's brought into the loop-of-crisis-management and she gets into the habit of visiting him. They broke up because she was convinced she was the only one in love. (Hyuk isn't good at expressing himself. He's just good at curveballs). She's at her cutest in this show. Their relationship is as sweet a thing as I've ever seen. Their theme song is nice, too.
The oft seen Ye Soo Jung is Je Hyuk's mother. I've enjoyed her most in Train to Busan-7.8, the Along With the Gods films, & Mine-8. I'm currently watching her play a Walter White style meth cook in The Worst of Evil. She is fabulous. All visits are one-on-one. Mom and Jihoo pretty much ask exactly the same questions: Are you sleeping? Did you eat? Are you cold? He gives each of them exactly the /opposite/ answers. He lies to his mom about everything and tells Jihoo the truth. Mom is an easy con, but sis? “Do you think I'm a fool?” His sister is perturbed. “Put some thought into your lies!” She isn't as readily fooled.
“Looks like it's going to rain,” (as Hyuk heads to court for the appeal). “Don't let your uniform get wet, it's unlucky.” “See you soon” Chief Jo says. We just learned, guards aren't supposed to say that. The signs are there that Hyuk's several months stint may not get cut short by appeal. The filming is loaded with quality segues & other connections like that. The director is the amazing Shin Won Ho who gifted us with Hospital Playlist & the Reply series. All these shows have the same original creator: Lee Woo Jung. Screenwriter, Jung Bo Hoon, also 📝 Racket Boys-8.3, an adorable family show that fell on the PC sword merely because a player gets booed in Indonesia. The punishment seems to be worse than the crime; RB is wonderful.
The whole prison is abuzz that they have a celebrity in their mix. Hyuk's presence stokes awe, love, snark, and jealously. The warden fawns on him. The Warden's cheerless #2 would prefer to give him solitary for the balance of his stint as Hyuk's mere presence is throwing off the flow. The Warden wouldn't allow that, however. Eventually, Hyuk's band of theives, eh - brothers start helping with his recovery. “How many pitches did he throw?” Dr. Ko, the accountant, is keeping account. He's grilling guard JHo about the particulars. JHo becomes uncomfortable over his lack of detailed observation. “How many minutes did he weight train? You don't even remember that?” How many balls did he throw in the afternoon? What kind of pitches, mainly? What weight were the dumbells? And how many times did he lift them? You kept count, right? You weren't counting?”
“Happy Reform”, the sign says. The theme is prison life and the dignity of every human being. One of the show’s potential weaknesses is that several of these inmates aren't guilty of much, if anything at all. There's 6 men in the cell block and at least 3 of them are innocent, counting our ML who arguably suffered a miscarriage of justice. Even one of the thugs ended up in jail because he was caught up in another man's mess, and well he's committed plenty of crimes, he didn't actually commit the crime for which he was convicted. There are definitely innocent people in jail - But not half of them. We all need to constantly focus on improving, but innocent people don't need reform. Sadly, very little true reforms happen in prison.
Prison is a small world. Every little thing gets magnified, because most days, not much is happening. When things are happening, it ain't good. So we go from one small but overly magnified incident to another. There's the incident of the embellished watch. The sports festival. The smuggled cigarettes. Trivia night. The singing contest! (The winner gets a day of leave!!! But who is the inmate practicing My Way? They can hear him. They can't see him. He's the one to beat). Ironically, when something significant and deadly serious does occur, it's normally kept under wraps and few even know about it. There's a steady supply of laughs. When Hyuk puts the fork in his mouth at his first jailhouse meal, he's relieved that the food doesn't taste bad. Yes, the cook is pretty good, despite the fact that he's a four-time murderer and guilty of dismembering corpses, his cellmates inform.
Two inmates who are 20 years apart in age discover that they've been writing to the same woman. She told the older one she's 33 and the younger one that she's 25. Neither one of them can give her up. This starts a bitter competition.
Prison ingenuity! A CO once told me that 1/3 of criminals are idiots, 1/3 are very intelligent, and the rest are something else. There were a couple inmates that were so brilliant the officers weren't allowed to talk to them - because the state supreme court always found in their favor. PP shows some stellar prison ingenuity. People, they can make toilet wine out of bread and fruit scraps! If you want to lose a couple hours on your phone, check out The After Prison show on YT. They do recipes more than anything else. Any prison show that doesn't show impressive prison ingenuity is cheating us - There's no way they did their homework.
Good news: They have a TV! Bad news: They only get one channel. When the electrical engineer fails to change the channel with scavenged copper wire, chewing gum, and a jerry-rigged soldering iron, another saves the day by pilfering a remote from the Warden's office. Teamwork. Just like baseball, prison is better with it.
Oh, no! Hyuk gets a case of the yips. He can't hit the strike zone, all of a sudden. They overthink the cure. He's just not that complicated. Jihoo knows exactly what to do.
One thing I've learned from watching Kdramas is that Korea is no fan of Japan. On trivia night, there's a question about the 1995 Murayama statement, in which Japan's PM, Murayama, apologizes for Japanese atrocities committed during the Japanese imperialism period. To para-quote Wiki, the Japanese army was responsible for the deaths of millions. Actions include a wide range including torture of prisoners of war, forced labor, biological warfare, looting, rape, and the use of comfort women. The contestant got it mixed up with The Kono Statement of 1993, which was an apology specifically regarding the rape and forced prostitution of women by that regime.
More than anything, PP is heartwarming. It's prison; they do show violence and fights, bullying and sexual advances, tensions and heartbreaks, but they keep it fairly tame. Hyuk has to pull a Jamie Lannister. If you don't know what that means, I ain't tellin, but PP tells its audience that if we keep stubbornly plodding away, just like Hyuk, we can come back from anything. Hyuk inspires us to believe that.
QUOTES📢
It's been so long since I've felt like a human being.
Call the whole CPRT team. If there's a riot tonight, let's give them the warden and run.
Flexibility is essential for this place to operate properly.
〰🖍 IMHO
📣8.5 📝7.8 🎭8.3 💓7 🦋4 🎨6 🔚8.7 🤗6 ▪ 🌞5.5 ⚡4.5 😅3.5 😭4.5 😱4 😯3 🤢3 🤔4.5 💤0
🎵/🔊8.5 The soundtrack is gorgeous. My Way by The Sinatra makes a showing. Shazams: Would Be Better by Heize; Like A Dream by Park Boram; Bravo, My Life, by Eric Nam; The Door, by Kang Seung Yoon & MINO. The sound of heavy footsteps ends many episodes particularly if drama is looming. It's effective.
Age 15+ with the following cautions: R-rated language including F💣s. Violence and references to sex and violence, but it's nothing like a Hollywood feature. Rated TV-15
Re-📺? 👍🏼
Park Hae Soo (Six Flying Dragons, Squid Game-8.4, Yaksha: Ruthless Operations) is our ML, Kim Je Hyuk. He's brilliant. At ⚾baseball. He is, otherwise, a complete dunderhead. (“He's just acting dumb,” says his BFF. “No, he really is stupid about everything but ⚾,” insists his manager). He is capable of occasional flashes of brilliance. He's a simple man, and there can be a brilliance to simplicity. As a top-tier player he's living a top-tier life. Im Hwa Young (Signal-8.6, Birthcare Center-8.2) plays Kim Je Hee, his younger sister. Hyuk is found to have used unnecessary force when he defends Sis against an assault. He proceeded to chase the fleeing brute and smash a 🏆 on his head - fatality. Jail, it is.
There, he's killer at woodshop. I mean, he literally almost /killed/ the woodshop. They move him to gardening. Eventually they set up a training area for him. He has injuries to work back from, he'll be released in a few months, and he's a very popular player. Watch actor/Park closely: His facial expressions make the show. He'll look positively constipated and then spring into affability when forced into a corner. Up until the very last second, the viewer expects him to (maybe) go a different way.
PP is a 2017 release that is rated 90 on AWiki. It is 1 season consisting of 16 90-minute episodes. All the acting in this show is a delight. We follow Hyuk through his prison odyssey, meeting cellmates and various officers, getting most of their backstories. Jung Kyung Ho (Hospital Playlist-9, Crash Course in Romance) is Lee Joon Ho/JHo. He's so wealthy, he's living a top-tier life among those who live top-tier lives. JUST KIDDING! He's a CO - corrections officer - one of the worst ways to make money on the planet. He's Hyuk's long time friend. In fact, he requests a job transfer so that he can follow Hyuk to another prison and keep an eye on him. Kim Kyung Nam (The King: Eternal Monarch, Connection) is Lee Joon Dol Joon, JHo's brother. Jung Woong In plays CO, Paeng Se Yoon. He has a gruff exterior, but on the low-down he helps the inmates more than anyone. I've seen this actor play a ruthless politician in My Sassy Girl-8.5. He's completely different here, much to his credit.
Let's meet Hyuk's cellies.
Jung Min Sung (Record of Youth-5.8, Racket Boys-8.3) is a white collar criminal, Doctor Ko. Dr. Ko was convicted of embezzling 10B won, but we see that his company is the true criminal element and they mistreated him horribly. He actually took the fall for a high level manager. Here's a guy who understands that the pen is mightier than the sword. He will not tolerate violations of the law, ironically. They only get chicken necks and their dinner? That's maltreatment. He files a petition. He needs a book that's not in the prison library? Petition. The guards are cursing at them and being rude? Human Rights violation complaint. Every prison has jailhouse lawyers. They have nothing to do but read the law books all day. Most of them are smarter than most of us. Doc Ko doesn't just hold /officers/ to the rules. He will recite them to his cellmates as well, which often gets him beat up by the most short-tempered of the cellies. In one scene a body comes flying in from off camera onto him. They do that as a running bit in the hilarious show, Arrested Development-10. No doubt, Arrested Development picked it up from cartoons.
Choi Moo-Sung plays a gangster doing a murder stint. He's big and powerful. I've seen him in Han River Police-7.4 (he's a bad guy) & Reply 1988-8.6 (he's a loving dad). In this, he's both. Good, bad, or otherwise, he's always a teddy bear. Jung Jae-Sung is the first cell leader we meet. He's often casted as an @$$h0le w/ power. I've seen him in Hospital Playlist-9, Flower Crew: Joseon Marriage Agency-7.4, My Mister-9.5, Clean w/ Passion For Now-7, The King's Affection-8.3, Pandora-3.9 & Big Mouth-7.4. He's different here. More polite and contained, but, appropriately, there's something /off/. Ahn Chang Hwan (Fiery Priest) as "Crony" is the perfect thug.
Lee Kyu Hyung plays goofy druggie, "Loony”. He's really funny. In Uncle Samsik-8.4 he portrays a beautiful (looking) man who is ‘beautifully’ corrupted and deranged. In Doctor John and Hi Bye, Mama-6.5, he has more serious roles. This dude is an ACTOR. The show wouldn't work the same way without him. He gets some of the best scenes and the best lines. He's childlike, and they all seem to understand that. He's also tired all the time, especially when he tries to break his drug habit. They all end up letting him sleep on their knee or their leg. He's like encroaching flood water, at some point they stop resisting and just let it flow.
Jung Hae In goes to prison. This actor's a national treasure, appearing in hits such as Something in the Rain-8.6, One Spring Night-7.8, D.P.-8.4, While You Were Sleeping-7.3, and so much more. He's a superb romantic ML. When we meet him in PP he's a volatile inmate - He's scary. There's nothing lacking in his performance, I just don't love seeing him this way. Is he my favorite? Not quite: Seo Kang-joon, Song Seung-heon, and Jo Jung-suk are occupying my top 3. Do I put him ahead of Song Kang? Hmmmm. I have a special place in my heart for the teddy bears, too, like Ma Dong-Seok… Well, he's definitely a top 5 for me. In fact, regardless of where I place him in my personal order, his raw natural power of attraction is indisputable. I'm thinking of changing how I refer to him to something like: ‘Jung Hae In…um-Um-UM’ and shaking my head slowly every time I say or write his name😜. Jung Moon Sung plays his brother. He doesn't have any scenes with his Hospital Playlist co-star here, but in HP, all of his scenes are with Jung Kyung Ho.
Krystal Jung (Sweet & Sour-7, The Heirs-7.3, The Bride of Habaek-7, and the enormously fun Crazy Love-7.8) plays Jihoo, Hyuk's ex. They never told his family they broke up, so she's brought into the loop-of-crisis-management and she gets into the habit of visiting him. They broke up because she was convinced she was the only one in love. (Hyuk isn't good at expressing himself. He's just good at curveballs). She's at her cutest in this show. Their relationship is as sweet a thing as I've ever seen. Their theme song is nice, too.
The oft seen Ye Soo Jung is Je Hyuk's mother. I've enjoyed her most in Train to Busan-7.8, the Along With the Gods films, & Mine-8. I'm currently watching her play a Walter White style meth cook in The Worst of Evil. She is fabulous. All visits are one-on-one. Mom and Jihoo pretty much ask exactly the same questions: Are you sleeping? Did you eat? Are you cold? He gives each of them exactly the /opposite/ answers. He lies to his mom about everything and tells Jihoo the truth. Mom is an easy con, but sis? “Do you think I'm a fool?” His sister is perturbed. “Put some thought into your lies!” She isn't as readily fooled.
“Looks like it's going to rain,” (as Hyuk heads to court for the appeal). “Don't let your uniform get wet, it's unlucky.” “See you soon” Chief Jo says. We just learned, guards aren't supposed to say that. The signs are there that Hyuk's several months stint may not get cut short by appeal. The filming is loaded with quality segues & other connections like that. The director is the amazing Shin Won Ho who gifted us with Hospital Playlist & the Reply series. All these shows have the same original creator: Lee Woo Jung. Screenwriter, Jung Bo Hoon, also 📝 Racket Boys-8.3, an adorable family show that fell on the PC sword merely because a player gets booed in Indonesia. The punishment seems to be worse than the crime; RB is wonderful.
The whole prison is abuzz that they have a celebrity in their mix. Hyuk's presence stokes awe, love, snark, and jealously. The warden fawns on him. The Warden's cheerless #2 would prefer to give him solitary for the balance of his stint as Hyuk's mere presence is throwing off the flow. The Warden wouldn't allow that, however. Eventually, Hyuk's band of theives, eh - brothers start helping with his recovery. “How many pitches did he throw?” Dr. Ko, the accountant, is keeping account. He's grilling guard JHo about the particulars. JHo becomes uncomfortable over his lack of detailed observation. “How many minutes did he weight train? You don't even remember that?” How many balls did he throw in the afternoon? What kind of pitches, mainly? What weight were the dumbells? And how many times did he lift them? You kept count, right? You weren't counting?”
“Happy Reform”, the sign says. The theme is prison life and the dignity of every human being. One of the show’s potential weaknesses is that several of these inmates aren't guilty of much, if anything at all. There's 6 men in the cell block and at least 3 of them are innocent, counting our ML who arguably suffered a miscarriage of justice. Even one of the thugs ended up in jail because he was caught up in another man's mess, and well he's committed plenty of crimes, he didn't actually commit the crime for which he was convicted. There are definitely innocent people in jail - But not half of them. We all need to constantly focus on improving, but innocent people don't need reform. Sadly, very little true reforms happen in prison.
Prison is a small world. Every little thing gets magnified, because most days, not much is happening. When things are happening, it ain't good. So we go from one small but overly magnified incident to another. There's the incident of the embellished watch. The sports festival. The smuggled cigarettes. Trivia night. The singing contest! (The winner gets a day of leave!!! But who is the inmate practicing My Way? They can hear him. They can't see him. He's the one to beat). Ironically, when something significant and deadly serious does occur, it's normally kept under wraps and few even know about it. There's a steady supply of laughs. When Hyuk puts the fork in his mouth at his first jailhouse meal, he's relieved that the food doesn't taste bad. Yes, the cook is pretty good, despite the fact that he's a four-time murderer and guilty of dismembering corpses, his cellmates inform.
Two inmates who are 20 years apart in age discover that they've been writing to the same woman. She told the older one she's 33 and the younger one that she's 25. Neither one of them can give her up. This starts a bitter competition.
Prison ingenuity! A CO once told me that 1/3 of criminals are idiots, 1/3 are very intelligent, and the rest are something else. There were a couple inmates that were so brilliant the officers weren't allowed to talk to them - because the state supreme court always found in their favor. PP shows some stellar prison ingenuity. People, they can make toilet wine out of bread and fruit scraps! If you want to lose a couple hours on your phone, check out The After Prison show on YT. They do recipes more than anything else. Any prison show that doesn't show impressive prison ingenuity is cheating us - There's no way they did their homework.
Good news: They have a TV! Bad news: They only get one channel. When the electrical engineer fails to change the channel with scavenged copper wire, chewing gum, and a jerry-rigged soldering iron, another saves the day by pilfering a remote from the Warden's office. Teamwork. Just like baseball, prison is better with it.
Oh, no! Hyuk gets a case of the yips. He can't hit the strike zone, all of a sudden. They overthink the cure. He's just not that complicated. Jihoo knows exactly what to do.
One thing I've learned from watching Kdramas is that Korea is no fan of Japan. On trivia night, there's a question about the 1995 Murayama statement, in which Japan's PM, Murayama, apologizes for Japanese atrocities committed during the Japanese imperialism period. To para-quote Wiki, the Japanese army was responsible for the deaths of millions. Actions include a wide range including torture of prisoners of war, forced labor, biological warfare, looting, rape, and the use of comfort women. The contestant got it mixed up with The Kono Statement of 1993, which was an apology specifically regarding the rape and forced prostitution of women by that regime.
More than anything, PP is heartwarming. It's prison; they do show violence and fights, bullying and sexual advances, tensions and heartbreaks, but they keep it fairly tame. Hyuk has to pull a Jamie Lannister. If you don't know what that means, I ain't tellin, but PP tells its audience that if we keep stubbornly plodding away, just like Hyuk, we can come back from anything. Hyuk inspires us to believe that.
QUOTES📢
It's been so long since I've felt like a human being.
Call the whole CPRT team. If there's a riot tonight, let's give them the warden and run.
Flexibility is essential for this place to operate properly.
〰🖍 IMHO
📣8.5 📝7.8 🎭8.3 💓7 🦋4 🎨6 🔚8.7 🤗6 ▪ 🌞5.5 ⚡4.5 😅3.5 😭4.5 😱4 😯3 🤢3 🤔4.5 💤0
🎵/🔊8.5 The soundtrack is gorgeous. My Way by The Sinatra makes a showing. Shazams: Would Be Better by Heize; Like A Dream by Park Boram; Bravo, My Life, by Eric Nam; The Door, by Kang Seung Yoon & MINO. The sound of heavy footsteps ends many episodes particularly if drama is looming. It's effective.
Age 15+ with the following cautions: R-rated language including F💣s. Violence and references to sex and violence, but it's nothing like a Hollywood feature. Rated TV-15
Re-📺? 👍🏼
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