This review may contain spoilers
A Mess Dressed as a Drama
Some dramas know that they want to be teen rom-coms and some know they want to be supernaturals. When a drama doesn’t know what it wants to be, you don’t get a genre blend.. you get a mess. Head Over Heels is that mess.
Story
The drama starts with an interesting premise: a young shaman falls in love with one of her customers at first sight. There is a catch though - he is plagued by misfortune, and worse, he is destined to die in 21 days. She promises to save him. The obstacles are compelling on paper. He turns out to be her new classmate, and he utterly despises shamans. With the help of her loyal best friend, she manages to save him.
That is the core story. Unfortunately, around the halfway mark, the drama seems to lose faith in its own premise. Instead of deepening the existing conflict, it pivots in an entirely new direction - one that exists mainly to give the leads ample opportunity to engage in self-sacrificing noble idiocy.
Things I Sometimes Liked:
Characters: Sung-ah is mostly likeable. Her best friend Ji-ho is consistently likeable. Gyeon-u is a mixed bag. The various shamans are a confused lot who can’t seem to decide whether they are powerful or not. Yeom-hwa, who in my opinion deserved a painful death, is handed a convenient redemption arc that is forced down our throats. The second antagonist, Bong-su, also receives a wholly undeserved free pass. More on that later.
Performances: I sometimes liked some performances. With the arguable exception of Cha Kang-yoon, almost every performance feels uneven - so much so that it feels like watching two different dramas spliced together.
Cho Yi-hyun clearly has range, but the drama wastes a golden opportunity to show a teenager leading a double life: dreamy student by day, formidable shaman by night. While she does an uneven but passable job, Choo Young-woo does not. His Gyeon-u is painfully one note. Whether he is playing Gyeon-u or Bong-su, very little changes. Even Kim Mi-kyung comes off more robotic than stoic, and Choo Ja-hyun’s Yeom-hwa is flat throughout.
Lore: The lore is interesting (when it makes sense).
Things I Did Not Like:
Script
This is one of the most confused scripts I’ve seen in recent memory. It leans heavily in one direction at the beginning, then pulls a classic switcheroo midway through. It’s irritating. And the loopholes.. oh dear. They are large and plentiful. Because of them, the drama feels like it has dissociative personality disorder.
Lack of Accountability for Characters’ Actions
This is my biggest issue with the drama. Characters are repeatedly absolved of horrific actions simply because they have tragic backstories.
Yeom-hwa commits a staggering list of despicable acts: she keeps on cursing an innocent child for money, curses an old woman’s soul to hell to drive that child toward suicide, creates an evil deity for reasons the script never bothers to explain, and ultimately causes the death of her adoptive mother. Her solution to her own mistakes? A murder-suicide. Oy!
And for all this, she walks away scot-free, framed as a tragic figure deserving sympathy because she lost a child in the past. Apparently, that loss justifies destroying someone else’s. A wardrobe change and a sad smile are apparently all it takes to earn forgiveness. No thanks.
Bong-su. Yes, he was a child soldier who died an undeserved and untimely death. Let’s assume he has no control over his murderous urges. Even so, the undisputed fact remains: he kills 99 innocent people. He willingly tries to kill the ML and wants to trap the FL in some half-world dream state. And then - boom - because the FL decides he is “innocent,” he gets a free pass and an upgrade straight to heaven.
Where is the accountability? What happened to the principle that forgiveness is earned, not handed out like candy?
Lore
Even with my near-zero understanding of shamanism and its rules, it’s obvious that the lore in this drama works or stops working, purely to stretch the story to 12 episodes. It bends, flips, and contradicts itself constantly. It’s ridiculous.
Performances
The unevenness of almost all the main performances only amplifies the script’s problems.
Noble Idiocy
The two leads repeatedly hide crucial information from each other “for the other’s own good.” Their incessant attempts to die for each-other gets tiring pretty soon. Yikes.
Overall
Head Over Heels mistakes suffering for depth and redemption for resolution. Its inconsistent script and uneven performances only magnify the story’s flaws. Without consistency or accountability, the drama drains its own story of meaning and impact. This has landed on the red side of my entertainment ledger.
Story
The drama starts with an interesting premise: a young shaman falls in love with one of her customers at first sight. There is a catch though - he is plagued by misfortune, and worse, he is destined to die in 21 days. She promises to save him. The obstacles are compelling on paper. He turns out to be her new classmate, and he utterly despises shamans. With the help of her loyal best friend, she manages to save him.
That is the core story. Unfortunately, around the halfway mark, the drama seems to lose faith in its own premise. Instead of deepening the existing conflict, it pivots in an entirely new direction - one that exists mainly to give the leads ample opportunity to engage in self-sacrificing noble idiocy.
Things I Sometimes Liked:
Characters: Sung-ah is mostly likeable. Her best friend Ji-ho is consistently likeable. Gyeon-u is a mixed bag. The various shamans are a confused lot who can’t seem to decide whether they are powerful or not. Yeom-hwa, who in my opinion deserved a painful death, is handed a convenient redemption arc that is forced down our throats. The second antagonist, Bong-su, also receives a wholly undeserved free pass. More on that later.
Performances: I sometimes liked some performances. With the arguable exception of Cha Kang-yoon, almost every performance feels uneven - so much so that it feels like watching two different dramas spliced together.
Cho Yi-hyun clearly has range, but the drama wastes a golden opportunity to show a teenager leading a double life: dreamy student by day, formidable shaman by night. While she does an uneven but passable job, Choo Young-woo does not. His Gyeon-u is painfully one note. Whether he is playing Gyeon-u or Bong-su, very little changes. Even Kim Mi-kyung comes off more robotic than stoic, and Choo Ja-hyun’s Yeom-hwa is flat throughout.
Lore: The lore is interesting (when it makes sense).
Things I Did Not Like:
Script
This is one of the most confused scripts I’ve seen in recent memory. It leans heavily in one direction at the beginning, then pulls a classic switcheroo midway through. It’s irritating. And the loopholes.. oh dear. They are large and plentiful. Because of them, the drama feels like it has dissociative personality disorder.
Lack of Accountability for Characters’ Actions
This is my biggest issue with the drama. Characters are repeatedly absolved of horrific actions simply because they have tragic backstories.
Yeom-hwa commits a staggering list of despicable acts: she keeps on cursing an innocent child for money, curses an old woman’s soul to hell to drive that child toward suicide, creates an evil deity for reasons the script never bothers to explain, and ultimately causes the death of her adoptive mother. Her solution to her own mistakes? A murder-suicide. Oy!
And for all this, she walks away scot-free, framed as a tragic figure deserving sympathy because she lost a child in the past. Apparently, that loss justifies destroying someone else’s. A wardrobe change and a sad smile are apparently all it takes to earn forgiveness. No thanks.
Bong-su. Yes, he was a child soldier who died an undeserved and untimely death. Let’s assume he has no control over his murderous urges. Even so, the undisputed fact remains: he kills 99 innocent people. He willingly tries to kill the ML and wants to trap the FL in some half-world dream state. And then - boom - because the FL decides he is “innocent,” he gets a free pass and an upgrade straight to heaven.
Where is the accountability? What happened to the principle that forgiveness is earned, not handed out like candy?
Lore
Even with my near-zero understanding of shamanism and its rules, it’s obvious that the lore in this drama works or stops working, purely to stretch the story to 12 episodes. It bends, flips, and contradicts itself constantly. It’s ridiculous.
Performances
The unevenness of almost all the main performances only amplifies the script’s problems.
Noble Idiocy
The two leads repeatedly hide crucial information from each other “for the other’s own good.” Their incessant attempts to die for each-other gets tiring pretty soon. Yikes.
Overall
Head Over Heels mistakes suffering for depth and redemption for resolution. Its inconsistent script and uneven performances only magnify the story’s flaws. Without consistency or accountability, the drama drains its own story of meaning and impact. This has landed on the red side of my entertainment ledger.
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