[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Grandpas Over Flowers Investigation Team" Episode 1

The entire extended opening of "Grandpas Over Flowers Investigation Team" is just exposition as to who the five lead characters are. I can't really explain who these people are, because discovering their bizarre personality traits is most of the fun. Each member of the squad has their own special investigative talent, as well as a crippling nonsensical weakness. Together, they solve crime eventually.

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Sadly, the pacing of the drama is just a bit off. It's not until quite late that three of the leads are finally transformed into old men, and by the time we get there there's not really any time to explore the greater plot because we have to hurry into vignettes about the inconveniences these three old men now face, having lost their younger bodies. The comedy is played so sharp it's easy to lose sight of the fact that the entire situation is, well, pretty awful actually.

Fortunately the comedy is quite potent, and the younger cast does an excellent job hitting their beats even though half of them aren't even going to be in the drama after this episode. Jeong-woo (played by Kim Heechul) is the man of the group with the most dubious competence- so of course he's the only one who manages to get away without having his youth stolen. That's gotta sting almost as much as losing the old age- having this unreliable young whippersnapper be the one in charge of actually doing stuff.

Joon-hyeok (played by Choi Jin-hyuk) is a cranky young guy, so it feels all too appropriate to see him transition into Lee Soon-jae, a cranky old guy who has all the same skills but is now much less capable of executing them. I like the general attitudes of the cast here- there's a clear sense that nobody is taking the drama all that seriously, so the failure to get any kind of impressive narrative progress doesn't feel like that big a deal. We're here for the jokes, after all.

And in that regard a special mention must be made for Eun-ji (played by Lee Cho-hee). She manages to be quirky without being particularly cute. The woman is honestly pretty weird, and I like the way that the other characters brush her off. There's an obvious potential romantic subplot for her with Jeong-woo, yet the drama pulls off the odd feat of making them both just unlikable enough that such a storyline feels kind of pointless. Technically the whole drama is pointless- it's clearly aiming for humor, so this is as yet not much of a liability.

Review by William Schwartz

"Grandpas Over Flowers Investigation Team"is directed by Kim Jin-young, written by Moon Seon-hee and features Lee Soon-jae, Byun Hee-bong, Jang Gwang, Kim Heechul, Lee Cho-hee, Kim Eung-soo.