[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Grandpas Over Flowers Investigation Team" Episode 2

Now that the premise has been thoroughly explained, this episode gets to the more essential question of what exactly this drama is going to be about. In terms of storyline, "Grandpas Over Flowers Investigation Team" looks to be sticking toward an episodic format. Presumably the characters will be restored to their original youthful bodies at some eventual point. In the meantime, though, there's mysteries to solve.

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I like how nobody is treating the team of detectives seriously, even though the first episode clearly established that they're all experts in their field. It makes sense- Joon-hyeok is the only person on the team who acts like an adult, and as a rude old guy he can only come off as so threatening. An inordinate amount of the humor seems to be based on Won-bin and Kang-seok acting like ridiculous young people even though they're clearly old, a fact that clearly hasn't fully sunk in yet.

The comedy tends to be awfully crude- an essential sequence in the overall mystery is arrived at through an exploration of bowel movements. It's not incredibly funny but it is basically funny. The writing is less traditional scripted situation comedy as it is the stuff of variety shows. "Grandpa Over Flowers Investigation Team" even makes a point of using cheesy editing at weird moments to punctuate character emotions. It's goofy stuff, and how well it works will depend mainly on your personal sense of humor.

While the comedy works sometimes, like whenever the team gets too emotional and Joon-hyeok has to berate them into behaving like actual detectives, it's an awkward contrast compared to the actual storyline. There's actual death involved here. Characters are genuinely distraught over having lost a loved one, and it's rather mean-spirited of the drama to make jokes at their expense, even if the entire story is just fiction and intended mainly for our amusement.

The trouble is that "Grandpa Over Flowers Investigation Team" isn't really that amusing. It certainly has its moments, and does a good job encouraging me to pay attention to the proceedings, but the comedy isn't good enough to overcome the whiplash from the divide between humor and murder. The jokes just aren't dark enough for that to feel appropriate. Wherever the drama goes from here, I hope the writer doesn't feel compelled to make every single case a murder mystery. There are other crimes that can be investigated, after all.