[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Happiness - Drama" Episode 11

So Andrew (played by Lee Joo-seung) is the guy who insists on wearing a mask all the time, owing to personal vanity regarding a scar. Despite Andrew's behavior being suspicious, he's one of the few characters that doesn't start fights for petty reasons, and has thus appeared mostly sympathetic until now. Anyway, it turns out Andrew is a serial killer. It's a testament to the sheer stupidity of most of the cast that his plan worked so well.

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Andrew isn't that smart though. He doesn't appear to have had any reason to murder the cleaning lady aside from being bored. And Andrew also could have been fooled by Joo-hyeong, our disgraced doctor, but as usual it doesn't occur to Joo-hyeong or for that matter Representative Oh that a serial killer isn't exactly a reliable ally. Hilariously, Andrew's plan obviously being to kill everyone on his own timetable and escape appears to be the only actual long term plan any of the schemers have come up.

I'm still disappointed with Sae-bom and Yi-hyeon though. Apparently the other characters were not aware of the fact that they had a line to Colonel Han. Why our leads would hide this information is unclear to me. Maybe they just wanted to exert authority without having to rely on an external threat? Because if that was their plan it was a pretty terrible one that wasn't exactly working that well even before Andrew exposed himself.

"Happiness - Drama" gets far just on the strength of this new plot twist, as obviously embarrassing as it is for our lead characters. Sae-bom and Yi-hyeon don't attempt to explain to Colonel Han is going on. And Colonel Han, for his part, is entirely disinterested in the petty drama at the apartment building when he's trying to find a cure for the epidemic. Sae-bom and Yi-hyeon chose poorly when they decided they'd rather stay in the apartment building with strangers than evacuate to Colonel Han's location.

I suppose there was the matter of their wanting to protect the people at the apartment building who aren't complete jerks, of which there are several. Still, I think there's a genuine dispute that could have been had over why Sae-bom and Yi-hyeon were hiding their affiliation with Colonel Han. It's just, when Representative Oh is trying to attack them over it in the context of her rationalizing why she contrived to give a serial killer a gun, the critique is pretty hollow.

Review by William Schwartz

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"Happiness - Drama" is directed by Ahn Gil-ho, written by Han Sang-woon, and features Han Hyo-joo, Park Hyung-sik, Jo Woo-jin, Kang Ji-eun-I, Lee Jun-hyeok, Park Joo-hee. Broadcasting information in Korea: 2021/11/05~Now airing, Fri, Sat 22:40 on tvN.