[HanCinema's Drama Review] "I'm Not a Robot" Episodes 31-32 (Final)
By William Schwartz | Published on
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The production team is clearly padding for time, as the final episodes of "I'm Not a Robot" bring up some very weak last-minute conflicts solely so that the characters can demonstrate more minimal effort to solve them. Min-gyoo abruptly turns around from permanenently hating Yoo-cheol to just sort of idly forgiving him, which Yoo-cheol gladly accepts. Once more it's hard to take Yoo-cheol credibly as a villain, when it never seemed like he wanted to be fighting Min-gyoo in the first place.
Everyone else just sort of hangs around and does extended epilogue stuff. Everyone gets a girlfriend, or boyfriend, or little sister, or something to make life generally warm and fuzzy. At the risk of sounding like a grump, my main issue with this is that everyone's loneliness issues are solved way too easily. At its best emotional moments, "I'm Not a Robot" really nailed Min-gyoo's sense of social isolation, to the point it made other characters do serious introspection about their own life choices.
The revelation that Min-gyoo has to go do military service, an inherently miserable and lonely life experience for Korean men, is completely wasted in this context. The drama had a perfect opportunity to help us build solidarity with Min-gyoo, and realize that we are all Min-gyoo on the inside- and instead we just to Yoo Seung-ho looking dapper in his uniform as he comes back to see Ji-ah. The scene may be cute, but it's also unnecessarily generic.
Consider this. We see Min-gyoo go through a terrible grueling day of training. He's miserable, having never been run ragged before like this in his life. He's about to cry- then the heart ball turns on, and upon realizing that Ji-ah is thinking of him, Min-gyoo's worries all melt away. Other soldiers see the heart ball and want their own. All of a sudden, Ji-ah is a successful entrepreneur, and she didn't have to make deals with suspicious looking white guys in suits to do it.
That's another mistake "I'm Not a Robot" has made fairly consistently. It expects us to care about the characters' professional goals, solely because we're supposed to want to see them succeed. What I wanted, anyway, was to see them work together to make the world a better place. How exactly Baek-gyoon's robots are going to accomplish that, we'll never know, since the drama cuts out before we get an explanation. Oh well. I've seen worse.
Review by William Schwartz
"I'm Not a Robot" is directed by Jeong Dae-yoon, written by Kim Seon-mi-I and Lee Suk-joon-I, and features Yoo Seung-ho, Chae Soo-bin, Uhm Ki-joon, and Park Se-wan.
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Staff writer. Has been writing articles for HanCinema since 2012, having lived in South Korea from 2011 to 2021. He is currently located in the Southern Illinois. William Schwartz can be contacted via william@hancinema.net, and is open to requests for content in future articles.