[REVIEW] TV series "Road No.1" - Premiere episode

A scene from TV series "Road No.1" [MBC]

"Road No.1" - Premiere episode (MBC TV, 9:55 PM)

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The blood of a fellow soldier runs beside a man who has survived death by a thread. The shaking hand which will never be able to paint again. The look in the eye of a betrayed man who leaves the woman he loves in the fire. The wheeled cannon tank approaching the two men, who face a war before battling each other over one woman. These are several scenes that sum up the premiere episode of TV series "Road No.1".

Instead of explaining the story or describing the situations, "Road No.1" reveals emotions among the characters and their circumstances with short dialogue and images of certain moments. The love between Soo-yeon (played by Kim Ha-neul), the daughter of the master, and Jang-woo (played by So Ji-sub), the son of the servant, begins during their childhood as something of a compassion. Over the years, it changes into a heated passion that cannot be cooled by a shower of rain.

However, "Road No.1" omits showing viewers the process of their changing emotions and only shows their happy, shining days together and painful moments of the breakup. It is definitely unkind to play out the story like this, going onto the next phase of the story without providing ample explanation of the previous. But in a drama where the melodramatic structure between characters Jang-woo, Soo-yeon and Tae-ho (played by Yoon Kye-sang) has to be set up before the war breaks out and breaks up the three characters, perhaps such storytelling was absolutely necessary. The relationship between Jang-woo and Tae-ho, who had displayed subtle tension after only meeting three or four times, will be a key element in not turning the melodrama of "Road No.1" into a cliche.

And what is left now in the show is the war. Will the war in "Road No.1" merely be a collection of spectacles and the setting of its melodrama? Or will it be a 'real' war of people who had lived and are still living in this land, which had the Korean War only sixty years ago and makes the experience all the more painful? It will be all right to wait and see how it turns out. Because the war in "Road No.1" has just begun.

- Written by Yoonina (TV critic)

Editor : Lynn Kim lynn2878@
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