Letter #52: Two Cops

Good morning, Erin.
 
Welcome to Part 2 of the “For the Boys!” Duology, the long-awaited and never-requested second half of my mini-project to watch a couple of shows because of the guys who are in it, rather than because of the girls! Woo!
 
Today, we’re going to talk (non-spoilery) about Two Cops—which, as it so happens, both falls under my vague Phase II “watch more supernatural stuff” umbrella and is surprisingly similar in concept to Part 1 of this duology, Bad/Crazy. Man, sometimes things just work out.
 
“...I still didn’t ask for this, Daryl.”
 
Oh, don’t worry—it’s on the house.
 
Let’s roll, Kato!
 
1. Well, obviously, there’s the question of who the titular “boys” of this part of the mini-project are…and it turns out they are, as I’m you may have guessed, the titular “two cops” that headline this series. And, as it turns out, they weren’t the only of myK-drama friends to join me on this ride:

• Mr. CEO Guy from You’re the Best (which I’m 60% through) as the main cop

• Good Boy from my self-insert fanfic Start-Up as the conman ghost

• Gumiho Girl from…apparently everything I’m watching, now, as the reporter

• the awesome older sister from True Beauty as Good Boy’s pickpocket sidekick

• the homeroom teacher/older sister’s boyfriend from True Beauty as a cop

• the curly-haired shakedown thug boss-turned-travel-agent from Vincenzo as a cop

• the paralegal guy from Vincenzo as a minor criminal

• the main character’s writer friend from My Sassy Girl as Good Boy’s thug boss friend

• the dad from 100 Days My Prince as the police superintendent 

• Restaurant Friend from Our Beloved Summer (very, very briefly) as a nurse

• the evil possessed woman from The Uncanny Counter as the Japanese waitress

 
2. It’s…it’s just nice to hear Good Boy’s voice, again. Gosh I’ve missed him.
 
3. I know it seems a little cheaty to say that I’m watching this for Good Boy and the dude from You’re the Best when I haven’t finished that show nor (most importantly) talked to you about it, but…spoiler alert: I really like him, as an actor, and I think having watched 35 of 52 episodes is enough time to render a judgment on whether or not I like him. And I do. He’s probably my…third-favorite Korean actor? (It goes Good Boy, then Start-Up Dead Dad, then him.) I particularly like how theater-actor-y he is, in terms of how he moves when on screen. 
 
3A. …and my top three Korean actresses are probably Jeon Yeo-been, Kim Go-eun, and Kim Tae-ri. In case you were wondering.
 
4. Good Boy and Mr. CEO Guy are waaaaaaaay too good for this show. By which I mean they put everything they have into their performances, but there’s only so much you can do with bad writing. So, it’s some good hustle, but…well, it’s a bad script. 
 
5. On the other hand, Gumiho Girl is kinda great in this. I don’t know exactly what it is about her, but she seems to adapt to the script the easiest of the three leads. And, for whatever else I could say about her here or have said about her in previous things, she’s once again really funny, here. And especially charming. And so young. Not that she’s remotely old, now, but this is far enough back that she’s noticeably younger-looking, compared to now. And, perhaps relatedly, I think she’s the prettiest I’ve ever seen her look. 
 
6. …that said, one of my first notes was that I thought Good Boy was crazy for falling for her when his pickpocket sidekick girl was obviously (to me) way prettier than she was. Which is why I wasn’t at all surprised when I realized she was the awesome older sister from True Beauty. 
 
6A. She’s #BestGirl, by the way. (And not just because she looks fantastic, here.) Her character, I think, has the most depth to it, and she’s definitely the most engaging member of the cast—potentially as much for the energy she brings whenever she’s on screen as for being perhaps the only one whose writing doesn’t fall outside the reach of the writers. 
 
6B. For a brief period of time, I thought Gumiho Girl’s nurse friend was going to earn that spot, but she gets way less to do than I thought she would, so she’s barely a character in her own right. Cute, though. 
 
7. Speaking of actors being charming and the writers not exceeding their grasps: I really like Mr. CEO Guy and Gumiho Girl as a couple, in this. They’re adorable together, I think they have really nice chemistry, and their relationship forms in a really, really understated and believable way. I mean, it sometimes plays out during dramatic chase scenes and kidnappings and other cop show-y things, but ignoring that, it’s all really grounded and subtle. I don’t want to say they’re my favorite on-screen couple, but I found myself rooting for them with a similar intensity as I did for the couple in When the Camellia Blooms, which is pretty high praise. (And, no, I don’t yet have a ranking for couples. Though I did make my short list of contenders. So…look forward to that, maybe. Eventually. Maybe.) Plus: good smoochin’!
 
8. Oh—Restaurant Friend is only on screen for one brief scene, but I still liked her. I think she’s a hoot. 
 
9. This show has a Hyundai sponsorship, which forgives a lot. 
 
10. The show’s villain is supposed to be very thoughtful and strategic, but he also can’t seem to keep his lies straight. And all of his dialogue is just shy of being a guts-spilling cliche villain speech. I don’t know how anyone doesn’t walk away from him wondering if he’s got a giant death ray mounted to the roof of his home. 
 
11. …that said, Mr. CEO Guy and Good Boy do an equally lousy job of keeping the insane reality of their situation (that Mr. CEO Guy is talking to a ghost no one else can see, and Good Boy that he’s (when applicable) a ghost possessing Mr. CEO Guy’s body) to themselves. Which, sure, you’d expect it to be difficult to hide it in every single instance, but it’s like they never think it might make other people think something seriously wrong. So, y’know, maybe this story is just set in a too-honest world. I dunno. 
 
12. Good Boy does a lot of dancing, in this show—which just bolsters my long-held belief that the music video for “Future” (the Start-Up theme song) should have just been him dancing to the song as he listens to it on his headphones on the way to work. 
 
13. Add this one to my ongoing demand for subtitles to just use oppa instead of the character’s name, because this one not knowing how best to translate it gives away an aspect of the mystery to the English-speaking audience. 
 
14. …that said, a lot of the turns in this show are set up as though the audience (English-speaking or otherwise) is too stupid to think for themselves. I mean, I know not everyone is the world’s greatest detective, like I am, but…come on. 
 
15. Oh, speaking of subtitle nonsense, again: one of the characters refers to the other as seonbae, which I of course know is the Korean equivalent of senpai, which denotes that someone is the speaker’s senior. But the subtitles again chose to translate this by using that character’s name. Unfortunately, the character’s name is Jung-man—which the translator chose to write as “Young Man.” So, until I figured out that his name was Young Man, I was fighting off this sense of cognitive dissonance every time these two characters would speak, because I could hear one calling the other as his senior but was reading him refer to the guy as his junior (that is, I thought he was calling him a “young man”). 
 
16. Gumiho Girl changes her hairstyle around Episode 30, and I hate it.
 
17. The show is called Two Cops because it’s about the partnership between Mr. CEO Guy and Good Boy as they use their supernatural situation to help solve a case that’s important to them both. But it literally gets its title from Gumiho Girl, who has noticed that Mr. CEO Guy inexplicably acts like two different people (as in, like himself and like Good Boy when Good Boy possesses his body) and has him down in her phone as “Two Cops” because she never knows which version of him she’s going to talk to. Which I thought was pretty funny. 
 
17A. Taken a bit further, there’s an argument to be made that the title also refers to the partnership between Mr. CEO Guy’s cop and Gumiho Girl’s reporter in investigating everything. 
 
18. Gumiho Girl changes her hairstyle again around Episode 32, and I looooove it.
 
19. This will seem out of the blue, but there is a moment in this show that makes this point necessary: if you are ever a ghost and find yourself possessing a man’s body, it is proper etiquette not to use the urinal directly next to someone else, if it can be avoided.
 
20. I really like the goofy cast of thugs that both Mr. CEO Guy and Good Boy know and utilize as a support crew throughout the series. And I like that they keep using them, as well. It’s fun. 
 
21. There’s a beat in the middle of the show that requires Mr. CEO Guy and his junior cop partner to swap cars—that is, for Mr. CEO Guy (when possessed by Good Boy) to swap his beat-up old car with the junior cop’s super-fancy expensive new car. And then he just…never swaps back. Like, the junior cop eventually just buys a new car. And no one questions this or refers to it. Not Mr. CEO Guy who has no recollection of the swap nor any particular personality trait that would allow him to, y’know, essentially steal his partner’s car, not Gumiho Girl who would find the swap very out of character, and not even the junior cop whose car it is. It’s very strange. 
 
22. Another aspect of the bad writing: characters remember, share, and use information they’ve garnered only when and if the story needs them to. They forget things they definitely knew a few moments ago whenever it is convenient to the plot. It’s really frustrating. 
 
23. I have thoughts on the secondary romance stuff. Which I will spare you. 
 
And…yeah, I think that’s that. 
 
Nor worth the time, but also not unwatchable, if you really feel the need to. And, yes, I kind of regret that I finished this before getting into another of the shows from your list. Yet again proving that I am not to be trusted to make decisions without you. To the surprise of no one.
 
—Daryl