Review – The Sound of Your Heart

I HAVE NEVER LAUGHED SO HARD OVER A K-DRAMA!  Ever.  This show is Archer funny.  Arrested Development funny.  Bojack Horseman and South Park funny.  I literally laughed so loud the cat jumped off the couch and hid under the bed.  I’ve never seen anything like this before – and I’m loving it!  All star cast, all star comedy.

If you have Netflix – start watching this now.  If you don’t… well… call up your friends and borrow their passwords, cause this show is golden!

Okay… so this is a situational comedy.  And in general, I loathe situational comedies.  They are the reason I love Korean dramas so much – they have plotlines that run a course, have narrative, wrap up at the end.  This show may or may not EVER wrap up.  Just like South Park or The Simpsons, this show may never end.  It has it’s set up – which is a struggling webtoon artist trying to break into the industry (played by Lee Kwang-Soo) and his family… which consist of his father (Kim Byung-Ok) who runs a chicken restaurant that rarely sees customers, thus he seeks additional part time employment often and hilarity ensues – his mother (Kim Mi-Kyung) and her stern, but genuine affection – and his adorably awkward older brother (Kim Dae-Myung), who is low on the ladder in the Korean business world and a ridiculous playboy who targets the most unattractive women he can find, seduces them, and quickly throws them aside for the next conquest.  He is your quintessential manchild… a selfish, heartless ass… who thankfully is funny, or we would all hate him.  And of course we have the extremely attractive woman (Jung So-Min) who has a personality so quirky it has chased away all the extremely attractive men who would pursue her (apparently?), who is the love interest of our sweet, dorky webtoon artist.

Overall Rating – 9/10.  Who Doesn’t Love Stupid, Low Brow, Fart Joke Humor?

Mild spoilers & Discussion Follow….

So…

I actually took video clips of this show and sent them to my best friend, who doesn’t watch Korean dramas.  Except I was laughing so hard, I couldn’t keep the phone still… and all you can hear is me snorting and giggling and busting out while Lee Kwang-Soo does a caterpillar crawl naked across his living room floor, trying not be seen by the camera the video crew left in his house.  I thought I would die.

And when his next door neighbor started vacuuming the walls in victory after their karaoke battle?

Or when his older brother insisted on going grocery shopping with his mother via facetime on the giant iPad?  Oh my gosh, I was rolling!  When he started ruining the drama for her, I thought I would pee on myself, but then she took him out in public and I snapped in half laughing.

The smartphone joke!  Where his father brags to his wife about knowing how to use the smartphone to order food – but he just texts his son to pick up food… OMG… I fell out of my chair…

My favorite episode, so far, is #3… the gangster chicken restaurant episode.  I think it’s true every man in his fifties secretly wishes he ran an empire of men in black.  That episode was spot on – from beginning to end.  A perfect homage to every gangster Korean drama I have ever seen… and a lot of American gangster cinema as well.

I haven’t finished season one.  As it doesn’t have a plot – as I mentioned before – I don’t feel the need to rush it.  I can enjoy the laughs whenever I want.  And savor them.  And hope this show is renewed.

Unlike many people I know (just kidding, I actually don’t personally KNOW anyone who watches Korean dramas in the real world… just you folks here on the interwebs), I don’t watch The Running Man.  I tried a few times… and was mildly amused, but it just wasn’t my cup of tea.  You can tell that all this time of live and random comedy has Lee Kwang-Soo a lot of good, though, as the man is fearless in this show – just making a total fool of himself for laughs.  And shamelessly at that.  It’s comedy gold.

This kind of humor does, unfortunately, wear me out.  I can only take so much of it before I need a break.  With this show, I tend to watch three episodes at a time then stop… I am too busy laughing to bother with screen shots, which I need to do for my reviews, I know… I’ll try again, I promise.  And though I am happy to see this kind of show appear in K-town, it also worries me… as I the last thing I want to start seeing is more of this mess.  Lee Kwang-Soo can pull it off.  Maybe one or two others.  But let’s not open the door for the dregs of situational comedy to come rolling through… the last thing I want is never ending comedy shows like Full House, Home Improvement, Modern Family, The Simpsons, and so on, to start streaming from South Korea.