This review may contain spoilers
Way too long
I wasnt gonna bother write a review for this drama as it had its ups and downs but werent to bad,i found it way to long it honestly could of finished in alot less episodes,but hey each to their own i only liked the odd characters tbh like the main lead his coldness turn soft was great couldnt really fault him well apart from when he became Robin,yeah he was way to childish touchy feely and kinda sulky,loved the assistant lol found him hilarious.Didnt mind the young girls dad her circus friends and the female shrink liked em all, didnt really like the rest of them couldnt stand the father he got on my nerves heartless dick he spent most of the drama constantly shouting his mouth off, didnt like the guy voted ceo he was proper irritating and kinda creepy.The female lead was just rubbish to be fair dunno if it was just her character as ive not watched her in anything else or just her i felt they could of made this drama just as well without her,she contributed nothing in my opinion she was just there,i got a little confused though ,i thought she was giving both parts of him a try , she seems only interested in robin ,theyre always lovey dovey not seeming to care there's a nutter on the loose whos after the both parts of the male lead,i also found theyre not very cautious,as the crazy doc seems to always get to them,also how do you love one part of a person and wanna date and play house with him ,but not the other is she really that thick ,he wouldn't even exist without mr gu,wake girl they are 2 halves of a whole,think about it:( by the time i finished watching i just couldn't stand her tbh.
The police in this drama were so shite i mean come on......what a let down , no sense at all,couldn't catch a cold to be fair after abit the male shrink who took the doc just again started to get on my nerves who waits 15 years for revenge just to suck at it so bad ,the storyline to some extent werent bad it just got ruined along the way somehow ,others in it to me neednt of been.
I decided to drop it as i felt it was getting pretty silly at this point i mean the bad guy manages to keep escaping and kidnapping people uh uh it was time to drop it,as i said storyline weren't to bad would be better without female lead and i wouldnt watch it again.
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I am so glad that this KDrama is not similar to what the U.S. profiles Jekyll and Hyde. The U.S. version is scary and gruesome. I believe that the writers took D.I.D. to another level and didn't twist this mental illness. I thank the writers for bringing a very important but sad mental illness to the Korean Screen. I noticed that some Korean Screenwriters bring a lot to the screen when it comes to mental illness with importance and bring about awareness.
Hyun Bin with his character playing two different types of personalities must have been difficult and he did that with excellence. I applaud Hyun Bin! He did so great that I even thought they were two different people but in the same body. How difficult is that! Han Ji Min who played her character had to deal with a personality whom she deeply loved and the other personality she had to tolerate was perfection and believable. To see their personalities merge was very emotional.
*Standing Ovation* for the whole Hyde, Jekyll, and Me team, cast, writers, producers, visual, costume, and sound.
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Does it deserve the (negative) hype?
This review is as spoiler free as possible while giving fair warning about this drama! So no plot details, but mood spoilers etc.For me, this was very much a drama of two halves. The first half was enjoyable, the second half was.... Not. The acting is good, the problem here was entirely the script/story.
The portrayal of multiple personalities isn't realistic, obviously. If you're someone who can take the show at face value and just go with the rules as set by that universe, you may still have fun with the first bit, like I did.
It's not the greatest show ever but it's an enjoyable enough ride with plenty of cute and fun moments - up until the main plotline wraps up and you realise there are still a bunch of episodes left. Instead of using those episodes to wrap up the romance, the show goes off the deep end in a way that I can only really describe as unpleasant.
The in-universe "rules" around the personalities are completely disregarded. There is a sudden and massive amount of unnecessary angst. Finally, and I am in no way exaggerating, the very last few minutes of the very last episode essentially goes "wait actually the personalities did work how we said they did at the beginning after all so forget all of that".
If you're the world's biggest Hyun Bin fan and simply must watch anything with him in... Watch up until the main story wraps up and then maybe the last 5 minutes of the last episode. It won't be satisfying but at least you won't feel actively bad.
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This review may contain spoilers
Potential lost on those additional episodes
WARNIG, this review contains some massive spoilers!This drama gave me a lot of mixed feelings. For the most part it seemed very interesting and actually well written. I think I should be warned beforehand by really bad reviews, but at first I didn’t understand why it was so criticised, as it seemed to be actually entertaining. But then something happened.
Let’s start from the beginning. The idea is simple and actually well known. Gu Seo Jin is a young chaebol, director of amusement park. He is very composed, everything must be according to his words, he rules his company in a very stoic manner. And there’s a very good reason for it. Seo Jin has a DID, dissociative identity disorder. And his other identity, Robin, who’s name everyone avoid, can appear when Seo Jin’s heart rate will go too high. So no excitement for Seo Jin. But his five year steak of being Robin-free is about to be broken when Ha Na appears on the scene. Young circus actress work on Robin in mysterious ways and soon he appears.
And honestly, that’s a neat idea, and how it was done was also interesting. The comparison with Kill Me, Heal Me comes naturally, so I’d only say that transformation lacked weird effects, like change of eye colours, magically appearing tattoos or eyeliners (as it was in Kill Me Heal Me). It all seemed a bit more natural here, but of course it wasn’t perfect either.
And at first I really liked this drama. It all seemed pretty well. Production-wise it might’ve not be the best looking, there were some weird, pretty ridiculous moments, but not bad at the end. Main characters were interesting and well played (I mean, duh… Hyun Bin, right?).
It was sometimes painfully cliche. Because of course, and here comes major spoiler, so be aware, Seo Jin’s trauma from the childhood was caused by kidnapping. And of course, the child that was kidnapped with him is now a perp who kidnapped Seo Jin’s therapist. And Seo Jin wanted to save the kid as well but wasn’t able to do it, so that’s why Robin has a need to save people.
But aside all those things, up to some point this drama was pleasant to watch, just like that. Wasn’t the best, but I wasn’t bored, I felt somehow even invested in the story. Characters were interesting, there was some king of plot, even though writers seemed to forget about some motives and they brought them back out of spite.
What you can see from the beginning is cheap production. It’s maybe not incredibly obvious but I laughed my butt off when I’ver seen how they’ve changed car for accident scene. Brand new Mercedes shapeshifter into old Nissan. I mean, color was the same so I guess it’s all fine. But you can see after scenes like this that it’s not all perfect here. At least CGI gorilla wasn’t the worst.
So I actually enjoyed watching it, it all seemed very good, aside of those minor flaws that can be overlooked considering that this drama is not that new.
But you may ask, what happened then? Why am I writing good things about drama that I’ve marked so low?
Well… it all happens somewhere in the middle of the series. I’m always a bit sceptical towards drama that have more that standard 16 episodes. I’ve learned that many times writers just don’t use this additional time perfectly. And it happened here again. For four episodes we have an absolute chaos that doesn’t really changes anything. There’s a lot going on, but it doesn’t have any effect on the main plot.
A lot of new motives were brought then and some were totally forgotten about (third identity, anyone?). And yet, there were just too much information, too much was happening at the same time but the issues were not solved. There was no real plot development.
There was one episode that I swear was just dialogues. Nothing real happened, there was just exposition talking. Who’s who, and what could happen, that sort of things.
And the villain, interesting at first he grew into this exaggerated, over the top bond-type villain, who can do anything and cannot be captured. There were moments that I was wondering if he’s invisible because despite doing pretty obvious things, police still couldn’t figure out that it was him all along.
And don’t start me on the hostage situation episode. Yes, EPISODE. The whole episode when we had exclusively hostage situation. Nothing more happened, just talking about kidnapper. How it ended? I have no effing idea, it was so chaotic that I actually I haven’t catch all of it.
After this we had stretching motives till the very end. One issue had to be talked through by everyone and before anything happened my curiosity was long gone.
And only at the end, last two episodes we had some sense back, those two episodes brought my faith in this drama back a bit, but nothing could bring back my time that I’ve lost before.
So… I’m a bit in a pickle here. I really wanted to like this drama. Despite all of its flaws, ridiculous solutions and poor production. I liked main characters and I really liked how it all ended between them. But the truth is that Hyde, Jekyll, Me should have 16 episodes, no more. That’s it, thank you.
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Wraps itself up nicely, it's not rushed - some may argue it's perhaps a bit slow but I appreciated that they took the time to not gloss over some difficult stuff.
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Hyde, Jekyll, Me is a kdrama centred on a character with DID that came out at the same time as the much better received Kill Me, Heal Me. Because they share similarities in concept and came out around the same time, these two dramas are held up to one another automatically, so I think it's important to recognize how and why KMHM had such good reception when HJM couldn't pull in ratings. Other reviewers have mentioned the similar time slots, so I won't get into that. Instead, let's focus on HJM's shortcomings.
The story is about Goo Seo Jin, a rich chaebol heir who was kidnapped as a child alongside his friend--check off another similarity to KMHM. The trauma from that event and his inability to do anything about it eventually birthed Robin, his heroic, kind-hearted alter ego. But the story doesn't start with Robin's birth and instead, we're shown Seo Jin's position later in life, his bad personality and selfishness as he meets ringmaster Jang Ha Na and the two clash. One big drawback to the series is the very start of it. It took me two attempts to get through the first episode, and another two to make it past the first four. The beginning is clunky with weird pacing, an even weirder setup, and not a lot to suck you into the story. The first introduction to Robin as a character is cringy. He feels less like a person and more like a comic book superhero someone came up with in middle school. Both he and the main personality feel like caricatures, and it's painful to watch. Getting into this drama is hard, there are no two ways around that. But does that mean it's not worth watching? Well... I have a story for that.
I started watching HJM coming off of a few really great dramas. I absolutely fell in love with those dramas back-to-back and once they were over, I couldn't bring myself to get invested in any of the other good-looking shows out there. Ah, I thought, the dreaded burnout. That's when I looked back at my 'dropped' list and saw the name Hyde, Jekyll, Me. I went into it wanting a trashy, badly-written drama that I could laugh at. I only paid half attention, especially to the earliest episodes, and it worked out exactly as I expected it to. The plot was cliche, a bit stupid, with some moments that didn't make a lot of sense and a bit of dragging towards the middle that I was used to seeing at the halfway. Every now and then, I would put the drama back on hold again and would switch to series that I was invested in until the burnout came and I would inevitably need my 'trash drama' once more.
But something strange happened amidst all that. The writing wasn't good by any means, even when the acting was decent, and my wife and I would mock and laugh at some of the things that they were doing, but then it came time for the final episodes. The main conflict was over, the antagonist was gone, and there were still a few episodes to go. All that was left to settle was the conflict of the dual personalities, something that, remembering KMHM, I expected to take maybe half an episode. But it didn't. And as I watched the characters go through their days and saw the inevitable end creeping up on them, I realized that I actually cared about the characters for some strange reason. The characters I thought of as caricatures grew on me when I wasn't looking and suddenly they mattered to me. And sure, what happened from there on was predictable, but I was still invested.
Just like how production values don't make a show, you don't always need a solid story to love something. Sometimes all you need is time and a little bit of passion. HKM is nothing of a masterpiece, but that doesn't mean it did everything poorly. Instead of focusing on the outward appearance of DID like KMHM did, it put time into the internal effects that the illness had on both Seo Jin and Robin, and the ripple effect it had on the people they surrounded themselves with. Even while its handling of the issue was silly, with hypnosis sprinkled in for added effect, and even with Robin being a better person than Seo Jin and more likeable to boot, it remembered that the root of everything was mental illness. It took the time to make Robin a person instead of a stereotype the way that KMHM treated its alters, and it respected its characters enough to give them a proper end.
The production is a bit of a mess, the writing is sloppy and premise is weird, but it's a drama with heart. Don't take it seriously, and you may be pleasantly surprised.
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Overall i would recommend it
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JUST WATCH IT!
it took me a while to see the drama due to the raiting (I only saw it after 3/4 years of joining my list) . After finally deciding to watch, I don't regret anything, I also read some reviews from very good to very bad. Users who gave a bad rating only spoke of the main character being egocentric, it is true that sometimes he did what he felt like but she made many actions thinking of everyone.If you saw kill me heal me you will like this one :)
About the story: the story is quite interesting, it didn't become a tiresome story and you can see the episodes well. For me, I even think there could have been one more episode at the end.
About the cast:they chose excellent actors, they was chosen to act as a couple were chosen very well. What ended up bringing me to know the drama was hyeri (because she is my favorite k-idol) and hyun bin , if you know any of the main ones it becomes more interesting to see the drama.
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