[ad_1]
Behind Your Touch: Episodes 1-2
by lovepark
What happens when you put together a butt-psychic vet and a single-minded detective? Utter chaos. Lots of crazy misunderstandings, dramatic shenanigans, and haphazard encounters dominate the opening week of this zany comedy that is full of laughs and off-beat characters. Leave your brain at the door and get ready for a wild ride.
EPISODES 1-2
This show may need to come with a warning for the unaware lest it offend people’s sensibilities. Our hero, orphaned veterinarian BONG YE-BOON (Han Ji-min), can see others’ memories by touching their butts. Seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen, but lo and behold, the first outing of Behind Your Touch has turned this skeptical viewer into an amused fan. But before we get to the nitty-gritty, some context is needed.
High school student Ye-boon just lost her mother who committed suicide, and moves in with her cheery aunt JUNG HYEON-OK (Park Sung-yeon) and her disapproving grandpa. At her new school, she meets her future bestie BAE OK-HEE (Joo Min-kyung) who is equal parts intimidating and adorable. In order to win her grandpa’s love, Ye-boon becomes a veterinarian and takes over the family business. Fifteen years pass since then, and our story resumes in present-time.
Despite Ye-boon’s efforts to shift their practice to house pets, their main source of income is cows and pigs. Unfortunately, Ye-boon has a tumultuous relationship with livestock, particularly of the bovine-kind, and on one such visit, her patient sends her flying through the streets. This is where the show introduces its other protagonist, violent crimes officer MOON JANG-YEOL (Lee Min-ki).
Recently transferred to the countryside, Jang-yeol’s goal is to return to Seoul within a month. His team leader WON JONG-MUK (Kim Hee-won) laughs at his lofty dreams since nothing happens in their quiet town, and proving his point, all the officers head out for their newest assignment: directing traffic.
While everyone else busies themselves with the once-in-a-century meteor shower, Ye-boon goes out on another “farm call” to examine a pregnant cow. However, this ordinary night turns extraordinary when a bright light crashes into them and sends Ye-boon flailing through the air. She wakes up at home three days later, and to her horror, she starts seeing her pets’ memories when she touches their butts.
Modern science offers her no explanation for her rather unbelievable situation, so Ye-boon seeks out neighborhood shaman PARK JONG-BAE (Park Hyuk-kwon) for help. He tells her that a deity has chosen her, and to avoid disaster, she must perform a rite. Ye-boon gawks at his solution (as well as the price tag), but that very day, her grandpa comes home with an injured back. Guess it’s time for a career change.
Accepting her fate with reluctance, Ye-boon performs the rite alongside Jong-bae, but her flimsy faith wavers further when he orders her to walk across straw cutters. She asks him to demonstrate first, and Jong-bae’s ruse falls apart as he hurts himself and fails to summon his deity (a.k.a., General MacArthur). Ye-boon demands her money back, and Jong-bae asks if he can keep just enough for his kid’s K-pop lessons in Australia. Pfft.
Ye-boon turns to the internet next for answers and discovers the idea of psychometry. She wonders if her powers work on humans and tests her theory on a pickpocket she spots on the bus. When the first tap fails, she goes in for another, but a hand reaches out and cuffs her. It’s Jang-yeol, and he looks disgusted at the pervert he just caught.
At the station, Jang-yeol interrogates Ye-boon who decides to go the brazen route, but her bravado crumbles when he pulls out the video he took of her committing the crime. She attempts to steal the phone but that flops as well, so she tells him the truth: “I have superpowers.” Jang-yeol gives her a scathing look, and Ye-boon rescinds her comment. Ha!
Aunt Hyeon-ok hears of Ye-boon’s arrest, but instead of rushing out to help her niece, she dresses up to see her old flame, Jong-muk. They get a cute and hilarious Twenty Five Twenty One parody flashback, but once we return to the present, Jong-muk bursts her bubble and throws her into a holding cell. Heh.
Meanwhile, Ye-boon heads home, having already been released, and sighs at her useless powers — they don’t even tell her winning lottery ticket numbers! As she laments her fate, a last-minute patient shows up at her doorsteps, and she helps an elderly pet owner connect with his dog. For once, Ye-boon realizes that maybe this power is a gift after all.
As she sends the elderly man off, Ok-hee’s younger brother Deok-hee (I love their names) passes by with Jang-yeol and introduces her to the new neighbor. She immediately gets into a spat with Jang-yeol, but even amid their animosity, Ye-boon rushes to the rescue when he slips on the stairs… only to catch him by his butt. While Ye-boon is distracted by her powers acting up again, Jang-yeol scowls at the pervert and tosses her to the ground.
Despite the sore back and new pervert-label, Ye-boon’s power brings her good fortune as word quickly spreads of her uncanny ability to diagnose a pet’s problem. One of her many new customers is convenience store employee KIM SUN-WOO (Suho) whose beauty literally blows Ye-boon away.
Later that night, the farmer from the meteor shower accident appears for another cow-related trouble, and Ye-boon learns that she wasn’t the only one endowed with psychic abilities. The farmer warns her that using the powers too much will cause hair loss, which he experienced firsthand. This new discovery sends Ye-boon into a panic, so much so that she closes the store indefinitely. Her aunt has other plans in mind, though, and secretly sends Ye-boon off to a fish farm to work.
At the farm, Ye-boon meets with an underclassman from veterinary school who looks exhausted, and she soon finds out why: they have to vaccinate 10,000 fish. By nightfall, Ye-boon is a shadow of her former self, and rather than die on this godforsaken farm, she decides to test her luck by swimming back home wearing a makeshift diving suit. The owner of the farm catches her trying to escape, but instead of stopping her, he goes along with her outrageous lies until she gives up on her foolish quest.
Back in town, Jang-yeol makes a name for himself as the white powder weirdo, eating everything from salt to rat poison in hopes of finding drugs. His hunt for a case leads him to the fish farm, and he stumbles across a suspicious sighting — a possible drug exchange? Without an ounce of doubt, he calls for a raid, and as fate would have it, he runs into Ye-boon who walks out looking like a zombie while holding a syringe. She’s just been upgraded from pervert to druggie-pervert in his books.
The raid, unfortunately, is a total bust since the drugs Jang-yeol saw are actually fish food. As for Ye-boon, she makes herself at home in the police station and even gets a blanket for her tired underclassman. As she drapes it over him, her hand brushes against his rear, and she sees a strange vision of a bloodied woman.
Hearing of Ye-boon’s predicament, Hyeon-ok arrives to free her, but Jang-yeol barely bats an eye at her demands. However, as soon as family friend and assemblyman Cha Ju-man makes an appearance, Jang-yeol folds his body in half and becomes his personal bodyguard for the visit. The rest of the night ends without any more mishaps, and Jang-yeol falls asleep at his desk without writing a single word on his apology form.
With her newfound freedom, Ye-boon spends it at the convenience store to “coincidentally” meet Sun-woo, and to her delight, he invites her out to go save an abandoned kitten. On their way, they pass Jang-yeol and his team who are on an onion murder case, and he warns Sun-woo to be wary of the butt-pervert.
While rescuing the kitten, Ye-boon sees a memory of someone hiding bottles in a field, so she goes out at night to double-check. As she digs in the dark, Jang-yeol also happens to patrol that area for evidence, and our hapless heroes end up scaring each other. After running in a circle like headless chickens, Ye-boon and Jang-yeol realize their mistake, and their fears turn into annoyance.
Noticing the pesticide bottles, Jang-yeol asks how she found the evidence, so Ye-boon answers truthfully, telling him about her psychic powers. He, of course, calls her strange, but an inkling of doubt seems to linger in his mind. Elsewhere, the underclassman drags a woman into the woods, and at that moment, Ye-boon realizes that her powers work on humans, too, which means the scary memory she saw at the police station was real.
What an opening week. I can clearly see this show being divisive with a sense of humor that will either work for you or not. I’m not usually quick to judge a show, but Behind Your Touch seems like one of those dramas that you enjoy right off the bat or want to avoid with a ten-foot pole. As for me, I found the general silliness and lowbrow humor amusing and laughed out loud quite a few times. The jokes are funny in and of themselves, but the deliveries are what really made the show shine. Both leads are absolutely delightful in their respective roles, and I’m glad Jang-yeol is as equally unhinged as Ye-boon. I was expecting from the premise that he might play her comedic foil, so I was pleasantly surprised to see the hot-headed detective acting as ridiculous as everyone else.
Speaking of the premise, I did come into the show with some reservations, but after watching these two episodes, I thought the butt touching wasn’t as off-putting as I feared. The reason it works for me is because the show makes it clear that her touching is sexual harassment, and she gets “punished” for her crimes almost immediately. Jang-yeol arrests her the first time she does it, and the show even makes the point that committing a crime doesn’t give someone permission to harass you. As for the second, it may have been accidental, but Ye-boon still gets tossed into the air for her behavior and the show never belittles Jang-yeol’s disgust or discomfort. I also think the premise works because Ye-boon’s actions are clearly portrayed as nonsexual, and the punchline comes from the misunderstanding that results from her actions rather than some lewd jokes.
I think the comedy is the show’s greatest strength with its over-the-top scenarios and eccentric characters, so I hope the story does not lose its absurdity as it delves into the “mystery” part of the plot. Going off the last scene, it seems the show might go dark with its cases, and I think it could work if the creators strike a good balance. For the most part, I have faith in this production and writing team to do well given their prior series, so hopefully, this wacky show will continue to surprise me.
RELATED POSTS
[ad_2]
Source link