Episodes 1-2 (First Impressions) » Dramabeans MGG

Doona!: Episodes 1-2 (First Impressions)

by Dramaddictally

Visually stunning and slow to get off the ground, Doona! arrives with more melancholy than it knows how to handle. Our leads are lovely to look at, as a former idol sets her sights on her new neighbor, but it lacks the sparky chemistry I was hoping would kick it into high heart-flutter gear.

Editor’s note: This is a First Impressions post only. For a place to chat about the entire drama, visit the Drama Hangout.
 
EPISODES 1-2

Yang Se-jong! Yelling his name is really the only way I can account for the exclamation point in the show’s title. So far, there’s nothing that makes me want to holler from the rooftops about this story. It has its pros. The art direction, the frames, the lighting, the colors — and even the music — are captivating. But it’s got uneven pacing, weird transitions, and a series of scenes that are meant to build tension but somehow feel flat.

Here’s the setup. LEE WON-JOON (Yang Se-jong) has just moved to Seoul to study engineering. On the day he arrives to his new digs (roommate cameos by Kim Do-wan and Kim Min-ho), he stumbles on the morose, chain-smoking girl downstairs. He doesn’t realize it right away, but she’s the recently retired idol LEE DOONA (Suzy).

The two get off on the wrong foot for a series of reasons. On her side, she thinks he’s a sasaeng who’s moved into the house to stalk her (courtesy of the borrowed hoodie he’s wearing with her former idol group on it). And on his side — much more justified — she gets him fired from his tutoring job when she blows cigarette smoke in his face and has him showing up to work smelling like a smoker.

They have their first real encounter when Doona collapses in the snow outside their shared house and Won-joon takes her to the hospital and acts as her guardian. When she’s conscious again, she curses him out but starts to show interest when she sees how attentive he is — asking the nurse questions about her health and buying her socks to keep always-bare feet warm.

The next day, she has a revamped personality, following him around with big eyes and flirty faces, asking him out to meals. He ignores her and we see a series of shots that show this becomes a routine. She wants to hangout; he avoids her at every turn. But, when he sees her against the sunlight, it’s hard to hide his attraction.

The promo for this drama led us to believe that Won-joon was the one with the crush on Doona. So far, that hasn’t been the vibe. Actually, our soft-hearted hero has an unrequited crush on his first love from high school, KIM JIN-JOO (Shin Ha-young) — who he keeps running into at his new university.

After he’s fired from his tutoring gig, he puts up fliers to snag new clients but only gets a call from Doona who’s still pestering him to hang out. She plays the call like a prank, as if she wants to hire him, before he realizes who it is — and then he yells at her for making a joke of the fact that he needs money. He sees her as pampered and privileged since she sits around the house and smokes all day, and so, after his outburst, she leaves him alone.

But it’s a great feet of reverse psychology because once she’s not waiting for him every time he steps outside, he changes course and asks her to go have that meal together. In the moment, she ignores him, but then shows up in the middle of a lecture and sits beside him in class. She’d like him to leave and go eat together now. At least he puts his foot down and tells her they have to wait until his class is over.

That’s largely the entirety of Episode 1. There was so little to go on that I watched Episode 2 — not out of interest (there was no real hook at the end) — but to see if the drama would establish a clear conflict. Luckily, we learn enough about Doona in the next episode to see that she’s suffering some kind of trauma from her idol days — and it’s meant to explain her unhinged behavior.

We don’t yet know the details, but we learn she collapsed on stage during a performance while thinking about the abuses she’s endured as an idol. It also has something to do with a man (who appears to be her former manager) and the one-sided relationship they were in. Whatever the situation with this guy (who she has saved in her phone as just “P”), she’s still infatuated with him in a big way. As the episode ends, he leaves her a note while she’s out of the house and when she finds it, she runs into the street without shoes to search for him.

Doona is a lonely character and I get the sense that the time she and Won-joon spend together in Episode 2 (drinking, talking, almost kissing but not) is mostly because she has no one else and he’s a nice enough guy. She feels abandoned and ignored — even Won-joon ignores her if he’s with Jin-joo — but he is taking a slow interest in her. He’s also starting to think she needs therapy, though, and his interest may be part pity.

By the end of Episode 2, Doona has at least as much interest in him as he does in her. On her birthday, she’s alone and Won-joon prepares seaweed soup and then takes her out to win a prize at a claw machine. They end up at a park where she tells him how to win over Jin-joo once and for all: just push her up against a wall and stare at her for five seconds without saying anything. What he does next is up to him.

She asks if he wants to practice on her — which he does, pressing her into an exercise machine and not breaking their gaze. After five seconds, he says, “Happy birthday.” Then laughs and lets her go, noting that her tactics don’t work. But the look on her face says they do.

So, my issue is that the scene I just described should be heart-pumpingly hot and it’s just… not. There are a bunch of situations like this, where the characters find themselves in semi-sensuous circumstances, and I can’t connect. How? I mean, it’s freakin’ Yang Se-jong. I think there just isn’t enough heart in the story between those scenes to get me all aflutter when they come up. The first episode told us little about Doona except that she’s big into cussing, smoking, and emulating Kate Moss circa 1996. It’s hard to care about a character when her moping isn’t in context.

I am interested in learning more about her backstory with her manager and what caused her to quit her idol career at the height of her success. But the individual stories of our leads don’t have me rooting for them as a couple. They each have their hearts set on someone else, and now they’re thrown together in a house, lonely and feeling blue, and seeking each other out because they don’t know what else to do. I feel for them — but it’s not a romantic feeling.

 
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