[Drama Recap] Remember You: Episode 1

"Remember You" revealed the special relationship between Seo In-guk and Jang Nara, which had lasted for twenty years.

The first episode of KBS 2TV's Monday & Tuesday drama, "Remember You" aired the scene where Ji-an (Jang Nara) became excited as she encountered Lee Hyoun (Seo In-guk) face to face for the first time.

At the crime scene of Bangbae-dong murder case, when Ji-an spotted Lee Hyoun, she was exhilarated. As Lee Hyoun left the spot, Ji-an followed him. She said, "You must be Lee Hyoun, right?". Lee Hyoun asked her back, "Who are you? How do you knoe my name". Ji-an said, "Well, how do I know you?", avoiding to answer his question.

And then Ji-an thinks, "It's been twenty years since I became to know this guy. The twenty years I have been stalking him. But this guy does not even remember me". Her monologue stirred up the curiosity about the relationship between the two even more.

 

Hyeon (played by Seo In-guk) is a strange man who investigates unusual events just for the fun of it, and likes to mess around with people without ever changing his eerily vacant expression. Ji-an (played by Jang Nara) is a perky detective who is easily provoked by actions obviously intended to stupefy her. Together they...don't actually fight crime just yet. After a rather peculiar opener most of the runtime is dedicated to Hyeon's backstory.

And as befits Hyeon's character, his backstory is just as unsettling and just plain weird as the modern day Hyeon. Little Hyeon (played by Hong Hyeon-taek) is extremely precocious, to the point of being a little disconcerting. Most kids do stuff like, well, play. Little Hyeon instead performs tasks that are obviously physically impossible, and doesn't even seem to appreciate just how unusual he is. But that impression changes when little Hyeon meets Joon-yeong (played by Do Kyeong-soo).

"Remember You" appears to be going for a theme of whether or not supervillainy is something that can be genetically and psychologically predicted. What makes the drama unusual is that the romantic comedy mystery genre turns the rather nihilistic assumptions of this question upside down. Can Hyeon really be secretly evil when we all know the whole point of the drama is for him to get together with Ji-an?

The production team seems determined to make this as muddled a question as possible. I don't know what's going on with the music. Try as I might I can't think of any genre where that kind of strange, mildly upbeat, rather mysterious, occasionally cornball and equal parts ominous music could possibly be appropriate. Consequently I watched this episode with my head mostly askew, completely at a loss as to where this story was supposed to be going.

That's a good feeling to have, just to be clear. While "Remember You" is rather front-ended with the backstory, we're given so much information about Hyeon here that one fact is very clear. We know pretty much nothing about Hyeon, and that isn't likely to change any time soon. So when Ji-an ruminates over what kind of person Hyeon really is, completely unable to come up with any kind of satisfying answer...well, I'm right there with her, even though I have access to way more information than she does. It's still too early to make any definitive statement about "Remember You", but for now I'm cautiously optimistic.

Review by William Schwartz