I Picked Up a Celebrity On the Street (Korea, 2018) [나는 길에서 연예인을 주웠다]

♥♥♥/♥♥ 

TITLE: I Picked Up a Celebrity On the Street [나는 길에서 연예인을 주웠다] 
ORIGINAL AIR DATE: 11/01-11/30/2018 
WIKI: --
SEASONS/EPISODES: 1/10, about 1 hour apiece 
US AVAILABILITY (as of 2019-04-21): Viki (free) 

Lee YeonSeo is trying to live a life that will make her mom proud... but all that means to her at the moment is making lots of money. So in order to survive the corporate shark tank and hopefully eventually climb the ladder, she lets herself be taken advantage of by coworkers and her boss, and doesn't even defend herself when she's made the scapegoat for their various inadequacies and mistakes. She just keeps letting it bottle up and bottle up and bottle up... and then one day she's fired when her boss and coworkers throw her under the bus with the higher boss. Of course she snaps, because of all the bottling. She drunkenly follows her boss out of the bar where they're having her goodbye party and bashes his head with her shoe from behind. She didn't really intend to kill him, just give him the beating he deserves, but that one smack with the shoe seems to have rendered him... dead. And that's when she realizes that the man she's just whacked isn't her boss. Yes, that man lying face-down in the alley there in front of her, blood pooling under his head, is the country's biggest celebrity. She just killed a bazillion fans' beloved Oppa and now she'd better not get caught or else! 

Flow and sequence: 

For the first story arc of the drama, YeonSeo first proceeds to run away from the body of Kang JoonHyuk, the celebrity she thinks she killed, then she proceeds to drag the body home and internet-search how to dispose of a body, then she spends a while freaking out and re-"killing" the poor guy every time he wakes up, before finally settling on keeping him hostage indefinitely. JoonHyuk is a very uncooperative hostage and keeps screaming for help and trying to escape, until YeonSeo proposes a contract. She works herself half to death trying to keep her extremely rude, high-maintenance, and expensive hostage happy so he won't escape. For his part, despite seeing his life going down the toilet watching the news each day while chained up in YeonSeo's apartment, JoonHyuk begins to feel empathy and affection for YeonSeo. Ah yes, the Stockholm Syndrome seems to have set in. But he still wants to escape to set the mess of untrue rumors in the news about him straight!
The next story arc: After escaping, JoonHyuk discovers that there is a real actual murderer trying to kill him and that person not only isn't YeonSeo, but also may want her dead too. The second half is more of a murder mystery where nobody's actually murdered yet but someone keeps trying to kill JoonHyuk and YeonSeo and they have to figure out who. A subplot is JoonHyuk trying to get YeonSeo to quit letting herself be abused by her employers. I confess I enjoyed the second story arc a whole lot more than the first. 

Cast/ Characters/ Acting: 

Sung Hoon is a fabulous actor, as usual, but why does he always have to play an @$$hole? :p His character was less of a jerk in the second half of this drama. There was less slapstick type comedy in the second half. The second male lead was a lot more appealing when behaving as an adult with a job in the second half, as compared to being the annoying mooch of the first half (though he was even likable as the mooch!). The female lead was more confident and less mentally unstable in the second half. Basically everything was better in the second half.  

Writing and directing: 

I don't usually enjoy what I call "stupid comedies" - what I mean by that is that the comedy is derived from the characters acting stupid, looking stupid, or the plot gimmicks are stupidity-driven. I find slapstick to be particularly unpleasant. I prefer witty comedies myself- I don't usually even mind dark comedy as long as it's more cerebral and less physical. So I'm saying outright that this drama wasn't really my style, especially at the beginning. I don't really feel comfortable critiquing the writing and directing of a genre which I basically don't like and don't watch, even if this time I found the drama enjoyable enough to stick it out and take the time to review!  

Happy Ending Factor? 

4 out of 5 on the happy ending scale, and that's mostly just because of the Second Lead Syndrome! Lol! 

Final Summary: 

Despite not really being my cup of tea, genre-wise, I found this drama quite cute and entertaining! I don't think I'd watch it a second time, but I didn't skip-forward through anything the first time and don't regret the time spent watching it. Well, if I could get my sister to watch it with me I might watch it a second time. I think she'd like it more than I did actually, because she can appreciate the kids of comedy that bug me and also she liked Sung Hoon in My Secret Romance. :) If you're not allergic to dark comedy or slapstick then you might really enjoy this cute drama. 

Check out I Picked Up A Celebrity On The Street on Viki!
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