So after waiting 1.5 years for Lee Dahee's drama comeback, it's finally here in the form of LUCA The Beginning, about Z-O/JiOh (Kim Raewon), a man with altered genes conferring him superpowers, and Gureum, our lady detective who has ties to JiOh in their childhood.
I liked the overarching theme of DNA manipulation and creation of superhumans very much. Although not the most original premise, it was fairly well executed in the beginning and the show brought up the key moral questions. Of course, with shows like these, we need to suspend belief a little (or a lot). One main problem many people had is how the female lead Gureum is seemingly superhuman because she was thrown around like a rag doll but I guess they got what they wanted since the writers decided to kill her off in the end when she made the very unwise decision to take the bullet for JiOh when he's superhuman and can withstand bullet shots, as evidenced by the next scene where he goes after Deputy Director Kim...
Ep 8 was the peak, with progress between the leads relationship, and then I don't know what happened in the last 4 eps when everything went to shit. I was just in disbelief at everything the characters were spouting. Gureum easily believing that JiOh killed her parents, and waffling between "you're a monster" and "you're not a monster", JiOh suddenly deciding to participate in the tests. What a waste of a show with so much potential.
Acting wise, Kim Raewon surprised me as the main lead. I haven't seen him in many shows but he was well suited for this character who was innocent and child like yet could become badass when he gets triggered. I sympathised for his character who had these powers that seemed more like a curse than a gift, and this was especially so when he was afraid to touch his newborn baby! So sad..
I also really liked his chemistry with our female lead. I'm biased to Lee Dahee (just check out my Search WWW review) so I will love anything she does, but I really appreciate her taking on such a vastly different role from her recent roles to show range. Gureum's character was very frustrating since she was not the smartest and always diving headfirst into danger, especially trying to constantly take on the baddie team of Lee Son, Yuna and TaeOh, or infiltrating the lab alone, or making that cursed call to her police friend after knowing the police and media are not to be trusted, AND believing the news that JiOh killed her parents. I also hated how after she had her baby, Gureum was kept locked up for so long and she wasn't doing anything for most of the episodes!
Speaking of the baddies, the cult leader and Director Kim were pretty typical, but I really liked how they fleshed out the characters of Lee Son and Yuna with their backstory on how they got recruited, their motivations and suspicions, and the affection they had for each other.
I think the strongest point of the show was the directing. The cinematography was great and the CGI was pretty decent. This was obviously an action show and thankfully the action scenes were well executed. Shout out to the elevator scene with our 2 leads and the 3 baddies. So well choreographed and exciting to watch!
Overall, this show had so much potential and it was going strong and then crashed and burned in the end. It feels like the writers were going for the shock factor with our female lead dying and male lead joining hands with the "enemy", and I respect writing choices that try to be different rather than the typical happy ending, but the journey there could have been so much more well executed. I persevered through the last few eps just to see more of Lee Dahee fighting and to complete the show.