Ha! It’s not as if our plates aren’t full from the smorgasbord of Korean and Chinese dramas. We have “My Liberation Notes,” “Again My Life,” “From Now On, Showtime!” “Tomorrow,” “Reset,” “Who Rules the World?” and our on-going rewatch of “W: Two Worlds,” we now have “The Killer’s Shopping List” premiering today.
Here’s the synopsis from soompi.
Based on a novel by Kang Ji Young, “The Killer’s Shopping List” is a comedy mystery thriller about an ordinary neighborhood on the outskirts of Seoul. When a mysterious body is found in the vicinity of an apartment building, a supermarket receipt becomes a key piece of evidence that kicks off an entertaining hunt for the killer.
Lee Kwang Soo stars as Ahn Dae Sung, the son of a supermarket owner.
source: soompi
I said I was watching this for Lee KwangSoo. But I want to see his co-star, Seolhyun, perform. She’s a kpop idol like Kim Sejeong of “Business Proposal.” But unlike Kim Sejeong, Seolhyun strikes me as a bimbo ever since that dating “scandal” of hers.
You see, her company had always media-played her curvaceous body. To me, if her body was that stunning, then she should’ve known that any eye-catching outfit would make her conspicuous whenever visiting her boyfriend’s apartment.
Duh!
source: Dispatch
She should’ve “dressed down” (e.g., something ordinary that wouldn’t attract the attention of other apartment dwellers she might meet in the hallway or elevator) if she wanted to keep her dating life secret. Even if Dispatch wasn’t on her tail from the onset, then her boyfriend’s neighbors would’ve recognized her if they met her. Isn’t anonymity the whole point of dating in secret? Oh well. I’m crossing my fingers that she’s a smarter actress than she was as a girlfriend.
This drama is only 8 episodes long. It’ll be over in 4 weeks. It premieres on Viki today,
Let’s enjoy the show!
I’m trying “Love all play” now. With the girl from Mouse, The loto player from Sisyphus and the Bully girl from School 2015. Yeah sorry, I’m a bit lazy about to find the actors names. 😉
It’s a sport kdrama with badminton.
Hmmm… Episode 1 was somewhat uneven or things haven’t gelled yet for me.
The beginning was promising, and I laughed a couple of times, but towards the middle I started wondering about the change in Daesung, about the set up for the mystery as well as the type of comedy show was going for. We’ll have to wait for a couple more episodes to see if the Show has introduced all the necessary characters and situations we need to know for the murder investigation.
Daesung had started out as a badass kid, with a relatively bright future, but as an adult and failed civil servant, he gets rained on exactly when he needs to walk home (and to add insult to injury the rain stops exactly when he reaches home!), he is dissed by his own mum who had once named the Mart after him, and is scorned by his girlfriend and her dad. I’m not sure it’s funny that even the heavens are not on Daesung’s side. Probably we are to root for Daesung’s return to being well regarded. In any case there was less comedy as we went along and entered the mystery.
Show links the murder victim’s slipper to Daesung who has a flashback memory about seeing the slippers on feet in socks (we don’t know whose). At the same time Daesung asks his mum about the Kindergarten teacher who used to shop on Fridays. I’m guessing we are to put them together, since he goes out to make deliveries, to win back their regular customers, and the apartment he visits belongs to the slipper’s owner, the first? victim.
Watching Daesung and his once foiled, counterfeiter enemy flailing (literally) on the ground after discovering the body, underlined both how ineffectual they were and that the situation was not to be taken seriously. Perhaps it was meant to be a farce, with 1 dead body lying still and 2 grown men shrieking, flailing in the dirt next to it, but it somehow failed to amuse me.
More mysterious is the ubiquitous Daesung Mart delivery bags holding choco pies, tampons and stockings, which a resident in the same apartment claims she never ordered. But this is not exactly the most compelling of mysteries, although Show will probably try to link these to the murder. It might be a red herring.
Lee Kwang Soo looked strangely old to me, as in much more than his 36 years. I’ll give him a few more episodes for me to warm up to him, but I felt that he lacked presence. There was something lacking in his delivery that would have gotten me immediately behind him as the hero I’d root for.
This episode didn’t feature much of Seolhyun, but I might say that so far she appeared competent as the exasperated gf. The more watchable character is Mum, Han Myung Sook.
I usually give a Show at least 4 episodes to hook me. Let’s see how this goes, in this rather busy time for me. If I have to give up a Show, this one might end up in the dust.
Before to read GB comment, I prefer to write blindly this:
I watched episode 1 and liked very much this kind of weird comedy.
I got that very quickly and it was unexpected. A very good surprise.
Toward the end of the episode, it goes down about that.
Also, in this first episode I can’t really find the key of the story.
So I will take it like that: this drama need more time and one episode isn’t enough to get us in the main point. I hope it won’t last as long than Grid and that the absurd comedy will continue.
I’ve read GB comment now! And I rewatched the end of the episode. Obviously, I lost a bit my concentration and missed some points. So it’s about the return of the counterfeit guy who bought a cookie? It’s weird than the ML is worried about that because when he was young they deal so good with the situation. I didn’t have the feeling the boy was traumatized. And he didn’t look traumatized either when he find the box. There is even comedy because he made a text correction on the message badly written.
I’ve also had a difficulty to catch this point: when the ML is teenager, he find the message in the box “I’m back”. But right after we see him adult (and I needed some time to understand it was him, as the time jump wasn’t clear, I was thinking the adult ML was another guy, in the same time than the teenager, probably you could say I suck, but I’m sincere, I made this confusion).
But in this case, why it took so long since this message in the box for the counterfeit guy to do some crime? Or it’s not him? Strange, I struggle. Mystery.
Strange meta-fact. The actor Park Ji Bin (he’s the new delivery boy, catched as a robber by police in the past). Listen that, it’s amazing: the actor is 27 years old!! But he’s small and tiny, he looks so much younger. I could watch this actor many times previously, for example in the drama Incarnation of money (2013). So he was 18 then. What is stunning is he looks younger now than in this 2013 drama!!
Hi @WE, Park Jin Bin looked like a teenager to me!! He’s 27 years old!
I haven’t watched Ep 2 yet. I’m too sleepy and show is not compelling enough at the moment. I’ll watch it tomorrow.
I’m glad you like the humour. I hope I warm up to the Show and its humour. Yes, the time jumps were not all that evident and character of Daesung changed from the spunky kid to the lacklustre failed adult. It was too jarring a change. The jokes then seem to be made at his expense, so the Show seems to make him out to be that kind of ML who’s being dissed by everyone, even by the Show itself.
It’s possible, if executed well, that kind of style could be funny, but somehow it does not work for me.
Everyone except maybe Mum Myung Sook seem to be rather pathetic, but even Mum is losing money over the mart. Dae Sung’s father is a useless song-writer/musician supported by his wife, the counterfeiter is a nanchucks wielding oldie with dementia (I think the dementia is fake), the girlfriend is a cop but has been waiting 20 years for Daesung to inherit the mart…
The dead body would have been interesting, but we were not introduced to her when alive!!
So with a bunch of losers as the characters in this Show, it will have to up its game to be more interesting to watch! I hope for and expect some ridiculous investigating by the Mum, gf and Daesung trio. 😉
I didn’t finished your comment and I was thinking “a bunch of loosers”… then you said it. ahahaha!!! Telepathy, it’s that?!! 🙂
I was a bit disapointed about the ML too, because when he was younger, he was like a little genious. Weird to jump to something so different.
Agree about the husband. Why make him so useless and ridiculous?
And about the woman body at the end. I wasn’t thinking about that but it’s so true. Instead of an anonymous body we never saw (so we could miss the scene as I did because the shot is very fast on her), give more profile before. So it make something. Take for example: it could be the young woman that said “my order is not complete, I don’t pay for that”. Of course, we need to see her one more time before the murder. But at least, we could feel connected to that.
Dear me @WE are we telepathically linked? LOL. Maybe I’ll send thoughts in my sleep. Good night!
So, I mentioned on the “From Now On Showtime!” post that it seems to me that tvN dramas are taking a while to show up on Viki, and then taking some time to sub. (Usually they’d show up a few hours after airing in SK, then take time to get subbed, that time varying.) The Killer’s Shopping List is a tvN show.
The Killer’s Shopping List’s first episode did drop on Wednesday, 10:00 am central (much later than when dramas normally show up on Viki.), but did so fully subbed I watched it Thursday am, then watched it again with someone in my house. I thought maybe there were changes made to the subs between these two watches? I’m going to assume they didn’t–perhaps I got distracted?–but I may keep my eyes open if I do in deed watch future episodes twice again.
@Skayt,
On Viki, unless the dramas indicate that they’re 100% subbed (say, they’re only 99% subbed) then I do expect the subbers to tweak or fine-tune the translation a little bit more. With this drama, I doubt that the edit will significantly alter the meaning of the dialogues since the plot doesn’t seem to require much nuance or high context.
In other dramas, I’d find the last-minute changes annoying, especially when I relied on the precise words to analyze the script. To double-check, I’d go to Kissasian and take screenshots.
Right now, Ep 1 is 99% subbed.
Ok, after a good night’s rest, I’m convinced the subs were changed. I remember some specific things, jokes, esp., that weren’t as I remembered. Not a big deal, but I offer it up in case lines didn’t land correctly.
I reached half of episode 2, and without regret, I drop (or put on-hold). It lose the weird comedy. I don’t know if the show could be good again. But I just have too many dramas on my watchlist, so I cut the weaker one.
@WE, I see that I’m not the only one to find this Show lacking. The characters have to become more likable or relatable. I’ll give it to Ep 4 to see if it does not make an upturn. Pity for Lee Kwang Soo and the others if this flops.
Hmmm, I guess it says something that even overnight, Episode 4 is still not subbed. Popular shows are subbed within 4-8 hours.
I did do a quick watch of Episode 3, and it still didn’t grab me, although we get more backstory about Daesung’s ‘trauma’. Even the backstory of the victim(s) failed to elicit the required pathos and regret, and the focus on possible victims/perpetrators felt somewhat forced. The comedy was missing too.
Everything is there, that is familiar, and in other shows would have worked well enough to bring me on board, but something about the execution of this show makes it fall pretty flat.
Thanks, @GB.
I’m on Ep 1. Did I get this correct? The leading lady is only dating him because of the real estate value of the supermarket? Was she joking?
Hi @pkml3, that’s what Do A-Hee says, but she has been his long-time friend since they were like 11 years old, may even have had a crush on him then… and she did evince some sincere fondness for him even when they were older, although whether it’s more friendship fondness or romantic fondness is hard to say. Seems more like a family-member fondness to me.