Three reasons why this drama is a nope for me.

1. The subs are terrible.

I’m always grateful to subbers for their hard work. However, the subtitles of Episode 1 were so subpar that it’s hard to believe that a human subber actually worked on this. I suspect that English subs were auto-translated by an A.I.

I’ll give three examples:

First, the scene inside the plane. The plane hit turbulence, sending the passengers into a panic. The female lead, however, remained unperturbed, to the amazement of her seatmate. So her seatmate wondered why she was so calm.

Without saying a word, the female lead pointed at her horoscope.

Clearly, the translator-bot was subbing only the closed captioning of this scene because it missed subbing the all-important horoscope.

Now, closed captioning is often to videos by the production team to help deaf and the hard-of-hearing viewers understand the scene. Close captioning includes the description of the background audio (e.g., “passengers screaming,” “bomb exploding”) and translation of the spoken words in the video. The translator-bot automatically subs these.

For international viewers like us, who don’t understand Korean, the auto-translated closed captioning is insufficient. We can already hear the background sounds so it’s redundant to translate the description for them.

What we do need, however, is:

a) the translation of the non-spoken words e.g., letters, text messages, and written book passages,
b) the translation of the lyrics of the OST, and
c) the idiomatic (or semantic) translation of the spoken language rather than the literal translation. So far, the translator-bot can only deliver the latter.

In this airplane scene, then, the translator-bot omitted the subs for the horoscope which was critical to understanding the female lead’s serenity. I had to look up the horoscope myself.

Her horoscope for that day predicted that she would have a great day. “It’s a wonderful day. You will laugh all day.” That’s why she was unfazed. Given her happy forecast, a plane crash was unlikely in the cards for her and the rest of the passengers.

Second, the scene about “drogbar.”

It’s NOT Drogbar but Drogba. The translator-bot didn’t know who Drogba was.

Didier Drogba was a soccer player from the Ivory Coast. Back in 2005, the country was in the middle of a civil war. When Drogba’s national team earned the berth to play in the 2006 World Cup for the first time in history, Drogba took the opportunity to call on his countrymen to unite together. He said,

“Men and women of Ivory Coast. From the North, South, Center, and West. We proved today that all Ivorians can coexist and play together with a shared aim. To qualify for the World Cup. We promised you that celebrations would unite the people. Today we beg you on our knees. The one country in Africa with so many riches must not descend into war. Please lay down your weapons and hold elections.” (source: BBC.com)

Amazingly, his compatriots heeded his call for unity and there was a ceasefire.

This is the historic event that the male lead was referring to in that scene. Like peacemaker Drogba, he was imploring his wife to halt all marital hostilities and come to peace table (…or to the marital bed, in this case) with him. But auto-generated subs mangled it.

Last, the scene with “nigga.”

The father-in-law was reminding the female lead not to be easily charmed by his good-for-nothing son. The translator-bot used the word “nigga” when the better word would have been “punk.”

I believe a human translator would have caught this mistake.

2. Jang Hyuk’s over-the-top acting grates on my nerves.

I like him fine in his serious roles. But when he does comedies, he tends to mug for the camera. He exaggerates his facial expressions, lowers his voice to make it sound gravelly, and tries too hard with big outlandish gestures. Subtlety should be his friend.

To me, his over-exaggerated acting is just as cringe-y as Jim Carrey’s. But maybe, I’m just a boomer….

3. The whole point of the show (or at least the first episode) is exasperating.

I’m surprised that viewers went along with it.

Jang Hyuk’s and Jang Nara’s characters are having marital problems.

For ten years of their marriage, he’s been an absentee husband and father. His job as a sniper for the NIS requires him to be on field work at odd hours. Fortunately for him, his wife is the understanding sort. She’s clueless about his job and takes it for granted that she’s going to be the glue of the family. She raises their daughter alone, takes good care of her father-in-law, and runs their household like a Stepford wife. She sounds too good to be true.

The first time she loses patience with him is on their tenth anniversary when he misses their anniversary vacation to Bali. In a huff, she flies out on her own. Her outrage is relatable because she tolerated his absenteeism all this time. But then she doesn’t know on the day of their flight, he has a valid reason for not making it on time: he’s bound and gagged in a hostage crisis.

Anyway, he escapes captivity and returns home to their daughter. After a few days, she too returns home from her solo trip. She’s still miffed, so he tries to smoothen things out between them.

But then, her fertility notification/reminder pops up on their respective phones and they see it.

Jang Hyuk’s character wants to have another baby.

Are you kidding me??

That’s the whole point of the Drogba scene earlier. He’s trying to convince Jang Nara to forget their hostilities for a while, have sex with him, and procreate another baby. And she gives in to his smooth talk.

Ugh.

I wanted to smack sense into them. Obviously, he can’t keep lying to her about his occupation and she can’t continue raising the family on her own. But instead of first resolving these issues, they think procreation is their number one priority. I don’t see any comedic value in their insanity.

In short, the title of “Family: Unbreakable Bond” doesn’t live up to my expectations. My ties to this kdrama are easily severed because I wasn’t entertained for a minute during the hour-long episode. It was a waste of my time.