Skip to main content

Best of 2021: Happiness

I finally got to see all twelve episodes of the apocalyptic SF k-drama Happiness, and it is definitely the best Korean TV series I've watched this year.

The story kicks off in the past, when the two lead actors are high school students. This may be the coolest opening scene I've ever watched to set up a story. Yoon Sae Bom (Han Hyo-Joo) wants to get out of class, but the students are in lockdown because injured baseball player Jung Yi Hyun (Park Hyung-Sik) is sitting on the edge of the roof and everyone thinks he's going to jump. Sae Bom sneaks up to deal with the situation by first talking to Yi Hyun, and then finally pushing him off the roof when even he leasts expects it (he falls safely onto a big inflated cushion below.)

I didn't realize why Sae Bom did this at first, but then it made sense when she's taken away in handcuffs: Yi Hyun can't get into any trouble because she pushed him. At this point Yi Hyun also falls for Sae Bom, and asks her to be his girlfriend, but she turns him down flat.

At this point we go to a post-COVID future where an adult Sae Bom is a member of a special forces anti-terrorist team, and Yi Hyun is a police detective. Working on different cases, they encounter ordinary people who turn into crazed zombies who attack, bite and drink the blood of anyone who comes near them -- and then turn back into normal people for a while, thanks to a highly infectious virus dubbed Madman Rabies. Sae Bom is scratched by her zombie, but doesn't seem to become infected. The situation seems to calm down as Han Tae Seok (Jo Woo-Jin), a lt. colonel with the health service command, arrives and takes charge of both cases, but at this point you get the feeling that things are a lot worse than anyone realizes.

More than anything Sae Bom wants her own apartment -- in this near-future time the cops live in dorms -- and is able to get a very nice one thanks to her bravery dealing with the zombie (and by talking Yi Hyun into marrying her so they can qualify as newlyweds.) By this time you realize Yi Hyun is crazy in love with Sae Bom, but she seems oblivious to him. They happily move into their new place, which is part of a huge complex of apartment buildings, only to discover they have some noisy and obnoxious neighbors. When one of the tenants becomes infected by virus, things start to get scary. That jumps up a few notches when Tae Seok and the military quarantine all of the apartments as the virus begins to spread through the buildings.

What Sae Bom and Yi Hyun go through trying to survive quarantine and the mountain of problems the tenants create would be frightening enough, but there are two different murderers they also have to contend with, tenants who are willing to sacrifice each other to protect themselves, a little girl who has a heart condition, dwindling food and water, the virus mutating, etc. Everyone in all the other buildings become infected, too, creating a zombie army ready to attack anyone who comes outside. To add to the terror it turns out that an antibody in Sae Bom's blood may be the only cure for the virus -- and then Yi Hyun becomes infected.

Happiness is not a fun series to watch, it's a nail-biter. All I did was hold my breath, I swear. I actually watched the final episode without English subtitles just so I could see what happened (and then went back and watched it again once they subtitled it.) Park Hyung-Sik was stunning in his role; he showed the kind of maturity and complexity I'd only glimpsed in his past performances (all of which dazzled me, too.) Han Hyo-Joo gets my gold star as the best actor in the series; she played a very enigmatic yet adorable character who stole every scene she was in. Even the ones with Hyung-Sik were hers. He did the next best thing by letting her steal them, too. They were amazing together, and their subtle, low-key romance while all of this horror and terror is going on was the very best love story I've seen in a long time.

This series is quite violent, sometimes very graphic, and yet everything as depicted was appropriate to the story. It's not something you want to watch if you have an aversion to seeing blood, as lots of that is splashed around, or zombies, who were quite convincing. With that warning in advance I have to give this show my highest recommendation. It really is the best series I've watched all year. Available to watch on Viki.com.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.
Post a Comment
Read more

In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to
Post a Comment
Read more

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.
Post a Comment
Read more