One More Happy Ending had a fantastic start, but has sadly fallen to the plague that haunts all romantic comedies. Sadly, it has turned into a melodrama. And not a very good one at that.Spoilers Ahead
One More Happy Ending began with a truly hilarious sequence of events, thriving on the childishness and insanity that consumes Mi-mo and Soo-hyuk. The first two episodes are some of the funniest episodes of television in the world, with hijinks and assumed drownings and drunkenly filling out a marriage license. Better yet, the insanity was nicely balanced out by Mi-mo and Soo-hyuk’s personal lives, which were much more normal. It let the audience know just how special Mi-mo and Soo-hyuk were to each other because they were unlike anything else in their lives.
Yet, as the drama went on and the episode count climbed up, the sparkle and joy was suppressed in favor of drama, drama, and more drama. Mi-mo has been dating Soo-hyuk’s best friend Hae-joon; a scenario first played for laughs as Soo-hyuk tries to keep them apart as much as possible in the most obvious ways imaginable. But as One More Happy Ending continued, the humor dissipated into petty rage, quiet protectiveness, heartbreak, and Soo-hyuk eventually (almost) decides to move back to the US.
Hae-joon himself has fallen prey to the melodrama that has been creeping in. He started off as a nice guy, albiet one with little understanding of women, and turned into…I don’t want to say an emotionally abusive jackass, but that’s all that fits. He constantly plays mind games with Mi-mo — ignoring texts to see how she reacts, flirting with his ex-wife in front of her, demanding she stop talking to Soo-hyuk despite him being Hae-joon’s best friend and Mi-mo’s across the hall neighbor. This behavior is concerning. No person should actively try to force someone else’s world to revolve around them, and when coupled with Hae-joon’s attempt to control Mi-mo’s friendships, some serious red flags are getting raised. It’s great that Mi-mo dumped him but this behavior should be part of the reason why.
Even Mi-mo’s friends are significantly less fun then they had been previously, and that bar is not particularly high. Ae-ran’s husband began pursuing her and trying to win her back now that she knows his true self. She does eventually cave, but the instant she does, her husband starts belittling her intelligence and appearance with abandon, which Ae-ran just takes. Dong-mi has a new boyfriend who’s nine years younger than she is, and instead of congratulating Dong-mi on getting her own utterly besotted boy toy, her friends all tell her to break up with him. Da-jung is both recovering from breast cancer and slowly reconciling with her estranged husband, and that’s the most uplifting thing in this whole drama right now.
The big issue that dominates the middle episodes is that One More Happy Ending has straight forgotten that it’s supposed to be a comedy. The whole drama has undertaken a massive tonal shift from light, zippy, and funny to angsty and pain-filled. Nothing happens in four episodes except Soo-hyuk loving Mi-mo from a distance, Mi-mo realizing she loves Soo-hyuk, and Hae-joon setting of the internal creep alarms of the entire female audience and a good chunk of the male ones too. It just circles through the pain, and around the pain, and beside the pain. So. Much. Pain.
The first episode of One More Happy Ending and the twelfth are so far apart on the tone scale that they don’t seem like they come from the same series. First episode Ae-ran would have responded to Dong-mi’s 25 year old love puppy with a high five and a “get it, girl!” but twelfth episode Ae-ran recommends dumping him before he dumps her, and the whole drama has followed that pattern. The sparkle and ease has been replaced with cheap angst and false obstacles that provide nowhere near the amusement of Mi-mo and Soo-hyuk’s more natural earlier interactions.
One More Happy Ending started off with two episodes that made me laugh constantly, but the latest crop haven’t made me laugh at all. Now that Mi-mo and Soo-hyuk are together, there’s a faint hope that the charm and sparkle of the earlier episodes will return, but I’m doubtful.
(Images via MBC)
