Snowdrop may have been planned well before Crash Landing On You but the underlying theme
is the same - the impossible love affair between a North Korean soldier and a high ranking Korean
woman. Snowdrop is a lot darker and does not end as well for the protagonists as the ambiguously
romantic denouement of CLOY, but it presents the same insuperable dilemma, particularly for the
man. He knows that to place his love ahead of his duty, his family will be destroyed by the
unforgiving (and completely unromantic) North Korean government and indeed he himself may
also be hunted down. So for those who require happy endings for their romances, this is not the
show for you. It's CLOY without the charm or the fun.
The backdrop is indeed much darker: The ruling party in South Korea will do anything, including murdering a large number of young women hostages taken by North Korean operatives at a girls' university dorm, to carry out its scheme to get reelected. The plot has more twists than a hungry anaconda and some of them are quite clever, but ultimately the series suffers from the same problem that afflicts so many Korean dramas - 16 super long episodes to fill and not enough material. The same scenes repeat themselves. And the writer had to resort to plot devices that simply beggar credibility, including innumerable times when tied up individuals wriggle free; various hostages are allowed to wander free around the dorm even after they have been caught, multiple times, committing mischievous and in some cases treacherous acts; the villains repeatedly swap places in the competition for power, all amid the usual torrent of eavesdropping, monologuing (see The Incredibles), and big and small reveals. There is also the usual stream of implausible coincidences and flashbacks. (Really, how did several secret agents end up living in the women's dorm long before the hostage crisis?)
Probably the biggest challenge to our ability to go along with the story is the way the villains in the ruling Korean party so completely control the press and everything else that not one tiny leak of their nefarious plot, even when presented on a plate, gets out to the public or the anguished (although mostly invisible) parents of the hostages. On one occasion, cassettes (remember them) get delivered to all the major newspapers and TV stations and everyone of them gets intercepted.
Apparently, no one thought of sending them to a foreign news agency or correspondent beyond the reach of the bad guys. And the huge SWAT team supinely goes along with plans to murder and bomb the students and at one time obeys an order by one villain to shoot his rival (who survives, of course - if you ever get shot or stabbed, let it be on the set of a Korean drama). But it is impossible to sustain the belief that the villains really count on succeeding by murdering 30 students, shutting up their parents, and suppressing numerous other people who know what is happening.
There are so many other more minor but equally credulity defying details that I will stop there and move on to the acting.
The main protagonists do their best but one has to say that they are not all that watchable. Jisoo, a member of the super girl group BlackPink, in her first major dramatic role plays her part well enough and certainly does not deserve the many negative comments bestowed on her by so-called Korean netizens, one of the world's most cowardly and self-righteous groups. These twerps don't seem to be able to tell the difference between poor acting and poor writing. Jisoo is at her best early on in the show when she has something to do. But for many episodes right to the end, she's just a cross between an ornament and a tearful punching bag and that is definitely the fault of the writing. It's a little hard to explain without unreasonable plot spoilers, but there were a dozen opportunities to give her more to do and the writer and director spurned all of them.
Just as in CLOY, our North Korean hero is portrayed by Jung Hae-in as almost irresistible as a love interest and as almost saintly in his devotion to duty, all the while struggling with the wildly different directions in which these pull him. I can see how South Koreans might be offended by the latter although they should have been a little more forgiving as duty gradually gives way to the need for human decency. It's an acceptable performance, but no more than that.
Surrounding the two leads is a huge cast of well-established Korean actors, who generally do not disappoint, with a special mention for the unspeakable conniving trio of wives of the three villains, played by Kim Jung-nan, Jung Hye-young and Baek Ji-won in that overwrought style that seems to be adopted by so many older Korean actors. Their husbands are also overwrought. Also, hats off to a terrific Yoo In-na, one of Korea's most beautiful actresses who, as gorgeous as she was in Queen and I and in Goblin, dresses down, hides behind glasses, and completely conceals her glamour to play another (eventually) conflicted character. I also had a thing for the villainess Rosa Klebb-lookalike in the North Korean government, played relentlessly by a snarling Jeon Ae-ri - I kept expecting her to kick her rival with a poisoned blade in her boot.
If you don't mind the multiple twists and turns and the plot holes piling up like a car wreck on a bad day on the California freeways, and if you like to squeal in frustration at the screen as the good guys keep doing stupid things and the villains keep getting away with it, Snowdrop is for you. It's not the worst way to spend a few, more than a few, hours but it ultimately feels tired and, for all the time the makers had to tell their tale, it ends rather abruptly.
The backdrop is indeed much darker: The ruling party in South Korea will do anything, including murdering a large number of young women hostages taken by North Korean operatives at a girls' university dorm, to carry out its scheme to get reelected. The plot has more twists than a hungry anaconda and some of them are quite clever, but ultimately the series suffers from the same problem that afflicts so many Korean dramas - 16 super long episodes to fill and not enough material. The same scenes repeat themselves. And the writer had to resort to plot devices that simply beggar credibility, including innumerable times when tied up individuals wriggle free; various hostages are allowed to wander free around the dorm even after they have been caught, multiple times, committing mischievous and in some cases treacherous acts; the villains repeatedly swap places in the competition for power, all amid the usual torrent of eavesdropping, monologuing (see The Incredibles), and big and small reveals. There is also the usual stream of implausible coincidences and flashbacks. (Really, how did several secret agents end up living in the women's dorm long before the hostage crisis?)
Probably the biggest challenge to our ability to go along with the story is the way the villains in the ruling Korean party so completely control the press and everything else that not one tiny leak of their nefarious plot, even when presented on a plate, gets out to the public or the anguished (although mostly invisible) parents of the hostages. On one occasion, cassettes (remember them) get delivered to all the major newspapers and TV stations and everyone of them gets intercepted.
Apparently, no one thought of sending them to a foreign news agency or correspondent beyond the reach of the bad guys. And the huge SWAT team supinely goes along with plans to murder and bomb the students and at one time obeys an order by one villain to shoot his rival (who survives, of course - if you ever get shot or stabbed, let it be on the set of a Korean drama). But it is impossible to sustain the belief that the villains really count on succeeding by murdering 30 students, shutting up their parents, and suppressing numerous other people who know what is happening.
There are so many other more minor but equally credulity defying details that I will stop there and move on to the acting.
The main protagonists do their best but one has to say that they are not all that watchable. Jisoo, a member of the super girl group BlackPink, in her first major dramatic role plays her part well enough and certainly does not deserve the many negative comments bestowed on her by so-called Korean netizens, one of the world's most cowardly and self-righteous groups. These twerps don't seem to be able to tell the difference between poor acting and poor writing. Jisoo is at her best early on in the show when she has something to do. But for many episodes right to the end, she's just a cross between an ornament and a tearful punching bag and that is definitely the fault of the writing. It's a little hard to explain without unreasonable plot spoilers, but there were a dozen opportunities to give her more to do and the writer and director spurned all of them.
Just as in CLOY, our North Korean hero is portrayed by Jung Hae-in as almost irresistible as a love interest and as almost saintly in his devotion to duty, all the while struggling with the wildly different directions in which these pull him. I can see how South Koreans might be offended by the latter although they should have been a little more forgiving as duty gradually gives way to the need for human decency. It's an acceptable performance, but no more than that.
Surrounding the two leads is a huge cast of well-established Korean actors, who generally do not disappoint, with a special mention for the unspeakable conniving trio of wives of the three villains, played by Kim Jung-nan, Jung Hye-young and Baek Ji-won in that overwrought style that seems to be adopted by so many older Korean actors. Their husbands are also overwrought. Also, hats off to a terrific Yoo In-na, one of Korea's most beautiful actresses who, as gorgeous as she was in Queen and I and in Goblin, dresses down, hides behind glasses, and completely conceals her glamour to play another (eventually) conflicted character. I also had a thing for the villainess Rosa Klebb-lookalike in the North Korean government, played relentlessly by a snarling Jeon Ae-ri - I kept expecting her to kick her rival with a poisoned blade in her boot.
If you don't mind the multiple twists and turns and the plot holes piling up like a car wreck on a bad day on the California freeways, and if you like to squeal in frustration at the screen as the good guys keep doing stupid things and the villains keep getting away with it, Snowdrop is for you. It's not the worst way to spend a few, more than a few, hours but it ultimately feels tired and, for all the time the makers had to tell their tale, it ends rather abruptly.