Coupang’s play newest kdrama “Bait” has finally aired its first two episodes, lets talk about them!
I’ve been excited for this drama for a couple of reasons, one of them being the fact that Coupang’s Play “Bait” is directed by Kim Hong-Sun who worked on some of my favorite OCN dramas of all time, he excels at such types of scripts so I was admittingly very excited. It also features a star-studded cast including Jang Geun Suk, Lee Elijah, and Heo Sung Tae.
Note: this article is a first-impression review, it doesn’t mean this is the writer’s final thoughts on the drama. This is a spoiler review.
For premiere episodes, I’d say the drama did an okay job. I am not sure yet about my feelings regarding the excessive use of flashbacks but so far, I think its serving a purpose. It seems the director wishes to take the drama in a certain direction and mislead viewers hence the use of flashbacks so much.
How effective that will be is yet to be known.
In terms of plot so far, its somewhat similar to what director Kim Hong-Sun has worked on, a classical tale of victims falling for a pyramid scheme, a tail as old as time. There is an ongoing debate about whether No Sang-Cheon is alive or not but I mostly believe he is and the actual killer is trying to hunt him down. I think the plot twist will either be that Do-Han is the orchestrator or its Na-Yeon, using one of the victims as the person who carries out her mission.
The person whose doing this is attempting to lure out No Sang-Cheon by killing every single person who somewhat helped him commit crimes or escape justice, this also means the person must have spent so much time, and money and must have known a lot of people who know who helped No Sang-Cheon, which is likely not an easy thing to achieve. Something someone in law enforcement might be aware of to a certain extent.
So far, Do-Han seems mysterious but not enough for me to find him interesting, I don’t think the 1st and 2nd episodes were able to make me interested that much in him. The premiere episodes seem to focus on the victims for the most part.
I think he has a tragic story behind him similar to what a lot of detective characters like him often have. He doesn’t seem to be quite nice as he’s asking his superior to know if he needs to ‘cover up’ anything but not horrible either, it’ll be interesting to see what he does moving forward.
Overall, I’d say “Bait” was a fun watch but wasn’t as gripping as I would have liked it to be. I do like the directing style a lot, like I said, I like director Kim Hong-Sun’s past works and directing style.
I do think this has some potential but the next episodes need to be gripping enough to generate some buzz.
Geun Suk is finally back. It took him like 4 or 5 years, I am glad he’s back with something that is also different from what he’s known for. I am glad he’s shifting away as far as he possibly can from his flower boy image. His performance here is great. It was nice seeing him on screen after such a long time.
Lee Elijah and Heo Sung Tae are as good as ever, I hope this project does not disappoint.
Having said this, I do not like the fact that this drama is being split into 2 parts, its becoming quite annoying at this point honestly.
It happened with the glory, big bet, and now this one. Back in the day, like 2 years ago, you’d get a full 16 or 12-episode kdrama and it would be that, now, everyone is trying to compete for that subscription fee and its becoming quite annoying, this is not why I started watching kdramas, one of the main reasons was escaping that American style of pushing out seasonal content for the foreseeable future with horrible cliffhangers that do not get resolved.
With k-content becoming more similar in its rollout to American content, I am starting to lose some interest, depending on how this year progresses, I might cut down on reviews a lot more, much more than I had in the past 5 years. We have some amazing content rollout planned for 2023, but given just how annoying the rollout is becoming, I am losing interest in anything that mentions the words ‘part 2.’
I hope next week’s episodes of Bait can make me more interested in the drama.
So have you guys seen the drama yet? thoughts?
