Stream K-Dramas at OnDemandKorea

[HanCinema's Drama Review] "My Secret Hotel" Episode 13

This episode is so heavily wrapped up in the question of Sang-hyo's love triangle it's often difficult to remember that technically there's supposed to be a lot of other stuff going on. The titular hotel itself feels less like an actual important location as it does that place where Sang-hyo goes to work. And also some people died there. Whoever the killer is I rather doubt the revelation will be an impressive one, given how much focus is given to Sang-hyo's wacky comedic antics.

Advertisement

For what it's worth these are amusing comedic antics. Yoo In-na makes the most of the material she's given even if by definition her character almost always only exists in reactive terms. I'm honestly a bit surprised she hasn't gone into any kind of serious reflection about her current situation. Sang-hyo accepts way too much of the information she's given as being basically true. The whole facade was supposed to be a favor to Hae-young- and there's time it feels like Sang-hyo's actually getting into it.

The fact that Hae-young's character isn't undergoing any kind of apparent meaningful change is another significant stumbling block here. I can accept that he's not as bad a person as he was earlier on in the drama. That's still not really a very strong endorsement for him to actually get any kind of romance out of it. As for Seong-gyeom, he's almost totally sidelined into just, well, having a drink really.

In all fairness there is the same usual piecemeal movement forward on the murder storyline. It would appear that Geum-bo is holding out on us in the information department. His deduction makes sense, but he conveniently fails to give us the essential information necessary for this plot point to have any meaningful sense of urgency. There's so much going on here it's difficult to imagine all the plot threads will be resolved satisfactorily.

They will be resolved somehow, make no mistake. The drama is clearly leading up to some sort of big moment of truth. It's just not going about the task of getting there in a particularly convincing way. The significant revelation that appears near the ending only calls attention to the absurdity of the overall storyline, and not in a good way. Seong-gyeom really has the right idea here anyway- this situation obviously isn't sustainable. But everyone's doing such a deliberate job of stalling on the subject that, well, we're just very successfully not going anywhere.

Review by William Schwartz

"My Secret Hotel" is directed by Hong Jong-chan, written by Kim Do-hyeon and Kim Ye-ri-II and features Yoo In-na, Jin Yi-han, Namkoong Min and Lee Young-eun.

 

Watch on Viki

❎ Try Ad-free