It turns out that Ji-hoon really is somewhat villainous. At first I was wondering whether "Please Come Back, Mister" was doing the whole thing where the turncoat you know is worse than the explicitly evil bad guys, but no, as it turns out, the explicitly evil bad guys are still pretty explicitly evil. This is somewhat impressive considering how a lot of their villainy is by accident. When it comes to I-yeon's crooked relative by marriage Hyeok (played by Park Min-woo), I doubt we'd even care about his gangster problems except that Gi-tak mnaged to get sucked into that situation somehow.
Then there's also Seung-jae (played by Lee Tae-hwan), who's sort of had traitorous moments, but who again, can always be counted on to do the right thing in a clutch moment. So...overall I'm having the same problem with "Please Come Back, Mister" of not really being able to figure out what this drama is trying to do thematically. The structure is kind of like a mystery, and that would also explain the one-dimensional villains. Yet even there the delivery is rather lacking.
Consider, for example, how Yeong-soo is finally able to prove once and for all that he did not commit suicide. This was not accomplished through serious deduction. Rather, Yeong-soo recalls a memory that leads him to video evidence. All of this pretty much ends up coming out of nowhere. Even while I now understand why "Please Come Back, Mister" was making the model shoot a plot point, I'm not especially impressed with the denouement.
The drama is filled with moments like this, where I can sort of appreciate what director Sin Yoon-seob is going for, but the lack of compelling context makes the entire production come off as scattershot. Take the whole cool slow motion walk after the situation with Hyeok is mometarily resolved. Nobody really did anything to warrant a cool slow a motion walk and yet it's still there because it's funny I guess?
It's hard to tell what parts of "Please Come Back, Mister" are supposed to be foreshadowing and which are just simple clumsy writing. Is Maya trying to be helpful because there's a secret agenda going on in the afterlife, or is she just clumsy comic relief who ineffectively warns against revenge? At least I have a good grasp of what's going on with Hae-joon. He's trapped on an abandoned island. And he looks silly. That's not much but I'll take it.
Review by William Schwartz
"Please Come Back, Mister" is directed by Sin Yoon-seob, written by Noh Hye-yeong and features Rain Kim Soo-ro, Kim In-kwon, Oh Yeon-seo, Lee Min-jung, Lee Hanee, Choi Won-young, Yoon Park and more
Episode 7
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Staff writer. Has been writing articles for HanCinema since 2012, having lived in South Korea since 2011. Started out in Gyeongju, then to Daegu, then to Ansan, then to Yeongju, then to Seoul, lived on the road for HanCinema's travel diaries series in the summer of 2016, and is currently settled in Anyang. Has good tips for utilizing South Korea's public bus system. William Schwartz can be contacted via william@hancinema.net. He also has a substack at williamschwartz.substack.com where he discusses the South Korean film industry in broader terms and takes suggestions for future movies to review.
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