[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Wedding Impossible" Episode 1

With opening ratings of only 4% in its first episode, "Wedding Impossible" faces an uphill battle in trying to reach the 11.951% high of "Marry My Husband" in its final episode. But that much is to be expected- lead actors Jeon Jong-seo and Moon Sang-min are relatively new faces. Weirdly enough, they've mainly showed up in Netflix projects. So it's a little odd for them to come to television anyway, particularly for a fairly traditional screwball romantic comedy.

Advertisement

Jeon Jong-seo plays Ah-jeong, an actor who takes fake wedding jobs to make ends meet in an acting career where she just plays extra unnamed roles. The first episode mainly just sets up the premise- circumstances contrive Ah-jeong to accept a job from her best friend Do-han, played by Kim Do-wan, to pretend to be his girlfriend. As it happens, their friendship has always been premised on her being his fake girlfriend, but the stakes for Do-han have gotten quite high due to his role in a corporate inheritance dispute.

Curiously enough, Do-han is not the first lead. That role falls to his younger brother Ji-han, played by the previously alluded to Moon Sang-min. Ji-han has an unusual role here as a corporate heir who actually really enjoys company work, to the point that he makes his chauffeur Eun-taek (played by Min Jin-woong) pretend to be his overbearing boss so that everyone at the company sees Ji-han as a serious team player. Why Ji-han isn't on the fast-track for company ownership is, at present, the main mystery of the drama.

Rather than plot, "Wedding Impossible" is banking heavily on charm. The story, based on a webnovel, is mainly just a set-up to give all the characters appropriate motives to engage in certain deceptions. A key similarity between Ah-jeong and Ji-han is noted early on, as the purpose of Ah-jeong's deceptions is to help people, while Ji-han also engages in deceptions for more nakedly self-serving financial interests.

Ji-han isn't exactly likable as a result of this, but then, he doesn't really need to be. His role, like Ah-jeong's, calls for ambitious swagger and determination while being somewhat oblivious as to the strain on his family life. But again, all the first episode really does is set up the premise, without getting into any of the frills that will make that story especially compelling. I'm kind of interested to find out more, but actually watching the first episode didn't really give me any new information about "Wedding Impossible" that I couldn't already have guessed at.

Written by William Schwartz

___________

"Wedding Impossible" is directed by Kwon Young-il, written by Oh Hye-won-I, Park Seul-gi-II, and features Jeon Jong-seo, Moon Sang-min, Kim Do-wan, Bae Yoon-kyung, Kwon Hae-hyo, Park Ah-in. Broadcasting information in Korea: 2024/02/26~Now airing, Mon, Tue 20:50 on TVING, tvN.