"My Secret Hotel" Episode 1

Hae-gyeong (played byJin I-han) is getting married. But he doesn't seem terribly enthusiastic about it. Sang-hyo (played byYoo In-na) is a wedding manager who takes the news personally, although in the present day she seems to be all right with what's going on. Also there's a dead body involved all of this somehow."My Secret Hotel"doesn't appear to be in any hurry to tell us what that's all about.

There's all of the elements necessary here to make"My Secret Hotel"...well...something. Unfortunately having watched the first episode I'm mostly just perplexed as to how many clearly defined concepts could come off so blandly. The only time we see any kind of explicit interesting emotion is when Hae-gyeong gets drunk, and even then the effect is undermined by everybody else just acting like the straight man.

If this drama is going for comedy that's the first problem- not everybody can be the straight man. Someone has to actually be making the jokes or else there's no point to having a straight man at all, let alone several of them. In a similar vein, I know almost nothing about the main characters in this drama except that they used to be married, and that this inspires a lot of emotions now that they're meeting again in a professional wedding management capacity. Big surprise, I know.

Maybe there's supposed to be some satire going on here about modern weddings? If so, it must be very well disguised. Certainly, everything about the wedding preparations that we see looks over the top. But then, that's just the story of modern weddings in general. Also I'm not sure what relation any of that could possibly have to the dead body. Again, these are all the elements necessary to make an effective black comedy, but so far I'm not seeing any humor at all, let alone weird subversive stuff.

The proceedings are so bland it's a struggle to pay attention. I often thought back to "Emergency Couple". Now, overall quality problems aside, the first episode did an excellent job explaining the relationship between the two leads and defining the problems that destroyed their marriage in an engaging way. Not only do I not know why Hae-gyeong and Sang-hyo broke up, I don't particularly care. Hopefully"My Secret Hotel"has more interesting material set up for the second episode, because so far this drama can't even inspire me to complain about it.

Review by William Schwartz

"My Secret Hotel"is directed byHong Jong-chan, written byKim Do-hyeonandKim Ye-ri-IIand featuresYoo In-na,Jin I-han,Nam Goong-minandLee Young-eun.

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