Job Well Done, or, depending on who you ask, Good Job, is about two families trying to raise their children under difficult circumstances. Situations are of course made worse by social custom. There isn't really a plot, but we'll get back to that point later.
By looking at the images, reading the blurb, watching the intro, and sitting through the first few episodes, you might ...
Job Well Done, or, depending on who you ask, Good Job, is about two families trying to raise their children under difficult circumstances. Situations are of course made worse by social custom. There isn't really a plot, but we'll get back to that point later.
By looking at the images, reading the blurb, watching the intro, and sitting through the first few episodes, you might think this series is a comedy drama, a character drama, or even a straight tragedy. It's none. The tone soon changes and it becomes strictly an overly distraught, one dimensional melodrama.
Hospitals, car wrecks, fainting spells, nosebleeds, evil stepmothers, IVs, this series has it all. I normally don't like this type of show. I find them tedious. This wasn't a great drama, in my opinion. However, there were good points, and I hear that this type of high melodrama is a large majority of K-Drama. (The show even makes in-jokes to that effect.) If this is true, fans of K-Drama might just find this series to be their next guilty pleasure. I'm going to try to give it a fair review so please enjoy:
OVERALL
My Rating: 2.5/5
Did I rate Job Well Done a "low decent" because of personal taste? No.
Melodramas are what they are. I sometimes enjoy one from time to time. I gave this show a 2.5 as it suffers from lack of a good script. The tricks to a good "soap opera" are in making the setting a character, making the outlandish hyper-outlandish, and keeping the dramatic action flowing while managing to remind viewers what is going on so they don't get lost in the complexity. There are normally multiple storylines and multiple conflicts. This show does none of those things well.
The brightest spots in Job Well Done are Kim Hae Sook as Wang Young Soon, Chae Rim as Lee Kang Joo, the soundtrack, and the redonkulous cuteness of the two youngest Lee children. I was very impressed with the believability of Jun Min Seo as Byul (Star). [Edit: I just found out that she won an award for this show. Way to go.] The biggest detraction to the series is that the real meat of the story is in the first and last few episodes. In between, nothing much happens.
ACTING
My Rating: 3.5/5
The acting was a large part of why I was able to keep watching. While many of the actors did an admirable job with the material, and there were certain other actors whose charisma was a force unto itself, Kim Hae Sook and Chae Rim were ultimately responsible for keeping my attention. By the time the script had devolved so far as to offer little even for these two ladies, the series was almost over.
Some actors may have suffered under the material. (There were characters I grew tired of even seeing appear because of the waste of air time.) A very few seemed incapable of even their limited roles.
I often found myself thankful for the comedy of the Lee household overall, but was disappointed we didn't get to see more of Lee Han Wie (Mr. Min). Not only was this a well played role, his character would have added more to the series had he been given more material. Unfortunately, the writers mostly drop away from him as the show flounders.
CHARACTERS
My Rating: 3/5
Interestingly enough, this is a strength of the series. While the writing was not enough to do justice to these characters, the characters themselves were all compelling enough to have made a good show. With a decent premise, good characters, and an above average cast, they should have made this a character drama.
I can only give this aspect an average rating as the characters aren't used as well as they could have been. Concept only counts for so much. As I said above, the one dimensionality grew incredibly tiresome in many cases.
STORYLINE
My Rating: 1/5
Despite a decent premise and good character ideas, in my opinion, the script was the major failing of this show. My grade under Storyline is meant to reflect this.
Thankfully, viewers are rewarded with a happy ending, but there was no journey. No plot. What happens in the end is what would have happened in episode 6 or 8 or so had anyone ever been remotely adult. The main premise, that these people cannot live together because two of them have a history, makes little sense when you realize that there is no real reason for any of them to ever live together in the first place. Not only that, it was never the initial plan.
While Korean life plays some part in the story, it's not a large one. This drama could have taken place anywhere. Conflict, while there, comes much less often and is much less outlandish than the show would have us believe. I kept waiting for something even more unbelievable to happen, but what I found truly unbelievable were the amount of scenes wasted on characters proclaiming the initial premise was "unbelievable."
Technically, there are multiple storylines, but most of these drip off into obscurity or are so thin as to never really matter. While there certainly is drama, most of it is caused by characters deciding they don't like something then refusing to change their minds, not a plot situation. At certain points in the program, when one character begins to change their mind, the other will then change theirs in opposition for no apparent reason other than to be the scene's antagonist. This would be fine if there was some action causing the change, or if the change caused some action, but it's overwhelmingly not the case. (plot)
If there was a plot, it would be something nebulous about how all women are bad, but that doesn't make enough sense to be a plot. There technically are attempts to introduce more conflict through action -- I have to be honest and acknowledge these -- but I can't really credit these attempts as they are all ultimately forgettable and make no difference to the action at large.
Action flows better in the beginning of the drama but, as the series wains on, it wastes away like a fevered anorexic. At this point the anemic series could have gotten a shot in the arm by taking one of two roads: Becoming a character drama, or, going whole hog with the melodrama and making everyone a past lover or secret child of everyone else. They don't do either and instead, let the minor characters drift away and the major ones lose steam.
I should note that it's possible there was more depth to the writing than I was able to glean. The subtitles are of poor quality. I have no knowledge of Korean, so, with subs being below par, I could have missed nuances in the dialog. In a few scenes, I was unable to tell if the script was making an in joke, the actor was giving a poor delivery, or the writing and directing was legitimately confusing. I watch a good deal of foreign shows in different languages and don't often have this problem.
MUSIC
My rating: 4.5/5
The music is an attraction. Both pop covers and original instrumentals are catchy and well chosen. Although I got a little tired of the reuse of one or two tracks, the classic rock covers are an appropriate and atmospheric addition to emotional scenes and the instrumentals are never heavy handed.
Read more
