The Beauty Inside (drama)— Should You watch it?
4 episodes in and this looks like it’ll be a fun, comedic ride. Right off the bat, I think they did a great job with casting for this premise: the overtly dramatic acting style of Seo Hyun Jin (for Han Se Gye) and the overtly deadpan acting style of Lee Min Ki (for Seo Do Jae) is a great pairing for the premise!
tldr: if you want something light-hearted and comedic with some cute slightly-contrived romcom elements, watch this!
What’s the premise?
Han Se Gye is a top-class actress who’s body, once a month, for a week, changes into a different person. Lee Min Ki is a chaebol + executive who has face blindness (prosopagnosia), but who hides it from almost everyone by being carefully observant about everything else about that person.
Cast (Lead + Supporting)
Lead
The very premise creates an opportunity to make the cast a strong point for this show, since ‘once a month’, a new actor has to play Han Se Gye! So far, it’s been a delightful part of the show and something I look forward to: especially since there’s no restrictions: old or young, male or female, or race. The potential is endless!
It’s why I feel that the casting was perfect. Han Se Gye is best as someone who has a lot of outward personality, so there’s ample characteristics for someone to read. Lee Min Ki’s deadpan reaction is perfect for when he meets someone who looks different, but acts the same.
Supporting
The supporting cast is a bit weak so far. The two surrounding Han Se Gye (her manager and guy friend) are fun, but I feel like it’s cause they’re so intimately tied into the central body-swapping storyline. But the “good looking guy capturing the attention of the ambitious chaebol sister through duplicitous chance encounters” just seems too contrived.
I don’t think it will since this ancillary relationship seems more comedic than dramatic, but I hope it doesn’t devolve into another show which Seo Hyun Jin starred in, “Temperature of Love”. The secondary stories in that one became unbearable and really dragged the whole show with it.
But it seems like the main storyline is going to drive this story along well, with secondary stories staying secondary :).
What to Expect
I’ll start off by saying that I haven’t watched the movie, so I do not know what’s “supposed” to happen. I find it kind of funny, though, that this relationship starts with a contract (which also happens with Lee Min Ki in the drama I loved, Because This is the First Time).
There should be a lot of elements that will make this story interesting to follow:
- Han Se Gye + Seo Do Jae’s budding relationship, with the whole “I can be myself with you” or “you love me for who I am” aspect, hah. This will probably serve nicely for both comedic and dramatic purposes.
- Han Se Gye will eventually be “found out” and how the media deals with it and how Seo Do Jae protects her will be driving factors. This will probably be the mid-season “cliffhanger”.
- Then the 3 quarter drama will likely be the drama within the chaebol family where they find out Seo Do Jae has face blindness. This will then help make the main relationship stronger, but I’m more interested in seeing how they use the relationship with the “beautiful” guy + chaebol sister to draw a wrench in this. With the feel so far, it feels like they’ll tackle it a bit more light-hearted after an initial “dramatic” fight.
It seems like Han Se Gye’s team will continue to be something to look forward to and seeing which cameos appear should be intriguing, too! Whereas for Seo Do Hyun’s team, they don’t seem to have much hope of making much of an impact on the show :\. They don’t have chemistry at this point.
If anything, it seems like they’re pushing for a relationship between both Han Se Gye & Seo Do Hyun’s assistants, which intrigues me because they both have strong controlling personalities (due to their understandably demanding bosses). That relationship might end up being more interesting to me than the “beautiful guy + chaebol sister” one.
I just like that, so far, even when drama comes in, it doesn’t weigh the show down, but they hit you with it and then quickly move on.
Conclusion
This won’t be like an Incomplete Life or more recently, Live, that really hit you with a thought-provoking, well-crafted story + an amazing cast. Instead, this is going to be an antics + comedy-filled journey with some light dramatic elements led by a great cast of actors (particular with the different feels due to the body-switching).
Plus, this has the same director as Another Miss Oh, which Seo Hyun Jin absolutely shined in, so I’m confident that this is what I’ll look forward to every week for some laughs and good feels.
OVERALL: 8.0/10
- STORY: 8.0/10
- DIRECTING: 8.0/10
- LEAD Actors: 8.5/10
- SUPPORTING Cast: 7.0/10
- CINEMATOGRAPHY: 8/10
- MUSIC: okay, not memorable
You can watch this here!
(sorry, with the recent downfall of DramaFever, who had the exclusive US rights to this, can’t find an English subtitled version)
