Bullet Point Review: School 2017
Published in
2 min readFeb 4, 2018
- School 2017 is a muddle of all sorts. It majorly deals with the (broad) theme of corruption in private schools, highlighting the partiality of teachers and the school administration towards the richer students, but unfortunately, it is also so much more. There is a plot involving the death of a close friend, pranks pulled by an anonymous student, the unfair hierarchy system at the school, pressures of preparing for college, disagreements with parents and the high expectations of the society.
- It is understandable to have so much going on to showcase the varied troubles a teenager goes through nowadays (along with the pressures of excelling in studies), which goes unnoticed to most parents and outsiders, but these subplots are introduced at randoms, forgotten after a point, and then picked up again without any foretelling, and adjoined back into the storyline. What exactly happens to the relationship between Song Dae Hwi and his mother? Does he confront her about taking his hard-earned money and explains to her, how hard he has to work to earn it? What happens to the student evaluations of the lower ranking students? What happened between Hwang Young Gun and Seo Bo Ra that causes Young Gun to bully and beat her up? What exactly was the intention of the group of four students (Hee Chan, Bit Na, Jung Il, Hak Joong) meeting up in secret like that? There are so many unanswered questions. Don’t introduce characters and backstories if they aren’t going to be answered in the upcoming episodes. It virtually doesn’t add anything to the storyline.
- I wanted more of Song Dae Hwi, the most interesting and complex character on the show, who loses the second half to the much-unwanted antics of the lead couple. He is super smart, but also poor, with an alcoholic mom, who doesn’t live in his version of reality with the monetary struggles and the dreams that keep becoming unattainable because of it. After the death of Joon Gi, he sells his knowledge, sometimes for money, sometimes for things unavailable to those of his stature. Maybe a spin-off just for him? I would watch that.
