‘Touch Your Heart’…Yoo In Na shines in this no-fuss, warm, forthy romance, that derails quite a bit towards the end.
Some shows are made just to make you feel good. They are equivalent to drinking a cup of mulled wine on a snowy winter day — they leave you feeling all warm and fuzzy from the inside. Their slow pace serves as a break from our fast-paced lives, and their simplicity is a reminder, on how the simplest of things, can put a smile on our face (in Touch Your Heart, it is in the pink heart memos and handwritten letters). And what better way to do this, than watch two extremely good looking, successful people (Lee Dong Wook and Yoo In Na, reuniting after Goblin), immaculately dressed, without a hair or a button out of place, fall in love.
Touch Your Heart follows the story of Oh Yoon Seo (an outstanding Yoo In Na), an out of work actress, who has to gain field experience at a law firm, to land her comeback role in a new drama. She is then assigned to work as Kwon Jung Rok’s (an understated Lee Dong Wook) secretary, and soon enough, they are in love.
What then follows are oodles of cute, (sex is invariably absent in such shows, though it is hinted at sometimes), dates — on beaches, amusement parks, fancy restaurants, smartly disguised as Jung Rok learning how to date by watching dramas, loads of not-so-subtle product placement and surprisingly a loving and respectful relationship, until all of that is completely thrown out a window for a couple of episodes (more on that later).
Touch Your Heart joins the list of dramas that mesh romance and crime/mystery together, which is not a subgenre that I have completely enjoyed, but thankfully here, the romance is at the forefront, and the legal aspect is kept largely to the background, occupying very short snippets every few episodes. Even the office that Yeon Seo works in, is so charming, with it’s sweet, well-wishing colleagues, and hilarious fellow attorneys like Dan Moon Hee (an excellent Park Kyung Hee), Choi Yoon Hyuk (Shim Hyung Tak) and Yeon Joon Kyu (Oh Jung Se), that they make us wistful for such easy-going bosses, and a cordial, non-competitive working environment. Through the (few) cases that Jung Rok works on too, the focus never shifts away from him and Yeon Seo. We watch them grow closer, teach and learn from each other, while the legal cases unfold gradually. Lee Dong Wook is brilliant in expressing the tiniest of reactions of incomprehension, surprise or being dumbfounded by Oh Yoon Seo’s flamboyant personality and it is her character exactly, that adds salt to what would have otherwise been a rather bland story.
Oh Yoon Seo is a very interesting character. An actress is often seen in many Korean dramas, sometimes as the leading lady, but majorly as a caricature of a young haughty woman, well stylized but vile. In recent memory, the actress/star character was popularised by Jun Ji Hyun’s Cheon Song Yi in You Who Came From The Stars (in which Yoo In Na also co-starred in). Touch Your Heart takes the caricature and transforms it as the star of the show.
Oh Yoon Seo hasn’t worked in two years (following a drug use scandal) but we never see her beat herself up about it. She is still very optimistic, still innocent and a bit dull too, which is implied to the fact that she has been in front of the camera from a very young age and hence hasn’t really experienced the real world. She loves acting, even though she isn’t good at it. She loves pink, to the point everything in her office is decorated in it. She loves to dress up. She acts out her advertisements when she sees the product she is the brand ambassador for, and she lives in her own world, largely resembling a drama.
In another setting, she would have probably been ridiculed, but here, she is a symbol of strength. For a character who has gone through a lot of misery, she still possesses the ability to hope for the better and doesn’t lose the zest for life. She is confident and mainly she isn’t apologetic about being herself. She admits that she does live in her own world, filled with the same drama cliches that she films for, and she is ready to always learn. So, it didn’t really surprise me that within a few episodes, she is transformed from a clueless newbie into a competent secretary to Kwon Jung Rok. In a time where women are required to be devoid of emotions and/or their feminity to be depicted as strong, it is refreshing to watch a girly girl be celebrated or not be judged for who she is.
That is why it is so infuriating that the third act is completely devoid of Yoon Seo and her comeback to the limelight. What we get instead is a re-emergence of an older case and a sudden shift to Kwon Jung Rok altogether. There is a mistake from his past, which he vows not to repeat, which also means going against his boss and the constraints as an attorney to defend the very suspect he put in jail. It is a nice bit, going against everyone to fix a mistake no one wants to admit it occurred in the first place and is in line with Jung Rok character too, as he tells Yoon Seo in an initial episode that the reason he became a defense attorney was so that he doesn’t prosecute people, but defend them. But unfortunately, this whole conflict doesn’t belong in this drama; maybe in a Suits where Go Yeon Woo has to learn to accept that he still has to defend his clients even when they are clearly in the wrong, but not in this show, which so far has been a mushy romance.
I kept thinking of this sudden decision to shift the whole narrative to Kwon Jung Rok and the whole legal framework, as the drama has always been about Yoon Seo from the start. It is she, who wants to star in a legal drama. It is she, who decides to go through with the field experience. It is she, who confesses her feelings first to Jung Rok and even what we know about him, is through his interactions with her. It was about her struggles as an actress, to make a comeback after a false accusation, and the whole plot seemed to be building up to her grand re-entry to the entertainment world, till we get a blink and miss obsessive stalker, and a sudden break up, propelling the plot to go completely off track.
It is truly sad but thankfully, the last episodes return to the same lightheartedness. The damage is done, and I hope to forget those few episodes ever occurred, and instead choose a remember a warm, heartfelt tale of love and friendships.
