- TV Show: The
Innocent Man (English title) / The Nice Guy Never Seen Anywhere In The
World (literal title)
- Revised romanization: Sesang
Eodiedo Eobneun Chakhan Namja
- Hangul: 세상 어디에도 없는
착한남자
- Director: Kim Jin-Won
- Writer: Lee Kyeong-Hee
- Network: KBS2
- Episodes: 20
- Release Date: September
12 - November 15, 2012
- Runtime: Wed.
& Thu. 21:55
- Genre: Melodrama
- Language: Korean
- Country: South
Korea
PLOT:
A man is betrayed by the woman he loves. To
exact revenge, the man uses another woman who lost her memory…
Ma-Roo (Song Joong-Ki) is a promising medical student. He lives with his younger sister
Cho-Ko (Lee Yoo-Bi), who suffers from poor health. Meanwhile, Jae-Hee (Park Si-Yeon) is a reporter at HBS broadcasting company. Both Ma-Roo and
Jae-Hee come from poor family backgrounds, but try hard to achieve their
dreams: Ma-Roo to become a doctor and Jae-Hee to become an anchorwoman.
One day, Ma-Roo goes home and finds his sister
feverishly sick. While he puts socks on his ill sister, Ma-Roo receives a phone
call from Jae-Hee. Jae-Hee sounds completely frantic and asks Ma-Roo to come
over to save this man. Even though Ma-Roo's sick sister begs him to not leave
her, Ma-Roo rushes over to help Jae-Hee. When he arrives at the motel room, he
finds Jae-Hee completely shaken and a dead man laying on the floor near her.
Ma-Roo attempts to counsel Jae-Hee to turn herself in to the police. Appearing
completely broken in spirit, Jae-Hee begins to call the police, but Ma-Roo
hangs up the phone. He kisses Jae-Hee and then goes through the motel room to
wipe away Jae-Hee's fingerprints. Ma-Roo then tells Jae-Hee that he will take
the blame and turn himself into the police.
Meanwhile, Eun-Gi (Moon Chae-Won) is the rich heiress to a family that owns the large corporation
Taesan. She has been groomed to become the successor to the Taesan corporation
and, consequently, shows very little emotions. When she pulls her car over in
front of her home, Eun-Gi sees a woman hug her father. The woman hugging her
father is Jae-Hee. In tears, Jae-Hee tells Eun-Gi "You have no idea what I
did to protect you. What I just did to the man I care the most for in my
life."
6 years later, after serving a 5 year prison
sentence, Ma-Roo travels to Aomori, Japan to retrieve money from a woman who
swindled his friend Jae-Gil (Lee Kwang-Soo). Ma-Roo seduces the woman and retrieves the money stolen from
his friend. At the same time, Eun-Gi and her now stepmother Jae-Hee are also in
Aomori, Japan. Eun-Gi looks down upon her stepmother as nothing but a gold
digger.
On the flight back to Korea, Ma-Roo waits to use
the restroom. When the restroom door opens, Eun-Gi walks out and collapses onto
Ma-Roo. Ma-Roo places Eun-Gi on the floor and walks back to his seat. Eun-Gi's
condition quickly worsens and the airplane asks if there is a doctor on the
flight. Since nobody comes forward, Ma-Roo is compelled to help Eun-Gi. While
administering aid to Eun-Gi, he asks for the woman's guardian. At this time,
Jae-Hee walks over to the scene and states that she is her mother. Jae-Hee also
has a child next to her that is calling her mom.
ABOUT THE LEADING CHARACTERS: (in order of appearance)
Kang Ma-Roo
(Song Joong-Ki)
at first, he is just a simple, smart, nice guy, a thoughtful lover and brother
but after claiming Han Jae Hee’s doings, he spent 5 years in prison, 6 years
later he became a Playboy with mean and cold character. What I can say about
Joong-Ki is that, he is really good at acting, plus he is so good looking with
killer smile, as we can see in the drama, he plays the smart & wise guy, he
even helped Eun-Gi in saving Aomori Resort through studying the Tae San’s
business background for overnight only.
Han Jae-Hee (Park Si Yeon) is
claiming to be a righteous reporter back then and betrayed Kang Ma-Roo (her
lover for 19 years), she aimed for fame, wealth and status that was what made
her go to the old, Tae San's President, Seo
Jo (father of Seo Eun-Gi) immediately after the murder. She is a kind of
person that will do everything to reach her dreams (after 15 years of living
with rats & cockroaches in a small house) without thinking of the
consequences of her actions even risking her loved one just to achieve the life
that she’ve been dreaming of.
Seo Eun-Gi (Moon Chae-Won) at
first, she was mean and rude but after she met Kang Ma-Roo, her soft side and
innocence was slightly shown. Then, after she had a car accident, her character
was totally different, she became a different person and experienced amnesia,
after she recovered her lost memories, she became a cold-hearted person, using
her own wedding to get revenge on Kang Ma-Roo. I'm surprised how Chae-Won can
deal with all those character changing in such short time given. Moon Chae-Won
did so well switching from the hard/arrogant Eun-Gi (what she wanted to show
the world) to sweet/giving Eun Gi (her true self) and finally finding the
balance in the end.
Park
Jae-Gil
(Lee Kwang Soo) is the perfect add to this heart-aching and tear-jerking drama.
His funny moments in the drama came perfectly in time! I enjoyed watching every
episode in expectation of what funny moments he will let us remember from this
drama. Together with Kang Cho-Ko
(Lee Yoo Bi), these two acted as a comic relief to the intensity of the drama.
ABOUT THE DRAMA: (drama review)
The Innocent Man has now topped my list of
favorite Korean Dramas. As I started watching the drama, little by little, I
fell in love with the story line and the roles of the actors and actresses.
Especially Song Joong-Ki & Moon Chae-Won, these two couples are my favorite couples in
KDrama so far and what I love about this drama is that it will make you curious
that you'll wait for the next episode. Actually,
the pacing was fast and that made the drama more exciting. Maybe you don't like melodramas, most
dramas with same genre are often boring but this one is a nail biter. I feel a
greater rush to know what will happen in the next episode.
ABOUT THE ENDING: (ending review)
The ending is a bit suspended. They showed Ma-Roo
dying on the silent street, with his narration. This let people think that he
actually died. But in the end they showed him meeting Eun-Gi again and he
claimed he lost his memories and all. The narration is confusing. I think the
writer wants to let the viewer’s decide for themselves whether they think
Ma-Roo died or lived. Other viewer’s prefer to think that he actually died and
the ending scene with Eun-Gi are all his imagination before he died though it's
sad but still it's a beautiful ending.
NOTE:
Kang Ma-Roo didn't lose his memories at all, he
was just pretending because since he wanted to meet Seo Eun-Gi for the second
time around and start out fresh, he decided to pretend he lost his memories.
He really just wanted to experience the kind of
innocent, simple love (the ones without motives) he never really did before (in
one of the scenes he even asked Jae Gil what he should do during dates when he
was a womanizer already) and that’s why he took his time with his “Prosopagnosia”
(he can't recognize faces) to start all over with Eun Gi, that was what he
prayed for just before he collapsed on the side of the road. What gave it (Ma-Roo's
fake Prosopagnosia) away was at the last scene when he said in his heart that
he prayed to experience pure love and he was praying for the same thing again
to happen (with Eun Gi, sitting on the bench with him) as he gave the rings to
her and both of them looked at each other knowingly.
