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[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Bring It On, Ghost" Episode 7

So apparently ghosts can get...sick? Well, "Bring It On, Ghost" doesn't really belabour this point, so I won't either. All of the weird things that ghosts can apparently do aren't really intended as pararealism anyway. They're just storytelling advices through which Bong-pal can express affection to Hyeon-ji. This much is important, since last episode established that Bong-pal doesn't really have a chance with Seo-yeon, even though she insists on expressing (platonic) interest in him.

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The format overall is more of the usual. We're given just enough information about Hye-seong to know that he's important without really having any kind of clear idea why. Hye-seong's storyline feels like an abridged version of the plot from a completely different drama. It has almost nothing to do with anything Bong-pal is doing. We know that eventually Hye-seong's connection with Bong-pal will be explained, but looked at on individual merits it's not even clear Hye-seong's crimes have anything to do with ghosts at all.

The ghost that must be fought this time around fares somewhat better on account of the provided social commentary. Given Bong-pal's rather ominous relationship with his own father, having a ghost deal with similar issues generally proves to be reasonably interesting. It helps that the ghostbusting aspect of "Bring It On, Ghost" makes more sense than usual. Cheon-sang and In-rang are slowly getting the hang of the whole "locate people who need help with ghosts" aspect of the story.

The fights, themselves, though, have lost a lot of their charm for me. This is mainly because there's not really that much logic to them. Bong-pal and Hyeon-ji lose against the ghosts for awhile until it's time for them to win. That's really all there is to it. Earlier in the drama we heard a decent amount about the importance of weak points, yet neither of the ghosts dispatched this episode had obvious weak points that I noticed. They just sort of faded away after a lucky hit.

"Bring It On, Ghost" suffers mainly from being little more than the sum of its parts. While it's cute watching Hyeon-ji try to learn simply for the sake of learning, Hyeon-ji seems to have mostly forgotten about exploring her own backstory, which only ever gets exposition by accident. A better sense of mutual shared goals would help "Bring It On, Ghost" a lot. Plot progression near the end of the episode implies that we're finally getting close to that point, although I've had that thought before.

Review by William Schwartz

"Bring It On, Ghost" is directed by Park Joon-hwa, written by Lee Dae-il-I and features Ok Taecyeon, Kim So-hyun, Kwon Yul, Kim Sang-ho, Kang Ki-young and Lee David.

 

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