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[HanCinema's Drama Review] "The Girl Who Sees Smells" Episode 9

Moo-gak and Cho-rim are still cute together. I like how for the entire opening portion of the episode they're holding hands yet are apparently oblivious to this fact. Cho-rim's shocked reaction to Moo-gak's conversational piece later on is equally cute. Unfortunately writ large "The Girl Who Sees Smells" has decided to double down on the serial killer storyline...again. And it's times like this I really wish Moo-gak and Cho-rim could just solve normal mysteries instead. When was the last time we even got to see some smells?

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I'd be less irritated if Jae-hee was in any way a competent villain. But he's not, no matter how much director Baek Soo-chan tries to play up Jae-hee's schemes as strokes of evil genius. They're contrived and stupid is what they are. Where does Jae-hee keep finding these people who are willing to do secretive, suspicious, and most likely illegal activity at the behest of a guy who won't even show them his face? Is the economy really that bad?

The irritating part is that I saw the plot twist from a mile away, mostly because Jae-hee's ability to get people to run these errands for him is so obnoxiously implausible that I just assume he uses it at every possible opportunity. The detectives fail to catch on to this fact. Irritatingly, they mistakenly clear Jae-hee as a suspect again because they just accept his story at face value without even considering a lateral deduction like how they never had any evidence that that guy was the killer to begin with.

Any halfway competent detective would have solved this mystery several episodes ago. It wouldn't even need to be a good detective. Inspector Clouseau could pull it off. Granted, he would manage this by making stupid, nonintuitive inductions and stumbling on to Jae-wook by accident. But then that's exactly the kind of rival Jae-wook deserves. Someone who acts unpredictably. Like normal people often do. In "The Girl Who Sees Smells" even car crashes only ever happen when they benefit Jae-wook.

And the hook is just...ugh. This very same week, "Who Are You - School 2015" used the exact same plot device. A high school bully took advantage of another character's optimistic nature. Whereas here, a murder suspect takes advantage of a police officer just being a moron. Since when do police apologize to suspects anyway? If anything Jae-wook should be apologizing- you'd think he'd have some slight interest in having the murderer of his girlfriend and best friend brought to justice. Just how long is it going to take for these people to get a clue?

Review by William Schwartz

"The Girl Who Sees Smells" is directed by Baek Soo-chan, written by Lee Hee-myeong and features Park Yoo-chun, Shin Se-kyung, Namkoong Min, Yoon Jin-seo, Kim So-hyun, Choi Tae-joon, and more.

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