Home » Reviews » When The Phone Rings review: Not every happy ending makes a show good, Yoo Yeon-seok and Chae Soo-bin's K-Drama is proof
When The Phone Rings review: Not every happy ending makes a show good, Yoo Yeon-seok and Chae Soo-bin's K-Drama is proof
Yoo Yeon-seok and Chae Soo-bin deserved better than When The Phone Rings.
3.0/5
Jan 05, 2025
When The Phone Rings Review
When The Phone Rings Story: A fake wedding falls apart till one day the husband gets a call demanding a divorce from his wife, and she is the one blackmailing him. His family happens to hide a lot of secrets, which directly affects his life. How will Paik Sa-eon handle the situation?
When The Phone Rings Review:
Hailing from India, When The Phone Rings, which was supposed to be a K-Drama, comes very close to what I have grown up watching in Bollywood movies. It's senseless, the story goes at random and there's a cute love story. While this concept might be newer and loved among Koreans, it is outdated for me, even as a K-Drama lover.
Let me rewind it back to the first episode of When The Phone Rings. There's tension, there's mystery, there's an adrenaline rush. Soo-bin's Hee-joo suddenly talks, she plays with her car like she owns the stage, and then, she blackmails her own husband for divorce! The woman at the backseat her whole wedding takes the front seat and how! This woman was here to stay! That one episode truly took my breath away, and the standards were set so high!
Unfortunately, I never really found that kind of spark in any other episode. Sure, most of them ended in cliffhangers but they were all pointing to nothing except a love story we all knew was coming. So, was it special? Well, yes and no.
The constant back-and-forth between Yeon-seok's Sa-eon and Soo-bin's Hee-joo was frustrating, to the point that their chemistry almost fizzled out for me. The keyword here is almost. The makers did manage to bring it all back, but too little too late. And after a lot of toxic moments between the couple. The makers probably tried to play on regret, as evident in the finale (what if we could be honest with each other), but despite that happy ending, the series did nothing much, at least for me.
Episode 5 was a changing point for me. I found myself feeling sensitive for the characters, now that their whole truth was out. There was spark, too, but like K-Dramas are known for it, they both held out for a long, LONG time to come (till the very final episode i.e. episode 12). Can you blame the actors? No. The scriptwriters? Oh, I have LOTS of questions and the biggest is WHY!!
Yeon-seok and Soo-bin are the cutest pookies on the block and proof in case is their BTS videos from the sets. These actors have given the roles their very best and it is evident. It is why they deserve a drama better than this one. I would love to see their chemistry again, maybe in a drama like Marry You, where they are unintentionally connected from the very beginning but have no relation to one another, not even childhood friends or enemies. When The Phone Rings truly didn't do justice to the actors.
Heading over to the script. Okay yes, it did try and stick closer to the webtoon, sure, but what really happened by the time the finale got closer? One minute Sa-eon is dying, the other minute he's in warzone, a third Hee-joo randomly ends up there and he just happens to be at the spot. This is something I have seen in Bollywood movies and it was more than enough for me, even more than the frustration all felt over the confusing storyline. I was done by that point! The webtoon had an explanation for the finale episode but here, it was simply rushed after dragging the series for longer than required (all the back-and-forth, the confusion and the random moments).
The 406 and 604 moment is cute, given how Sa-eon knew about his wife's intentions and stuck by her anyway, till the very end at that. The chemistry, as expected, is there. The final steamy session works great, but the finale in itself is a minus, especially with the lukewarm episodes after the first.
When The Phone Rings Verdict:
When The Phone Rings may have fans but it's not the best thing about 2024. There are too many K-Dramas that have upped this one. We and the leads deserved better.
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