by Devina
This drama marks the end of my sanity. For a couple of days, my internet went down, and the on and off connection only let me watch two things: short Youtube videos and Korean drama.
Because apparently my usual shows take a lot more data than the Korean drama.
So in my boredom, I decided to watch Healer. I’d seen episode 1 with my sister a week before that; she didn’t like it, but I found myself going, “The main guy is actually cute. And the other main guy is dashing.” 
And this was probably the first time in a long time that I actually find myself attracted to the main title guy. So I thought, this would at least be worth it to watch due to that.
Now, now. What has happened to me?!
Plot
A night errand boy called “Healer” was assigned to get DNA samples from a reporter named Chae Young Shin one day. After her DNA was confirmed a match, according to the client’s request, Healer was instructed to follow her to dig into her background.
The girl turned out to be a little bit crazy, and no, I’m not talking about the cute, bubbly kind that we usually see in drama. This girl made me question if she had some disorder lining up.
At first, Healer wasn’t too happy about it, especially since Young Shin was too strange for him to bear. However, there were a lot of things about her that made him curious. She got a hell lot of stories under that smiling face, and Healer started to understand her. And when he saw a picture of him in her room, he decided to stick around Young Shin as a colleague. He acted like Clark Kent/Superman, pretending to be a slow, coward junior by the name Park Bong Soo during the day, and going full mode Healer at night.
Little did Healer know, both he (actual name Jeung Hoo) and Young Shin (born Ji An) had been childhood best friends before they were separated by cruel fate years back. He knew so little about his own past, nor could he care less; but things started to fall together after he had started following Young Shin, the connections started appearing, and Healer grew more and more curious about his own history.
The man who had hired Healer to get Young Shin’s DNA sample was none other but someone they used to call uncle when they were still kids. He was now a famous reporter, Kim Moon Ho, or well, I’d actually prefer calling him Moon Hot because he was so dashing. He wanted to protect the niece he’d lost years ago, and when he found her, everything started coming together because Healer happened to be Jeung Hoo.
And when Healer’s research on his father started clashing with Moon Hot’s secret mission to protect Young Shin, the two men came head to head and decided to work together to reveal what had happened years ago to all of them. In 1992, there were five friends tangled into an ugly fate, and it ended up costing some lives, as well as Jeung Hoo and Ji An growing up without knowing each other and their parents. And of course, as Young Shin confessed to liking Healer and he realized that he’d fallen in love with her, things got complicated due to their connected past.
Characters
Healer / Seo Jeung Hoo / Park Bong Soo
A night errand boy who had difficult time being around people due to always being abandoned by people who mattered to him. When he’d made up his mind about being alone for the rest of his life, he was assigned to investigate and protect Young Shin, who actually was his missing childhood best friend. He fell head over heels for her, and started not following orders to be with her. He adopted the name Park Bong Soo and went to work alongside her at Someday. When he heard the rumour that his father killed Young Shin’s biological father in 1992, it crushed him and he tried to clear his father’s name so that he could have a start with her. Inside, he actually was just a little kid who’d been alone his whole life, so when he met someone who could accept him and wanted to be with him, his whole world turned around.
Chae Young Shin / Oh Ji An
A Someday reporter who developed a crush on Healer a year prior to the beginning of the story. She met him once when he tried to get her DNA, and when he kept showing up to save her life several times, she decided to find him and be with him. She didn’t remember her life before she went missing in 1992, so she didn’t remember her real name or her parents. When Park Bong Soo joined Someday, she took him under her care and trusted him with all her secrets. She didn’t know that Bong Soo was actually Healer, and confessed her feelings for Healer to him one night. Young Shin charmed Healer with her insane, irrational courage and ever so happy attitude in life.
Jo Min Ja / Ahjumma
The Felicity Smoak of this show. Except that she didn’t get to date billionaires and wear dresses. Ahjumma…. She was an exceptional hacker who’d been working with Jeung Ho for eight years. Despite her denying it, she truly cared about the boy. When things got out of hand, she decided to show her face to Young Shin, and eventually ask help from Young Shin and Moon Hot. She was always making sushi rolls for some reason, and at the same time criticizing Healer for always ordering takeout.
Kim Moon Ho(t)
A famous reporter who wanted to find Ji An and hired Healer to help him out. He used to babysit Ji An and Jeung Hoo before the 1992 incident. After he found out who Healer was, he agreed to helping him find out what truly happened in 1992. He was a man of charisma, a lot of smiles, and tons of hotness. He’d loved Ji An’s mother Myung Hee ever since he was a kid, and he believed that he owed her a lot. When he found out who and where Ji An was, he went out of his ways to look after her.
Kim Moon Sik
Moon Hot’s older brother, Moon Sick. He covered a crime years ago and pursued the love of his life, Myung Hee, after she got paralysed due to a tragic accident and lost both her husband and child. A very successful man, Moon Sick was powerful and influential, and he couldn’t let Moon Hot stop him from rising to power. However, he was just following Elder’s orders and keeping up.
Elder
The evil in the show. An old man who enjoyed making drinks, moping around a really empty bar with only few visitors who turned out to be his minions. He believed that his best student was Moon Sick, and tried to clear things out of the way for Moon Sick to succeed. He had a lot of power, and could control who’d be running as mayor and everything going on around the campaigns and such. Also, he knew how to make good drinks. I guess that’s about it on this guy.
What’s great
Stunt works. I guess this is something that’s obvious. I love stunt works. I love good ones of course. And not to be mean, but this has been, out of all the korean drama series I’ve seen, the best stunt work. The actor and the stunt double looked convincing enough. They weren’t the usual too skinny guys trying to look good while kicking the air; their kicks were actually solid, such good forms and angles. Don’t even get me started on the parkour.
The twists. Nearing the end, everything’s kind of falling apart. I don’t blame anyone for this since this kind of thing tends to happen in any show. But the twists in the beginning, how all their fates intertwined, were good. I was cheering and going “Awww” a lot the first few episodes.
What’s not great
I am not, in any way, a big fan of cheesy romance. And Healer delivered the cheesy part, a little bit too well. I do understand it, due to the background story on Healer being a loner his whole life, so of course when he found someone who actually wanted to be with him, he was a goner. Like, literally. He went insane ever since he found out that Young Shin had been crushing on Healer for a year, and started going from a cool guy to a hopeless romantic. The most hopeless romantic ever. Come on, the PDA was just insane. I mean, give the girl some space!!!
Again, it makes sense. Healer was just a kid. He was unwanted, abandoned, and felt like he was truly alone in the world. Then Young Shin went, “I just want to be with you. Let’s go on a date,” to Healer, and he went gaga. And even when she found out who he was, she couldn’t stay mad at him for long. She worried about him and tried to not say anything, accommodating his Park Bong Soo alibi. Young Shin was just too eager to be with him, and I guess, that was the first time someone wanted to be with Jeung Hoo / Healer that much.
I rest my case. No matter how many times I wanted to protest the cheesy romance, it still made sense.
7/10
Healer was a fun watch. The first half was a lot of fun, and even though from then on to the end it turned into a pulpy mess, I still liked it. I can see myself watching random episodes, probably the ones with most action scenes, in the future.
I could say I’m not exactly a big fan of this show, but I do like the cast. And of course, don’t we all have that weird imaginary boyfriends/girlfriends? Healer kind of brings that old stupid fantasy back, so for that, I enjoy this show.
OpinionHuis 