Kdrama Review — My Mister

There are only a handful of shows on here that I’ve rated as 9, and only one that I’ve rated above that. My Mister easily stands as one of the best shows I’ve watched, and not simply in the Kdrama genre.

This is a show that combines beautiful storytelling with terrific acting from IU and Lee Sun Gyun. It is transcendent in that there just aren’t shows remotely comparable to it. Describing it is difficult because in reality it’s a mundane plot, and yet, the dialogue, the acting, the writing all weave together to create one of the greatest modern-day kdrama shows.

My Mister is a powerful tale that is essentially about family and social connections, both when caught in a family’s trappings, and when family acts as a safety net. The two main characters embody this: one who is burdened with a big family that provides him with a constant presence of comfort and love, yet masks its own fractures and pains. The other is a young woman burdened by the absence of one, abandoned by her mother, forced to look after her deaf and ailing grandmother by herself.

The rarity of human warmth and kindness makes it devastating to watch when she tries to process Lee Sun Gyun’s character displaying kindness without an ulterior motive. To say that these two have chemistry feels insufficient to explain how they decorate the show like an artist crafting on a canvass. They…