What makes Healer a good show to binge is its direction and performances. To be honest, it was a boring start and a disappointing end but once you start watching it and get into the story, you want to know what’s next. That unfolding of the story keeps you hooked.
If you are a KDrama lover, you know their style of storytelling. It’s always back and forth till they start connecting all the pieces to complete the picture. Even if it’s a romcom, the mystery is still present. This particular show, though has plenty of loopholes, it’s still no harm to watch it.
So what’s Healer all about? This, now a web series, available on Netflix, was once a TV series which aired in South Korea from 2014-15. I am assuming many of the KDrama fans, especially Ji Chang-wook fans in India must have watched the show by now so I will cut the story short for you.
5 friends were illegally running a radio show in the 90s. As they grow up and set their careers, things do not go well for them and one of them betrays the entire group by joining hands with Boss, a person responsible for destroying the friends’ and later on, their kids’ lives. Who are these kids? Two couples from the group had two kids, Jung-hoo (Healer) and Chae Young-sin. While Chae Young-sin’s father gets killed while reporting a crime, his friend and Healer’s father is held responsible for the murder. Everyone in the group, including the victim’s wife, believes that this was a trap and Jung-hoo’s father is innocent. This one trap against the group destroys their lives. How? Jung-hoo’s mother, kind of, abandons him to protect him from the people who are after their life while Chae Young-sin’s mother never returns to take her back home after meeting with an accident. Young Chae Young-sin is then adopted and brutally beaten up by her then adoptive parents before she meets her current adoptive father.
Traumatised by their past, both the kids are now fighting for their identity, and also, their sanity. While Jung-hoo is working as a ‘night messenger’ along with one of the friends who managed to survive and Ms Jo, a former detective who is now his partner-in-crime; Chae Young-sin aspires to be a reporter but lacks courage to cover stories that truly make an impact. How these two kids meet again as adults, fall in love, and find out what happened back in 1992 to clear their parents’ name is what Healer is all about. The entire story revolves around crime and criminals yet has a strong hold on emotional bonds between all the humans involved, especially to Chae Young-sin and Jung-hoo, then may it be Young-sin’s adoptive father or Healer’s detective partner, Ms Jo.
What’s Watch-Worthy In Healer?
K Dramas are narrated in a way that they keep you hooked. At one point, the story reaches its peak and you just don’t want to move. Romantics-at-heart would just fall head over heels in love with the young couple who cannot get enough of each other yet maintain a line to protect each other. While Chae Young-sin is aware that Bong-soo (Jung-hoo), her colleague, is the Healer she is in love with, she decides to wait till he wants to reveal it to her. On the other hand, Bong-soo knows that Chae Young-sin knows about his real identity but is afraid that letting her in would only mean legal troubles for her. And not only legal, her life will also be endangered so he decided to keep mum, and after a point, to disappear.
Apart from their bond, the connection that Jung-hoo has with Ms Jo or the way reporter kim Moo-ho protects Chae Young-sin is heartwarming to watch. That’s the overall beauty of KDramas. No matter how difficult the storyline is, they find human ways to connect with the audience or get them emotionally involved in the story. Similarly, they have humour sprinkled here and there to make you laugh during the most difficult times of their characters’ lives.
Honestly, there is nothing new in Healer that you haven’t watched in other crime dramas. But I always feel that how a Director tells the story changes the way the audience perceives the final product. Because writing wasn’t that great. If this show was well-received by the audience, the majority of the credit goes to the Direction, and then of course, the actors, who brought these characters to life.
