The Curse of Bad Scripts | Shy Boss

My Shy Boss just ended yesterday. A drama that was originally portrayed as a romantic comedy about an introverted boss who instills fear into the hearts of his employees because of his antisocial personality, devolved into a strange kind of suicidal, mystery-solving, revenge-seeking plot. What an utter disaster.

Starring Yeon Woo Jin and Park Hye Soo, My Shy Boss had all the makings of a solid drama. The actors were very good with portraying what all they had. Despite the sloppy writing, they still managed to show so much chemistry onset which drew a line between the acting and the script. The amount of effort the actors put into the drama was imbalanced with the kind of content they were provided with.

The show’s first five minutes started off with Eun Hwan Ki (Yeon Woo Jin)’s secretary committing suicide by jumping out of his office window. She leaves her parents and younger sister, Chae Ro Woon (Park Hye Soo) grieving for her loss. Ro Woon makes it her mission to enter the company where her sister had been working in order to reveal what happened to her and to unravel the potential corruption that led to her sister’s demise. It is on this pretext that she runs into Hwan Ki, who is considered a superhuman, phantom-like presence on the top-most floor of the building.

The idea behind making Hwan Ki and Ro Woon bump into each other was essentially to show the shy boss step out of his shell and become a normal participant of the world around him. What ended up making absolutely no sense at the end of the entire show was why they had to start off with a death, when they could have used so many other reasons for Ro Woon to enter the company. If they were so bent on showing moral corruption in terms of men taking advantage of women, they should have committed to it thoroughly. If somebody had to act as a sexual offender, then the consequences and reactions of other characters should have been appropriate to the offense. The way the show introduced the various strands of the suicide mystery, did not become part of the romantic story line and kept standing out as a thorn on the side of a potentially good plot.

Added to this concern is: Another Oh Hae Young. Most of the supporting cast was the same as Another Oh Hae Young, even all of the cameos. Furthermore, in episode 13, while two of the characters are chatting over coffee, Shy Boss had to go ahead and play the OST of Another Oh Hae Young, also! Particularly, Roy Kim’s and Seo Hyun Jin & Yoo Seung Woo’s OSTs! You just don’t do that. PERIOD.

Nevertheless, Eun Hwan Ki was a character that we were able to relate to because of  Yeon Woo Jin’s portrayal of him. Constantly thinking, and overthinking is a habit many of us have, similar to our shy boss. The uncomfortable situations our overthinking creates, the embarrassment and awkwardness are all palpable emotions that everyone experiences. Yet seeing a character in a drama display those same emotions makes them real.

And this is how you ruin a good concept for a drama. Perfect casting, perfect acting, even direction did not lack too many flaws but when there is a bad script, everyone suffers. I wish this had been a show that had left a better impression on me after its conclusion. Shy Boss, you had it all. You just did not realize how to make the most of it. What a travesty.