“The Uncanny Counter 2” (경이로운 소문 2)

By Jae-Ha Kim
Substack
September 30, 2023

☆☆½☆☆
So Mun (played by Jo Byung-gyu)
Ga Mun-tak (played by Yoo Jun-sang)
Do Ha-na (played by Kim Se-jeong)
Cho Mae-ok (played by Yeon Hye-ran)
Na Jeok-bong (played by Yoo In-su)
↑Note: Korean names denote the surname followed by the given name.

This second season of “The Uncanny Counter” is good enough. But it is also a reminder that K-dramas are traditionally made to finish after one season. With the influx of Western streaming sites that have figured out how lucrative Korean shows can be, there have been more shows going into their second (or even third seasons). And while I was one of the viewers who had hoped for a second season of this series, I acknowledge that it may have been best to just leave things as they were.

It’s not that this is a bad season. But it is lacking compared to the previous one in terms of story arcs and the introduction of new characters. In the first season, our protagonist Mun and his relationship with his two nerdy high school friends drove some of the most compelling storylines. But here, our heroic Counters battle a trio of bad guys, move from their beloved noodle shop hideaway into an IKEA-looking warehouse, and try to save the soul of their kindly friend whose need for vengeance has turned him evil. There’s a lot of chaos and subplots within story arcs and it gets to the point where after a while, I didn’t feel vested in what happened.

You don’t have to have watched the first season to understand what’s going on, but it would be helpful to understand how the Counters came to be. They are human beings who laid in a comatose state for various reasons. They were given the option of remaining in a coma or letting good souls (Yung) occupy their bodies. The Yung don’t overtake the Counter’s personality, but they have a symbiotic relationship with their human counterpart. If one gets hurt or is on the verge of dying, so does the other.

The Counters can’t just resume their previous lives, though. Their new lease on life comes with a caveat: they have to work as Counters and fight demons. Once they agree, their hair turns curly and they learn to work with the powers they now possess.

This second season starts off with a demon who thinks nothing of hijacking a school bus filled with kindergarteners. Later, the Counters will be joined by a newbie whose unusual skill is being able to sniff out demons. The trait does come in handy. However, I wish Jeok-bong’s fighting skills had gone from zero to 100 — rather than stagnating at, well, zero.

Rather than the truly chilling uber villain that the Counters battled in the first season, the season is saddled with a trio of sadistic hellbound beings who are annoying AF. There were so many opportunities for the Counters to work together and demolish these demons, but they let them escape in order to save someone who had gotten hurt. I get it, their job is to save humanity. However, each time the demons escaped and/or killed a human being and sucked up their soul, they became stronger and more difficult to defeat. This resulted in more mayhem and more people dying.

This kind of repetition made the 12-episode series seem much longer than its actual running time.

For me, the best arc revolved around Ha-na and a former high school classmate, who had always liked her. When she was lying comatose in the hospital, he always came to visit her. Their fledgling romance as adults is sweet and tender … which means that savvy viewers will know that something tragic is around the corner.

Meta moment: In a nice bit of casting, Yoo In-su joins his “Alchemy of Souls” co-star Yoo Jun-sang. Some viewers — including my family — disliked Yoo’s sniveling and sniffling character. But I found him hilarious. But as I mentioned earlier, I had hoped his fighting skills would improve so that he would be able to save, rather than be saved more often than not.

Airdates: Twelve hour-long episodes aired on tvN from July 29 through September 3, 2023. The series is based on Jang Yi’s 2018 webtoon “Kyeongirowoon Somoon.” (I watched this on Netflix.)

Spoiler Alert: When Ha-na’s beau is hurt, Mae-ok heals him. But in order to relieve him of the trauma he went through, Ha-na erases his memories of her so that he won’t try to contact her again … and possibly get killed by the demons who want to harm her. But that also means that he will lose all his memories of their high school years, as well as the time they’ve spent together recently. There is hope though. Seeing her walk past his studio where he gives piano lessons, he invites her to take a class.

In the final episode, So-mun has been sent to help train other Counters in Europe. There, he meets Jade, the daughter of his Yung counterpart Wi-gen. Moon Sook (the actress who plays Wi-gen) is 69. While it’s possible that they could be mother and daughter, the age discrepancy between the two characters just didn’t jive. I also didn’t understand how Wi-gen’s daughter — played by Russian model Angelina Danilova — is white, while her mother is Korean. Giving the character the name Jade (ewwww) doesn’t make her appear more Asian. Maybe her father was white. If the series had presented other characters whose parents were different ethnicities and/or race than their children, it wouldn’t have been so jarring. Of course, Jade could be adopted. And I know that it sounds like I’m nitpicking, but this aspect is just off to me — even in a fictional series where Counters battle demons and their hair turns curly when they gain super powers.

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