Based on the webtoon of the same name, there are too many things I disliked about Super Daddy Yeol. I went into it with high hopes, mainly because it stars Lee Dong-Gun, who I loved in Sweet 18, but I had a huge problem with the storyline and the main character.
Cha Mi-Rae is a successful nuerosurgeon at a university hospital. She passes out one day and wakes up in her own hospital to the shocking news that she has stage four cancer. Since she’s a single mother with no parents and siblings she has the startling realization that once she’s gone her nine year old daughter will be an orphan. So she sets out to give her child the one thing she has always wanted – a dad. Although there’s a wonderful doctor she works with that would love to take on the roles of being her husband and a father to her daughter, she seeks out Han Yeol, the boyfriend she walked away from 10 years earlier while he was on his knees begging her to stay. Han Yeol is the rehabilitation coach for the same baseball team he had pitched for. After his heart was broken, when Mi-Rae so coldly left him, he closed himself off from loving other women, not wanting to go through that kind of pain again and still in love with the woman who left him. When Mi-Rae locates Yeol and proposes they live together as a mock family for three months so her daughter, Sa-Rang, can have a father, he flatly refuses, of course. But a little later on he finds out something that makes him change his mind and a whirlwind 90 day “rehabilitation marriage” begins.
I was so conflicted with my feelings towards Mi-Rae. Of course I felt sorry for her, knowing she would be dying and leaving behind her little girl, but I thought she made huge mistakes in how she chose to live out her remaining days and it made me angry that she was so controlling and selfish. This is an extremely sensitive subject and I certainly don’t want to offend anyone who may be going through, or knows someone who is going through, this same situation so let me just apologize now, in case I do. These are strictly my opinions and the fact that I’ve never been in Mi-Rae’s place makes those opinions iffy at best because I honestly don’t know for sure what I would do if I were faced with her situation. However, these are the things I was thinking as I watched the choices she made throughout the 16 episode show. She didn’t want anyone to know about her cancer diagnosis. Okay, I can understand that. But I felt it was wrong to keep it from her daughter. Wouldn’t they become closer if Sa-Rang were by her mother’s side as she was going through such a difficult thing? Knowing that my mother was no longer with me because an illness took her away would be a lot less painful than thinking my mother no longer wanted me to live with her, or having her just disappear from my life. I understand that a parent wouldn’t want their child to see them in pain, or wasting away to a disease, but isn’t that a whole lot better than having the child wonder why the parent no longer wanted to live with them? I also thought Mi-Rae’s decision to not tell her superiors at the hospital what was going on was dangerously wrong. How ethical is it to have a doctor who randomly passes out from pain working in an operating room? That’s just plain wrong! If you don’t want the people who work with you to know you’re terminally ill, just quit. No one needs to know why you’re leaving but if you get to the point where you’re passing out because of pain don’t stay in a job that could mean life or death to someone else. Mi-Rae also just accepted the fact that she was dying and decided against doing anything that could possibly prolong her life. Why not fight and do whatever needs to be done in an attempt to give the people who love you one more minute in your presence? I guess maybe she thought of it all as the quality of life over the quantity. The fact that Mi-Rae was making the kind of choices I thought were wrong really bothered me. But in spite of my frustration I finished the show. The ending wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, either.
Lovable Han Yeol is played by Lee Dong-Gun who began his entertainment career as a singer. He then went on to acting in both feature films and TV dramas. He’s won 10 out of the 15 awards he has been nominated for, two being Best Dressed Actor. I guess a bunch of people think he’s a classy lookin’ guy.
Lee Yoo-Ri playes beautiful Cha Mi-Rae. She won, what I think is an interesting award, in 2006 – Queen of Tears. Then in 2014 she ranked in the top five of Gallup Korea’s “Actor of the Year”, getting second place after Kim Soo-Hyun.
Cha Se-Rang is played by the very talented Le Re. She began her acting career in 2012 playing in three different Kdramas and then went on to feature films and even more TV dramas. She’s only nine and already has an award for best supporting actress in the movie Hope.
As for soundtrack, there’s a song called It Hurts It Hurts that plays over and over and over again. It’s not a bad song but it became monotonous and very close to irritating because it played so often. The songs Because of You and Meaning of You are nice, mainly because they’re not It Hurts It Hurts.
Scenery isn’t anything spectacular but that’s not a problem. The story doesn’t lend itself to anything other than everyday backgrounds so amazing scenery isn’t expected and we’re not disappointed when we don’t get it. The family and a couple of friends do go on a short vacation which allows us to see a few seconds of a beach and a mountain trail but that’s about it.
I wish I could say I liked this drama a lot more than I did. Lee Dong-Gun’s handsome face and acting talent was enough to encourage me to watch it, but the storyline and writing just wasn’t good enough to make me like the show as a whole. If you never see this Kdrama you don’t have to think of it as a horrible loss. Instead of watching this one, allow me to suggest you choose a show off my Favorite Dramas list.
Score: 5.5
The Good:
Good acting all around
The Bad:
I didn’t agree with Cha Mi-Rae’s choices
The song It Hurts It Hurts was over played
Heart and Seoul 