Although it had been sitting in my queue for a while, I had deliberately skipped over the webdrama One Fine Week time and time again because I wasn’t quite sure if it would be worth my time. Then I noticed Viki.com was offering One Fine Week 2 and the thought came to me that the original must have been pretty good for them to have given it a second season. So I decided to see for myself if the show was sequel material.
This story’s plot smacks of the good old Mark Twain novel, The Prince and the Pauper.
Although Kim Byul has been enjoying success as a pop idol for the past five years, she has never felt comfortable in front of cameras. So it’s not surprising that Byul is concerned when she’s informed that she has to take part in a seven-day televised game show. As luck would have it, she is introduced to her doppelgänger, a part-time worker in a local café named Jung Da-Eun, and the two young women agree to switch places for a week – Byul posing as Da-Eun working at the café while Da-Eun masquerades as Byul for the game show. While pretending to be one another, the gals each begin to developed feelings for a nice guy in their fake life – the real Byul becoming interested in Da-Eun’s sympathetic boss, and Da-Eun falling for a popular and handsome idol. A year later, when Byul is forced to be a part of another week-long show called Music House, alongside five other idols, the ladies switch places once again. But just because they got away with deceiving people the first time doesn’t necessarily mean the swap will come off without a hitch the second time around.
Jung Da-Eun is a sophomore who is busy studying physical education at Hanil Sports University while she works part-time at a local café. She is a congenial young woman who claims to be sufficiently happy with her life.
Twenty-one-year-old Kim Byul has been the lead dancer in the group Angels for the past five years. People accuse her of being expressionless and rude but her manager claims she is the kindest idol he’s ever met.
Han Jung-Woo is a member of Endest, a popular group that placed first on both music and Orion charts and third on billboard charts. He also has the leading role in a drama that is currently on the air. Jung-Woo describes himself as a “homebody,” someone who rarely speaks or leaves the house.
Yoo Ji-Han is Da-Eun’s boss, the handsome owner of Café Decoa. He is kind, sympathetic, and still nursing a broken heart from a relationship that ended years ago.
Yoo Ari is Ji-Han’s younger sister. She is a high school teenager who is seriously enamored with pop idols and knows intimate details about many of them. She respects their skills and work ethics.
Seo Do-Hyun is a member of the group Mystic Fever. His composing skills are phenomenal – every song he writes becomes number one. He finds Byul intriguing and would like their relationship to be more than just partners on Music House.
Yoo Hwa-In and Jung-Woo were trainees together many years ago and, as a result, are very close. She is a member of the pop group Hay Day and is currently co-starring with Jung-Woo in a drama. With her superior dancing, singing, and acting skills she’s considered to be the best of all the female idols.
Eden is the son of the “chief” of MS Entertainment (the same agency Jung-Woo is signed with) and, as a result, has been popular since his debut. He was in a hit-and-run accident but the company covered it up. He’s jealous of Jung-Woo because of how much attention his father gives him.
While Luni was a member of Angels, her jealousy and insecurities lead her to bully Byul and, even now that she has gone solo, there is definitely no love lost between the two women.
The gal who plays the parts of both Jung Da-Eun and Kim Byul is 27-year-old Seo Ji-Soo. Way back in 2011 she participated in Korea’s Got Talent but her entertainment debut didn’t come until she became a member of the girl group Lovelyz in 2014. One Fine Week (and its sequel) is the first thing Ji-Soo acted in and she not only won the starring role but played two separate people. What an acting debut! Here are some fun facts about Ji-Soo – she was a Fine Arts Major in college, she’s good at drawing, she can play the drums, she takes boxing lessons during breaks from working, she is teaching herself Japanese through watching anime and dramas, and her nickname is “Fennec Fox” because of her “fox-like” eyes and pointy ears.
The young man who plays the part of idol Han Jung-Woo is Shin Jun-Seop. He was a member of the boy group Myteen (they were formed in 2017 and debuted a year later) until their disbandment in 2019. His acting debut came in 2018 by way of the Kdrama My ID is Gangnam Beauty.
Although Byul and Da-Eun looked the same, when it came to their social behavior the two women were vastly different. The idea that Byul felt anxiety around cameras was too far-fetched for me to go along with. How could she have been an idol for five years and still be so uncomfortable around cameras? It just made no sense at all to me. Idols have to be the most filmed people in South Korea and Byul had been in the public eye for five years before this week-long TV shoot came along. Understandably, she might still not like them after all that time but it was difficult for me to go along with the idea that she would not have gotten used to them in that amount of time.
I appreciated the fact that the writer decided to have some people (at least one on each side) quickly catch on to the fact that the girl was not who she claimed to be. I am friends with twins who have told me about how they would switch places in school and teachers never caught on. However, I’m sure there were some people that it was impossible for them to trick. I definitely would have called foul if no one in this webdrama had caught on to the swap so I’m glad the whole ruse didn’t go off perfectly.
Since One Fine Week is about Kpop idols, we get to see and hear a few of the main characters sing several times throughout the two seasons. Shin Jun-Seop (Han Jung-Woo) and Seo Ji-Soo (Jung Da-Eun/Kim Byul) sing a lovely duet called Dazzling Stars and Your Warmth. Woo Jeong-Ah performs Crush, a fast-paced song with a great instrumental break in the middle. Shin Jun-Seop sings a second song called I Promise – in the story his character sings it as a duet with Yoo Hwa-In but on the soundtrack he sings solo. It’s a nice song both ways but I prefer the duet because I enjoy the harmonizing.
The show has decent visuals. We don’t get to see much of Café Decoa but what we do see is charming. I’d love to go in there, order a hot vanilla chai latte and relax for a while. The place just had a nice atmosphere.
So was One Fine Week a webdrama worthy of a sequel? Well, in my opinion, it didn’t need one but, because the characters were decent folks, I was okay with the fact that it was stretched to a second season.
Score: 6
The Good:
Music
The swap wasn’t perfectly successful
Decent characters
The Bad:
Byul was too shy to be a convincing idol
Heart and Seoul 