Review of Mr. Plankton / Mr. 플랑크톤

Lately, I’ve been in what I call my funemployed era, which means that as I wait for my visa to come through so I can go abroad to do work, I’ve been catching up on all of the movies and television shows that have been on my backlog.

Thankfully this blog has been one of the few resources keeping my sanity together, especially as I wait longer for what I thought would’ve came months ago.

Anyways, I’ve been reading a lot, and watching quite a few shows during this time. Over summer of 2024, around when I am writing this, I spent two months living and studying Korean in Busan, South Korea. When I came back in mid-August, I was ready to come home to the United States, but at the same time I was missing Korea.

That’s how I’ve turned back to Korean dramas in the mean time. I’ve reviewed quite a few of them on my blog throughout the years, but what I’ve been focusing on lately is watching shows as they drop episode by episode on platforms like Viki and Netflix.

Mr. Plankton was on my radar when it was first announced to come out, but I had no idea what to expect when I pressed play the day it dropped. I ended up binge watching the entire show over the first two days of its release because I was having a lot of fun with it. This is a great show.

I don’t want to get into the review too much already, as this is just the introduction, so let’s get started!

A terminally ill man kidnaps a woman who can’t get pregnant to join him an epic journey.

This is a series that consists of ten episodes, and it flies by very quickly. We meet our protagonists pretty quickly, although the first few scenes has some ominous foreshadowing before we get to the end.

Our female lead in this show is Jae-mi, a woman going through early menopause. We meet her at the hospital, where she receives news of her diagnosis, and learn that she lied to her fiance’s family and told them she was pregnant. Her fiance is Eo-heung, the heir of a prominent food dynasty in Korea, so this won’t go over well.

While she’s in the hospital openly having a meltdown about her diagnosis, her ex-boyfriend Hae-jo overhears her and realizes this is his ex. Hae-jo recently helped kidnap a bride from her wedding into a crime family, and said crime family is on the hunt for him after he pulled off such a stunt.

It doesn’t help that his former associate is being threatened by this gang, and now they know all of his moves due to a tracker in his phone. But more on that later. Jae-mi’s getting married to Eo-heung in a traditional wedding, at the clan’s estate, but Hae-jo shows up to save the day.

And what I mean by the save the day is this: he kidnaps Jae-mi by throwing her onto his shoulders and forcing her into his Jeep. Eo-heung doesn’t react too kindly to this, and despite her best efforts to keep him contained in the family compound, he flees to rescue his almost-bride. His mother does call in reinforcements from America in the form of the mysterious John Na.

This kickstarts a wacky adventure, as Hae-jo is very much on a mission right now. He was the product of artificial insemination, but his parents realized that the clinic inserted the wrong semen in the process. His father is not actually his father, and then his parents abandoned him because he wasn’t “actually” their kid.

This created some major problems for him mentally, and now he’s on the hunt for his true birth father. He’s also been diagnosed with stage four cancer and has three months to live, but he’s not going to tell Jae-mi that for now. These two have insane chemistry with each other, even when she’s trying to actively run away from him.

That is a serious plot point in the real world, by the way. We condone such acts in the real world, and it wouldn’t be cute is this were real life. Imagine getting kidnapped by your ex-boyfriend at your wedding, then realizing you’re falling in love with him again. One may call that Stockholm syndrome.

Regardless, this is a series very much about finding purpose and meaning in your life. All of the main characters do end up having revelations in form or another, even if the outcome in the end isn’t going to be happy.

Overall Thoughts

As I wrote before, I thought this show was great. There are some dark and funny moments scattered throughout it that had me laughing at 2 AM in the morning.

The actors also did a fantastic job with the material; I’m becoming more impressed with Woo Do-hwan in everything I see him in. Lee Yoo-mi is also very talented in all of her shows, too.

In the end, I would say this show kind of reminded me of early 2000s Korean cinema.

As I mentioned, it’s dark. The ending one could interpret as not being a happy one, but it’s realistic. In this way it reminded me of the revenge films we would see from the 2000s coming from Park Chan-wook and other directors.

At the same time though this is a bit more optimistic than those movies, making it fall more into television territory at times—even though some of the scenes and shots felt like they belonged in a movie. I didn’t get bored once while binge watching the show, and the dialogue felt snappy too.

Go watch this if you haven’t already and want to! I think this was such a great addition to Netflix’s Korean drama content.

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