[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Modern Farmer" Episode 20 Final

Hopefully you enjoy the romance between Han-cheol and Soo-hyeon, because that's what the last episode spends most of the runtime building up. In all fairness, of the myriad half-baked storylines "Modern Farmer" has picked up, this was probably the best one to devote attention to, on account of one of the main characters being involved. Also the whole imminent death thing. That probably should have been more relevant up until now.

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Although really, that same complaint could be leveled against any of the storylines in "Modern Farmer". Everyone more-or-less ends up getting married, it's just we don't get to see how any of that was actually accomplished. I don't remember any of serious barriers to the Sang-dook and Mee-young coupling actually being taken down. The other ones weren't really that big a deal. But, well, I guess it's nice that everyone finds someone else in the end so why bother getting too serious about that.

On the comedy end, I belatedly realized by the ending that "the gang impulsively decides to try a get-rich-quick-scheme to get out of trouble" was actually supposed to be a running joke. All right, given that context, the late storylines about their desperate attempts to sell all the cabbage and the whole bit with the meteor make a lot more sense. The main problem is that the drama spent about half its runtime not actually having the leads act particularly crazy at all, to the point I thought that was suposed to be their character arc.

In the end, it wasn't the wackiness they were supposed to disown. Rather, they were supposed to find a community they actually care about so that in between the wacky adventures, our heroes actually manage to make a positive impact on the world and the people around them instead of freaking out because their lives are miserable and unejoyable. Positive motivation can do wonders. Even Hyeok-sik is mostly rehabiliated having learned this simple lesson.

All this works to make a perfectly pleasant and enjoyable episode that nonetheless irritated me because it emphasizes that the downturn in quality "Modern Farmer" took recently was mostly due to a very poorly telegraphed tonal shift, one that was made all the more difficult to notice by the sheer quantity of subplots. Well, at least the drama did manage to rehabilitate itself somewhat by the end. Sometimes "Modern Farmer" was great, and other times terrible, so it's only fitting that it concludes somewhere in the middle.

Review by William Schwartz

"Modern Farmer" is directed by Oh Jin-seok, written by Kim Ki-ho and features Lee Hong-ki, Lee Hanee, Lee Si-eon, Park Min-woo, Kwak Dong-yeon and Lee Han-wi.

 

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