K-drama midseason recap: L. U. C. A.: The Beginning – strong action dragged down by thin drama and repetitive plotting
- While full of edge-of-your-seat thrills and pyrotechnics, L.U.C.A.: The Beginning has skimped on its story and finds itself repeating the same clichés
- What can we expect from the final four upcoming episodes?
This article contains spoilers of the show.
The first two weeks of L.U.C.A.: The Beginning gave us a lot of propulsive action as a group of villainous super soldiers and their mysterious cult backers gave chase to an electrified superhuman and a tough-as-nails detective. There was plenty of pyrotechnics, a lot of breathless running around and the occasional double-cross.
Though not the most original set-up, these episodes were reasonably entertaining and rarely slowed the pace. This propulsive momentum has carried through to the middle of the series, but with it has come a growing sense of boredom as the showrunners remain mired in the same clichés.
A tense game of cat and mouse can make for edge-of-your-seat thrills, but action and fighting alone aren’t enough to keep a story tight. Most episodes of L.U.C.A. have both kicked off and closed with a confrontation between electro-powered Ji-o (Kim Rae-won) and Yi-son (Kim Sung-oh), the leader of the gang of mercenaries after Ji-o.
The choreography is decent, the fidgety lighting suitably moody and both Kims give it their all, but the stakes never change. After a brief brawl, Ji-o overpowers Yi-son with one of his electric charges.
By the beginning of episode five, Yi-son has actually caught Ji-o and bundled him into his car, but not long into his evening drive, the latter’s eyes once again charge blue before he shoots an incandescent pulse through the vehicle and the chase resumes anew.
L. U. C. A.: The Beginning preview – sci-fi action K-drama is fitfully diverting
Of course the show isn’t all about one man’s fight for survival, as it does try to temper its action with pockets of drama, largely through Goo-reum (Lee Da-hee), the rogue detective who sides with Ji-o. They’re somehow connected through the disappearance of Goo-reum’s parents, and over time affection builds between them.
Tempering action with drama is a necessity, especially over the course of a 12-hour narrative such as this one, but it’s only when the quiet moments work that the set pieces can really hit home. The motivations of Ji-o and Goo-reum are clear and easy to follow, but they’re never given much room to develop; what is shown on screen is too familiar to wring any true degree of emotion out of the audience.
Ji-o is eventually caught by the evil cult and dragged to the underground laboratory where he was created. Experiments are conducted on him while the scientist who made him tries to bond with him, but, before long, he breaks free again.
This sets the stage for an extended set piece, peppered with several fights and explosions, during which he is joined by Goo-reum, who finds her way to the secret lair at the exact moment of his escape after weeks of investigation. Beyond being a contrivance, this feels like a wasted opportunity, where Goo-reum could have been instrumental in his getting away.
After a few scraps, the set piece introduces a room full of newborn babies which, likely in a nod to John Woo’s classic Hard Boiled, are saved by the pair as they eventually exit the facility.
Ji-o and Goo-reum then decamp to the countryside when the show finally does slow down for a moment. Picking up a few months later, the pair are tending to lambs on an isolated country farm, and in a vulnerable moment they finally lock eyes and share a kiss.
Goo-reum awkwardly wakes up in Ji-o’s bed the next morning and within a few minutes of screen time she has gotten pregnant and the pair get married, even posing for goofy home-made wedding photos on a grassy meadow.
Though we could reasonably expect the pair to hook up before all was said and done, this progression from platonic allies to lovey-dovey family within half an episode is a fairly jarring about-face for a series that had been rather lean on the dramatic front up to this point.
The result is that it feels a little hollow, though Kim and Lee are an attractive pair and, given a tidier progression, might have found themselves in a more compelling romance.
Meanwhile, with that pair playing house, we get more insight into the cult behind the gene-sequencing experiment. There’s a lot of money behind them, plenty of fanatically devoted followers and a group of experimental pregnancies that are bound to end badly.
The writers seem to want to show us something crazy – a member of the group even uses the word to describe the cult’s activity several times – without really digging into what makes these people tick. They’re just nuts, plain and simple.
It’s not hard to imagine what will happen in the final four upcoming episodes. Ji-o and Goo-reum’s newborn will surely be put in danger by the cult, which they will have to vanquish once and for all, and the somewhat villainous Yi-son will most likely play a part in that with a late redemptive arc.
But while it’s too late to expect any narrative innovation and emotional resonance so far into the series, we surely can still look forward to a few more major set pieces. And if those are sufficiently explosive, it might be just enough to forgive the show’s simplistic and repetitive plotting.
L. U. C. A.: The Beginning is streaming on Viu.
