K-drama midseason recap: Military Prosecutor Doberman – Ahn Bo-hyun’s arrogant male lead sucks the fun out of half-hearted legal action-thriller
- While confidence is a trait all male K-drama leads share, the overabundance of it in Ahn Bo-hyun’s character in Military Prosecutor Doberman is frustrating
- The show tosses action, legal drama and personal trauma against a canvas of military corruption – but, while it has its moments, none of it feels noteworthy
This article contains spoilers.
If you needed to identify one character trait that all male leads in Korean drama series share, your safest bet would probably be to go with overweening confidence. That and a cocky grin, if we had to add the most common physical attribute.
Do Bae-man (Ahn Bo-hyun), the more-or-less titular character of Military Prosecutor Doberman, has both the grin and the swaggering confidence to go with it. But why is it that Bae-man, along with all his male K-drama peers, can get away with showing such a supercilious attitude?
Played by a Korean leading man, Bae-Man is naturally handsome and chiselled, but as a character he also needs to be extremely capable. He acts haughty since he knows better than everyone else. He’s always one step ahead of the other characters – save occasionally for his sassy female co-star – and has a preternatural ability to read people’s minds and predict their future actions.
All this makes Bae-man a formidable force in a court of law. He’s always prepared and easily ferrets out sneaky ploys before his opposing counsel has even thought of them.