Happiness is a 2021 tvN production billed as a thriller set in the post-Covid future where another disease had taken place. Initially I didn't have much interest in a zombie drama, yet because there were familiar faces in the cast, I thought 12 episodes of zombie silliness would be bearable.
Familiar faces in Happiness cast
- male lead and 501 occupant Jung Yi-hyun: his face is familiar, but I couldn't quite recall which drama I had seen him it. Googled and realised that he was very skinny in Suits. Happiness was his first drama after his dis-enlistment. Must say that enlistment bulked him up nicely.
- 601 occupant Oh Joo-hyung: You-tuber turned President in The Devil Judge. Does he specialise in portraying over-the-top characters, or is it his method of performance, where the personalities of the characters he portrayed are so bizzare?
- 602 occupant lawyer Kook: also a lawyer in The Devil Judge, with the same hairstyle to boot. However the character is a lot less upright in Happiness compared with the lawyer with a purpose in The Devil Judge.
- 1201 occupant Oh Yeon-ok: the housekeeper in Hotel Del Luna
- Detective Kim who crashed in his partner's 501 apartment during the lockdown: the eunuch in Love in the Moonlight.
- female lead's team leader: Dongbang Min in Voice 4. This is a fairly small role without much screen time after the 1st 2 episodes in Happiness.
Happiness was surprisingly watchable.
Positive points about Happiness
Relatability.
Timeline was set post-Covid, so it provided a glimmer of hope (somewhat), that the current pandemic does and will end end. However, another disease appeared, and similar actions that we have experienced or seen during the pandemic were re-enacted. Cue the lock-downs, imposition of martial law, supermarket shelves swept bare, entire neighborhood quarantined, people who step up, people who refused to believe that yet another disease had appeared and people who continue to behave in bizarre manners.
Petri-dish treatment.
The screenplay wasn't ambitious. It didn't try to become a big story with multiple plotlines that couldn't be properly wound down when the drama ended, but scoped the drama to what happened primarily in a single apartment block after lock-down was imposed. Conveniently, the neighborhood was also newly constructed, hence the apartment blocks were not fully occupied, which allowed a fairly small cast to get rather sufficient screen time to develop their characters more fully compared with other dramas. It was interesting to see how the personalities of the characters evolved as the lock-down continued, much like what a character said that the lock-down allowed the apartment block to become a petri-dish to understand how the disease would evolve naturally without intervention.
Closure of plotlines.
Because the screenplay wasn't ambitious, most of the plotlines had closure, even if there were still some parts that I didn't really understand. Almost all the characters who appeared in Happiness had an ending, whether they remained alive at the end of the drama, or died.
Negative points about Happiness
So what exactly is this disease that causes rabies-like symptoms in the infected?
Is it a bacteria or a virus? Was it caused by the Next pill? Do the infected lust only after the non-infected's blood or are they choosy if the non-infected has HIV or hepatitis or other blood-borne illnesses? The screenplay didn't specify or perhaps some meanings were lost in the English translation. Anyhow, I can't really qualify this as a negative point, seeing that the current pandemic is starting its third year yet scientists are no closer to identifying the origin of it.
Gore for the sake of it.
Of all symptoms, the screenplay had decided that infected would display rabies-like or rather zombie-like symptoms, so that was all that biting of the neck, spilling of blood and the leads slashing themselves to divert the attention of the infected to themselves.
Little details were omitted.
When electricity was shut down, water supply stopped too. Thus it was a little surprising that most of the cast, if they were not covered in blood yet, looked fresh and washed without greasy hair. I thought whatever little water they had would have been prioritized for drinking, cooking and flashing the toilet.
Outdoor shots showed that outside the apartment block, the walkways were clean without rubbish, fallen leaves and overgrown hedges.
Also, the set designer designed quite a number of doors in each apartment, suggesting that there are, in addition to the master bedroom and bathroom, two other rooms. These other rooms were never opened in any of the occupied apartments. Which makes it odd, because why would occupant of 401 need such a large apartment with multiple rooms? For a single person, I would have thought a decent sized 1K or 1DK would have sufficed. Also, when the lock-down happened, the Detective Kim and the male lead had to sleep in the living room, because the female lead and the girl slept in the master bedroom. Erm? What about the room next to the living room? Or the other room?
Happiness contained a gamut of personalities. Some characters were good and remained so, some characters were bizarre and remained so, and there were also characters that had changes in personalities during the lock-down. This was rather interesting to watch the personalities play out when the characters were forcefully isolated.
201 squatters.
201 is an empty unit, and was used to temporarily house characters who were trapped in the apartment block when the lock-down happened. There was a couple who go around cleaning apartments when there are changes in occupants. They hired a part-timer who was always masked, in a cap and wore green goggles. They never saw his face and were rather proud that their hired help never pressed them for timely payment of his salary. I thought that petty greed would spell some trouble for them and sure enough it did when it emerged that their part-timer was a murderer. The couple was opportunistic, charging the other characters high prices for the groceries they salvaged from the neighbourhood supermarket, and even wanting to occupy 601 as payment for their experience during the lock-down. I don't know if this is a shameless rip-off by the writer, but the behaviour of this couple does resemble the banjiha family in Parasite and Irene Kellermann in The Last Children.
Another cleaner stayed in 201 until she was turned out by the couple who complained that she was depleting their rations. Sadly, she was killed by the part-timer for seemingly no reason. Perhaps she was picked on because she became isolated after she was turned out.
302 occupants.
302 was occupied by an elderly couple on subsidized housing and their unemployed KOL-wannabe son. Initially he chose to leave his apartment after suspecting that his mother was infected, yet his father welcomed the contrite son home after he was bitten by the infected.
The supermarket cashier was briefly offered refuge in 302, and was moved by the leads to a tent on the rooftop when she was triggered by the male lead's blood. She joined the female lead and left the block, hopefully receiving treatment.
401 occupant.
401 was a writer who lived alone. She initially took issue with her older brother and yet was one of the two decent residents throughout the lock-down, offering the cleaner refuge after she was turned out by the couple in 201. She also voted to keep the gym worker in quarantine instead of turning him out after the worker was suspected to be infected.
Her brother displayed a surprising turn of behaviour after he was bitten by an infected, opting to stay away from his sister in case he bit her, and warning the detectives not to come to close to him in case he bit them.
501 occupants.
The leads of Happiness, who conveniently happened to be police officers and somehow, decided to take it upon themselves to be the keeper of the apartment block, locking the exits of the block to ensure the infected did not enter, quarantining infected residents instead of killing them outright, taking in their neighbour's daughter, in general, trying to keep some semblance of sanity in a block with certain crazy characters. The male lead actually wasn't as selfless as the female lead, and all his actions point to the fact that he was in love with her and all that he did was to protect her and keep her apartment intact. It was slightly an overkill on the niceness of his personality, but the tight editing and short number of episodes didn't allow much room for sappiness and I did feel happy for the male lead that his object of affection finally responded positively to him. Confessing that he had fallen in love with her back in high school then made some sense as to why he would agree to a fake marriage with the female lead so that she could get the subsidized apartment. Also, I thought the writer had written the male lead to be somewhat selfless too, when he continued to look out for the weaker residents even after the female lead had left the neighbourhood.
502 occupants.
A couple who worked as courier lived there with their daughter who required heart surgery. The couple mostly vanished from the screen when the lock-down happened with their daughter being taken care of by the 501 occupants. It wasn't very clear to me if the couple recovered from their infection, or if their daughter continued to live with the 501 occupants one year after the lock-down.
601 occupants.
A disgraced doctor tried to murder his wife, also a doctor, instead she survived because she was infected. He tried to wriggle his way out of a murder charge when his wife died, and together with the 1202 occupants, created plenty of mayham during the lock-down. In a karma-like moment, he was wacked in his head with a golf club by his mistress, in the same manner he tried to murder his wife. Eventually he was charged in court, together with the female occupant of 1202 for murder.
602 occupants.
A lawyer and his secretary wife ran their home business here, providing legal advice. The lawyer had similar elitist mentality as the 601 and 1202 occupants and cheated on his wife with the mistress of the 601 doctor.
The wife, as with the 401 occupant, was another decent being, opting for the infected to be quarantined instead of being turned out, and finally deciding to leave her husband when she found out he had cheated on her, and realizing how low his decency had sunk.
1202 occupants.
A scammer couple lived here, with the wife obsessed about being voted as representative of the block. I don't know how these things work in Korea, but it was hinted by the 501 occupants that the wife's obsession was to embezzle from the residents' funds as representative. Their apartment was also not furnished, leading credence to this theory.
1501 occupant.
The 1501 occupant also lived alone, in a penthouse that spanned the entire level. Initially appearing to be gruff and unsociable, he did respond positively to the female lead's requests every time, perhaps out of affection for her. And that also led to his murder.
Happiness isn't a really good thriller in a sense, but because the writer didn't try to be too ambitious, the screenplay was pretty straightforward and the ending where the lock-down ended relatively quickly with a cure found very quickly somehow brings a breath of fresh air as the current pandemic enters the third year.
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