Review of When the Phone Rings / 지금 거신 전화는

If you’re new here, welcome! This is my blog, which is something I started doing three years ago (at the time of tying this) to turn it into a digital archive and diary of sorts. It’s kind of a place where I track my thoughts on the shows, movies, and books that I’ve come across throughout the years, as I was finding I was forgetting certain books and movies.

If you liked what you read, feel free to click around and see if there’s anything else you like on the site. There was a point of unemployment for me that was unexpected, and this site really became a lifeline as it generates a little bit of revenue through the display ads.

All of that said, I was looking for a new Korean drama to watch one day because I needed a tiny break from Viki. US Netflix has really been stepping up their game in recent years when it comes to Korean content, and I’ve been consistently been impressed with their offerings.

That day I was looking on Netflix when I saw When the Phone Rings had just dropped its first two episodes. I used to never watch dramas as they slowly aired, episode by episode, on streaming platforms because I just wanted to binge watch all the way through. But as I get older, I find it a part of a ritual to sit down and watch the new episode each week.

And that was why I decided to watch When the Phone Rings. It was a bit of a mental break each week, even though this series was a bit shorter with 12 episodes. I think 12 episodes was good enough for the show, as going any further would have stretched the story a little too thin.

Let’s get into the review! I really don’t want to ramble too much before we get into the actual content.

The mute wife of a political spokesperson becomes involved with a kidnapper and elaborate plot.

In this show, our leads are Hong Hee-joo and Baek Sa-eon. He’s a prominent political spokesperson in the government, and she works as a sign language translator. They’re married, but there’s something major approaching in both of their lives when Hee-joo is kidnapped one night.

Se-eon doesn’t seem to take the kidnapping call too seriously, which angers Hee-joo. She manages to get the car in an accident and get away from the kidnapper, but then she takes the phone with her in the process. As we see throughout the show, she’s going to call her own husband from the phone, pretending to be the kidnapper, and he slowly realizes that this isn’t a joke.

As we can see from the very beginning, these two were married through an arranged marriage, and there’s quite a bit of tension between them. When they’re at work functions, Sa-eon straight up acts like they have no relationship beyond employer and employee, and doesn’t disclose that they’re married.

Regardless, this hurts Hong-joo’s feelings in so many ways. He also doesn’t learn sign language (yet seems to understand her tone sometimes), which puts even more of an actual communication barrier between the two. When she tries to get a job translating his work into sign language, he also puts her in a public test that kind of freaks out the other people in the room at how he’s getting intense.

But as the plot thickens in this show, we see how Hee-joo is digging her own hole by calling her husband, proving that she’s not actually fully mute and able to tell him that his wife is suffering, but he doesn’t know that. Big revelation moment coming from that later in the show, but then the real kidnapper is also going to show up later.

Enough on plot—something that really interested me and made me question the show is the nature of the main couple’s relationship itself. It starts out with the male lead acting really aloof and then becoming more like a marshmallow later on, but to me it didn’t seem like a healthy relationship at all.

I get that they probably can’t divorce, but if I were her, I wouldn’t have kept staying in that kind of relationship. Towards the end of the series we get more insight into what actually is happening, but it was quite the rollercoaster of getting there.

Some dramas don’t know how to capture tension well, but I thought this show consistently did. There are also some fun plot twists, which keeps you wanting to watch even more, especially when it seems like these two are getting closer romantically. That raises the stakes even more in the end.

Overall Thoughts

I would say I liked this show! It wasn’t my favorite by the time we got to the end, but I found myself returning to each week and actually looking forward to each episode. If it were sixteen episodes, I might not have liked it as much, but the tension was just perfect the way it was.

The only time I found myself faltering a little bit was when I hit episode nine. That’s kind of normal for me, but for this show I had to find the motivation to keep going for a bit and then I ran through those final episodes. The ending and some of the plot points in the final episodes had me scratching my head at times, but it was fine.

Anyways, I wasn’t the biggest fan of the main couple either. I was here for the drama, and I got what I wanted I feel like! I had no expectations going into this, which probably helped, but I recommend watching it if you’re interested in the plot. It was a good time.

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