I was a little hesitant around the casting of Healer when it was first announced with Ji Chang Wook as the titular character. I wondered what the drama was going to do having Yoo Ji Tae around as well. Thankfully the drama turned out eminently watchable and Ji Chang Wook is fantastic as Jung Hoo/Healer, the first time I genuinely like his role, but the flip side is my reservation has also come true which is Yoo Ji Tae is totally wasted in this particular outing. Moon Ho is important to the story but not worth casting a movie star leading man like Yoo Ji Tae, which gets me to the crux of a trend that’s been ongoing for two years now and shows no sign of stopping.

K-dramas have basically been doubling down on casting leading men by pairing an older establish actor with a younger star from the next generation, which has almost always resulted in wasting the older actor’s talent in a role that ends up being shunted to the side. The idiom that “one mountain cannot have two tigers” has never been more true, and it’s a trend I want stopped only because there should be ways of spreading the love without wasting the all that older leading man charisma on a thankless babysitting role. Healer is actually one of the least annoying examples of this trend, a look back reveals some dramas in the last two years which nearly gave me an apoplexy with the way the older lead’s story line inevitably got crapped all over. Continue reading →