[Drama special review] Grand Shining Hotel

by Jenzy

A writer enters the world of a novel to save her boss from a serial killer. Full of twists and turns, TVING’s Grand Shining Hotel goes for a lighthearted take on an otherwise thriller-esque story.

 
DRAMA SPECIAL REVIEW

Our heroine, the bubbly YOO AH-YOUNG (Jung In-sun), is a publishing assistant at Taco Publishing (a company name that is both unintentionally hilarious and never explained). She has big dreams of becoming a bestselling writer, but despite shopping around her manuscripts for publication, she’s found no takers. Thankfully for now, she’s happy enough getting a steady paycheck and regular opportunities to check out her workplace crush, the friendly manager SONG WOO-BIN (Lee Ji-hoon). He’s hardworking, handsome, and supportive of Ah-young’s writer dreams — a true triple threat. It’s no wonder Ah-young’s a goner.

But it’s a tough time to be Woo-bin. Today was supposed to be the day his immensely popular novelist, the mysterious Rebekah, attended a fan meeting for her latest bestseller, The Grand Shining Hotel. However, when Rebekah never arrived, things quickly devolved into a screaming match of disappointed fans.

To resolve this PR crisis, Woo-bin drove out to Rebekah’s home to speak with the reclusive author. But what should’ve been a simple work trip becomes another cat-and-mouse chase when Woo-bin also goes AWOL, and her boss decides that Ah-young has to go find him.

There’s about a million other things she’d rather do than leave all her work to drive out to a town she hasn’t been to in ten years, but the threat of Woo-bin’s job on the line and the possibility that he’s out there dating the rumored-to-be-hot Rebekah is enough to convince her to make the trip.

And who else should she run into upon arriving but her old friend MOON MYUNG-HWAN (Jung Jin-woon), a smiley police officer who after all these years is thrilled to see her. There’s an undercurrent of complicated history between these two — a little too awkward on Ah-young’s end for them to have just been friends, and is that a hint of wistfulness I detect in Myung-hwan’s voice?

But there’s no time to dwell on the subtext of their meeting, or the nature of their former relationship. Ah-young is a woman on a mission! She finally manages to get a hold of Woo-bin’s cell, only to find on the other end a restaurant owner who says that Woo-bin disappeared without paying for his food. Checking the CCTV only shows something even more unexplainable: one second Woo-bin is there, the next second he’s gone.

Looking for answers, Ah-young drives out to Rebekah’s house, only to find a sickly, furtive-looking grandma who tells her Woo-bin never came by, even though Ah-young can see the gift he bought for Rebekah on the counter.

Lucky for Ah-young, her two hoobaes, the alien conspiracy theorist LEE TAE-MIN (Jung Yong-joo) and the dark web expert AHN SO-JIN (Ju Ah), are working the case back in Seoul. They call Ah-young with some intel they found from another dark web user Berlin 1004. Apparently, there have been other cases of people suddenly disappearing, and it all traces back to a laptop that has the ability to write novels by itself, sucking in real-world people as characters.

So when Grandma suddenly passes out on the floor, Ah-young takes the opportunity to snoop around the house — instead of, you know, calling an ambulance. Sure enough, in Rebekah’s office she finds an open laptop auto-typing a manuscript, and when she takes a closer look, she recognizes the name of the protagonist: Song Woo-bin, aspiring author at the Grand Shining Hotel.

If that weren’t chilling enough, Ah-young also recognizes the other main character of the story, PARK HYUN-JOO (Kim Jae-kyung), a convicted serial killer who also unexplainably disappeared on her way to prison. In the novel, Hyun-joo is now a jazz singer, but still up to her same murderous MO of seducing men and then stabbing them as soon as they say “I love you.”

It doesn’t take much for Ah-young to guess that the romantic descriptions of Woo-bin running into Hyun-joo are foreshadowing the inevitable conclusion of Woo-bin as Hyun-joo’s next victim, to which Tae-min informs her, once someone dies in the book, there’s no coming back.

With the knowledge that Woo-bin is about to be led to his deathbed, Ah-young makes a Hail Mary play of interrupting the computer’s story and typing herself into the novel as Woo-bin’s ex-girlfriend.

The next thing you know, she’s in the middle of a highway, where a mind-wiped Woo-bin almost drives past her. Gone is the gentle demeanor of her heartthrob manager — this Woo-bin is disgusted at running into his ex-girlfriend who cheated on him and broke his heart. You can see the confusion in Ah-young’s brain as she struggles to process her relief at finding him alongside the parameters of their new relationship (“I want to go with you!” “You told me you don’t love me anymore!” “Uhh right, let me explain.”)

Still, Book Woo-bin isn’t so heartless as to leave his ex high and dry on the streets, so he takes her with him to the Grand Shining Hotel, giving her his card to check herself into a room and leave him alone. This is where Operation: Stop My Boss from Falling in Love with a Serial Killer begins in full force.

She brings out the big guns by kissing Woo-bin in order to get him to stop making googly eyes at at her least favorite jazz singer, but even that isn’t enough to stop him from leaving the bar with Hyun-joo for a romantic excursion.

Furthermore, another wrench is thrown into her plans when Myung-hwan, at the machinations of Grandma, also gets pulled into the story as Ah-young’s husband (surprise!). And father of her son (double surprise!). With their second child on the way (you doing okay?).

Now, while I am definitely biased toward golden retriever men, I must mention that Myung-hwan is an absolute gem of a husband and father. Despite all of Ah-young’s antics, he patiently helps her with all her needs, whether it’s run-ins with police or snooping around gravesites. And while Ah-young’s priority never wavers from making sure Woo-bin doesn’t end up telling Hyun-joo the dreaded L word, she also grows to care for this unconventional family. It’s that care that ends up forcing her to piece together who is really behind this novel. It’s a twist that comes completely out of left field, it does do a lot to explain Ah-young’s backstory.

You see, long before Ah-young was a publishing assistant, she used to be an assistant screenwriter under a nightmare boss who would take her assistants’ work and claim it as her own. It was here she met her colleague AHN JI-HYE (Seo Ye-hwa), who one day got fed up with their boss’s demands and quit. Years later, Ah-young followed suit, gleefully meeting up with Ji-hye at a beachside town and discussing the possibility of opening up a bookstore together.

The two girls had a shared bond only corporate trauma and horrible bosses could forge, and things started to look up for our newfound free spirits as they signed a lease on their new place. This is where Ah-young first met Myung-hwan, son of their landlord and object of Ji-hye’s not-so-secret crush. As the three of them hung out, it was painfully evident to everyone but our girls that Myung-hwan was interested in Ah-young. So it became an extra stab of betrayal when, on the day Ji-hye was planning on asking Myung-hwan out, he admitted his feelings to Ah-young.

Ji-hye, who overheard Myung-hwan’s confession, lashed out at Ah-young despite her refusal to return Myung-hwan’s feelings out of loyalty to Ji-hye. In an ugly falling out, Ji-hye told Ah-young she was sick of being compared to her, both in writing and in men, leaving her with the bitter parting words: “Meeting you was the worst mistake of my life.”

And thus we get the big reveal: Not only is Ji-hye actually Rebekah, but she’s also the shifty Grandma that’s been pulling the strings of this story all along. The laptop, in exchange for its storytelling abilities, has sucked the life from Ji-hye, leaving her old and on the brink of death. While I wouldn’t say this twist is particularly well set-up, it’s definitely an effective choice to keep the plot moving, since now Ah-young has to fight her battle on two fronts — one being the murderous Hyun-joo, and the other the godlike author Ji-hye, who’s capable of erasing all of Ah-young’s in-universe progress with the press of a backspace key.

I will definitely credit the show for knowing how to build tension. The episodes don’t waste their time on filler moments and instead take us to the climactic end in a way that’s both expedient and efficient. And the Ji-hye reveal is only the first step down a line of twists that keep the plot unpredictable and inherently bingeable to the very last moment.

It ultimately makes for an entertaining ride, but that comes at the expense of fleshed out characters and world-building. Each character becomes a launchpad to the next plot point, leaving you without a lot of moments to care for anyone but our protagonist.

And while I can excuse the rushed character development for the high concept and short episode count, I was a lot less impressed by how the drama chose to resolve its conflicts, relying more on conveniently timed information reveals than on Ah-young’s wits. I would’ve loved for this drama to utilize her cleverness to make the connections and find solutions. I mean, she is a writer… would it have been too much to expect for her to write her way out of a pickle? (But I digress.)

 
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