Tuning in to watch a show called Perfect Family about a family that truly was picture-perfect from first to last would not be much fun. So the question that the audience must ask themselves as the story begins is whether the titular family is about to have its perfect facade smashed to bits through trial and tribulation, or whether in fact they were far from perfect to begin with.
The trials and tribulations, at least, are evident from the start.
Kyeong-ho, who has long had a crush on Seon-hee, has prepared an elaborate demonstration of his love for his neighbour, which Soo-yeon isn’t thrilled about.
After some shouting draws Seon-hee inside, she finds her classmates in a confrontation, and we get our first look at the manic Soo-yeon, with her wig torn off to reveal a gruesome burn scar on her scalp.
Soo-yeon wields a knife and makes for Seon-hee, but Kyeong-ho steps in front of her and falls to the ground, stabbed in the gut. A shell-shocked Seon-hee returns home, where her mother finds her covered in blood and saying that she has killed Kyeong-ho.
The clock then rewinds a month to give us a chance to appreciate the lead-up to this bloody and dramatic flare-up.
Soo-yeon arrives at Seon-hee’s school as a new transfer student. She already knows Seon-hee, although Seon-hee does not immediately recognise her. The students knew each other as very young girls, when they lived at the same orphanage.
Following an incident at the orphanage, Seon-hee was adopted by Jin-hyuk and Eun-joo. She did not meet Soo-yeon again and does not know what happened to her in the interim.
Things did not go well for Soo-yeon, who deliberately transferred to Seon-hee’s school. She reveals her injury and traumatic past to Seon-hee, which she blames on her, and tells her: “From now on, I’ll slowly get back what I deserve.”
Seon-hee, seemingly genuinely guilt-stricken and distraught over Soo-yeon’s pain, attempts to patch things up between them. For a while, her efforts seem to bear fruit.
The action soon returns to the bloody scene with which the show began, and to an even bigger shock, as Seon-hee’s mother responds to the stabbing with a crime of her own.
By the time the Choi family are gathered again for a scrumptious breakfast spread, the parents are all smiles, as if nothing has happened.
Who exactly are these people, and what are they capable of? Despite a decade under their roof, Seon-hee is only just beginning to understand that there might be more to their adoptive parents than meets the eye.
Given its baroque style and soapy dramatics, the first show that comes to mind when watching Perfect Family is the hit prime-time melodrama The Penthouse, a view reinforced by the casting of Kim Young-dae as the handsome high-school romantic who appears to perish in the show’s cold open, and of Choi Ye-bin as the mercurial Soo-yeon.
Both played spoiled high-school children of the uber-rich in The Penthouse, which, for Kim in particular, served as a launch pad to fame.
The coda of the first episode is a retelling of Oscar Wilde’s heart-rending fairy tale The Happy Prince, about a swallow and the sentient statue of a deceased prince who selflessly give themselves to the poor without them ever learning of their sacrifice.
Seon-hee, who has lived a privileged life in her adopted family oblivious to Soo-yeon’s suffering, is an obvious parallel to the poor villagers in Wilde’s story as the unknowing beneficiary of another’s sacrifice (about which we will learn more as the series unfolds). Where else might Perfect Family and Wilde’s story intersect?
Perfect Family marks the K-drama directing debut of Japanese filmmaker Isao Yukisada, best known for the award-winning Japanese film Go!, about a third-generation Korean in Japan.
Perfect Family is streaming on Viu.