Korean drama sees if it can break bad
Review
Stop me if you heard this before. A husband is diagnosed with cancer and the solution to paying for the medical bills involves selling meth. That is honestly where most of the similarities between Breaking Bad and Walking on Thin Ice end. That's a good thing since trying to exactly follow a show that is universally considered one of the best ever is tough ask even in another country.
What does follow is a plot that follows Kang Eun-soo, a wife and mother played by Lee Yeong-ae do whatever she can to create a better life for her family. She finds a bag of meth and gets help selling it by Lee Gyeong played by Kim Young-kwang. Lee Gyeong is the art tutor of Eun-soo's daughter who dons the persona of "James" to help sell drugs. They both have different reasons for this and are ultimately hounded by the drug enforcement task force led by Jang Tae-gu who plays the key third role in this crime drama. Tae-gu's actor is Park Yong-woo who has brilliant in everything I have seen him in including Made in Korea and Hunter with a Scalpel.
Eun-soo initially plans on just getting enough money to pay for her husband's medical bills after her husband is the one diagnosed with cancer. Lee Gyeong has his own reasons for needing the money that mostly breakdown to getting revenge for an event that happened a decade ago. For that, his main goal involves buying stock in the company ran by the family that wronged him.
The three main characters ultimately clash and what follows is a serious of events that sees them in a race to the bottom. All of them willing to do what is necessary to achieve their goals. Whether any of them accomplish it or not is something I will leave to you to find out. I thought the endings for all of them were well earned and made sense for what led to them. The show does end on a cliffhanger for one of them, but it doesn't appear like there will be a second season. The plot points are all wrapped up nicely. The cliffhanger seems meant to be intentional for each viewer to decide what happens.
Closing / Recommendation
If you enjoy crime dramas, there's a good story that is well acted in Walking on Thin Ice. I suggest it especially to anyone that likes Korean crime dramas in particular. It follows the standard Korean crime drama formula quite well. If a second season does eventually get green lit, I would be surprised. Second seasons for Kdramas are rare to begin with, but this one did wrap up nicely even with the aforementioned cliffhanger. It's a twelve episodes series with them all clocking in around 65ish minutes with the exception of the finale which pushes 80 minutes. It's a solid quick show that can be binge watched.
Image / media credit: Fandomwire.com