Two Weeks in Two Minutes

Two Weeks finished airing over a month ago, but is still available streaming if you're like me and prefer marathoning completed shows to the bittersweet agony of waiting for the EngSub episodes to come out week by week. It is basically a 16-episode kDrama version of The Fugitive (the TV series). In honor of its (reasonably) fast pace and fugitive premise, here’s a 2-minute rundown of its key points. This post is free of major spoilers, but does include some that I consider to be reasonably minor.

To get you in the mood while you read, here’s Run, by Nell, Two Weeks’ pulsing theme song:

 1. Our main character is Jang Tae-San (Lee Joon-Gi). He is framed for murder, arrested, and nearly assasinated in jail, so he escapes (all in the first two episodes).

2. Tae-San does a lot of running and hiding.

3. He wears a lot of disguises.

4. He helps some people.

5. He spends a lot of time talking to his daughter, a.k.a. the World's Most Adorable Cancer Patient (WMACP), whom he is trying to save with a bone marrow transplant. Their conversations are frequent, but mostly in Tae-San's imagination.

6. He comes off like a royal jerk in the first 1-2 episodes, but it turns out he's really just a wounded little puppy whom the world just won't stop kicking (thus all the crying).

(Yes, he really does cry that much. More, in fact. Many of his crying scenes just didn't yield good screencaps.)
7. Park Jae-Kyung (played by Kim So-Yeon of IRIS, but try not to hold that against her) is the prosecutor in charge of Tae-San's case. She's also very emotional. This is because her true motives are personal.

8. Lim Seung-Woo is the lead Detective on the case. He’s engaged to WMACP’s mum, Seo In-Hye, who is also Tae-San’s ex. They, too, spend a lot of time looking distraught and/or stressed out. Here's In-Hye looking upset:

Seung-Woo's distressed face is not much different from his regular face, so here he is in the shower, where we know he's brooding by virtue of the location:

9. To round out the cast and the story, there are a lot of gangsters:

Final Thoughts:

Two Weeks was engaging and entertaining, and kept up a brisk, tense pace for at least the first 10 episodes or more (depending on your judgement). It slowed down a bit toward the end, but by then it had me invested enough in the characters and the story to (mostly) enjoy the denouement. Tae-San and Jae-Kyung were nicely developed characters whom I genuinely grew to care about, and Lee Joon-Gi in particular did a great job with his role. WMACP, In-Hye, and Seung-Woo weren’t too badly done, either, although the baddies tended a bit toward caricature. The plot was derivative, but the producers knew it and had fun with it (Tae-San has multiple flashes of Hollywood chase movies during his days on the run, marking what may be the first time Tommy Lee Jones and Geena Davis have appeared in a kDrama), and the story’s internal motivation – literally “my daughter will die if I don't survive” – was probably even superior to most of its chase-themed predecessors', if a bit melodramatic. (Hey, it’s a kDrama, what did you expect?) Also, I would have preferred more (Lee Joon-Gi) nudity and lots more kissing, but you can't have everything.

Verdict: Watch it! Your heart may not flutter much, but it will definitely race. And your ovaries will be bored stiff, but they're not the boss of you, right?! Or maybe they are. If so, Two Weeks is still only 16 episodes long, so you can easily squeeze it in between installments of Heirs this week. Your remaining brain cells will appreciate the distraction. ;-)