Cold Blooded Intern

Korean Drama " Cold Blooded Intern " is an office drama about two women who fight against prejudice at their work place.

The drama touches upon many sensitive subjects and gives a nice critique on how women are treated at work and what changes for those who opt to have families. On that front, the drama did a great job, of presenting a variety of cases and using them to enhance its point.

However, the rest of the story was basic office drama. The main leads were the focus, with the side characters being left underdeveloped, the final episodes being rushed in order to have the main plot concluded, the ending was more or less open (could it be that they are gearing up for a second season?), and the twists were predictable and boring.

Still, the two main leads did a fantastic job with their performances. They also had smooth chemistry between them which aided the drama a lot. The rest of the cast was enjoyable as well.

So, overall, four out of ten.

It's a decent short drama but far from perfect and too many problems held it back. Although it was meant to be on a lighter tone and considering its short format, the drama was passing through a lot of social and workplace problems too quickly despite the drama establishing depth to some of the characters. It created some disconnect and cohesion problems along the way. A possible easy fix to the problem is having it turned into a full 12-16 episodes regular drama. The characters and their archetypes were well established and fit well in their respective roles. There was a lot of potentials to be had in the first place. Another victim to its shorter runtime was the last stretch of the story, in particular the last 2 episodes. It presented the final points of tension and jumped to the resolution very quickly and abruptly. Although it's a decent watch but at the end it was a wasted potentials.

Office ice maiden boss in her heyday now attempts to rejoin the super-tough office scene, but now as a middle-aged woman. I like how the writers constructed the terrible choices Mi-Ran (played by Hae-Ra Go) had to face in order to overcome the scourge of age discrimination and to regain her former position as a regular office day worker, but with Mi-Ran having made a pact with the devil in her youth, that should make that transition easy? But has age, maybe made this maiden too mellow and apologetic with her intervening years and experiences? I really enjoyed the tension provided by this difficult situation, welcoming the inclusion of her middle-aged husband and young daughter into this morass, showing off the iniquity of insensitive office culture in all its colors, not limited to just female staff and recommend the drama as a good, short, mid-quality series.

Overall impressions of Cold Blooded Intern, however do fall short of initial expectations, maybe due to its 12-episode brevity - but there lurks that suspicion of a bad juxtapositioning of ages in casting the not-so-young Mi-Ran Ra directly opposite the glamorous and deliciously vengeful office boss-lady Ji-Won Choi, (played by Ji-Won Uhm) when surely two closer-aged actresses would have appealed to a wider audience? Preferable to think the writers overruled the advertising executives in this, making it easier to award this drama an 8 score, when it probably deserves a 7.