My Fellow Citizens is a comedy crime drama about a con man (Choi Siwon) who unknowingly marries a police officer (Lee Yoo Young) and ends up running for the National Assembly.
Choi Siwon takes the lead as our con man Yang Jung Guk. He’s an expert at what he does, but when his fiance runs off with his money, he is left despondent. This sets up a chain of events that begins with him meeting and falling in love with Mi Young.
Lee Yoo Young plays the police officer Kim Mi Young. She too just went through a bad break up stemming from her occupation. So when she meets Jung Guk, she lies about it and waits until her wedding day to drop the big secret on him.
Finally, we have Kim Min Jung as our villain Park Hoo Ja. She runs a loan company, but after Jung Guk cons her father out of a whole lot of money, she sets her sights on him for revenge. And this is one of those rare cases where we actually get a genuine female villain (not the usual kind like the meddling mother-in-law types) who proves to a formidable foe for our heroes.
My Fellow Citizens comes from the writer of a couple dramas I’ve enjoyed, Police Unit 38 and Bad Guys. It didn’t work out quite as well for me as those did though. Let’s take a look at the drama. It has a caper style feel with con men working multiple scams throughout the drama.
While the series has plenty of dramatic moments, it also has an easy going feel with a lot of humor. And that’s a perfect fit for our leading man Choi Siwon who gave an excellent performance.
I thought the drama felt very fresh with a pretty unique plot. We already don’t see a lot of stories with married couples, then we get this very interesting situation where con man Jung Guk marries Mi Young while being unaware that she is his worst nightmare: a police officer.
He has to keep it a secret which results in him constantly walking on eggshells. And things get even worse when he is blackmailed and threatened into running for the National Assembly by Hoo Ja.
The actual romance part of the drama started off very strong for me, and I just loved how they got together in the first couple of episodes. But after they get married, they really don’t spend a lot of time together and live pretty separate lives with him hiding his con jobs and her hiding the type of police work she’s doing. That was a bit disappointing.
The times that they do come together, there is a lot going on with them. With all of the secrets, things are tense between the pair. They both love each other dearly, but the secrets put a major strain on the relationship. It was tough to watch play out.
Then in the second half of the show, they do finally get to spend a bit more time together which was something I enjoyed. That’s also where we get a little bit more romance between the pair, though still not a lot. Of course, there was still all of those pesky secrets to deal with!
Jung Guk certainly has a long journey of growth he goes on through his relationship with Mi Young. He loves her so much, but he fears he will lose her if she finds out he’s a con man. Despite the lies, Jung Guk continues to improve as a person because of Mi Young.
He does what he can to protect her (though she can pretty much take care of herself against anyone, hehe) and prevent her from getting hurt. Then he learns about the needs of the people and decides to be a truthful politician. It was good to see his development.
Now something I was concerned with going in was the focus on politicians and running for the National Assembly. And sadly, the drama did end up getting pretty heavy into all of that. There was also a whole lot of campaigning in that middle stretch of the drama.
I tend to find a lot of that stuff boring, so that knocked down my interest in the show. SPOILER: And after Jung Guk got elected to the National Assembly, I lost even more interest with all of the politics involved. END OF SPOILERS
On the plus side, My Fellow Citizens does focus on some interesting topics concerning politics like the vast amount of corruption going on behind the scenes including lots of lies just to get votes. The show highlighted these things well while also keeping some humor and never getting too heavy.
In the end, My Fellows Citizens was on the slow side due to the campaigning and political focus, but it had a fresh plot and presented the romance in a unique way. It also mixed politics and humor well. This definitely isn’t a genre I love, but it was still an okay watch and would be worth a look if you like the genre.
My Rating: 6/10
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