The K-drama adaptation A Good Day To Be A Dog of Naver webtoon by Lee Hey premiered on MBC and Rakuten Viki on October 11, 2023. This marks the small screen comeback of ASTRO’s Cha Eun Woo as a webtoon character following his massively successful K-dramas, My ID Is Gangnam Beauty and True Beauty. A Good Day To Be A Dog also stars Park Gyu-young and Lee Hyun-woo in lead roles, making it one of the most anticipated releases of the year.
Read ahead to find out if it truly is a great time to be a dog in the K-drama Land following the premier of the series, including all the attractions- a webtoon-based storyline, sweet romantic interests, good-looking leads, interesting fantasy conflicts, and lighthearted comedy.
Spoiler Warning: the article includes spoilers from the first two episodes of A Good Day To Be A Dog. Reader’s discretion is advised.
A Successful Webtoon Adaptation
The K-drama A Good Day To Be A Dog follows Han Hae-na (Park Gyu-young), a Korean Language high school teacher with a surprising curse that turns her into a dog when she kisses someone. This curse has hovered as a dark cloud over her life, interfering with all of her relationships while she avoids skinship religiously.
Fortunately, she has finally found a growing infatuation with History professor Lee Bo-gyeom (Lee Hyun-woo), who has an amiable personality. The more she observes him, the more she gains hope that her circumstances will be accepted and understood, providing her with a chance at love.
- However, unfortunately, when she attempts to confess her feelings under the influence of alcohol, she ends up kissing the Mathematics professor Jin Seo-won (Cha Eun-woo), who she believes hates her. This accident turns her into a dog every midnight (like a cute little werewolf), and she only has 100 days to return to her original form, or she will have to lead the rest of her life as a puppy.
- The solution to break this curse is to kiss teacher Jin Seo-won while in the form of the dog to the joy of viewers and the dismay of the leads. This is a particularly herculean task as Teacher Jin has a phobia of dogs from childhood trauma. As such, the K-drama A Good Day To Be A Dog stays true to the webtoon without much alteration for adaption. However, there are a few aspects of the series that, albeit making it attractive for rating, take away the overall charm.
A romantic comedy closer to ‘Makjang’ fantasy
K-drama A Good Day To Be A Dog is driven by single perspective writing, which means that while focusing on the central theme, it compromises with the rest of the background. Firstly, the school setting is just as dreamlike as the fantasy of becoming a dog.
- Very little is taught in the classes where the students and teachers interact more about relationships than the syllabus. If we were to change the setting to anything other than a school, there would be barely two scenes and one conversation to alter.
Furthermore, when teacher Han Hae-na turns into a dog, her priority is to hide from the embarrassment of accidentally kissing Jin Seo-won rather than the impending emergency of having to spend the rest of her life as a little fur baby.
Later on, when she does get serious about breaking the curse, her solution is to invite Seo-won on a round of drinks, get him intoxicated enough to lose the sense of reality, and then kiss him. This solution appears as a sly way to take advantage of him, which morally overshadows the sympathies for Hae-na.
While some of the reality is expected to get compromised in a fantasy K-drama, the rationalizing of actions, which at times comes off as if shot for a Makjang (overboard or senseless) drama, can be a dealbreaker for many. The screenplay is also more suitable for a webtoon than a K-drama. The frame of a phone’s screen allows to focus on only the main conflict while the story requires to be more fleshed out for a motion picture adaption.
However, the show does pick up a bit from its second episode. One of the major credits of the rating goes to the actors who, despite a bit too farfetched script, keep things interesting, their characters reliable, and ignite a curiosity of what happens next. Overall, it will be interesting to see if A Good Day To Be A Dog can pick up its screenplay with the rising ratings and join the other successful webtoon adaptations.
The K-drama A Good Day To Be A Dog is currently airing on MBC and Viki on Wednesday at 9 PM KST. Happy Watching!
