Ratings: “Big Man” Gets A Bigger Advantage

If there was a single theme in this week's Monday-Tuesday night dramas, it was powerlessness.

In "Doctor Stranger," which held first place with 12.7 percent of the ratings, Lee Jong Suk's character is kicked out of the hospital and loses his connection to finding his lost love, played by Jin Se Yeon. With the help of Kang So Ra's character, also a woman with limited power over her own life, he manages to find his lost love again. Or does he? Is the woman he thinks is Jae Hee, really Jae Hee? The audience knows more than his character does but they don't know why the woman who loved him would turn on him.

It's a very comic book plot but beautifully filmed as if each frame were comic book art. And Lee Jong Suk is good at playing a man desperately in love.

The big surprise this week was "Big Man," which climbed in the ratings, from 8.1 percent to 9.0 percent.

The drama started off slow due to its convoluted unrealistic plot about Daniel Choi's evil corporate family adopting Kang Ji Hwan so they could harvest his heart to replace Daniel Choi's failing one. But now that the family has set Kang Ji Hwan up in a more conventional way, by having him take the fall for their crooked business dealings, it's on more solid drama ground. Kang Ji Hwan's character is finally beginning to realize he has been had. He was a fool but you could forgive his character for being so happy and grateful to finally have a family. Now that he knows they are not his family and sees their horrible motives, he will aim for revenge. And the family is so bad that viewers will cheer for their downfall.

Meanwhile "Triangle" stayed at third place, falling to 6.8 percent. At first the drama seemed like it would be more of an action thriller about the twisted fate of three brothers but it's really a character study of the most vulnerable one, Heo Young Dal. Kim Jaejoong does an admirable job of playing the hapless Heo Young Dal. His older brother, played by Lee Bum Soo is what might have happened to Heo Young Dal if he had grown up on the right side of the law. His younger brother, played by Im Si Wan, shows how he might have turned out had cruel rich parents raised him. Heo Young Dal keeps getting involved in the stupidest schemes and while this shows viewers how lost he truly is, it's time for that plot to move away from his tragic fate or it will be too painful to watch.

Kim Jaejoong is so good at making you feel for his character that it hurts. He needs to acquire the power to change his fate.