Stream It Or Skip It?

Korean romantic dramedies have thrown together just about every combination of protagonists you can think of, including a modern-day chef with a Joseon tyrant. But we don’t know if any K-drama randomizer could come up with the combination in Genie, Make A Wish.

Opening Shot: We see someone welding a pipe to a muffler. The person flips open the mask and we see it’s a young woman. A voice, claiming to be a genie, says he was forged from smokeless fire.

The Gist: Long story short, the genie, Iblis (Kim Woo-bin), tired of bowing to sniveling humans, has made a deal with his ruler (God?) that he could stay out of hell if he’s can corrupt and tempt humans on Earth and drag them down to hell with them.

But if he met one pure soul he couldn’t corrupt, he’ll be sent to a depth that makes hell look like a resort. The corruption comes in the form of the classic three wishes genies grant humans. He met a pure soul like that, 983 years ago, a little girl who used her dying wishes for others. He’s been waiting for her to be reincarnated, with his assistant Sade (Ko Kyu-pil) informing him of the changes on Earth.

Meanwhile, Ki Ka-young (Bae Suzy), who works on cars and buses and has become a self-made millionaire, lives with her grandmother; her mother abandoned her when she was young because she was “difficult.” In reality, she was a psychopath, enjoying dark thoughts and killing without emotion. Her grandmother put that in check when Ka-young was little, telling her that Ka-young kills anyone, she’ll kill Ka-young herself.

Ka-young found out where her mother, who sent money to her grandmother for many years, is located, and for a decade, she’d fly to Dubai, sit at the same table at the same restaurant and eat the same meal, to see if her mother would show up. She finally does after a decade, and Ka-young essentially tells her if her grandmother cries because of her mom, she’ll strangle her mom without much thought.

On a desert tour, Ka-young trips over a lamp. She can’t throw it away, because it pops up again. When she shakes it, Iblis comes out, and realizes she’s the same “lump of clay” that was pure of spirit almost a millennium ago. He is determined to get her to make wishes that prove she’s as corruptible as other humans. But she resists, trying every way she can to get rid off him; however, he keeps returning. He even flies around Dubai with her hanging on to him. But what he never counted on was how this pure soul has murder in her heart.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Maybe I Dream Of Jeanie in reverse? And in South Korea in 2025? And the “master” is a psychopath?

Our Take: Genie, Make A Wish, written by Kim Eun-sook, seems to have more tonal shifts than your average Korean romantic dramedy. There’s melodrama, there’s slapsticky comedy, there’s dreamy wish fulfillment, and there’s violence — or at least the promise of violence. It’s a strange combination that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. What the first episode did show us, though, is that both Ka-young and Iblis are pretty complicated characters.

Iblis is handsome and charming, able to change appearance and speaking languages to appeal to whatever human summons him from his lamp. But he hates humans with a passion and truly wants to make sure even the most incorruptible ones get compromised and dragged to hell. Ka-young has kept to a very regimented life due to her grandmother’s wishes, and she’s bored. She actually sees in Iblis a chance to “kill” someone and not go against her grandmother, since he technically can’t die. And as much as Iblis hates humans, he’s taken aback at just how dark-hearted Ka-young is.

Of course, this isn’t going to stay this way for the entire series; this is, after all, a romantic K-drama. But it will be interesting to see how the two of them go from open contempt for each other to something resembling love and affection.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Iblis is confused; in anger, he grabs Ka-young by the neck and hangs her over the ledge of the hotel roof. She just laughs and says “I’m having a blast!”

Sleeper Star: We get a brief look at Lee Joo-young as Min-ji, who has somehow become friends with Ka-young. We hope to see more of her going forward.

Most Pilot-y Line: Ka-young asks Iblis about why, if his hair was growing for 900+ years, why doesn’t he have a beard? He just gasps with no response.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Genie, Make A Wish has an odd romantic pairing, even by the standards of romantic K-dramedies, but it has the potential to work pretty well.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.