Stream or skip?

One of the things that frustrates us the most when watching dramas is when the writers of a show withhold information to create drama. We could call it “You Know What You Did Syndrome,” where it would just be easier to state what that person did rather than keep viewers guessing. Delaying this payout is almost never worth the hassle the viewer will experience if it is withheld. A new Korean crime drama on Hulu is withholding a lot of information, to its detriment.

Opening shot: “GANGNAM, SEOUL.” A group of police officers are in the parking garage of a building. One of them tries to reach a hidden area with torches.

The essentials: Kang Dong-woo (Jo Woo-jin) is a top police officer in Gangnam District and is prone to conducting raids without his boss giving him the green light. During this particular raid, he arrests a well-known drug dealer who implicates numerous of Dong-woo's colleagues in the crime. Instead of letting it go, he has the officers, including his boss, arrested. He then has himself transferred to a district.

Three years later, a club girl named Kim Jae-hee (Kim Hyeong-seo) wakes up back in Gangham and realizes that she is in trouble. She goes to the bathroom and throws up to get the medication out of her system. She then takes a hidden phone and calls a club member who she knows has disappeared. She then runs out of the club, dodging traffic to avoid the bouncers and other thugs the bosses have after her.

Yoon Gil-ho (Ji Chang-wook), a “facilitator” for the club girls, realizes that some of them are on drugs like Jae-hee. He finds out that Jae-hee has disappeared, but seems to know where she is. When he finds her hiding place, she asks him to find and rescue her friend who is being held captive.

Dong-woo is persuaded by the commissioner to return to Gangnam and handle the case of a number of missing club girls in the district. He's also called back downtown by a call saying his daughter Ye-seo (Oh Ye-ju) is on hold at a local psychiatric hospital. Since she was bullied and cheated on by a group of club girls, her mental health has been affected, but she remains loyal to one person: Jae-hee. And because she doesn't respond to calls and texts, Ye-seo's mental health is affected.

He met Jae-hee a year earlier and the meeting didn't go well; He also met Gil-ho years ago when he worked as a driver for call girls. And even though it seems like Gil-ho and Dong-woo are on opposite sides, they both want to make sure these girls are safe.

What shows will it remind you of? Gangnam B-side is similar to other Korean crime novels, e.g Vigilante.

Our opinion: Gangnam B-sidewritten by Joo Won-gyu and Park Noo-ri (Park also directs), tries to chew off a big chunk of the story in its first episode. We get to know Jae-hee as well as Gil-ho and Dong-woo. There is also Min Seo-jin (Ha Yoon-kyung), a young prosecutor who is also pursuing the case; We are briefly introduced to her but don't really understand who she is.

We had to watch the first episode twice to really understand the story. There are too many indirect references to what the girls know or possess; There, the series commits the cardinal sin of withholding too much information, leaving the viewer grasping for information to make the characters distinctive.

It's hard to figure out their motivations at the start of this story, other than who's taking these girls. There's also intentional confusion about exactly what role Gil-ho plays. When Dong-woo sees a video of Gil-ho grabbing a drugged club girl and putting her in a car, Jae-hee is with them. He might think that Gil-ho is the one making these women disappear, but it feels like he's trying to save these girls from what usually happens when they're drugged.

Still, the story is so confusing that we weren't even sure if Jae-hee was alive or dead, despite scenes in which she hides; We thought this might be another club girl. There's also the connection between Yae-seo and Jae-hee, which seems to suffer from the same indirect connection as the main story; We have no idea “what happened on that roof,” as Dong-woo said to send Yae-seo into an emotional tailspin, and knowing the information will be withheld until a later episode is more frustrating than anything .

Gender and skin: There's a scene in a club where people are watching a man and a woman having sex, but there's not that much skin showing.

Parting shot: Gil-ho finds Jae-hee's missing friend, but it's too late.

Sleeperstar: We're calling this Ha Yoon-kyung as Min Seo-jin, mostly because we barely see her in the first episode and know she has a bigger role to play.

Most Pilot-y Lines: Maybe it's a translation problem, but we read the words “that bitch” in the subtitles far too often. These thugs need more creative ways to describe the women who work for them.

Our call: SKIP IT. Gangnam B-side Could end up being a good story if all threads are resolved. But the first episode was so confusing and withheld so much information that we're not all that interested in waiting for that to happen.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and technology, but he's not kidding himself: He's a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.comFast Company and elsewhere.