Stream it or skip it?

One of the things that frustrates us the most when watching dramas is when a show’s writers withhold information as a way to create drama. We could call it the You Know What You Did Syndrome, where it would just be easier to say what that person did instead of making the viewers guess. Delaying that payoff is almost never worth the annoyance the viewer has if it’s withheld. A new Korean crime drama on Hulu is holding back a lot of information for damage.

Opening shot: “GANGNAM, SEOUL.” A group of law enforcement officers are in the parking garage of a building where one of them tries to burn his way into a hidden area.

The main essence: Kang Dong-woo (Jo Woo-jin) is a top police detective in the Gangnam district, and he tends to initiate busts without his boss’s approval. During this particular bust, he apprehends a well-known drug mule involving lots of Dong-woo’s fellow police officers. Rather than let it pass, he has these officers, including his boss, arrested. He is then transferred to a rural area.

Three years later, back in Gangham, a club girl named Kim Jae-hee (Kim Hyeong-seo) wakes up loud and realizes she’s in trouble. She goes to the bathroom and throws up to get the drugs out of her system. She then picks up a hidden phone and calls a club girl she knows is missing. She then runs out of the club, dodging traffic to avoid the bouncers and other thugs the bosses have chasing her.

Yoon Gil-ho (Ji Chang-wook), a “broker” of the club girls, finds a number of them drugged like Jae-hee. He finds out that Jae-hee disappeared, but it seems he knows 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 work on the case of a series of missing club girls in the district. He is also called back to the center of town by a call saying that his daughter Ye-seo (Oh Ye-ju) is on standby at a local psychiatric hospital. Her mental health has been fragile since she was bullied and ripped by a group of club girls, but she remains loyal to one: Jae-hee. And because she hasn’t responded to calls and texts, Ye-seo’s mental health is affected.

He met Jae-hee a year before and the meeting did not go well; he also met Gil-ho you years earlier when he was a driver for call girls. And even though Gil-ho and Dong-woo seem to be on opposite sides, they both want to make sure these girls are safe.

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

Our offer: Gangnam B-sidewritten by Joo Won-gyu and Park Noo-ri (Park also directs), tries to bite off a large chunk of the story in its first episode. We are introduced to 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 get much of a handle on who she is.

It took us two viewings of the first episode to really get the hang of the story. There are too many oblique references to what the girls may know or possess; there, the show commits the cardinal sin of withholding too much information, leaving the viewer grasping for information to flesh out the characters.

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

Still, the story is confusing, to the point where we weren’t even sure if Jae-hee was alive or dead, despite scenes of her hiding; we thought it might be another club girl. There’s also the connection between Yae-seo and Jae-hee, which seems to suffer from the same oblique connection that the main story does; we have no idea “what happened on that roof” as Dong-woo said to send Yae-seo into her emotional tailspin, and knowing that information is being withheld until a later episode is more frustrating than anything else .

Sex and skin: There is a scene in a club where people see a man and a woman having sex, but not much skin is shown.

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

Sleeping Star: We’ll give this to Ha Yoon-kyung as Min Seo-jin, mainly because we barely see her in the first episode and we know she has a bigger role to play than that.

Most pilot-y line: Maybe it’s a translation problem, but we read the words “that bitch” far too many times in the subtitles. 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 when all the threads work out. But the first episode was so confusing and withheld so much information that we’re not that interested in waiting until that happens.

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.