At day, she is a capable middle-aged office worker. But at night, she is a young woman trying to have some fun and find a solution to her body-swapping dilemma.
Will our heroine succeed in keeping her dual identity a secret? Or will she get caught by our sharp male lead in the act?
Bunny S. watches Miss Night and Day on Netflix
Opening Week Rating:
Miss Night and Day Opening Week Story
“Can’t you tell? He is a scammer.”
Our heroine, Lee Mi-jin (Jung Eun-ji), is a job seeker in her late twenties. Unluckily, despite her hard work, Mi-jin keeps failing the civil service exam and getting rejected at interviews. Desperate to find a job, Mi-jin gets fooled by the sugar-coated words of a strange man promising her a job in return for money.
It is here that Mi-jin runs into our leading man, Prosecutor Gye Ji-woong (Choi Jin-hyuk), for the first time. Sensing something is wrong, Ji-woong. intercepts the situation. But it is too late as Mi-jin has already wired the money to the scammer and gave him her account book.
The scammer makes a run for it. Yet Ji-woong isn’t about to let him get away with it, giving chase and catching the scammer. The catch: the scammer already deposited the money into another account and Mi-jin might not be able to retrieve it easily.
“If you improve little by little, you will become someone big one day.”
Living up to her name (Mi-jin means small progress), Mi-jin always believed that as long as she kept trying and made gradual progress, there would come a day when she would reap the results of her hard efforts. But this time, the situation hit Mi-jin so hard that she burned down all her textbooks and cried her eyes out.
In a moment of magic, Mi-jin falls down a well. At that moment, Mi-jin wishes that she would disappear or that she could become someone else. The adage that one should be careful what one wishes for can’t be more fitting, as when she wakes up, Mi-jin finds herself in the body of a middle-aged woman (Lee Jung-eun). But it is only during the day, once the sun sets and it is night, Mi-jin returns to her original body.
“Why do I have to be an old lady like this? Why?”
Since neither science nor shamanism offers a solution to her predicament, Mi-jin is on the verge of breaking down. Why did this happen to her, of all people? But then, like a ray of light in the darkness, Mi-jin stumbles across a recruitment notice for a senior internship program. Which is the exact nudge Mi-jin needs to pull herself together and return to her persistent self.
Taking on the alias Im Soon, Mi-jin (or shall I start calling her Soon) applies for the job and impresses everyone with her multi-talents. It seems like the body change comes with a boost in skills. Soon is so touched, having finally got a job. She is tearing up and jumping on the bed and I want to cross the screen and pat her on the back.
“Why did he have to be a prosecutor?”
As we come to learn, Im Soon isn’t a random name Mi-jin came up with to blend in. Originally, that was Mi-jin’s aunt’s name. Back when Mi-jin was a little kid, her aunt went missing, and no one has heard from her since then.
Speaking of missing people, Ji-woong seems to be interested in a missing persons’ cold case that was closed after the last witness assumedly died. And for sure, it isn’t a coincidence that Soon started working at the prosecution office which Ji-woong got transferred to. It looks like we have a back story here and a potential partnership here. Interesting!
Running into Ji-woong at work, Soon is shocked to learn he is the newly hired prosecutor. Worse, Ji-woong caught her dancing while cleaning the room. Their first impressions can’t get more hilarious.
“Are you saying you burned my documents without permission?”
Earlier while giving Mi-jin a ride to the station after the incident with the scammer, Ji-woong’s case files got mixed up with Mi-jin’s CV. He tried calling Mi-jin but funnily enough, Mi-jin mistook Ji-woong for yet another scammer and blocked his calls.
To get his documents back, Ji-woong drops by Mi-jin’s house. But to their collective shock, Mi-jin got the documents mixed up with the textbooks she burned down. Luckily, though, Ji-woong’s documents were saved by the rain. And after some looking around, Mi-jin finds the documents.
Except, Ji-woong had to leave to check a crime scene. Noticing that the culprit (who is probably the one responsible for the missing persons’ case too) is still at the scene, Ji-woong chases after him. But the thing is, Mi-jin happened to be around as well. We end our opening week with what seems like Mi-jin getting hit by a car. But we have to wait until next week to see what really happened.
Miss Night and Day Opening Week Musings
The story might not be ground-breaking: a workaholic prosecutor who is super intense, super focused, and super sensitive gets entangled with a woman who is the exact opposite of his uptight personality and falls in love with her. But other than our leading lady’s body-swapping condition, there are those minor details that make the drama fun.
For instance, Ji-woong uses his super umbrella skills to shield himself from angry fans throwing eggs at him after getting their favorite idol, Ko Won (Baek Seo-hoo), on probation, and then Ji-woong uses the same skill to protect Soon from getting burned by a chemical substance. Also, how Soon kept dancing in the police station to convince the police officer she was still in her twenties.
Though I was quite surprised by a mystery element getting yet again shoved into a rom-com, I appreciate that it gives our leads a connection beyond K-Drama land’s fateful coincidences. It seems like Ji-woong’s mother was another victim. Thus, how set he is on catching the culprit. But while Ji-woong’s mother’s body was found, that wasn’t the case with Mi-jin’s aunt. So, there is a slight hope she might be still alive.
A partnership between Ji-woong and Soon/Mi-jin to solve cases seems reasonable given Ji-woong’s job as a prosecutor. But I wish the drama handled this arc in a multiple-cases format rather than an overarching mystery. Also, given the brutal nature of that case, I am worried about what is yet to come. I signed up for a romcom with a fantasy element, but I didn’t come prepared for such a heavy theme.
It might be still early to judge. So, I will stick with the drama to see how it will juggle all those elements. And even if it is only for the amazing cast, I am going to tune in and see where our fantasy tale will end up. More umbrella scenes and less of the culprit, please, show.
Miss Night and Day is currently streaming on Netflix!
Photos and Videos: JTBC Drama
