Spoiler Warning: Café Minamdang

One of the most highly anticipated TV shows in Korea this year was Café Minamdang. (LINK FATIMA) Based on the serialized web novel Minamdang: Case Note by Jung Jae-ha, the series mixes comedy, romance, and drama in its overall murder mystery plot. The show was broadcast by KBS, one of the biggest South Korean TV networks, from June 27, 2022, to August 23, 2022, in Korea and is available to stream in many international territories on Netflix. At several points over its run, the show was rated by Nielsen Korea as the #1 most-watched in the country.

Having officially wrapped up this week, now is the perfect time to take a look back at the entire show. With its engaging characters, intriguing plot, and a fun mix of comedy and drama, the moment-to-moment of the show is quite good. However, it runs far too long, and both the plot and the characters begin to suffer tremendously from the show's slow pace.

Café Minamdang's Plot and Characters

Cafe Minamdang
Netflix

The story centers around two groups. First are the employees of Café Minamdang, a popular coffee shop that serves as a front for an internet-famous shaman to read fortunes and advise VIP clients. In reality, the shaman — Nam Han-jun, played by Seo In-guk (from The Master's Sun and Reply 1997) — is a fraud. He is a former criminal profiler for the police who uses his skills and those of his employees to dig up his clients' secrets and pretend that he's learned it all by speaking to the spirits.

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He's aided by his friend Su-cheol, a former detective (played by Kwak Si-yang from Mirror of the Witch), and his younger sister Hye-jun, a hacker and former agent at the National Intelligence Service, the South Korean equivalent of the American CIA. Hye-jun is played by Kang Mi-na, a former singer in the pop groups I.O.I. and Gugudan, and who also appeared in the hit series Hotel Del Luna.

The second group of characters are the detectives at the Daeun Police Department, led by Han Jae-hui, played by Oh Yeon-seo from the hit show Jang Bo Ri is Here, and Jang Doo-jin, played by the veteran actor Jeong Man-sik. The latter has appeared in films like Miracle in Cell No. 7, The Battleship Island, Hunt, and more.

The crux of the story concerns a six-year-old cold case involving the murder of a man named Jae-jeong, who was at the time a close friend of shaman Han-jun and the older brother of female detective Jae-hui. In the present day, Han-jun uses his fraudulent fortune-telling business to secretly search for the killer. Meanwhile, detective Jae-hui is investigating a series of murders that may be related to her brother's death. As the show goes on, they eventually start working together to unravel the grand conspiracy behind Jae-jeong's murder.

The Show’s Plot Becomes Repetitive

Cafe Minamdang
Netflix

One of the biggest issues with Café Minamdang is how repetitive the plot is. It would have been great as a ten-episode series, but it feels stretched to the breaking point to fill eighteen episodes instead. In episode two, for example, the Major Crime Division detectives investigate a rich man for a hit-and-run murder. They illegally obtain his car's dashcam, which shows him committing the crime on video, and arrest him. However, when it's proven that the dashcam was taken illegally, the police are forced to release the man they know is guilty. It's a dramatic plotline that keeps the viewer on the edge of their seat, but as the show progresses, we see this same pattern again and again.

In episode six, Han-jun and Jae-hui catch a man named Choi Yeong-seop, someone they believe to be Jae-jung's killer, only for him to be murdered in his hospital bed before he can reveal anything. In episode nine, they are on the trail of Jeon Gyeong-cheol, a loan shark involved in the crimes that might be able to tell them what happened, but he's murdered before they can learn anything from him. Starting to get the picture?

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Well, it keeps going: in episode twelve, they find the home of Gu Tae-su, who appears to really be the one behind the murders, but the home is burnt to the ground before they recover any evidence. In episode fifteen, they track down the psychiatrist of Cha Seung-won, who appears to be behind it all for real this time, but she's killed before she can tell them anything. In episode sixteen, they meet with Auntie Im, one of the heads of the large conspiracy, but she winds up dead. Even in the final episode, they confront Cha Do-won, the one who is actually behind it all for real this time, but he escapes — and they have to hunt him down all over again.

When it's all laid out on paper like this, it certainly seems a bit much, and these are only some examples. This basic plot cycle — find a suspect, try to catch them, but they either get released, disappear or die — occurs in almost every show episode. After about ten of these cycles, the series feels like it's spinning its tires in the mud and going nowhere. With each dead suspect, the conspiracy gets more extensive and confusing, too, until it's so big that it's a bit silly and doesn't even make sense anymore. By the end of the show, it s hard not to think, “Who killed Kang Eun-hye? And why? Was it completely unrelated to the intercontinental real estate fraud scheme? Was that all just a coincidence? Who even was Jeong Gyeong-cheol? What does he have to do with any of this? And whose side was Gu Tae-su on?”

It's a shame because the plot is quite interesting, the characters are engaging, and much of it is well written. It could be a great show if the show were far shorter, didn't rely on so many repetitive plot elements, and the conspiracy was much more straightforward.

The Characters Would Have Developed Sooner

Cafe Minamdang
Netflix

Another thing that the show's overly long run-time weakens is the character development and, in particular, the romantic subplot. It's clear from the first time the shaman Han-jun and detective Jae-hui meet that they will fall in love. However, because the show has to stretch this out over eighteen episodes, it develops at a glacial pace.

It goes something like this: in one episode, their fingers will accidentally touch; two episodes later, they might hold eye contact a little too long; and three episodes after that, she trips, and he catches her in his arms while romantic music plays. After watching more than a dozen hours of this, they finally start dating in episode fourteen. As with the mystery plot, the eighteen-episode runtime means their romance proceeds in frustrating stops and starts. If the show were condensed to just ten episodes instead, it would have been much sharper, tighter, less repetitive, and allowed its good writing and mystery plot to truly shine.

Café Minamdang is available to stream on Netflix in most territories.