The first khbrknews we meet the Boks in Netflix’s The Atypical Family, they are perched on a literal precipice. Bok Dong-hee (Soo-hyun) stands on the edge of a cliff, willing herself to fly. Her brother, Gwi-ju (Jang Ki-young), downs a stiff drink while his mother, Man-heum (Ko Do-shim) simultaneously berates him for no longer being able to travel back in khbrknews and laments the insomnia that stops her dreaming of the future. It’s an unsubtle introduction to the series’ titular atypical family, now rendered ordinary by the loss of their superpowers and desperate to get them back. And it’s a lack of subtlety that haunts The Atypical Family right to its surprisingly watchable end.
That ending arrived this weekend, when the series’ 12th and final episode aired on Netflix. The finale closed with a tight, almost-tragic climax that had the potential to salvage a sterile series that too often relied on mean-spirited jokes and tried to cram too much into its runtime. Yet, as The Atypical Family undermined its own grim final act with a typical K-drama happy ending, it failed to redeem its many shortcomings.
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If the story of a matriarch fretting over her family’s loss of superpowers draws immediate comparisons to Disney’s Encanto, the similarities continue when it falls to a young, non-superpowered woman, Do Da-hae (Chun Woo-hee), to help the Boks rediscover their humanity. Da-hae enters the picture after Gwi-ju falls from the cliff and she drags him from the water, only to promptly disappear again.
In a moment of ostensible serendipity, Man-heum finds her working at a spa seemingly hours later, where she discovers Da-hae is the only person who can grant her the sleep she desperately needs. Da-hae is immediately ushered into the Bok family home and just as quickly thrust on Gwi-ju—who is still grieving the loss of his first…
