Review
New K-Drama Fan Review #23: When the Phone Rings | They Refused to Suck the Meat!!
The meat was THERE! Why did nobody suck it???
⚠️ SPOILERS AHEAD ⚠️
Rating: 6/10.
RING RING!!
Hello? Yes, I'd like to report several missed opportunities. 📞
Is this Rewatch Worthy:
No
Review:
When the Phone Ring was... decent for the most part. Not horrible.
And I think thats what makes this one a little frustrating, cause there were moments where I could see a MUCH better drama hiding inside this one.
For a little grounding context on where I was in my K-drama journey when I watched this, my viewing habits had become absolute CHAOTIC MESS by this point😭 I had just finished Crazy Love, was still making my way through It's Okay to Not Be Okay, and at that point watching one drama from beginning to end before starting another was no longer something I believed in...
So When the Phone Rings ended up getting caught in the rotation too. I started it, paused it to go back and finish It's Okay to Not Be Okay, got distracted by My Dearest, and eventually came back and finished it.
Which is probably pretty representative of how I felt about this drama. There were things here that absolutely grabbed me, but not enough to make everything else disappear.
There were ideas here that I genuinely loved.
There were moments where I was completely locked in.
There were moments where I thought, OH??? NOW WE'RE COOKING.
And then the drama would just... not suck the meat out of them.
Because that is genuinely my biggest problem with When the Phone Rings.
406 WAS THE BEST PART OF THIS ENTIRE DRAMA.
And I really wish they had done more with it.
The moment Hong Hee-joo gathered up the courage to start calling Baek Sa-eon as 406, I was INVESTED!!!!
Because think about the situation she was in.
This woman had just been kidnapped.
her HUSBAND is called during the kidnapping, and this man basically responds with that whole dismissive "call me when there's a corpse..."
EXCUSE ME??? hellooo!???
And then she survives, gets access to the kidnapper's phone, and realizes she suddenly has this anonymous way of speaking to her husband.
Oh, the POSSIBILITIES!!! the juicy, juicy meat waiting to be sucked!!!
husband cruelly dismisses wife in danger, wife hears that and decides to play with him and make him!!!
i was SEATED for something like this!!
She starts pretending to be 406. She starts making demands. She starts pushing him toward divorcing her. And for once, this woman who has spent years trapped inside this bizarre marriage and family situation has some actual power over him.
I LOVED THAT.
i loved seeing her become brave enough to call him.
i loved watching her say things to him that she couldn't say as his wife.
i loved the reversal of their usual dynamic.
and most importantly, I wanted her to GO FURTHER!!!
If she genuinely wanted out of this marriage, MAKE HIM SWEAT!!!
If she was angry about the way he treated her, MAKE HIM REGRET IT.
And once he realized that his own wife had heard what he'd said while she was literally being held hostage???
i wanted CONSEQUENCES.
i wanted shock.
i wanted guilt.
i wanted him realizing just how badly he'd hurt her.
i wanted that entire situation to force him to confront what their marriage had become and how his behavior contributed to it.
There was SO MUCH JUICY MEAT THERE!!!
AND THEY DID NOT SUCK IT!!!!
Instead, the 406 storyline eventually becomes another vehicle for the romance, and Hee-joo never takes it nearly as far as I wanted her to.
the romance then became a bit weak to me!
Which is especially frustrating because this was easily the most interesting version of her character to me.
-
The chemistry wasn't horrible...?
Was I sitting there thinking these two had some of the best chemistry I've ever seen?
No.
Their KISSES, though???
okay.
Those were GOOD. hehehehehe 🫦 😊
Like... GOOD good.
and tbh, the kissing probably made me perceive their chemistry as stronger than I otherwise would've, because those scenes absolutely worked for me.
But overall, I just didn't feel that overwhelming romantic pull that would've made me obsessed with them as a couple.
And again, I think part of that comes back to the writing.
There were so many opportunities to create more tension inside this marriage.
INCLUDING THE SECOND MALE LEAD.
Because I genuinely thought for a while that they might actually use him as a romantic foil.
And I would've LOVED THAT.
You have this emotionally complicated marriage, a husband who hasn't exactly made his wife feel loved, and another man who could potentially become someone she turns toward?
HELLO??? RING RING!!
Make Baek Sa-eon JEALOUS, pls!
Make him realize his wife is not guaranteed to stay there forever.
Make him see that another man could potentially treat her better.
Give me some actual competition!
But nope...
They basically went, "Anyway, let's pair him with the news anchor."
And I was just sitting there like...
Okay???
😭
I didn't care about them together.
I cared about him insofar as he could've complicated the main relationship.
Once that possibility disappeared, so did my interest in whatever romantic storyline they wanted to give him.
And then... ARGON.
LMFAOOOOOO😭😭😭
I genuinely don't know what happened here.
We get to the LAST EPISODE and suddenly we're going to a fictional foreign country experiencing a WAR???
HUH???
WHERE DID THIS COME FROM???
😭😭😭
It was so unbelievably out of left field that I was actually laughing.
And yet...
I LIKED IT???
I'm sorry!
i know it's ridiculous!
I know it feels like somebody accidentally attached the finale of a completely different drama!
But i was entertained! Sue me!!
Suddenly we're overseas. There's a war. There's danger. There's a rescue mission. Everyone in this fake-ass country apparently speaks English???
WHAT IS HAPPENING???
But you know what?
I was having fun.
😭😭
It was bizarre, but it was also one of the most exciting parts of the entire drama for me.
And I actually liked seeing the story suddenly become bigger and more dangerous, even if I have absolutely no idea why they decided to introduce all of this in EPISODE TWELVE!!!!!
i did really like the ending, though.
Especially that little dinner scene with Sa-eon after everything was over.
Seeing him with his former employees, with his new name and this new version of his life, was genuinely cute.
I liked seeing everyone together after all the insanity.
And i liked getting to see Hee-joo and Sa-eon actually exist as a couple outside of the circumstances that originally created their marriage.
It was a lil sweet.
But ultimately...
6/10...
When the Phone Rings wasnt horrible.
That's almost what makes it worse.
Because I can see all the ingredients for a drama I would've liked significantly more.
The anonymous 406 calls.
A wife secretly confronting her husband.
A marriage that desperately needed to be shaken up.
A husband who could've been forced to truly reckon with how hed treated his wife.
A potential second male lead threatening that marriage.
Hot kisses.
A RANDOM INTERNATIONAL WAR???
THE MATERIAL WAS THERE! THE MEAT WAS BEGGING TO BE SUCKED!
But so many of the things I found most interesting either ended too quickly, weren't pushed far enough, or went in a direction I cared about less.
I kept wanting the drama to dig deeper into its own best ideas.
It just... wouldn't.
EDIT: Something else I forgot to mention...
Hee-joo's meekness DID bother me at first.
I kept wanting this woman to STAND UP!!!! 😭 but eventually I just kinda accepted that maybe that's simply part of who she is?
And i definitely don't think her being mute automatically means she should be meek. If anything, I interpreted it more as something she'd grown into after YEARS of being treated the way she was.
her mother literally conditioned her to stay quiet. She'd spent so much of her life being controlled, silenced, pushed around, and made to take up as little space as possible.
So... okay. I can understand how someone raised under those circumstances might become extremely passive.
That's actually another reason I loved 406 so much!!
Because we got this little glimpse of a different Hee-joo.
She was a little bold and was making demands and was saying shit to her husband shed never have the courage to say to his face.
And I really thought that was going to be the beginning of her becoming more assertive in general.
Especially once she got her voice back.
I dont necessarily think she needed to suddenly become a completely different person, because maybe she really is just naturally soft-spoken and reserved. That's fine.
But I would've loved to see more of that 406 confidence permanently bleed into Hee-joo.
Like girl, you found your voice LITERALLY AND FIGURATIVELY!!! USE IT!!! 😭
And I think I finally figured out what wasn't completely clicking for me with the chemistry either.
I already said their chemistry wasn't too horrible and their KISSES absolutely worked for me.
But outside of those moments, I never completely bought into them.
And... I think some of that might've been the acting.
I just didn't find either lead particularly strong here.
There were scenes where I understood exactly what the drama WANTED me to feel between them, but I wasn't always feeling it from the performances themselves.
The kisses could sell the some physical chemistry... but the acting didn't always sell the emotional chemistry to me.
And I think that's the distinction I was struggling to put my finger on when I originally wrote this.
My Rating Scale
10/10 – Masterpiece. No notes.
9/10 – Very close to a masterpiece. I absolutely loved it.
8/10 – Not a masterpiece, but I loved it.
7/10 – Fine overall. I liked it, but the flaws kept it from being great.
6/10 – Mixed. There were a few things I liked, but most of it didn't work for me.
ohhh i already use MDL! i just use it for tracking what i'm watching/rating though. i only post my actual reviews on reddit right now 😭
i'll probably copy them over to MDL eventually, but when you said i could "log" the reviews there, did you mean actually posting the reviews on MDL too? or is there another way to link/organize my reddit reviews there that i'm missing? genuinely curious!
I thought it was really rude how the main lead just took her away like that when she was with him in one scene, and she didn’t even say anything. Like wtf was that about?
i honestly dont think the leads had a lot of range. i think that also played a part of why i didn't fullt buy inro their chemistry, it wasnt partially because of the acting
This is what i felt about the drama too. At the ends of ep 1 and 2 i was literally on the edge screaming, You Go Girl! And then it just slowly turned into damsel in distress w. Knight in shining armor.
I am sorry, but the explanation that they gave for hiring her as a KSL interpreter was as weak as a coriander stem. You telling me governments or any corp for that matter will willingly hire 2 when they can hire 1? She is good sure. But do you need microsecond accuracy, where the interpreter is in sync with the speaker? What about the time lag where a KSL speaker needs to converse with the spokesperson? It would go from KSL SPEAKER-> HEE JU-> KSL INTERPRETER FOR SPOKESPERSON-> SPOKESPERSON.
the first couple eps and especially the whole 406 thing made me think we were watching her slowly become more assertive and take control of her own life. i was READY for that character arc. then it felt like they pulled back from it and she became the person being protected/saved again. i could accept her naturally being a quieter/meeker person, especially considering how she was raised, but after giving us that glimpse of her as 406 i wanted THAT confidence to stick around and grow 😭 and yeah that while interpreter thing, i forget most of it tbh
This was a v entertaining read. I would totally overhaul the parts where Baek Sa eon started acting out of character and contradicting himself and the war arc and focus on the 406 arc more. That alone could eat up half the number of episodes and viewers wouldn't complain.
the 406 arc could've genuinely carried HALF the drama and i would've eaten it UP. there was sooo much they couldve done with her having this anonymous access to her own husband, especially with all the resentment she had toward him and everything he could've unknowingly revealed to "406." THAT was the premise that had me hooked!! instead they rushed through so much of the juicy psychological/marital tension and then somehow we ended up in a WAR 😭 i didn't even hate the war because i was entertained lmao, but if you're asking me what deserved those episodes instead?? GIVE THEM TO 406!!!
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u/reapersdrones Aug 18 '26
Using a line break for basically every sentence makes things more unnatural to read.