Have you ever had a "Meh" date? The guy was charming. Laughed at your jokes. Paid for the meal. But there was no connection. That’s kind of how Dating Agency Cyrano was for me. It was cute. But I never got those warm fuzzy butterflies.
Lack of connection aside, I still expected a satisfying conclusion and these are the top 5 reasons I didn’t get that with this finale:
Who straps their heroine to an explosive and then frees her with 3 minutes to spare. Haven’t these people seen NCIS? Don’t they know the clock's supposed to count down to the single digits, while the incessant beeping of the timer gets faster and faster! Moo-jin didn’t even stress over whether to cut the red wire or the blue one. It was all snip, snip. I’m done.
The Hawaiian Shirt Psycho hangs around the restaurant all series, kidnaps our sunny matchmaker to wreak havoc in the eleventh hour, and never bothers to explain why. We know that Waitress Girl wanted revenge for her dead brother, but what was this guy’s deal? He just muttered vaguely about them stealing his love away, blah, blah, blah. And then he dares to give the “You think this is over!” warning from the police car. Like anyone cares. We don’t even remember your first name.
Of all the story setups, my favorites were Taemin’s Sweet Pop Star’s First Love and Lee Kwang Soo’s Dorky Baker with the Masochistic Streak. Yet, the last we see of these twosomes, Dorky Baker is sobbing on the phone, and Taemin’s girlfriend is railing at Arang that she’s been deceived. As far as we know, these girls are gone for good. Would it have killed the show to have the plot exposition fairy make a passing reference that the clients called in to say their women forgave them?
Did our soft, mushy heroine have an emotional lobotomy between episodes 15 and 16. She’s been the one character with a heart in the Agency. Yet, she sits at the hospital bed of the man who took a knife to the gut to rescue her and basically asks, “Oh by the way, have you seen the guy I’m really in love with?” I thought Master’s injury might bring around a bout of noble idiocy (not that I’m a fan of that trope). But no, this girl wants the other guy no matter what, and she’s not about to sugarcoat it. Would it have killed her to let him down easy?
The Tin-Man Boss without a heart pushes the heroine away for 15 episodes, and when he finally gives in to his deep-seated passions . . . he whispers it in her ear. So the audience is only allowed to hear the put downs? He tops it all off by saying he’s going to be busy for a month, so she shouldn’t bother him. And then they tack a cringeworthy kiss on the end that looked like Lee Jong-hyuk was channeling Park Shin Hye in Heartstrings. It’s not often we see the guy do the eyes wide open, jaws clenched shut pose. I thought TVN was a cable station. *Sigh*
Cyrano was okay. I didn’t hate it. But I don’t think it was worthy of being listed in the Oh, Boy Series that gave us the spicy Noona/Rich Brat coupling of Flower Boy Ramyun Shop or the sweet and silly Panda hijinks of Enrique in Flower Boy Next Door. This one needed to stay in the oven a little longer.
