The Top 10 Hints You Might Watch Way Too Many K-dramas

1.     Your husband leaves a love note in your lunch and you grade it and give it back to him.

2.     You want to name the family’s new puppy Seung-gi.

3.     You start to wonder what your husband would look like with an asymmetrical haircut.

4.    You avoid commercials like the plague, but find yourself looking up your favorite k-drama star’s CFs on Youtube and now you’re measuring your kitchen for a kimchi refrigerator.

5.     Ramen has become a major part of your diet.

6.     You have a sudden urge to buy a Galaxy Note.

7.     Your sister is upset because the school play is Twelve Angry Men. Your advice is to pretend to be a boy to land a role because this WILL TOTALLY WORK. 

8.     Your mother-in-law gives you birthday money and you think this is her subtle way of telling you to go study overseas.

9.     You are convinced that everyone has cancer.

10.   You almost failed high school Spanish but now have a Korean vocabulary at least as good as an average Korean two-year-old.

Committing to I Do, I Do

The promos for this drama were weird and honestly a little off-putting so I didn't think I was going to watch it in spite of the fact that I love Kim Sun-ah.

 

See. Weird.

I mean, this show has SHOES!!11!!! Shoes! And the ladies love shoes, amirite? We want to make sure that every promo features the shoes because SHOES!!!


Yeah.


I'm not all that into fashion or shoes, nor am I all that drawn to noona-killer plotlines, so I figured I'd give this one a pass.  I'm not even sure what made me watch the first episode. 


But, you know, it's pretty good.  It's fluffy, but there's some interesting stuff going on here, too.  I don't want to post spoilers, so I'm going to stick to the most general points.


More than anything, the plot really picked up momentum when the B lead was introduced.   Yeom Na-Ri (played by Lim Soo-hyang) is the young and ambitious daughter of the company CEO.  But she has her own drive to succeed as she is the illegitimate daughter of his mistress.  She has impeccable credentials but no real world experience.  She makes the rookie mistake of trying to dominate Hwang Ji-An (Kim Sun-ah), her sunbae, rather than learn from her. It makes for a great antagonism that has nothing to do with a man. 


Also, ignore that picture up there, because Park Geon-hyeong is the B male lead and he is sex-on-a-stick.  If he and Kim Sun-ah dance the tango in this I will probably spontaneously combust. 

The male lead actor, Lee Jang-woo is fine.  He does have some chemistry with Kim Sun-ah (but she is like Ha Ji-won in that I challenge an actor to not have chemistry with her.)  I think acting opposite Kim Sun-ah will make him improve over time. 


If I could make a K-drama wish, it would be that A-chick ends up with B-dude and A-dude ends up with B-chick.  I will be shocked if this actually happens. 

King 2 Hearts Wrap Up

Oh, Show.  Why did you do this to me?  At times you were some of the best TV ever, other times you were so painful to watch I literally cringed.  


Sigh.


Spoilers behind the jump...

Big Excitement

Okay, as more and more promo materials come out I am getting more and more excited about Big. Coming from a place of ambivalence I'm starting to look forward to June 4.   From what I understand it will be a situation where the body of Gong Yoo's doctor character will be inhabited by a teenager's soul with the added complications of the doctor's fiancee and the teen's girlfriend.  The inherent complications of this should be a fount of both comedy and drama.

I'm particularly interested to see how the Hong Sisters will handle the body situation.  Is the doctor "dead"?  Has his soul moved on?  And is the teen's body in a coma or has it died as well?  Also, who has a better claim, the fiancee of the body or the girlfriend of the soul?

My Love

I finally saw the movie that this video is referencing.  My Love came out in 2007 and stars a lot of people you are probably familiar with:  Uhm Tae-woong (Equator Man), Jung Il-woo (Flower Boy Ramen Shop), Choi Kang-hee (Protect the Boss) among many more.  It's got that whole Love, Actually cast of thousands, multiple intertwining stories thing going on.  

It does a good job of balancing the sweet with the poignant and even when it's sad it offers hope.  I can handle sad if there is hope.  I can't really say more than that.  A movie of this type, being a series of vignettes more so than a story, there's not a lot for me to talk about without revealing plot points.  But I do recommend it.

An Ode to the STP

Oh, K-drama, where would you be without your OTPs, your UST, your HEAs?  "What are you talking about?" you ask. I'm talking about One True Pairing (the main couple), Unresolved Sexual Tension and Happily Ever Afters.


But what I really want to talk about are the STPs of the world of K-drama.  The Secondary True Pairing.  This is the duo that is overshadowed by the epic TRUE LOVE of the main couple. But the STP is the workhorse of K-drama.  They are not used in every drama. In fact I wish they were used more because their appearance, when done well, means that the drama is buttressed when the OTP is wallowing in angst because of a Love Triangle or to provide a counterpoint to the OTP's love story by offering a different take on What Love Is.  


So this is the first in what will probably be a series on my favorite STPs.  I'm going to start with Dong-ah and Manager Kim of Wild Romance.  This drama had terrible ratings and understandably so.  It started out so uneven and with characters so unlikable that it was difficult to get attached.  The drama really did improve as it went on, and I plan on a separate post about it one day, but for today I want to concentrate on Dong-ah and Kim.

Im Joo-eun really carried this relationship and pretty much stole every scene she was in.  As the porn-obsessed eccentric land-lady Dong-ah she provided encouragement and support to the main female character with a string of one-liners that were delivered with a restraint that leant them more weight.  Dong-ah could very well have been a totally over the top character, but in Im Joo-eun's hands she became a sweet, damaged character that reached a surprising level of poignancy in a drama that all too often veered into full throttle mode.

Kang Dong-ho's Manager Kim is another in the long line of k-drama boy-robots but he reacts to Dong-ah's eccentricity with an exasperation tinged with attraction that is charming. 


What I loved most about this couple is that there is a physical attraction (and goodness knows Dong-ah talks about sex enough) but their relationship is more of a meeting of the minds.  It provides a nice counterpoint to our two main leads who are united in their belligerent stupidity.  Dong-ah and Manager Kim are the brains behind the operation and they are the ones who make most of the breakthroughs in the drama's mystery arc.  Dong-ah knows how to manage Kim by appealing to his business sense and watching her manipulate him into a relationship is cute because you know he's not really resisting all that hard.

Yeah, she's making him put on her false eyelashes.

And the final scene between them made me look at hanboks in a Whole New Way. So there's that.

Perfect Couple

2007 action rom-com starring Hyun Young and Lee Dong-wook. 

This movie is pure candy-coated popcorn.  There are lots of cute, funny moments strung together with some action scenes and enough bare bones of a plot that you have a reason to root for the hero.  


You know that movie that you've seen in 10 minute snips simply because every time it's on cable you find yourself watching it and the only reason you've seen the whole thing is because they play it so much.  This is that movie. 


Reasons to Watch:  Lee Dong-wook spends most of the movie angry.  He is, like, the hottest pissed-off guy ever.  So the director said, "You know, I think we're going to play to that strength."  So the movie knows exactly what it is and doesn't try to pretend that it's something more.  It is B-grade fluff and it goes with it.  Also, Hyun-Young has great comic timing and isn't afraid to be ridiculous. Plus she has a cartoon character voice that you will either love or hate. Personally, I thought it added to the comedy.