 |
| Gratuitous pic of my foster cat |
Disney+ has broken into the business of K-dramas and whoa was it a mess. But Netflix offered some new shows that work well for their formulas.
Snowdrop
I ended up with a free subscription to Disney+ so I thought I would check out Snowdrop, their politically controversial K-drama. While there was an uproar about what the show might say about Korean democracy activists and their association with North Korean spies, in the end the show was such an absolute mess politically and artistically that the only real controversy is how did this nonsense show get made in the first place.
Set in 1987, a college student, Eun Yeong-ro (Jisoo), falls for a mysterious graduate student (Jung Hae-in) who ends up shot and bleeding in her dorm room. She saves him, protects him, and then finds out he's a North Korean spy. Their sweet attraction sours when he takes her and her friends hostage. AWKWARD.
Some South Korean politicians actually helped to fund part of the spy's scheme in an effort to win their re-election (I think...things get very confusing) and then they decide it would help their election efforts if they just blow up the dorm full of students to erase their mistake and blame everything on the North Koreans but it's not quite as simple as that.
The trouble is the show cannot manage its own tone barometer. First it's a darling romance, then a comic caper, and then a serious hostage crisis with moments of the ridiculous. And the romance disappears and is revived. Sometimes K-drama can make these pendulums swings pay off. Here, not so much.
The male politicians are inept and their wives pull a lot of their strings but then the wives are also obsessed with a fortune teller telling them that their husbands' political futures depend on 13 virgins dying...and so they encourage them to kill the college students. Seriously. So much circling back to this plot point for why?
The tension does not rise. Rather we’re jerked from here to there. And it’s not clear what the consequences are for some of these characters or why they do what they do. The storytelling just spins in circles. So many of the attacks and counterattacks feel more narratively accidental than intentional. You cannot root for the romance because of the deeply troubling lies and manipulation.
If the show is taking a political position it was hard for me, an outsider, to see it. Politicians pulling the strings on both sides are portrayed as terrible.
The show had my goodwill at the start and then squandered it so badly that I hated every single character and I wanted to blow up the dorm myself by the end. Not a great outcome for any of us.
Business Proposal
This workplace romance was a big hit but I struggled to totally give in to its charms. It follows a formula of a outwardly angry boss who we eventually warm to because his anger is a cover for his issues. But something never sat right with me about this set-up.
Kang Tae-moo (Ahn Hyo-seop) is the boss of a food company who has been impressed by the work of Shin Ha-ri (Kim Sejeong). But when he shows up for a family-arranged blind date with Jin Yeong-seo (Seol In-ah) it turns out Shin Ha-ri shows up instead pretending to be her rich friend. Jin Yeong-seo has paid Shin Ha-ri to blow up the date and Shin Ha-ri needs the money. But Kang Tae-moo is intrigued and wants to stop going on blind dates so he proposes. But then he finds out she has been lying about being Yeong-seo. He then entraps her in a contract to help him convince his pestering grandfather that she is his girlfriend so he can stop going on blind dates. They of course fall for each other. Meanwhile, Jin Seong-seo falls for Kang Tae-moo's secretary and long-time friend Cha Sung-hoon (Kim Min-kyu).
I just could not get over Kang Tae-moo's anger and his retaliatory entrapment. The person who really lied to him was Yeong-seo and Shin Ha-ri was a victim here and then he victimized her again. Even when they become a couple he teases her in a lightly blackmail kind of way. Her resistance to their romance is just because of the gap between them in status (her family runs a chicken shop and he's a chaebol) so I didn't love his disrespect of her concerns.
That said it's a pretty hot show and there is chemistry with the two couples. Maybe I was just being a grump. Everyone else I know seemed to be really into it from the start.
Forecasting Love and Weather
If you can get over the overabundance of weather/relationship metaphors, this is a solid Noona romance.
Jin Ha-kyung (Park Min-young) works at the Korea Meteorological Administration. She is a rising star but her long-time engagement to her co-worker Han Ki-joon (Yoon Park) ends in a disastrous fashion. She swears off office romance forever just as Lee Shi-woo (Song Kang) joins her team. Lee Shi-woo is a bit of a weather prodigy. He is earnest and excited about weather and her.
Jin Ha-kyung is muted to the point of uninteresting at times. Once she gets to be unleashed a bit we root for her. Lee Shi-woo meanwhile wears his heart so openly that we cannot help but be on his side immediately. Oh someone love this precious puppy.
Being a Noona drama, the stakes of romance always feel higher. And short-term romance is often balanced against the long-term prospects of this kind of match. But whatever stands between them, from the start, you want them to work it out. They both deserve a little happiness and they are better together than apart.
I was less interested in Han Ki-joon and his romantic issues after betraying Jin Ha-kyung. Maybe other viewers are more sympathetic. But that plotline did address maturity and failures of communication in relationships.
Overall, there is a strong ensemble of actors, with many of the supporting characters having their own relationship conflicts. Each of these is a meaningful portrait of people at different ages and situations in their lives and how hard relationships can be.
But when the series focuses on the challenges of predicting the weather and the public being mad when they get it wrong, it feels like a PSA to support the Korea Meteorological Administration. I now know the value and difficulty of fog reports.
Comments
Post a Comment