Due to travel, I am behind on my drama posts. I also had some trouble watching shows while I was on the road so my viewing got interrupted. But I finally fulfilled my early pandemic plan to make a trip to Korea (and a little side jaunt to Japan). I spent two weeks in Seoul, Busan, and Tokyo in November. It was an incredibly relaxing trip. I've included some pictures below for fun.
We did some sightseeing, visited museums, napped, ate, and saw some musicals--including the Crash Landing On You musical which turned out to be a lot better than I expected.
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Under the Queen's Umbrella
While setting a drama in a palace and focusing on succession issues is not unique, Under the Queen's Umbrella approaches the story from a different angle. Instead of just fixating on the King and his power brokers, this drama is about the Queen, the King's concubines, the Dowager Queen, and the many young princes hoping to be chosen as the successor.
Queen Im Hwa-ryeong (Kim Hye-soo) has five sons. The Crown Prince is happily married and has two kids but he suspiciously takes ill and suddenly there is a succession crisis. The Chief State Councilor wants to see his grandson take the throne. His grandson is the oldest of the King's sons but his mother is a concubine and not the Queen. The Queen Dowager, herself a former concubine, who put her own son on the throne through her machinations hates the Queen and does not want the Queen's sons to succeed. So there is a proxy battle between all these parties as to which prince will get their support as the princes compete.
It ends up being about what lengths mothers will go for their sons. With a riveting performance from Kim Hye-soo, we are drawn into this competitive space.
What makes her different from the other mothers is that she loves her kids so fiercely she will do anything to protect them. Sure, she'd like her son to be king (though she'd really like her oldest son not to die), but she wants to make sure they survive whatever hellfire the Queen Dowager is planning. She is faced with some complicated issues and how to out maneuver the others who will do her sons harm. But she also is willing to step in to protect other people's sons. That's what sets her apart. The Queen is full of compassion for those she loves and even those who cross her. It's a really unique character.
SPOILER
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I have to mention that one of young princes, Prince Gyeseong (Yoo Seon-ho) dresses up in women's clothes to imagine his true self. How the show handles this and the Queen's reaction is really lovely. Considering how little K-dramas deal in gender identity issues (while at the same time doing a lot of character cross-dressing--see next review) I thought this was addressed carefully and with love.
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The show deals with the real consequences of betrayal and back-stabbing. So while we get the drama of these actions we also feel the pain of what comes next for many of the characters. These women are trapped in their circumstances and are being made to fight to survive (or for their sons to survive). The men might be all about power, greed, and control but this rains down on these women and their hearts. They are the ones most wounded. And the show demonstrates the limited paths these women have, how their entire existence and power is related to the sons they give birth to, and that status is fleeting.
END OF SPOILER
The show deals with the real consequences of betrayal and back-stabbing. So while we get the drama of these actions we also feel the pain of what comes next for many of the characters. These women are trapped in their circumstances and are being made to fight to survive (or for their sons to survive). The men might be all about power, greed, and control but this rains down on these women and their hearts. They are the ones most wounded. And the show demonstrates the limited paths these women have, how their entire existence and power is related to the sons they give birth to, and that status is fleeting.
There's also the issue that many of the princes are young and total idiots. The show finds joy in them being just run-of-the-mill troublemakers exploring their youth and not understanding how this could blow back on them or the Queen. So for all the challenges the Queen faces there are these moments of release where she's running through the palace to stop trouble before it starts.
Every once in a while the show lets us just see these young men having fun, being brothers, and helping each other and we understand how much the Queen is fighting to make these moments possible.
Truly a stellar show with a great cast and a new spin on an old trope. There are so many new young actors in the show to keep an eye out for in the future. Yoo Seon-ho has already been cast as a new member of Two Days One Night. Moon Sang-min was a compelling leading man.
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Love in the Moonlight
I decided to catch up on this 2016 series which was wildly popular at the time. Several cast remembers reunited recently for the variety show Young Actors' Retreat.
In an enemies to lovers arc, a woman is hiding in the palace as a eunuch and after much squabbling the Crown Prince (Park Bo-gum) falls for her--at first not knowing she is a woman.
Hong Ra-on (Kim Yoo-jung) has always hidden her identity as a woman. She manages to escape detection as a eunuch and ends up serving the Crown Prince. Kim Yoon-sung (Jung Jinyoung), the grandson of the prime minister, figures out her secret. He falls for her instantly but helps protect her. She ends up also befriending the stand-offish Royal Guard Kim Byung-yeon (Kwak Dong-yeon). He is sworn to protect the Prince but has his own secrets he is keeping. The Crown Prince falling for Hong Ra-on, a commoner/eunuch/secret woman, is complicated by issues from her past that neither she nor the Prince know about.
I'm not a huge Park Bo-Gum fan but he plays this insolent Prince well. He has a certain on-screen smugness that I don't enjoy (and I think he acts with his teeth a lot of the time). He fits this character well but it makes it hard for me to root for him as a romantic lead.
Nevertheless, I liked the threading of complications with all these characters and the supporting characters who help them. As always, I fell victim to the second-lead syndrome but it kept me watching. I think as time has gone on we've gotten stronger female leads in K-dramas and this role ended up being a little too damsel-in-distress for my liking. It was stretched out at 20 episodes but with the emotional engagement from the supporting cast I understand why this is a fan favorite.
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The Fabulous
This very short series set in the fashion world has pretty low dramatic stakes but it's a sweet ensemble of friends. At only 8 episodes, there's just not a lot that happens. I blame Netflix for continuing to put vague concept over actual writing and substance on their series. Do they just greenlight this with a pitch and then forget to write the shows?
At some point it feels like this show boils down to: show Min-ho shirtless, sex on a kitchen table, fashion, fashion, fashion, catfights, big personalities, and friendz. Like the whole show is just a trailer for the actual show someone was supposed to write. I binged it in two days and I love Choi Min-ho and was really excited for him to get a leading role again. But the whole cast deserves better.
In a circle of friends, Ji Woo-min (Choi Min-ho) is a photographer and photo retoucher, Pyo Ji-eun (Chae Soo-bin) is a fashion marketer, Joseph (Lee Sang-woon) is a fashion designer, and Ye Seon-ho (Park Hee-jung) is a super model. Woo-min and Ji-eun used to be a couple and now they are just friends. But they both still have feelings for one another that come up whenever Ji-eun has a new boyfriend.
Even in a mullet, Choi Min-ho is absolutely the guy you would throw your boyfriend over so any resistance by Ji-eun seems futile from the start. She faces some professional setbacks and troubles but the boyfriend character they have given her is a jerk from the start and then we are to believe she wants to get back together with him, ever? I just cannot suspend my disbelief that far....not when Min-ho is right there. They do have him be shirtless a lot and then play sports a lot.
I didn't hate watching the show but they just didn't seem to be trying all that hard to write a story.
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Touch My Heart
An actress whose career was ruined by an ex-boyfriend tries to start over by volunteering to work at a law firm in an effort to score a new role as a lawyer on a TV series. She gets assigned to a straight-forward lawyer who has no interest in this celebrity but wins him over with her hard work.
There was not a lot to this series but it addressed issues of stalking and abuse and it was nice to see the actress "grow-up" through this work she committed herself to.
I was mostly watching for Lee Dong-wook. It was a harmless series. Not super memorable.
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Love In Contract
I love Park Min-young but this romance was not one of her stronger shows.
Choi Sang-eun (Park Min-young) has been marrying men for years in contract arrangements. She's a professional and all these relationships are just on paper. She takes on clients who she believes really need her help. For five years, she's had a standing dinner appointment with one husband, a family court judge Jung Ji-ho (Go Kyung-pyo) who hardly speaks. She gets a new client, a big TV star Kang Hae-jin (Kim Jae-young) who actually knows about her real background. The two men both live in the same building and a rivalry begins between them. Meanwhile, she lives with one of her ex-husbands, a gay man who needed her help keeping his sexual orientation secret from his family. And then the evil woman who raised her on behalf of a chaebol family who adopted her ends up moving in.
The show begins with a darker storyline that’s kind of a smoke screen. At first, that was an impediment to getting into the series for me. Eventually it's about two men who are vying for the love of a woman who has sacrificed much of her life for the happiness of others and is only now trying to figure out what she wants. Her motivations are slowly revealed but even so not all her actions are clear. Her connection with the judge is hard to believe and she does seem more suited to the suffering TV star who has a similar background to hers.
And it's one of those romances where the woman becomes very gooey once the relationship starts and I lost all interest at that point. The last episode really drags everything out for filler and for fake drama.
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