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| My fave K-drama restaurant in 2011! |
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Queen of Tears
It's been a while since there has been a new drama that seemingly dominated the discourse. Queen of Tears held it's own mostly until the end. By the writer of Crash Landing On You, Park Ji-eun, it steals sometimes a little too much from CLOY particularly near the end. But so many dramas lose their momentum and this one managed to throw in some twists and turns that kept things chugging along until its weepy finish.
Hong Hae-in (Kim Ji-won) is a cold-as-ice chaebol heiress who married a smart, handsome lawyer from a small town, Baek Hyun-woo (Kim Soo-hyun). In the years together they have suffered some big losses and the pressures of Hae-in's demanding, cruel family have taken their toll on the couple. Baek Hyun-woo has been secretly trying to figure out how to divorce Hong Hae-in. But when Hong Hae-in discovers she has a brain tumor, he steps up to help her. Slowly, they find their way back to each other but everyone around them is doing their damnedest to make that difficult. A manipulative ex-boyfriend of Hong Hae-in, Yoon Eun-sung (Park Sung-hoon) re-enters the picture and a crisis in her family's fortune threatens everyone's status quo.
Mean, distant chaebol romances are dime a dozen, but it is interesting to see the cold, withholding chaebol here is a woman and the tender-hearted, doting one in the couple is the man. Kim Soo-hyun is called upon to cry up a storm and he is more water than flesh in this drama. A lachrymal machine. We love to see it.
The tone of the first episode was really sharp and unpleasant but I am glad that was just the shrill set-up. It definitely gets more thoughtful after that. There was a reversal of fortune that was a head-turner and I was worried the show would jump the shark at that point. But I was surprised how that change in circumstances allowed the one-note characters to reveal more things about themselves. We get invested in one or two other couples (although for my money, the babo brother romance was the secondary romance I cared more about).
That said I got confused about some of the family members and we maybe did not need so many darn siblings in the mix.
I took a break near the end of the series and it really lost its momentum for me when I came back to it, unfortunately. There are some "necessary" drama 11th hour twists that I was just clocking as it came to its conclusion. But this is not as much a drama crime as so many dramas that can't even get the narrative past episode 9. So while I was not "into it" I think it held the tension.
Kim Ji-won and Kim Soo-hyun were well-matched here. I hated It's Okay to Not Be Okay so much so I had resisted watching any Kim Soo-hyun shows because of that. And I feel like I am now healed by Queen of Tears.
Let me just leave this note I took while watching here: "Is he allergic to human spit?"
This 2011 cancer weepy about a poor woman whose life just keeps getting worse until she meets and somehow woos a rich chaebol just kept going and going. I did not.
I took a break near the end of the series and it really lost its momentum for me when I came back to it, unfortunately. There are some "necessary" drama 11th hour twists that I was just clocking as it came to its conclusion. But this is not as much a drama crime as so many dramas that can't even get the narrative past episode 9. So while I was not "into it" I think it held the tension.
Kim Ji-won and Kim Soo-hyun were well-matched here. I hated It's Okay to Not Be Okay so much so I had resisted watching any Kim Soo-hyun shows because of that. And I feel like I am now healed by Queen of Tears.
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My Love From The Star
I decided to dip my toes into the ancient Kim Soo-hyun waters and watch My Love from the Star from 2013. Another drama by Park Ji-eun, it is a product of its era but he is funny as an alien who has no need for people until he finds himself wanting to save a woman, a famous actress, he thinks he remembers from his past.
Do Min-joon (Kim Soo-hyun) is an uptight professor in the present, but he is actually an alien who landed on Earth during the Joseon Dynasty. He rescues a young girl then and her eventual death haunts him. So much so that he rescues another girl hundreds of years later who looks just like her and that girl grows up to be top star, Cheon Song-yi (Jun Ji-hyun). He has some sort of mental connection to her and when she is in peril he comes running, despite his own misgivings about humans.
I have to say the weird pull between this adult man and this young teenage girl is just uncomfortable. I know K-dramas do this a lot and even if the setting is Joseon when teen girls were being married off...I struggle with it today. I was watching another series recently where it's clear the teenager is the adult's "inner child" in a scene with an adult looking lovingly at each other, but even so...there's just something creepy about it.
There is, also a ridiculous chaebol murderer in the mix played with a high camp level of dastardliness by Shin Sung-rok. That man knows how to be a demented villain.
The adult comedy-romance is often fun but also Cheon Song-yi gets increasingly annoying and irritating. So while he may be falling for her, I was not. I need to finish watching the last couple of episodes...but suffice to say I kind of hit a wall with this one.
Let me just leave this note I took while watching here: "Is he allergic to human spit?"
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Scent of A Woman
But I did spot my favorite K-drama restaurant (Woonsan) that I have been seeing in dramas from 2011-2023 (although apparently it has been in dramas going back to 2003).
It was fun to see a very young Lee Dong-wook as the handsome but miserable chaebol who falls for her. But there was just something deeply infantilized about the lead female character and after a while I could not take it. I hope she dies happy/or is miraculously cured by her elementary school classmate who pooped his pants and is now a doctor. But I will never know how it turned out.
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