October-November 2024: Love in the Big City et al

Happy to report on one new series that is a real big step forward and will make you cry. 

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Love in the Big City

Love in the Big City really changes the landscape for gay representation in Korean drama.  It is a true journey into gay culture as well as being a bittersweet story about looking for love. 

Based upon the novel of the same name by Sang Young Park the drama maintains a literary feel with voiceover narration throughout and a chapter-like structure.  It also has a stronger visual landscape than most dramas, emphasizing sensual, moody montages.  There is a hands-off approach to narrative which allows certain moments to speak for themselves. This drama series operates more like an indie film leaving questions hanging and dynamics unresolved.  It is not meant to follow K-drama formulas. 

The story begins when Go Young (Nam Yoon-su) is a gay college student. He runs into his classmate Choi Mi-ae (Lee Soo-kyung) when he is out clubbing in Itaewon. The two are ostracized in their school. Rumors swirl around Mi-ae being promiscuous and Young being gay. They bond over this outsider status and end up moving in together.  With a slumber party feel, they share their dating and sexcapades with each other.  

But they grow out of this relationship and after college Young attempts to become a writer.  In his post-college life, we see the jobs he holds and quits and the men he holds and quits. There is an uptight, closeted photographer from the regions Kim Nam-kyu (Kwon Hyuk) who maybe wants more than Young is ready to give then. Young hooks up with a sensualist academic No Yeong-su (Na Hyun-woo) who turns out to have skeletons in his closet.  Later, he moves in together with a sweet Jeju country bumpkin Sim Gyu-ho (Jin Ho-eun) who is finding his footing on mainland.

While it is probably tame by American comparisons, for K-dramas, open conversations about gay sex, abortion, promiscuity, condoms, HIV, and dick size is notable. Just having an authentic language for gay culture in Korean feels liberating.  While I've tried to spot queer coding in other dramas or there have been introductions of queer characters with varying levels of fanfare, this show is distinctly a queer lens on queer life in Korea, something most dramas will not center. 

Sadly, it is not a surprise this series was protested by the Christian organizations in Korea and the actors received hate comments for their involvement. 

There is also a spectrum of what being out looks like in this deeply homophobic society. We see characters code shift between gay spaces and straight spaces. Young is careful who he tells and even Mi-ae makes some mistakes in how she handles his privacy.  In turn, Young is perhaps bold about his identity when others are not which leads to tension. 

Nam Yoon-su, with his endless dimples and sweet, goofy charm, makes Go Young instantly likeable. Even when he is being petulant or wrong, we want to root for him. He is fallible and frequently wrong-footed. 

I picked up the book in the middle of watching the series and it does largely track the novel.  One thing that was less clear on screen and more developed in the book was the fact that No Yeong-su was from an older generation--Gen X I think.  

He would have been in college when the democracy movement was still active and it got me thinking about what being gay and out in Korea meant while still living under dictatorship and how it must be a wildly different experience compared to younger gay men now coming out. This might be me suggesting it's worth picking up the book as well as a companion to the TV series because of some of those cultural nuances that might be less obvious to the American viewer. 

But it's an incredible series with characters you immediately invest in and its romantic, dreamy, and also rooted in some hard truths about contemporary gay life in Korea. 

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Judge From Hell

I guess it is notable that I thought I finished this weird revenge drama with super natural elements and then realized I had not. I found the formula repetitive and the oddly shifting stakes frustrating. But I liked seeing a female lead in the "evil" role for a change. 

Justicia is sent from Hell to Earth as punishment and must send 10 murderers to hell to get her ticket back home.  She inhabits the body of Kang Bit-na a judge on earth.  She is assisted by two demons Kim In-kwon as Gu Man-do (Kim In-kwon) and  Lee A-rong (Kim Ah-young).  Kang Bit-na ends up in conflict with police officer Han Da-on (Kim Jae-young) who sees her letting criminals off lightly in her role as a judge as a betrayal of justice, while she then secretly punishes them forever. 

Finding the bodies of these criminals the Han Da-on starts to suspect her and the cat and mouse games begin. But amidst this there is some spark between. Something about Han Da-on's personal suffering touches her and she begins to experience human emotions. A problem for a demon. 

She makes a mockery of the judicial system seeking her vigilante vengeance.  She is always releasing the criminals so she can torture them and kill them.  Although I never quite understood why can’t she send people to prison and kill then them there or on the way. 

There are extended violent sequences of her recreating the pain these criminals inflicted on others. I tend to find these kinds of "justified" violence sequences gratuitous at best. 

I enjoyed her unruly demon assistants and Kang Bit-na has hate-hate relationship with an older woman in the neighborhood which develops into an interesting friendship of sorts. 

I mostly found this "exploration" of violence, evil, and criminality very surface-y. 

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Dare To Love Me

This drama is set around a small town in Korea that preserves the era and activities of Joseon.  With a dull female lead and a badly framed child abandonment plot I stuck this out but it was not worth it. 

Sort of like a Colonial Williamsburg but everyone has cell phones,  Shin Yoon-bok (Kim Myung-soo) is a young scholar who helps the Seoul police investigate stealing cultural objects.  He's kind of like a heritage Ninja protector.  Yeah. I mean ok.  He runs into his old webtoons teacher,  Kim Hong-do (Lee Yoo-young) who taught him to draw and made him feel normal in a world where he was out of place (He was the only student wearing a gat to class). He is super uptight and respectful and Kim Hong-do can't quite figure out if he's flirting with her or not.  His mother and sister left the village and he's not seen them since he was a teen.  Until his sister shows up again and forces herself back into his life.  Kim Hong-do is walked all over by everyone until she is plucked from obscurity to become a fashion designer.  Sure.  But Shin Yoon-bok's attention and support gives her more confidence in herself.

There's a lot here that does not add up.  Shin Yoon-bok is accused f holding himself back from people because of his mom issues but it never plays that way.   His efforts to protect himself from his mother trying to connect with him again--which is reasonable boundary keeping--is then "revealed" to be cruel because his mother always wanted to be in touch with him.  It's actually quite abusive.  

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Kill It

This was a terrible show about a secret assassin (Jang Ki-young) who is trying to get to the bottom of the abusive conditions he was raised in at an orphanage and find out who his father is.  

Suffice to say this involves some evil, rich men abusing children for profit and even the children who survived did not do so unscathed. It had the kind of plot that I feel like could be remade into something good but as it was executed here was very cartoonish.  I really lost it was when the assassin's lair was not locked and his computer not password protected.

I watch too many Jang Ki-young shows even when they are bad.