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| Saw Stray Kids in concert in LA. Had so much fun. |
Yet another busy couple of months so I am combining what I saw over two months. And I don't have time to write about The Haunted Palace (lots o' shamanism) or Into the Ring (oh I like this, oh I'm bored) or Spring of Youth (if this is going where I think it is I will be mad so I'm stopping watching).
Heesu In Class 2
I had heard zero buzz about this gay teen romance but it's a fucking delight from beginning to end. Forget every cheap, badly produced BL out there. This is a high-quality, YA-like teen romance akin to Heartstoppers or Love, Simon. Sweetly crafted with just the right amount of setbacks, comedy, and coming-of-age struggles and some teen couples you want to root for.
Here Hee-su (Ahn Ji Ho) is an affable high school student who lives with his three older sisters in a chaotic but loving household. He is always giving advice to the lovelorn but he's never dated himself. He's always hanging out with his best friend Chan Young (Cho Jun Young) who is the hearthrob of the high school and Hee-su has a secret crush on him too.
Hee-su unpexectedly becomes friends with his next door neighbor, the uptight class president Kim Seung-won (Lee Sang-jun). Hee-su thinks Seung-won has a crush on the aloof Ji-yu (Kim Do-yeon) and he tries to set them up. But in reality, Seung-won is just trying to spend more time with Hee-su for reasons he's still trying to work through in his own heart.
The series is based on a webtoon and you can feel the strong story and character development throughout. Hee-su and Seung-won live very different lives. Hee-su is cared for and teased by his sisters in their loud and rambunctious home. The sisters have crazy love lives of their own and the whole family is authentic and fun. Meanwhile, Seung-won is a latchkey kid who takes care of himself almost all of the time while his mom works. He loves to hear the cacophony from next door and you see how quiet, neat, and controlled his life is in comparison.
There are so many teens in love with the person who does not love them back here and a couple that. do. But these romantic fumblings are based in real-life teen misunderstandings as they are trying to figure out their own hearts.
The show has just the right balance of sweet and genuine characters trying to understand each other. This can lead to anger, struggles with miscommunications, and mistakes they navigate their first relationships.
And the way the show handles Hee-su's coming out and the ways in which the gay characters must keep secrets differently from their straight friends is mostly nicely done. The straight characters don't get it immediately and the anger that comes out is again authentic even if unfortunate.
This show was such a joy I ended up bingeing it twice, appreciating the writing and craft so much more on the second go. A total gem if you love teen romances and really a triumph for a BL that is a cut above the rest.
Park Hyung-sik stars in this serious revenge drama that gets confusing at times. It overreaches and tries to be both emotionally sincere while also being outlandish in plot. It does not really pull off the character suffering. But it's compelling corporate intrigue watch and I love to see Hyung-sik stretching himself here as a less than pure character with dark motives of his own.
Buried Hearts
Seo Dong-ju (Park Hyung-sik) is a trusted corporate secretary to Chairman of the Daesung Group, Cha Kang-cheon (Woo Hyun). He is flying high as he rises in the corporate organization and happily dates Yeo Eun-nam (Hong Hwa-yeon). But things are not as they seem. Someone is trying to kill Dong-ju, he has stolen money from a political slush fund, and he's trying to use it as leverage. Everyone is fighting for who will take over the Daesung Group and even between family members there are factions and fights. And outside forces are trying to force the Chairman's hand as well.
There are some eye-popping twists, double-crosses, and betrayals.
Dong-ju is adopted and is seen as a "thug" in this world of chaebols (although they are always the ones ordering violence). He will do just about anything to get ahead in the corporation and keep in the Chairman's good graces, but he's also this open-hearted guy who wears his emotions on his sleeve. His relationship with Eun-nam was pure.
Park Hyung-sik gets to be action star and wronged man all at the same time here.
Without giving too much away, there are some people who come in and out of Dong-ju's life pretending to be loyal and then turn out to be disloyal. And the frequency of these switches starts to get a little much. Trust no one Dong-ju.
As with many dramas, they sometimes invest in more minor characters and their motivations when I have no interest. But because of the wild plot you will want to keep watching. It just cannot deliver on the real pathos that they try to inject from time to time over Dong-ju's personal life and his emotional pain. I wish they had found a better balance because it would have been a much more rewarding payoff. Park Hyung-sik is certainly acting the shit out of it...but the writing does not give him much room to go with it.
And very much a side-note, I feel like Disney+ k-dramas spend real money on music and it makes a difference.
Weak Hero 2
Weak Hero: Class 1 is one of the best K-dramas of all time. But they've just tried to shoehorn the original character of Si-eun and his personal trauma into a facile bullying drama. They try to reproduce, badly, a friend group dynamic, and then drag in some important elements from the first season inartfully. It's actually offensive. It's like someone watched Study Group and tried to copy some elements from that. Or maybe we are just in the school bullying-gangster era.
I'm not even going to explain to you this pointless gangster war with teens that this show dreamed up. Truly a pox on Netflix forever.
Crushology 101
The only notes I wrote down as I watched this college romance drama were:
"Why am I watching this show. The boys should fall in love instead. Deeply undeveloped characters so the push and pull between them is not longing but confusing."
And I stand by that.
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