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| Reunited. |
All seven members of BTS returned from the military this month. We finally got to peep Min Yoongi at J-Hope's concert and then see his full FACE upon the first OT7 live announcing they will work on an album and a world tour for next spring. My savings account is ready.
I also saw Stray Kids during their world tour in NY. We had some adverse weather conditions but after the nightmare of Ateez's NY show last summer we were ready for this one. A good time was had by all.
One of my closest friends moved out of NYC forever. It's hard to have been here for 30+ years and then leave but it's also a difficult place to stay.
So a lot of comings and goings in June 2025.
Now onto the dramas....
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Our Unwritten Seoul
Our Unwritten Seoul could have easily falling into a some ridiculous narrative traps with it's Parent Trap twin-swapping premise, but it ends up as a series about opening your heart, sharing your pain, acknowledging mental health struggles, and choosing a path that works for you.
Park Bo-young plays twins, Yu Mi-rae and Yu Mi-ji. Yu Mi-rae was the straight A student who worked all the time, struggled with her health, and moves to Seoul to work in an abusive corporate job that is eating away at her very being. Yu Mi-ji was outgoing, cheery, healthy twin who discovered a talent for running. But a running accident ends her dreams and she ends up living at home working odd-jobs. When Mi-rae tries to kill herself, Mi-ji stops her and they agree to do what they used to do when they were kids. Switch places. Mi-ji will hold down the fort at the corporate job so Mi-rae can take some time off and figure out what she wants to do at home.
What they do not count on is uncovering all sorts of layers to each others lives. Mi-ji runs into her childhood next door neighbor and high school crush, Lee Ho-su (Park Jin-young), who is now a big time lawyer. He is pushing Mi-rae to pursue some sort of lawsuit she dropped. Mi-rae wants Mi-ji to avoid him and not meddle in her life. But Mi-ji cannot help but want to see Ho-su and also find out what has been going on.
Ho-su has hearing loss and some injuries from when he was in an accident as a kid. These disabilities have shaped his world view. Mi-ji hid away from the world for several years after her accident and stepping into Mi-rae's shoes she is pushing herself out further into the world than she has been in years. Mi-rae and Mi-ji have stopped talking in adulthood so neither understands what their lives have looked like and this is the moment they both start to understand each other more (while still trying to keep secrets from one another).
I feel like the best K-dramas are the ones that fold in a supporting cast of characters which are as thoughtfully and richly written as the leads. Here Mi-ji finds herself trying to persuade a restaurant owner to sell her restaurant to Mi-rae's corporation but eventually just becomes that woman's helper as she is trying to keep secrets of her own.
Mi-rae ends up helping on a strawberry farm run by an eccentric financier (Ryu Kyung-soo) who left the world of finance and has been puttering in the countryside trying to heal his wounds.
Even Ho-su's mother and the twins' mother have their struggles and have tried to keep their difficulties from their kids. And as mothers they are always someone's daughters. So the mother-daughter dynamics here get played with
Basically, there is a lot of inner children in need of healing and this show attempts to have each character start on that journey. And yet it works. With delicate writing, external conflicts, and inner turmoil, all these characters have to face the lives they have been living and the pasts they have been avoiding in some way or another. They are all so generous to support others and never kind to themselves. And this begins a journey for them of seeing their self-worth.
It's a feat when a drama manages to balance all these characters and scenarios without them feeling pat or underwritten. It mostly does (maybe a little too neatly wrapped up in the annoyingly insufficient 12 episodes Netflix seems to favor--a pox on them cutting K-dramas down like this from 16 episodes).
Park Bo-young's stellar performance keeps the twins so distinct. Mi-rae is always understated, sharp-edged, and internal. Mi-ji is full of fake exuberance overcompensating for her inner pain and her fear of the darkness coming back. When she's performing Mi-ji as Mi-rae you can these two characters battling it out inside her because she knows she needs to be Mi-rae like but Mi-ji cannot help but spill out.
Park Jin-young is just too handsome to play a nerdy guy who’s never had a girlfriend--I call bullshit on that. But we can see the teen version of his character awkwardly navigating his adult life and falling into teenage patterns with the twins who he knew intensely for a while and then not for many years. He is befuddled in amusing ways and he offers a nice counter-balance to Mi-ji.
It's a thoughtful story, with well-crafted personal tragedies and triumphs.
The Witch
At first, I was curious about this spooky narrative about a young woman who seems cursed anytime someone fell for her. The guys ended up maimed or dead. Awkward.
But then it became about one man's quest to prove she was not a "witch" because he was in love with her. And while I think it was meant to suggest that he is sacrificing himself and risking life and limb to help her...it was, in essence, all about him. He stalks her to collect his data points and she's just this remote object he observes. There's no reason why he would even fall for her.
So it kind of ended up in a gross place about male obsession without a lot of self-reflection on that topic.
Boo.
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