The famout 1970s weepie Love Story made popular the phrase, "Love means never having to say you are sorry." For the 2003, K-drama (which references Love Story), love apparently means having to say sorry all the freaking time. Mianhae eoreobun.
Shim Hye-won (Son Ye-jin) has been long engaged to her childhood sweetheart, Park Jung-jae (Ryu Jin). Jung-jae's wealthy family has kind of adopted Hye-won after she lost her parents when she was young. She is bffs with Jung-jae's little sister, Park Jung-ah (Han Ji-hye). Hye-won has had a heart condition and she got a heart transplant on the cusp of adulthood. With her new heart, it's the start of her new life.
This twenty-episode series was part of the Endless Love tetraology from the early aughts all directed by Yoon Seok-ho (Autumn in My Heart, Winter Sonata, Summer Scent, Spring Waltz). This is the first one I watched. For me, it was drawn out and obvious from the start who you are rooting for. And all the plot devices to force these characters to spend time together (which leads to the "forbidden" romance growing stronger) was very wonky. Nevertheless I strapped in and got maybe a little too invested in Hye-won.
Hye-won is sweet but Jung-jae is boring, patronizing, and infantilizes her. He may have been in her life
for a long time, but their relationship feels more parental than romantic. And he's of course a rich, controlling jerk who would rather see her miserable and with him than happy. And it's a pairing of extremes. She is totally self-sacrificing and he is self-absorbed. A terrible combo.
Meanwhile, Jung-ah is selfish, bratty, and exhausting. She is pestering Min-woo all the time in a way that is also not romantic. This whole family is just about getting their way regardless of how anyone feels.
That no one stabs Jung-ah in the twenty episodes to just get to her to shut up is truly unfortunate. I would absolute get in a time machine and do it.
 |
| Where are his sleeves? |
And Min-woo has suffered a lot and this is his first happiness in a long time and Jung-jae and Jung-ah are constantly making his life harder. Also he almost never got to wear sleeves.
I spent a lot of this show yelling at my TV. You will really need to prepare yourself for a romance of quiet, longing looks, bad communication, secrets everyone is keeping (badly), and a lot of terrible people pushing Hye-won and Min-woo around all the time. Hye-won will cry a lot and spend a lot of time apologizing to people who do not even deserve it.
But once I was in I needed to see it through to the end. And I do find these shows from a whole other era of K-dramas really fascinating.
Son Ye-jin and Lee Min-ho star in this kind of ridic 2010 gay mistaken identity romance. Again Son Ye-jin's character is mistreated. Was this her job for a decade? Meanwhile, I had to watch.
Park Kae-in (Son Ye-jin) is a quirky, tomboyish mess of a human. She is trying to get her furniture design business of the ground but there are no takers. She discovers her bff and roommate Kim In-hee (Wang Ji-hye) is marrying the man Kae-in thought she was dating, Chang-ryul (Kim Ji-seok). He's a greasy, opportunistic asshole and Kae-in literally shows up at her friend's wedding not knowing that is what she is walking into. It's incredibly cruel.
She gets conned out of some money so she has to take in a roommate to help her pay her bills. She lives in a famous moderized hanok designed by her father, a renown architect. She ends up letting architect Jeon Jin-ho (Lee Min-ho) move in, because she has mistakenly believed he is gay. He finds her a car wreck of a person and starts sort of bullying her into growing a spine and standing up for herself. It is not a pretty process. But she does start to gain confidence under his tutelage. But she also starts to fall for him (ugh ladies stop doing this, he's actually be mean to you).
Meanwhile, Jin-ho is staying with her to try to learn more about this famous hanok to help him win a bid for a architecture project. He starts to feel bad about using her, but then gets kind of stuck in this situation. Other people think he's gay and dramedy ensues.
In some ways, this show felt progressive in the embrace of the gay character by Kae-in but then of course there was disgust from others and some incredibly awful statements about queerness. And you see why other characters have stayed in the closet. And then another character def goes full limp wrist caricature faking his gayness. So this is not actually good, but interesting in the scheme of how K-dramas deal with queer identity over time.
Also, for no reason, they dress Min-ho in these incredibly long suit jackets like he's stepped out of the Regency era but also with a mullet. The Hallyu wave was bad for men and their hair. His character is also so one note "cold."
In addition, it's just so hard to get over how mistreated Kae-in is by everyone. She is abused and manipulated. And even the guy who falls for her isn't the warmest and fuzziest either.
Justice for these Son Ye-jin characters!
Comments
Post a Comment