K-Drama Reviews

Review – I Remember You / Hello Monster

/ Lady Divine / 11 Comments

Review – I Remember You / Hello Monster

I will remember this show… until I’m dead. I am a sucker for sympathetic villains and this drama featured not one but TWO.

Plot:  Basically, two young brothers are separated in childhood after one is kidnapped by a teenage serial killer.  The story is what happens when they are reunited in adulthood… including the reunion with the serial killer.

To say that I loved this show is an understatement.  I love a lot of dramas.  If I didn’t love K-dramas, I wouldn’t bother with this blog.  There are tons of great K-dramas.  And for every K-drama, there is one that seems made… if you can find it… just for you.  As if K-World read your diary and said, “Oh, you like this, eh?” Then created a drama that matched your secret wish list, wrapped it up like a present, tied it with a bow, and put your name on it.

This drama HAUNTED ME.  I loved it so much! I loved everything about it. The romance, the cop shenanigans, the mystery plot lines – everything was perfection. But the center of this story is about nature vs nurture. Do we create monsters or are they born? Can they change? Can they learn? Can a monster evolve into a human being?

I’m not even using poetic license when I say I had dreams about this show.  I literally had dreams about this show.  

Overall Rating – 12/10.  Monsters Make Their Own Families.

Much Much Much Rambling, Character Explorations, Themes, And Massive SPOILERS follow… so, you know, you have been warned.

Continue reading →

Review – My Beautiful Bride

/ Lady Divine / 6 Comments

Review – My Beautiful Bride

Basic Plot – a banker proposes to his pretty young girlfriend and a few days later, she disappears.  As he tries to find her, everyone is dragged into the secret vortex of these people’s lives and the criminal underworld – including you, dear viewer.

I loved this show from the first episode.  It had a strange vibe.  A uniqueness.  It reminded me, in a way, of Heartless City… which also lives by itself in a universe of its own genre.  Not quite this, not quite that.  Violent, bloody, scary, romantic, sentimental, intimate, intense… with action galore and these nice old school thriller shots (you know, the kind were you just follow someone down a dark alley and the tension just grows and grows until you’ve chewed your nails to bits and are jumping at every shadow wondering when something is going to happen).  It jumps back and forth in time.  It reveals the plot slowly, in layers.  You think you know the show in episode two?  Nope.  Episode four?  Nope.  It just keeps changing, morphing, becoming more brilliant.

And then… mysteriously… horribly… I lost interest in it entirely around episode 9 and no longer cared what happened to anyone.  I had to force myself to finish it – but I’m glad I did.  Part 2 had an entirely different tone, but it was still interesting… just not in the same awesome way as Part 1.  It’s like going on a date with someone who got up suddenly in the middle of dinner, went to the bathroom, put on a wig, changed clothes, and sat back down sporting a foreign accent.  What?  What’s happening?!  This was not the show I asked out to dinner… but I still wanted to know what would happen.  I can’t help but think this would have been a 10/10 drama if it were 10  episodes long instead of 16.

Overall Rating – 10/10 First Half, 6/10 Second Half…. so 8/10 Average.  What Happens When Your Fiance Falls Into A Dark Rabbit Hole And You Go Chasing After.

Light spoilers follow…

Continue reading →

Review – Six Flying Dragons

/ Lady Divine / 13 Comments

Review – Six Flying Dragons

This drama was outstanding.  It’s about the end of the Goryeo period and the beginning of the Joseon period – in particular, the revolution leading from one to another.  And it’s the best historical Korean Drama I have ever seen.  Ever.  After the second episode, I was pretty sure it was surpassing my favorites.  And after the epic 3-Prong Rescue Sequence from the Biguk Temple in Episode 6… I was hooked.  By the end of the loop to the opening scene in Ep 1 closing in Ep 10, I thought… wow… holy crap… that’s extremely good writing.  It’s by the same writing team that brought us Queen Seonduk and Tree with Deep Roots… this male/female team, Kim Young-Hyun and Park Sang-Yeon, know their stuff.  And they have been perfecting their craft.  Tightly woven plots in each episode, building on each other throughout yet changing enough to keep you enthralled, extremely complicated but fulfilling character development, action, historical significance, and even some romance.

Seriously.  BEST HISTORICAL DRAMA I HAVE EVER SEEN.  Just… mesmerizing.

Overall Rating – 10/10.  The View Is Only Better From the Moral High Ground If You Don’t Look Down.

More about characters – spoilers spoilers spoilers – thoughts and more…. please watch the show before treading into these waters, you don’t need to muddy up your experience by reading details first.

Continue reading →

Review – Which Star Are You From?

/ Lady Divine / 2 Comments

Review – Which Star Are You From?

I stumbled across this romantic comedy from 2006 by chance… and what a charmer!  It had everything you want from a romantic comedy – or at least, everything I want – nonstop focus on the main couple.

The plot is simple:  A successful filmmaker falls in love with an elegant, rich beauty – but doesn’t measure up to her family’s standards.  In a tragic accident, she dies – leaving him heartbroken.  Several years later, he stumbles across this backwoods hillbilly girl who looks just like his departed lost love – and follows her to her mountain home.  She’s crass, rude, wild, honest, and basically the exact opposite of everything his first love was… yet they find themselves having a blast together, fighting and bickering and playing and falling in love.  Can he open his heart his again to this unexpected girl?

Though it was a simple show, it had enough twists in the road to keep me highly entertained all sixteen episodes.  It was also incredibly romantic.  The two leads had great chemistry – Kim Rae-Won and Jung Ryeo-Won have no trouble convincing us they are star crossed – and the female lead, in particular, was fantastic at playing dual roles – of the mysterious, lovely first love and the plucky, gregarious hillbilly with her childish braids and hair barrettes.  Classic romantic K-Drama.  I loved it!

Overall Rating – 9/10.  Lolita of the Back Woods.

Review – Cinderella and the Four Knights

/ Lady Divine / 3 Comments

Review – Cinderella and the Four Knights

I love Korean fairy tale dramas.  Shining Inheritance, anyone?  They always follow the same rules – basically some good-hearted young lady is brought in to “save” rich people from their own miserable natures.  Unhappy rich people become happy rich people, and as a reward… the young lady gets married off to one of the rich boys and becomes rich too.  Happy Ever After.  This show didn’t even try to deny it… just look at the title!

Unlike most Korean drama fairy tales, however, this show differentiated itself by focusing on character development, almost exclusively as a plot device (through various missions our Cinderella is tasked to accomplish), so that our knights became real people instead of cliches.  Cute and romantic, it’s a feel-good drama that’s perfect when you’re in the mood for some cheesy charm.  Lots of laughs and heart.  Highly recommended.

Overall Rating – 8.5/10.  Prince Charming’s Castle Courtesy of Mass Studies Architecture.

Discussion of Characters and Spoilers Follow….

Continue reading →

Review – Suspicious Partner / Love in Trouble

/ Lady Divine / Leave a comment

Review – Suspicious Partner / Love in Trouble

What happens when you take a pretty good plot for a standard 16 episode drama and try to pull it apart like taffy into a drawn out short format series that goes on for 40 long (yet annoyingly short and empty) episodes? You ruin a perfectly good show, that’s what happens. Can we just stop making these 35 minute format shows? They’re so annoying! This drama was just a big mess – and I blame the formatting for 90% of the problem.

The cast was stellar and had great chemistry – all of them – though it felt more like “playing” than “acting”… as if they were all enjoying a nice vacation from serious work for a while and just goofing off for an easy paycheck. So it wasn’t an unpleasant waste of my time – I enjoyed watching them enjoy themselves, I guess. I am a huge Ji Chang-Wook fan, but this role required very little of him.  He just had to show up, basically, and be adorable… which he can do in his sleep, I imagine. Sigh.

With the exception of the villain, played to absolute perfection by Dong Ha (someone just give him an award immediately, cause he brought his acting chops to the table while everyone else came empty handed).

It’s basically about lawyers and prosecutors and the challenge of trying to determine the guilt and innocence of people when all these external and internal factors are messing with the evidence (watch Remember, if you want a damned fine drama on this subject).

The two main leads fall in love, so lots of flirting and kissing. These two actors have excellent chemistry so it is definitely swoon worthy – and why my original low rating had to be replaced with a higher one later cause I admit I find myself rewatching this show occasionally.

Everyone is charming and cute, but other than that… there’s not a lot going on with their characters. As mentioned, the only character who really mesmerized me was the villain – and the cool plot twist at the end could not save this long, rambling story line or this show. It will forever be good… but not great.

Overall Rating – 8/10.  Ji Chang-Wook’s Star Power Trying to Survive a Needlessly Drawn Out Show.

Review – Doctor Stranger

/ Lady Divine / 6 Comments

Review – Doctor Stranger

What an odd little show.  I have so many conflicting emotions about this drama – because there were so many things I really, really liked and quite a few things I wished I could have vetoed in the writer’s room.  But overall – it’s one of the few medical dramas I enjoyed.

Plot:  A brilliant surgeon and his young son are sent on a secret diplomatic mission to North Korea – only to be betrayed by their own country and kept by the North Koreans!  The young man grows up there, following the footsteps of his father to become a doctor, but due to the lack of equipment and technology, learns “old school.” His childhood sweetheart and fiance is taken by the secret police shortly after agreeing to marry him.  When he’s near graduation, he is taken by the government to a secret facility to perfect his craft of heart surgery, by devious and nefarious means.  He spends several years imprisoned in this nightmarish place – secretly searching for his fiance.  He finally finds her right when his opportunity to escape the country presents itself – and attempts to flee with his lady love only to lose her in the process.  Several years later, in South Korea, a series of events leads him to be hired as a new surgeon at a prestigious hospital.  There he meets a woman who looks identical to his fiance, but claims not to know him.  Who is this mysterious woman?  And will he ever find his lost love?  While all these burning questions linger, there is an awesome new woman in his life who vies for his heart… but can he ever escapes the secrets of his terrible past and get over his first love?

Overall Rating – 8/10.  Pyongyang Medical School is Not For The Faint of Heart.

More Discussion and Spoilers Follow….

Continue reading →

Review – Man to Man / ManXMan / Man 2 Man

/ Lady Divine / Leave a comment

Review – Man to Man / ManXMan

A good summer drama with a lot of exciting action sequences, exotic locations, and hammy comedy.  It wasn’t perfect – and kinda tried to pack too many layers on its club sandwich, if you ask me, but I still had fun trying to eat it.  It’s not quite one genre or another, which I think was the only failing of this show – as I kept wanting it to lean left, into more exciting action/suspense, or just stay firmly right in the romantic comedy zone.  The constant shuffling between the two made me feel a little jet lagged.

Plotline:  A secret agent (played to perfection by Park Hae-Jin) goes undercover as a bodyguard to a goofy, middle aged actor (another ideal casting decision to choose Park Sung-Woong) – who, by the way, was hysterical – and gets romantically entangled with his over the top possessive female manager (Kim Min-Jung).  Missions to recover stolen artifacts, corrupt politicians, the extremely sexy Yeon Jeong-Hun, showbusiness shenanigans and more will entertain you for hours.

Sure, there are better shows.  But this one was fun trip with a huge cast of stars, tons of cameos, and… well… a little something of everything, really.  Unfortunately, that also meant it wasn’t a lot of one thing, which was ultimately its downfall.

*Quick Editor’s Note: Since posting this review, I have gone back to this show numerous times… and watched random episodes any time I wanted to laugh, enjoy Park Hae-Jin’s facial expressions, or just chill out and enjoy the show. It reminds me of Master’s Sun – in that you can just click on any random episode and have a good time watching it. Anyways, it’s 2021 now… and I’m going to have to bump up my viewer rating to reflect how fun this show is to rewatch.

Seriously, though, Park Hae-Jin’s facial expressions are the most enjoyable aspect of this show. Recently I reviewed Taxi Driver and said I didn’t think anyone else could pull off the action/comedy required for the main role, but thinking about it… Park Hae-Jin could have also nailed that role. 

Man2Man_1

Overall Rating – 9/10 (original rating: 7/10) – Undercover Romantic Tactics Will Be Used.

 

Review – In Need of Romance 3

/ Lady Divine / Leave a comment

Review – In Need of Romance 3

The more I think about this show, the more I dislike it.  I will admit being biased, as I don’t care for Kim So-Yeon.  She’s one of my least favorite actresses in K-World.  She’s like Seth Rogan… krytonite to my viewing experience.  So, I should have known better going in… but I thought, Sung Joon might save it… or Namgung Min.  Nope.

The plot is basically about a young girl who was a nanny for a rich boy all through her childhood, watching this kid from infancy until he was about 10 or so.  For him it was all sunshine and roses, but for her it was hell.  Time jump about 17 years and she’s grown up to be a bitchy, successful producer of a home shopping network and he has grown up to be a naive, successful musician.  They have a ten second romance before his identity is revealed, and then they basically switch roles from their childhoods – with him acting as the caregiver and her as the busied dependent coming in and out without appreciating him.  And, you know, they slowly fall in love.  I guess.  You’ve also got all the coworkers at the home shopping network going through their own romances – none of which are very noteworthy.  They’re so cliche and one note, they’re basically wallpaper.

One of my pet peeves is tedious voice overs – especially when they’re trying to be poetic or introspective and it doesn’t seem to match the character at all.  This show was stock full of annoying voice overs of our two main character musing about life and love and blah, blah, blah.  Just, show NOT tell, please.  If you couldn’t get that message across in the drama, then it’s lazy writing to try to throw it on top as a voice over.  Yuck.  The voice overs were like those contrite memes with inspirational sayings.  Also, the dialogue was a mess.  There were too many instances of a character saying something that sounded way too measured and preachy for sporadic conversation.  What, did they memorize this speech before hand?  It felt so unnatural.  Our male lead calmly lecturing our female lead about her emotional state… “maybe you’re just a person who doesn’t recognize your own feelings” was ridiculous.  People don’t talk like that.  Even therapists don’t talk like that.  The whole show was like this.  Groan inducing.

What the show DID have going for it was open mouth kissing.  And quite a bit of it.  And bed scenes (mainly “after” where there’s a dude without a shirt and the girl mysteriously sleeps in pajamas).  It was quite frank with its sexual tone.  If only I cared about whether any of them ever got laid, ever again in their lives.  But I didn’t.  I basically just enjoyed the eye candy and fast-forwarded through massive chunks of the eps towards the end.  Honestly, I should have just watched some kiss compilation videos on youtube… saved myself from the constant eye rolling.

Overall Rating – 4/10.  French Kissing Does Not Make Up For Bad Writing.

Review – Fight My Way

/ Lady Divine / 1 Comment

Review – Fight My Way

There’s nothing spectacular about this drama – it’s middling at best – the plot isn’t intricate and the characters aren’t necessarily as developed as they could be – but it still manages to be charming.  Simple and charming.  A straight forward love story with light obstacles and people overcoming their hardships rather easily.  Not that I didn’t still enjoy it – cause I did.  Park Seo-Jun is a great actor and really killed it as a mixed martial arts badass with a tender heart.  And Kim Ji-Won was lovable as the country girl with big ambitions to be an announcer that just needed to find her place.  They had great chemistry and it was delightful to watch them come together, moving from long time platonic best friends into lovers.  Also, the second romance of the second leads was equally engaging – the long time couple who were struggling with their relationship and status as they moved through life.  It felt very real and believable and my heart was genuinely moved by both of their stories.

But this show is popcorn.  A tasty snack.  It didn’t try too hard.  And I didn’t try too hard either.  I just enjoyed it, as a delicious treat but not a real meal.  I think after viewing a lot of K-Dramas you get spoiled on the potential of what 16 hours of storytelling can actually provide a viewer.  I mean… that’s a lot of time.  A LOT can happen.  Or a little can happen, and it can still be fun, if it’s done right.  I had fun watching this show, but it didn’t challenge me or make me think or offer me any new insights into humanity or relationships.  So in a way, I’m a little disappointed in it.  Cause the story line could have been so much more than it was.  But as it was… I still wouldn’t skip it.  Check it out.  It’s pretty freakin’ adorable.  And it was cool to explore a little more of the professional fighting world, even though honestly I feel even that could have been done better, too.  There were a lot of funny moments and a lot of cutesy “rescue” scenes that I loved.  The little vignette stories at the end of each episode were particularly fun to watch.  The coach, in particular, was my favorite side character… gah, what a cutie!

Plot:  Four teenagers with big dreams become young adults who have settled for lower expectations due to varying circumstances.  They each try to find their way back to their passions as their relationships further develop.

Overall Rating – 8/10.  Mixed Martial Arts Means More Shirtless Men.