K-Drama

Review – Tunnel

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Review – Tunnel

There’s a lot to like about this show.  The unusual plotline.  The adorable cop shenanigans and bromances everywhere (all the main cops are dudes in this show and they’re all extremely lovable).  The tangled web of time travel.  The serial killer(s) and their damaged childhoods.  I enjoyed the whole thing.  A quality drama, highly recommended.

Overall Rating – 8/10.  Grumpy Time Traveling Detective Solves An Old Case.

A little bit more about characters follows (very, very mild spoilers)

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Review – Liar Game

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Review – Liar Game

How incredibly awesome was this show?  And it was the perfect length – at 12 episodes – not too long, not too short – just right.  I had read a bad review of it and skipped watching it for a long time, but decided to check it out recently… and twelve hours later, this binge-inducing show had completely swept me off the planet and into an exciting world of intrigue and suspicion!

Plot in a nutshell – a new reality show tests people moral aptitudes and problem solving skills as they attempt to win money in increasingly difficult ways.  This is a character driven show – and after a few games you are down to a small number of key players and you get a firm sense of their personalities, faults and strengths without the use of backstories or flashbacks (exception to the rule being the main three characters).   What lines are they willing to cross for money?  And is there a darker secret behind the show?

Overall Rating – 10/10.  Manipulation Is A Group Sport!

More discussion and very mild spoilers follow (cause I don’t want to spoil the excitement!)….

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Review – Can You Hear My Heart?

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Review – Can You Hear My Heart?

This is “old school” k-drama done right.  A small but incredible cast in one fantastically complicated knot.  We’re talking tropes, tropes, tropes – birth secrets, evil moms, love triangles, revenge plots, stolen children, all-people-with-disabilities-are-angels, family feuds, memory loss and more!  It’s surprising how difficult it is to try to summarize this 30 episode trip to quality, emotional trauma/drama.  It’s about family – the ones we are born with but more importantly about the ones we create for ourselves – through friends, through neighbors, through marriage, through fate.

A true gem and worth the watch, when you’re feeling patient and understand that a four course meal takes time.  I liked it a lot.  I didn’t love it, necessarily, but I enjoyed it.

Overall Rating – 8.5/10.  Dumb People Are Happier In Life… So It Sucks To Be You, Smarty Pants.

Read More… in which I try to explain this ridiculously unique plotline about intelligence, the hierarchy of needs, and familial love (major spoilers ahead!)

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Review – Love in the Moonlight / Moonlight Drawn by Clouds

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Review – Love in the Moonlight

So, I finished Moonlight Drawn by Clouds, or Love in the Moonlight, not too long ago and have been wondering what, exactly, I had to say about it.  It was nothing special, to be perfectly honest.  This drama offered no new ground to the pantheon of K-Dramas, yet it still managed to be enjoyable, settling into well worn territory… like coming home and putting on your favorite t-shirt even though it’s faded and has holes in it and probably smells a little suspicious if you get too close.  Love in the Moonlight is your usual tropes thrown together in a historical romance with a light melodrama.  It’s the safe bet.  The meal you’ve ordered before and know you like.

I liked the first half best, that was more focused on the romance, than the second half, that was more focused on the politics.  The young actors were beautiful and charming, the seasoned actors were outstanding as always.  Costumes, sets, writing, all well done.  They added a lot of modern humor in, which made it fun and playful.  The lead female looked like an alien, albeit a pretty alien.  I’m not kidding.  She was straight from a Steven Spielberg movie – and yet it was cool, like her Western alien friend Amanda Seyfried.  The black-clad guard was clearly the poster child for perfected jaw sculpting… just startlingly handsome.  That wig was working for him, too.  Usually the wig doesn’t help improve the looks of our male historical characters, but Kwak Dong-Yeon lucked out.  He has NEVER looked better, and probably never will.  The rival to the Crown Prince was also handsome and generic and overall the entire production was very easy on the eyes.

But it was the Crown Prince that owned the show.  To be honest, I don’t know if I would have stuck around for the entire drama if it weren’t for Park Bo-Gum.   Is it the capped teeth that make his smirk so cute or what?  Park Bo-Gum took a rather tired plotline of a clueless dude falling in love with a girl in drag and made it adorable all over again – by being impossibly adorable.  Geesh, he was a cutie.

Overall Rating – 8/10 – Like A Fluffy Bunny, Pretty Worthless But Oh So Cute!

Review – Faith

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Review – Faith

There are few historical dramas with an interesting female lead… whose interest goes beyond “I want to rule” or something generic like that.  But the lead female in Faith is by far the most interesting character in the show – and she’s interesting for lots of reasons.  The girl wants TONS of things – cause the world is full of possibilities and she’s crafty and resourceful and full of life and energy.  And she’s not the only one!  No, no, no, my fine friends, there are a multitude of interesting ladies in this show.  In fact, the ladies are JUST AS INTERESTING AS THE MEN!  Gasp!  Equal representation in a historical drama?  Be still my feminist heart.  This show has ladies with humor, personality, individuality, sexuality, and self interest.  Heck, there are even female guards in this show.  It’s awesome.

Faith is a show that knows its strengths and weaknesses and plays both correctly.   It doesn’t have great action, but it will distract you with a handsome lead.  Heck, they even let him get away with abandoning the top knot in favor of a fan favorite bangs.  There isn’t too much political tension, but there’s fun characters.  Loads of them.  Faith is a fish out of water via time travel story… as well as your basic “kings trying to keep their thrones while their court plots against them” story.  There are fantasy elements, people with special powers, magical portals to different times… but that’s about the extent of it.  It’s a bit long, a bit cheesy, a bit under dramatic for something that should be more dramatic, and definitely light on the action (for my taste – I prefer much more sword play!).  The romance is PG at best.  Yet it was still extremely enjoyable just for having so many refreshing elements and unique characters!  If only we could have such well written characters in other historical shows, eh?  To dream!

Overall Rating 7.5/10.  Lee Min Ho Looks Cool With A Sword Even If He Doesn’t Know How To Use It.

More Review and Spoilers and Discussion Follow…

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Review – The Moon Embracing the Sun

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Review – The Moon Embracing the Sun

LAWD!  Save us all from historical dramas!  Why are they always so good?

I’ve heard about The Moon Embracing the Sun for many years but for some reason never watched it.  Scratch that – I did try, originally, but got bored around the third episode and turned it off (a mistake I almost made again the second round).  This time I firmly planted myself in front of the show and stuck with it – until the young cast went through their youthful turmoil and misfortunes and reached adulthood… only to be met with more turmoil and misfortunes.  In between all this they also found moments of happiness and true love.  It was wonderful.  I mean, it wasn’t The Princess’ Man, but it was still worth watching.

Plot in a nutshell – two young royals fall in love with the same young lady, but she only likes one of them, the one destined for the throne.  A series of unfortunate events occur and the young woman is presumed dead, the young royals both left heartbroken.  Young lady grows up with total memory loss, raised as a shaman.  Young royals grow up as well.  They all meet again.  The young lady doesn’t recognize her male admirers, but they are drawn to her like bears to honey.  The entire process of their youth repeats – with both men falling in love with her again… who will she fall in love with round two?  Will she remember her past?  What happened to her all those years ago?  Mystery and intrigue and romance abound in this historical drama.

Overall Rating – 8/10.  An Satisfying Appetizer to Prepare You For Better Historical Drama Meals.

Discussion and spoilers follow…

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Review – Man from the Equator

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Review – Man from the Equator

There is a certain grandiose nature (also known as being waaaay overdramatic for no reason) to these older melodramas that can’t be replicated.  Maybe it’s the standard tv (box) formatting.  Maybe it’s the lack of fancy cinematography, most of the shots are head on and there are many long cuts.  Maybe it’s the emotional music, reminiscent of soap operas from the States in the late 20th century.  There’s a roughness to the characters, a grittiness and cruelty… as well as honest and instinctual love.  This is a story about two young men who become unlikely best friends, the smartest boy in the school and the street fighter.  They are two totally different people, and though they become best friends, their values, motivations, and personalities remain independent of one another, even over time.  In a way, those are some of the best friendships.  And like most good things, they require a lot of work.  So does this drama.  Perhaps more work than it deserves…

The first part of this drama is captivating and interesting – but unfortunately the second and third part just drag and drag and drag.  Part two involves a wandering story line of love and blindness, and part three is about revenge but manages to forget that half the time and just bore us with flashbacks, unnecessarily long sequences of staring, walking, staring, pondering, staring and more staring.  I don’t think I’ve seen a show that enjoyed focusing on a character just staring pensively into the distance more Man from the Equator.  Still, I didn’t hate it I just… wanted to speed it up.

Overall Rating – 4/10.  Not Recommended For Tourists.

More plot musings and spoilers and discussion follow…

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Review – Empress Ki (Sageuks, Not Sanity!)

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Review – Empress Ki (Sageuks, Not Sanity!)

I feel like the most important thing everyone should know before committing 51 hours of your life to a historical drama is this… you will never get so torn up over whether or not two people will be in the same room together as you will in these slow burn historical romances.  Just intensely looking at each other in silence turns into the most erotic of experiences.  Holding hands? Gasp!  Someone bring the fire extinguisher because you’re gonna be BURNING UP!

I know it sounds ridiculous.  It really defies reason, in this day and age, that we can revert back to grade school romance so quickly, no matter how old we are… but such is the power of the historical drama.  Such is the power of Empress Ki.  There is literally a scene where two grown men are fighting over who is going to covertly hold a woman’s hand in a dark room and the stakes have never been higher!  Who will win?  Which hand will she hold?!  I imagine a bookie is literally taking bets from an excited audience at this point (“$15 on the Emperor!” – “Put me down for $100 on Wang Yu!”) – cause it’s like… what… episode 17 and it’s hard to explain but by then you’re just INTO IT and you’re ready to scream “Chuna!” and “Kill Me!” and the spell has been cast.  You are committed to these characters and their stories and this love triangle is EVERYTHING – it’s not just about two men and a woman, it’s about two countries fighting for power and you know this woman is going to be key… but it’s also about love and you kinda want her to lean left, no right, no left, no right!  Curses!  They’re both so awesome!   And deep down you know you’ll probably sit through 51 hours of this show and never even get any tongue, cause if Queen Seondeok taught us anything, it’s that you’re going to have to take those chapters to the fan fiction forums.  Does that stop you from chewing your nails off as the intensity between these people increases?  Hell no!  Cause… we’ve got mega intense hand holding happening here!  And who knows what might be next… there could be a dramatic rescue scene or some heartbreaking sacrifice or… a hug… oh my god, they might hug!  THERE COULD BE HUGGING!!!  And that might as well be uncensored porn, because that’s how rewired your brain has become watching these shows.  I say this without irony.  This really happens.

And while watching something this long… you may be tempted to start skimming.  DO NOT DO THIS.  You can skim all you want the second time you watch it, but the first time it is vital that you watch it – every scene – just as it is.  The pacing is important.  The details are important.  The people are important.  And yeah… it’s freakin’ crazy long.  So take a break if you need to – watch another drama and come back to it.  You do not have to binge Empress Ki.  I watched about 32 episodes of this before I had to stop – and then I didn’t return for a while. When I did return, the last chunk of eps flew by with babies, deaths, madness and intrigue.  I’m glad I took a break, though – cause even with the break, that’s still a heck of a lot of time to spend with one show.  After a while, you kinda start to get wonky.  But hey… I don’t need sanity, I need Sageuks!

Empress Ki is bound to live on for some time as one of the great historical dramas… and it is well deserved.  The character development alone is worth the price of admission.  The amazing acting, the incredible sets, the drool inducing costumes… it was a work of art.

Empress Ki is divided into two sections – PRE CONCUBINE Eps 1-24 and POST CONCUBINE eps 25-51.  Both sections are cool.  There are also “two houses” in this play… and two men, both the heads of each, vying for the same women.

I felt like my grandmother was in the room lecturing on me on the importance of finding a man who “needs me” over a man who “wants me.”  According to grandmother, a woman who is needed is never taken for granted and will always live a happier life.  I’m not sure if that’s true – but this show was definitely the perfect example of a man who Needs You and a man who Wants You.  The Emperor needed her.  And the King wanted her.  Let’s face it, though… it feels nice to have either type of love… and to have both, well… that’s kinda the plot.

Overall Rating – 9/10.  To Be Needed Is To Be Loved.

More musings… and SPOILERS

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Review – Marriage Not Dating

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Review – Marriage Not Dating

Just a blissful spring day of skipping through a field, that’s what this drama is.  It’s not too heavy, not too light.  It’s juuuuuuuust right.  All your favorite cliches – pretend couples, love triangles, disapproving wealthy mothers.  Adorable romantic shenanigans.  Three interesting male and female characters that are fun to watch throughout the series, even when they are disappointing you.  Lots of laughs, lots of good times with friends, lots of love.  This is one feel good drama you don’t want to pass by… like a valentine you give yourself.

Overall Rating – 8/10.  Korean Febreeze.

More Discussion including spoilers….

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Review – Spy Myung Wol

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Review – Spy Myung Wol

Spy Myung Wol is one of those adorable, zany romantic comedies that came out a while back – with heavy handed shenanigans, lots of side characters, tons of extras, and these stellar cliches for leads that are so out there you can’t help but love them.  Think… The Greatest Love or You Are Beautiful or Fated To Love You or Secret Garden.  Zany.  With handguns!  This drama is about a North Korean spy who ends up getting entangled with a South Korean actor/rockstar.  National politics, international intrigue, paparazzi, and a hosts of fans are thrown into the mix for a good-hearted romp of a show.  Not only are the two leads highly amusing, but there’s a whole gift basket full of side characters that are witty and entertaining.  It’s so much fun!

Overall Rating – 9/10.  The Drama Between North & South Korea Is Nothing Compared To The Drama Between Men & Women.

Mild Spoilers & Fan Gushing Follow

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