Korean Drama Review

Review – The King Loves / The King in Love

/ Lady Divine / Leave a comment

Review – The King Loves / The King in Love

This drama was divine.  It took your basic love triangle and raised it up to levels of discomfort, pain and joy that I don’t recall ever experiencing in another drama.  Kings are always lonely, isolated people – by design – the people they can trust or count on are few and far between.  In this story, our King had one friend.  One.  So when they both fall in love with the same woman… cue the twenty hours of beautiful agony this show will provide.  I think what made this particular love triangle special was that our lady in the middle really loved both men.  She just happened to love one of them a little more…

Add to that some outstanding political intrigue – none of the boring filler that so often accompanies historical dramas – and brilliant side characters – and you’ve got yourself a historical drama that stands above others.  Let’s not forget how freakin’ sweet this show was!  So many sweet moments.  And tons of genuine humor, too.  There was a great mix of everything, honestly.  Gorgeous cinematography,  detailed costuming, and a complicated but tightly woven plotline that deeply satisfied.  Until the very end.  The very bitter end.  Cause… only one of these absolutely lovable men is getting the girl, after all.  And your heart is going to break for the other dude.  It wouldn’t have mattered which one.  That’s why this drama was amazing… it was a win-win and a lose-lose either way…

Overall Review – 9.5/10.  Love Is A Game That Demands Losers.

More musing on heartbreak, some spoilers, and character thoughts follow… let’s dive in.

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Review – Defendant

/ Lady Divine / 2 Comments

Review – Defendant

I’d like to press charges, your honor.  For bad acting.  Ji Sung was so god awful in this show, I could barely stand it.  I suffered through most of it, assuming it might taper out and get better.  It didn’t.  It got worse.  What happened to this guy?  He was so adorable in Protect The Boss!  He was less adorable in Kill Me, Heal Me, but still okay.  But in this show… it was painful.  PAINFUL.  My eyes hurt from witnessing the horrors of such a lackluster, over-the-top yet simultaneously disingenuous performance.  Ugh.  To make matters worse, Uhm Ki-Joon brought his A-Game and was outstanding, playing twins… so the comparison in abilities was blinding.

Now, I know I am on the unpopular side with this opinion – as the ratings and reviews for this drama are high with tons of comments praising Ji Sung for his performance.  I have to assume they are either new to K-World or just… delusional.  Is everyone watching the same show I was?  I don’t get it…

The plot itself was decent – though overly convoluted and a little too gimmicky for my taste.  I adore a great murder mystery, amnesia, psycho-killer, hidden identity story… but this one tried too hard.  Thumbs down.  Gave up after 8 episodes.

Overall Rating – 4/10.  Guilty of Over Acting.

Review – Twenty Again

/ Lady Divine / 1 Comment

Review – Twenty Again

What a gem of a show!  Such a simple premise… a young, energetic dancer has a one night stand with a stranger that ends in an unexpected pregnancy – she ends up hastily getting married and follows her new husband to Germany, where he has his first professor appointment.  There, isolated and alone, she sort of looses her spark and falls into obscurity, her house and home becoming her entire world as all her dreams are lost.  Motherhood becomes her only solace.  Her husband pushes her further and further away, until finally he asks for a divorce when their son is a teenager.  They postpone the divorce until their kid goes off to college… and in a mad dash attempt to save her marriage by becoming the intellectual equal of her husband, our leading lady secretly enrolls in college.  There she runs into one of her best friends from high school, who secretly had a crush on her, and the show takes off!

So much happens.  There are all sorts of twists and turns in the relationships.  Affairs.  Terminal illnesses.  Miscommunication on an epic scale.  And adorable banter and humor between the adult leads, as well as all the students, faculty and staff.  So much cuteness.  And a really great story, too, of growing up even when you’re already a grown up.  I loved it.

Overall Rating:  8/10.  There’s No Planned Parenthood in K-World.

More discussion and spoilers and musing…

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Review – My Wife’s Having an Affair This Week / Listen to Love

/ Lady Divine / 1 Comment

Review – My Wife’s Having an Affair This Week / Listen to Love

This is one of those shows that reminds me why I am single.  But cheers to all the working moms in the world – cause let’s face it, you are doing twice the work and haven’t been thanked for it since mother’s day of last year, right?  Though Lee Sun Gyun is adorable and has a gorgeous voice (his new drama My Mister is incredible, also someone please force him to read audiobooks), I pretty much found him impossible to love in this show.  I kept thinking, “Let’s see how well you do with your kid for a week without your wife around, ya jerk.”  And then, when we finally get that scene, he can’t even handle it for one day.  He pawns his kid off onto his coworkers and friends, who seem to instinctively understand joint parenting more than the married, child rearing couples on this show.  Not that it is all the husband’s fault.  I hated Song Ji Hyo’s character just as much.  The bland, lowered eyed, push over wife – desperately trying to be perfect, always smiling, always agreeable.  Use your words, people.  If you act like a doormat, you can’t be surprised when people walk all over you.

Though there was a lot to dislike about this show, I did find most of it enjoyable.  The shenanigans of the unfaithful lawyer.  The online community marriage counseling.  The side romance of the two television producers was delightfully awkward and unusual.  And I liked the ending, though I wanted more.  The exploration into the nature of affairs, the motivations, the suspicions, and the consequences were interesting but also only waded into, not fully explored.  I watched the whole show – after jumping ship on several shows recently, it was nice to find something that actually drew me enough to finish it.  So… I give it a “Meh.”  A nice middle grade.  Not bad, not good, but definitely not just right.

Overall Rating – 6.5/10.  Tuna Mayo Gets Her Happy Ending Via a Shotgun & a Hot French Dude.

Review – Emergency Couple

/ Lady Divine / 1 Comment

Review – Emergency Couple

Why did I wait so long to watch you???

This show was awesome!  True, I think it would have been better as a 16 episode drama instead of a 21 episode drama… as it definitely suffered from a drag down towards the end… but who cares?  It was fun.  It was funny.  It was romantic.  It was pissy and playful and interesting and enjoyable.

A young couple gets married, despite parental objections, only to have their marriage fall apart within the year.   He can’t see her side of things, she can’t see his side of things, they are both 19 and fully immersed in their own perspectives.  A few years pass, and both end up getting their medical degrees after the divorce.  Fate brings them back together when they both get assigned the same intern positions, in the ER, and are forced to meet again.  They’ve both grown up… but how long will it take them to realize it?

Overall Rating – 8/10.  Resuscitating a Relationship Requires Two Medical Degrees.

More humor, musings, spoilers, and giggles follow….

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Review – Tomorrow’s Cantabile / Naeil’s Cantabile

/ Lady Divine / 1 Comment

Review – Tomorrow’s Cantabile / Naeil’s Cantabile

Surprisingly odd, funny and enduring drama about a bunch of talented young musicians.  It’s a drama filled with a big cast of memorable characters – each with their own instruments and problems – but each with a common goal:  To Get Better, To Succeed.  The friendships and struggles make this show shine.  I thought this might be a mindless throw-away show, which is why I popped it in this week… as I’ve been extremely tired after work and wasn’t in the mood to think much.  I was just looking for a feather light diversion, but instead got a quality gem of entertainment.  I laughed, I worried, I got emotionally involved, and I wondered what would happen to ALL OF THE CHARACTERS as the show moved from episode to episode.  It starts off quite silly but quickly settles into more structure and higher stakes as the plotlines establish themselves.

Overall Rating – 8.5/10.  Brainwashed Into Loving Classical Music Through Adorable Characters.

Much More About Everything and Everyone – Spoilers too….

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Review – Cheer Up / Sassy Go Go

/ Lady Divine / 1 Comment

Review – Cheer Up / Sassy Go Go

Plotline:  The top 5% of an elite high school belong to the Cheerleading Club, but in name only… these kids just use the club space to further their studies.  Next door, the bottom 5% dance their pants off in a Hip Hop Club, annoying the nerds who share a wall with them.  When one of the top students worries her extracurriculars aren’t meeting Ivy League standards, it is suggested they turn their fake cheer club into a real one and try to win Regionals.  Unfortunately, none of the nerds can dance… so the school officials help them blackmail the Hip Hop Club into joining their team, increasing their chances of success.  Love, anger, friendship, betrayal, and lots of lost sleep over exams follow.

This show was a joy ride.  Just… a bunch of fun, from start to finish.  The problems of these students at their high pressure school were interesting to watch.  All the parents, officials, teachers, and outside pressure illustrated how complicated and stressful the system was.  But overall, it was just fluffy feel good fun.  Nothing too deep, nothing too serious, nothing too overdramatic.  The characters were cute and likable, even the unlikable ones (shout out to Chae Soo-Bin who killed it as the near nervous breakdown #2 in the school desperate to climb to the top at any cost), and the plotlines moved quickly through the 12 episode series.

I had just finished the book Revival by Stephen King… the ending of which left me slightly traumatized… so I needed something light weight and heart warming to ward off the nightmares.  This show as perfect for that.

Overall Rating – 8.5/10 – Bring It On, Elite Boarding School Style.

Review – Sungkyunkwan Scandal

/ Lady Divine / 7 Comments

Review – Sungkyunkwan Scandal

I recently rewatched Sungkyunkwan Scandal, for… what?  Maybe the sixth time?  It’s an adorable romantic comedy.  It is, in my opinion, the best historical romantic comedy.  Still standing strong since 2010.  It has it all.  The best of all the tropes.  All your favorite things.  All the things you hope to see in a romantic comedy.  All the tricks of the trade done just right.  And for some reason, it’s impossible for me to write a review about it.  Every time I try, I just end up wanting to watch it again.  Sometimes you just have a to watch it.  When everyone agrees that it’s awesome – how many reviews do you need to read, anyways?  Trust the crowd.  It’s true.  It’s really, really freaking good.

The cast is perfect.  The lead male is the most delightful stick in the mud nerd… and let’s face it, how often is the main character an uptight, mega nerd?  But it works!  It works because they paired him off with a equally smart lady disguised as a man, who has a sense of humor and a flair for drama.  It works because they balanced him off with polar opposite friends – a carefree, socialite who is interested in fashion and flirting (Yeorim!  Oh, how I love him!) and a misfit, rebel who is interested in fighting and social justice won through actions over words.  They’re all awesome.  I wanted to be bestie with all these besties.

Just watch it.  You won’t be sorry.  You’ll laugh and be entertained and smitten and charmed.  It’s unavoidable.  It’s so well written – the cast is large and memorable.

Overall Rating – 10/10.  Nerds in Love.

Review – (Suffering Through) The Bride of the Water God

/ Lady Divine / 3 Comments

Review – (Suffering Through) The Bride of the Water God

I am a sucker for supernatural stories, so of course I signed up for this show the minute it started.  Even though the first episode was lame.  Even though the second episode was lame.  Even though it never got better… it just… middled around towards the bottom.  But I kept watching it.  Every Tuesday.  Two new eps at a time.  Like an idiot.  Because I kept expecting something to happen… which is ridiculous, because after a certain point, you just know nothing is going to happen because if the writers knew how to make a good story, they would have been giving you one the entire time.

So, idiot me, watched this entire dumb show.  About the most boring, lifeless, and dreadfully uninspired divinities EVER.  Have there ever been more boring gods?  NO.  They have zero personality.  They don’t really do anything, apparently – they were as boring in the Realm of the Gods as they were in the Human World.  Just… dreadful.

As was our lead female.  What a low key bitch, right?  And her annoying habit of rambling out her self autobiography showed a sad lack of insight for a therapist.  I mean… didn’t she have a degree in psychology?  No wonder she didn’t have any clients.

Did the actors not read the script first?  I honestly can’t believe this show got the green light.  It’s so bad!  Plot holes, pointless characters, storylines that go no where, seemingly important things that turn out to be utterly meaningless, and bad fashion.  The romance was stupid, too.  Childish, annoying, insipid, awkward.  Eck.  I hated it.

Overall Rating – 2/10.  Drowning In A Plate of Water.

Review – Chicago Typewriter

/ Lady Divine / 3 Comments

Review – Chicago Typewriter

Stop the press!  This show gets the award for best use of books as decor.  Bookshelves galore – and all of them packed.  I’m talking… books, books, books!  Anyways, this was a fun and strange little drama about reincarnation and writers.  A group of independence fighters from the 1930’s end up reunited again in 2016… trying to solve the mystery of their past lives and their current situations.  Though I really liked this show, I thought it could have been better – so it’s not a perfect story.  But it’s such an unusual tale… with ghosts and shamans and snipers and book thieves and stalkers and quirky side characters… that it definitely stands out.

It’s no spoiler that all our characters had to die at some point to be reincarnated, and I’m not gonna lie… it was sentimental and gloriously patriotic and heartbreaking and awesome when it’s finally revealed at the end and I wept openly.  Before the tears, thankfully, there’s quite a bit of comedy and romance and screwball situations to amuse the viewing audience.  And did I mention mansions full of bookshelves?  It’s like the Beast’s castle, I swear.

For a drama about writers, I think they got a lot of things right.  Including the literary jokes (Stephen King references anyone?)!  Writing is tough.  My mother is a published author and it’s work, people… it’s not glamorous most of the time, it’s a lot of sitting in front of a computer typing until you’re fingers are numb.  And then doing the same thing the next day.  It’s deadlines and rewrites and editors and then, at some point, a finished product… followed by publicity tours which are also less glamorous than they seem.  Cause work is work.  And if writing is your profession, then it’s what you put 8 to 10 hours of you day into.  Just like other professions, 99% of the people in it aren’t amazingly successful and living in mansions filled with 40 foot bookshelves.

The three principal actors carried the show – drawing you into their past and present story lines with ease.  They all had a natural camaraderie that was believable.  Yoo Ah-In was perfectly cast as the neurotic, obsessive, serious author – he’s really quite a talent.  Ko Gyung-Pyo continues to shine by finding roles that are well suited for him – in other words, roles that don’t require too much besides a sensitive face and a calm demeanor.  Lim Soo-Jung, our wide eyed lady, was charming and a perfect balance between the two.  None of the side characters were interesting enough for me to bother writing about but all of them were fun enough that I was entertained by their presence.  Though it was great to see Yang Jin-sun playing the best friend/newly awakened shamen… I honestly think she’s leading lady material and hope she’ll get headline status again soon.

Overall Rating – 8/10.  When Ghostwriters are Actual Ghosts.

P.S.  It should be mentioned there is a few quality smooches in this drama… one with the same preamble used in Grease 2 “Let’s do it for our country!” and the other, my favorite, off a crowded street… meow!