A year of surprises and disappointments [Year In Review, Part 1]

It’s that time of year again, when we look back and size up the past twelve months of dramas. This is my fourth year (this is my fourth year?!) doing this, and it’s always one of my favorite posts to write, because while I love to analyze and parse dramas to within an inch of their lives via recaps, I also enjoy looking at them through a holistic lens, to survey the forest as well as the trees. Plus, I eagerly anticipate what my fellow drama-loving friends have to say. I know that we’ll always have differences of opinion, but that’s the fun of it.
As in past years, this’ll be a multi-part series, with five posts in total. If you’d like to check out past Year In Review posts, you can get there by way of this handy link — linky! — or via the recap index.
Without further ado, let’s get this show on the road.

SONG OF THE DAY
Cinderella’s Sister OST – “Smile Again” [ Download ]

As always, you’ll notice that some dramas are missing from my list. That’s because of that whole time-space continuum thing where I don’t have the time to watch every show ever, but hopefully amongst all of us writing review posts, we’ll get the big ones covered. The following are in chronological order by premiere date.

Wish Upon a Star

Wish Upon a Star is really two dramas rolled into one. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it’s two dramas frankensteined together with only the feeblest effort to link the halves in any meaningful way. One of these dramas is adorable, addictive, energetic, and sweet. The other drama is crap. For me, the lure of the former outweighed the buzzkill of the latter enough that when I think back on the drama, I recall it fondly.
I wasn’t expecting to watch Wish Upon a Star, much less get hooked and recap the whole thing. For one thing, the day it premiered was a busy, busy Monday that saw four premiere episodes, and it was the least interesting-sounding selection of the bunch. (The others were youth-oriented God of Study, workplace romance Pasta, and thoughtful sageuk Jejoongwon.) I gave the first two episodes a cursory watch, and while I was entertained, I wasn’t sold. But as the the lead character (Choi Jung-won’s Pal-gang) went from frivolous shopaholic to dedicated surrogate mother to her five orphaned, adopted siblings, it started to develop substance and heart, just as Pal-gang did.
And the kids! Adorable, yes, but what really made them stand out is the way they were more than mere plot devices needed to tie Pal-gang down to her new maternal role. They had distinct personalities and developed familial bonds with their new housemates, Kang-ha and Jun-ha (Kim Ji-hoon, Shin Dong-wook), bringing about changes in them as well. The unlikely bond that sprung up between young Pa-rang and cold lawyer Kang-ha was one of the highlights, as the boy’s unconditional love melted the latter’s icy exterior.
Alas, we had that pesky other half of the drama to contend with: the chaebol family with its scheming mother, scheming daughter, and secret baby plotline. That secondary plot increasingly lost touch with reality (not that it was all too acquainted with it in the first place) and took the tone from cute family bonding to makjang insanity. Second lead Chae Young-in was useless — haughty, sneering, in dire need of a clue — and she dragged down Shin Dong-wook with her. (Where was the charming, cool lead from Soulmate?) It’ll be a while before I can forgive her for ruining his last pre-army project (although to be fair, he had an unfortunate tendency to overemote; his intensity was out of step with the rest of the drama and came off a little unhinged).
Even more than the cuteness of the kids and the hilarity of the comedy (such as watching straitlaced Kang-ha dealing with the Night From Hell, which has him dirtied by a soiled diaper, vomited upon, and car stolen), there are two things that particularly endear this drama to me. First is that we get significant and satisfying growth from both leads, and much of that growth is spurred by the other, which makes their eventual romantic pairing that much more effective in a long-term sense. She grows up and becomes a responsible adult, while he lets his guard down and trades some of his cynicism for open affection.
Second is the fact that the drama actually delivered on its anti-Cinderella claims. Pal-gang dreams of being a Cinderella in the beginning, perfectly content to be a trophy wife. But when she decides to devote herself to raising her siblings and putting her frivolous past behind her, she actually means it. There no “until Prince Charming comes along to solve all my problems” caveat to dull the effect of her conviction, and she resists the easy outs offered to her via her rich new boyfriend and rich new grandpa. Props for that. Even so, at the end of the day she also realizes that being independent shouldn’t preclude love or marriage, now that she has made her point and delivered on the promise to not count on others to save her. She’s one heroine who earned her happily ever after.

The Woman Who Still Wants To Marry

The Woman Who Still Wants to Marry – “오늘의 날씨” (Today’s weather) [ Download ]

MBC’s little-watched The Woman Who Still Wants To Marry is one of this year’s gems and one of the most underappreciated, even by myself. Sure, while I was watching the show I knew it was solid and insightful and at times laugh-out-loud funny. But it wasn’t until several months and numerous disappointments later that I appreciated more fully the drama’s balance of outrageous humor and its thoughtful handling of romantic, friendship, and family issues.
Even at its silliest, the drama is in tune with its heart; in this case, the friendships at the core. For instance, Da-jung’s drunken faceplant into wet cement is one of my favorite comic moments, but what makes it even better is the way Shin-young swoops to the rescue, because that’s what girlfriends do when our best girlfriends are drunk and stupid and needing the benefit of someone’s better, sober-er judgment — whether that sober judgment involves holding back your hair as you cough up last night’s mistake, or, as in this case, chopping it off to free you from a sticky (har) situation.
Centered around successful reporter Shin-young (Park Jin-hee), the drama follows her career foibles, romantic entanglements, and her friendship with her best girls, Da-jung and Bu-ki. In a nutshell, it’s a drama about the issues commonly faced by the modern working woman, which is a horribly dry way to describe the bright, effervescent fun spirit of this series. Not only does the drama tackle what it feels like to be 34, single, and happy about it despite the world telling you that you really should feel somehow lacking, it weaves together its various plots with an effortless, humorous touch.
Nowadays the noona dating relationship is a common drama trend, but rarely does the drama actually address some basic issues wrought by the age difference in a thoughtful, realistic way. Shin-young’s relationship with 24-year-old Min-jae brings up some valid points about being at different points in your life, not to mention the stickiness that arises in these nontraditional setups that mean your potential father-in-law may be your own age. (Also your ex-boyfriend.) But neither character is shoved into a stereotypical corner, and the two wade through these uncharted waters with hopeful optimism — it’s not so much about happily ever after as it is about being the happiest you can be and keeping an open mind about where that’ll take you.
It only takes one look at other dramas that attempted breeziness and instead came off painfully labored in order to realize how rare it is that a show hits the perfect balance between lightness and substance. The Woman Who Still Wants To Marry was a comfort-food drama that also made you think. And feel. And laugh. Best of both worlds.

Oh! My Lady

I probably wouldn’t have stuck with Oh! My Lady had the timing not been right; it aired at a time when there was a lull in the drama landscape, and I was willing to stick with a show that wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be. Here was a familiar setup — older woman with younger man, housekeeper and employer, rich man and poor woman — that didn’t do anything very special with those tropes but was made watchable by the natural charm of Chae Rim and Choi Siwon. She has a warm, engaging screen presence and he, despite his lack of technical acting skill, has plenty of charisma, and together their bickering relationship carried the show.
They didn’t, however, have much in the way of sexual chemistry, which makes Oh! My Lady an odd entry in the rom-com genre. Perhaps the writer or PD picked up on their platonic noona-dongsaeng vibe and decided to leave the romance on the back burner, instead opting to highlight Min-woo’s (Choi) growth as a reluctant father after finding himself saddled with a young daughter he didn’t know he had. That was a wise choice, because that’s frankly a more compelling and less-explored plot than the housekeeper-employer romance.
Min-woo has a fantastic character arc, going from disinterested dad — the kind who even momentarily considers ditching his new burden on the street, for shame — to the kind who throws his reputation and public image to the wind without a second thought when his daughter’s happiness is at stake. But Kae-hwa (Chae Rim) is the same at the end that she was at the beginning, which isn’t so terrible for her since she was a decent human being to start with, but sort of a waste from a dramatic standpoint.
As a result, this drama goes from being Oh! My Lady to Oh! My Daddy, which is great for Choi Siwon but a damn shame for Chae Rim, who is making some disappointing choices lately. She was wonderful as Dal-ja (not to mention her earlier roles), so why is she playing older than her age, frumping her looks, and doing stuff like Good Job, Good Job and this drama, where she gets shunted off to the side as a prop for Min-woo’s development?
Oh! My Lady isn’t a huge disappointment because it’s a drama that didn’t make big promises to start with, but its one glaring flaw is that the lack of romance makes the resolution dissatisfying: When Min-woo pursues Kae-hwa, we get the sense that he’s drawn to her as a friend and as a mother for his child, not because he’s in love with her. In fact, it may have been better to just take that approach, but in asserting that he feels a romantic love when we haven’t seen it and can’t feel it, the ending rings false.
My recommendation? Watch this one for the father-daughter growth, which is sweet and satisfying, and feel free to skip the rest.

Cinderella’s Sister

It’s the ones you love that have the power to hurt you the most. Cinderella’s Sister had beauty, darkness, depth, emotion, complexity, and one of the most compelling characters of the year — Moon Geun-young’s complicated, nuanced Eun-jo — and, four episodes in, was simply captivating. And although many fans will mark Episode 4 as the marker for when the drama lost its spark — there was a time jump and a PD switch — I’ll even argue that its spell continued through its eighth episode. Or at least for me.
The drama was chock full of talented actors, and Moon Geun-young did not fail to blow me away with her portrayal of Eun-jo as a damaged, defensive, abrasive, distrusting young woman who desperately wants to feel loved but has learned too soon that love can betray and hurt you. That the lesson comes from her own mother (played commandingly by an always-superb Lee Mi-sook) only makes it harder for others to crack through that seemingly impervious shell she builds up around her, but one person manages it — stepfather Dae-sung, played by Kim Gab-soo, whose performance regularly brought me to tears.
So convincing is Moon that you’d think she’d been playing rebellious teens her whole career, and she made you feel Eun-jo’s pain and fear. It’s a crying shame that the drama then took these wonderful characterizations and stuck them on a narrative treadmill for about ten episodes — one step forward, one step back, on and on and on. It’s one thing if that lack of forward movement were merely boring — that allows you to mentally check out and detach, chalking it up as just another disappointment.
But Cinderella’s Sister piled on the angst and gave us tears, agonized family conflicts, and a whole lotta internalized brooding. Eun-jo clashed with stepsister Hyo-sun (Seo Woo), fought with Mom, and angrily shook off the well-intentioned advances of Ki-hoon (a sorely wasted Chun Jung-myung) in practically every episode, which became simply exhausting. How about some payoff to counter the pain? No? Let me go curl up and cry from all the emotional turbulence, then.
By the time the ending came around, I felt more like the drama was put out its misery than had achieved a believable resolution. These characters never learned, and therefore I had no hope that in their fictional future, they’d achieved any peace. Never has a happy ending felt so bleak. It’s enough to drive you to drink. (hic!)

Personal Taste

Personal Taste had been on my radar from the moment I heard about its premise — boy pretends to be gay to live with a girl — and the casting solidified my excitement. Sohn Ye-jin has long been a film star, but it would be a treat to see her back in drama form, while people had been anticipating Lee Min-ho‘s new project for months, dying to see if he could re-create the draw of his Gu Jun-pyo character that was such a sensation in last year’s Boys Before Flowers.
Casting, check. Premise, check. Hilarious sidekicks, check. Chemistry of leads, check. So where’d it go wrong?
Well, writing was certainly partly to blame, but I blame directing even more. Even when the plot was zipping along and the characters cute-ing it up all over the place (and each other), the drama found ways to muck up its scenes by editing poorly, inserting odd beats and cutting important ones, using strange music, and basically wrecking the effect that everyone else had worked so hard to achieve.
What saved Personal Taste from being a total disappointment is its wacky humor (chainsaws, gay-not-gay misunderstandings) and heartfelt acting. Sohn Ye-jin breathed life and spirit into her Kae-in character, bringing her vulnerability alive with painful clarity, and ultimately it was Sohn who was most wasted by the underdeveloped plot. Lee Min-ho had wonderful chemistry with her, and thankfully didn’t overdo the feigned gay act, which could have been uncomfortable at best, offensive at worst. (Ryu Seung-ryong must be mentioned for playing a gay man with sincerity and depth, and was a happy surprise.)
It’s the cohabitation dramas that go through extreme narrative backflips in order to maneuver the leads into the same living space — can’t risk soiling their virtue in the name of roommate hijinks — but once we get past the inanity of the premise and get them under the same roof, bring on the hilarity. Whether that means stumbling in on your roommie in the bathroom, or having to endure the mortification of overhearing her whispering to a friend about seeing your… you know… and describing it as “only” so big. Those scenes gave us some of our best comedic bits, and went a long way into maintaining the drama’s charm.
Yet as disheartening as Cinderella’s Sister was, Personal Taste was even more disappointing for me. Perhaps it’s because while Cinderella’s Sister was on an obvious, steady decline through its latter half, killing my hope slowly and surely, Personal Taste kept injecting flashes of awesome hilarity and heart at just the right point to cause that hope to flare up. And then killed it with the next implausible plot turn. What a tease.

Coffee House

Coffee House – “Page One” [ Download ]

Despite my great affection for Kang Ji-hwan, I had no real expectations for Coffee House, and maybe that’s why I was pleasantly surprised by (most of) it.
I’ve gotten so inured to the standard kdrama cliches by now that any deviation from the norm is a welcome change, and in that Coffee House wins several points. First off, there’s the off-the-wall lead character, Jin-soo (Kang Ji-hwan), who is so far from the standard hero that it’s difficult knowing what to do with him at first. He’s the boss from hell, forcing his hapless secretary (Ham Eun-jung) to undergo numerous wacky schemes, all in the name of writerly experimentation. Yeah, he’s a jerk, and erratic and crazy — but also entertaining for all his eccentricity. He’s hilariously creative in his pranks, particularly the elaborate ones he pulls on his exasperating sunbae (Jung Woong-in). His actions often seem random and insane, until we see the logic emerge at the end.
And while he has a dark side, I appreciate that this drama doesn’t glamorize it as a bad boy in need of a good woman to “fix” him; his depression is crippling, destructive, and hinders his ability to connect with people in a meaningful way. I appreciate the layers that were built into his character, even if I didn’t always like him.
But surprisingly, it was Park Shi-yeon who won me over with her Eun-young character. She was a careerwoman who wasn’t coldly ambitious, was loving but not about to lose herself in an unhealthy relationship, a loyal friend who could call her friend on his bullshit — she wasn’t a cookie-cutter heroine who ticks off all the boxes on a Cliche-o-Meter, like so many heroines.
Their romance was also one of my favorites of the year, because it’s one where I felt for them. Oh, there were lots of couples that I found absolutely adorable this year, but most of them were in the “cute” category; often I felt their romance mentally, but not in a real, gut sense. With Jin-soo and Eun-young, it’s a combination of the unconventional setup — friends for years, but kept apart by the memory of his dead ex-wife — and the actors’ chemistry that brought the bond to life. When they kissed in the rain, you felt her yearning, and later, when they kissed at the train station, you had a palpable sense of his.
Coffee House wasn’t an addictive watch for me — it had uneven spots and the pacing faltered at points — but its unpredictability kept me tuning in.

Bad Guy

Was this the year of wacked-out endings or what? And in that category, Bad Guy takes the cake.
The drama had everything going for it at the outset: strong actors, wonderfully melancholy ambiance with flashes of darkness, moody score, an assured sense of pacing that told me to trust the skilled creative powers steering us through this mystery/revenge thriller that, as its title suggested, was full of moral ambiguity and complex characterizations.
On the acting front, Kim Nam-gil played his Gun-wook character with a detached, impenetrable air of cool, while Kim Jae-wook showed raw acting talent as a damaged chaebol. Oh Yeon-soo was impressive, though more technically sound than moving, and Jung So-min played her spoiled brat role to a tee. The problem was definitely not with the cast.
There were chinks in the glossy armor early on, of course, but I was willing to overlook them and simply bask in the stunning visuals and compelling acting. The drama had a tendency to over-convolute its plot in the name of melodramatic effect (a bane of kdramas as a whole, really), such as the narrative wringer it put lead character Gun-wook through as a child. It heaped trauma upon trauma on him, as though it couldn’t quite trust the audience to accept the moral grayscale, watering it down so that it wasn’t so intriguingly ambiguous after all.
But it wasn’t until the final quarter — about the time that the drama got cut down and Kim Nam-gil was called for army duty — that it became evident that the confident hand guiding us through the drama wasn’t quite so confident after all, and maybe had been bluffing all along. Themes and plots that had been introduced were resolved in maddening ways — the worst offender being that a character committed murder and got away with it, scot-free. And how nobody knew that a crucial character had died.
There were some interesting issues raised — such as how our bad guy wasn’t a bad guy after all but really just craved familial love, only to realize that he’d destroyed his own family. But when you create actions in a drama, you sorta have to see them through the end, and recognize that the actions convey a message. And while nihilism is a theme, it’s not a message, which leads me to the question: So what was the point? Of revenge, of truth, of living? Of this drama?

I Am Legend

And it started so well.
The premise sounded fresh — repressed society wife finds liberation in divorce and rock music — and the casting was spot-on. The songs were catchy and the casting of actresses who played their own instruments and performed live was a definite boon. The initial conflict as the wife’s in-laws fought her tooth and nail in refusing a divorce was a gripping underdog story where it really mattered that our heroine win the fight, because she was fighting not for truth or justice (noble but intangible values), but for her very self.
Kim Jung-eun was the perfect actress to play Seol-hee, who is capable of sass but has gradually had that spark suffocated out of her over years of cruel indifference on the part of her husband and his family. I rooted for her to find her wings and stand up for herself, and that kept me invested through the divorce case.
But then the divorce was resolved and half the drama still stretched ahead of us, which they filled by introducing a second lawsuit, making Seol-hee into a crusader for the people. The problem is, even occupation dramas should be about our heroes, not the case at hand. And we just didn’t care enough about the market to make the latter half any sort of interesting.
The drama missed opportunities to do more with the characters, such as the divorce lawyer who is Seol-hee’s rival in the courtroom and for both men — each woman’s ex is the other’s new flame. (Yeah, how tidy is that?) I was intrigued with this character because it’s one we don’t often see — a single mother who gives up custody of her child to her ex-husband because she is ambitious about her career, who isn’t negligent but actually pretty loving. Especially when you have another character in the cast who is a young mother struggling to balance her baby and her career aspirations (Juny). I wished there was more done with those characters, as well as drummer Su-in, who was sorely underdeveloped and didn’t even merit a backstory.
On the romance front, chemistry presented a problem: Too much of it with her dastardly ex, and not nearly enough with the new love interest, the bland songwriter. The setup should have worked, with her divorce from the cold lawyer freeing her for a new romance — or at least hot fling — with the musician she’d had a mad crush on years ago. But chemistry is a tricky thing, unpredictable and impossible to force, so instead the drama left that thread loose.
Which would have been fine if the rock band angle had sustained the show; the use of Seol-hee’s music to mirror her emotions in the first half was a nice touch. Yet here, too, the drama dropped the ball in opting to push the band aside in favor of that market storyline. I Am Legend chose to highlight the most mundane portion and sacrificed what made it charming in the first place — the friendship of the four ladies at the center and their growth as a band — and for that it gets a huge yawn.

Joseon X-Files

I feel confident calling this the best drama of the year, with its superlative writing, directing, plotting, and pacing. It hardly misstepped, if at all, and didn’t talk down to the audience. Sure, that meant that sometimes I had to watch an episode again to get the nuances down, but I’m so tired of dramas that assume we’re idiots that I greatly appreciate one that lays out clues for me to pick up on my own, so I can revel in the discovery when I do.
The concept mixes two disparate genres, sci-fi and sageuk, which is an experiment that could have gone horribly awry had it not been able to strike the right tone. Yet it was always in control of its mystery, dropping tantalizing hints at deliberate intervals — it gave you a glimpse of the overarching story that hovered over the drama, much like that great UFO that starts us off, dipping down occasionally to be seen, then zooming out of sight, into whatever space and dimension it came from.
There are aliens and spacecraft and paranormal activity at play, but ultimately this story is about Hyung-do’s journey from the safe confines of the known, visible world into the outer reaches of the unknown. Which is why the ending, to me, is so fitting. He has been through this incredible series of events, his eyes opened to phenomena he used to eschew as hokey superstition, and concludes that despite whatever greater truth is out there, what matters to him is the truth as he defines it for himself. It’s an argument for personal integrity, something he never loses his grasp on, and how can you argue with that?
This is one drama that doesn’t tie up its loose ends neatly, preferring to lay the groundwork and let you interpret based on the guidelines they’ve established. An entirely open-ended finale would have driven me nuts, but there’s just enough closure — and clues as to what happened — for me to be satisfied. The drama gently suggests lines of thinking that leave you free to believe — or not. Just as we do in real life.

My Girlfriend Is a Gumiho

I talk about the Hong sisters a lot, but when you’ve established a brand so distinctive and strong, and never fail to deliver a zany mix of humor, cheekiness, and adorable lead couples, you’ve earned a little viewer loyalty. My Girlfriend Is A Gumiho is their sixth drama in six years, and if nothing else, their ability to churn out zippy stories so disparate in genre and plot from each other is admirable. That they do so with charm and humor is downright amazing.
I’ve come to expect a few things from them, some of them good and some not quite so much, and Gumiho has ‘em all: endearing leads, a comic courtship that uses humor to undercut moments before they get too saccharine, pop culture references, and lots of parodies. But with this drama, they introduced a new element — fantasy mythos — that elevates it by adding another dimension of meaning and symbolism to the story.
By making the gumiho real and plunking her down in modern-day Korea, we get a whole host of metaphors for human relationships that the writers play with on both literal and figurative levels. The ethereal being wants desperately to become human and live in the world, rather than watching it zoom by her from her immortal prison, on eternal standby.
She’s paired with a wastrel of a manchild who hasn’t quite learned what it means to be human either — and by extension, what it is to be a man — because he’s been pampered and privileged. As they fall in love, they both mature and establish their own rules for happiness, which is literal for them — how to keep both alive when there’s only enough ki, or life energy, for one person? — but which could just as well be a metaphorical representation of two young people discovering what it means to be in love and reconciling seemingly insurmountable differences to be together.
Shin Mina has been around for a decade and was quite famous in her own right, but the Mi-ho character was still a breakthrough for her, particularly since many had written her off as mere CF star and pretty face. She was luminous as Mi-ho, imbued with a childish curiosity that stopped short of making her seem stupid. She looked at the world with wide-eyed wonder, lit up from within, and won us over with her love of all things cow, pig, and chicken (in that order!), her adorably literal interpretation of language, and the way she loved unabashedly, confidently, and unwaveringly. We could all take a cue from her.
If I have to voice any criticisms of the drama, it’s that because the Hong sisters are so free with their favorite devices and twists, Gumiho didn’t feel quite as fresh as I wish it had. That’s what you get when you’ve gotten familiar with a particular artist; you want them to surprise you every time, and when they don’t, you feel bummed at the recycled elements which may only be visible to those who are equally familiar with the entire oeuvre.
However, taken on its own merits, Gumiho was winning and at times heartbreaking, and above all a breath of fresh air.

Sungkyunkwan Scandal

Every year has that one show that inspires massive fandom fervor and addictions (past years had Coffee Prince, Boys Before Flowers, You’re Beautiful), and this year Sungkyunkwan Scandal was IT. And for good reason: It had adorable characters, boyish camaraderie, solid conflict, and an ideological bent that gave a little added meaning to what could have been mere romantic-comedy fluffery. And that’s just the story. There’s also the gorgeous cinematography, the wonderful score, the bright and colorful visual palette.
Sungkyunkwan Scandal was addicting to the highest degree — at least for the first ten or so episodes, before that slowed. Even so, there was so much energy and life to the characters that it built up a pretty substantial store of goodwill with me. I know Sun-joon (Yoochun) was staid and boring, but I loved his integrity, and how he maintained it without being pretentious — he was noble and righteous to the core, not just trying to demonstrate superiority. Yong-ha (Song Joong-ki) was an intriguing mix of bold and fearful — his “secret” as a merchant’s son kept him from engaging fully, lest he be found out, but he developed a bond of loyalty with his friends that brought out his courage.
And do I even have to mention Jae-shin (Yoo Ah-in)? Having been impressed with Yoo back in 2008′s thoroughly silly Strongest Chil Woo, I wasn’t surprised that he became the breakout star of this drama, though I was surprised at just how intense the fervor would become. He was the traditional hero — brave, dashing, with a pained past and daddy issues — only he wasn’t the hero. Hero points AND tragic never-gonna-get-her points! Is it no wonder we all fell victim to the Guh-ro virus? (While Yoon-hee (Park Min-young) wasn’t my favorite character, she held up as the object of these guys’ affections, so she did her part.)
But more than each person on their own, Sungkyunkwan Scandal was sprinkled with some kind of pixie dust that made the total more than the sum of its parts. Separate, they were cute. Engaging. Endearing. But together, they were awesome, and the witnessing camaraderie that sprung up between them was like being dosed with happy juice.
I do have fairly major issues with the ending, which was all fanservice and pretty close to no character consistency, and sadly that does dull the memory for me. If only it hadn’t reneged on its earlier promises to give us a satisfactory out for the problem it set up — of how to reconcile Yoon-hee’s brilliant mind and her true identity with the strictures of the times. Instead, it left us hanging, and I think I’m still bitter about that, having had such faith that they would deliver.
A cop-out of an ending usually kills my love entirely (see: Bad Guy, Cinderella’s Sister), but Sungkyunkwan was so winning that I still remember it fondly, even if it is more as a “what could have been.” (Answer: AWESOME.)

Playful Kiss

Playful Kiss had an awful first episode that undoubtedly kept some from tuning in for the rest. But in a way, I think there was a benefit to the slow start in that the rest of us who stuck around lowered our expectations accordingly, and therefore were able to glean the fun out of the drama. Or maybe that’s me grasping for a silver lining.
The drama had a number of flaws, but wasn’t without its charm. My favorite thing about it was undoubtedly Jung So-min, who played Ha-ni with a realistic, heartfelt touch that I’m not convinced that the character was written to have. More than any actress in recent memory, she captured the chaotic emotional contradictions of what it feels like to be young and in love (or in crush) — the giddiness of a brief mundane encounter, the teeny voice of reason that reminds you that the crush is better off abandoned, the devastation in knowing you’re nothing to him alternating with the undying hope that maybe, just maybe, he really was looking at you this time.
She embodied that complex well of emotions so wholly that I felt embarrassed for her when she faltered, proud when she stood up for herself, and, yes, exasperated when her feelings got the better of her and she went back to pining for Seung-jo. Every. Damn. Time. But it was an exasperation of the sort you feel for a good friend, or a sister, born of concern and affection. She was Ha-ni — all heart, not so much brain.
Seung-jo, on the other hand, hardly deserved her, which almost everybody realized eventually but Ha-ni herself. I’m not a fan of his type of character or the dynamics of this relationship — not one tiny bit — and routinely had to fight my aggravation at how he liked to mess with Ha-ni’s emotions for sport, or how Ha-ni was never able to escape his thrall. Once it was clear that he reciprocated, Playful Kiss got a lot more fun to watch, but I still wish there was more substance to this drama. Slice of life is fine and all, but there were stretches where these two hardly spoke, so we didn’t even have the benefit of cute bickering to tide us over.
What’s ironic is that had this been Kim Hyun-joong’s debut drama, I think his prospects as an idol-turned-actor would have been much brighter, even though Boys Before Flowers had tons more viewers, more buzz, and a bigger place in the public consciousness. He isn’t exactly good in Playful Kiss, but he’s serviceable, and in that regard I have no complaints with his acting. (There was hardly any acting to be done on his part, because his place in the story was as a cold, mysterious cipher to Ha-ni for much of it.) Alas, he’ll have to wear the tarnish of Boys Before Flowers for a little longer, with Playful Kiss having flopped so spectacularly in the ratings.
Ultimately this drama isn’t one to watch for anything other than brain candy, since plot is nonexistent — some stories don’t even conclude properly, they just fade out and we pick up some time later. It’s all about the two characters growing up alongside and gradually toward each other, so if you find either character lacking, chances are this isn’t the drama for you. On the other hand, you might enjoy it if you don’t mind low-key, low-drama cuteness.

Dr. Champ

Though not an unequivocal success in terms of ratings or popularity, Dr. Champ may be the closest thing we’ve had to a decent sports-related drama in years, possibly a decade or more. It isn’t strictly a sports drama, since it’s more about the doctor at the center, played by Kim So-yeon, and the cases were only relevant inasmuch as were a vehicle for her conflict and growth. But the best sports dramas are about people before they’re about the sport, anyway.
In avoiding a lot of the cliches that have come to be used as crutches, Dr. Champ offered a refreshing change, though it was perhaps a bit on the underwhelming side. There was no Big Drama, which meant that the drama had less momentum carrying us from week to week, especially with the episodic nature of the stories; plots would resolve in an episode or two, and then a new conflict would befall our doctors and provide the next obstacle.
Ji-heon’s (Jung Kyeo-woon) relationship with rival-friend Sang-bong was one of the shining highlights of the show, providing us a healthy dose of bromance (So. Cute.) and supplying Ji-heon with some emotional turmoil when certain things go awry. His courtship with Yeon-woo (Kim So-yeon) had its share of cute moments, though truth be told, it was one-sided stuff for far too long. (Kim So-yeon is a brilliant actress and is finally getting some well-deserved recognition, but her character was often hard to get behind, with her snappishness and anemic reception of Ji-heon’s numerous attempts to win her over.)
On the other hand, Uhm Tae-woong strikes me as the kind of actor who needs a specific vehicle in order to be brilliant, and unfortunately, Dr. Champ wasn’t it — he’s much better being wry and just a little twisted. It didn’t help that he was paired with an energy-suck of a co-star, Cha Ye-ryun, whose bland character was not helped by her bland portrayal.
That means I sped through those scenes as much as I could, preferring to stay with the slice-of-life dramas that complicated Yeon-woo’s life, and sympathetic characters like exuberant puppy-dog man-child Ji-heon and his motley cast of hard-bodied judo teammates, who kept things moving. And as we know, a little bromance goes a long way.

Runaway Plan B

Runaway Plan B – “Mayday” [ Download ]

I had almost written off Runaway Plan B early on, because while it was flashy and entertaining, it was also very empty. Normally I don’t have the patience to wait eight episodes for a drama to get good, especially if I’m not getting anything out of it. On the other hand, all it takes is one compelling thread, one promise of better things to come, to keep me hanging in there. In the case of Runaway Plan B, there were a few.
First, the matchup of Ji-woo (Rain) and Do-soo (Lee Jung-jin), whose cat-and-mouse chase took them through Asia and into some inventive fighting sequences. Crowded streets, high-rise roofs, flatbed trucks, pedi-cabs, warehouses, swimming pools — there was no end to their creative combat scenes. While the fighting eventually grew tiresome, the intensity with which the adversaries poured themselves into the clashes was imbued with an emotional undercurrent that brought to life the desperation of one to capture, and the other to evade capture.
Second was the cop romance, adorably anchored by the feisty So-ran (Yoon Jin-seo). While we are enjoying a greater range in kdrama heroines these days, most often it’s still the hero doing the pursuing. So-ran was sassy and strong, but not above relishing some clinch time spent with her oppa, and declared her feelings for him repeatedly and frankly. So-ran grinning giddily, mid-high-speed-chase, as Do-soo finds himself inadvertently wrapped around her is still one of my favorite moments of their courtship.
Third, there’s Rain’s comic performance. More impressive than the wit and ease of his line delivery, or his goofy charm, or his dramatic intensity later on, was the way he was able to turn from one emotion to another with the flip of a switch — one second pouring on the cheesy charm, the next glowering fiercely — and maintaining his character’s sincerity throughout.
The second half of the show (the better half) saw the silly comedy transition into high stakes and life-and-death drama. Funny enough, despite all the frantic jet-setting and running in the first half, it’s actually the second half that zoomed along, plot-wise. Ji-woo and Jin-yi (Lee Na-young) found themselves wanted by a mastermind and targeted by a series of assassins, and as their bond grew, so did mine with the series. Finally, they were in true danger, the kind that Ji-woo couldn’t just high-kick his way out of with a swagger and a grin.
I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the overly simplified resolution to the Big Bad — it’s a little toothless, admittedly — but on the whole I found Runaway a pleasant surprise, one whose merits I wish hadn’t taken so long to discover.

Mary Stayed Out All Night

Oh, Mary. You know, Mary Stayed Out All Night isn’t my biggest disappointment of the year, and I don’t think it’s the worst drama, either. It’s just… frustratingly blank. It’s nonsensical, but not in a truly wacked-out, energetic way that would make it brilliant camp fun. Blandly benign. Which would really render this a drama a non-issue, if not for its biggest crime, which isn’t something it does but what it doesn’t do: namely, make worthwhile use of three shining young talents.
When considering her performance in this drama alone, one might suppose that Moon Geun-young fell into a role that suited her perfectly — an innocent, cute, damsel-in-distress who fits the stereotypical Candy heroine type — and dismiss her performance. She’s so natural, so earnest, and so Mary that you’d think she’d been doing these characters all her life… until you remember that just earlier this year, she was so surly and bitter in Cinderella’s Sister. And that two years ago, she won a Daesang for playing a cross-dressing painter in historical drama Painter of the Wind.
Same with Jang Geun-seok: Mu-gyul seems like such an easy role for him to play that it’s easy to overlook that Hwang Tae-kyung, his character in last year’s You’re Beautiful, was like Mu-gyul’s polar opposite in everything except maybe love of his own hair. Where Tae-kyung was cold and uptight, Mu-gyul is free and warm.
Kim Jae-wook had just shown us such budding promise in Bad Guy earlier this year, only recede into the wallpaper here, only emerging occasionally to interrupt the lovebirds or engage in a well-timed back hug. So really, it’s their talent that makes these actors seem so natural when these characters so lack consistency.
If only they had a story to support them. Quickly unraveling at the seams as it heads toward the finish, Mary is flailing and seems to be making a mad grab and any and everything around it on its way down — insane parents, illogical behavior, repeated story beats, kidnappings. On one hand, it’s makes for an entertaining watch, even if it wasn’t intentionally meant to be so. But there’s no crying over spilled milk, so maybe unintentional amusement is the best way to make the best of an unfortunate situation.

Secret Garden

Billed as a body-swapping fantasy romantic-comedy, Secret Garden is really a story about classism, buoyed by crackling sexual tension between leads Hyun Bin and Ha Ji-won. (To be honest, one-half of that pairing is infuriating me these days, so my impression of the drama is a little colored. But the chemistry between the actors? Off the charts.)
Since the fantasy element was brief and currently not in play (the body-swap has occupied a surprisingly small amount of real estate), Secret Garden‘s magic isn’t so much literal as it is tonal — it’s in the dreamy cinematography, the contemplative moods, the way Joo-won imagines Ra-im always nearby. That dash of whimsy carries over into the plot as well, even when there’s nothing strictly supernatural going on. I love these little touches, such as when a seemingly random shelf of book titles form an unintentional poem. It’s like finding beauty in unexpected places; maybe it doesn’t mean anything on its own, but it has the power to move you. Style without substance is not going to get a drama far, but style on top of substance can elevate a scene, or your emotional connection to a beat.
In addition, Secret Garden has a rollicking sense of humor, and has surprised a laugh out of me on more than one occasion. Some actors are better at carrying the humor than others — Yoon Sang-hyun overacts, Hyun Bin is a comedic revelation — but overall, the script is written (sharply, and wittily, at that) to tailor to their assets.
I’m hesitant to make any declarative statements when the drama’s still a ways from wrapping, but if things continue in this vein, Secret Garden will be one of my happy surprises of the year. I hadn’t been terribly intrigued about a body-swap drama when I first heard it announced, but as we know, execution is everything. Smooth directing, clever writing, and hilarious acting make this drama sparkle with enough life to rival one of Joo-won’s hand-stitched, imported designer tracksuits. (Finally, an instance where resemblance to that cursed tracksuit is a good thing!)

Rock Rock Rock

After watching My Girlfriend Is A Gumiho earlier this year, I had mentally filed Gumiho Hunter Noh Min-woo away as the latest entry on a long list of “pretty, but boring” actors. So when I decided to give this four-episode Drama Special miniseries a try, my first thought was, Wait, Noh Min-woo can act??? No longer was he the monotone emo guy with asymmetrical hair and guyliner trying to keep our couple apart. Suddenly he was boyish and alive, brimming with energy, dorky and cool at the same time, ablaze with passion for music. What the heck just happened? That just goes to prove the power of good casting (and the folly of miscasting).
To be honest, I’m not sure this drama would appeal to someone with no interest in the music or story of legendary rock band Boohwal, or perhaps in music in general. While Rock Rock Rock is made to be watched as a drama rather than a documentary or straight-up biopic, it is basically the life story of lead guitarist Kim Tae-won and the origins of the band. There are parts where my interest flagged, although overall I enjoyed seeing the lives of people I’d only known in a vague sense as public figures. But it does employ some nifty non-linear storytelling techniques to keep the narrative moving, skipping over years sometimes, and filling in the blank spots with flashbacks.
But if you’re a budding Noh Min-woo fan? By all means give it a watch; his performance alone is enough to tether the drama in heart and emotion and prove that he’s much better than playing at stone-cold emo boy. As a newly converted fan, I’m eager to see what he does next.

Phew, finally done! Stay tuned for the rest of the Year-in-Review series, and I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I know I will.

Objects in mirror are closer than they appear [Year In Review, Part 4]

I have to say, 2010 was a downright awesome year. It was the year of bromance, the year that Santa came in August, the year when guys had perms and noonas ruled, the year of the sparkly tracksuit and hoi-hoi, the year that makgulli made a comeback. But most importantly for me, it was the year I joined Dramabeans and got to know all of you. So thanks, for all the encouragement, the thoughtful commentary, the dissenting voices, the snark, and of course…the fangirling. It’s been a helluva year for this recapper, and I for one couldn’t ask for anything better for Christmas than one giant, crazy, Dramabeans family.



Kim Gun Mo – “울어버려” (Go Ahead and Cry) – Queen of Reversals OST Download

Here’s everything I watched in its entirety (unless otherwise stated) in 2010, in order of airdate:

The Woman Who Still Wants to Marry

Revisiting this series actually made me nostalgic. Why does January feel like a million years ago? The Woman Who Still Wants to Marry was all the right things for me, at just the right time. It had a great sense of humor that felt grounded in reality, because even if the situations seemed crazy (and boy, were they), they were based in characters that felt real.
At the heart of the drama was the trio of ladies: Shin-young, Da-jung, and Bu-ki were all such colorful and vivacious women, and watching them tread the murky waters of dating and working in their thirties just hit that sweet spot of funny, real, and poignant. Eom Ji-won in particular stole my heart as the flighty, marriage-obsessed Da-jung, who wore designer duds to seek out gurus and shamans to find her mate. She made me alternately sigh, laugh out loud, shake my head, and want to hug her.
But what drove the series was the quintessential noona-killer romance between 24-year old Min-jae (Kim Bum) and 34-year old Shin-young (Park Jin-hee), which just rocked my socks off. These two played such a natural progression of their chemistry and their eventual love that I was completely enamored with this couple and their every flirty exchange.
What’s great is that with a couple like this, the basic premise of their age gap means that conflict is inherent in their relationship, and the drama doesn’t shy away from what Shin-young faces when she chooses to give in to her heart. It’s an organic conflict that comes from the characters just living according to their respective ages, so it doesn’t have to rely on crazy twists of fate to drum up drama.
Despite the fact that Min-jae’s mom and Shin-young’s ex have their own loveline which is way too coincidental, the setup of the 44-34-24 ages and the turning points that each character faces is such a nicely woven world, where love, work, age, and dreams collide.
What I loved more than anything was that Shin-young was a character with whom I could identify, and root for with no reservation. She had real fears and limitations and struggled to get what she had in life, and didn’t repress her own desires like a sappy Cinderella. This is definitely going to end up a rainy day drama for me, because it made me thankful for my friends, hopeful for my future, and wishing for that same kind of unconventional love.

Pasta

Pasta had one thing going for it, in my book: my endless love for Lee Seon-kyun and Gong Hyo-jin. If they had cast anyone I loved any less, I would’ve checked out of this miles before it ended. They sure were cute, the bickering, yelling, pasta-making duo. But oy with the story that goes nowhere.
This drama had a lot of great elements that I took to right away. For one, it’s set in a restaurant, which I love by default. It’s also got some great food porn that made me super hungry and even attempt cooking (horror!) when watching the show. Let’s just say it didn’t end well for a certain frying pan. But in its attempt to dramatize the inner workings of the kitchen and the artistry of cooking, it sort of went too far…so much so that by the end of the drama, I was throwing my hands in the air going, “How HARD could it POSSIBLY be to make Linguine with Clams?? Is it the goddamn Mona Lisa of pastas?”
They wanted to make the world of cooking seem dramatic, but ended up trivializing it because I can only be made to care about Linguine with Clams for so long. Really. It’s Linguine. With Clams. I’m gonna need a little more conflict that means something to those of us whose cooking vocabulary consists of: reheat, toast, and call for delivery. How about actually utilizing your second leads or giving the couple a conflict that doesn’t involve yelling over pasta?
What amazes me is that nothing ever happens to the main characters, despite lots of scurrying about. It’s like watching a chef do lots of cool tricks with your food as he cooks it right in front of you, and then when you look down at your plate, it’s just fried rice. All flash, no bang.
It’s actually so uneventful that the drama doesn’t so much end, as it just…stops. He doesn’t let her go to Italy to better herself as a chef for admittedly selfish reasons, and then they just go about being in the same kitchen, with the same dynamic that they always had. So, then…why exactly did I have to wait twenty episodes for that? What changed for them? What did he give up to be with her? What’s that? Nothing? Oh, nothing. Well, I’m certainly glad I learned that lesson.
What this drama had in spades was the undeniably easy, breezy chemistry between the leads. Too bad it was undercooked and over-sauced.

God of Study

God of Study kept me watching for one reason: the fresh-faced cast of kids who were all endearing, engaging, and good. Their individual stories with their families, and the realistic dilemmas they faced as kids in high school—feeling lost, adrift, having a crush on that guy who has a crush on someone else—these were the things that kept the drama afloat.
The rest? Could have gone down a toilet and it would have made the drama shorter, speedier, and a whole lot better. For one, there’s only so much test prep that can be made dramatically interesting. After a certain point, we get it. No, really. We geddit. I remember being in high school and studying my ass off to get into a good school. I appreciate the message, but I don’t actually think anyone watched this drama and learned revolutionary studying techniques.
Also, the adult cast was either wasted (as is the case with Bae Doona) or totally miscast (sorry, Kim Suro, but no one’s buying it). I don’t see why you’d cast a comedian and then make him supremely unfunny and devoid of personality as a character. It confused me.
Yoo Seung-ho carried the show as the bad-boy-turned-good, and now I’m a fan. Although not enough to follow him to makjang-land. I’ll just wait till he headlines something where people smile.

Cinderella’s Sister

Cinderella’s Sister is an interesting case, really, because I utterly LOVED the drama in the first four episodes, set in the past, or the early years when we meet Eun-jo and Hyo-sun as teenagers. Had the drama stayed in that era, with no time leaps and no chances for people to run off to the “army” and go get lobotomies instead, then I might have continued to love this drama till the end.
As it stands, though, the show did jump forward, and it failed me—which I haven’t yet forgiven it for, because frankly, I’m still upset about it. Why did you have to go and ruin a good thing? Why did you have to lop off Eun-jo’s glorious mane and make her heart locked up so deep that Ocean’s Eleven couldn’t crack that safe? What kills me most about this show is that it went beyond just having the potential to be awesome—it WAS awesome, and then…not so much.
Despite the downward spiral of Show and my sanity, I absolutely fell in love with Moon Geun-young‘s amazing range as an actress. I felt every bit of pain and anguish trapped in her soul, and her heartrending love-hate relationship with her mother (played to utter perfection by Lee Mi-sook) pretty much killed me. She made me love Eun-jo, despite her iciness and her constant impression of a wounded porcupine. I wanted her to grow, to open up, to get past her pain.
One thing I liked about her journey was the central conflict of her inability to lay down roots—the idea of home, family, and the things that most people take for granted were so fundamentally foreign to Eun-jo, which made for such a fascinating character whose wounds were so deep that she lashed out at everyone. The problem is, of course, that while the early episodes managed to balance this with some levity in her adorable relationship with Ki-hoon (Chun Jung-myung) or stepfather Dae-sung (Kim Gab-soo), when both characters leave her, she becomes insufferably dark, with nothing to buoy the tone of the drama. We end up in a spin cycle of bleakness that leads to gnashing of teeth.
I think my feelings for this drama can hardly be summarized, because I have such an inexplicable love/hate relationship with it. Perhaps I’m stuck in what it was, or what it could have been, or maybe I just love the cast too much to not stay angry about how all the characters ended up sucked dry and left as shells of their former selves. Their happy endings hardly even register with me because it’s hard for me to believe that they’re not all dead inside after what the drama put them through. That’s not to say I don’t also love it either, because this drama hits me in that sweet spot tonally, and there’s something so hauntingly beautiful about its imagery. So…yeah. I love it…and I hate it with the fire of a thousand suns. Whadduya gonna do?

Personal Taste

Personal Taste was as cute as it was infuriating. It’s actually quite equal in those respects, because on one end of the spectrum, you have uneven directing and really screwy writing; but then on the other end, you have Lee Min-ho and Sohn Ye-jin. And Lee Min-ho. Did I mention Lee Min-ho?
I’m shallow. So sue me. But beyond the pretty, they really were delightful when they got to play off of each other. In particular, all their physical comedy—Kae-in hanging off of Jin-ho like a monkey in a tree—showed stellar chemistry and nice comedic chops from both of them. Whenever they were onscreen together, I was always engaged and invested.
But come on, this drama had as many lies as a makjang. Seriously, it was a crazy house of cards all built upon the notion of the Super Special Secret of Sang-go-jae. While that idea intrigued me initially, I immediately grew tired of it once I realized that it was merely an excuse for the hero to spin his massive web of lies.
And oh, what lies they were. Initially, the Big Gay Misunderstanding was actually set up perfectly. A series of incidents makes Kae-in believe that Jin-ho is gay. Nicely done. Then he doesn’t disabuse her of that, so he can move into the house. Okay, not a shining moment, but fine. Understandable. But when the lie gets bigger, and bigger, and bigger…Jin-ho becomes the guy who turns Kae-in into the very thing he tried to make her STOP being: a doormat. And I just cannot suffer a doormat for a heroine. I can’t. It drives me bonkers.
In the end I actually did enjoy this drama, even if it did drive me batty. I took to Jin-ho and Kae-in’s flawed but sparkling chemistry. What I liked about this drama was all the peripheral stuff: the hilarious cast of side characters, or the moments of physical comedy like late-night run-ins with the chainsaw. But all of the important stuff: the main storyline, the whittling down of motivation for the main couple to be together…teetered on the brink for most of the drama…and then when it crashed in angstville…well you know what they say about Humpty Dumpty.

Prosecutor Princess

Okay, so I didn’t initially watch this drama, because it didn’t capture me right away and I was totally up to my ears in the Personal-Taste-Cinderella-Unni spiral of doom. But then all year long, people kept raving about how good it was, and they just would not shut up about it. So I finally hunkered down and marathoned this sucker, just so I could include it in my year-ender. This particular review is dedicated to kaedejun. You owe me a drink.
Hot damn, Park Shi-hoo. You are one sexy tortured man. I don’t know if it’s because I saw this drama last in 2010, the year full of man-boys, but it was so refreshing to watch a drama where the men were grown-ups. Even Park Shi-hoo’s later drama, Queen of Reversals (which I saw first), is one where he’s a man-child along with Jung Jun-ho. So this was an utter surprise. Merry Christmas to me!
What initially kept me away doesn’t get any better: the blaring soundtrack that annoys the crap out of me, or Ma Hye-ri’s egregious sense of style, complete with the most unflattering haircut of 2010. But I found that all of that was just window dressing. What I came to love were the characters. Kim So-yeon‘s Ma Hye-ri may seem frivolous at the outset, but is warm, trusting, and the eternal optimist. Park Shi-hoo’s Seo In-woo begins the drama as an arrogant mastermind, but slowly unravels as his heart begins to thaw…for the one girl he can’t fall for.
And that, in a nutshell, is why this drama is good. Because the core relationship is set up as a Love That Cannot Be. And you know that just means our hearts will bleed for the hero who knows this, and falls in love with her anyway. That? Is drama gold, and it kills me, every time.
Obviously, I cared less about the law cases that weave in and out of each episode, but I found that most of them were actually pretty engaging. They were at least interesting and varied cases, and Kim So-yeon never phones in her performances, no matter how small the scene. I did wish overall that they were shorter, and I cared even less about the other lawyers in her office by the time they stopped torturing her. When they weren’t the mean kids anymore, they lost me.
One of my favorite things throughout the series is the gradual progression of In-woo’s inability to separate his master plan (get close to Hye-ri to bring his mother’s killer to justice) from his growing attraction to her. One of my favorite scenes wasn’t even one of the kisses (although I will concede: I get it now, y’all. I get it.) but the moment when Hye-ri’s mom first comes upon In-woo. Her mom asks her what she likes about him, and she rattles off sincerely nice things about him, ending with the clincher: that he’s a good person. The look on his face, knowing that he’s not a good person for betraying her without her even knowing…it’s a great dilemma for a character to have, because his intentions are noble, his methods are not, and his heart is complicating matters on top of it all.
I know I was late to the party, but I’m here now, with bells on.

Coffee House

At first Coffee House was a little too zany for me. It also began with a focus on Seung-yeon (Ham Eun-jung), who I just never liked as a character, so it was hard for me to find a hook. Jin-soo (Kang Ji-hwan) was charming but cold, and Seung-yeon was bumblingly obtuse. The drama began with their relationship in the forefront, so I nearly dropped it because no matter how funny it was to watch someone get stuffed into a suitcase for nothing other than sheer morbid curiosity, there was no emotional center that grounded me in the hijinks.
Thankfully, I stuck around, because when the drama shifted gears and put Jin-soo’s relationship with Eun-young (Park Shi-yeon) in the foreground, I discovered a magnetic couple. The great thing about Eun-young is that she makes every nutty thing about Jin-soo tethered to reality, because they have a history, and she has two feet firmly planted on the ground. So when he does something outrageous, when she rolls her eyes and laughs, or cries in frustration, we have a compass. A compass of sanity, as it were.
Coffee House actually got better as it went along, which if you think about it, is pretty damn rare in the k-drama landscape. Most dramas in the live-shoot system blow all their awesome on the first set of episodes, and continue a downward spiral ending in either lunacy or mediocrity; it’s the rare drama that ends better than it began. But Coffee House really hit its stride later on, when Jin-soo’s feelings for Eun-young began to put a real dent in his armor.
Jin-soo was a character that I enjoyed immensely because he was SO whacked out, but that also kept me from ever being fully with him. I saw that he had his own internal logic; it just didn’t resemble Earth logic, so while he always surprised me and made me laugh, he also frustrated me when he purposely shoved people out of his life, or shut down when faced with any sort of conflict.
I know this drama had one of the great ‘shipping wars of the year, but for me the two-heroine dynamic mostly took away from what it could have been, if Eun-young had been the central focus of the show.
The tone of the show often gave me whiplash, but when they went dark, or moody, or angsty, it was breathtakingly raw and intense, due to the stellar acting from Park Shi-yeon and Kang Ji-hwan. Their longing for each other, their inability to get past years of barriers, was gripping. What this relationship was doing in the same drama as the wacky zany secretary shenanigans is beyond me, but I’m glad I endured the one for the other.

Bad Guy

Bad Guy actually had a lot of things going for it. It had perhaps the best cinematography of the year (although it might get trumped by the likes of Athena and has runners-up in Dr. Champ and Sungkyunkwan), an amazing soundtrack that I still listen to, and a moodiness in its tone that made everything textured and palpable. The darkness, the tension, and the complexity of the visuals were a cut above.
The problem, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, is in the writing. If looking at the show on a microscopic level, the writing doesn’t seem that bad at all—the individual moments, the interaction between characters are all nuanced, filled with dramatic tension, and propel the story forward. But once you back up to look at the world, everything starts to buckle under the weight of one major flaw: this drama did not know what it wanted to say.
That doesn’t mean every drama has to say something, like a take-away message from the Wheel of Morality. But on a fundamental level a drama needs to: a) pick a road and b) go somewhere. Was it about two men who lived each other’s lives? Well, for a while it was, and then it wasn’t. Hm, well then was it an indictment of the rich? It kinda was…but then they triumphed in the end. Oh, then was it about The Man triumphing over one man? No, because it’s not so much an institution as it is one family. Oh, then it’s about family! Well, it’s really more about revenge because…see where I’m going with this?
It began with mystery and the sense that we were going to be taken somewhere dark, twisty, and pointed. I got taken all right. Someplace bleak, twisted, and pointless.
The thing is, I liked the characters enough to want narrative closure for all of them. I wasn’t expecting happy endings or tearful reunions, but I was invested enough to wish for Gun-wook (Kim Nam-gil) to see a light at the end of the tunnel, and gain some sort of personal peace, even if not with his biological family. Even if his final fate had narrative purpose, or meaning, or even had an effect on those around him, I would’ve been satisfied. Alas, that is not where this drama went. Instead it went to the loony bin, and there I went with it.

Baker King Kim Tak-gu

I watched this show only casually, because I never intended on watching it, but for a spell, every time I went to my mom’s house, it was on. So I sort of watched it by default, and sporadically. The funny thing is, I’ve gotten dramas down to such a science that I’d go over and guess what had happened in the intervening episodes, and I was always right. Not because I’m some genius (although my family did think it was a neat party trick), but because although makjang pretends to be really shocking, it’s actually the most predictable of drama types.
The thing I pretty much couldn’t get past wasn’t the birth secrets and tragic twists of fate, because that’s this genre’s bread and butter; it was the way the dialogue was written. Characters spoke almost exclusively in declarative sentences, as if expositing to the audience directly. Everything was explained, clarified, and reinforced, ad nauseum. I didn’t get why, as nothing in the drama needed that much explanation. Bad guys, bad. Good guys, good. Bread makes people happy. Nom, nom, nom…bread.
What did impress me, though, was Yoon Shi-yoon. He was the find of the year (to be later eclipsed by everyone’s favorite horsey Yoo Ah-in), and deservedly shot to stardom with his turn as the wounded, tough, but optimistic Tak-gu. He played everything convincingly, which is no small feat in a drama where he alternately cried, fought, smiled and baked in the course of an hour.
I totally get why this drama was the ratings king this year. It had a clear setup, hinged every character’s fate on a crucial secret, and then totally teased the audience with the possibility of a secret-revealing collision at every turn. That’s a well-crafted addictive ride. But what it was missing for me was the element of surprise, because I can tell you, in thirty episodes, nothing happened that I didn’t see coming a mile away.

I Am Legend

I Am Legend had such a great premise, that I thought for sure it’d be a feel-good drama, even if it wasn’t a hit. I was anticipating the tale of the ajumma-band-that-could, a triumphant underdog story laced with comeback-centric tunes.
The drama delivered about a fifth of the awesome that I wanted. Granted, that fifth was indeed awesome, especially the live-performance stages and in particular the one in the rain, or the moment when they first arrive to play at the open market and weather the humiliation of starting so low. But in the end, I feel lied to. This drama was supposed to be about how music and a group of friends help one woman turn her life around from repressed socialite to rock goddess. At least that’s what I wanted it to be.
I’m not alone, right? That’s not something I made up in my head, and wished for out of thin air. That’s where I was told we were going, by the first few episodes. Even the prolonged divorce case was understandable, as it was the turning point for our heroine and the catalyst for her to really stick it to her hot but assy husband.
But then, I thought for sure the band’s story would really take off and reward those of us who were waiting patiently for Seol-hee’s real story to begin, post-divorce. Instead we were high-jacked. We came for rock. We got served instead.
Kim Jung-eun was so endearing as Seol-hee that I hung on, because she made me care. I loved her sass as the high school jjang reborn, and I wanted her to conquer the world. As it stands I would’ve been happy if she had had a love affair with one of the men in her life. But what I REALLY wanted to see was her love affair with rock. We got glimpses, but not a whole drama’s worth, and certainly not to my satisfaction. Guess it takes more to be a legend than a clever name.

My Girlfriend Is a Gumiho OST – “여우비” [ Download ]

My Girlfriend Is a Gumiho

I know 2010 was the Year of the Tiger, but for me, it was the Year of the Gumiho.
Hands down my favorite drama of the year, because well—you know me and my obsessions—it was the best written, which is king. I’m partial to mythology-laden narratives because they raise the stakes within the heightened world, making characters face basic questions of mortality and what it means to love with life-or-death action rather than words. If cosmic forces oppose your union, it’s a lot more compelling than if your parents lock you up for marrying beneath you. (See: Mary Stayed Out All Night)
What this story about a gumiho and her Woong-ah manages to do is exactly what I wanted and more: it reinvented the gumiho myth. It put the girl on top (quite literally, as you can see) and let her own her sexuality, and her otherness. It reclaimed the myth of the gumiho as a patriarchal metaphor for the dangers of female sexuality, and rewrote her as an empowered, good soul who loved and was loved equally.
The keystone moment of the drama when they meet each other halfway, halving the fox bead and their ki, was the high point of the narrative, not only because of the kiss (swoon) but because it symbolically set them as equals. They made the one confession that you almost never hear in a k-drama: I love you so much, I’m not going to die for you; don’t you do it either. They put their fate in each other’s hands and loved with no reservations, which just blew me away.
Of course that doesn’t mean the drama didn’t have its share of pitfalls. There was a heady angst-filled round of Noble Idiocy, with a side of second-lead meddling, finished with a deus ex machina in the form of the Samshin Grandmother and a solar eclipse. But I would’ve sold my own grandmother for a happy ending, so I feel like I got the best of both worlds: a chance for them to say their goodbyes in the face of death, (Sucker for good melodrama. Hello, k-drama nut.) and a happy reunion to keep me from swearing off k-dramas forever.
But the heart of this drama was Shin Mina and Lee Seung-gi‘s unparalleled cuteness as a couple. They managed to take the most basic interactions and imbue them with this otherworldly cuteness that I didn’t even know existed. Shin Mina was the standout in this drama, for her turn as the gumiho who wanted to be human, but ended up having more humanity than anyone else.
I don’t unequivocally love all Hong Sisters dramas, (nor have I seen them all, unlike someone I know) but they’ve really been hitting their stride in the last two years. That, or I’m just falling into a groove where their sense of humor hits me the right way. Either way, Gumiho owns me, heart and soul.

Playful Kiss

Playful Kiss was like a highlight reel. Every episode was like one long trailer, for some other full episode that existed elsewhere in the universe. I imagine that the bizzaro-world episodes had a narrative arc, a dramatic throughline, and some engaging conflicts. Because that’s what drama episodes are supposed to have. Why we only got the trailers is beyond me.
When this show was at its best, it was endearingly, almost embarrassingly frank about a young girl’s first crush. Ha-ni (played with natural charm and charisma by Jung So-min) made all of us reminisce fondly about our first butterflies and crushing rejections, as we watched her tackle her budding attraction to the Boy Who Felt No Feelings.
But as the series went on, I grew very tired of the exact same dynamic…for almost the entire run. I felt as jerked around as Ha-ni, because as soon as Seung-jo (Kim Hyun-joong) showed the tiniest sign of affection, he’d punk out and then counter it with something mean, just to keep her at arm’s length. And then on top of it, Ha-ni began to plan her entire life around Seung-jo, which was cute in high school, but totally dysfunctional in adulthood.
I actually liked the low-key slice-of-life feel to the drama, but that doesn’t mean that I’m okay with nothing ever changing in the world of the characters. I don’t mind stories that are small, about one study date or one love letter, because what’s important are the character moments that come out of that. But the execution of the small moments is where the drama lost me, because you have to make me feel that this beat, no matter how seemingly insignificant and small, will change how these characters interact tomorrow. I began with hope that this would be the case, but found that I’d returned to square one, every time.
This show was exactly as Ha-ni described herself in the drama: Noah’s little snail. Cute, but entirely too slow for my taste.

Sungkyunkwan Scandal

It can’t be denied: Sungkyunkwan wins for most deflating ending ever. But that aside, it was quite the electric ride. What Sungkyunkwan had was that intangible, ungettable get: lightning in a bottle that ignited a passion for all things Joseon Crack.
It was unusual to have a fusion sageuk as a trendy drama, but that’s perhaps what made this drama stand out at a time when the airwaves were flooded with trendies. It seamlessly blended old-world settings with new-world ideas, which is really the heart of why I loved it. It’s also the biggest way in which this drama failed me, in refusing to answer the very dilemma it had created for itself: what is a smart, educated woman to do in world built for the advancement of men?
In setting up that question, the drama did an amazing job. Yoon-hee (Park Min-young) was quick-witted, well-read, and gifted with the power of words. She came from noble but poor beginnings and found that providing for her family was easier done dressed as a man. I mean, you had me at hello.
To spend all those episodes so firmly with her on her journey, only to be told that there IS no answer? That what she ought to do is hide her identity forever? That hurts. It cuts me deep. What I wanted was not historical accuracy. You’re a trendy drama about cross-dressing, for god’s sake. What I wanted was for the heroine to stand tall, as a scholar, as HERSELF.
What this drama did do well was the friendship between the foursome, which crossed social, economic, political, and gender lines. They had off-the-charts chemistry as a group of friends, often times more at odds with each other than in sync, but always shooting sparks. The bromance between Yong-ha (Song Joong-ki) and Jae-shin (Yoo Ah-in) will no doubt go down in k-drama history as one of the great loves of all time.
What Sungkyunkwan made me remember is how much I love stories set in youth. It’s normally such a huge subset of my favorite-show repertoire, but I had forgotten in the year I had spent watching so many twenty-something shows, or bad attempts at stories set in youth. When it was at its height, this drama was exactly what I wanted—youthful, exuberant, and idealistic—and I plan to remember it that way.

Dr. Champ

This drama surprised me. I had no idea that I’d end up watching it, because I was thoroughly uninterested in the initial premise of doctors at an Olympic training facility. But it had what ended up being one of my favorite characters of the year: judo athlete and supreme man-child Ji-heon, played by the heretofore un-noteworthy Jung Kyeo-woon.
His turn as the affable, slightly dim, boyish athlete was so understated and charming, and his dogged pursuit of Kim So-yeon‘s Yeon-woo made me smile from episode to episode. Their courtship was equally understated and realistic, as he won her over inch by inch.
That’s perhaps this drama’s overall strength—its ability to let the world breathe and fill the gaps with character beats. It doesn’t spend too much time on any one focus—the medicine, the athletes, or the romance—but instead captures the lives of these people who happen to intersect. It’s both a strength and a weakness, because while I enjoyed its slice-of-life narrative, it did lack a dramatic pull that no doubt kept a lot of viewers at bay.
And while I loved all of Ji-heon’s relationships, like his adorable bromance with rival and friend Sang-bong (Jung Seok-won), or his petty rivalry with Uhm Tae-woong‘s Do-wook, I didn’t really like any other character besides Ji-heon. Almost everyone else was insanely self-absorbed, to the point where I didn’t understand what he saw in Yeon-woo. Our heroine.
I ended up liking this sports-medicine mashup more than I anticipated, but what I really fell in love with was that camera. This drama went all-digital, shooting with a DSLR camera that made every image stunningly crisp and vivid. And it wasn’t just the camera either, although I know I’ve sung its praises to a ridiculous degree. It’s the director’s cinematic eye—every shot is carefully framed and artfully composed, even if it’s just two characters having a conversation. The colors are carefully chosen to pop, the lighting is moody and the atmosphere is always right on the money. If this director and this camera ever team up again, I’m there.

Runaway Plan B

Interestingly, what Runaway lacked in the beginning is what ended up salvaging it in the end: heart. It began as an all-flash, no-substance adrenaline ride, which was entertaining, but hardly memorable. But once we got past the initial globe-trotting setup and all the players settled into the story, the relationships really took off and I found myself invested.
The middle stretch of episodes was really the highlight, right around Episode 8, until about Episode 16. That was when Ji-woo (Rain) and Jin-yi (Lee Na-young) were really on the run, backed into a corner, and the show was firing on all cylinders. Their relationship actually grew on me, as it began to be played for an actual connection, and not just the hammy flirting that characterized it in the beginning. I loved that the two people who lived their entire lives not trusting anyone began to rely on each other.
The problem is, despite my coming to like all the characters, the overall plot ended up being entirely too simplistic for my taste. In the latter half I kept hope alive that more would be revealed, that there would be something, anything, to complicate matters and surprise me. Alas, the same plot of revealing the gold, when all the baddies had already been rendered ineffectual, was just not enough to drive this train home.
Back when Chairman Yang was beating heads bloody and killing people to make his threats, everything was high stakes and nail-bitingly tense. But by the time his son comes around in the end to be the ultimate bad guy with some henchmen and the power of public opinion, it’s like watching a toothless kitty mess with a mouse for old times’ sake. They needed more story, more stakes, more running…all the way to the end. I can’t understand why you’d take a villain like Melgidec that you’ve set up to be the ultimate mastermind bad guy, and then de-fang him with such little satisfaction for our main characters. Where’s the fun in that?
My favorite part of this drama, and what it really should have set as its core relationship, was the Ji-woo-Do-soo bromance, complete with handcuffs and fisticuffs galore. Both Rain and Lee Jung-jin played the hell out of these characters, who were both tough, funny, endearing, and smart. I found myself always wanting more interaction between them, which is I think where the drama wasted a huge opportunity in the latter half. If you had the genius idea to handcuff them together, why would you ever set them free? If Do-soo wasn’t going to chase him anymore, then couldn’t they have worked together, in the same room, exchanging barbs and getting on each other’s nerves? That would have been So. Cute.
As it stands I liked this drama but never loved it. I was entertained throughout its run, and I liked the balance of comedy-action-drama. I just wish it hadn’t blown its wad too early, and saved some of the high-octane drama for the end.

Queen of Reversals

At the time of this review Queen of Reversals is still airing, due to the twelve-episode extension. So I don’t know how things’ll shake out, although I have a pretty good guess that it’s not going to go my way. This show wins hands down for the worst case of Second Lead Syndrome I’ve had all year. It’s crazy how much I want Park Shi-hoo‘s Gu Yong-shik to get the girl. He even beats out other second leads like Moon Jae-shin (Sungkyunkwan) and Hong Tae-sung (Bad Guy) because those guys had competition in heroes who equally loved and deserved the girl or better suited her (as is the case with Yoon-hee and Sun-joon).
But in this drama, Yong-shik is better. He’s just better. There’s pretty much no way in which he doesn’t win, objectively speaking. Hence, the crazy Second Lead Syndrome, and my dire wish that Hwang Tae-hee just wake the fuck up and see how much he loves her. It kills me, in that totally crack-addled way that keeps me tuning in to find out if she will.
The problem is, this show took WAY too long to get to this addictive and awesome plotline, and I nearly dropped it a bunch of times because I don’t care at all about the work subplots or the minor characters who aren’t in the main love square or an extension of Yong-shik, like his hilarious assistant or the employee who takes up residence in his house. But once this end of the love triangle got going in earnest, all of a sudden I was up till 6am to watch what happened next.
It’s a case of getting to the good stuff too late, which only rewards viewers who hung in there for whatever other reason. Mine was Kim Nam-joo, who plays Hwang Tae-hee as full of contradictions—warm but cold, fearless yet cowardly, arrogant but self-deprecating. It sounds bipolar, but she makes her believable, humorous, and empathetic too.
The main conflict in the story—marriage and divorce—is actually handled in an interestingly realistic way. The whirlwind courtship and marriage leads to conflict after the fact, and the couple who wed so easily get divorced just as handily…except that the consequences come after, just as they did with the marriage. I like the mirroring of that, and the things that Tae-hee has to face about herself through all of it.
So far the extra episodes have done exactly what they should: amp up the romantic triangle, giving Yong-shik a fighting chance to ignite their chemistry. This drama is doing that perfectly awesome and infuriating thing of giving him thismuch chance of winning her, which is just all we need to make us crazy. I’ll watch until my heart can’t take it anymore, and then opt for the spinoff: The Adventures of Gu Yong-shik and His Sassy Secretary.

Mary Stayed Out All Night

Oh, Mary. Mary, Mary, Mary. What am I going to do with you? When I think about what you could have been, I feel a little like Joo-won’s mother in Secret Garden: I put in all the right ingredients, so why did you not come out Perfect Drama Cake?
If I hadn’t watched any of these dramas, and you had me guess based on the cast and premise which one would end up being the most cracktastic trendy hit of the year? This one would win, hands down. Because how can Jang Geun-seok + Moon Geun-young + Kim Jae-wook x double contract marriage NOT equal awesome?
Sure, it sounds crazy to have two contract marriages. But if the Hong Sisters had written it, it would have been crazy good. It’s not like nun-in-training-cross-dressing-as-idol-star is any less crazy, if you think about it.
What this show had was an identity crisis of the highest order. It wanted to be about the indie music world of Hongdae, but set itself in the drama production world, and then had the strangest soundtrack on top of it, as if trying to undermine its own credibility. It wanted to be about being young and free, but had each main character tied to a parent straight out of a makjang. It wanted to be clever and subvert the traditional drama clichés, but ended up recycling them all with no twist, no wink, no zing.
It’s got two episodes left to go, but there’s nothing two episodes can do to turn this bus around. That’s not to say I hated the drama, because I’m not invested enough to hate. It’s just…meh. I couldn’t really take any of the characters seriously, because they kept doing the silliest possible nonsensical thing, solely in service of the plot. The held-together-by-shoestring-and-bubblegum plot. If you think too long and hard about why anyone’s doing the things they’re doing…you’ll quite literally strain yourself.
But The Cute. The Cute makes up for a lot in this part of town, and this couple was Ri.dic.u.lous. They’re almost SO cute that it infantilizes them in my mind, so much so that I forget that they’re not teenagers. I think perhaps this drama would have worked better had it taken that approach, something more like Playful Kiss, but on speed. Because let’s face it—this drama was on some kind of crack…just not the kind I’m buying.

Secret Garden

As an exercise in casting for chemistry, Secret Garden should be hailed as the bible. Though I’ve loved Hyun Bin for many years, I had no idea he had the power to stare a girl’s clothes right off. And Ha Ji-won is no second fiddle, as she actually makes it believable that despite yelling hateful vitriol at Joo-won’s unparalleled asshattery, she’s always an inch away from jumping his bones. They’ve taken angry-hot to new heights.
Not that it’s not totally dysfunctional, mind you. But damn if it isn’t great drama fodder.
It’s nice to have a drama that’s almost entirely about the mating ritual. It’s actually a rather realistic portrayal of dating that’s complicated by issues of class that are played for real conflict rather than the ubiquitous Cinderella-fying plot device.
I like that Joo-won isn’t a neat little Perfect Drama Hero package: he’s neurotic and arrogant, and almost always says the wrong thing, but I like that he’s unpredictable and uncontrollable, much like real men, natch. This couple’s situations are out there, but their basic problems—communicating their actual thoughts, trying to reason against feelings—are all universal to the ever-delicate mating dance, and quite a nice conflict to have at the center of a drama.
Now, the soul-swapping bit is a whole other can of worms, because I don’t think it was anything other than a gimmick, so far. That is to say, the drama hasn’t made use of it properly and pretty much wasted an opportunity for some dramatic consequences. Also it wasn’t well-conceived on a mythological scale, but all of this remains to be fleshed out, given the chance to re-swap or face consequences down the road. And I don’t deny the epic win that was Binnie in a Bra.
At the time of this review, we’re a little past halfway (having completed Episode 12), so I reserve the right to hate this drama if it ends up grinding up my love and spitting it back out at me (see: Cinderella’s Sister). That doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll automatically hate it if it goes the way of the Big C, because though Cancer (or insert-terminal-disease-here) is an overused plot device, it’s all about the execution.
If the show manages to make me believe that it’s happening for a reason, and that for instance something that life-or-death is the only thing that would make Joo-won dig his head out of his ass, then I don’t care about the plot device itself (aka Slow and Painful Death) if what comes out of it is still in keeping with the tone of the drama. Now, having said all that, if the drama makes a quick left turn and we end up in sappyville or broodytown, imma make a quick left hook…right in Show’s face.

Rock Rock Rock

This four-episode drama special about Boohwal‘s lead guitarist and songwriter Kim Tae-won actually surprised me, for a couple of reasons. I only watched because I was curious about Kim Tae-won’s backstory, and figured that Noh Min-woo would just be more of the same that I saw in My Girlfriend Is a Gumiho: that is, one-note and serviceable, nothing more, nothing less.
As it turns out, I was happy to be wrong. Noh Min-woo not only acted his heart out, but he made me feel genuine empathy and triumph as Tae-won went through the peaks and valleys of his very dramatic road-to-being-a-rock-star life.
The coming-of-age first episode was probably the best of the four, as we see young Tae-won pick up a guitar for the first time and teach himself how to play Led Zeppelin’s “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You.” It’s as great an origin story as any superhero’s: from humble beginnings and strife comes the birth of a legend.
From then on, Noh Min-woo portrays Kim Tae-won from high school to the present, from heady first love and guitar battles to drug addiction, emotional darkness, and the travails of taking Boohwal from nothing to the height of its success. It’s an amazing life, which makes for a great story, and rather than going for flash, the drama sticks to the emotional center, which is engaging, and realistically dark.
One of my favorite parts of the series is the famous clashing professional relationship between Kim Tae-won and Boohwal’s most famous vocalist, Lee Seung-chul. It’s a brotherhood complicated by fame, success, failure, and competition, and is one of the highlights, and what this drama does so well. It uses what we know about Boohwal to heighten the dramatic tension and place weight on the events that are unfolding.
That’s perhaps one of the reasons why I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this drama to someone who knows or cares nothing about Boohwal. It’s not like you wouldn’t get the very basic human life story, but you’d miss the references and the interjecting real-life footage of the actual band. I’d say if rock is your thing, that’s another story—you’ll be invested in the story behind the music, which is compelling in and of itself.
One delightful feature throughout the series is the endless array of eighties rock hair that Noh Min-woo sports. It’s everything from mullets to Kim Tae-won’s signature long, flowing locks, played not for comedy, but authenticity. Except, of course, everything about eighties hair is inherently funny. Rock on.

Athena: Goddess of War

And to go out, something to usher in 2011. Granted, only four episodes have aired so who knows where this’ll go, but so far I’m totally digging this drama. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, is a badass. And it’s awesome. The show is slick and assured, but also a little bit raw in its energy: it’s dressed like Bond, but fights like Bourne.
The direction, the cinematography—it’s all first-rate, and that’s not even counting the beauty of the purty, purty cast. I already like it better than IRIS for its cast AND its cast of characters. Both are an upgrade, because for one, I never bought Kim Tae-hee as a badass, ever, and Jung Jun-ho‘s friend-betrayal storyline got old really fast.
But Athena is already more complex, and better produced, and isn’t afraid to play with the audience. The fantasy sequence for the Italian job was so awesomely hilarious. To blow so much flash on a character beat is just full of so much whimsy. Love it.
I don’t even know which I love more: the buddy-cop duo played by Jung Woo-sung and Kim Min-jong, or the baddies played by Su Ae and Cha Seung-won. I love them equally, and even more when they’re pitted against each other for maximum tension.
What’s great is that I already feel like I’m in good hands as far as the narrative is concerned. I’m such a fan of assured writing that pulls no punches and isn’t afraid to go high stakes right away. I certainly hope that they can keep this up, to ring in the new year right.

Postscript
Thanks to dahee and thundie for participating in the year-end reviews (and the Editors’ Picks, still to come), and thanks to all the guest recappers throughout the year, for sharing your dedication and love of k-dramas. We probably don’t say it enough, but y’all are awesome. You know who you are. And most of all, thanks to javabeans, for the laughs, the tears, and all the drinks in between. You make me feel like less of a nut. And that’s saying a LOT.
Stay tuned for Part 5, where dahee, thundie, jb and I fight tooth and nail over who gets the glory and who eats dirt.