She Was Pretty Korean Drama Review, Or, A Tribute to Siwon's Face

From what I can tell, a lot of people really, really loved She Was Pretty, making it one of the most popular dramas of the entire year.

Fair warning: I was not one of those people. If you adored the drama and would rather not hear negative things about it, stop reading now.

You have been warned. Now let us proceed.

If I had my way, this is the review I would give, as told by Siwon faces:

No? I can't get away with a million pictures of Siwon? Very well, then. Allow me to elaborate.

First of all, let me make this very clear: I started the drama for Park Seo Joon. I finished it for Siwon. Siwon stole the show, and I say that as someone who didn't go into the series as a blind Siwon superfan.

I never really had strong feelings for Siwon one way or the other, but this character was perfect for him. He's definitely become more natural as an actor since his Oh! My Lady days, and, although his character was mainly comedic, he was able to drive home a full range of emotions over the course of the series. I may have clutched my heart once or twice. (Dear drama writers: WHY did he tell her to answer the phone???? That was just cruel.)

Seriously. My heart!

Siwon's scenes were easily the highlight of the series, but there were some other things that I generally enjoyed, like the friendship between Ha Ri and Hye Jin or the members of the Most team. Overall, though, aside from the revelation that was Siwon, the series felt pretty bleh overall.

Considering how overwhelmingly positive most of the feedback on this series was, I tried to pinpoint exactly what it was that didn't gel with me as a viewer. Here are some of the biggest issues as I saw them:

Issue 1: The lead characterizations: I love love love love loooooove Park Seo Joon, but his character might as well have been a cardboard box for the interest he generated. I don't mind cliches when they're used in interesting ways or if the actors inject the characters with some extra spark (lie in Marriage, Not Dating, for example), but his character did none of those things. He was a typical terrible rich guy lead who magically changed overnight through the power of love into a completely bland, smiling paper cutout. 

There were glimpses of delving into his background and giving us a better look at how the sweet, chubby boy became this angry, wounded man, but we never really got there. Instead, the drama focused so narrowly on his love with Hye Jin that he turned into a dull boyfriend-bot without anything really compelling to keep me watching.

Hye Jin had glimpses of better moments, especially at first, but after her makeover, she also became the ideal, tamed Candy girl we've seen a billion times before. I honestly feel like the writer was following the K-drama playbook so closely with these two that we could easily copy and past 80% of their dialogue into an entirely different drama without anyone noticing a difference.

Siwon and I feel the same way about lame characters.

Issue 2: Why is she with him? No, seriously. I think we were all so worried about whether Sung Joon loved Hye Jin as her present self that we forgot to ask ourselves the same question in reverse. Aside from the fact that he was her childhood friend, what reason does Hye Jin really have to fall for him in the first place?

I know this is going to make some people upset, but for the vast majority of the series, I honestly got a more motherly vibe from Hye Jin towards Sung Joon than a romantic one. Yes, she mothers everyone and that's just her personality, but if Sung Joon is supposedly her true love, shouldn't he be different? Even consider the romantic gesture of cutting his nails for him. Why does he like it? Because that's what his mom did. Cute gesture, but no. Just no.

Gross and weird. Cut your own nails.

Issue 3: Wasted potential: At the beginning of the series, there were quit a few things that grabbed my interest, and I saw them as a chance for the writers to try something new. Unfortunately, the writer completely dropped the ball on most of these interesting threads and forgot they existed. For example, Ha Ri was a really interesting character at first. Even when she was dating her best friend's first love, I thought she could be a well-rounded, intriguing character. Instead, she just got pushed off to the side after Sung Joon discovered her secret. I mean, I'm happy that she found herself and all, but it kind of felt like the script ignored her as much as possible after episode 10.

Okay, okay, I think that's enough bagging on the show for now. It wasn't actively bad. It just didn't really give me any reason to keep watching.

In case you wondered what the other people in the show look like, this is them.

Conclusions

On a narrative front, She Was Pretty didn't really work for me. The characters weren't unique or interesting enough for a character-driven drama, and, for the first time ever, I was so uninterested in the central pairing that I found myself tempted to fast forward through their cute scenes together. That's really saying something.

That being said, I'm glad I watched in order to discover Siwon. This was his perfect army sendoff, and he has at least one new fan looking forward to seeing what he does upon his return from enlistment.

Surely you won't begrudge me just one more Siwon for the road, right?

Where to watch:

Viki

DramaFever (concluding next week after a 2-week delay)

She Was Pretty Korean Drama Review, Or, A Tribute to Siwon's Face

New K-Drama Alert: She Was Pretty

Via

Am I the only one who has been longing for a new drama cycle? I'm in love with Twenty Again, but every other show on the air right now is making me roll my eyes and yawn at the same time.

I just watched the web series Noble, My Love out of sheer desperation for something fun and mindless (because that's what web series do best). It was both of those things, but it also took every single sexist trope that has ever bothered me in a K-drama male lead and put them into one (admittedly handsome) character. Dear Sung Hoon, if you flatly refuse to wear a shirt, I will happily use it to strangle your domineering character. But I digress.

Speaking of terrible male leads, let's talk about the first entry in the upcoming drama cycle — She Was Pretty.


Premise: Kim Hye Jin (Hwang Jung Eum) was pretty and poised as a child, but loss of fortune and some unkind puberty turn her into an unattractive (read: frizzy hair and too much blush) and noisy mess. Ji Sung Joon (Park Seo Joon) was Hye Jin's first love, an overweight, awkward child who grows up to be a handsome, accomplished magazine editor. A series of events (aka FATE) leads them to work in the same office, but Sung Joon no longer recognizes Hye Jin.

Episodes watched so far: 4

Thoughts so far: Ummmmmm I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there are some major red flags in the first few episodes.

Neither am I, Sung Joon. Neither am I.

Let me start by saying that I found Park Seo Joon enchanting in Witch's Romance, so I really hoped to love him in this role.

Too bad his character is the pits.

I know, I know. He's a K-drama male lead, so what did I expect? Of course he's going to be coldhearted and cruel for the first few episodes, and then we'll find out that something terrible happened to him in America and that's why he goes around telling presumable strangers that they are too ugly and awkward to deserve the same name as his first love.

The problem isn't the type of character so much as the handling of that character so far. As Oh My Ghostess so recently illustrated, it's possible to have a jerk boss character who is also empathetic and multifaceted from episode one. I don't feel that way about Sung Joon, however. Instead of seeing a softer side to him in his sweet scenes with Ha Ri, I mostly just find those scenes annoying. How dare you treat everyone with contempt and then turn around and pretend to be sweet and charming to the girl you assume is your first love? It comes off as fake, and it kind of makes me not care about hearing his inevitable sob story.

Unfortunately, Hwang Jung Eum's character isn't exactly a shining beacon of character depth. I find it interesting that she called herself a supporting character because that's is exactly how she has been written so far. A caricature is okay as a secretary, but it's not ideal to carry a show. Hwang Jung Eum needs a director who can tone down her over-the-top histrionics, but it feels like, if anything, the writer and director are encouraging her to dial up the crazy even more.

Sorry, but if I were her boss, I would definitely fire her for trying to pull down my pants on the second day of work.

It's not all doom and gloom on the show, however! I'm pretty sure the amount of time it took me to catch a massive case of Second Lead Syndrome for Siwon's goofy reporter (and probably chaebol in disguise) must be some kind of record. Yeah, his character is a little zany too, but his brand of zany actually makes me like Hye Jin more when they're together.

The same can be said for Go Joon Hee as Ha Ri, Hye Jin's best friend. Even if she isn't Sung Joon's actual first love, that pairing has much more chemistry than our OTP does so far. I also love having a second female who isn't a terrible person, giving us one of the better female friendships I've seen on a drama in a while.

I know that the entire premise of this series revolves around First Love That Must Be Fate, but this is a rare case where I feel that the show could really benefit from carrying the B pairings to the end. Siwon's Shin Hyuk sees Hye Jin in a way that Sung Joon doesn't. He doesn't need the inevitable makeover or the fateful pull of first love to make him appreciate her for who she is. Similarly, Sung Joon and Ha Ri genuinely seem to enjoy being together right now, in the present. Why not just go for something different and give us the pairings that already work?

Why do I love you so much, Siwon? Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?

I'm still hopeful that I'll end up eating my words and that the show can turn things around, but for now, I'm bracing myself to sob over Siwon's sad dimples until the end of time.


Where to watch:
Viki
DramaFever (premiering 9/30 with a 2-week delay)

New K-Drama Alert: She Was Pretty

K-drama Dream Casting: Who Would You Choose?

A while back, Kathryn, one of our readers, sent me an email asking who our "dream cast" would be. Her ideal was a romcom staring Ha Ji Won, Gong Yoo, SSH (Song Seung Hun?), and Hee Ji Jin with a Yoon Eun Hye cameo where she plays a professional woman for a change of pace.

I have to admit that Kathryn's  selection sounds pretty enticing, and I'm not sure if I can top it. I almost emailed her back right away saying it was too hard and I could never decide with all of my favorites, but now, after spending way, way too much time imagining different pairings, I have come up with the...wait for it...


ULTIMATE K-DRAMA DREAM CAST OF ALL TIME 
(according to the completely biased Vivi)


Are you ready for this?

Here we go...

Since this is my hypothetical dream cast and I can do whatever I want, I'm going to have two main pairings because I can't choose. Think of it as interconnected stories with separate romances instead of a love square with two losers who get dumped and then pick each other as a consolation prize. No consolation prizes here! In fact, there are NO SECOND LEADS ALLOWED in my dream cast scenario. You Are All Surrounded is an example of what we're going for here. Some bromance and friendship between Cha Seung Won and Lee Seung Gi, but ultimately they're involved in their own individual romantic stories.

My two leading men would be Song Joong Ki and Ji Chang Wook. Why those two? Song Joong Ki has been a favorite of mine for a while, and Ji Chang Wook...well, let's just say I've caught a little case of Healer fever these days....

Really, I chose these two because even though they're relatively young, they both have an incredible ability to express volumes with a tiny facial expression or gesture. If you want to see what I mean, watch Nice Guy again. Half of the time, Song Joong Ki is saying one thing, but he'll do the tiniest little things with his face to express how he really feels. I don't necessarily want my dream K-drama to be a super soapy melodrama or anything (NO PEOPLE FALLING IN LOVE WITH SIBLINGS ALLOWED), but I would want to give them roles that allow both actors to stretch a full range of emotions, even if it's under the broader romcom genre umbrella. Oh, and this K-drama might become a musical where Ji Chang Wook belts some songs. I'm just tossing that in there for good measure while we're dreaming big.

So who are the lucky leading ladies? I went back and forth on this a lot, but I thiiiiiink I finally settled on Han Groo with Song Joong Ki and Song Ji Hyo with Ji Chang Wook.

Both of those actresses have an on-screen presence that pushes past the typical wide-eyed Candy girl, and I would love to see more of them. Plus, I secretly want to be best friends with both of them, so casting them in my K-drama is the first step in that secret plan (mwahahahahahahaa).

Now, because I can't just quit at 4 characters and my imaginary K-drama pocketbook is limitless and my script is so amazing that no one would ever say no, I would use Park Seo Joon as Song Joong Ki's wild younger brother (don't they seem perfect as brothers?), and Yoo Ah In and Jung Ryeo Won would be antagonists.

Notice I didn't say "villains" because they would be funny at times, terribly tragic at others, and always magnificently nuanced. You would probably walk away from the show crying buckets of tears over them and still not being sure if they're good or bad.


Add in at least one adorable little child actor who you wish you could kidnap and keep forever in real life.

 Oh, and Lee Min Ho as a murderer. A terrible, irredeemable serial killer who haunts your dreams at night. Just because it's my drama and I can. And I would like to see the fangirls squirm a little.

Via

But he also doesn't have a very big part because we're too busy focused on the other, more interesting and awesome, characters.

So that's my dream cast. I would absolutely and completely watch the crap out of that show. What's yours?

K-drama Dream Casting: Who Would You Choose?

Noona vs. Noona: Witch's Romance and King of High School Kdrama Reviews

I'm happy to report that there were no actual metallic shirts in Witch's Romance.

I finally got around to the last episode of King of High School/High School King of Savvy, and as I thought about the review, I kept thinking about it in comparison to Witch's Romance. Because I'm really lazy  the shows are similar (noona romances airing back-to-back on the same network), why not just review them together?

Noona Romance 1: Witch's Romance

Overview

Ban Ji Yeon (Uhm Jung Hwa) is a single, 39-year-old reporter who her co-workers call a "witch" behind her back. Yoon Dong Ha (Park Seo Joon) is a 25-year-old part-timer with a kind heart and a secret past. When they cross each others' paths, they find mutual love and healing (or something equally corny).

Noona Romance 2: King of High School

Overview

Lee Min Suk (Seo In Guk) is a high schooler who--for some absurd reasons--has to pretend to be his older brother and play the role of a high-power director. He works with Jung Soo Young (Lee Ha Na), an oddball temporary employee.

We've already talked at length about the age difference in both of these dramas, so I'm actually going to ignore that part and review the other parts of the shows instead, Okay?

The Leads

Frankly, both of these dramas had stellar male leads. In the case of Witch's Romance, Park Seo Joon was a pleasant revelation. I had never seen him in a drama, and I ended up loving him in this role.(I know I wasn't the only one--just look at the header love at Samsoon Down the Rabbit Hole.) Is it just me, or does he have kind of a Song Joong Ki vibe about him? 

No? Is that just my wishful thinking because Joong Ki still has another year in the military?

In any case, I'm loving the current trend of male leads who act like second male leads. He was kind and caring, and I only wanted to punch him in the face once (I'll gt to that in a minute).

Similarly, King of High School's male lead broke the typical male lead mold. He was a little rough round the edges at first, but he always had a caring heart. Most importantly, Seo In Gook killed this role. He was a convincing 18-year-old, but not in an obnoxious way. As I watched him, I felt like I was watching a complete person, which is a change from the typical one-note chaebol lead. That guy has some acting chops, and I'm excited to see what he does in the future. 

The two female leads are basically complete opposites. Ban Ji Yeon is assertive and pretends to be cold-hearted, while Jung Soo Young is a dorky pushover. Between the two of them, I think I preferred Ban Ji Yeon, although the writers did damped her character towards the end to the point where I felt like she forgot about her personality. Uhm Jung Hwa seemed to have a lot of fun in this role, and that always goes a long way. 

I didn't mind Jung Soo Young's quirkiness for the most part, but I did feel like the writers struck this weird balance between infantilizing her and making her act like a mother figure. It's like they couldn't quite figure out how to navigate the age gap, so they had her oscillate as a way of maintaining balance. I kind of liked that they didn't decide to give her the obligatory makeover and tone down her personality, though I would have liked to see a bit more character development over the course of the series. It's important to note, however, that Witch's Romance was a female-centric story, while King of High School revolved around the male character. I guess you're only allowed to develop one character at a time?

Plotting (Not the scheming to kill people kind of plotting--the narrative kind)

Uggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggh. Just thinking about the middle six episodes of Witch's Romance gives me boredom-induced amnesia. (Is that a thing? If not, I bet some drama writers will use it as a plot device soon!) That being said, thinking about the first six episodes makes me swoon. I started watching this series because the comments on this post about balanced relationships recommended it. All of those people were right. The friendship and comfort between the two lead characters was my kind of K-drama for sure.

Sadly, I guess you can't have 16 episodes that just revolve around two people falling in love (But whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?). Instead, they had to toss in a love triangle that was short by K-drama standards, but it felt eternal in the context of this drama. To be blunt, Shi Hoon's character had no depth. What did we know about him as a person? We know that he takes pictures of lions and war and stuff, but what about his personality? Wait, photographing lions isn't actually a personality trait? I guess someone forgot to tell the writers. It's really hard to devote 6+ hours to caring about a cardboard cutout.

The love triangle is just one case where the writers tried to attempt something good (filling 16 episodes with some plot), but executed it poorly. This same problem appeared multiple times throughout the drama, and one of the other most egregious examples has got to be the bedroom scene at the end of episode 2. The purpose of the scene is great. It establishes amazing chemistry between the two leads early in the series, it allows a female character to take the lead in the physical relationship (a rarity in K-dramas), and it also shows that Dong Ha doesn't care about the age difference even from the beginning. 

The problem? The one teensy weeeeeeeensy problem? Oh, yeah. She was drunk out of her mind, and he knew it.

First of all, there's the whole issue of consent. He knows that she's doing things she probably wouldn't agree to do sober, and he goes along with it anyway. Second of all, the entire scene flies in the face of Dong Ha's core characterization. He's always harassing his friend for being a womanizer, and then he has a one-night stand with a drunk woman? Let's not forget that he's also still grieving over his dead girlfriend, too. I was pretty torn because the scene had great chemistry, but it also made me a little uncomfortable and made so little logical sense that I actually thought it was a sexytime fakeout like in I Need Romance 3 and Marriage, Not Dating. (Seriously, tvN, stop doing this to us!)

Okay, so let's talk about King of High School. Again, I was much more engaged during the first half of the series. Sure, the whole premise was nonsense (either that, or being a director is a waaaaaaay easier job than I thought), but it moved at a nice pace with delightful characters. Once the couple got together, I found myself fast forwarding or reading my phone during scenes. I guess business machinations just don't interest me very much, especially when you build up an entire series with a mysterious scheming brother, only to resolve his storyline so easily that it might as well never have happened. Why was hyung even there?

You mean he had a purpose other than to show us what Seo In Guk looks like in lenseless glasses?

Side characters

This was an enormous strength in King of High School. It wasn't until the very last episode that I realized just how attached I was, not just to the leads, but to almost every side character, as well. From the high school buddies to the coworkers to Min Suk's dad, they all seemed like real people who I grew to love over the course of the series. 

There were two main standouts here who I have to mention in particular. The first was gramps, who made me laugh and cry on more than one occasion. The second was Jung Yoo Ah, who just might be my favorite second female lead of all time. She was playing a high schooler, but she handled rejection waaaaaaay better than most second female leads do. I was still able to root for her at the end of the show, unlike some other second female leads-turned-murderers I could name (Trot Lovers, I'm lookin' at you).

While Witch's Romance had kind of flat side characters in comparison, I adored Ban Ji Yeon's mother and Dong Ha's best friend. I appreciated that Ji Yeon's mother had a life story of her own outside of trying to find her daughter a husband, and every time I see him in a supporting role, Yoon Hyun Min grows on me more and more.

Conclusions

Both dramas were fun to watch at times, and both were incredibly frustrating at times. In both cases, charismatic male leads really pulled the shows together.

Where to watch:

Witch's Romance

Kdrama.com

Viki

King of High School

Kdrama.com

Noona vs. Noona: Witch's Romance and King of High School Kdrama Reviews