Kultured Bear Note to the Supreme Reader: This is my love/hate letter to The World of the Married. I wrote this as I was watching the show so it reads almost like a live review; not entirely episodic, but my reactions sort of parallel the narrative arc. It was, to put it simply, a rollercoaster of emotions, and I got played by the writer (Joo Hyun) and director (Moo Wan-il) like a goddamn fiddle.
A Volcanic Eruption of Words and Emotions
(I have not edited it too much to keep it as close to my original copy as possible like a mosquito embalmed in amber. Consider yourselves lucky to get a sneak peak into the raging tornado that was young Kultured Bear’s mind.)
Diary Entry 1 (OMW to crash & burn)
Ignoring all other shows in my now watching list, I’m blazing right through The World of the Married. Kim Hee-ae as Ji Sun-woo is, in a word, sublime. There’s just something so magnetic about Hee-ae—she brings so much intensity to her characters. She’s one of the few actors I know who can quickly and without fuss (read: least amount of character exposition) pull you straight into the beating heart of the story and her character’s essence and POV. She often plays the unapologetically ambitious, successful yet deeply flawed woman whose life is turned upside down by something or someone and she’ll make sure you know all this in the first few minutes of her being onscreen. And before you realize it, and without quite being able to explain it to anyone, least of all yourself, she’ll have you rooting for her. I guess some credit to the writer, but I dare any other actor to pull off this kind of a role with this much conviction and without polarizing the audience.
It dawned on me quite early in the series that Sun-woo can straight up commit murder in the most gruesome way imaginable and I’ll just stand on a chair and cheer her on. It’s not that Sun-woo is charming or fun or dashes about on the screen or that she is disarmingly impulsive and ingenuous. It’s the opposite. At no point is Sun-woo trying to win my affection. At no point does she or her surroundings move faster or slower than usual. In the first few episodes, whenever Sun-woo comes on screen, she is set against backdrops that are placid, ordered, and quiet, almost still. There’s barely a breeze. She herself is sphinxlike, no emotion is allowed to cross her face without her permission. Even her hair doesn’t dare move much. In spite of it all, then, it’s amazing how she conveys the impression of a volcano on the verge of erupting.
And so she keeps you riveted—focusing every ounce of your attention on the smallest of movements, every sharp intake of breath, every facial tic, every monosyllabic response she has in a dialogue (the 아 that Suadoes so well). I love the way the tension builds in her scenes and I love even more that when that tension does find a release, it rarely takes the form Sun-woo screaming her head off. Even during climactic moments, she is true to character, simultaneously intense and quiet—even when she is huddled on the floor in the darkness and sobbing fit to break your heart. Or when she is plowing through her husband and his girlfriend at the latter’s parents’ house (KWEEN) and laying bare their dirty laundry, something she does in the most unnervingly calm and dispassionate manner and with the same business-life efficiency she exudes in her professional/domestic life. How she manages to give off the impression of being completely in control of herself while at the same time being on the brink of insanity I have no idea, but the result is just mesmerizing. Like a cat, she sits back and watches the chaos—entirely of her making—unfold around her. There were any number of other, more convenient ways she could have spilled the beans, more underhanded, less confrontational, maybe an anonymous phone call or note sent from a “good Samaritan”. But that’s not how Sun-woo rolls. She’s the kind who fells in one swoop. She’s the type who not only cuts the knot but burns the string for good measure. She’s the eye of the storm, unfazed and almost looking forward to coming to grips with the consequences of her actions and those of the lesser mortals surrounding Her Royal Competence—channeling some real Dark Phoenix energy.
It’s brilliantly satisfying to watch how after a few half-hearted attempts at being discreet and furtive she gives up trying to act the fool/doing the “right thing” and embraces her dark side in the same quietly efficient way that by now we recognize as being inherent to her nature. While she pauses often to reconsider and reevaluate her decisions and actions, this hesitation doesn’t come from being wishy-washy (that’s Tae-ho’s territory), rather it is owing to the raging conflict of her emotions—an equal measure of love and resentment warring bitterly inside her. Unfortunately for her family, but fortunately for us, a series of betrayals from the people she trusts sharpens her pain and anger till she reaches breaking point. But again, there’s no hysterics or histrionics. Even her descent into darkness (or as I call it, Morphing into Mother) is slow, planned, and deliberate. Because she can’t do anything by half-measures, she has to be certain, for herself more than for anyone else, that she wants to fight before she actually does. And characteristically, (again), when she does decide to take the bull by the horns, she’s determined to do a good job and proceeds to set fire to everything and everyone. Masochistic? You bet. But she ain’t going down alone for sure.
Only Kim Hee-ae can elevate an action as prosaic as sitting quietly in her car or at her desk to something momentous and significant—as though she’s travelled an entire lifetime of emotions in those few seconds. Only the swelling background music, which some viewers found distracting but didn’t bother me as much, and the storm in her eyes belie the turmoil in her heart. Only Hee-ae can elevate what is otherwise the purview of corny afternoon soaps into a moving story of revenge and redemption. Only she can invest her character with so much quiet dignity that even her mistakes seem noble. In a lesser actor’s hands this would have come across as melodramatic or trite, especially when the music becomes operatic, the writer would have had to soften Sun-woo’s very sharp edges to gain the audience’s sympathy. But Hee-ae as Sun-woo wastes exactly zero minutes trying to get brownie points. What she does instead is effortlessly make you believe that she’s on her way to slay dragons. And you are waiting for that glorious moment with widened eyes and bated breath. Morality be damned.
Diary Entry 2 (shaken AND stirred)
So apparently this is a remake of a Suranne Jones series, Doctor Foster. My god, I’m not at all sure I want to watch this now. I may have to watch the original just to compare the interpretations.
(Randomly starting a new thought) And in a genius touch, Sun-woo’s hair post apocalypse is no longer poker-straight and rigid, but is softer, curves naturally to her face and in comparison a little untidy—which shows how she’s finally done for the time-being taking a break from fighting demons and is letting herself relax a little. DETAILS.
Diary Entry 3 (seething at the betrayal)
Aaaaaaaargh—I hate this show now (I got played). Poor Jun-yeong—this drama is actually his tragic childhood story…poor baby. I am on ep 12, four to go. And I think it is intentional, because the story is focused almost entirely on Sun-woo in the first half, you don’t pay a lot attention to what’s happening with Jun-yeong, other than, of course, the fact that he’s sad his parents have to split up, and eventually downright scared they may end up killing each other. It’s not until his problems are magnified and impossible to ignore that you realize with a shock that like Sun-woo, you weren’t paying attention to him. You were too absorbed/invested in Sun-woo’s journey, cheering her on in her quest for revenge, and you didn’t spare a thought of what would be the effect of all this on the kid. Which is exactly why Jun-yeong feels unloved, abandoned, and after accidentally spotting his parents making out (a nightmare even during times of peace), betrayed, possibly nauseous.
They love him, but not enough to swallow their pride and keep the peace for his sake. They break his trust completely, blow by blow. Even though he tries and tries to hold on to whatever sliver of hope he has. Maybe his dad really cares for him, maybe his stepmom does. But nobody ever comes through until the end almost, before his mom finally gets a grip and saves him from his dad. The writing/direction is so good that we fall headfirst into the trap, making the same mistakes as Sun-woo, and don’t realize it until it’s too late that Sun-woo has been making some crappy choices. Like Sun-woo, you ignore the little voice in the back of your head that’s telling you that this fight is probably not worth it, it’s not worth scarring Jun-yeong more than he is already just to get even with Tae-ho and anyone who sides with him. I’m sorry, Jun-yeonga. I love you.
Another thing I realized while watching Ep 15 yesterday—of all the storms that buffet Sun-woo, she doesn’t break from any of them except the most terrible of them all: when she finally realizes the extent of damage her decisions have caused Jun-yeong. All the crap that she gets from the people in her life—Tae-ho, Da-kyung (or her parents), Yerim-Jehyuk—the gossiping snitches of Gosan—Hyun-seo’s abusive boyfriend, her colleagues, her chauvinistic boss, patronizing Dr. Yun-gi—ALL their crap she takes on with barely a blink and basically with an attitude of “let’s have at it”. But her child? Realizing just how much Jun-yeong is going through, and just how badly his feelings have been overlooked, by his own mother no less (who unwisely resents any interference, even from well-meaning people, in Jun-yeong’s life) is what shatters her heart to pieces. Finally the facade of control breaks and Sun-woo knows that in her blind rage, she has destroyed the only relationship that mattered to her.
Also, I got hit by the monster truck that is Dreamcatcher’s parody of The World of the Married and these fools have ruined it forever, effectively killing any idea i had of watching the BBC original… damn them iltsm.
Diary Entry 4 (A lot of tears were shed)
Weel, at least they gave us a satisfying reunion moment (foreshadowing a later reunion that wasn’t satisfactory, but hopeful) with Jun-yeong and his mum—the only bright spot in what’s otherwise a grey sea of despair filled with foolish choices—grown-ups-finding it-harder-to-let-go, I-just-want-to-give-Sun-woo-a-good-shake-but-I-get-it moments.
A reviewer said this show is frustrating and annoying and yes, it’s an agonizing watch as you see your favorite characters make wrong choice after wrong choice every time they are standing at a moral fork—but that’s the intention, so overall it’s just brilliant writing.
Lee Tae-ho is the definitive toxic fuckboi manchild archetype—his character is literally every toxic partner trope compounded in one person. Rarely does he do the right thing, if ever, and usually it’s only to make himself feel better, only when he can no longer tune his conscience out. He doesn’t like any sort of spiritual or emotional discomfort at all, so he backward rationalizes everything he does, including hitting Jun-yeong and expects everyone to forgive him. To be fair, he does mean it when he says he’ll be better. But at no point does he truly reflect on his actions or face up to their consequences squarely. Except, maybe when it comes to his son… but then again he’s so inconsistent, and so laughably insipid especially contrasted with how unsparingly critical Sun-woo is of herself when it comes to her son, whom she loves absolutely and unchangeably. Tae-ho prefers to continue being selfish and indolent and not be held accountable for anything he does—an entitled mega prick if ever there was one. I’m sure a lot of us in the audience found shades of our own toxic exes in Lee Tae-ho.
But Park Hae-joon, brilliant as he is, never lets Tae-ho become a caricature, he makes you almost sympathize with him (gasp). You know you’re supposed to hate him, you know he’s bad for Sun-woo, you know he’s gonna drag her down with him, that he’s gonna put his own pain and discomfort before everyone else’s, you know all of this, but you also GET IT. You know why both his wife and son adore him—he is boyishly charming and sweet when he wants to be, he’s great company, he’s attractive, he’s an intrigant, he makes women swoon. In the show’s own words “he’s a free soul” and as Sun-woo tells Da-kyung in what is probably the best scene in the show, “women like us who are methodical, ambitious, and driven are attracted to men like him who teach us to live a little and we think we can be the making of them”. You get why Sun-woo wishes so much to hurt him but also that he would come back to her, and you get why the betrayal provokes her to resort to a completely out of proportion reaction, her burning desire for revenge (sex)—she can never be indifferent to him, she can only swing between intense hate and intense love, often feeling both at the same time. The only thing that saves her from begging him on his knees is her pride, but for the same reason, she can’t let go either, so she sets out to destroy him, hurting herself and her son in the process.
Jun-yeonga—oh god, that’s the hardest arc to watch… you see this kid falling through the cracks because of other people’s mistakes and your heart literally breaks when he gives that look of pain and bewilderment as he learns about the basest parts of human nature in the worst and cruelest possible way. And he has to grow up in a hurry. Of the three—Sun-woo, Tae-ho, and Jun-yeong—Jun-yeong ends up being the most emotionally sorted; it’s painfully clear to him that his parents’ relationship is toxic and unhealthy and the sooner they both get out of each other’s lives the better. He’s also the first to realize that despite what they claim, his parents are using him as an excuse to get even with each other (that would have hurt the baby so much. He does forgive his mum after she comes flying to his rescue though, good little man <sniffs>).
And although he hopes for reconciliation in the beginning, he soon realizes that that would never work, that they should probably have never been together in the first place, and should never have had him (I’m sobbing freely now). He doesn’t even get to act out for long after his parents’ divorce. He lets off some steam through a few delinquencies, but it’s nothing compared to the shit his parents are pulling. And he’s soon forced to reckon with his petty misdeeds and has to sac up a lot earlier than he strictly needs to, almost on his own—because his dad is busy being a selfish crybaby and his mum is away having a breakdown on the beach.
Read another great review (the link for which I idiotically didn’t save) and boy was it unsparingly critical of Tae-ho. Also, everyone feels the same way about Jun-yeong—he is the beating heart of the show, not Sun-woo. You’re practically holding your breath and tensing up whenever you think he’s in danger, either physical or emotional. At one point in the later episodes you’re literally trying to will Sun-woo into course correcting before it’s too late. YOUR SON NEEDS YOU, WOMAN! Forget that asshole ex-husband of yours. GET JUN-YEONG OUT OF THAT PLACE NOW!
It’s hard not to get caught up in the story—full credit to the cast and crew. You kind of get why the characters are so frustrating, they’re making mistakes that we ourselves would make in our lives, it’s painful to watch it unfold before your eyes—like a mirror held up to dysfunctional families everywhere.
It will be interesting to watch how each character picks up the pieces and where they go from this low point? Will they turn around and change for the better, which will be an extremely hard and painful journey but worth taking, or will they sink back into the same unhealthy patterns because it’s the easier choice?
A few more highlights from the penultimate episode:
The heart-to-heart Sun-woo and Jun-yeong have in the beginning of the episode where she acknowledges and apologizes for her actions and tells Jun-yeong that he has every right to be angry and to hate her, to take his time to regain his balance and come back to normal, reassuring him that she’ll always be there for him, be right by his side as he gets through these difficult times (too dehydrated to cry atp)
The fact that Jun-yeong is legit scared of Tae-ho now and wants to get his mum away from his father as soon as possible. The way he almost panics when Tae-ho barges in, not because he’s afraid of getting hit again, I mean that too, yes, but he’s terrified Tae-ho will manage to sway Sun-woo again and try to weasel his way back into their lives and make more trouble for them. And later when they’re safely out of Tae-ho’s reach and Jun-yeong tells his mum that she should start dating someone again, someone nice, someone worthy of her (stuffs fist in mouth to stifle lusty sobs)
After weeks and weeks of living in agony and denial, Da-kyung finally faces up to her worst fears and listens to Sun-woo. She steels herself to cut Tae-ho out of her and her daughter’s lives and then stands by her decision. She has more success than Sun-woo, possibly because her own family is always so supportive of her even when she makes mistakes. Subtext: Divorce is still a luxury/frowned upon in conservative countries/cultures. Not everyone can raise their girls to be confident enough to walk out of a bad situation. It’s not always easy for people, especially women, to get out of a toxic relationship or marriage, case in point—Hyun-seo. (But even she manages to get out. Come on, Sun-woo! Lesgo!)
Watching Tae-ho unravel is both satisfying and hard to watch. In the reviews I read, a lot of viewers thought it was unnecessary for Sun-woo to go to such great lengths to split Da-kyung and Tae-ho up, that it was done out of spite, but I disagree. Sure Sun-woo did appear to derive some sadistic pleasure in disillusioning Da-kyung, but reaching out to Da-kyung’s parents and requesting them to get their daughter out of her unhappy marriage was something that would have needed a lot of courage and resolve. Yes, she did it to protect her son, but I think somewhere she also felt she owed Da-kyung the truth. Keeping the truth from Da-kyung might have felt noble at the time, but if she hadn’t Da-kyung would have spent many more years in misery than she needed to. So, Sun-woo giving Da-kyung the 401 on Tae-ho is probably the most generous thing she could have done in that situation. In spite of all the bad blood between them she felt a kinship (after all, they had very similar personalities and married the same asshole) with Da-kyung, and didn’t want her to suffer like she did #womensupportingwomen
In earlier episodes, there are scenes juxtaposing Sun-woo’s and Hyun-seo’s situations which are really very well done.
Subtext: Sun-woo while having no trouble recognizing Hyun-seo’s being in a bad relationship and even encouraging her to leave, loses her objectivity when it comes to her own life.
Diary Entry 5 (Written with the last remaining braincell)
Well what can I say about this conclusion that hasn’t already been said? I couldn’t take the suspense and I read the episode recap to know what happens to Jun-yeong, because I knew from reading the BBC drama’s synopsis the son runs away and never returns and I couldn’t trust Dreamcatcher’s summary, for all I know they could be having us on.
Anyway, the first half of the episode is basically the makers torturing us by showing us a facsimile of a happy ending, but we know, deep in our hearts, it’s a hollow victory. You know in your gut this is basically the writer playing with their food (as in us aka the hapless audience) before swallowing it whole. There’s a darkness lurking just at the edge of the light, waiting to cast a shadow on the life that Sun-woo and Jun-yeong are trying to piece back together, slowly, excruciatingly.
The tension never lets up. You’re too wary to even breathe properly, one eye permanently on the runtime, your head a complete mess: “maybe, just maybe…there’s not a lot of time left…can I hope? CAN I FUCKING HOPE THAT MOTHER AND SON WILL GET AWAY, IF NOT WHOLLY UNSCATHED, BUT SOMEWHAT INTACT?”
Sigh. Of course the fuck not. Not even close. Obviously, Tae-oh has to live up to his reputation of being a complete and irredeemable a-hole and pull a dangerous stunt because he can’t fucking take “no” for an answer. One second is all it takes for the world (of the married) to come crashing down in the most toxic, scorched-earth manner possible. Jun-young, justifiably horrified at just how self-destructive his parents are, ups and bolts, taking with him the last remaining shreds of my sanity. Can you imagine being this anxious and worried for a fictional character? Fittingly, we don’t get a neat and satisfying resolution at the end. The very fact that people are divided on whether the ending was real or not proves how ambiguous it was—audiences have one last, eternal trial to endure: a complete lack of closure from one of the greatest k-dramas made (Is this how Scarlet Heart Ryeo fans feel?)
Afterword
Come afterword, I’m still recovering.
It has been a while since I watched this drama, but doing this review reminded me just how much of a wild ride it was (this obviously isn’t a traditional review, so don’t be disappointed if I didn’t mention any of the jaw-drop moments or the mic-drop dialogs from various episodes, which anyway are too many to list).
Present-day Kultured Bear is, for once, bereft of words. However, one thing I will say: they don’t make shows like this anymore. If they do, please let me know, I will grant you a BOON.
Frankly I don’t have a review in me, but thanks for the laughs, XOXO.
Lee Jun-young was fighting for his life, though. He (assuming it was his decision) made the right call in deciding to ham it up to the skies. He was the only reason I watched it till the end. And to some extent Choi Jin-ho who plays Kang senior and who also wisely decided to do a lot of—
If you want to see Jun play a stupid/evil dude brilliantly, I suggest watching D. P. (S1) and/or Mask Girl. He does only cameos in both, but he is phenomenal. Truly a star in the making. Of course, Imitation is a must-watch idol drama, for Jun, who was also one of the—
I mean I love UKISS, but mostly their pre-Jun eras. Seriously though, Imitation is a great watch even otherwise, not nearly as good as Top Management, but yeah, it’s wholesome and funny.
TBF, the basic premise/idea behind the Impossible Heir is really good. I always assumed it was based on an existing webcomic but it’s not?? There goes that excuse for the choppy AF screenplay.
It’s very much a brodudes-turned-arch-nemesis’ story of rivalry between the bastard son of a conglomerate family and the plucky outsider he befriends. Extreme potential for Xtreme fireworks, but the screenplay was probably written in post, if at all. Given that it’s a fantasy about power and who inherits that power, thematically, it had the bones of an epic, Shakespearean tragedy, however it turned out more a farce—it’s giving more Falstaff than Macbeth.
BTW there is no space on this blog for Hong Su-zu hate. You don’t blame Hong Su-zu for giving us absolutely nothing. You blame the writer (Choi Won) who wrote a shitty role and the producer, casting agents, director, literally everyone involved in putting her in this bilge production. Sure, she does bear some responsibility for tanking so spectacularly, but! Hear me out: I can’t imagine lesser known actors having much of a say in what projects they get to be part of. In fact, I would venture a guess that none of the people who signed on saw the script in its entirety, if it existed in the first place. Surely, they were making it up on the go, and yeah, maybe they kept rewriting Su-zu’s role because she was tanking (a veritable chicken and egg quandary), but who’s to say, really. The cast couldn’t very well abandon a sinking ship without getting sued. Su-zu, it appears, just gave up trying. And I would honestly do the same. She was like, “I showed up, right?” And come on, you know Na Hye-won was written to be nothing more than a red herring, a sop thrown to convention. I would be mad too. And I would be petty, and probably do even worse than Su-zu.
Despite everything, I didn’t find it a tedious watch, not even a little. I guess they were going for The Penthouse-like makjang vibes, but 12 episodes is not enough to achieve that sort of a sweeping, larger-than-life atmosphere. Budget not taken into consideration ig.
This series is a perfect example of a bad but enjoyable watch, and I would any day choose this over any of the so-called hits that are literally a drag to sit through. Also, this is completely random, but I really liked that last exchange between Han Tae-ho and Kang Seong-ju—there were, weirdly enough, a lot of (probably unintended) undercurrents in that one scene, because of the set-up in that gargantuan office, as well as the framing and camerawork. It actually left me feeling a little wistful for what-could-have-been, if they’d taken the time to run through one or two (or a 100) more drafts before moving to production.
Good OST, though.
PS: A moment of silence for all of us who watched the show because of those IG edits that made it look like a BL.
Park Bo-young, Yeon Woo-jin, Song Yu-chan, Lee E Dam, Chang Ryul
Inside me, there are two wolves.
The first wolf is peaceable and tolerant and altogether a raging optimist and less raging optometrist (no really, that’s his profession).
If this one were to review Daily Dose of Sunshine, he would say it was an absolutely charming drama series full of warmth and gentle sunshine, with some dark clouds here and there of course, like it’s the k-drama version of actor Park Bo-young. It seems tailor-made for her, almost.
And he would probably say that the show gets many things right, and is definitely one of the more sensitive and moving portrayals of mental illness—certainly it takes a different direction from dramas that use mental illness as nothing more than a plot device or a backdrop for an otherwise conventional romance, with the goal usually being to concoct increasingly ridiculous reasons why the OTP can’t be together. And while it did not offer any radical observations or perspectives, Daily Dose still manages to gently get its point across. Across its 12 episodes, there are a number of moments that exemplify the small, everyday victories mentally ill people experience on their road to recovery. There is also an equal focus on the setbacks and failures, altogether offering a balanced and level-headed view into what dealing with mental illness looks like. And while there was room to make these moments more revelatory or thought-provoking, the cast does an excellent job of elevating them, giving them that final push over the line to make them quietly impactful.
And yes, it’s works EXTREMELY WELL as an ode to healthcare workers and the unglamorous, often tedious side of medical care, the majority of which falls to the nurses and administrators. They are the unsung heroes who work long shifts, often sacrificing their own well-being, deal with uppity doctors and uncooperative patients and then go back home and do <shudder> chores. Fully 100% support and gratitude for healthcare professionals. Please remember this when you read the rest of the review. Also remember that the optometrist loves you romantically.
But that’s not the wolf you’re going to hear from today. It’s the second one, who’s simply raging (no noun follows).
Here he is in his own words—
Oh hi, it’s my old frenemy, social message dromo. This one was trying to go for smudged, sepia, slight realism vibes—you know, the type we usually see in indie movies (reminded me in some ways of Misaeng, huhuhuhuhu, alright fine, I’ll watch that one again) but of course, a lesser version of that. Because, after all, this is a Netflix show. There’s only so much quality they’ll let slip through it seems. It’s like they have an anti-QA team who are there to make sure a series is only this good and no more.
When I looked it up, I found that the series is actually based on a webtoon “Morning Comes to Psychiatric Wards Too” by Lee Ra-ha, who’s worked as a psychiatric nurse (as in the past tense? Interesting …) and has drawn from her own experiences while creating the webtoon. However, I’m going to assume that by the time the story made its way from Ra-ha’s personal experience to her webtoon to the script then screenplay then finally to the drama, it was all out Artistic License 50% off, Clearance Sale.
I didn’t hate Daily Dose, I might have even liked it. But the only story that moved me was Kim Seo-wan’s, played incisively, with real empathy and sensitivity, by Roh Jae-won. He managed to bring so much subtlety and believability to the role, something no other “patient” could really nail. No, not even Park Bo-Young. She’s by no means bad, she did a great job, so did all the other actors. There is a difference between good acting and great acting, and Jae-won demonstrates exactly that. (The only other person who comes close is Nokdu as Song Yu-chan, but more on that later)
And so, after his story ends, the rest of the show just kind of limps forward, having shed its emotional core with Seo-wan. With, of course, the sole exception of Chang Ryeol who is a walking work of art, just– he just needs to breathe and I will cry, okay? #simplife. But, not even his sheer beauty can really lift the show past the shallow peak it manages to reach in the initial few episodes. Sure, there were nice moments scattered throughout, absolutely. So why didn’t it work? Other than, that is, the usual culprits of inconsistent writing, unnecessary love triangles (actually all of the love stories were unnecessary, but I’ll let it slide only because of Chang Ryeol), stereotyping/oversimplification of mental disorders, factual inaccuracies for the sake of Plot? You know me, I like to spend more time dissecting flaws that are less obvious, the kind that get under my skin and won’t let me be at peace, ffs.
This being a drama on mental illness, obviously the makers/writers (Kim Da-hee, Lee Nam-gyu, and Oh Bo-hyeon) constantly feel the need to add exposition, yk, in case us dumbs don’t get it. Let me tell you, if I was someone who looked down on mental illness and mentally ill people and I watched this series, I would switch off and remain firmly moored in my prejudice. I get that some exposition is necessary in a drama like this, but my god, this much! No need to belabor the point so much. Just, not in 2023-24 we don’t need all this gyan on BPD, depression, etc. You know why? Because if there’s still a population untouched by mental illness, we should study them instead. Yes, stigma against mental illness exists, and demystifying mental illness is a first step to removing the stigma. But from a story set in a psych ward, I expect a much more complex treatment of these topics—not so much a wiki of common illnesses but a deeper, more nuanced exploration of what it means to live with/treat a mental illness. Less cheery preachiness: “what if it was your child”, “take your medicines, please!”, “these things happen”, “let’s identify your one trigger and set you free”, and more darkness, more transgression, more questioning social values and codes, more discomfort (for normies) around pathologization.
And yes, I would have liked to see more, not a lot, but a little more social commentary in the subtext—an inquiry into the alienation and dehumanization engendered in a capitalist society, that is throwing us out of our natural element as a cooperative species, making us compete with each other, chase impossible goals that are somehow always just out of reach. And this not just in the context of academics or work, those are obvious and outward, but in terms of how competition and comparison warps our understanding of ourselves and the people around us. Can everybody be equally successful if they work equally hard? How do we define success? How do we survive every second of our lives knowing, believing we are not enough, we will never be enough, we will never reach a place where we’ll think, “finally, I am everything I wanted to be?” This pervasive dissatisfaction and inadequacy that haunts us every day—consigning all blame for our failures on ourselves—that are not caused by any one person or incident but by the miasma of social and cultural expectations, not to mention increasing social tension, reinforced in movies, television and other media, magnified by social media, why am I not seeing any of that being discussed in a show about mental illness? What about the role of stress in mental health and the fact that we all seem to have accepted chronic stress as an unavoidable reality of life? What about loneliness and the lack of social connection?
Okay, so maybe the source material required the writers to focus only on clinical disorders. But then I want more psychological scrutiny and exploration into them without being too concerned about patients’ underlying morality. In fact, I would like to learn more about the psychology of people who are criminalized by society: how does deprivation, neglect, or abuse affect adults, and children who would grow up to be maladjusted adults. How about showing how for minorities and marginalized communities, mental health issues can be compounded by financial and social insecurity? What about substance abuse?
And on the other side of things, instead of simply assigning victimhood to a group of patients, how about a more scientific investigation into trauma and illness: how they alter our brain chemistry, the way they get passed down through our DNA, bleed into our otherwise normal lives and impact our choices and decisions, our coping mechanisms, or the lack of them. Yes, we need to explore the more extreme manifestations of illness, but to reduce the “otherness” of mental illness, it is also necessary to help people get better at recognizing the gaps in their own mental health by including situations that induce self-reflection and shoe-drop moments. So that we, in the audience, are not just voyeurs of other people’s struggles, we’re not just consuming stories of mental illness in the contextual confines of television/entertainment, but rather we’re being nudged to look inwards, shine a light inside the dark recesses of our own minds and understand the frameworks through which we interpret the world around us, look past the binaries we try to apply to everything, laughably enough, even to mental health and illness. An exercise in metacognition…Is that asking for too much? I suppose it is.
At the very least, I don’t expect to feel dispassionate for the majority of the time I’m watching a drama on mental illness. I think it’s reasonable to expect that a show like this would demand more from me as a viewer. I’m not asking for a life-altering experience or anything, but I certainly expect to be challenged, to be taken aback, to feel more than just a fleeting sort of wistfulness that simply rolls off the surface of my mind like a gentle wave. I have nothing against this kind of a pleasant, atmospheric, comfort watch, just not for this theme. Also the entire shtick of dewy first-person narration style more suited to a coming-of-age story? Yeah, no.
I was/am conflicted about the use of special effects to make the problem “visible”. I get why they did it, it works in some cases, but the thought that kept recurring to me was why the show tries so hard to get its point across, almost as though convincing itself of the legitimacy of the issues it’s talking about. Like, I don’t need to be able to visualize the way someone feels so graphically to be able to empathize with them or understand they’re struggling. Again I get the idea: to be able to help patients verbalize what is happening inside them. At the same time, it’s important to be conscious of the fact that just because we can’t see it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist or isn’t serious. The onus is on the listener to understand, not on the person with the illness to try harder and make themselves more relatable. At some point, it becomes more of “how creatively can we depict this mental illness?” It’s bordering on parody and comes dangerously close to being insensitive, even though it’s not done with malice. One way to contextualize this is to look at analogues from other forms of discrimination—microaggressions, for e.g., where the absence of malice or ill-intent does not automatically negate harm caused by a stereotypical and reductive portrayal of a protected characteristic.
This could just be me projecting, but why did they make Jung Da-eun so incompetent? I mean I know why—I understand she has to fuck up to set the stage for a doctor or another nurse to start spouting definitions and symptoms. Not to be a cinema sins beeyotch but I also don’t want things to be too contrived. Especially when it’s clear to you as a viewer that she’s saying/doing the wrong thing, which means you’ve already jumped ahead in the story and you know all hell’s going to break loose so you’re holding your breath—slightly anxiety inducing, but maybe that was the point? Who’s to say, even if it’s more in the vein of cheap thrills. Jung Da-eun, the vessel of contrivance. It’s an important role in fiction, and it’s usually uncommon in k-dramas to have a lead play it …you know what, ignore this entire paragraph, this is not a valid criticism. It’s just something I personally found irritating because realistically Da-eun would never be a nurse in a psych ward.
Overall, in terms of treatment, I would have liked the show to have more patient POVs; not quite Girl, Interrupted but an insider’s perspective of the staff and environment. And instead of slice-of-life procedural (I see the Hospital Playlist influence, but the show does not pull this off given the under utilization of the ensemble cast and lacking that screwball energy), maybe horror or comedy or a combination would be a better suited genre for psychological themes. The point I’m trying to make is that you will NOT find the best representations of mental illness in a show that is billed as such (just the fact that it plays it so safe is a red flag). The closest it gets to an earnest and believably complex but not inaccessible depiction is Kim Seo-wan. You may want to bring up Da-eun’s own depressive episode, and you’re going to wish you hadn’t.
Look, I understand why they did it, okay? It’s the whole, “it can happen to anyone” point they’re (true to form) beating us over the head with. As a narrative device, it’s champion. Where they lost me is when Da-eun vehemently denies that she is ill, where she is absolutely horrified by the mere idea that she is now on the other side of the looking glass, she is the observed, not the observer. Now, this could have been an interesting twist if they’d used it as an opportunity to offer up a more critical look at mental health treatment: how it can be impersonal and alienating, and only ever be an incomplete solution, rather than making it about the “shame” a patient may feel for what they themselves perceive or are afraid others would perceive to be a personal failing or weakness (because we’re way ahead of this point in the discourse on mental health, keep up). So, in her heart of hearts, that’s what Da-eun thought about the people she was providing care to… isn’t that what it amounts to? Shouldn’t that be pointed out, shouldn’t she have a transformative realization that she has thus far been operating from a place of tolerant benevolence rather than real empathy? Maybe it was implied, but to me the abrupt shift from grieving for Seo-wan to having to feel sympathy for Da-eun felt anticlimactic and a little distasteful. It undermines the gravity of Seo-wan’s situation and ends up framing it as (merely a) SETBACK our MC has to “overcome.” Talk about fridging.
Dong Go-yoon aka Knuckles is the most unimpressive love interest (you’re probably tired of hearing me say this by now. Have an energy drink and hear me say it again) I’ve seen in a long time and is mildly codependent? Since they chose to include a romance subplot at all—unnecessary in the first place—I was hoping, considering the mood the writers were going for, they would opt for a more believable resolution. Anybody who’s suffered depression knows how hard it is to maintain even close family relationships, leave alone romantic entanglements. It would by no means be such smooth sailing, and it may even be a cause of strife in an otherwise normal relationship. Bottomline is it’s hard, and I think many viewers agreed with this take: the conventional ending to the leads’ romance undid a lot of the goodwill the show had otherwise generated because it seemed to make light of what it’s like living with a mental illness, however mild or severe.
Having said that, if they really wanted Da-eun to get paired off in the end, it should have been with Nokdu. Reason: they’re equals. Another reason: He understands Da-eun will have her off days just like he will but, they’ll always have each other to lean on. Yet another reason: This is not the drama for an escapist, fairytale ending. And while I’m not going off on a tangent to talk about gender and mental health (for now), I feel Go-yoon is too paternalistic and represents nothing more than “security” in a traditional, conservative sense. There’s no compelling reason for Da-eun to be with him other than that he likes her (and wants her to be happy and confident all the time, uWu). No blame on Da-eun though: you get that bag, girl! However, more than commenting on whether the Go-yoon-Da-eun pairing works in a very literal sense (read: I don’t actually care I say even as I’ve said a lot about it), I’m more interested in what this tells us about the makers’ view on romance in a post-capitalist society. I know, I know, it’s not that deep, just that this IS a show about human psychology, isn’t it? I’m going to analyze it as such.
The one time I support a childhood friends-to-lovers arc, I get short-changed. I didn’t mind the other love story so much (Yeo-hwan and Deul-re) probably because of pure bias. Also Deul-re doesn’t have Da-eun’s naive little ingénue air, and like a true, quixotic heroine, she steadfastly refuses any material help from Yeo-hwan. His frustration at not being able to help her is very real and funny. Also, the part where he tells her to fuck filial piety and leave her toxic mother (predictably one note) was just *chef’s kiss*. More realness from the love of my life. If I could change anything about it, I might have turned their relationship into a deep friendship or even unrequited love to make it more poignant, highlighting what it means to care for someone’s happiness (it doesn’t mean being together at any cost, Go-yoon). I would also change all the ghastly music troupe scenes—wtf was that, the whole time I had my face covered wondering what is this fresh hell of cringe that’s been unleashed all of a sudden (I’m never going on a cruise). Yeah, for sure, Deul-re is absolutely justified in not wanting to be a nurse anymore, but why that, Deul-re? You’re better than that. Join like a proper theatre group or something.
You’ll be pleased to know, beloved, Supreme ReaderTM, that in a rare moment of consensus, both me and my optometrist brother really liked Nokdu’s arc (yeah, I know he’s Song Yu-chan, but Jang Dong-yoon is Nokdu forever). Dong-yoon brings a roundedness and authenticity to Yu-chan’s character; he is able to present Yu-chan as someone who is cheerful and upbeat but trailing wisps of a bleak sort of defeatism at the edges by letting through a barely-noticeable but still-detectable strain of melancholy (this language is the direct result of reading Solo Leveling). It’s hard for even seasoned actors to calibrate their emoting so well; Bo-young herself is only somewhat successful in bringing this degree of lived-in-ness to her character. Or maybe Nokdu’s role is the better written one. Or maybe both, I’m not going to watch the show again to confirm. Either way, it works well. You never doubt for a second there’s more to Yu-chan than meets the eye. It could also be that making Jung Da-eun sink like a stone with nary a fight was a characterization clue—to paint a picture of someone who has not really pondered too deeply about life or the world, has been sheltered from reality to an extent, and is now suddenly REALIZING THINGS, so obviously it is all too much at once—this is just me giving the benefit of the doubt to the writers… no hate for Bo-young though, it’s difficult to play troubled characters. I am totally onboard with actors not sacrificing their mental health for a drama or a movie, it’s unnecessary.
I liked Yu-chan’s story not only because it has a satisfying resolution, I mean sure, that’s one part of it, (so I like happy endings, sue me) but also because it’s more emblematic of our daily struggles of adulting in this day and age. No one is going out of their way to be mean to him, the source of his strife is not confined within a single individual, well-intentioned or otherwise—it’s the closest the show comes to uncovering the systemic causes behind people falling sick and being unable to keep pace with the constant demands on their time, attention, and effort: a highly performative and productivity-oriented culture and all that it entails. Yes, there are similarities with some of the other cases or stories, but within k-dramaland, the extreme pressure and ruthless competition within academic environments is a long-acknowledged truth and does not really count as breaking new ground. Making Yu-chan a high achiever before he starts having panic episodes is inspired because it nudges us to consider what “success” can cost a person. The scene where Yu-chan takes a stand and chooses to break the unspoken rule of working overtime, while small, is by no means insignificant; it is almost revolutionary—it requires courage to put yourself first, even before your dreams and ambitions. And it’s the only scene in the show that shows us a possible, tangible way forward as a society.
I read so many positive reviews of this show on the internet, including people who found it very moving (and even disturbing?! What?) The only thing I found triggering was Knuckles cracking his knuckles (there’s nothing cute or funny about OCD :() I actually began to doubt myself and now I don’t know if I should be worried for myself or for everyone who thinks this drama is flawless. Also, a reviewer in one forum said that there was TOO MUCH social commentary, it seems. Ahahahahahahaha, hence proving that art is a subjective ass bish. Maybe some bosses are just born toxic, who’s to say. Nature has her little jokes.
In conclusion …”wow, kultured bear,” I hear you say, “still not done with your yapping, huh”. Hush, child. Mother is talking. In conclusion, now more than ever, ignorance about social issues is no longer a good starting point in popular forms of media. It’s like dragging the discourse back to zero each time. Yes, there is a large, sheltered (like Da-eun) group of people that mainstream pop culture does not want to alienate and so they treat them with kid gloves, gently introducing them to “difficult” concepts like mental illness, and I’ve honestly had enough. Media needs to worry less about perception and popularity and be more unabashedly radical. At the very least, I would like to see this frustration at the fact that the discourse never seems to go beyond the fundamentals, of having to go on educating people ad infinitum, to find expression in the context of the story; more impatience for the Jung Da-euns in our lives, more characters who are angry at the world, not resigned to it. For people who choose to cling on to ignorance, we don’t owe them any more understanding or sympathy than they are willing to extend to marginalized communities.
Homaigush, writing this review did a number on my mental health, let me tell you that. Daily Dose of Sunshine – 1; Kultured Bear – Nil. Well played.
For reasons related to sanity, this is not going to be a full review short post. Also, Castaway Diva is a harmless if dull show that is more of a DV PSA. There’s really not enough and at the same time too many competing threads for me to come up with a coherent review. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against social message shows—they have their place in the kaleidoscope of Asian dramas. Like Ms. Hammurabi is close to my heart even if there’s no actual plot or anything in it, or at least a plot that’s bigger than Myungsoo’s dimples. And yes, on its face, Castaway Diva is a story about surviving, beating the odds every day. I appreciate the thought that went into making Seo Mok-ha a castaway in more than one sense of the word. And I appreciated the Kang family’s story too.
However, right from the get-go the screenplay didn’t really let us settle into the story at all, or rather it didn’t let us settle into a story. The first half of Ep 1 had me thinking that I was going to be watching a gritty thriller, the second half made me correct that assumption and start expecting a literal marooned-on-an-island survival story. In reality, the story that we end up getting defies all these laughably tame even if reasonable expectations. Because by the end of the roller-coaster ride that was Ep 1, we finally land on what feels like a hazy, undefined space between dimensions—like the feeling you get when you miss a step climbing the stairs. The writers (Park Hye-run and Eun Yeol) were like “Lol, jk, we’re just messing with you. Seo Mok-ha’s story is indeed about being on an idol show”. Like, wu-wu-whaaat dawg? What am I supposed to be feeling right now? Is this metaphysical commentary or something?
As such, I am a teensy bit impatient with social message shows that don’t go beyond the surface level of “Our society has an x problem” and “it’s a big problem that we have this big problem”. Yes, indeed, it is. Humans can do awful things to each other. There are genuinely horrible people doing horrible things out there. Yes, and? Identifying the problem is Step 1. To be fair, Castaway doesn’t really bungle this plot line (looking at you, The Glory) but I really wish we didn’t have to wait all the way till Ep 11 to get a tangible, emotional, and empowering resolution for the Kang family’s story. Those scenes in the DA’s office almost overshadowed all the other episodes and plotlines for me. Not that the other plotlines were bad.
In fact, be it Yoon Ran-joo’s second wind arc, or Mok-ha’s tenacity and resourcefulness throughout, her innate honesty and candour, the way she is portrayed to be naive but never infantilized (which is refreshing, we need more MCs like her), I liked all of these angles individually…Not to mention, Eun-bin’s portrayal of Mok-ha is almost flawless; in lesser hands, such an idealized, good-on-paper character wouldn’t have been as compelling or relatable. It’s just that there are too many different threads to follow, which predictably blunts the emotional heft of the story. Admittedly there are worse, more egregious genre-mashup k-dramas out there. The disparate pieces of Castaway do sort of fit together. But barely. Some jagged edges remain, as do many gaps.
BTW, all of the main actors—Park Eun-bin, Chae Jong-hyeop, Cha Hak-yeon—have done roles that allowed them far more scope to demonstrate their comedic timing (or acting chops, even), than Castaway. Like, have you seen Unlock My Boss? In terms of storyline and plot, it’s a decent watch (a fun but skeptical look at AI—exploring the problematic ethics surrounding its use—AND A MUCH BETTER TRIBUTE TO CHO YONG-PIL. SAMDAL-RI COULD NEVER), but it’s Jong-hyeop who makes it unmissable. You wouldn’t realize looking at his extreme length, intimidating width (of shoulders) and his puppy dog eyes, but Jong-hyeop is funny AF. Like, seriously. So is Hak-yeon—he shone in his brief role as Assistant to the Regional Inspector in Bad and Crazy, a drama where everyone needed therapy, and probably did get it! Yay, rare therapy W.
It kills me that these talented younger actors don’t get enough well-written roles that will allow them to truly shine, also making for good viewing for us in the audience! It’s a win-win-win, I don’t know why there’s such a shortage of good scripts. Do you know why? Cause I don’t. I mean I can guess, but I don’t want to.
Key takeaway: Moon Woo-jin is all grown up, huhuhuhuhu
Hello, My Twenties!
But of course, the gulf separating these other shows and Castaway in terms of quality and characterisation is not all that much. Except in Eun-bin’s case, where there is indeed one show that is leagues and leagues above any other series she has been in (the ones I know of, at least). If you really want to see a coming-of-age story that does justice to Eun-bin’s talent as an actor, can I recommend BOTH SEASONS of Age of Youth/Hello, My Twenties? Yes, that’s right, not Attorney Woo (I haven’t seen it, but I don’t need to see it to know that Eun-bin deserved a Baeksang not for Attorney Woo but for Hello, My Twenties). She is phenomenal as Song Ji-won. I mean, altogether great casting, but Eun-bin stands head and shoulders above her peers.
I am personally incapable of reviewing Hello, My Twenties (Writer: Park Yeon-sun). I love it too much. Both seasons, although if I’m being completely transparent, S2 a little more than S1 (I’M SORRY S1 I LOVE YOU TOO, A MOTHER LOVES ALL HER CHILDREN EQUALLY). Instead, I can brokenly offer a nowhere-near-exhaustive list of some of my favorite storylines/moments from both seasons.
The Yi-na-Ye-eun rivalry at the start of S1 that eventually blossoms into a close friendship.
The juxtaposition of Yi-na and Jin-myung’s choices in life and how they learn to appreciate and sympathize with each other.
Yoon Jin-myung’s journey in both seasons as she navigates poverty, loss, death, love, and yes work too. Also how she’s the de-facto mom of the group
Literally every second Song Ji-won is on the screen—her carefree, jokester, bohemian, free-spirit-I’m-in-my-hoe-phase-wannabe, braggadocious, compulsive lying ass-self… like I cannot tell you how much I love this character.
Yoo Eun-jae’s tiny fish in a big pond but with a dark past and her series of firsts as she slowly, and bumpily, settles into college/hostel life. Her being a diminutive, nervous, and shy person in general but also the bravest in an emergency.
Ji-won’s and Sung-min’s bickering, just… this is how you write a slow burn, okay team? Take copious notes. Frenemies to something more? arc…Idk, it’s implied but never confirmed (WHICH IS THE CORRECT BEHAVIOR).
The legendary funeral scene. Need I say more?
The outtakes after every episode—especially when they use it to make tongue-in-cheek, meta references to the show itself. For e.g., when in S2, Eun-jae admits sheepishly that she’s “changed a lot” because in reality, they changed the actor? I died.
Jo-eun being such an ODOROBOL softie, which is basically the gentle giant trope but female and MAN, DOES IT WORK! Ever so well. Really, excellent, top-tier writing.
Continuing the theme of “the firsts of youth”, Eun-jae’s (first) break up which so perfectly captures the turbulent messiness of young love—whether it be the lack of maturity to accept endings or the lack of wisdom in letting people go, but eventually acquiring both and growing as a person—it will immediately take you back to your own youth when you were so dramatic and every setback seemed like the end of the world. Unless you are in your twenties right now, in which case, it gets better, child.
The entire Asgard/Heimdall-kpop idol subplot. I mean, Eun-jae’s heartbreak may have made me tear up a little, but the episode where Ji-won and Jin-myung manage to get Heimdall a farewell performance? I bawled.
Ye-eun and Ho-chang’s unlikely pairing and in general Ye-eun’s journey of self-actualization does such a great job of showing us that love comes in many shapes and sizes and will often take us by surprise and teach us things about ourselves we didn’t know before.
There are probably tons of other moments, like Ji-won’s attempt to invite all the local stags to a house party, or Yi-na driving to the airport (in fact, that entire Ep 1 of S2 was a TRIP) but yeah, I will stop here because when it comes to describing the things you love, less is more. Because you want others to discover those joyous moments for themselves. I will say, however, that I wish the show had been more categorically pro-LGBTQ. But even the antagonism/ambivalence towards a potentially gay person is not out-of-character because Ye-eun is slightly prissy and Eun-jae is parochial/ignorant in many ways. It’s safe to assume that they will both likely get over their prejudices and become better people eventually. Plus, the writer was also trying to make a point about gender expression and sexuality which, you go, girl, I’m with you 100%.
Oh, and, Hello, My Twenties also has an IPV angle, and while every such story is different (and no matter how extreme, it’s never the victim’s fault), I do feel good writing helps to avoid stereotypical and reductive portrayals of abusive relationships, so that we’re better able to appreciate just how commonplace and normalized such violence is. Also, the lasting impact on a person’s physical and psychological health is not something that can be neatly resolved by the end of the story in a sterile, happy ending. Hello, My Twenties is a perfect example of how a show can handle such sensitive topics without compromising it’s overall light-hearted, feel-good vibes. Precisely BECAUSE it doesn’t shy away from exploring the multitudes we contain, how our good and bad experiences interconnect and seep into each other. The end result? A wonderful, heart-warming tale about the healing and succor to be found in friendship and community.
Maybe someday when I watch it all again and I’m capable of more objectivity (probably in like 20 years from now) I might attempt to write a more critical review/glowing tribute.
Shin Hye-sun is on a mission this year (this was 2023, when she had like three or four dramas come out in succession), but Samdal-ri fails her.
Let’s start with the diss track (review) first. Also, it seems like I’ve written a veritable treatise on My Golden Life, so it’s kinder to put Samdal-ri ahead. That’s just who I am, overflowing with the milk of ursine kindness.
Welcome to Samdal-ri
Writer: Kwon Hye-joo (Also wrote Sound of Your Heart. Shocking, I know)
One-line review: Promising start as always, but predictably unravels into a self-indulgent mess
Full disclosure: I did not watch the last four episodes because I FUCKING COULDN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE. If any of my complaints are addressed in these last few episodes, I don’t really care.
Thematically speaking, Welcome to Samdal-ri is similar to My Golden Life in its rejection of the hyper-competitive, fast-paced, glamorous-but-lonely life of the rich and successful in favor of an inward-looking, I-am-my-own-competition, the rat-race-is-for-rats kind of perspective on life. And yes, I suppose somewhere it’s also about sharing your burdens and finding community. Absolutely dandy. Can I just say though that while, sure, cities can be alienating, small towns also tend to be parochial and hierarchical and tend to exert higher levels of scrutiny over people’s lives: in a conservative society, the anonymity a city offers can be a good thing. Even though Samdal doesn’t really want anonymity except when it benefits her…AAAAAAND let me heroically stop myself from going off on absurd tangents with impeccable grace and chivalry.
Fine, let’s go with the assumption that Samdal-ri is about rediscovering the important things in life (I literally threw up as I typed that).
However <deep sigh> except for that one scene when Sam-dal and Friends stand up to the reporter, most of the story is focused on Cho Yong-pil being her single source of strength and even sense, it seems, which kind of robs the story of its message of “community.” I almost feel the key message here is that love—romantic love specifically—is the force which can bring about great personal transformation.
And, Samdal-ri is too breezy and too saccharine to make even THIS point with any degree of conviction. The flat, cardboard characterization doesn’t help of course. I’m never really convinced that Samdal doesn’t actually like her high-flying life. I think her ambition has as much to do with wanting to be famous and well-regarded as her passion for photography. And by not sufficiently addressing that part of her personality, we end up with a very tepid romance that doesn’t really say anything much other than “girls who break up with their boyfriends to pursue their dreams are stupid and misguided and should repent.” Oh wait, no, they wouldn’t even let Samdal—a fictional woman—actually have the audacity to walk out on a “good guy” for no reason other than that the path she wanted to take in life diverged from his, which, to be clear, is a perfectly valid and sufficient reason to break up. Not even her being ashamed of her small-town roots is allowed to be a (extremely cogent and believable) source of conflict between her and Cho Yong-pil! No, no, we’ll just blame the father who’s mourning his dead wife but whose love still pales in comparison with our OTP’s love-for-the-ages. Because how dare any (successful or otherwise) adult woman be single and happy, while still having room to grow, right? How dare she have actual faults or make errors of judgment or be allowed to patently recognize that it’s her own pride getting in the way of her happiness? Welcome to Samdal-ri if it was titled honestly: In This Economy, Getting Back with Your Ex From the Small Town You Grew Up in May Not be Such a Bad Idea.
That’s as far as my sympathy for Samdal of Samdal-ri goes. It will never not amaze me that these are a bunch of 40-year-olds. I don’t mean to be ageist, I say this because I am in the same age range as the middle generation around whom much of the story is based. I am not looking for realism in a small-town romance like Welcome to Samdal-ri, but I am looking for complex characters I can identify with considering these are not teenagers but fully grown adults who have a modicum of self-awareness and life experience.
Alas, I am destined to be disappointed. To me, the OTP in Samdal-ri both seem to suffer from arrested development, two individuals who have never moved past the glory days of their youth (very peaked-in-high-school vibes) which does not make sense because they’re both apparently really good in their chosen fields of work. And that forms one of the biggest issues I have with Samdal-ri—the fact that for both Sam-dal and Yong-pil, their feelings and emotions are extremely incongruent with their (stated) personalities. Time alone is enough to weather a person and change their preferences and outlook on life. Add to that the effect of success, of having spent time perfecting an art or a science, of having met so many people from different walks of life—all of these would typically leave an impression on a person, not to mention the watershed moments, each in turn made of series of cascading realizations about our inner selves, the crystallizing of our political, social, and financial points of view, the strengthening of our habits, our hobbies, our expressions, our way of being—there’s so much happening in our inner worlds, so many deaths, so many births, the romance of those silent revolutions…but none of this is explored as a twist of fate brings two estranged lovers face-to-face after many years. I never thought I’d say this, but this series might have benefited from a little more first-person narration.
Look, I’m not complaining about the fact that they still love each other, I’m annoyed because they’re in love with each other’s 20-something-years-old selves, which means that they’ve not had any emotional growth and their love has neither changed nor evolved with time. It is as chaotic, as irresponsible, as self-centered, and worst of all, AS FURTIVE as it was when they were young, long past the age where it could be considered sweet and romantic. I know the will-they-won’t-they secretive nature of the romance is meant to add tension to the leads’ interactions but honestly, for me it didn’t engender any of the pleasurable anticipation that comes from a typical rekindling-of-an-old-flame arc. Instead, considering Cho Yong-pil’s (execrable use of that legend’s name, imo) incessant wheedling and inability to get over his heartbreak, and Sam-dal’s broken self-confidence (reaching credulity-stretching heights, like okay we get it, she is plagued by self-doubt, move on), their dynamic comes off more as a somewhat unhealthy relationship between two people who are incapable of learning, reflecting, and letting go. Also, it boggles my mind that it needed Yong-pil’s patronizing and officious interference in Sam-dal’s life to pull her out of her slump like come on, you expect me to believe that or worse, find THAT charming? Hell naurrrr. It would have far been better if this helping hand were to come from one of the sisters, or a new entrant (preferably another woman) altogether, or her best friend, which I suppose Yong-pil is but because they’re also exes, it becomes problematic. What is he really after, hmm? I get that the point is for Samdal to choose vulnerability over her ego, but why does it only have to be with Yong-pil, who’s the ENEMY (nice-guy-energy-giving, sanctimonious bastard…”I did not tell you about your mom’s heart condition because you haven’t been home for so long…” ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME)?
Now, I’m not really going to be a stick in the mud and say you cannot have any kind of toxic behaviors in a romance at all, I mean often the central conflicts in a love story stem from an unhealthy place (wish fulfilment ig), and yes, yes, it’s just fiction, etc., etc., but where, WHERE is the searing chemistry that will make me overlook all of these nitpicks (making me sound like an annoying stickler, which I am not, not even a little, my watch list will scandalize you). Ugh, nothing more painful to see leads with zero chemistry trying so hard to convince us that they’re in love. First of all, if you can see the effort, it doesn’t work. Second, chemistry is an abstract and difficult to capture entity, granted, but I can GUARANTEE that never-ending shots of the OTP staring into each other’s eyes (with a gazillion flashbacks of cutesy, cringy PDA thrown in for good measure… seriously, is that supposed to endear them to me?? They’re like that annoying college couple who’re together only for the vibes and popularity) is a surefire way of killing whatever little chemistry the actors may have had. Especially, with Chang-wook doing that lop-sided thing with his mouth—it just makes him seem like he’s trying to break away from some sort of hypnotic witchcraft Sam-dal’s doing. As for Hye-sun, all that staring just made her look as if she was disassociating in Ji Chang-wook’s direction. I’M SORRY! You cannot convince me they weren’t bored by shooting endless scenes of just “looking intensely.” Why are rom-coms being dumbed down more and more with each passing day, like if they’re trying to compete with Indian soaps, they can forget it. Nothing can compete with Indian series’ level of kitsch (not to mention that a lot of younger audiences gravitate towards k-dramas precisely becausethey tend to be be less cloying and sappy).
Also, vehemently denying you are still hung up on your first love is a cute look only for Song Kang (j/k, not even him). Within the story, it’s really weird to see two characters who’ve dated publicly and known each other for donkey’s years start spluttering and prevaricating and being totally loud and obnoxious just because someone asked them a question about their feelings (the way I was able to time every “micheosseo?!” down to the last microsecond, smh). Tbh, it seemed that both the stars kind of lost interest in the script and were just meeting contractual obligations. Literally all Chang-wook does is to make his eyes wide and pout, other than crying copiously. Am I supposed to swoon? I did not even sigh.
It would have been so refreshing if Sam-dal actually fell in love with someone else when she came back home. Like all the time she’s dreading meeting Yong-pil but she ends up falling for someone else, not necessarily Yeong-seok but yes, someone other than Yong-pil. That would have been an easier approach to make this a light-hearted, not too serious coming-of-age story, without getting too philosophical or anything, and leaving the audience free to properly romanticize life in a charming coastal town, which was the point after all. Be it the wafer-thin plot, or the fact that the entire show is probably just a thinly-veiled Jeju tourism ad, none of this would have mattered if the main story or main characters didn’t take themselves so seriously, considering the show otherwise does not aspire to any modicum of profundity. Like I said, it’s not the fact that Sam-dal chooses Yong-pil (I mean she didn’t really choose, she just sort of caves) that’s incongruous with the veritable storm of romance the writer is attempting to evoke, it’s that there’s nothing rewarding about it, there’s no inner journey, not really. Their love story seems like any other love story, nothing epic about it, and that’s fine. Not every romance has to be sweeping or breathtaking or larger-than-life, but then why all the hysterics? I feel the lack of calibration in the emotional scenes sort of killed the slice-of-life vibe they were obviously going for. Tonal mess.
Also don’t even get me started on the lost opportunity to explore the mentor-mentee relationship (blessedly aromantic, although it might have been interesting if they’d added a shade of obsession there) between Sam-dal and Eun-ju in an extremely competitive field; yet another avenue for Sam-dal to check in with herself and see how far she’s traveled as a person and if she has been moving only in good directions. In fact, I was most curious about this storyline and was hoping to see it developed further. Instead, we get Sam-dal throwing a fit because nobody asks her if she did the thing she’s been accused of doing—bih calm the fuck down.
Young-pil’s dad being anti-Sam-dal is honestly not a big enough point of a conflict, nothing two grown-ass adults would find difficult to overcome. The attempt to extract drama from a comparatively non-critical conflict falls flat because again, this isn’t a heady and intoxicating story of young love like Romeo-Juliet, and it actually ends up making the leads look stupid and ineffectual. Also, in their attempt to pull a “no one is bad, everybody is good, everyone has their own cross to bear,” the writer actually ends up making Yong-pil’s dad sympathetic to the extent that I mildly resented Yong-pil every time he’s short with his father. AND, I DON’T REALLY BLAME THE DAD FOR NOT LIKING OR WANTING TO ASSOCIATE WITH THE CHO FAMILY. LIKE, HELLO?? HIS WIFE LITERALLY DIED BECAUSE OF KO MI-JA’S STUBBORNNESS. SHE CAUSED AN EASILY AVOIDABLE, FUTILE DEATH. MORE IMPORTANTLY, WHY IS YOUNG-PIL NOT MAD? NOT EVEN LIKE FOR A FEW WEEKS?? COULDN’T HAVE BEEN ME FOR SURE. IT WOULD TAKE A BIGGER PERSON (like god maybe) THAN I AM TO LET THAT GO SO EASILY… Let’s be real, I’m not going to sympathize more with Young-pil and Sam-dal being star-crossed lovers than with a person losing a loved one because of someone else’s bad judgement. Like with Crash Course, I’m not going to root for the OTP unconditionally, not when they make everything about themselves.
I don’t even want to talk about the disservice the makers do to the Haenyo community—like it’s almost insulting how reductive and oversimplified they made it. Also, what about climate change and its eviscerating impact on coastal communities, hello? Even generally, I feel that the show misses a huge opportunity to spotlight networks of solidarity and community between women: maybe have the three Cho siblings become better people by finding sisterhood and companionship with each other and with the other women in the community, overcoming prejudices and letting go of the superficial assumptions that generally color interactions between city slickers and small-town folk. No, no, they had to make it about the men and their fEeLinGs.
A lone highpoint for me was the metanarrative aspect of Gyeong-tae and Eun-u’s (the comic relief friends) conversations. I don’t know if it was intentional, but at various points they accurately express my frustration with the OTP, complaining about how long they were taking to get together, for heaven’s sake, can they stop being so coy for no reason… in general, being so done with them. I specifically liked how Gyeong-tae calls Sam-dal out for cutting them out of her life when she breaks up with Yong-pil, even though they were her friends too. That point is never really addressed, and Sam-dal doesn’t really apologize for it (if she does in the episodes I didn’t watch, idc). Her heartbreak is used as a shield against any criticism of her character. She often fails at being a good friend or a good daughter, but you guys, her heart is broken okay? So what if it’s been eight years, she should be allowed to get away with anything, even murder. Not to belabor the point, but this goes back to my initial complaint about not letting Sam-dal be “bad” or “selfish”. Well, too bad, the tendency to sidestep any form of meaningful introspection or accountability ironically makes Sam-dal less likeable.
Long rant short: Samdal-ri did not provide me with even a fraction of the escapism it advertised. Two thumbs down.
My Golden Life
Writer: So Hyun-kyung
Three words to describe My Golden Life: Anti-cliche, anti-chaebol fairytale, anti-Cinderella
Welcome to my review of this weird outlier k-drama called My Golden Life—Extremely disjointed ADHD vers.
This is one of those rare shows that works so well as a class critique and an indictment rather than glamorization of the chaebol lifestyle of privilege and arrogance—specifically the exaltation of wealth above all, regarding it as the only signifier of individual worth. I can’t tell you how pleasantly surprised I was when the show eschewed the usual developments of a rich boy-poor girl plot where the chaebol is always framed to be a (secretly) good person who wins at everything: he gets the girl, and defeats the enemy (usually a step-parent or something) without having to give up an ounce of his privilege.
My Golden Life takes this formulaic approach of class difference being the central source of tension and conflict between the leads and turns it on its head. It even plays with our feelings with the possibility of the two leads being siblings. Throughout the drama, all of the twists and turns are in service to a single goal: to always bring the leads to the same plane of existence and trace how this impacts their dynamic. In terms of an interpersonal exploration into gender and class, this approach works really well.
Overall, the drama adopts a (gently) critical stance on the patriarchal, hero figures within its world. For example, Seo Tae-soo is pegged as provider in-charge but he is hobbled by misfortune and poor health and is not able to fulfil the role of being the “man of the house.” Choi Jae-sung appears to have unlimited power over his dominion but it is soon revealed that he is but a pawn who needs to obey every behest of his temperamental father-in-law (eyo Queen of Tears og version).
Even in the case of the very green-flag coded Sun Woo-hyuk, his saviorism arising out of having had to assume responsibility for his family at an early age is addressed in the show. Somewhere in his past, he has helped his sister leave behind a bad marriage, and mended relationships with his father far enough to have him working at his company, all of which hints at significant personal growth that must have happened between adolescence and adulthood. Even so, he has his own growth arc in the present: when he realizes that his imagined ideal is not the same as the person he actually loves. The writing makes it a point to emphasize that it’s his naturally protective and loyal nature that drives him to help Seo Ji-an, and, more importantly his desire to help her does not hinge upon what he gets in return. Even after he realizes she doesn’t reciprocate his feelings, he continues to help her get back on her feet without any expectation of being rewarded with a romantic relationship. This sets him up in almost painful contrast with our chaebol prince, Choi Do-kyung, who expects praise and adoration for every little “good” thing he does, and in general has an irritatingly paternalistic and condescending attitude. And yes, you are correct in assuming that Choi Do-kyung has been added to my list of most useless love interests in k-drama history (ironically, it’s actually because he is really well-written, which means full marks for characterization).
Thankfully, the writer and I are on the same page when it comes to Choi Do-kyung, which is why the show works so well for me. It loses no opportunity to demonstrate just how useless and incompetent Choi Do-kyung is outside his privileged bubble, being completely dependent on his business family and connections. Later episodes do show him working through this, but he always remains the one who got a head start in the world because of his privileged background. So far, so good. Also where would he be without Secretary Yoo?
What really pushed the story from good to great territory is its insistence on Do-kyung having to completely break away from the Haesung empire—symbolizing a rejection of the hyper-capitalist, consumerist, and obscene wealth and luxury of his class/social group—before he can even be considered WORTHY of Seo Jian. Which means the wealth, position, and influence he inherited from his forceful grandfather through his snobby and status-obsessed mother are considered as NEGATIVES that count against him. This is actually a very radical stand for a k-drama to take.
However, the show does depart from this extremely progressive lens when the time comes to present possible alternatives; the ones that are ultimately offered—small-scale business and/or an artisanal economy—are a little too benign to be strongly anti-capitalist. Still, it’s a step forward from mega-corporations and monopolies, so I’ll take it. I guess the point is also to spotlight the Seo family as a group of scrappy achievers who, given the opportunity, will outshine any spoiled and coddled chaebol who has been bred and trained to his assumed role of a titan of industry since birth. Again, I don’t deny this is a nice sentiment and mildly anti-meritocratic, but people shouldn’t have to be perceived to be “competent” to deserve help and attention. Even Seo Ji-soo has a specific talent and interest for that matter…Of course, this is more of a nitpick and it’s definitely open to interpretation. Suffice to say that I’m not looking for anything more radical than this in a socially conscious family drama that is more an exploration of the impact of poverty (or wealth) on familial relations rather than an outright criticism of capitalistic systems (even though the two are closely linked).
The follow-your-dream message, too, is a little idealistic and geared towards groups who can afford the privilege of a hobby or nurturing talent. But considering the shift here is mainly Seo Ji-an going from being an ambitious corporatist to someone who willingly drops out of the rat-race to pursue a slower life, the arc is overall more than satisfying. However I wish they’d also addressed toxic productivity as an issue, for e.g., Ji-an finding work-life balance no matter how much she loved carpentry, and having more of an identity outside work, instead of letting her work or “passion” define her entirely. But again, this is me being annoyingly wishful. This show is from 2018 after all.
The other big theme of the series—family—is to me overall more expertly handled and has greater emotional heft. The main focus is the Seo parents’ respective relationships with their children, particularly with their daughters. Their evolving relationship with both Ji-an and Ji-soo powerfully illustrates the fact that parents are also people and are not infallible or above making mistakes. But above all Tae-soo and Mi-jung’s characters truly embody parental love and sacrifice, even if that love sometimes leads them to act unwisely.
I will never be able to recover from the Seo Tae-soo subplot. Like, it was such a harsh but necessary reminder of just how fragile our lives under the current socio-economic system are: A single setback can cause lasting and irreversible harm to our physical, mental, and financial health, eroding our self-confidence and embittering our relationships.
There were so many scenes which were a direct sucker punch to the gut: like the one where on finding out that he has cancer, Seo Tae-soo feels nothing more than a sense of overwhelming relief. You can literally see the burden being lifted off the poor man’s back. That scene….god, that scene will never leave me. Or the one where Ji-an berates herself for not recognizing the signs of her dad’s depression when she herself went through something so similar in the past. Her heart truly breaks for her dad, and it was one of the most moving scenes in a drama series I’ve ever seen (certified Shin Hye-sun fan).
In my view, this series ended up offering better discourse on mental health than any of the more recent ones, even the ones billed as such (*cough*Daily Dose of Sunshine*cough*)—which points to a worrying lack of real progress, maybe even regression (and increasing conservatism and censorship?) in the way such difficult themes are presented. It’s not very hard to include earnest and layered portrayals of social and economic injustices and their impact on society—be it our increasing sense of isolation and alienation, physical and mental illnesses, lack of access to healthcare and support…these problems are literally everywhere. What newer series tend to leave out or leave unsaid actually says more about them than what they choose to include. It’s like there’s this invisible but suffocating veil of warped morality that’s clouding all forms of storytelling in mainstream media that’s becoming increasingly hard to ignore.
Degrees of One True Loves
Seo Ji-an and Choi Do-kyung: Man-child learns to fish
I would have been absolutely chuffed if Seo Ji-an had outgrown Choi Do-kyung by the end of the show. Okay, I admit, I’m prejudiced against Do-kyung even if I completely understand Ji-an’s attraction to him. Even after both of their respective rites of passage—they travel entire countries (metaphorically speaking) in terms of character growth—even after Do-kyung learns to respect Ji-an as an independent person with her own perspectives and dreams and not just as an extension of him (Feminism 101), even after they both arrive in gradual degrees to a greater understanding and appreciation of each others’ strengths and struggles, in spite of their deep affection for each other that withstands both time and the disruption of their numerous fall outs, even if all the other differences between them of status, familial opposition, etc. are resolved over the course of the show—I grant all of this—even so. Even so, I can’t help but think that ultimately they’re mismatched. Again, I say this in the face of all the great strides Do-kyung makes from being an absolute dipshit to somewhat less of a dipshit: for me, he still falls short. Because the way they both relate to the world is so different. Seo Ji-an loves like her dad does, fully and generously, going out of her way to help and assist Do-kyung in his struggle to become independent of his family. While Choi Do-kyung loves like his mom, selfishly and for his own comfort. In fact, this is the reason Seo Ji-an breaks from him completely towards the end, because he’s never fully able to grow out of his self-centered, me-and-mine-first way of going through life. But, ofc, this being a family drama, they had to give us a crowd-pleaser ending.
Also to be completely honest, I didn’t exactly like the way he insinuates himself in Seo Ji-an’s life again, but at least now we know that she will never again lose her hard-earned agency and autonomy. It will always be Do-kyung who will have to make the adjustments and the sacrifices. That’s my silver lining.
Ji-soo and Woo-hyuk: Reclaiming the ditzy heroine
I liked Ji-soo’s growth through the drama even if it is a lot more subtle than Ji-an’s dramatic upheavals. Ji-soo may be a little spoiled, thoughtless, and somewhat of a simpleton, but really she is the emotional anchor of the show. Of everyone, she’s the one with the purest intentions, and the most transparent, the one who has an instinctive understanding of what happiness really is and never wavers for a second. Even after discovering her true identity, she doesn’t really hanker after wealth or position. So secure is she in her personhood that the only times she’s really unhappy is when she has to be someone she’s not. I also feel that the writer intended for her easygoing and somewhat thoughtless nature to be a marker of privilege (not just from having been born to a rich family, but also from having been coddled and even favored over her siblings), something that sets her apart in spite of her middle-class upbringing. Whereas, Seo Ji-an is always alive to everything she lacks, hungry for success, and eager to escape what she feels is an unsatisfactory life. And the master stroke of writing in having them grow up as twins?? Pure genius. What better way than that to clearly demonstrate the interplay of nature vs nurture: Seo Ji-an’s innate class consciousness and Seo Ji-soo’s complete obliviousness to it.
I also feel that Ji-soo’s pursuit of Woo-hyuk, in spite of her awkwardness, is a subtle indicator of this very lack of self-consciousness or self-doubt. For all her bold and outgoing nature, Seo Ji-an would never presume to pursue a man she’s interested in, especially if he’s in a different social class than her own. Another example of this inspired use of contrasts or dichotomies in personalities is how, in spite of her seemingly timid nature, Seo Ji-soo doesn’t hesitate to rebel against her new circumstances after she moves into the Choi household. She actively dislikes their lifestyle, and constantly mutinies against having to give up her freedom in exchange for an upper-class life. She has no need for the luxury and riches her new family can provide her and instead shakes up their world by constantly questioning their rigid mores and high-handed ways. In fact, the show is at pains to show that in the face of a sudden swing of fortunes for both the sisters, Ji-soo comes off better, with her integrity and equanimity intact.
But this is not to castigate Seo Ji-an as weak or lesser than. In fact, I would say, she is ultimately the stronger of the two, considering she has to overcome real temptation, overcome her baser impulses and do the right thing. Ji-soo doesn’t give in to temptation because she feels none. She’s definitely a rarity in the sense that she’s almost monk-like in her complete rejection of the rich chaebol life. But it isn’t really a great struggle for her like it is for Ji-an. She seems to have inherited at least some of her mothers’ iron will, and the resulting self-conceit and disdain for others’ struggles, even though it manifests itself in far more positive ways than it does for Noh Myung-hee.
And therefore it makes sense that Ji-soo had to suffer other disappointments—particularly in love, which famously cannot be willed into being—that teaches her humility and the ability to handle rejection. The show takes the time to let her explore her passion, uncover other aspects of her personality, allow her to have her own dreams, however modest they may seem in comparison to her background. In addition to all this, we get a rich and detailed subtheme of sibling love, particularly between Ji-an and Ji-soo. Show me a recent drama that has such a layered approach to sibling relationships (My Unfamiliar Family, I say, hence proving my best opp is myself).
While Seo Ji-an’s journey is more self-discovery and self-love, Seo Ji-soo’s journey is outward, where she learns how to think beyond her immediate self.
Hoooooooo….I need a minute.
The Baker and Woo-hyuk’s sister
A sweet love story, reversing the class trope—poor boy-rich girl—to demonstrate how much harder it is for women to challenge social norms. Woo-hee is punished much more severely than Do-kyung ever is. I wish they’d not made her inability to have a baby as a reason for not wanting to be with the Baker, but I get why it would weigh so heavily with her.
Ji-tae and Su-ah: N-po core
Most PSA—these two are the true representatives of the Sampo generation and their circumstances are a direct highlighting of the issues of economic disparity and rising cost of living that make it hard for people to choose to have families. But it gets a little too easily resolved in the end. Having a baby in the current economic climate is accurately pitched as a point of contention between two people who otherwise love each other a lot. However, Ji-tae holds out for far longer than he needed to. Also abortion rights, y’all! Considering the viewership, the resolution is predictably tame. Ultimately, though, it was nice to see them both happy at the end, and it didn’t take away from the lesson that while love alone is not enough, it does give you the strength to carry on.
More than anything, having the PSA couple not be the MCs of the story works so well in ensuring the “social message” part of the show doesn’t overshadow the deeper, psychological explorations of class differences or conflict: we’re still very much watching a fell-fledged family drama with all the trimmings of its classic tropes and with well-differentiated characters. This is a far more effective way to get people to recognize and ponder the profound questions it raises.
Ji-ho and Seo-hyun: Gen Z represent!
I know, I know, they don’t technically fit under here. But just BEAR with me.
Seo Ji-ho is definitely my (and probably everyone’s) favourite Seo sibling. He is the most level-headed and pragmatic of them all, although his streak of hyper-independence points to the possibility that his needs weren’t always met when he was younger. After all, he must have experienced the most deprivation considering he’s the youngest and likely the most overlooked. I was particularly relieved that he remains sweet and caring throughout, and honestly think It’s a near-miracle that he doesn’t turn into a delinquent—a frequently used trope in Drama World.
It’s always satisfying to see characters learn from their mistakes and apply it to their next experience within the show itself—however small these little epiphanies may be in the larger scheme of things, they make a huge difference in helping the audience experience real closure, especially when there are multiple arcs unfolding in parallel. The same themes from Ji-an’s arc repeat here as well, although on a much smaller scale, where the lesson is for people to do their best with what they have, learn from setbacks, and live earnestly. I see now the advantage of these long-format series—they may need a little bit of perseverance to get through but they do allow a lot of room to explore each sub-story and time for us to get fond of the characters as we accompany them on their journey.
Ji-ho’s unlikely friendship with Seo-hyun, the chaebol maknae, was probably one of my favorite things in the series. Again, the parallels to Ji-an and Do-kyung are apparent. While both Ji-ho and Seo-hyun teeter on the edge of something deeper for a brief moment, they wisely pull back. I’m almost inclined to believe that this was the writer’s hint to the audience that this is the actual, plausible, and desirable conclusion to an association of this nature.
Yang Mi-jung and Seo Tae-soo
Again, a smaller but potent story of personal transformation. Theirs is one of the most moving arcs in the whole drama. It is poignant and deep with real conflict, shining a light on what it actually means to grow old together. Aspiring writers should take notes on how to construct complex characters who can make mistakes without being categorized as evil and who are shown to bow down before life’s vicissitudes before finding their way forward with fortitude, redeeming themselves and their relationships.
Choi Jae-sung and Noh Myung-hee
This was quite an interesting equation and had the potential to serve as yet another contrast to the leads’ story. Here too, the theme of class resurfaces, reversed again, but this time, instead of the woman leaving her rich family to enter the more humble world of the person she loves, the opposite happens. This leads to a series of misunderstandings between the two and an eventual estrangement, besides resulting in them losing their daughter. The premise was intriguing enough for me to wish to see it explored further, but yeah, that would mean another ten episodes and that would have tested even my goodwill.
Grandpa No is such a terror but it was a joy to watch actor Kim Byeong-ki relish it so much and really play the part of the evil capitalist. Yeah, there are no gray areas here, but I’m not complaining!
P.S. – If you’ve noticed the sad lack of visuals in this and later reviews it’s because of extreme executive dysfunction, which is why it’s taken me a year to release a new review. I’d rather publish something in a basic format than nothing at all. Thanks, supremely beloved readers, for understanding.
Song Hye-kyo, Lee Do-hyun, Lim Ji-yeon, Cha Joo-young, Park Sung-hoon
Starting things off with a ban-tangent
Can I just say, before I begin this review for real, how very lacking Netflix subtitles are? There was a line about a storm in a pond or something that certainly got lost in translation. When I saw it in my notes, I just stared at it blankly for a whole minute, then asked, “Does she fish?”
Mild warning: Spoilers ofc for The Glory and The Penthouse
So plot, very twist, not
In today’s world of fast-paced and ubiquitous entertainment, the tension between writers and audiences has tautened even more: gone are the days of audiences as passive consumers, TV viewers today expect to and do participate actively in pop culture phenomena, and may not always, but can potentially influence show makers’ choices and decisions. And it’s true that modern audiences and fans are extremely knowledgeable, even cynical.
When it comes to psych thrillers, action-adventure series, sci-fi or similar suspenseful genres, not only are viewers used to rug-pull moments in (all kinds of media, but especially in) motion pictures, they even expect it—being surprised, shocked, or disappointed has become an almost sacrosanct part of the viewing experience.
This contrasts with what is generally expected from more laidback genres: think slice-of-life or documentary-style shows or movies where there isn’t some big payoff at the end, instead, the story gently meanders forward until we, the audience, leave the characters off at some logical point in their journey.
Further, and regardless of genre, when it comes to key characters and their development, viewers take special pride in being able to correctly spot foreshadowing and guess what turn events will take. The attitude is basically, “Aha! I knew it! This <plot twist> was supposed to shock me, but it didn’t! I guessed it all along. Joke’s on you writer-nim!” And often, writers generously concede these small wins to their viewers for many of whom, the predictability of a show or character arc can be as much a source of comfort as a target for derision.
And conversely, it is also likely that for a writer, a key concern is figuring out ways to outwit her audience, considering they are already familiar with existing tropes and formulas.
The reasons I bring all this up are to:
establish that the writer’s intent was to set The Glory up as a dark, psych thriller in Season 1,
see whether Season 2 stays true to Season 1’s genre and style,
observe—since there is no question of there not being a payoff (the genre and story demand one)—the quality of the payoff, and, in light of this payoff,
recognize The Glory’s deeper meanings and implications.
I can dimly appreciate what writer Kim Eun-sook was going for: people were expecting twists; therefore, the attempt was to defy expectations by keeping things very, almost painfully, straightforward.
I guess you can think of it as a smart sleight-of-hand when Eun-sook-shi decided on a WYSIWYG approach and subverted our expectations by—wait for it—giving us exactly what we wished for, i.e., a horrible ending for each of the Terrible Five, no disappointments whatsoever. Let’s assume for a moment that the writer was indeed successful in divining (more on this in the next paragraph) what we wished to see in S2. Here’s the thing though: a big part of enjoying pop culture is the bittersweet prospect of not having your wishes fulfilled. The wistfulness and slight regret of a not-so-happy ending make for a more memorable viewing experience than when everything falls magically into place. And this is one of the main reasons why The Glory S2 slowly but surely deflated over its eight episodes and turned into a complete washout by the end.
Besides, it’s completely debatable if the writer really understood what we (or just me, a random bear of kulture) wanted at all. I have an inkling she believes she’s pulled off a great writing coup, and many would agree. But if that is indeed the case, it shows just how much respect she has for us, the audience. Spoiler: she thinks we’re all a little soft in the head. Maybe this isn’t entirely her fault; maybe we didn’t know ourselves what we wished for. And maybe it no longer matters; after all the series became a big hit and won many awards, etc. But I’d say the only way The Glory could be of any actual value as a piece of media is for us to reflect on what it ultimately chose to portray vs what we wanted or hoped to see in it. What did we want for Moon Dong-eun? Was it revenge? Or justice? What’s the difference? And what do the answers to these questions say about us, as individuals, and as a society?
S1 vs S2 vs The Penthouse
Verisimilitude Fail
The Glory S2 veers away from a dark, gritty, character-driven revenge thriller to an almost boringly straightforward revenge melo, I’m talking grocery shopping list-level of mundane considering how every thing gets flattened into this very binary landscape… like the plot twists were not plot twisting.
Besides, when it comes to soapy revenge dramas, 2020-21’s The Penthouse simply cannot be touched (Edit many years later: I recently learned that the Glory is supposed to be a makjang—which, fair enough, but it’s besides the point because it doesn’t work as one either. Considering I’m comparing it to The Penthouse, a quintessential makjang, I accidentally got the genre right lol). There were many moments while watching the latter half of The Glory, I couldn’t help but think of the Penthouse series: how it truly embodied this elusive quality of “glory” the recent, eponymous series didn’t quite manage to capture through its 16 episodes, even though it tried v. v. hard.
My mind automatically drew comparisons between the majestic and extra AF sweep of The Penthouse—a sprawling and epic tragedy from the Greek school of drama—to the coldly efficient and single-minded tunnel vision of The Glory. If you’ve read my past entries, you’ll immediately recognize this to be a double standard. All I will say in my defense is there needs to be a balance to storytelling. I guess The Glory is a good example of the other extreme when it comes to a show’s treatment of its themes: there is such a thing as being too fixated on a single plot or character arc, and this at the expense of having a complex, layered story or well fleshed-out characters. Truth be told, it’s not just subtlety I am looking for—a blunt/broad strokes approach works just as well with the right setting. Rather, it’s more respect for the material considering the sensitivity of the topic. As such, S2 effectively quashes any claim to realism S1 may have aspired to—the oversimplification clashes with the mood and set-up to the extent that the end result is a sad pastiche of a pulpy revenge thriller and a soap opera but without the dark humor or absurdity typical to these genres to leaven the heaviness of the gloomier scenes.
In comparison, S1 fared much better, especially when it gave us those fantastic moments between Dong-eun and Hyeon-nam. The scene where Hyeon-nam confesses to Dong-eun that despite the abuse she faces, she’s a happy person?!? I cried buckets.
Problematic treatment of difficult themes
Before S2 came out, I did what any non-self-respecting drama fan would and came up with my own set of predictions. Looking back, it’s so funny to me that the most unserious prediction ended up coming true minus the “plastic surgery” and “quiet life.”
Because by the end of S2 Dong-eun is apparently a full-on vigilante, which is literally the least useful or reassuring message a victim can get. What is being said here exactly: that you’re on your own? That you need to magically make enough money, build the right connections preferably with rich people, scheme your way into a position of strength and suddenly enjoy a long streak of amazing luck so you can smoothly carry out a convoluted and painstaking plan for revenge you’ve spent decades plotting? And you make a deal with your partner (only privileged golden bois with zero personality need apply) to help them find “justice” after your own revenge is nicely tied up in some kind of quid pro quo from hell?
In a sane world, this would be the starting point of the story and the narrative would naturally be about a little something called life taking a shit over all of it, even the best laid plans. It might go on to explore how one would then salvage a personal and moral victory, however small, out of this hellish situation. We might have gotten a show that’s actually dark and gritty and not a cartoonish parody of the concept. But ofc, we don’t live in a sane world. In fact, it’s very not sane, it’s even more unstable than Lee Sara.
In an interview, Eun-sook-shi mentioned how she wrote S2 out to be some kind of wish fulfilment/release for victims of bullying, because they may not be able to actually carry out this sort of elaborate, heist-movie nonsense in real life. No shit, writer-nim! Zoinks, if that isn’t a slap in the face of victims, I don’t know what is. While there is a time and place for wish fulfilment in media, a series about the horrors of bullying and abuse should ideally be treated with restraint and preferably not lean quite so much into escapism. The dark/gritty ambience makes it worse, because while it signals the intent to include social commentary, there’s little of that to be found (for instance, the issue of bullying can be addressed in a rom-com as well—the genre dictates the treatment). The show borrows the trappings of a social commentary drama but remains pulpy and conventional at heart. My question is: who is this escapist for?
Taken in this light, S2 is almost like a taunt, considering how ridiculously serendipitous things turn out for Dong-eun. I don’t know, I could be way off base about this, but this show isn’t going to be some beacon of hope for victims of bullying or scare bullies into straightening up—S1 may have been effective in getting our attention, but S2 nosedives into a valley of improbability that undermines the gravity of the story and by extension, the severity of the issues it purportedly aims to highlight.
Also, it’s such a cop out, such a black-and-white cop out. And nowhere near poetic or epic enough to qualify as a tragedy, storytelling-wise. Be it Yeon-jin’s upbringing or Sara’s religious trauma (I can’t call it anything else), there are only small hints we’re given about the world that made these monsters. I also feel that the sexual violence needed to be called out more explicitly as a further, insidious dimension of the abuse of power, and the desire for control at the root of it: the multiple ways a victim’s very psyche is attacked, not just through fear of persecution, but through the added horror of undergoing new and evolving forms of harassment.
And obviously draw a line from there to the pernicious hierarchies and toxic environments that give rise to these behaviors because we need to know why, we deserve to know why. They don’t just manifest out of thin air; nobody is born evil. The fact that we went through 16 episodes without once calling into question the systems that allow such injustices to flourish is an undeniable failure on the makers’ part. I might still have accepted (bears have a unique adaptation that helps them perceive a situation differently by squinting really hard) the show as a critique of existing and seemingly immutable structures of power were it not for the inclusion of a character like Yeo-jeong. It’s very telling of the writers’ (probable) worldview: there are good rich people and bad rich people. The good rich people should keep everyone else in line, and retributive justice (punishment) can and should be meted out using the means the good rich people have at their disposal. Just to be clear, we’re not talking about self-defense, but a divine right to avenge. Hence, The Glory.
Let’s see how The Penthouse fared in this regard, even if it never pretends to be a serious, social commentary drama. Min Seol-ah and later Bae Ro-na clearly call out the reasons the Hera Palace kids bully and ostracize them: the weird mixture of disgust and pity rich people feel for the povos, the sense of superiority and entitlement the upper crust has for no reason other than being born into money, fear mixed with envy that Seol-ah and Ro-na are both more talented despite their poverty, as well as the rich families’ selfish desire to prevent those they deem “unworthy” from gaining entry into their world. And so they are punished for daring to aspire to a better life or compete with their “social superiors.” (I see potential for a detailed look at how the concept of punishment is explored in both these dramas, but I’ll desist and let you, supremely beautiful reader, draw your own conclusions.)
Class-based violence, limitless wealth (and the yearning for it), and unearned privilege are clearly the villains in The Penthouse. One can’t help but wonder how the most operatic (literally putting the opera in soap opera), extra AF drama managed to encapsulate this hard kernel of truth within its preening, grandiose chaff so perfectly, while a seemingly “realistic” series that was supposed to hold a mirror up to society, falls back instead on unequivocal and simplistic distinctions between good and bad, resorting to stereotypical representations of wrong-doers that don’t even begin to scratch the surface of abuse as a systemic evil. Once again, I am left with this question on my paws: who is this for? How ironic for The Glory to not lean into the genre’s tropes fully and instead resort to a half-here-half-there treatment thereby doing justice to neither.
The characters
I’m not going to argue whether it was wise of Writer Kim to make The Glory so character (and star power)-driven, but I do want us to acknowledge why: making the characters the focus means the show can more easily mask its sidestepping of larger issues while continuing to give the impression that it has, in some way, moved the needle. More on this later (sry). BEAR with me, though, because I’m actually trying to say something half-way positive. To give credit where it’s due, S1 did a great job of making the Terrible Five human. Even if they are the absolute garbage variety of humans, they are flesh and blood evil-doers, believable and scary.
A scene from S1 that stayed with me long after is when Jae-jun suspects that Ye-sol is his daughter and goes to pick her up from school. He spots her on the other side of the cross-walk looking confusedly at the traffic lights. The truth finally hits him with full force, and he runs across and hugs Ye-sol tightly. This was a really nice touch, reminding the audience that villains are also ordinary people, one of us, as capable as anyone of feeling more tender emotions. This and similar scenes where the Terrible Five are humanized lead us as intended to other inferences, particularly around the difficulty of administering justice in practice: bad guys don’t go around wearing labels for the convenience of the public or law enforcement officials.
The devolution of The Glory’s characters into distinct Good-Evil binaries contributes in a big way to make S2 flatter than I anticipated, which is a shame because S1 was a good set-up for some seriously bodacious character arcs. Instead, the collapse of the Terrible Five goes off without a hitch almost to the point of being uneventful and worse, unspectacular, other than some quality tantrums. So if you thought S2 didn’t feel as cathartic as you expected, you’re not alone. What makes a story about revenge powerful? It’s when we see the characters who fucked around earlier find out later: to a large extent we don’t get the satisfaction of seeing this happen in The Glory. We don’t really get to see the Terrible Five sit with what they’ve done except for some crumbs. The horror of it all never quite dawns on them, nor are they ever really haunted by it, there’s neither any reckoning nor repentance—considering that’s like the bare minimum payoff for a revenge drama, its absence is marked and there’s no other equally weighty (like a realistic look at how powerful perpetrators, if indicted at all, end up serving only light sentences and/or just drop out of the public eye till people start to forget and then come back into circulation once they feel enough time has passed, as if that’s enough to absolve them) resolution filling that space, emotionally speaking.
The one exception to S2’s pervasive inadequacy is Hyeon-nam. At least her story has a nice, Archery twist to it. If nothing else I would have at least appreciated the same level of surprise in the main revenge arc as well and more elegance or chutzpah in how the different threads get resolved. I mean, forget all the complaints about the lack of social critique for a second, the least the writer could have done is to serve up some spice. Amp up the camp. Squeeze up some juice – sorry, please shoot me during open season. I’ll be the bear wearing the monocle.
Edit: I realize something similar was attempted in the case of Dong-eun’s mother—as in the characters’ craftiness and venality becoming their undoing kind of twist—but it didn’t land for me as well as Hyeon-nam’s conclusion did.
Character deep-dives
Park Yeon-jin
Lim Yi-jeon as Park Yeon-jin is no doubt effective, but it’s clear she’s either consciously or unconsciously following the template created by the incomparable Kim So-Yeon as Cheon Seo-jin.
Just look at how similar Yeon-jin and Seo-jin’s prison scenes are; the only difference is Yeon-jin chants a weather report instead of trilling out an aria.
In S1, Yeon-jin’s relationship with Do-young is complicated but layered, while she herself is seen to have depth as a character; someone who is unscrupulous but really cares for her husband and daughter, someone who has no qualms in having an affair, but genuinely loves and takes pride in being with Do-young (I wish they’d spent a little more time on this, but yes, I get it, too many bodies, too little time). Honestly, she would have been a true baddie if it wasn’t for the fact that she’s also breathtakingly cruel and selfish and so obviously enjoys torturing her victims. She’s exactly like Lee Sara except while Sara gets high on actual drugs, Yeon-jin gets her kick from physically hurting others, for no reason other than that she can—she’s clearly addicted to the vicious pleasure she gets out of this. And yes of course it’s all coming from deep-rooted insecurities and growing up in a loveless family, but the show doesn’t really explore that much other than sprinkling in a couple of (hammy) scenes between Yeon-jin and her mother, Hong Young-ae, a caricature if ever there was one. Whether it’s her blind belief in the shaman which leads her to repeatedly belittle her daughter for every real or perceived failure including being told off by her school for bullying or her general air of irritation and discontent stemming not from the fact that Yeon-jin commits crimes but because she isn’t smart enough to avoid detection or capable enough to clean up her own mess, Yong-ae is the epitome of a stereotypical KDrama bad parent. It might have made more sense for Yeon-jin’s characterization to make her mother overly doting, covering up her daughter’s mistakes and making excuses for her bad behavior so that she never learns to differentiate between right and wrong. But that’s just my opinion, it’s equally plausible for a bullied child to be a bully themself…see this is exactly why we needed to know more about Yeon-jin: why is she the way she is?
In the end, Dong-eun correctly assumes that Young-ae would save herself before her daughter and I feel this is one of many missed opportunities to have added some nuance to the storytelling. Again, my mind goes back to Cheon Seo-jin’s arc in The Penthouse (or even Cersei Lannister)—the deterioration of her relationship with her daughter, Eun-Byeol, and the latter’s own evolving arc through three seasons to the point where she disowns her family. In the end, while Seo-jin’s ruin is deservedly complete and terrible, she dies with only Eun-Byeol in her heart, and despite everything, Eun-Byeol cannot help but love her back…Okay, when I sat down to write this review, I wasn’t aware it would involve this much The Penthouse nostalgia accompanied with some subtle bawling. Even if it has been a while since I watched it, I do hope I can pay proper homage to The Penthouse in a separate post—just as soon as I overcome my chronic procrastination, a common and recurring disease among bears.
The point is, while S1 starts off promisingly, subsequently, when we reach present day, the screenplay spends so much time assuring us of Yeon-jin’s depravity we don’t really get to develop an appreciation of everything she holds dear—her glory—be it her family, her job, or her social status. Or be certain beyond a doubt whether she even wants any of it; in fact she seems frustrated and dissatisfied with everything. This ambiguity around Yeon-jin’s emotional state and, as mentioned above, the scant attention paid to her backstory means everything that happens to her in S2 comes across as perfunctory: she needs to start losing simply because she’s bad and hello, we have to start wrapping things up. This business-like approach to revenge means when Yeon-jin does lose, we don’t really feel the acuteness of her loss. Perversely, her general air of defiance bordering on nihilism only managed to temper any hatred I was supposed to feel for her and even made me a little curious about her, tbh. Like who is this woman so filled to the gills with rage and spite that she lashes out at even the people she loves?
These missteps in characterization (universally, not just Yeon-jin) took me out of the story, and through the rest of the series, I wasn’t able to get back in or find emotional anchor points within any of the sub-plots, except maybe with Hye-jeong and Hyeon-nam.
Also, can I just say how much better the younger actors are? Shin Ye-eun as the teenage Park Yeon-jin is literally scarier than Lim Ji-yeon.
Jeon Jae-jun
I felt Jae-jun’s arc was undercooked: all the tension between Yeon-jin, Do-young, and him leads almost nowhere. I feel stupid for being so certain that Yeon-jin will go beyond simply manipulating Jae-jun to actively getting rid of him—like why go through all the trouble to make her a calculating and ruthless person if she can’t even be properly evil?
Instead, that honour falls to Choi Hye-jeong. It’s purely due to my partiality for Hye-jeong that I’m grudgingly willing to accept this complete lack of payoff from Jae-jun’s arc. And once again, it’s a righteous act of “justice” performed by Do-young, ostensibly the show’s moral compass, that finally ends Jae-jun. Boring.
I liked Park Sung-hoon as Jae-jun though, once again he did his best with the script he was handed. Not sure if it was intentional, but his face-off with Do-young is hilarious; overall, though, that scene is misplaced and had me sobbing weakly on the floor saying, “hey wha- what’s happening…this isn’t a whatever-goes madcap screwball noir comedy, please bring the sad back.”
Random biology tangent: color blindness is rare in girls; the only way Ye-sol could be color-blind is if her mother is a carrier in addition to Jae-jun being color-blind thus making her double recessive, that is, when both sets of chromosomes carry the mutated gene. But since it’s not impossible, I guess I can’t hold this against the show. Foine!
Moon Dong-eun
I don’t really have a lot to say about Dong-eun, because her entire personality is her need for revenge. We don’t really get to see her do or think about much else. Even the fact that she’s a fantastic Go player is just another sword to be wielded in her holy quest for vengeance and as such has no other meaning or significance (like hey, what’s this? A woman excelling in a male-dominated sport?)
Any other observations around Dong-eun are sadly in relation to the other characters. To me, this diminishing of her life and purpose to this one aspect comes across as disrespectful and even dehumanizing—it seems like the idea is just to milk Dong-eun’s (a stand-in for victims of bullying) pain for entertainment value. Hearkening back to that golden scene in S1 between Dong-eun and Hyeon-nam—it really made me hope that S2 will be about Dong-eun learning to embrace life again. In fact, their relationship of mutual trust and solidarity stands apart like an oasis of beauty and nuance in an otherwise dreary desert of clunky and joyless character development.
Having said that, I believe Song Hye-kyo did extremely well with what little she had to play off of (presumably) and overall managed to portray the dourness of her character without it becoming tiresome. That scene where adult Dong-eun finally comes face to face with adult Jae-jun? It is one of those rare moments in TV where everything comes together perfectly: be it the writing or the way it is shot and performed. You can literally feel Dong-eun’s skin crawling and see fear and rage battling within her, reflected in her burning eyes. If looks could kill Jae-jun would have dropped dead then and there. Hye-kyo effectively manages to convey Dong-eun’s conflicting emotions and thoughts through her body language and expressions—in that moment she perfectly personifies that ancient struggle: fight or flight. Every instinct is telling her to flee but she needs to stay calm to get the upper hand and get inside Jae-jun’s mind. The set-up in S1 that had Jae-jun realizing he has a daughter finally pays off here as Dong-eun points out that she too is someone’s daughter—Xtreme full-circle moment that lands perfectly. For me, this was the most powerful of all the confrontations between adult Dong-eun and the Terrible Five. For this scene alone, Song Hye-Kyo deserved the Baeksang.
Even though Jae-jun hasn’t himself assaulted Dong-eun (as far as I remember), it shows how psychological abuse can be almost as damaging to someone’s safety and mental health. I assume that’s the point being made because I can’t think of any other reason why Dong-eun would be more intimidated by Jae-jun than by Myeong-o. Whatever the case, the only other scene that comes close is when a young Dong-eun finally squares up to Yeon-jin and tells her, “You are my dream.” (Shout-out to Jung Ji-so who plays teenage Dong-eun and, who like Shin Ye-eun with Lim Yi-jeon, almost outshines Hye-kyo.)
Not even Dong-eun’s confrontations with Yeon-jin are as emotionally charged as the one with Jae-jun, nor for that matter are the ones with her mother. Because Park Ji-a’s interpretation of Dong-eun’s mom Jeong Mi-hee slots it into the “Strictly Come Hamming” category: in fact, her characterization had a big role to play in pushing the series into soap territory.
Also contrast the chemistry between Dong-eun and Do-young (a suitably enigmatic Jung Sung-il) with the v. lukewarm vibes of the couple cosplaying as the OTP. Don’t get me wrong, Lee Do-hyeon is fighting for his life, but even with the best intentions he wouldn’t have been able to salvage such a miserable role. Perhaps a more experienced actor might have been able to fill out and finesse the grey-toned inflections in Yeo-jeong’s character and made him more compelling, but it would still have been an uphill battle.
On the whole Hye-kyo’s screen presence fluctuates depending on who she’s playing against. For instance, I found her scenes with Kim Hieora as Lee Sara grating to say the least.
So much about not having a lot to say about Dong-eun. But you haven’t seen anything yet.
Choi Hye-jeong (and why she is the most interesting character in The Glory)
So. In this reductive, relentlessly black-and-white world, the greyest, most ambiguous character comfortably stands out, and that is none other than Hye-jeong, played brilliantly by Cha Joo-young.
In a world where admitting your desires is seen as a sign of weakness, Hye-jeong is earnestly ambitious and remains unabashed throughout. Her place in the pecking order is among the lowest but she uses her wits and beauty to survive and even try and claw her way up to a position of more power and influence. She isn’t very successful but A for effort amirite? She is shamelessly materialistic and calculating and isn’t above groveling to save herself or have uninterrupted access to the high-flying lifestyle—in short, she’s a consummate survivor: self-centered of course, and often spineless, but she has no illusions about herself or any of her so-called friends. Neither does she have a burning need to suppress or belittle her social inferiors. Through S2, she’s too preoccupied with moving up in the world, begrudging her working-class life and wanting to escape it by marrying rich to worry about other people. She’s also deeply resentful of the trust fund kids in the group who frankly have more money and privilege than is good for them. Having spent her life hanging around the fringes of high society Hye-jeong has an instinctive understanding of class and knows deep down that try as she might she’ll never be able to cross that invisible barrier that lies between new and old money.
While Yeon-jin and Sara tolerate her, and while she does have some sort of tenuous in-group standing (a notch above Myeong-o), for the most part they are either indifferent to her or find her an easy target for milder forms of harassment. They often treat her with contempt and find her attempts to be on an equal footing with them presumptuous and laughable. Ultimately, she is the most overlooked and disposable of the Five, and in some twisted way I guess this is why she gets off with the least damage when Dong-eun returns to upend all their lives. I’d even say they almost share a kinship of sorts, because they both know were it not for Dong-eun, it could just as easily have been Hye-jeong getting tortured by the bullies. Although she might aspire to be like Yeon-jin, Hye-jeong is hyper-aware that her position was only slightly less precarious than Dong-eun’s and that she needed Dong-eun to deflect attention from herself during the Five’s heydays in high school. Back in the present, as Dong-eun goes around wreaking havoc, Hye-jeong finds herself questioning if she ever was, or will ever be truly accepted by the others as one of their own.
In the end, after Dong-eun has successfully splintered the group, Hye-jeong even derives a degree of vindictive satisfaction from the rest getting served. In some small way, this is also a story of Hye-jeong’s revenge, which in comparison to Dong-eun’s, has a more realistic arc: she reaches out her hand again and again to the others, she even goes as far as to try and build a life with Jae-jun—but is ultimately attacked and later ostracized (which is worse than betrayal), thus making for a more poignant resolution. And logical, considering, she is not otherwise shown to have any limiting moral scruples. I wanted, or rather expected, this feeling of searing hatred stemming from humiliation to be magnified many times over in S2, really expecting for those penny-drop moments to stack up—moments when the characters realize that contrary to what they’d assumed, no one truly has their backs. Because that is what Dong-eun is going for: her MO is to basically to sow seeds of discord and take the Terrible Five out from within. Moral implications aside, this makes perfect sense on paper, but falls flat in execution; not sure if it’s the screenplay or the acting, or as mentioned at the start, the pigeonholing of key characters into good/bad categories for convenience. Like okay, so what, is the entirety of S2 going to be a foregone conclusion? Why do we need eight episodes then, just have one or two and get it over with. Okay, fine, I’ll stop being so salty.
My favourite Hye-jeong scene is predictably the one where Yeon-jin and Sara make fun of her for wearing a dress pilfered from her parents’ dry-cleaning store. She’s visibly mortified but quickly shakes it off and the next moment she is taking a selfie—the laugh I laughed at that scene. That bombshell exterior is not only made up of really thick skin but also cloaks the steel within, and it’s apparent she’s learned to be this way as a survival mechanism. Love her or hate her, Hye-jeong is a beautifully layered and complex character and I found myself unconsciously rooting for her by the end.
The only thing that I found weird was her pretending to be an air stewardess and sending a stand-in in her place. It’s not immediately clear to me why she felt the need to do that (if you know, most loved reader, let me know in the comments!)
Son Myeong-o
What do I even say about this waste of space? Myeong-o is just there to be used by both sides and then unceremoniously murdered.
Edit: I just thought of another parallel with The Penthouse: remember how in S3 Cheon Seo-jin gets arrested for a murder she did not actually commit (my mind still reels thinking about that scene)? Yeon-jin too is charged with murdering Myeong-o but she’s not the one who kills him…imagine if this had been intentionally orchestrated? Now THAT is a TWIST.
However, as I was thinking about Myeong-o’s character it did trigger an interesting observation about the Terrible Five’s in-group politics, specifically the interplay of class and how it defines the sexual tension between different pairs (all hetero pairings of course, sigh). Myeong-o is in love with Hye-jeong, Hye-jeong loves Jae-jun, Jae-jun thinks he and Yeon-jin are end-game, while Yeon-jin thinks only of Do-young. It’s actually material ripe for a tragicomedy if only the writer would’ve capitalized on the inherent contradictions of the world she set up. Also, the subtext of how each person’s love interest has an upward mobility angle to it is not lost. These subtle touches are proof that if she wanted to, Kim Eun-sook could have written a much more insightful S2, but for some reason stuck to playing it offensively safe.
Lee Sara
Lee Sara is truly a misfit and has an even more non-existent arc than Myeong-o. I really didn’t care for the slut-shaming Dong-eun resorts to in the end. I understand why she did it—she was looking for ways of destroying Sara that would hurt the most, but again, there was no vindication to be had, just discomfort and not a little side-eyeing.
I guess some point around gender and power was being made through her fascination for Myeong-o, but it was too fleeting for me to catch, not when there were a hundred other things going on.
It didn’t escape my notice that this is the second time Kim Hieora is getting cast as the drug chick, and I hope she doesn’t get typecast into these very specific character roles because she’s an interesting actor. I preferred her turn as junkie mob boss in Bad and Crazy to the fundie junkie she plays here. Also, why did they randomly make the character an extraordinary artist without making it relevant to the plot?
Joo Yeon-jeong
This may seem harsh, but really what was Lee Do-hyun’s agency/manager thinking casting him for this role? Is he not getting better roles? But then, Yeo-jeong would have sucked as a character no matter who played him. Ofc the question is moot now, considering the success of the show.
Yeo-jeong wouldn’t have bothered me as much if it weren’t for the writer shoe-horning in his own tragic backstory to make him sympathetic, and oh I don’t know, add some parallels between his and Dong-eun’s lives…as if. Likening their backstories and implying they’re both equally traumatised is appalling to say the least, not to mention that it takes focus away from the main themes of the show and from Dong-eun herself. Don’t tell me Yeo-jeong was also “bullied,” cause then you and I will have beef, dear reader, and I don’t want anything to come between us because of my endless and infinite love for you.
Yeo-jeong’s emotional dependence on Dong-eun is disturbing and creepy. Also, why should Dong-eun want to survive for Joo Yeo-jeong and not for herself? Makes no sense. It’s hard to believe either of them are ready to be in a relationship at all, leave alone a healthy one. Once they’re done with their avenging business, what is left? What’s holding them together? It’s not far-fetched to imagine that they may even go on needing to eliminate “wrong-doers” in order to fuel their relationship because that’s literally all that’s holding them together—it’s radioactively toxic at the end of the day. Maybe that’s the point, but I would obviously like to see that being framed as a problem, and I’d like to see them choosing to try and heal themselves again even more. It’s not dark or poetic or romantic, it’s just foolishness and also kind of pitiful: look at these two broken people ending up together, breaking each other even more under the guise of loyalty and love.
Let’s go back to Yeo-jeong’s backstory because I think it’s emblematic of the show’s problems and also because I may have shot my mouth off earlier about his not being a “victim,” and I want to explain myself; I’m a peaceable bear after all. Plus, since Eun-sook-shi included it at all, I am duty bound to run it through Kultured Bear’s Fine-Grain AnalysisTM.
So, Yeo-jeong is literally haunted by his father’s murderer, Kang Yeong-cheon, played by Lee Moo-saeng—who’s honestly doing too much, and thanks to this misplaced zeal, he easily dominates every scene he’s in. Poor Do-hyun is no match.
As for Yeong-cheon, I didn’t have enough reason to hate him. We’re told he’s also a sexual predator in addition to being a cold-blooded murderer. But let’s be real, those are not the reasons Yeo-jeong wants to get rid of him. In the flashback explaining Yeo-jeong’s “dark past,” we see Yeong-cheon as he lays dying in the hospital and all the doctors refusing to touch him because he’s a criminal. Yeo-jeong’s father steps in and he’s like, “Fine, cretins, I’ll treat him, but this is going to mess up my evening plans with my son!” Istg, Yeong-cheon’s reaction was nothing compared to mine.
It is the absolute wrong move and it’s no wonder Yeong-cheon gets triggered, of course his response is disproportionate, and maybe it’s a separate issue that Yeong-cheon is mentally ill, but is it? Yeo-jeong is unable to see beyond his own anger and pain, and does not pause to consider why Yeong-cheon is the way he is. He sees him merely as a beast that needs to be eliminated. And yes, perhaps it was too late for Yeong-cheon, but why then should Yeo-jeong be surprised that Yeong-cheon, in his turn, has no compunction for him and maybe even revels in his pain. Treat someone like a criminal and soon they’ll believe it and expect it of themselves. Besides, we’ve seen that Yeo-jeong is also capable of murderous rage, he can also become a beast: he says so as much. Which means they both have undiagnosed mental health issues that make them both dangerous. What, then, is the difference between them?
It’s also troubling that someone like Yeo-jeong, literally a ticking time bomb, is free to go about his life as usual, and this is not seen to be causing anyone any anxiety. Not even his mum seems to know the extent of the issue, or she does know but is willfully ignoring it and egging him on (is everyone in this universe sick)?
Side note: Back in S1, I was pleasantly surprised to see Kim Jung-young-shi break free of the formulaic kindly mom role and play a surgeon instead. I liked her scenes with Lee Do-hyun a lot. It’s one of the few times we see Do-hyun’s undeniable charm shine through…but alas, she has absolutely no role to play in S2. What a waste.
Yeo-jeong even walks out of counselling telling his doctor that she’s not helped him at all. Man, THEN WHY IS HE A DOCTOR! I don’t know about you, but I could only see alarm bells going off and red flags stretching as far as the eye could see. The only saving grace I suppose is that he’s a plastic surgeon, which makes him a little more ridiculous and a little less threatening. Don’t even get me started on the contrivances that lead Yeon-jin to his clinic and everything that follows after. Getting a confession from a drugged patient?? Let’s just not even try and unpack that. Basically, NO.
So what is the problem?
You’re probably thinking, “but, kultured bear, didn’t both he and Dong-eun have just cause? An eye for an eye, no?” Let me answer that question with a question (being annoying is part of what makes me lovable, Supreme Reader). Why does Dong-eun get bullied in the first place?
When you think about it, The Glory is remarkably obtuse about and uninterested in exploring the correlation between violence and class + privilege that undercuts this and similar stories. Especially considering, in a story such as this, the correlation is glaringly obvious to literally anybody, even those unfamiliar with the medium (like Squid Games/Parasite levels of obviosity). Despite that, the writing doesn’t do much beyond acknowledging its existence with a metaphoric, not to mention, fatalistic shrug, and instead chooses to direct its focus on and throw its weight behind what is essentially an (dated) argument for punitive justice (with elements of restoration) delivered by victims, no less, (framed as righteous, even divine justice) because the lEgaL sYstEm iS bRoKen. To add insult to injury, this correlation is almost entirely ignored in arcs other than the protagonist’s (essentially, I’m grumbling a little more about Yeo-jeong here, and Do-yeong as well I suppose, who takes his own sweet time until he finally draws the line like, how much abuse is too much abuse Ha Do-yeong-shi?)
Does all this mean that the world we should strive for as a society is one where inequality and violence are delinked and the focus is only on discouraging and de-incentivizing violence through punitive justice? That’s either an extremely naïve or purely disingenuous take. Inequality is violent in itself.
It’s almost as if effort was made to remain oblivious to the implications and realizations inherent to the story and pinning all hopes on Dong-eun’s revenge—as if that would be enough of a release for the pressures building in an unjust and unequal society—like a public execution.
Because in the end, that’s all The Glory is reduced to: a voyeuristic portrayal of punishment, retribution as entertainment, and aimed at delivering righteous and sanctimonious satisfaction to onlookers who can pat themselves on the back and declare, “oh we’re not like them, they’re monsters.” This point-of-view effectively helps us distance ourselves from both the victims and the perpetrators, relegating them to the backburner once the sensationalism of the story wears out, and treating these situations as one-off cases: anomalies that occur without rhyme or reason. How unjustified our complacency is when we think, “we’d never do that.” As long as the structures of abuse remain intact, there’s no stopping such incidents from happening again.
Then what could have been done instead, kultured bear?
PS: You’re so annoying and also a huge buzzkill.
I’d highly recommend you watch Olivia Sun’s video on carceral activism—she does a much better job of explaining this concept than I ever can.
But the bottom line is this: when it comes to crimes like bullying and sexual abuse, shows like The Glory (and mainstream media in general) never go beyond the individual. The writer does obliquely point out the truth about Dong-eun’s life being so utterly consumed by her desire for revenge that once she’s crossed everyone off her list, literally, she has nothing left to live for, which actually makes sense in context. But later on, we don’t see this being addressed at all, we don’t see Dong-eun trying to gain a sense of normalcy and build a life for herself. Oh no, no. She’s now on the vigilante path of no return. Such a bleak message. Nothing is said about what Dong-eun would have been, can still be without the constant abuse and harassment, nothing about her as a person. Her identity will always be that of a wronged victim. She can never escape it. Like I asked before: who is this escapist for?
Punishment being the end-all of systems of justice is a short-term, band aid-solution. Heck, it’s not even a solution, it just opens up the door to never-ending cycles of violence. The Penthouse series had the extreme good sense to unalive all its original avengers: that’s really the only realistic way of coming back from the cliff of cyclic violence: by ensuring that all, and by all, I mean people on both sides of an unresolvable conflict—good and bad—are eliminated. Epics and legends across cultures have told us this truth many times over in many forms. There cannot be a happy ending for Dong-eun or for Yeo-jeong.
And on that sombre note, I sincerely hope there is no Season 3.
A brief postscript on the symbolism
I’m not usually quick to pick up on hidden meanings and easter eggs but I felt that the symbolism in The Glory was there just for the heck of it, it didn’t really go too deep. Yes, there were recurring motifs of divinity and justice: like the trumpet flowers, and that scene in S1 where the light streaming from the gaps between and under the gym doors forms the shape of a cross (although it comes at a really dark time in Dong-eun’s life)—but what was all of this in aid of other than to foreshadow Dong-eun rejecting religion and choosing to take matters into her own hands or whatever. Considering her run of luck in S2 though, gurrrrrl, just render up some thanks to the (alleged) man in the sky. The show itself didn’t seem to have a strong opinion either way, nor did it use the opportunity to comment on the failure of religious institutions in stemming class conflict or social violence.
And I have no idea what that shaman was doing in this story and why Dong-eun enlists her help to bring down Yeon-jin. My best guess is that it was meant to add a tinge of prophecy to the Yeon-jin-Dong-eun hero-villain pairing. Thanks, but no. I am uncomfortable with the implication that everything that happened to Dong-eun could not be avoided because life or God (call it what you like) dealt her a bad hand. “But hey, look, we’ll make up for it later and have Dong-eun magically arrive at the means to exact a terrible vengeance on her tormentors…what’s that? How do we stop such things from happening again? Well, now, what can one do? Because, you know, destiny and such…”
Also, it is implausible AF. This is Park Yeon-jin we’re talking about. The same Park Yeon-jin who pushed a classmate off the roof and almost bludgeoned a man to death with a bottle without batting an eyelid—not in horror at least, strictly “oops, I lost my temper and committed a teensy-weensy murder” kind of surprised blinking—I’m to believe that Yeon-jin gets spooked by a shaman? And that is what gets her to finally confront her crimes? Really? Why bring in this supernatural element at all if it has no other purpose in the story except as the antagonist’s Achilles heel (what a sad excuse for an Achilles heel)? I realize the idea is for Yeon-jin to live out the rest of her life in fear—the same fear she made others feel—and suffer from being uprooted from a life of ease and luxury. But it didn’t need us to jump through so many delusory hoops to get there; that is just adding complexity at the wrong places.
I really liked the opening sequence though, if that makes you feel better, beloved, supreme reader.
Ft. Green Mothers’ Club, Under the Queen’s Umbrella, SKY Castle, One The Woman, and Love to Hate You
When I started collating my notes on Crash Course in Romance, I never intended to write such a long and detailed review: the original idea was always a “Shows to watch instead…” blurb series, but like everything else I write, it got away from me.
Taken together, the reasons these comparisons spring to mind (and the rationale for recommending them) are actually a summary of the problems that plague Crash Course: the multi-theme-approach being the biggest offender. In fact, the shows listed here surpass Crash Course solely on the strength of their focused approach (with the exception of Green Mothers’). But of course, we owe it to them to look beyond this one thing (which admittedly is becoming rarer and rarer, we’re lucky if a show nowadays has such single-mindedness). And that’s all the excuse I’m giving for writing this post. If you think it’s too much, just be grateful I didn’t write full reviews for each of them (yet).
Why these shows?
Green Mothers’ Club, Under the Queen’s Umbrella, and SKY Castle are all, like Crash Course, a commentary on parenting, its different styles, and situated in an extremely competitive and cut-throat world. While the protagonist in Under the Queen’s Umbrella is a positive example of parenting, the other two are more nuanced in their portrayal of parent figures—making their leads complex and layered with substantial character arcs (the efficacy of these arcs are of course up for debate, but Crash Course doesn’t even give us that satisfaction). I do want to call out that this is not the primary reason I loved these shows: they were, without a doubt better written and produced overall, and my reasons for liking them are diverse, maybe even unexpected. It would be great (and reassuring) to know if there’s someone out there who noticed similar things (tell me in the comments!)
Next, we have OneTheWoman and Love to Hate You: initially, these two ended up on this list purely on a whim: I happened to watch them around the same time as Crash Course: the first works better as a dramedy, and the second as a rom-com. However, other comparisons/questions crept up as I watched: one, what is the most successful treatment for a rom-com in a post-romance world (Love to Hate You handled this well, and managed to surprise even a jaded bear like myself), and two: how do you write a magnetic and riveting female lead (both shows pulled this off, but Jo Yeon-ju is the clear winner).
I just want to reiterate this isn’t an exhaustive list, it’s not very challenging for a show to be better than Crash Course. But these specific ones managed to soothe most of the rashes Crash Course gave me, so there you have it.
Green Mothers’ Club
Leaving aside the 100 different storylines crammed into this series, Green Mothers’ Club is essentially an empathetic analysis of what it means to be a “gifted” person. And what happens to our psyches when we perceive someone else to be more gifted than us. Especially for those of us who tend to be perfectionists or take pride in excelling at everything we do, our first reaction to someone who is able to do the same things better and more effortlessly is—envy. It’s not surprising that gifted people are often hated simply because they make the rest of us feel inadequate; they may even go through life without forming any real friendships or relationships. What about children who are gifted—it’s not uncommon for those who succeed early in life to experience depression and burnout owing to the pressure of high expectations, especially before they’re old or mature enough to handle the stresses that accompany excellence. Add to this the erasure they experience when their identity gets inextricably tied to the thing or things they’re good at.
Plus, in a meritocratic society where high performance is always incentivized and rewarded the gifted individual is expected to get ahead, win accolades, and enjoy consistent, perennial success. The show seeks to tackle this topic and the web of issues arising from it: what happens when gifted kids are separated into different classes or groups at school or made to attend special coaching, competitions, TV shows, on and on, anything and everything possible to satiate the ambition, the greed that glimmers into existence the moment parents discover their child is gifted? And to what lengths will they go to fund this pursuit of vicarious success?
An extremely dense and topical subject, I appreciate the sheer guts it took from writer Shin Yi-won and director Ra Ha-na to make a show as original, ambitious, and raw (relatively speaking) as this; plus, the acting is just superb. The last few episodes (and the plot in general) are all over the place, I agree, but I count every frame featuring Eun-pyo and Chun-hui (fighting or otherwise) as adequate compensation.
Immortal Scene: Eun-pyo and Chun-hui’s drunken exploits
Under the Queen’s Umbrella
I have so much love for this show I can’t explain it. It’s literally an academic competition/admissions drama but sageuk (period) style, with a healthy mix of other themes ranging from social justice and equity, gender identity and equality ft. misogyny and transphobia—in short, it was the most refreshing series in 2022. The period setting was a touch of genius because one, it allowed for one degree of removal (to save it from the censors’ wrath, even if it couldn’t entirely skirt controversy), and two, it made even small gains—small by today’s standards—appear revolutionary (smort).
The cast is excellent overall, but special shout out to:
Kim Hae-sook who plays the dowager queen: aspiring actors should take notes on how to play a baddie from Hae-sook-shi; hers was a cliched arc and ending, but by Artemis, she makes you feel every emotion like a punch to the gut. Also her story BEARS out the fact in a patriarchal system, women often turn against each other in order to gain/preserve access to power and security. Ekta Kapoor built an entire kingdom with this one reality fax.
Choi Won-young, who plays the king: I think writer Park Ba-ra was kindest to him—he gets some of the most poignant scenes and profound dialogues, and was successfully able to translate this into a nuanced portrayal highlighting the complexity and internal conflicts of his character; a nice change from the WTFery and general ineptness of the writing in The Golden Spoon (do not recommend).
Bae In-hyuk as the (OG) crown prince: rising star
Kang Chan-hee as the Pretender: SF9 member, also appears in SKY Castle, and my favourite idol drama to date, Imitation. He does pick/get good scripts.
But of course, the top honors go to Kim Hye-soo—the Queen to whom the umbrella and the show belong.
I mean for all that the show is giving Best Practices for Academic Success vs Cheating Your Way to the Top, Joseon ver., there is no dearth of political intrigue or drama—to have brought together so many themes seamlessly is an achievement in itself. It does get a little preachy at times, and it’s not really a black comedy as advertised, but the Queen carries all before her with such irresistible charm and humor, I guarantee you will rarely love an MC more.
Immortal Scene: when the Queen and Prince Gyeseong walk back home after they visit the portraitist. I was, but a puddle on the floor.
SKY Castle
The OG—written by Yoo Hyun-mi—that spawned a hundred copycat series, well maybe not a 100, but who’s to know.
SKY Castle is a sweeping, high-octane, and satirical take on the insanely competitive and toxic higher education system in S. Korea. In particular, it highlights the megalomania of status- and success-obsessed parents who not only bully and harass their own children to get and maintain perfect grades, but also gaslight misfits and outsiders into thinking they’re not meritorious enough to be part of or have access to the “high society” they so jealously guard. The vibes are very Succession-like, suRVivaL oF tHe fiTtEsT, etc., except the story is based on corruption in college admissions instead of a hell-spawn media baron and his family of baby vultures. I use the term satire loosely because like the Onion posts, the depictions of uber-rich families are too close to reality to be funny (except for Cha Min-hyuk’s hysterics, which are truly next-level).
I only recently understood why it’s called SKY Castle; SKY is an acronym that stands for the Big 3 schools: Seoul National University, Korea University, Yonsei University. Get into these schools and you’re guaranteed a castle in the sky, gettit? Mansion of the Gods, Palace of Prestige…okay, I’ll stop.
Anyway, watch it because a) it’s really well-made and always relevant b) it’s tight and focused and not trying to be a rom-com at the same time c) it won all the awards that year d) it paved the way for the Penthouse series and for that I’ll always be grateful.
Immortal Scene: The destruction of the pyramid of success.
One The Woman
Because Crash Course makes the fatal mistake of trying to be all-genres-in one, comparisons with other contemporaneous dramedies is inevitable, and OnetheWoman happens to be on that list. What made me watch this highly enjoyable but humble production? I have no idea, but am I glad I did. These smaller series are literally hidden gems, because they are earnest and cohesive and do not come across as a mismatched collection of tropes, something that heavily marketed and commercialized shows often devolve into.
Onethe–, or WonderWoman takes a doppelganger plot, mixes in some convenient amnesia, and makes it into a hilarious story of mistaken identities with elements of mystery and suspense added IN THE RIGHT QUANTITIES. The show’s humour comes almost entirely from the characterization: Lee Ha-nui or Honey Lee is phenomenal as the quick-tempered and garrulous prosecutor Jo Yeon-ju (and almost unrecognisable as Yeon-ju’s lookalike Kang Mi-na). Literally every scene where she goes at it with an assortment of evil people is a treat to watch.
Lee Sang-yoon as Han Seung-wook plays the rich but wronged chaebeol heir and is correctly relegated to eye-candy duties. He is purposely left somewhat one-dimensional to ensure he doesn’t steal Yeon-ju’s thunder: kultured bear approves. The two leads share good chemistry as well; even if the childhood connection and tragic backstory angles are cliched, the leads are surprisingly (and refreshingly) pragmatic about it. There is no excessive brooding or weeping that stretches into episodes. The only thing I would do differently is give Seung-wook’s arc a more dramatic and decisive ending: for e.g. a clean break from his legacy as the heir to the family fortune, maybe deciding to donate all his assets towards good causes or something…but yeah, that’s just my working-class bear brain.
Also, can I just take a minute to appreciate Kim Chang-wan’s (as Noh Hak-tae) comedic timing? His sing-song and plaintive voice is such a contrast to Yeon-ju’s boisterous and rowdy energy, literally every scene with them together is gold. Special shout-out also to Jin Seo-yeon as stone cold baddie Han Seong-hye.
I also loved how writer Kim Yoon made Yeon-ju such a creative problem solver, using her extensive network of connections—ex-cons, mafia bosses, even emergency services—to always out-think and out-maneuver her rivals. I like that her street smarts is a product of the experience she’s accumulated through her career as a prosecutor, and while there is a deadbeat father, there’s no father-figure watching over her or being a behind-the-scenes benefactor (sometimes Seung-wook steps in, but it’s not done in a way to make Yeon-ju look incapable). Even the otherwise hackneyed revenge arc doesn’t detract from the fun because through it all, the screenplay and Yeon-ju remain irreverent and buoyant, and things never get too serious. It reminded me a lot of Good Manager, that one was just buffoonery and shenanigans of the best kind.
Immortal Scene: The “WAAAAEEE?” Yeon-ju emits when her aunt announces the DNA test results. BTW DNA tests are like the most overused plot device in KDramas, here it just adds to the zaniness.
Love to Hate You
An impulse watch again: I just saw “stunt double” in the description and it made me nostalgic for Secret Garden, so I dove right in.
This is everything a breezy rom-com should be: it’s sweet and light-hearted, features interesting and charming leads and seconds, has satisfying character arcs and zero bad guys, and most importantly, DOESN’T OVERSTAY ITS WELCOME. Kim Ok-bin is superb as Yeo Mi-ran and Teo Yoo, who plays Nam Kang-ho, is clearly the new Ahjuicy in town.
Initially, Mi-ran comes across as an undiluted version of Cool Girl, and I have to admit my heart sank a little, BUT, I didn’t give up, and was rewarded for my patience as more layers get added to her character as the show progresses. Yes, Mi-ran has a passion for sports, and is uninhibited, but she’s much more than that, she is also funny, chivalrous, open-hearted, doesn’t really care for appearances, and has high self-esteem and self-awareness. I really like the scene where she surprises herself by doing aegyo but also realizes that she does it because she wants to. Basically, she’s not just a man’s version of an “ideal” woman—someone who never gets angry, or is ironic but never rebellious—but unapologetically and always herself. I mean she is literally a pick-up artist and a serial dater and if that isn’t subversion (even if subtle) I don’t know what is.
On the other hand, Kang-ho is not as impressive as a character, but towards the end, once he has magically defeated his inner misogynist <snort>, he’s actually the ideal supportive partner who really doesn’t care about bOdy cOunT (I really enjoyed the character analysis here). Another favorite scene is right before the end credits—Mi-ran and Kang-ho are arguing about getting married (Mi-ran doesn’t believe in marriage) and in a voice-over Mi-ran narrates something along the lines: there will always be another hill to climb, another day of going through the motions, another set of challenges and disagreements—essentially implying that perfect endings don’t exist. Simple and effective.
And yes, the two leads share an easy chemistry which is literally all we need sometimes, tbh. What’s a rom-com without chemistry, hanh?
What I liked best about the series overall though is the solidarity between the women: be it Choi Soo-jin’s patronage of Mi-ran, or Mi-ran and Na-eun’s BFF-ness, or even the sympathy and respect with which Mi-ran treats Oh Se-na, Kang-ho’s ex (just why does Lee Joo-bin always play this character, she’s so funny and beautiful, she should be a proper lead).
It’s not a blows-your-mind and makes-you-think kinda watch, but it’s charming and enjoyable all the same. An escapist bear approves (I’m an escape artist in my free time).
Immortal Scene: Oh Se-na running (I couldn’t find the clip, also it’s too metal for this page)
Key Takeaway
Impulse watch more shows, 9/10 times it turns out well.
Overthink? Me? Overthinking is an understatement, I’m beyond saving. Read at your own risk (sanity and spoilers).
Plot(s)
First, let’s get the obvious question out of the way. Is this a murder mystery or a rom-com? Here I used to consider Green Mothers’ Club to be the epitome of the Promising Start But Deteriorates With Unmatched Speed And Magnificence category of dramas, but Crash Course… had me thinking perhaps I was too harsh on the former. Despite its overstuffed and at times weird AF plot, Green Mothers’ Club (GMC from now on cause my claws can’t be typing out the entire thing each time) had the makings of a great show, with the characterization being absolutely phenomenal (until it goes off the rails, of course).
On the other hand, Crash Course was never going to be a great show, it’s an average rom-com at best, made many times worse by the nonsensically exaggerated complications in the main storyline. The serial murders subplot is jarring, unpleasant, and laughably out of place in a show that is neither a thriller nor a black comedy. I mean Crash Course puts The Glory to shame when it comes to casually killing characters off. It doesn’t help that the screenplay often switches abruptly from a chilling murder scene to the goofy antics of the Nam family or Chi-yeol’s tantrums. I really hope this trend of genre-mashing ends soon, please whose idea was this? I just want to have a chat, calmly and peacefully.
Is it also a trend in KDramas now to have a token on-the-spectrum character? In this case, it’s Haeng-seon’s brother, Jae-woo. With Attorney Woo’s success I suppose more producers will be encouraged to hop on the trend. I’m all for representation, especially if it leads to opportunities opening up for neurodiverse actors (I hope we can all agree that’s the ultimate goal). But, there’s always the risk that these inclusions never go beyond shallow tokenism, given that one, not all writers and directors know how to handle such characters with the sensitivity and nuance they deserve, and two, too often they tend to fall back on the autistic savant trope which is ableist in itself (thankfully not this one). Besides, using an autistic family member to generate emotional brownie points for the MC strikes me as lazy, particularly when there’s nothing for them to do in the story. No shade on Oh Eui-shik as Nam Jae-woo though, he is one of the more endearing characters on the show.
I get the feeling Crash Course was made with a dated, not to mention incomplete, screenplay fished out of the archives. They dusted it off, threw on some Netflix gloss (production value), got some big names to star in it and called it a day. Because the hapless-but-hard-working heroine trope is out of fashion even in KDramaland. I’ve been trying to unpack why I dislike Haeng-seon as a character, and so far it’s mostly a muddle. However! This is a bona fide kultured bear rant, so I’m sure as hell going to try and lay it out for your reading pleasure, because that’s my love language, apart from asphyxiating hugs.
The main characters are main charactering
Nation’s best auntie?
BEAR-SIZED DISCLAIMER: I’ve nothing against Jeon Do-yeon, if anything she’s also a victim of this mummified ruins of a script. Considering her next project is Kill Bok-soon, my guess is she agreed to do Crash Course to demonstrate range or some such thing. There was no need, Do-yeon-shi, have faith in my big heart and paws before you, uh, jump the gun.
Haeng-seon is supposed to be kind-hearted, brave etc., but my second and even third impressions of her were of someone who is, by turns, obsequious and stubborn/churlish—oscillating between flattering her social superiors and shutting down her best friend (and employee?) and brother in conversations. She’s way too wide-eyed for someone who’s supposed to be running a business and raising a teenager on her own in Gangnam, no less—an overgrown woman-child with an almost parochial worldview. These aren’t bad things in themselves, but this isn’t a coming-of-age story, nor is it a clash of cultures rom-com…or so I assume. I don’t think the writers meant to make Haeng-seon unlikeable—is she their idea of someone who is qUirkY?
Side note 1: I even went as far as to wonder if they wanted to make her a glammed up facsimile of the ahjumma archetype—an ahjumma-lite version, if you will—in an attempt to reclaim the term from stereotypical representations as a small-minded and judgmental gossip. But then I realized I was giving the show too much credit. It’s really not that deep. Ironically though, Haeng-seon is closer to the stereotype than you’d think, instead of the brusque-yet-soft-hearted character definition the writers were presumably going for.
Well, something surely got lost in-flight from initial scripting to production and final editing because I didn’t exactly associate Haeng-seon’s character with any particular degree of warmth. Contrast this with Haeng-seon’s mom, the ever dependable Kim Mi-kyung, whose earnest portrayal of the heart-of-gold persona is downright effortless (probably because she’s played this role a million times; where’s our favorite hacker from Healer? There’s a separate rant brewing for the sheer lack of diverse roles for character actors). Conversely, Haeng-seon has a streak of Karen-like belligerence and pettiness which makes her a pain to be around except for the rare occasions she uses it for good: to protest against Hae-yi’s dismissal from the All-Care program (in typically useless fashion), and to tell off the parents baying for Sun-jae’s dismissal from the school.
Side note 2: Why wouldn’t the MC attack the very idea of an All-Care program…oh what, I’m not supposed to care what happens to the hundreds of other students? Right. See, that’s the risk of including too many angles in the plot—you can’t do justice to any single one.
But considering this is allegedly a rom-com, I’m going to write about it as one.
At one point I had to stop and unpack my discomfort while watching Crash Course and examine whether I was (unfairly) projecting my own biases and expectations of rom-com OTPs on this show—then I came to my senses. It’s not me, it’s them. Honestly, I would have been okay with any degree of basicness on Haeng-seon’s part if it weren’t for the mistake the show makes of infantilizing her. This tendency is not uncommon in KDramas, and is always annoying, but here it is particularly egregious, ruining whatever enjoyment I could have derived from her escapades.
My disappointment is greater considering how initially, I was very hopeful about Haeng-Seon as a character, going by the flashbacks to her days as an athlete. Imagine what an amazing show we’d have got if Haeng-seon bringing up Nam Hae-yi, when she herself was barely an adult, was the central arc instead of the Seon-Yeol relationship. By her own admission, adult Haeng-seon hasn’t been very attentive to Hae-yi’s academic needs—this could easily have been a story of someone outside the system trying to figure it out or even fight against it (GMC does exactly this).
I am supposed to think Haeng-seon is the strong, fearless type, but I was too busy cringing at the coyness and simpering to notice; if the intent was to make it funny and hammy on purpose, it didn’t work because it’s not hammy enough because Do-yeon-shi lacks the conviction to pull it off (is this an unpopular opinion? Let me know in the comments!) Come on Haeng-seon, you’re a grown ass adult.
Maybe Do-yeon-shi did it on purpose because she hated the script as much as I did. Again, I absolutely welcome and appreciate the need for unlikeable and immature female leads in pop culture, but Haeng-seon is not it. Had they made her more obviously opportunistic and manipulative, it would have added so much more depth and complexity to the character, rescuing her from being buBbly and unproblematic like a sugary fizzy drink that’s also diluted beyond recognition.
OR they could have made Haeng-seon cheugy, but really leaned into and celebrated it—that’s a much better way of depicting innocence and naivete without resorting to tired and stale sexuality-related signifiers, and, as already called out, outright infantilization. There were hints of this here and there—like the cringey but cute scene where she’s listening to the same song over and over because Chi-yeol likes it at the camp. Haeng-seon could have been the antithesis to the Cool Girl, but no. “She’s allowed to be quirky, okay, not headstrong, that’s outside the brief,” is how I imagine it went down between the creatives.
Not to sound like a broken record, but show makers could stand to take notes on writing unlikeable or anti-hero MCs from Green Mothers’ Club—Lee Eun-pyo is often irritating and frustrating to the point of making you want to choke her, but that’s kind of the point. I’d even settle for a Korean Lorelai Gilmore, because unlike with Lorelai, Haeng-seon’s arrested development has no real consequences within the world of Crash Course.
In trying to understand the characters’ motivations, I couldn’t help but wonder if making Haeng-seon a long-suffering maiden (the Madonna archetype) was the writers’ way of overcompensating for casting Jeon Do-yeon. Like they were so afraid of viewers’ judgement (of her age), they had to make Haeng-seon unrealistically noble and pure, going so far as to have her invent a husband in pursuit of socially sanctioned parenthood.
I have a low threshold for the martyr archetype especially for female leads. Making Haeng-seon a misunderstood martyr is at best pandering, at worst, reflective of the makers’ own prejudice against single mothers; this unwritten rule that a female protagonist can be as unconventional (which Haeng-seon is not) as she pleases, but still needs to conform to strict standards of behavior and conduct—she should be chaste and modest if she’s unattached, loyal and committed if she’s married, and married if she’s a parent.
I’m not saying other shows aren’t guilty of this sort of essentialism, but normally it doesn’t piss me off as much. In Crash Course, the 🔴escandalo🔴is literally the main storyline, and it’s handled SO BADLY within the story. The leads are fully grown adults, ffs. It’s one thing for the judgmental moms to censure and blame the OTP, it’s another for the leads themselves to deal with the situation by not dealing with it. In the aftermath, all Haeng-seon does is get buffeted from one end of the tumultuous sea of public response to the other—from vitriol and abuse hurled at her for daring to have an affair to being admired for living as Hae-yi’s mom instead of as her aunt. She deserved neither. I guess they were going for the “rise above the noise” vibe, but tbh, it only made her look weak.
Later on after the truth emerges, Young-joo assures Chi-yeol that Haeng-seon is indeed a good girl, and has never had any men in her life. That’s not the flex you think it is, Young-joo, and ideally should not have any BEARing on Chi-yeol’s feelings for Haeng-seon. To be fair, it probably doesn’t, but why is the show so keen to assure us that Haeng-seon isn’t a loOsE woman, I literally dgaf, I wouldn’t even care if she was married fr, at least then the show wouldn’t be a literal yawn-fest. For me, the real problem is the way Haeng-seon keeps berating Young-joo and refuting her pov because she is too scared to admit her feelings, making a bigger deal out of the situation than necessary, “Oh, no! I’ll be a sInNer in everyone’s eyes!”
Dead mathematicians’ society
All said and done though, Haeng-seon is in good company, considering how Chi-yeol is barely more likeable himself. Is that the point? Is this about two unlikeable people finding each other? If that’s the case, I take back everything I’ve said so far. Really well done folks.
In the admittedly few Jung Kyung-ho rom-coms I’ve seen, he plays variations of the same narcissistic and bitter sceptic with a tragic past who predictably falls in love more violently than your average rom-com protagonist; his turn as celebrity math tutor, Choi Chi-yeol seems to fit right in his wheelhouse (I haven’t seen Prison Playbook yet, so I’m holding out hope that Hospital Playlist isn’t the sole bright spot in his TV filmography). He’s not a bad actor at all, but I feel he gets typecast into playing a certain type of petulant, self-absorbed personality. He’s not much different in Hospital Playlist if you think about it, but Kim Jun-wan is easily one of the most beloved characters in recent television history. That’s the difference great writing (and a dense script) can make. By paying close attention to character arcs, tracing interpersonal relationships other than the OTP’s, writers can elevate even iffy personae to believable and compelling people you can’t help but root for. This brings me back to needlessly speculating on whether this was a last-minute, quota-filling Hail Mary pitch in the quarterly “new ideas” meeting.
Another side note (I lost count and idc): Looks like the Hospital Playlist cast hasn’t had much luck with scripts—I watched all of 30 minutes of the first episode of Thirty-Nine (for Jeon Mi-do) before giving up the fight: couldn’t bring myself to look beyond the oversaturated frames dripping with what can only be described as plastic.
Okay, enough howling like a banshee, it’s not apropos to my majestic BEARING, let’s talk about some positives for a bit.
The pawsitives
Shining brightly like a diamond in a mud field
Roh Yoon-seo is one of the bright spots in the drama, investing Hae-yi with so much gentleness and quiet dignity that she easily manages to hold her own against even senior actors. It also helps that she’s extremely squishy. I heroically sat through 20th Century Girl and Yoon-seo almost made it worth my tears—of annoyance. I will watch Our Blues just for her. Overall, the younger members save the show, particularly once the main romance arc is more or less resolved.
Math is the third MC
All the math talk brought back some really vivid memories from school days. Yes, bears learn mathematics; foraging for honey and berries involves a lot of probability and trigonometry. Clearly, all the research and care went into the classroom scenes, not so much to express appreciation for mathematics as a subject or anything, as much as to demonstrate Chi-yeol’s brilliance. Okay, that may seem more like a diss, but it’s not my fault the show is literally begging us to be stupidly in awe of Choi Chi-yeol. Not that they do a good job of making this a purely Kyung-ho show either, given the bizarre number of subplots—seriously I lost count, I need a line distribution chart for the entire series.
Here’s a famous trig joke to compensate for the railing.
Other moments that warmed by icy heart (I’m 1/16 polar bear)
Sun-jae’s scenes with his mom, Seo-jin, played by the incredible Jang Young-nam—these were actually emotional, and didn’t feel as contrived (what a difference a good actor can make)
Hae-yi’s friends running to the hospital the moment they hear the news about her accident (WHY ARE THEY ALL SO SQUISHY, HUHUHUHUHU)
Jae-woo and Young-joo’s romance, it wasn’t organic, yes—they aren’t the leads and so don’t get a lot of screen time—but it was very sweet
Young-joo in general, she’s the only sensible person in the entire show, but sadly, she is not appreciated, least of all by her own friend. It didn’t escape my notice how Haeng-seon allows herself to break down only with Young-joo, it didn’t matter in the larger scheme of things, but it was a nice touch
Seo-jin mending her relationship with her older son; the number of times I wished this was the main storyline, smh
Su-a sharing her notes with Hae-yi when the latter comes back to school; this is literally the only scene that made me crie big fat bear tears
The give-me-a-break-please-s
Okay, that positivity lasted all of five seconds.
Rom-com red flags
Nobody cares to follow up about the missing fan girl – I finished the series and I still don’t know if she’s alive or dead. I assume she’s dead, but more likely they literally forgot <wheezing>. I mean, sure why not just reveal your hatred/indifference for teenage fangirls. Not even canned footage of a funeral scene, like she had no family or friends who cared about her enough to make a noise? Is this basically her super-villain origin story?
Literally zero nuance in the way the other moms are written, not a single thought spared as to why they are so competitive – I wouldn’t mind this if the series was soapy and melo, but no, it spends way too much time posing as a “smart” show for anyone to interpret it to be camp. Also why is no one questioning the dads? Why are they not invested in their children’s college admissions? Hmm?
Choi Chi-yeol – that’s it, that’s the entry. The man is a walking, talking red flag.
Chi-yeol finds himself drawn to Haeng-seon because she reminds him of her mother’s kindness and food, and he’s forever grateful – umm, what?
Chi-yeol finds out the truth of the Nams’ relationship along with everyone else – not a good look for Haeng-seon. Also how does Chi-yeol know Haeng-seon likes him back, when she never even says as much?
Haeng-seon goes everywhere in search of Chi-yeol when he goes AWOL because she can’t hElp hERSelF, and she a married woman, forsooth!
The OTP make their heartbreak and pain so obvious, it makes everyone else acutely uncomfortable – Hae-yi feels guilty; Haeng-seon prevents her brother from contacting Chi-yeol. Jae-woo already has few friends, why take one away from him? Was Chi-yeol not going to be friends with Jae-woo if he couldn’t be with Haeng-seon? Sonofa— (Also, and this isn’t a red flag per se, I prefer not to be hit over the head with “heartbreak” scenes, that’s just asking to be roasted and you know how much bears love a roast)
Haeng-seon doesn’t tell her best friend or her family the truth about her feelings, can’t even admit it to herself and just wallows in misery – okay, so she makes a tough decision (for no apparent reason except being gloriously stupid), leaving aside what this says about Haeng-seon’s lack of self-care, her inaction and helplessness at the first hint of trouble is more puzzling than infuriating. I’m supposed to believe this person has battled many hardships in life? The math ain’t mathing, seonsaengnim.
Unconscionable waste of Jang Yeong-nam’s acting prowess
Chi-yeol’s advice to Jae-woo ranges from bad to really bad – at the hospital he asks Jae-woo not to break down because he has to be strong for his family. STFU Chi-yeol, let the man cry if he wants to.
Dong-hui literally kills himself (god, that was so dark and for what), and we see Chi-yeol suFfeRing – what, I am supposed to feel bad for him? Whai?
Haeng-seon has to look after Chi-yeol when her niece is in the GODDAMN HOSPITAL IN A COMA – “Don’t blame yourself,” she says. Sorry, but I do blame him. Not for everything maybe, but certainly he made mistakes for which he should be held accountable, at least by himself. Why is Chi-yeol’s pain greater or more important than everyone else’s pain? Because he’s the MC? Whatever else changes in the course of 16 episodes, his self-absorption continues unabated.
Extending that last point: the writers try too hard to make both main characters deserving of sympathy – which is unfortunately not supported by any other storyline (and results only in unintended hilarity). Because there’s no dearth of people who have more trauma individually than the OTP collectively; exhibits A, B, C, and D: the people who get unalived or who unalive themselves, the depressed young man who narrowly escapes being falsely indicted for murder, his younger brother who goes through degrees of hell when he inadvertently becomes an accomplice to a crime, the girl who is abandoned by her mother as a kid, and in present day gets kidnapped, then gets in an accident, and then lies in a coma for days. In the face of these events, it would be paradoxical to feel more sympathy for Chi-yeol or Haeng-seon. Why couldn’t both of them have just been well-adjusted MCs? Is there a rule that all MCs should have trauma and be the sorriest people on earth?
When Chi-yeol disappears to “get over” Haeng-seon he doesn’t tell Dong-hui that he will be incommunicado for a bit – this was undoubtedly a dick move. Anybody would be worried. When Dong-hui tries calling Chi-yeol for the 110th time and is not able to reach him, he throws his phone in frustration. And I’m supposed to think it’s because he’s an eVil pErsoN. Umm, no. I would do the same, but maybe throw a log instead of a phone. There’s no reason to think Dong-hui’s feeling anything other than anxiety for Chi-yeol’s safety. Also, it’s one of the best scenes in the show: at last a character with real, believable emotions.
In general, the way Chi-yeol takes Dong-hui for granted, often causing him inconvenience and likely damaging his credibility – sure, Dong-hui may have manipulated him into an unsustainable lifestyle, but does this mean Chi-yeol’s arrogance, pride, and obsession with success are all Dong-hui’s fault? No, Chi-yeol is a borderline sociopath regardless of Dong-hui. Whatever hole he was trying to fill with being a workaholic, his misfortunes cannot be blamed entirely on someone else, on a subordinate no less, especially as he is often portrayed as someone who is autocratic and egotistic. At best, Dong-hui is an enabler. Besides, this line of reasoning is too inconsistent to be taken seriously considering it was Dong-hui that didn’t want him to continue the All-Care program, if Chi-yeol being overworked is indeed the issue. It was Chi-yeol’s decision to leave The Pride, and Dong-hui supports him in what he assumes to be an attempt to leave a toxic workplace. Regardless of right or wrong, all this means is Chi-Yeol is unable to think for himself and is emotionally stunted to the point where he cannot even recognize what makes him happy or sad.
The fact that Chi-yeol mellows down after he meets and falls in love with Haeng-seon, even taking the trouble to remember his staffs’ names – all he needed was a wOmaN’s toUch, it seems.
Haeng-seon not panicking enough when Hae-yi doesn’t come back home – I would have lost my shit much early on. But I guess SK is safer for women, so this is more of a nit-pick.
More rom than com – the humor is unfunny and facile for the most part, especially the bickering—it might have worked in 2019, but now KDrama audiences have come to expect only the best kind of repartee while characters exchange pleasantries: it’s surprising because that’s the one thing even average KDramas get right. I laughed exactly TWICE in 16 episodes and both times because of Geon-hu. Okay, maybe the belt scene was funny. A little.
I guess the total lack of chemistry between the leads doesn’t help, but that’s barely a problem at this point – Kyung-ho tries though, probably too hard. The script doesn’t help at all, often making him sound trite, pretentious, and even disdainful of Haeng-seon. There’s a brief moment where Haeng-seon shows a modicum of spirit—when Chi-yeol casually mentions Kant in a conversation, and from her expression it seems like she’s holding back a laugh at his pretentious ass-ness.
In conclusion, there doesn’t seem to be any one recognizable motif in the entire series for me to hold on to, other than closing my eyes, blindly believing in the MCs’ MC-ness and rooting for them for some reason.
The unBEARables
You could stop here, dear reader, there are no secrets between us, the rest of this is more of the same, just said in a different way. But I do want to call out the more insidious parts of the story separately because they deserve attention. It’s easy to be dismissive about this series—it’s a rom-com after all. But that’s exactly the danger, the rom-com label tends to make us less vigilant about problematic messages in the subtext of ostensibly non-serious shows.
I’m sure a human can do a better job of presenting the following arguments succinctly and lucidly, but I did my beary best to explain the convoluted thoughts in my little brain.
It’s no sac-ri-fa-a-ice
Haeng-seon is portrayed as someone who deserves our sympathy because she’s had to raise Hae-yi on her own, put her dreams on hold, etc. And because she even goes to the extent of pretending to be Hae-yi’s mom, she deserves our admiration as well. Right?
Umm, yes, but also no. Really, though you should have seen that coming. First off, let’s separate the two situations/realities: Haeng-seon taking care of Hae-yi and Haeng-seon deciding to live as Hae-yi’s mother are two different kinds of trouble. The first one sure, I agree, isn’t really a choice (I mean other than handing Hae-yi over to social services, which is quite extreme and meant for a different kind of story). However, imo, taking care of Hae-yi is a reasonable expectation to have of someone in Haeng-seon’s position. So, let’s not get ahead of ourselves and think Haeng-seon did something extraordinarily heroic by taking Hae-yi in. Even the Dursleys did it.
Now let’s look at the second part: Haeng-seon having to pretend to be Hae-yi’s mother. Here too, it’s framed as a sacrifice. In this case, though, it is undoubtedly frustrating because the writer wastes a great opportunity to give Haeng-seon more agency. Since the show never lets us dwell on the possibility that Haeng-seon doesn’t want to be a mom, the choice itself seems to not exist, but that’s not true. Similarly, although we don’t see Haeng-seon openly struggle with resentment about her “misfortunes” (there’s actually too little interpersonal conflict for this kind of a set-up, it’s all overly nice and sanitized), it doesn’t mean the feelings do not exist. In fact, her general attitude of Self-Immolation at the Altar of Duty indicates that being Hae-yi’s mom is some kind of penance for her, while also belying the assumption that she is without resentment or anger. People can be resentful in many different ways—being a sad sack doormat is basically a passive aggressive way of channeling bitterness.
Side note #do-you-even-care: In their defense, it’s quite possible the makers did not realize that making Haeng-seon a passive, defeatist person would end up having such negative connotations; most likely this was an unintended consequence of the writers going overboard in trying to make our hearts bleed dry for Haeng-seon. That’s the problem with being too heavy-handed or blunt with characterization: it usually backfires. I’m supposed to feel sorry for Haeng-seon, but the exact opposite happens. (Also to be fair, it’s not easy to spot. It’s one of those things that make you slightly uncomfortable but you can’t really put your finger on until you turn it over and over in your head a little obsessively—that’s why I’m here, beloved reader. For you, I’ll analysis-paralysis my way to an early demise.)
I would rather they showed Haeng-seon proactively decide to be Hae-yi’s mom for convenience as much as for love, and did so legally (with paperwork), so that it is a conscious and informed decision, rather than a forced adjustment to escape a difficult situation. A further improvement/alternative would have been to continue showing Haeng-seon and Hae-yi having a prickly, uneasy relationship for a few more episodes in the beginning, especially with Hae-yi barely being out of her turbulent teens and on the threshold of being a young adult. It would have gone a long way in making Haeng-seon’s parenting struggles believable—because it is true that it wasn’t a choice, she never asked to be a guardian, she was thrust into the role. And then the story could have gone on to show how she slowly learns to make it work, because at the end of the day she loves Hae-yi. The outcome would have been the same, but the journey towards it would have been different. And better. Like Kung-fu Panda 2—and who hasn’t cried at the ending of that one?
Whether or not you agree with this take, what’s undeniable is that there are so many nuances here left unexplored as well as missed opportunities for rewarding character arcs. And that’s not even the main issue. The question we should be asking is why—why this was done. The real and insidious purpose of Hae-yi’s presence in Haeng-seon’s life is to (further) make Haeng-seon a victim of circumstances, heighten the gravity of her ordeals, and set the stage for Chi-yeol’s entry into the scene as savior, and for the insipid and exasperating romance that follows. Peel away the trappings of tone and delivery, what passes for humor in the show, and Haeng-seon’s own sanctimonious self-effacement, the point being made is clearly this: Hae-yi’s very existence is a burden to Haeng-seon, she’s the obstacle standing between Haeng-seon and her happiness. Why else would there be so much emphasis on the “sacrifices” Haeng-seon has made? Haeng-seon herself does nothing to disabuse our minds of this perception, that no, bringing up Hae-yi was not a “sacrifice” for her (or as much sacrifice as a parent figure would make for a child in their care) nor is Hae-yi the cause of her unhappiness. Not only does this unnecessarily make Haeng-seon out to be some kind of victim, which she’s not, it also negates Hae-yi’s own pain and denies her any kind of space to make the sort of mistakes that young people are wont to. Why then should I admire or even believe in Nam Haeng-seon’s fortitude?
Side note (a+b)2: Until I understood this, I was completely baffled and had a really hard time understanding why Haeng-seon, having decided to lie about her relationship to Hae-yi, doesn’t choose to be a single mom, why it had to be either Hae-yi OR Chi-yeol at all. Yes this alternative would have been difficult, yes Hae-yi might’ve still gotten bullied, nobody said anything about it being easy. Welcome to parenting, Nam Haeng-seon. Or, even more simply, she could have let her niece call her “mom” and still lived as her aunt—both things could be true at the same time. Guess open and honest communication is not really Haeng-seon’s thing.
Side note n5: Bold of the writers to assume we are, all of us, operating under the belief that true happiness for a woman can only be found in a heterosexual romantic relationship.
It’s the obstacle that deserves our sympathy
Of course, it gets worse. When the scandal about Haeng-seon and Chi-yeol erupts, Hae-yi has to step in when the adults are flapping and flailing. The burden of caring for Haeng-seon’s happiness falls on Hae-yi, when it should be the other way around. Not only does the obstacle have to remove itself from our delicate protagonist’s path, but also feel guilt for not doing so earlier?
That’s fucked up on many levels. Again and again Haeng-seon is given the grace to be tragic and wretched, while her niece is expected to just get her shit together. Just because she isn’t the real mother, Haeng-seon doesn’t get to selectively choose when to be a mom. That’s not how it works. If you’re a mom, it’s 24/7, 365.
Motherhood and misogyny
It’s ironic that Haeng-seon being a mother is framed as a problem at first, and later, becomes the reason for her salvation—”Not a mother, yet, more motherly than the real one, and with her chastity intact too, such a good, wholesome woman. How brave of her to pretend to be Hae-yi’s mom,” as though being Hae-yi’s mom is some kind of punishment…Ugh, the moralizing is disgustingly in-your-face. Had Hae-yi been Haeng-seon’s daughter for real, all her “goodness” would have evaporated in a second, all her sacrifice worth next to nothing. We get a taste of this during the character assassination Haeng-seon suffers when the dating rumors surface. It’s not just the other adults, though, the show itself seems to endorse this condemnation, evidenced by Haeng-seon’s defeatist attitude throughout.
So does this mean it’s okay to take actual mothers for granted and judge them more harshly for mistakes? In making Haeng-seon a poster child for perfect, or near-perfect motherhood, the show actually diminishes and demeans both mothers and women in general. We see again the influence of patriarchal standards imposed on women—what they should do/not do; how they should be/not be.
What kind of mother
In all of this, the real question is lost: Is Haeng-seon a good parent? I don’t have much reason to believe she is. Forget that, does Haeng-seon want to be a good parent or does she just want to be seen as one? Because if it’s the former, she needs to go beyond caring for Hae-yi’s material needs. And obviously stop making her problems affect Hae-yi.
Apart from the one outburst at the beginning of the show, Hae-yi comes across as pretty low-maintenance (which means she is coping/withholding). Given we have no evidence to the contrary, she seems to have brought herself up, self-correcting, and doing her best not to inconvenience her aunt. Hae-yi also doesn’t confide in Haeng-seon all that much. The fact that she is so careful and guarded around her family begs the question: Is Haeng-seon really a good parent? I personally don’t care about it, but the show seems to take it for granted that she is, and I’m not going to lose this opportunity to turn the show’s philosophy on itself: how dare mothers not be motherly?
Emotionally, I think Hae-yi’s closest to Sun-jae; in short, Hae-yi and Haeng-seon don’t have that mythical best-friends mother-daughter or even aunt-niece relationship the show would have us believe. Haeng-seon doesn’t even seem to know Hae-yi very well as a person, considering how shocked she is by Hae-yi’s decision to move abroad with her mom. I mean, we all saw right through her, the baby didn’t fool any of us. (The real mother coming back was a weird tangent, but I don’t really hate that one so much, see arguments above.)
Even after the leaked paper incident, Haeng-seon doesn’t do much beyond noticing that Hae-yi is out of sorts. Not once does Haeng-seon try to find out what’s happening with Hae-yi beyond idly wondering that it’s unlike her to be moping over not doing well in a test.
The way these scenes are framed, I’m supposed to admire Hang-seon for her rEstrAint; we see the sacrificing theme resurface. To me though, it’s just a series of parenting fails—it’s a parent’s job to be all up in their child’s business (annoying them in the process is an added perk). AGAIN, THIS IS ALSO A VALID POSITION—the story could very well have been about Haeng-seon realizing and admitting her failures but learning to make peace with them, and finding her own path to building a close relationship with Hae-yi – literally so many interesting directions that the show could have gone in, but it chose the dumbest one.
Side note #whatever you want it be: Ahh, now I see why we needed the real mom to come back. There was no other way–, the show spent too little time demonstrating that Haeng-seon knows Hae-yi’s needs better than anyone. But it’s TOO LITTLE, AND TOO FUCKING LATE. That entire shopping scene was so obviously slapped on as an afterthought.
And because the show doesn’t spend time on how their relationship evolves (sorry for harping on this again and again), even their reconciliation at the end doesn’t have the expected emotional weight. The reduction of Hae-yi’s character to almost a MacGuffin-level plot device—in service of highlighting Haeng-seon’s (alleged) selflessness—is sealed when the show doesn’t even give us the satisfaction of seeing the two have a heart-to-heart after the aborted move to Japan. It all happens off-screen and we’re to assume everything is well and good. The message I got is that only Haeng-seon’s feelings matter, her pain more important, and her sacrifice more noble.
I think I finally have my answer, hi team✨: the reason Haeng-seon isn’t compelling is that all her challenges as an MC are resolved so easily not because of anything she does, but because of serendipitous strokes of luck—be it Hae-yi’s maturity, Chi-yeol’s money, or Haeng-ja’s sudden attack of scruples.
Is the theme be straight or be dead?
At this point, dear reader, it’s obvious to you that I’m skirting around the Ji Dong-hui-shaped elephant in the room. Because bears and elephants don’t get along, you see. Pathetic jokes aside, I kept this for last because I had a hard time coming to terms with this absolutely deranged subplot. The most frustrating part? It was so unnecessary. There were literally any number of permutations and combinations (I know math terms) of including Dong-hui’s character without distorting the fuck out of what otherwise could have been a not-so-light but surely breezy rom-com.
So why, for what reason across all the habitable planets in the universe did they make him an obsessive stalker when it would have been easier to have him be normally in love with Chi-yeol? And it’s not just my rainbow brain, the show itself hints at many places that Dong-hui and Chi-yeol are like a couple.
If that’s too far left field for mainstream audiences, there was still an opportunity to show his attachment to Chi-yeol to be unhealthy without making him a total psycho. I mean why did they have to make the only gay character in the show a murdering lunatic? Why, why did they do Dong-hui so dirty? I don’t want to unpack this, I want to goOOOO hOOOme.
I held on to the hope that this was indeed a love triangle for much longer than I’d like to admit. The first time Haeng-seon and Dong-hui share a tense moment, my initial thought was, “Wait, is he jealous?” And a spark of hope lit up in my beary bosom, which was soon extinguished. Because what Haeng-seon gets out of that interaction is that Dong-hui may not be a gOoD pErsOn. Really. Honestly he was right to call her out, like honey, you haven’t had to put up with this churl for six fucking years, and now that I’ve done all this work, you swoop in and suddenly you’re all cozy and chummy and he does whatever you say?
But fine, whatever, bad decisions were made. Moving on. Before you think I’m being overly sympathetic to the bad guy, am I really a psychotic bear (jury’s out, actually), let me remind you of his backstory: Dong-hui or Seong-hyeon (and his sister) was physically and emotionally abused by their mother. He was a child who’d fallen through the cracks and ended up internalizing his trauma because he didn’t get the help he needed in time (other than an ink pen). It’s so sad when he says Chi-yeol is the only person he can trust, which means that’s the first time he’d experienced kindness from an adult. It’s no surprise he develops an attachment to Chi-yeol bordering on obsession. Later we see him working hard to become indispensable to Chi-yeol, maneuvering his way into a codependent relationship with him.
I mean, the premise is not bad at all, I wouldn’t mind watching a psy-thriller like this. The scene where Chi-yeol and Dong-hui finally have it out after weeks of building tension?! Phew! Even without the gay subtext, it was the most emotionally charged and spontaneous scene in the entire runtime of this cursed piece of television and it will forever live in my head rent free.
In a rom-com, though, this stalker scenario is incongruous and blown-up to overkill proportions; the least the writer/director could have done is to keep the toxicity but remove the murdering. Like, come on folks, this one we should have gone PG with.
Why couldn’t there have been redemption for Dong-hui?
I’ll also take this opportunity to slyly point out that the basis for the Seon-Yeol relationship is also an act of kindness. There is no evidence that Chi-yeol has really improved or learned to be happy by himself, it’s just that he gets lucky with Haeng-seon who enjoys fussing over him like a mother hen. Sigh.
What Crash Course could have been instead of the dumpster fire it chose to be
Literally anything else
All the ways of exploring mother-daughter relationships already mentioned
A story focused on the coaching system in Korea, the toxic culture of meritocracy—this would have allowed the extended cast to shine, deservedly so. I suppose they wanted to avoid comparisons to SKY Castle
A love triangle rom-com, where Jo Dong-hui is in love with Chi-yeol (instead of being an obsessive stalker) and is about to confess his feelings before Haeng-seon comes in as a coc– sorry, I’ll keep it clean—before Haeng-seon brings her annoying ass, third-wheeling, nation’s best banchussy into the picture… I, a kultured bear, am pained to admit that I have failed at keeping it clean.
A slice-of-life ode to school teachers (of the right kind); I absolutely loved Jeon Jong-ryeol as the high-school teacher. This one seems like a missed opportunity for real: what if the story had been about a high-school teacher who’s lost purpose in life since all the kids get private tutoring and nobody really pays attention in class? Hmm?
A story about Chi-yeol’s Pride coming before his Fall and how he gets a lesson in humility and becomes a better person
Once again you ask, astute that you are, “Why did you watch this show, kultured bear? You seem so crusty about it…” Dear ferns, old and wise I may be, but I can still fall prey to FOMO, and soon it was too late to stop…I could have dropped it mid-way, but I wanted to see just how much worse it got…some kind of masochistic streak I suppose. Also, it wouldn’t sit right if I ranted about a show I did not finish.