Drama Review: Coffee Prince

Grade: A+++

My initial viewing of Coffee Prince was like a first kiss with someone I really, really liked: there were bells and rose petals and choruses of angels. (Seriously.) And this is the reason I’m completely incapable of objectively evaluating this drama—I just love it too damn much.

Originally airing in 2007, this Kdrama classic is the story of Ko Eun Chan, a tomboyish girl who passes herself off as a actual boy when a moneymaking opportunity presents itself—being pretend "boyfriend" to the dreamy, spoiled Choi Han Gyul. Throughout 17 episodes worth of trials and tribulations, family and food, the two slowly realize they're meant to be together.

Purportedly there are pacing problems toward the end of this series, likely due to a mid-run episode extension, but this letup in narrative tension didn’t impact my enjoyment of the show even one tiny bit. In fact, I would gladly watch a hundred completely narrativeless episodes of Coffee Prince, just to spend more time with its cast of characters: Grandma plays card games (while miraculously recovering from caner)! Han Gyul attends a business meeting! Eun Chan stubs her toe!

As far as I’m concerned, there are pretty much endless reasons to like this show. But an aborted viewing of Triple, the follow-up effort of Coffee Prince’s creative team, drove one thing home: without the outlandishly charming Yoon Eun Hye, Coffee Prince probably wouldn’t have been as fun to watch. Triple’s lead comes off as shrill, shallow, and obnoxious; yet playing a similar character, Yoon Eun Hye manages to be high energy and goofy while still giving Eun Chan depth and texture, making her someone you’d like to know.

I’d seen Princess Hours before watching Coffee Prince and had some difficulty imaging how the same actress could be in both: she seemed far too pretty and feminine for someone who passes as a boy. Was I ever wrong—with the right outfit and haircut, Yoon Eun Hye really did look like a guy. And unlike many other gender-bending Korean actresses, she didn’t stop there. The way she walked, the way she sat, the way she moved, all were suddenly replaced with the loose-limbed, slouching mannerisms of a teenaged boy.

As Han Gyul, Gong Yoo was another marvel. His magnetism and easy charisma were a perfect fit for the character, a chaebol playboy who approached the world around him with winking, open-hearted delight. Whether he was wooing his grandmother or pointing out Eun Chan's gender to random strangers on the street, it was impossible to take your eyes off him.

And when the show’s melodramatic plot threads heated up—“How will I ever win his heart looking like I do?” “But I’m a man and I love another man!”—both actors were more than capable of handling the situation.

Usually, crying in Korean dramas involves a few tears gracefully tracing a path down an actor’s cheek. But when faced with confessing her character’s true gender to Han Gyul, Yoon Eun Hye took the complete lack of vanity she showed in Coffee Prince one step further, and cried like a real person with a broken heart, gasping and shaking and snotty and in general looking like a hot mess.

The scenes of longing scattered throughout the show are tender and lovely, but Coffee Prince’s plot hit on another aspect of love often overlooked in television shows—Eun Chan and Han Gyul genuinely enjoyed spending time together. Their relationship wasn’t all confessions of undying love and insurmountable obstacles: it was playing with Legos, brushing their teeth together, and goofing off at work, all while talking about anything and everything that came to mind.

This sense of genuine respect and friendship between romantic partners doesn’t appear all that often in Korean drama, but when it does gender shenanigans are often in the offing. The wonderful Sungkyunkwan Scandal is another example: while spending time together as “boys,” its leads fall in love as fully-drawn and complete people, not as genders. Pretending to be a boy allows these girls to step outside the expectations of their society and be appreciated for who they actually are, not what their gender defines them as.

In a similar vein, I love that Eun Chan is a little feminist (whether she realizes it or not). She doesn’t want to rely on a man for the rest of her life, and even after Han Gyul has made it clear he’d be happy to support her family, she works hard to provide for them with her own abilities. Even when she marries Han Gyul, it’s clear that Eun Chan is going to be more than just his wife: she’s going to be his partner.

As a westerner, I also appreciate that the characters in Coffee Prince actually touch: playful shoves at a shoulder, tying other people’s ponytails, and even falling asleep in your cousin’s girlfriend’s lap. (However uncool that may be, whatever continent you’re on.) These things make the relationships seem more relatable and casual—nobody in this show is afraid of being near anybody else in this show.

This also comes to the forefront in the big love scene toward the end of the series. In the few dramas I’ve seen that actually acknowledge that their characters are having sex, the girl seems to be only grudgingly involved. (See, for example, the final episode of Sungkyunkwan Scandal.) She consents actively but usually looks more terrified about what’s going to happen than excited. This is not at all the case in Coffee Prince. Eun Chan might be nervous, but the look on Yoon Eun Hye’s face as Gong Yoo backs her up against the door and sweeps her into his arms tells the whole story: she wants to be with him just as much as he wants to be with her.

So for my money, Eun Chan and Han Gyul share the single most sublime love in all of Korean drama. But there’s more! The second leads are also great, and their tumultuous relationship only adds to the show’s contemporary, grown-up feel: Their lives have been entangled for ten years and they’re casual and comfortable companions, just like the leads. Their storyline is compelling and perfectly handled, overlapping and complementing the show’s primary plot.

Even beyond the two lead couples, Coffee Prince’s supporting cast is invaluable to its cracktacular appeal. The coffee princes are economically but thoughtfully drawn, each with his own motivations and desires. It’s a pleasure to watch their friendships build as they interact, especially when dim-bulb Min Yeop decides to protect Eun Chan’s honor in assorted silly ways.

Add to this embarrassment of riches the earthy air of sensuality that runs throughout the show, along with its naturalistic styling, beautiful settings, and amazing, globe-spanning soundtrack (which I’m listening to right now), and the result just might be my favorite television show of all time.

Fundamentally, Coffee Prince is made of the same old Korean drama building blocks: it includes chaebol–Cinderella romance, birth secrets, and a family’s attempt to break up the lead couple. But what it does with these building blocks is something altogether different: It creates a window into a warm, cozy world of blue skies and bright sunshine, a world that feels like our own, but ever so slightly better.