Drama Review: Autumn’s Concerto (2009)

Grade: A

Category

Romantic melodrama

What it’s about

A spoiled rich boy with a tragic past and a bad attitude finds angst-ridden love with a cafeteria worker at the college his family owns. After separating them with a slew of soap-opera-style obstacles, the drama catches up with the couple seven years—and one illegitimate son—later.

First impression

After the incessant cheerfulness of A Gentleman’s Dignity, I’m hungry for something unapologetically melodramatic. Looks as if this show is going to fit the bill—there was a dead parent and an attempted child abandonment before the first episode’s opening credits even rolled. That must be some sort of world record for misery, and I, naturally, couldn’t be happier.

Final verdict

Some things are heart-warming—this epic melodrama is closer to heart melting. The 21 lengthy episodes of my first Taiwanese series flew by in a delightful blur of stabbings, terminal diseases, spontaneous amnesia, court trials, and ill-fated (but ultimately triumphant) love triangles. A distant cousin to the Endless Love series of Korean dramas, Autumn’s Concerto is less innocent than most Kdramas when it comes to sex and violence, but is still built of similarly good-hearted DNA. Showcasing a pair of so-beautiful-it-hurts lovers and their mind-bendingly adorable son, it pulls out all the stops when it comes to soapy tribulations, but never fails to keep a relatable human face on the madness. Its somewhat draggy final quarter and inexplicably random final episode didn’t even dent my love for this refreshingly bad-guy-less show, all thanks to its squee-worthy love story and the respectful way it treated its quirky cast of Gilmore Girls-esque characters.

Random thoughts

• I can’t remember if I started off feeling this way, but I love the sound of the Korean language—it has lovely, crisp consonants and pleasantly curvy vowels. Japanese is nice, too. But Chinese? I’m really having difficulty watching this show with the volume on because the dialogue is hurting my ears. In contrast to the other Asian languages I’m familiar with, Chinese is choppy and harsh. Here’s hoping it grows on me, or this might be a long 21 episodes.

• So is it a Taiwanese thing that drama end credits ruin the suspense of the story? “I wonder if the leads get together…but wait, according to the cuddly, sun-drenched closing montage in every episode, they must!” I like to know there’s a happy ending in store, but leaving a little something to the imagination is cool, too.

• Episode 3. I can’t say that Vaness Wu is doing anything for me; he’s too much of an over-processed flower boy for my taste. The female lead’s gardening friend is another story—he’s just my flavor of cute. Clearly, second lead syndrome is going to be an issue in this drama. Finale update: Vaness Wu totally pulled a Gong Yoo—at first, I thought he wasn’t much to look at, but by the end of this drama I was ready to pack my bags and head to Taiwan just in hopes of camping on his lawn. His lovely, expressive face made the show.

• Episode 5. So now I see what people mean about Taiwanese television. This show is like a giant Saturday Night Live sketch spoofing Korean dramas. The plot is so stuffed full of unbelievable, outrageous developments and coincidences that it already puts all 16 episodes of the lunatic Winter Sonata to shame: it has dead parents, abandonment, bullying, over-privileged schoolboys, near-rape, court trials, stymied artistic dreams, and terminal illnesses. What in god’s name is left to fill the next 16 episodes?!? (I’m waiting with bated breath, let me tell you.)

—What’s this? Asian actors believably conveying physical affection? I never thought I’d see the day. ::fans self::

• Episode 10. I’m not a big fan of the young of the species, especially when they suddenly appear in my television shows, but I’ll make an exception this time: the little boy in this drama is so cute my ovaries are all but exploding. On top of that, he actually improves the story, giving the plot more to do than simply split up the main couple and get them back together, time and again. Love the burgeoning family dynamics, love the male lead (now that his hair is shorter, thank god), love the show.

• Episode 16. I’ve heard of hate sex, but a hate marriage? That’s hardcore.

• Episode 18. Picture this: the female lead is locked in a phoneless bedroom by her scheming rival for the male lead’s attention. What happens? In a Korean drama, the girl cries a little, knocks on the door, and then waits to be rescued. In a Taiwanese drama, the girl finds a lighter and burns a towel, thereby setting off the smoke detector and sending the hotel staff running. Well played, drama.

• Episode 20. Having caught up with Dramafever’s subbing of this series, I’ve reluctantly moved over to Dramacrazy for the last two episodes. The bright side? JKShows, whom I hereby nominate for the title of Asian drama fan of the decade, has been there first: he or she has made full-episode files available at YouTube. The not-so-bright side? There’s so much Japanese language subbing on the screen that it’s hard to keep track of what’s going on. It is amusing, though, to watch a character say the word “boss” in Chinese, which is the word “boss” in English, then see “boss” flash by in the Japanese subs, immediately followed by the word “boss” in the English subs. Talk about going full circle.

• Episode 21. This wasn’t an episode so much as it was a 23-minute denouement nugget. Totally discordantly, every single plotline was given its own music-video style happy ending, with little or no connection to the rest of the drama’s narrative. Weird.

Watch it

DramaFever

DramaCrazy (look for the JKShows posts—they’re full episodes)

You might also like

The Endless Love series, for their fabulously over-the-top melodrama

(P.S.: So I figured out what was behind the missing comments—Blogger spontaneously decided they were spam, and hid them away. I've liberated them, and will keep an eye out for this in the future. [And think about finally making the jump to WordPress, where the cool kids hang out.])