Drama Review: Sang Doo, Let’s Go to School (2003)

Grade (general): D

Grade (if weighted for the indefinable quality sometimes called “heart”): C+

Category

Light melodrama

What it’s about

Clearly influenced by Winter Sonata and its ilk, this melodramatic comedy revolves around tragically separated childhood lovers. Their paths inevitably cross as adults, but a chasm of life experiences still keeps them apart: the girl (winningly played by the always charming Gong Hyo Jin) has grown up to be an upstanding schoolteacher with a doctor boyfriend, while the boy (played by the smoking hot Rain) has become a semi-moral single father-cum-gigolo who romances married women and takes their money to care for his ailing daughter. Having dropped out of high school after they lost touch, Rain’s character eventually becomes a student in the class taught by his first love.

First impression

Nowadays, the production values for the typical Kdrama are on a par with television anywhere else in the world. Back in 2003 when Sang Doo aired, that wasn’t really the case—it’s stunning how amateur everything about this drama seems, from the acting to the direction to the script. And yet...I still totally enjoyed the first episode, which was goofy, improbable fun. What’s wrong with me?

Final verdict

It seems mean-spirited to judge yesteryear’s dramas by today’s standards. But that doesn’t step Sang Doo from feeling like fifth-grade gym class compared to today’s Olympic-caliber Kdramas. The acting (particularly on the part of the supporting cast) is atrocious. On the bright side, the production values are  slightly improved over what we saw in 2001’s Winter Sonata. For example, microphones dangle into the frame only every few episodes, rather than in nearly every scene, and you hardly ever catch random members of the production team crouching behind furniture during interior shots. Then there’s the plot, a hodge-podge of drama clichés that includes everything from (multiple) birth secrets to cancer to families struggling in the grip financial tragedy. Throw in a standard-issue love triangle and a side of law breaking, and you’ve got the same old template a hundred other dramas have been built on, before and since.

And yet, there’s something so likeable about this drama that it’s hard to complain too much. The single-father plotline is sweet, and acts as the impetus for Rain’s best work in the show—he and the actress playing his daughter have cute chemistry, and some of their scenes together are genuinely moving. (Her illness, however, is totally nonsensical in the way of Kdramas. She’s stuck in the hospital for the show’s entire running time without actually being sick, as if the writers were worried that caring for her would get in the way of the male lead’s shenanigans.) The actors playing the leads both do decent work, and their love story actually has some real-life weight to it. And rather than relying on irredeemable bad guys to propel its plot, Sang Doo actually highlights the evolution of its secondary characters into actual human beings and offers up a nice little bromance, years before the term would even be coined.

Do I suggest that you drop what you’re doing and immediately watch Sang Doo, Let’s Go to School? No, I do not. Do I suggest that you give it a shot if you’re ever wondering what comfort-food inanity to watch as you recover from the flu or some minor surgery? I think maybe I do.

Random thoughts

• Episode 1. I love that Drama Fever’s new video player allows you to change the subtitle format. The next innovation they need to introduce is some sort of pick-your-hero’s-hairstyle feature that would automatically cover over the once trendy, now tragic haircuts that make old shows so hard to watch without collapsing into fits of giggles. Just what is Rain wearing on his head throughout this episode? It’s hard to believe that it might actually be hair, and that someone might actually have caused it to look like that on purpose.

• Episode 3. So it seems that Korean love hotels sometimes feature sex-specific furniture, which look like an X-rated version of the chrome-y, safety-handled Nautilus weight-training machines at the gym. Frankly, there is not enough bleach in the world for me to feel okay about the existence of the “sex chair.” (Or its handy laminated instruction manual.)

• Episode 5. Does this doctor ever actually doctor? Or does he just hang out with preschoolers and teach them snide songs calculated to insult their parents? He’s winner of the award for worst Kdrama doctor of all time, methinks.

• Episode 6. Wait. The father of your child has never seen you naked? That must have been. . . awkward. I suspect the sex chair was not involved. [Finale note: OH! I get it.]

• Episode 6. Another Kdrama girl said she’d “take responsibility”! That makes three, out of all the hundreds of hours of Korean television I’ve watched.

• Episode 9. I’m happy to report that even at my darkest moments, I have never once considered using a Kate Hudson movie as inspiration for my life plans. Unlike this drama’s heroine—poor thing.

• Episode 9. Note to self: the next time you feel tempted to become obsessed with a foreign country’s television, please make sure they don’t eat dog meat before doing so. You’ll be happier in the end.

Watch it

Drama Fever 

Good Drama

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Hello, My Teacher, for its schoolyard high jinks (not to mention stars Gong Hyo Jin and my boyfriend Gong Yoo) 

Drama Short: Big (2012) Review

Average Grade: D

Episodes 1–6: A

Episodes 7–16: F

Category

Supernatural romantic comedy

What it’s about

After a car accident, a student finds himself trapped in the body of his teacher’s fiancé.

First impression

For once, my feelings about a drama are completely uncomplicated: I love, love, love, love Big. It makes me happy from the ends of my hair to the tips of my toes. It’s light and funny but not without emotional heft (something the past few Hong sisters projects have been missing, frankly). Gong Yoo is a slouchy, scowly vision as a high school boy with a bad attitude and a heart of gold. I can’t wait to see how the plot develops. 

Final verdict

Gong Yoo is great in it, at least. Decently executed but with an unforgivably awful, unfocussed script: Once it became clear that the writers had no idea where they were going with the show’s central body-swap mystery, I all but lost the will to watch. Someone with more motivation than me should write a fan fiction version of the final 8 episodes to right the many, many wrongs. 

My in-depth coverage

• Big Love: episodes 1 through 4 

• Little Thoughts on Big’s fifth and sixth episodes

• Big Homestretch, Here We Come

• A Big Post-mortem  

Random thoughts

• If hospitals in Korea were really so cavalier about blood being all over the place, the nation’s entire populace would have AIDS. Do they only use plastic gloves for handling spicy foods in Asia?

•Episode 1. In America, we usually remove our frozen pizza from the plastic wrapper before cooking it. Not so in Korea, per episode 1.

•Episode 5. I don't know if I love you or hate you, episode 5, but you sure had style. It’s like the reset button was pressed, and now we have to start all over. I just hope the show doesn’t morph into the typical love triangle now that the characters are on more equal footing.

—Did I mention that I love dramas that reward close attention? Episode 5 shows a flashback to Da Ran stapling their photo on Yoon Jae’s bulletin board, clearly using the same stapler Yoon Jae used to hem her skirt in the previous episode.

—Gong Yoo, would you mind laying off all the heavy breathing? It’s making me entertain inappropriate thoughts about you (again).

• Episode 6. Um. Did I just hear “Call Me, Maybe”? Not that there’s anything wrong with that—it’s a fun bubblegum delight just right for Big’s lighter moments. I just hadn’t realized that the song's quest for worldwide domination had been quite so successful.

• Episode 7.  After all the nice things I said about you, how could you be so cruel, Dramafever? Your subs for Big episode 7 are incredibly bad and downright misleading: When Ma Ri goes to the shaman, your translation says she needs the “seed” of a young boy, while the Dramabeans recap says that a young boy needs to receive the body-swapping spell’s negative energy. As the Hong sisters don’t strike me as the types to make semen jokes, I suspect Dramabeans is the trustworthy source.

—Let’s all just pretend that 8.4 seconds of “Mmmbop” didn’t just turn me into a quivering mass of teen-aged girl, okay? The instant I realized what was playing, the room felt flooded with sunlight, even though it was pitch black outside. No matter how far we may grow apart, I'll always love you, Hanson.

• Episode 8.  You almost lost me with this week’s episodes, which were a little average-kdrama-y for my taste. I still love the characters and think the plot has loads of potential, though. Here’s hoping that the next 8 episodes live up to this episode’s thrilling finale.

—I call red herring on the wedding—if it really happened without some twisty plot element, would they really not show a single minute of it!?!? [Ed note: Clearly, this is an example of me giving the writers too much credit. Sigh.]

• Episode 9.  Sorry Dramafever, I can’t bear waiting for you to post episode 10 tonight. I'm jumping ship to KimchiDrama, where the subs may be subpar, but sure are fast.

—What’s up with Kdramas having soundtracks consisting of only 3 or 4 songs? This show isn’t as bad as Boys over Flowers, but that “Hey you” song is headed toward “Almost Paradise” level over-exposure.

• Episode 10.  Ah, the inevitable Hong sisters crafting moment. Love the pandas, love the panda panties, love that Da Ran and Kyung Joon have begun inexplicably dressing alike, a true indicator of Kdrama love.

 • Episode 11. Where is it written that all new Kdrama brides must redo their marital bedrooms in the image of their vaginas? I haven’t seen so much pink since How It’s Made went to the Pepto-Bismol factory.

—Ask and ye shall receive! This weekend I posted a demand that all future Kdramas feature sageuk scenes, and what appears in Monday’s episode of Big? Not one but two Joseon interludes. Do they know how diabolical it was not to give us a peek at Gong Yoo in a hanbok, though?

• Episode 14. I’m sad to report that this show has pretty much lost me—even Gong Yoo can’t make up for all the opportunities for greatness missed while this drama is uselessly spinning its wheels. Are we really left with yet another “Who is it, really?” finale? I’m disappointed that you don’t have more to offer, Hong Sisters.

—Interesting that your unpublished book has a bar code and ISBN on the back cover. (And by interesting I mean impossible.)

Watch it at

Dramafever

Viki

My Soju

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Drama Review: The Fatally Flawed

Can You Hear My Heart?: D (if you watch everything) / B- (if you skip the country-mouse scenes)

Lovers: D

Me Too, Flower: C

I’ll put up with a lot when it comes to television shows. Give me compelling characters and actors and something resembling a coherent plot, and I’m happy. Take the universally reviled 2006 drama One Fine Day, for example. It was clearly created when someone dropped the scripts from about 50 previously-aired dramas into a blender and hit the "frappe" button. Yet I loved watching every cheesy, derivative moment and resolved that I would drop everything and marry Gong Yoo if the opportunity ever arose.

On the other hand, some dramas just don’t do it for me, however good everyone else may think they are. For every amazingly wonderful show I've seen during my 6-month Kdrama obsession, I've probably watched three so-so dramas—and one that was fatally flawed. The flaw isn’t always something big or important, but it inevitably makes it impossible for me to suspend disbelief long enough to get wrapped up in the story.

At 30 episodes, Can You Hear My Heart? is the longest drama I’ve seen. It’s also the first true family melodrama I’ve watched, and I suspect it will be one of the last. This is ultimately because I’m just not cut out for shows with grandma subplots, but in this case the drama’s length is also an issue: after a promising start with some cute child actors, the next 15 or so episodes did little to move the plot forward and were overstuffed with peripheral, largely pointless characters.

The drama itself is praiseworthy in a number of ways—its central plot is a compellingly soapy struggle for the future of a family company. It’s stuffed to the gills with swoony bromance. It allows not one but two disabled characters to be seen as more than just their disabilities. But one of its characters still falls victim to a great, unspoken disability in Korean dramas: the brainless female lead. I’m sure that the actress playing Bong Uri, said female lead, is supposed to come off as guileless and pure, but her big, blank stare and cartoony over-acting left me wondering just what the difference was between her character and the show’s developmentally disabled dad.

“I’m simple and stupid. I don’t understand complicated people like you,” Bong Uri says in episode 23. Clearly, the writers of Can You Hear My Heart? wanted this line to be her big emotional declaration of independence. With it, she’s accepting her adopted father’s “slowness” and rejecting her brother’s quest to discard the people who raised him. It served those purposes, all right, but it also summed up exactly what’s wrong with the character of Bong Uri: she’s a one-note, capering woman-child, just as her father is a one-note, capering man-child.

In the past few years any number of smart, capable female characters have been featured in Kdramas—pretty much every girl in Protect the Boss, The Princess’ Man, and Dream High is nuanced, perceptive, and has personal agency. On the other hand, Korean television has a long tradition of Bong Uris—dim-witted but cheerful girls who are limply swept along in other people’s stories instead of making stories of their own. They are fatal flaws, one and all. (I'm talking about you, Gil Ra Im from Secret Garden.)

Can You Hear My Heart? isn’t the first time a female lead has destroyed any enjoyment I might have had watching a show. The 2006 drama Lovers is known far and wide for the chemistry between its leads, but I was too busy wanting to slap some sense into the airheaded Yoon Mi Jo to appreciate it. Idiot point the first: She’s a doctor, but decides to specialize in plastic surgery because she doesn’t want to be involved in life or death cases. As Kanye West can tell you, just because you’re fixing someone’s boobs doesn’t mean they can’t die as a result of your actions. Idiot point the second: When you want to sell your father’s orphanage to open your own plastic surgery practice, you should spend a bit more time thinking about your priorities as a human being. Idiot point the third: When gangsters are fighting in a dark, secluded parking garage, you should probably make yourself scarce rather than lurking nearby to eavesdrop.

Appropriately enough, the actress who played Yoon Mi Jo suffered from another fatal Kdrama flaw: too much plastic surgery. Her crazy doe eyes are so clearly not of nature that I spent most of this series wondering why she’d do such a thing to herself, rather than watching her act. The entertainment industry may be full of people who have had work done, but some of them respect the fine line between a subtle touch up and turning yourself into a Pixar character. 

Me Too, Flower also featured a lead actor who’s had a few too many visits to the plastic surgeon. Phasers were clearly set to "bland" during Lee Ji Ah’s operations—they polished away any hint of distinctiveness or personality her face may once have had. And as far as acting goes, she proves that it’s almost impossible to use manmade facial features to express natural emotion. 


I wanted to love this show from the writer of the fabulous My Lovely Sam Soon and What’s Up Fox, but between Cha Bong Sun’s animatronic good looks, a largely unlikeable cast of characters, and the drama’s listless, disjointed plot, it was hard to get involved. Me Too, Flower’s only saving graces are the character of Seo Jae Hee and the actor who plays him, Yoon Shi Yoon. Jae Hee has a makjang history littered with dead parents and a tragic accident, but Yoon Shi Yoon creates from this standard-issue backstory a character of touching emotional vulnerability and charm.

Weirdly, the male lead of Can You Hear My Heart? was originally scheduled to star in Me Too, Flower, but backed out after an injury. I’m glad he did, and not just because Yoon Shi Yoon did such a good job with the role. The other characters in Can You Hear My Heart? spent a lot of time marveling at Cha Dong Joo’s “milky” skin tone, but I think modern science may have had an uncomfortable hand here, too—the actor’s improbable whiteness is so extreme that he looks more like one of the ghoulish cave-dwellers from the British horror movie The Descent than a person. Put him together with the actress who played Me Too, Flower’s lead, and you might as well just animate the thing. Computer-generated characters are bound to look more lifelike than those two.

A lot can be overlooked for the sake of compelling, relatable characters and actors. But whatever their merits, these three dramas dropped the ball and never recovered from their fatal flaws.

Drama Review: City Hunter & Secret Garden

 

City Hunter: C

Secret Garden: D

I have a horrible confession: two of last year’s most beloved shows are dramas I didn't like. Yes, City Hunter and Secret Garden, I’m talking about you.

My dislike may have as much to do with my expectations as it does with the actual quality of these shows, though. I usually watch only things that have already completed their run rather than watching as each new episode airs and is subbed, so I tend to be pretty spoiled from the get go. And so before watching either of these shows I’d already read any number of glowing reviews, many written by people I admire and respect.

City Hunter, in particular, is much loved by most people who aren’t me.

Billed as an action show, it’s a step outside my comfort zone—I’m more of a watcher of cozy romances, as embarrassing as that may be to admit. I expected City Hunter to be something dramatically different from the Korean dramas I’d already seen, as there tends to be a real dichotomy between the romance and action genres in American entertainment: Romance gets away with shallow, fluffy, and fun, while action is grittier and more nuanced.

Instead, City Hunter felt like last week’s leftovers, warmed up and served as filet mignon. It included all of the standard Kdrama tropes: cancer, birth secrets, romantic leads sharing living quarters, a Cinderella romance, and so on and so forth, all mixed in with a standard-issue revenge drama. It tried to be all things to all people, I think, and ended up looking like somebody who had gotten dressed blindfolded in a pitch black room: all the key pieces were there, but none of them matched or made sense as part of the greater whole.

The villains were one of the show’s biggest problems. They were largely bumbling fools, and because the show was so overstuffed each of them was far too easily dispatched. There was no subtlety here—see bad guy, thwart bad guy, move on to next bad guy.

Buried amid all the other junk, it is possible to find greatness in City Hunter: Lee Min Ho has star quality to spare. Bad Daddy is an amazing, ambiguous character, and his role in the final showdown is poignant and spot on. And even I’m not heartless enough to have disliked the comic relief provided by City Hunter’s live-in buddy, Bae Shik Joong.

Then there’s the prosecutor, who was actually more interesting than City Hunter himself: he was torn by his allegiance to law and order, and his growing realization that law and order sometimes isn’t the best way to get things done. But what could have been an exploration of this character’s conflicting emotions and existential angst was generally passed over in favor of City Hunter, a guy nice enough to punish bad guys without killing them, but not nice enough to feel guilty about his lavish lifestyle being funded with drug money.

To keep the womenfolk happy, the show also included romance, which was awkwardly shoehorned between the offing of bad guys. Park Min Young is thirty kittens worth of cute, but seeing her slight approach to Bear Na Na I wouldn’t feel comfortable with her protecting my ham sandwich, say nothing about the president’s daughter. (I do hope she and Lee Min Ho get married and have lots of adorable babies, though.)

To me City Hunter felt like a mildly entertaining show lacking in depth that was full of missed opportunities.

And on the topic of missed opportunities! Secret Garden, why did you break my heart so? I’m all about supernatural romance, so I thought I’d love this show. But after about three episodes I couldn’t believe what it expected to get away with.

If its characters hadn’t been paper-thin and indifferently acted, it might have had a fighting chance. As it was, though, it became clear that everybody involved knew the body-switch plotline was a complete failure when the actors stepped back into their original roles for key scenes, even in the middle of the switch storyline.

I’ve since watched Who Are You, another Kdrama body-switch show, and seen proof that this plot device can be handled brilliantly. During Who Are You the male lead’s body is taken over by the ghost of another man, who is sometimes also visible in his own body.

Who Are You's male lead always made it crystal clear who was inhabiting his body, unlike Hyun Bin's Pee-Wee Herman-esque turn in Secret Garden. (It’s hard to tell affectless wooden blocks apart, after all.) I would argue that this is partially the result of better writing, but what really made Who Are You more compelling was the actors it showcased. The male lead and the ghost brought their characters to life—they spoke in specific ways, moved in specific ways, and made certain character-specific facial expressions. This gave the actor playing the male lead something to work with when he body-switched with the ghost.

To my eye, it didn’t matter which character the Secret Garden actors were playing—it all looked the same, except for a sneer here and there and that painfully obvious toe kick thing the female lead was prone to do.

Secret Garden also committed one of the cardinal sins of Kdramas, as far as I’m concerned: it kept the lead couple apart too much. This might have been okay if their individual stories had been stronger, or if the secondary characters had been more interesting (or, in the case of Oska, less reminiscent of Jar-Jar Binks). As it was the viewer was forced to go from the not-terribly-interesting main leads to the outright dull second leads far too often.

And then there’s the plot, such as it is. Why were their bodies switched? Who knows. The show didn’t bother to tell us, because once it moved beyond this cutesy plot device it essentially ignored the whole thing.

Exactly what makes a show work for someone and not for someone else is a mystery. What's not a mystery is that neither of these shows worked for me.