Drama Review: Jewel in the Palace (2003)

Grade: A

Category

Girl-centered historical drama

What it’s about

A brilliant, hardworking young woman grows up while navigating the dangerous political waters of the palace, first in the kitchen and then as a physician lady working in the pharmacy.

Drama Themes of 2012: Who Did It Best?

One of the things I’ve noticed in the past year of of obsessive drama watching is Korean television’s penchant for repetition. Whether it was a common plot device like this year’s abundance of time traveling or a little detail like a prominently featured umbrella, 2012’s Kdramas have been nothing if not on trend.

The question is, who did it best?

Movie Review: Whatcha Wearin’? (2012)

Grade: B

Whatcha  Wearin’—a naughty, adults-only romantic comedy from Korea—answers one of the fundamental questions of modern life: With all the technology standing between them, how can two people go about making a real, human connection?

After all, this movie’s lead couple doesn’t meet in one of the time-tested ways you might expect: there’s no blind date or longing glances across the office. Instead, their meet-cute happens over the telephone, when Yoon-jeong misdials her boyfriend’s number and unwittingly has an extremely racy exchange with a stranger. Horrified, she hangs up as soon as she realizes her mistake—but not before leaving quite an impression on Hyeon-seung, the recipient of her call.

A series of candid phone conversations follows, during which the two share the most private and blush-worthy details of their lives and loves. Starting a relationship without meeting in person actually sets them free—when they’re talking, Yoon-jeong and Hyeon-seung can be their unvarnished selves and voice their most intimate thoughts without worrying about the consequences. Fostered by the anonymous nature of their relationship, their no-holds-barred friendship quickly becomes an important part of their lives.

Played with low-key charm by Ji Seong (TV’s The Great Seer) and Kim Ah-joong (drama Sign), the leads connect on a number of levels. Both are frustrated artists—Yoon-jeong is a design hopeful who specializes in revealing lingerie, and Hyeon-seung is a wannabe musician stuck in a day job he hates. There’s also the issue of their significant others. Yoon-jeong awaits a proposal from a wandering boyfriend, while Hyeon-seung is nursing a broken heart after seeing his beloved ex-girlfriend with another man.

In spite of spending almost half the movie apart, the actors manage to build zingy chemistry. When their characters finally meet, the sparks are instantaneous—but not without complications. Their outside relationships are certainly an obstacle, but so is learning how to be together in the flesh. The movie’s most memorable scene finds the leads on opposite sides of a bed, facing the room’s walls and talking to each other through their phones rather than turning around and communicating face to face.

Set in an upscale but believably realistic urban universe, Whatcha  Wearin’ is a sex comedy that gets its laughs from the bawdy discussions of its characters. Not for the faint of heart, it doesn’t shy away from discussing (and showing) the physical aspects of romantic relationships in vivid detail. Although its American release will be unrated, in Korea Whatcha Wearin’ is restricted to audiences over 19. Full of boob shots, discussions of penis size, and steamy bed scenes, it’s easy to see why. (It seems likely that the audition process required a lot of lusty moaning and the scratching out of no-nudity clauses in contracts.)

Playfully edited and crisply shot, this is a modern take on the age-old story of girl-meets-boy that takes a refreshingly graphic approach to sex and love. (And happens to be obsessed with underwear.)

***

Korean release date: December 6, 2012

Running time: 154 minutes

Direction: Byun Sung-Hyun

Screenplay: Byun Sung-Hyun , Kim Min-soo-I

Starring: Ji Seong, Kim Ah-joong, Shin So-yul, Kang Kyeong-joon, Kim Seong-oh, Jeong Soo-yeong

For more information, visit the official website (Korean only)

***

Christmas Wish List, Drama-Style

Dear Drama Overlords,

I have been a very good girl this year: I stood by your side through good and bad (or, in this case, Big), never letting a day pass by without telling someone about your glorious works (whether they wanted to hear it or not). I have kept my Drama Fever membership active, spent countless hours relishing your online community, and even bought a drama on DVD.

If it’s not too much to ask, I would like to submit my Christmas wish list to you instead of that guy at the North Pole. (I learned the hard way last year that his subbing work is always subpar—everything seems to translate into “Ho, ho, ho.”)

Here, then, are the gifts I’d like from you this year.

• Pay your employees. Sure, it’s important for businesses to make money, but it’s also important for them to do so in an ethical, honest way. No matter how creative your bookkeeping is, there’s no denying the fact that the writers, actors, and production staff who make dramas happen work hard for you and deserve not only the financial compensation promised to them, but also your respect.

• Be sure that Flower Boy Next Door is amazing. Ideally, I would like to describe it as follows: “Almost painfully charming, FBND is funny and goofy-sweet but not without serious insights and complex characterizations. The chemistry is hot enough for roasting marshmallows, and for once the female lead in romantic comedy isn’t a total idiot: Go Dok Mi may be awkward and shy, but she’s also capable and clever.”

• Let the second lead get the girl. Not always, or even often, but sometimes. It’s only natural that we viewers gravitate toward second leads: they’re supportive and kind and treat their female leads like queens. I think part of the problem here is that the chemistry between actors can be unpredictable—who knew, for example, that in I Miss You Yoon Eun Hye would steam up the screen with a boy almost ten years her junior? But she did, and you should have adjusted the show’s script to take advantage of it, instead of sticking with the same old long-lost-childhood-love plotline you clearly charted before production even began. You’re writing these shows as they air, so why not take advantage of it to work with the organic growth of the project?

• Bring A Wife’s Credentials to English-speaking audiences. This show finished airing in April, but it’s still not available subbed anywhere online—even your official site has never gotten past episode 10. I get the sense that your lighter, more youthful output is more successful on the Internet, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t international viewers who would be interested in watching a sophisticated exploration of real-world adult relationships. Instead? We get Dream High 2, subbed hours after airing. Thanks for nothing, Overlords.

• Be original. 2012 will go down in history as the year of the time-traveling Kdrama: Padam Padam, Operation Proposal, Rooftop Prince, Queen In-hyun’s Man, Dr. Jin, and Faith all used this supernatural trope to varying degrees of success. As far as I’m concerned, one of your greatest strengths is the ability to take something old and threadbare and make it seem new. But must you spend so much time honing this skill? Think outside the box—there’s a whole world out there waiting for you to write about it, a world where romances can happen without piggyback rides and chaebol princes sometimes fall in love with chaebol princesses, not hardworking everygirls. Don’t let yourself get in too much of a rut, on either the micro or macro levels.

• Bring on the Rory Gilmores and Temperance Brennans. When you showcase a smart girl, she’s usually a bad guy (e.g., Playful Kiss) or spends all her time apologizing for being smart (e.g., Lie to Me). I’ve heard about your grueling educational environment—brains are clearly something you value. So how about letting a female lead have some for a change?

• Find Gong Yoo a decent role in a good drama. I certainly can’t fault your taste in leading men; your shows are to handsome guys what Fort Knox is to gold. But you don’t always act in the best interest of the actors or even the dramas they’re starring in. Case in point? The hot mess that was Big, which had more Gong Yoo than you can shake a stick at, but utterly wasted him in a morass of spineless drivel. Make it up to us this year by giving Gong Yoo a showcase to remember—something that lets him be funny and lovable but also brings out depths of character that have been hidden since his days in Coffee Prince. (While you’re at it, maybe you should try casting Hyun Bin, fresh from the military and the stain on television history that was Secret Garden, as something other than Pee Wee Herman’s long-lost Korean brother.)

• Be real. Fairy-tale dramas are fun to watch, whether they’re swoonily romantic or tearily melodramatic, but without some degree of realism they lose their emotional impact. Shows with a real-life vibe were in sadly short supply this year, a situation I hope you don’t plan to repeat. Remember that naturalistic doesn’t necessarily mean boring—dramas like Shut Up: Flower Boy Band and Answer Me, 1997 managed to be sensational and realistic all at once.

Thanks for a great year of television, Overlords. It has been a funny, sad, sweet, silly, romantic (and bromantic) good time. Here’s for an even better year to come.

Fighting!

With much love,

Amanda

Drama Review: The Thousandth Man (2012)

Grade: C+

Category

Supernatural romance sitcom; 16 half-hour episodes

What it’s about

Gu Mi Jin is a nine-tailed fox who lives in human form with her newly human mother and sister. Like so many other Kdrama heroines, she’s desperate for love, but she’s got bigger plans for her soulmate than couples rings: she’ll die in three months if she doesn’t eat the liver of her thousandth man. Naturally, not just any guy will do, so she's on the prowl for “the one.”

First impression

My first-ever drama short is proving to be a goofy, upbeat romp with the added bonus of an intriguing central concept. It’s light as air, but not necessarily in a bad way.

Final verdict

Episodic and insubstantial, The Thousandth Man brings the mythical gumiho into the modern urban world, surrounding its family of foxes with spas and playgrounds and the petty concerns of humans. There’s little otherworldly magic about them, and being a gumiho seems to largely involve superhuman speed and the ability to spontaneously turn into a femme fatale, suddenly sprouting a pleather catsuit, glamorous red fingernails, and a smoky eye suitable for a night out on the town.

Like most Korean sitcoms I’ve seen, The Thousandth Man’s production values aren’t especially different from straight-up Kdramas. There’s no laugh track and it looks like every other show on the air. But in addition to shorter episode running times, it seems that most Korean sitcoms feature lots of characters, each with a little snippet of story that’s only explored on a superficial, comedic level. Even the impending death of this show’s heroine is mostly played for madcap laughs rather than the angsty tears that would be inevitable in a drama version of this story.

There are moments of sophistication here, notably seen in Gu Mi Jin’s appreciation of how much the people, geography, and language of Korea have changed in her thousand-year life. Unlike our current crop of time-travel dramas, The Thousandth Man acknowledges how fundamentally different everything in the world has become, “changing more in the past 90 years than it did in the past 900,” as one character puts it. The show even goes so far as to make Gu Mi Jin’s Joseon-era journal utterly uninteligable to people who haven’t specifically studied old Korean. The story also touches on another gumiho who’s so jaded and tired of living in the world she’s not even sure she wants to live on as a human. (In my dream drama retelling of this story, she’d be the lead.)

On the other hand, the show’s mythology could have used more development: It never manages to explain how the gumiho family has managed to live for so long without anyone noticing that they don’t age. It also never really clarifies what becoming a human means for a gumiho. When they eat that final liver, do they start the clock ticking on a normal human lifespan? Could they have babies? Do they lose their eyeshadowed alter egos? And what’s the big deal about becoming a human anyway, when the only drawback of being a gumiho is a taste for organ meats and nine lovely (but easily concealed) tails?

The Thousandth Man also suffers from a frustratingly naive and uninteresting female lead. She refuses to eat the liver of any man who doesn’t love her and volunteer to be consumed, but the show leaves her almost totally out of the transaction. Her emotions and motivations—beyond whatever starry-eyed Joseon chick-lit she read growing up—are at best glossed over. What must it be like to make someone love you and then kill them, genuinely believing it’s the noble thing to do? Dull emotions are shown as one of the side-effects of gumiho-hood, but for me this isn’t sufficient to explain away the serious issues surrounding the female lead’s diet.

Far more compelling than Gu Mi Jin are her boy-crazy, former-fox sister and their pragmatic mother, who loves and wants the best for her girls, just like moms everywhere. These two get less screen time, but they still manage to be the most memorable thing about the show. Also high on the fun-o-meter are a series of Joseon flashbacks that show Gu Mi Jin and her sister as girls.

For someone who’s drawn to romantic comedies, I suspect The Thousandth Man would be a fun twist on the standard plotline. For melo-obsessed me, it was like a plate of salad to a gumiho: I could get it down, but it wasn’t what I really wanted.

Random thoughts

• Episode 2. Did Anna Nicole Smith teach us nothing? The obvious answer here is to find some old, practically dead guy who will be so happy to hook up with a hot girl that he’ll give her anything—including his liver. Or, failing that, meeting Sisyphus, who could have donated all thousand livers himself.

• Episode 4. I hope the female lead’s wardrobe isn’t an indication that 80s fashions are coming back into style. I already spent one decade dressed like Stacy from the Babysitters Club, and it was more than enough.

• Episode 4. Isn’t the cute basketball player a little young for the lead's sister? 985 years is a pretty significant age difference for a noona romance, after all.

• Episode 4. On what planet does it make sense to only eat the livers of good guys who are willing to die for love? Wouldn’t a thoughtful gumiho exclusively eat bad-guy liver, Dexter-style? I guess this show's lead is looking to Darwin out the sweet portion of Korea’s male population. Pity, because as Song Joon Ki knows all too well, there just aren't enough nice guys in this world.

• Episode 7. The thousandth sign that I watch too much Kdrama? I’m starting to recognize where things were filmed. And I don’t mean, “Oh, look...there’s Namsan Tower!” It’s more like “I think I know that shrub.” Case in point: the male lead’s house in this drama was also used to film I'm Sorry, I Love You.

Watch it

Hulu

Drama Crazy

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My Girlfriend is a Gumiho, for its cute and funny gumiho shenanigans

The episodic romances of Twelve Men in a Year

Everything I Need to Know, I Learned from Korean Drama

Rocking it Hermione style since 2011

Ramen will make your face puffy. (But it’s worth it.)

Noble idiocy is the fourth leading cause of death in Korea, after cancer, dangerous intersections, and constipation.

In spite of a global population skewed toward females, every relationship begins as a love triangle between two men and one woman.

If there’s a pool, someone will almost drown in it.

If there’s a glass of water, it will be thrown in someone’s face.

No matter where you go or what you do, your first love will find you. (Especially if you met as children and were then tragically separated. Then there’s really no escape.)

Brooding is best done in the shower.

Prosecutor Princess: I feel your pain, Park Shi Hoo, but I’d rather feel your abs.

The primary purpose of flower pots is hitting people on the head. The secondary purpose of flower pots is potting flowers.

Most “off” buttons on cell phones don’t actually work; to be sure no calls come through, you must remove the phone’s battery.

Twenty is the new sixteen.

After dark, it’s fine to drink your body weight in soju. Drinking as much as a sip before the sun sets, though, is an indication of a serious drinking problem.

Tying your head-towel in the most complicated way possible is key to fitting in at the sauna.

Gravity in Korea has a very special property not seen in other nations: any falling human being will inevitably fall onto the lips of another human being.

There are two kinds of noribang singers: the laughably bad and the Kpop-idol good.

Protect the Boss: Exhibits A and B.

Approximately one third of all Koreans own their own department store or upscale hotel. The other two-thirds make a living by delivering milk and sewing on doll’s eyes.

A meal without rice is not a meal.

Always insist on a blood test before the wedding. Odds are in the upper 40 percent range that your husband-to-be is also your brother.

In Korea, it’s impossible to leave your house without seeing a dramatic public declaration of love.

The state of a person’s lips is an important indicator of their well-being. Shiny lips means they’re about to be kissed. Pale lips mean they’re sick. Pale and cracked lips mean they’re dying.

No blind date in the history of the world has ever resulted in marriage.

If someone says “You’re not making trouble, are you?,” say yes. If you’re talking to an American, they’ll assume that you’re making trouble and are therefore fun to be around. If it’s a Korean, they’ll assume that you’re not making trouble and are therefore a valuable member of society.

The smaller your face, the more attractive you are. (Say Korea and Beetlejuice.)

Never give shoes to someone you like, or you’ll have to spend the next three episodes talking about how you shouldn’t have given shoes to someone you like.

Forehead kisses are PG-13.

Boys over Flowers: “Are you crazy, Ji Hoo? There are children here.”

Have a bad day? No problem. Just go to the hospital for an IV drip of some nameless fluid, no questions asked, no reasons given.

Korea is comprised of three locations: Seoul, Busan, and Jeju.

Your forehead is the second most logical place to crack the shell of your hardboiled egg. (Your friend’s forehead is the first most logical.)

Nosebleeds mean certain death or tragic overwork.

All Koreans have giant framed photos of themselves on hand at all times, just in case they die suddenly.

Two classes of people use mini-vans: Celebrities and kidnappers.

Flawless skin is only as far away as the nearest paper face mask and sliced cucumber. (Unfortunately, that’s very far.)

Adding “yo” at the end will solve all your problems.

Hospitalized people are very easily confused, which is why “hospital” should always be written on their clothes in at least one language.

At any given moment, most of Korea’s adult population is studying abroad.

The best kimchi comes from unrefrigerated jars stored in the backyard.

Fermentation Family: “Let me get this straight.
We’re going to eat produce that has been out here how long?”

The ultimate signs of true love are: unsolicited sharing of earbuds, straightening of discarded shoes, and couples pajamas.

In every story, there’s a second lead. Don’t be it.

If you’re good, hardworking, and kind, you will always win in the end. Or die.

Drama Review: Equator Man (2012)

Grade: B

Category

Revenge melodrama

What it’s about

A young man’s quest for answers in the wake of his father’s murder results in fourteen years of melodramatic secrets, lies, and double-crosses for him and three of his high school friends.

First impression

Poky and pretentious, this kimchi opera suffers from an intrusive soundtrack and lacks narrative flow—it’s just one heavy-handed, bombastic conversation after another, with no real connective tissue or character development deeper than close-ups of the actors making maudlin faces. Also, it beggars belief again and again, even judging on a Kdrama-scale of improbability. (I’ll accept Joseon scholars time-traveling to modern Seoul; I won’t accept a scrawny teenager single-handedly beating up a gang of thugs as if he’s Batman.) I’ll keep with it for a while, though—it’s hard to judge a show based on the first episode, especially when that episode focuses exclusively on backstory and child actors. Also, Lee Hyun Woo is definitely my new jailbait love; I won’t be leaving until his character grows up.

Final verdict
I was prepared from the beginning to dislike Equator Man. Like most dramas that replace youthful actors with adults early on in their runs, its first few episodes felt overstuffed and confusing. Its likeable cast and promisingly soapy premise weren’t enough to overcome this problem, not to mention the show’s cheesy direction and distracting soundtrack.

But in spite of this shaky start, Equator Man settled into a reasonably satisfying potboiler about the perils of greed and revenge and the power of friendship. In a lot of ways, it feels like an old-fashioned counterpart to this fall’s younger-skewing Nice Guy: its conflicted, flawed characters confront the worst in themselves as they suffer through a litany of melodrama tropes—birth secrets, hidden identities, long lost first loves, terminal illnesses, corporate shenanigans, and the evil machinations of mustache-twirling bad guys. 

Thanks to a compelling cast and serviceable (if holy) plot filled with books, art, and a moving bromance gone terribly, terribly wrong, this drama is a juicy, uncomplicated soap opera that’s just right for rainy day viewing. (If not for deep thought or lasting reflection.)

Random thoughts

• Episode 1. It’s always bizarre to come across Western oldies used in Korean dramas, and I’ve had a run of it lately. First, Billy Joel’s “The Stranger” was used as the male lead’s leitmotif in I’m Sorry, I Love You, and now Equator Man is all about Eric Clapton’s “Layla.” At least the former fit the drama conceptually—on the other hand, “Layla” is a classic love-triangle song, but not a single woman has appeared on screen at this point. [Just you wait, Amanda.—Amanda.]

• Episode 2. Handy that these cops are total idiots, because anyone who’s ever read or seen an older detective story knows that typewriters are often traceable. As are the fingerprints he just got all over the note. ::sigh::

• Episode 6. So in addition to being physically tone deaf, this show’s music director is also metaphorically tone deaf. To him or her, it probably seemed like a clever idea to take a bunch of blind people into the woods to listen to Stevie Wonder songs. To the rest of us, not so much.

• Episode 7. Once you get past some initial bumps, this show isn’t all that bad. What is bad is its overblown soundtrack. A character flushes the toilet? Better set it to a soaring orchestral piece suitable for the sinking of the Titanic. Someone takes a drink of soju? That calls for a solo piano rendition of “Moon River.” The lead stubs his toe? A melodramatic riff on the “Layla” baseline is just what the moment needs. Or not.

• Episode 7. For someone who’s spent ages in a coma, this dude’s recovery is amazingly painless: on day one he’s running around gnashing his teeth and punching walls. Wouldn’t some physical therapy be in order? After all, while he was unconscious he grew like ten inches and turned from a boy to a man. Funny how selective melodramas can be about what to be melodramatic about.

• Episode 9. I’m always waking up in the middle of the night with big ideas I want to write down, but the results of my lightless scribblings usually look more like abstract art projects than words. So how is it that this blind character is able to write a perfectly legible letter? He’s fighting even bigger odds than I do: writing English using cursive, I barely have to take my pen off the paper. Korean, in contrast, is all about lines and circles and their relationships to each other. How could you manage that without being able to see? (Random note: it turns out that Korean actually does have a cursive form. Not that it would make that much of a difference when trying to write in the dark.) 

• Episode 14. Uhm Tae Wong, you are a delicious hunk of masculinity in a world of dainty flower boys. High definition isn’t your friend, though—is that your face or the surface of the moon? (If it’s any consolation, I’m reading a smutty American novel called Bared to You right now, and you’re number two on my casting list for its male lead, Gideon Cross. [Sorry, but Lee Joon Ki seems unlikely to give up first place. You may have the magnetism, but he’s got the cheekbones.].)

• Episode 20. And the worst finale of the year award goes to...Equator Man! (And that’s saying something, in a year that saw the exercise in futility that was Big.) Everything after the 15-minute mark feels useless and drawn out to fill time. Let’s just pretend that the show ended with the two boys outside to hospital, shall we?

Watch it

DramaFever

Drama Crazy 

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Nice Guy’s melodramatic story of damaged characters seeking revenge