Drama Short: King 2 Hearts (2012) Review

Grade: B-


What it’s about
In an alternate universe where the country’s monarchy survived until the modern day, South Korea’s spoiled young prince butts heads with a female North Korean soldier as they prepare for the World Officers’ Championship, some kind of military olympics. Political intrigue, Kdrama’s most ridiculous bad guy, and (of course) love are sure to follow.

Initial impression
If Speed on treadmills is the best this show has to offer, we may be parting ways sooner rather than later. Oy.

Final verdict

An amusing drama with a likable cast and lots of fun mythology about the Korean monarchy in the twenty-first century, but tonally inconsistent and about 6 episodes too long. As with everything else I’ve seen him in, Jo Jung Suk stole the show—his taciturn young officer’s charm cannot be overstated.

Stray thoughts

• Exactly how many times will this show feature people carrying on conversations in two different languages? Newsflash: lengthy speeches in Korean mean nothing to an English speaker, no matter how heartfelt they may be.

• I’m sick of “Your Body Is a Wonderland,” too, but that’s no reason to go and name your bad guy John Mayer…especially when he’s actually a remedial version of Heath Ledger as the Joker.

• Does anybody know the whereabouts of Rupert Grint’s dad approximately 9 months before Lee Seung Gi was born? The resemblance is uncanny: they look alike, share the same rubber-faced charm, and each give an unsurpassed disdainful side-eye.

• “Ride of the Valkyrie” is a great song and all, but I guarantee that no American will ever watch this show without singing Bugs Bunny’s lyrics to themselves: “Kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit….”

• Guess we know how Lee Seung Gi spent his break between My Girlfriend Is a Gumiho and this show—learning how to kiss convincingly on screen. Good for him, for us, and the lucky girl he practiced with.

Episode 3: Clearly, I hardly ever get K-culture in-jokes, so it was a pleasure to actually understand why they made such a big deal about Ha Ji Won’s character reacting to the Hyun Bin billboard when she first arrived in Seoul. As far as I’m concerned, Secret Garden the show may be grade D material, but Secret Garden jokes always rate an A+.

Episode 7: So I wasn’t crazy about this drama’s first few episodes, which were an awkward rom-com mess. But when the ship set sail around episode 4, I was totally aboard, and I’m pleased as punch with the melo turn it took in episode 7. Guess I’m not genetically predisposed to hate everything Ha Ji Won is in, after all. 

New Feature: Drama Shorts

For quite some time now, I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with the old Currently Watching posts from this blog’s sidebar. They’re hard to read on the current archive page, so I toyed with the idea of relocating them to Twitter or Tumblr. (Both of which I hate for crotchety old woman reasons: What’s the world coming to when people think 140-character bursts of nothing and “reblogging” are creative output? Get off my lawn you pesky kids!).

Ultimately, though, I decided to inaugurate a new feature here: Drama Shorts. Tidied up into actual posts, the Currently Watching quips become speedy little overviews of all the dramas I watch, including ones that don’t get written about in more depth. They’re not particularly involved or insightful, but my rationalization is that sometimes you just want to know what you’re getting into when you start a new drama. When I finish watching a show I’ll create a new post for it and delete its entries from the Currently Watching sidebar.

Because I’ve got quite a backlog of this stuff—and because I’ve now officially stuck with this blog for six whole months, miracle of miracles—I’ve decided to celebrate by getting a little crazy and posting two Drama Shorts a day for this whole week. That’s the fruit of more than 160 hours of drama watching, horrifyingly enough (which translates into practically every minute of free time I've had since Christmas).

(P.S.  For me, Twitter’s entire existence is justified by this single account: Gosling Literary Agent.)

Playing Favorites

Coming up with their very own top-ten list seems to be a major rite of passage for every fan of Korean television. Now that I’ve been watching Kdrama for almost a year, I guess my time has come. I’ve seen seen an awful lot of dramas: some that I’ve loved, some that I’ve loathed, and some that weren’t good enough to merit either emotion.

The shows listed here may not be the finest dramas Korea has ever made, but they are my favorites—the ones that stuck with me long after I watched their final episodes.

1. Coffee Prince (2007). A delight on every level, Coffee Prince is rooted in what could have been just another Kdrama cliché: a hardworking, tomboyish girl pretends to be a boy to make money to support her family. Over the course of 17 episodes, though, it manages to subvert almost every drama trope as it grows into a genuine, heartfelt story of best friends falling in love. The perfect mix of comedy and melodrama, it’s peopled by a huge cast of incredibly compelling characters and graced with sky-high production values. This drama may not have much to say about homosexuality, but if you listen closely it does have something to say about what it means to be a woman, a state of being that, contrary to popular Kdrama opinion, doesn’t require a two-inch skirt, white pancake makeup, or teetery high-heels. With its heart in the real, everyday world, Coffee Prince is a Kdrama romance unlike any other: It’s not a show about finding ways to keep people apart. It’s a show about bringing them together. So wonderful, even a year after watching it for the first time just the thought of Coffee Prince can make me smile until my face hurts.

2. Sungkyunkwan Scandal (2010). Only the hardest of hearts won’t be charmed by this candy-colored, deeply principled fusion sageuk that values learning, loyalty, and friendship above all else. Yet another story about a girl pretending to be a boy so she can support her family, Sungkyunkwan Scandal features one of Kdrama’s greatest quartets, perfectly embodied by a group of young actors with unforgettably flirty chemistry. This show’s most wonderful conflict isn’t to be found in its archery contests, classroom competitions, or royal intrigues. Instead, it’s the constant battle of worldviews waged by the jaded female lead and the idealistic young Confucian scholar she comes to love. Fun, swoony, and sometimes silly, Sungkyunkwan Scandal’s dreamy brand of revisionist history is the perfect introduction to historical Kdramas.

3. Boys over Flowers (2009). This story of Cinderella meeting Prince-not-so-charming isn’t good by any stretch of the imagination—but if you’re susceptible to its particular brand of cheese, it’s nonetheless irresistible. With characters so flatly iconic they’re approaching Hero of a Thousand Faces territory, it focuses on a poor every-girl and the dashing, mega-rich (and mega-flawed) young man who inexplicably wants to whisk her away into his life of privilege. Boys over Flowers has it all: wish-fulfillment shopping sprees, lavish tropical vacations, a nail-biting love-triangle, and more handsome knights in shining armor than it knows what to do with. The impact of this sweetly chaste, odds-defying love story is still reverberating throughout Asia—and the world. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I cannot tell a lie: I loved almost every minute I spent watching this train wreck. 

4. Que Sera, Sera (2007). A sordid Kdrama for grownups, this is a dark gem full of complex characters, edge-of-your-seat storytelling, and deeply felt emotions. There’s no cartoony Kdrama villain to be found here; instead, human nature in all its greedy, jealous, and cruel guises takes on the role of bad guy. And just when you think Que Sera, Sera’s imperfect characters are completely beyond redemption, they find a way out of the cycle of hurt and regret that propels most of this drama’s action and emerge as people who might just be better for their heartbreaking pasts. Compulsively watchable and with a surprisingly satisfying ending, this dark horse drama isn’t to be missed.

5. Painter of the Wind (2008). The rarest of birds: A thoughtful, girl-centered sageuk that beautifully explores the creation of real-life works of art by two historical figures. At the heart of the story is the imagined relationship between the artists, part professional mentorship, part friendship, and part love. (Did I mention that the younger artist happens to be a girl pretending to be boy so she can attend the royal painting academy?) The most sincere of the Korean gender-bending dramas, it explores the repercussions that would probably be felt by someone who actually spent most of her life hiding her gender. For my money, the most compelling relationship in this show isn’t the one between the two leads, though—it’s the one between the young artist and the courtesan she romances while searching for her true self. Tragic, exciting, and gorgeously filmed.

6. Goong (2006). Still the gold standard when it comes to dramas featuring modern-day Korean royalty, Goong is a goofy take on the standard love triangle. Instead of chaebols, though, the every-girl female lead gets to choose between two handsome princes—one distant and prickly, the other sweet and clingy with a creepy mother from hell. Its clever conceit, able script, and almost painfully winsome cast elevate Goong above its rom-com competition. A perfect vehicle for Yoon Eun Hye, this drama is charming, sweet, funny, and so wonderfully unafraid of being cute and cuddly that every episode ends with a teddy-bear diorama. (I love you, Korea.)

7. I Need Romance (2011). This show is the one thing I never expected from a Korean drama: racy. The only Kdrama romance I’ve seen that honestly depicts adult relationships, sex and all, I Need Romance is built around the friendship between three women in their early 30s. It explores the perils and pleasures of love from each of their perspectives—one a goddess of lust, one a long-term girlfriend, and one a virgin. Although the making, breaking, and remaking of an established relationship is at the heart of this show, no member of its likeable cast is wasted. Sex in the City, if Sex in the City were less sex-mad and more sweet-hearted (and Korean).

8. Padam Padam (2012). Being no stranger to the gutter makes the heights reached by this supernatural romance all the more powerful. Having spent most of his adult life in prison after being convicted for the murder of his best friend, Padam Padam’s male lead is understandably dour and jaded. But when the stakes are highest, God or fate or the universe steps in to give him a chance at happiness, rewinding time and allowing him to right the wrongs he’s committed. The real miracle of this drama is that it never loses sight of telling a good story about compelling characters, even when faced with the distractions of heartrending possible angels, supernatural plot twists, and truly breathtaking cinematography. Even a fairly lame final plot twist and an uninteresting female lead aren’t enough to ruin this lovely, reflective show.

9. Time between Dog and Wolf (2007). An action thriller with a heart, Time between Dog and Wolf is a high-tension exploration of the relationships between fathers and sons, whether they’re related by blood or not. This is the drama City Hunter should have been but wasn’t: a beautifully shot, thoughtfully written story of a young man’s quest for revenge against his mother’s murderer, and all the many things that get in the way—including his love for the murderer’s daughter (this is a Korean drama, after all).

10. Shut Up! Flower Boy Band (2012). SUFBB’s screenwriters could have phoned it in—nobody expects a gimmicky drama intended for teenage girls to actually be good. Instead, they created a gritty, acutely observed coming-of-age story that just happens to focus on good-looking bad boys in a rock band, and be set in the cutthroat world of Kpop. This drama is most memorable for its brisk pacing, strong characterizations, and poignant adolescent friendships that are closer to family ties. Also, the cute boys. (Duh.)

Learned from the list:

• I love it when girls pretend to be boys. Sadly, I suspect this is because it’s one of the few times Kdrama rom-com girls get to be smart and capable instead of airheaded and bumbling. (Note, of course, that Go Mi Nyeo from You’re Beautiful is the exception that proves this rule. She’s airheaded and bumbling as either gender.) Also wonderful is that gender-bending romantic leads tend to spend more time together—they’re not separated by the Great Wall of Boy versus Girl.

• My absolute favorite dramas are some of the first few I watched—of course, they’re also most everyone’s favorites, which makes them popular and easy to find. I think it was also easier to love without reservation back in the early days of my obsession, when I was too blinded by the fantastically exotic sparkle of Kdrama to watch with a critical eye. (This, I like to think, explains my undying love for Boys over Flowers. It was the second Kdrama I ever saw—of course I imprinted on it like a baby duck.) It’s certainly harder to please me nowadays, but I also think that I’m running out of classics. My first year down the Kdrama rabbit hole was spent watching the greatest hits that are widely beloved and still under discussion, while today I’m branching out into lesser-known shows, which can be hit or miss.

• I love youthful coming-of-age romances, and wish there were more of them out there in dramaland. Maybe it’s a sign that I’m a failure at adulthood, but somehow I find 15 infinitely more interesting than 35.

• I’m incapable of writing about Korean drama without using the word heart a lot. Whether that says something about me or Kdrama, I’m not sure. On the bright side, I’d still rather jump off something extremely high than discuss a character’s (or person’s) dream, whatever it may be.

• When I started putting this list together, I was only sure of my top two or three dramas. As I got going, though, I realized all the shows that were coming to mind were ones I had devoted an entire blog post to (or most of one, anyway). The rest of the shows I’ve written about in detail here? They would go on this list’s counterpart—my ten least favorite Kdramas.

Yet Another Relatively Mammoth List of Short Kdrama Lists

Reasons Korean dramas are better than American TV
1. Beginnings, middles, and ends.

2. Love stories get to be the true stars of the show.

3. Two words: flower boys.

Is that a gun, or are you just happy to see me?

Toughest Kdrama female leads

1. Kim Hang Ah, King 2 Hearts. Need some bad-guy butt kicked? Your mother being held hostage by a psycho with a thing for the pointier kinds of dental equipment? Stuck in the middle of an international incident with a loaded gun pointed at your head? Kim Hang Ah is the one to call.

2. Hwang Jin Yi, Hwang Jin Yi. She lived her life for art in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles, even going so far as to eschew true love in favor of dancing. No man ever got the better of her—although, interestingly, some women did.

3. Na Bo Ri, Hello, My Teacher. She may have been bumbling, but Bo Ri would do anything within her power (and a number of things that weren’t) to protect her students.

Nothing to see here, folks.

Kdrama couples with no chemistry whatsoever

1. Eun Sung and Woo Han, Shining Inheritance. I would say these two seemed more like brother and sister than lovers, but I’ve never seen siblings so visibly uncomfortable around each other.

2. Young In and Seung Hyo, Who Are You? Your dad, that’s who, and it shows every time the viewer looks at him.

3. Jan Di and Joon Pyo, Boys before Flowers. It’s just as well that these two had no chemistry—this spectacularly cracktacular drama needed a flaw or two.

Lo, it is the single most heavenly kiss in all of Korean drama.

Kdrama couples with Nobel-Prize-level chemistry

1. Eun Chan and Han Gyul, Coffee Prince. If life were ever-so-slightly more prone to magical realism, the heat between these two would actually cause televisions to melt.

2. Byung Hee and Chul Su, What’s Up, Fox. He always looks as if he’d like to eat her alive—in a good way.

3. Hee Jin and Boong Do, Queen In-Hyun’s Man. You know, maybe he really was a player all along: Kisses that hot take practice. And spawn real relationships, it seems.

Ah, young love in all its splendor.

Kdrama bromances that should have been consummated

1. Yeo-Rim and Gael-Oh, Sungkyunkwan Scandal. The show never dared to make the romance in this bromance happen, but I suspect the imaginations of many viewers did. Sweet, funny, and supportive of each other’s quirks, I would have liked them even better than this drama’s main couple if they’d gotten together. (Above image borrowed from A Bag’s Life.)

2. Dong Joo and Ma Roo, Can You Hear My Heart? Their relationship was far and away the best thing about this show, and they spent half of its running time rolling around in bed together anyway. If only a little kissing had been thrown into the bargain, my enjoyment of this drama would have skyrocketed.

3. Lee Gak and Tae Moo, Rooftop Prince. This edgy, love-hate relationship would have been even edgier and love-hatier if they’d just given in to (the audience’s) baser desires and made out instead of playing all that squash.

Hmm...where have I seen a Kdrama kiss shot in front of a similar background?

More things I love about Kdrama romances

1. Hot kisses. Contrary to common wisdom, there are smoking hot Kdrama kisses out there—and in some ways they’re all the better because they’re so very rare.

2. Reincarnation talk. The deck might be stacked against the lovers in this lifetime, but it kills me when they’re already hopeful for the next.

3. The back hug. Most Kdrama front hugs feature stick-stiff girls looking like they’re mentally tallying an upcoming dry-cleaning bill. The back hug is a pure, nonsexual act of love and comfort in which the she gets to take control.

Guess what? This in no way excuses the awful thing you just did.

Incredibly horrible things a Kdrama character has done to his or her lover (that the show expects you to forgive without batting an eyelash)

1. Attempted rape on a hotel room bed. She was visibly terrified by his use of brute force one minute and confessing her love for him the next? Ick.

2. With the help of the second male lead, she convinced her soulmate that she’d died—and let him believe it for years. That dreamy surprise meeting in the final scene should have involved a slap and some screaming, not loving, dewy-eyed glances.

3. Trying to strangle the female lead through the bars of his prison cell. Clearly this was traumatic for all involved, especially the actress: the scene must have taken several attempts to film, because from the very beginning you could already see the angry red marks on her neck.

(Drama names for this section will be posted in the comments to avoid spoiling anyone.)

::insert Jaws theme music here::

Kdrama places I want to visit

1. The place where Lie to Me’s finale was shot. Green waters, palm trees, volcanic rocks: even without a dreamy male lead, this is a place where I’d like to spend some time.

2. Heaven, Earth, and Man, the restaurant in Kimchi Family. On dumpling soup and scallion pancake day, please!

3. The giant Japanese bookstore in Someday. Bookstores make me happy on a visceral level, and although it might be suspiciously close to hell on earth to be in one this enormous and yet not be able to read a word, I’d be willing to give it a shot. I love how books look, and feel, and smell, whatever language they’re written in.

I would give him a huge tip, that’s for sure.

Things every drama writer thinks Korean women want

1. For Lee Min Ho to wash her hair (which happened in both Personal Preference and City Hunter)

2. To step between Park Shi Hoo and a deadly weapon (see both Family’s Honor and Princess’s Man)

3. To wear couple rings with Park Yoochun (as in both Sungkyunkwan Scandal and Rooftop Prince)

It’s a miracle anyone survived the Joseon Dynasty, between all the royal
poisonings and dangerous playground equipment. From The Princess's Man.

Kdrama things that differ fundamentally from their western counterparts

1. Swinging standing up. Really? I spent my entire elementary school career being yelled at for doing this on the playground, and it’s actually the traditional Korean approach to swings?

2. Rubbing your palms together. When an American does this, it means we’re excited and looking forward to eating/seeing/doing something. When a Korean does it, it means they’re begging. I guess the common theme is that it’s expressing hope for something you want, but it’s bizarre that the same gesture means something totally different in these two cultures.

3. Opening envelopes along a short edge, not the long one. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve accidentally ripped through the top fold of an envelope’s contents. Why don’t we Americans adopt this safer method for opening mail?

I want to go to there (on a number of levels).

Unspeakably wonderful things people overlook about Coffee Prince

1. Props and set direction. From Eun Chan’s grown-up version of a kid’s scheduling chart to Han Sung’s castle in the clouds, the things and places associated with this drama’s characters have just as much to say about who they are as the actors do.

2. Locations. Seoul has never looked more lush, green, and welcoming. From the Coffee Prince shop itself to the tree-lined hill leading from Han Sung’s house and the checkerboard-pavement of the playground Yoo Joo frequents, this show was a gift to Korea’s tourism board.

3. The clothes. In this case, the clothes really did make the man…and the woman. Without their amazing wardrobes, Coffee Prince’s actors couldn’t have been so successful in creating indelible characters. Han Gyul, the impeccably tailored ladies’ man; Eun Chan, the everyday girl who happened to prefer baggy jeans to short skirts; and Han Sung, the low-key, comfortable hipster. My favorite example of a wardrobe choice that goes above and beyond the call of duty? On her big night with Han Gyul, Eun Chan wore a boyish red polo shirt. When she returned from Italy a year later, a different girl but still the same person, she wore a girlier version of the very same red polo shirt.

My drama cave (note the Coffee Prince
box set next to the cable box).

Things all North American Kdrama fans should be lucky enough to have

1. Sony’s blu-ray player featuring Google TV. Most of the “Smart TVs” they’re selling these days aren’t that smart at all: they allow you to download apps, but rope off the rest of the Internet. Not so with this set-top Google TV device. Using it, I can visit any website on my television—and watch videos from Dramafever, Kimchidrama, Mysoju, and Dramacrazy. (Just not Viki, for some bizarre reason.)

2. Logitech’s Squeezebox radio. It uses wireless Internet to access radio stations anywhere in the world—including Seoul. (And Jeju, Teajeon, Ulsan, Cheonju, Gangneung, Kwangju, and Pusan...)

3. A Dramafever premium membership. Always reliable, always fast, and always decently subbed, Dramafever is worth every penny they charge. (And a many more, actually.) My membership predates the recent price hike, so a year of Kdrama is costing me about a third of one month’s cable bill. The only changes I could hope for would be a bit more coverage of new dramas (A Wife's Credentials, wherefore art thou?) and a stronger backlist of old shows.


The most popular Google searches that land people on this blog
1. Gong Yoo girlfriend. Yup. I definitely have the lowdown on that.... Or not, other than sometimes wishing it were me. (And then realizing I could probably only think of ways to keep him entertained for an hour or so before he would want to go do something athletic, and I would want to re-enact scenes from Coffee Prince. Which, it goes without saying, would be awkward.)

2. Family’s Honor review. I guess nobody else wrote much about this, so I’m toward the top of the search pile.

3. Painter of the Wind. Once again, hardly anyone is still writing about this show, but I can’t shut up about it. (And to the person who searched for “Painter of the Wind” “Incest”: They’re not related by blood, so it doesn’t count!) 

Little Thoughts on Big’s 5th and 6th Episodes

I’m still liking Big a lot, but (in spite of Gong Yoo’s outrageous toothsomeness) I’m a little less insanely in love with its most recent installments than I was with the first few. Read on for spoilery discussion about this week’s episodes.


P.S.: Now with newly corrected names that actually reflect the ones used in the show! ::facepalm::

Big Love: Episodes 1 through 4

These days, the word marathon is more closely related to sitting on the couch than running insane distances (or that city in Greece, even). For me, it usually means devoting a chunk of time to watching a single drama without interruption, as if it were an enormous movie made for viewing from beginning to end in one sitting.

Really, though, that’s not a marathon: it’s a sprint. Rather than being a drawn out over the course of weeks and weeks, your experience of the show is over in the blink of an eye. Knowing you can just hit the play button on the next episode whenever you want unavoidably changes your involvement with the plot and characters: you may be totally immersed in the show for a while, but having easy access to all the answers discourages deep thinking along the way.

I’ve always liked marathon-style viewing of television—waiting until a whole season is available and then devoting all my television time to that one show. But now that I’m watching episodes of Big as they air, I’ve realized I was missing something all this time: curiosity and conjecture and the prolonged tension of having no choice but to wait an entire week to see how things turns out. Big is the perfect show for this, too—it’s exposing its secrets ever so slowly, one tiny but significant revelation at a time. As of episode 4, the characters and overarching plot are still only beginning to come into focus, and each new installment begs to be pored over for hints about what it all might mean.

I’ve only seen a few dramas written by the Hong sisters, Big’s screenwriters, but this show seems pretty significantly different from their recent efforts. A weird fun fact: there’s a fundamental difference between the things described by the words labyrinth and maze. A labyrinth has only one possible path—if you start at the beginning, you will always end up at the end, having inevitably walked the very same way and taken the very same turns. A maze, on the other hand, is full of possible paths; some are dead ends, some are red herrings, and some will take you where you want to go. Greatest Love and My Girlfriend Is a Gumiho, the Hong sisters’ last dramas, were labyrinths. From episode 1 you knew exactly where they were going and pretty much how they would get there. This isn’t a bad thing, necessarily, but it is a track record that makes Big’s more open-ended plot feel all the more exciting and surprising. As of episode 4, Big is definitely a maze. Sure, it’s clear that love will be the eventual destination, but it’s not clear how the show will take us there—or who will even be involved. This Christopher-Nolan-lite storytelling, where each new revelation changes everything you thought you understood before, is working absurdly well for me.

Beyond the premise of a young man suddenly finding himself in an adult body, Big doesn’t have much in common with the 1980s movie of the same name. (I do seem to remember that the Tom Hanks version also included a race-car bed, though.) The weird parallel I see here is with The Host, a novel by Stephenie Meyer. It wasn’t much of a book, but The Host had a great marketing hook: “it’s the first love triangle involving two bodies.” In a lot of ways, that’s what Big is shaping up to be: while he’s in Seo Yoon Jae’s grown-up body, eighteen-year-old Kang Kyung Joon is falling in love with Yoon Jae’s fiancée. What this development means for everyone involved—and whether Yoon Jae himself will ever show up at the party—is a complete mystery at this point.

Yoon Jae is one of Big’s many marvels. He’s a huge, complicated jigsaw puzzle just waiting to be put together, but the show is giving him to us one piece at a time with only the vaguest hints about what the finished product might look like. We’ve seen him a number of times—mostly in scenes filtered through the perceptions of other characters—but have yet to develop a sense for who he truly is; all we know for sure about Yoon Jae is that he’s utterly inscrutable. Even during flashbacks to cute couple moments he shared with Da Ran, his expression is unreadable. He might be tentatively happy, he might feel trapped, or he might even be repulsed.

His role in the show’s plot is just as obscure: It’s obvious that Yoon Jae is uptight, emotionally distant, and prone to keeping secrets, but beyond that anything’s possible. Is he a creep who’s leading on one woman while he’s engaged to another? Is he in love with the female lead, but afraid to fully commit to her for some crazy Kdrama reason? Heck, maybe he’s actually the perfect man his fiancée believes him to be.

The flashback to the wedding scene in episode 3 is the biggest argument for Yoon Jae actually liking Gil Da Ran—but even that can’t be entirely trusted. It’s hearsay, after all, told by Yoon Jae’s coworker who witnessed only two of the events included in the flashback. I’ve since rewatched episode 1 and can report that one point of Yoon Jae’s story doesn’t check out: He wasn’t actually in the elevator with Da Ran when she was delivering the flowers. Whether this is an oversight or something meaningful, I can’t say. The other flashback scenes were shot carefully enough so that Yoon Jae really could have been just out of frame, but there’s no hiding big Gong Yoo and his checked jacket in that little elevator.

Where’s Yoon Jae?
 (episode 3) 

Not here...
(episode 1)

 

With Kyung Joon, on the other hand, what you see is what you get. He’s a cocky, scowling teenage boy who’s never afraid to say what he really thinks. He and Da Ran have an easy, bickering chemistry from the very first time they meet, and I can barely wait to see their mutual attraction evolve into full-blown love. Yoon Jae may be a dreamy unicorn of a man, but it’s impossible to imagine him ever really belonging to anyone but himself. In contrast, belonging to someone is the one thing Kyung Joon hungers for most. One of the most poignant moments in Big’s first episode showed him enviously watching Da Ran and her brother, loving siblings with a close relationship.

When Kyung Joon lost his mother, he lost his strongest tie with someone outside himself. Suddenly relocated to Korea, he’s not making great inroads at rejoining the human race: At his new school, he immediately gets into a fight with his classmates, the people who should be his friends. His aunt and uncle are in Korea, but they don’t live with him or even care about his welfare--his aunt was the one loading frozen pizzas in his freezer in episode 1. She’s not going to be a mother figure for him.

This lack of connection is something Kyung Joon and Yoon Jae share. Both live alone and are isolated from their families in a culture that values shared multi-generational households. And although each is the object of a female character’s passionate love, neither returns that love. (It’s open for discussion in Yoon Jae’s case whether this female character is his colleague, or Da Ran herself.)

Big’s central plot device is another example of their anchorlessness. What greater disconnect can there be than not recognizing the face looking back at you in the mirror? Usually it’s Yoon Jae we see reaching out to someone but failing to actually touch them, first to Da Ran as she’s about to fall down the stairs at the wedding, then to Kyung Joon during the car accident when their bodies are switched. But when he wakes up in the morgue, Kyung Joon also reaches out without making a real connection: only this time, he’s reaching out to his own reflection.

I think it will eventually come out that Yoon Jae and Kyung Joon have one more thing in common: their dad. There have been hints that Kyung Joon’s dad is still alive and somewhere nearby, but Kyung Joon doesn’t seem to know about it. And it may take a child of divorce to notice this sort of thing, but I think it’s safe to say that Yoon Jae’s parents are separated. They’re always discussed individually (per Da Ran, “both his parents live overseas,” not “his parents live overseas”), and while Yoon Jae has pictures of himself with his mom and his dad, he doesn’t have any with his mom and dad. I’m hoping the Miracle picture book will fit into this storyline somehow, maybe having been written by their dad.

The female lead, as is often the way with dramas by the Hong sisters, barely merits discussion. Da Ran is cute and naive and needy and displays only occasional flashes of backbone. It’s easy to see what draws Kyung Joon to her, though. She’s effortlessly nurturing, stepping in almost against her own will to comfort and care for him. From absently handing Kyung Joon his silverware to getting him a school uniform to nursing him when he’s sick, Da Ran has taken on his lost mother’s role. She’s the only person in the world who understands him fully, and it’s increasingly clear that he feels safer in her presence than almost anywhere else. Kyung Joon may not have acknowledged his feelings for Da Ran yet, but he’s stepping in again and again to protect her. Seeing her hurt or taken advantage of upsets him, whether it’s at the hands of the students in her class or her fiancée. And as for Da Ran, she was immediately at ease around Kyung Joon. It’s hard to imagine that this bossy, physically aggressive woman is the same clingy little girl Yoon Jae knows.

For a long time, I was in denial that Kyung Joon and Da Ran would be this show’s OTP. The spark between them is intense (in either body), but for me there’s a slight problem: Kyung Joon in his real body looks like a boy, while Da Ran looks like a woman. Most noona romances involve older characters, so the age difference is a less glaring. The difference between a 25 year old and a 30 year old is mostly their lifestyles, but an 18-year-old highschooler and his teacher-cum-mother? That’s a big theoretical ick, although not necessarily a deal-breaker. The show itself seems to be saying that we can’t discount this relationship—it hasn’t come up in the script yet, but the character charts indicate that there’s also a huge age difference between Da Ran’s parents, who met under similar circumstances. (Without the body swap, I presume.)

And it’s not too late for Yoon Jae to come back and sweep Da Ran off her feet, either. He hasn’t had a chance to speak for himself yet—who knows what he’ll say when he does? I’m betting that he really does love Da Ran, and I can think of a few ways to forgive that packed bag and ticket to LA. Maybe Yoon Jae’s mom lives there, and he intended to visit in hopes of convincing her to accept Da Ran as his wife. (His mom saying they’ll talk about the wedding when they meet in person sounded pretty foreboding.) Maybe Yoon Jae realized he had a half-brother in LA and wanted to meet him. There’s nothing to put the fear of commitment in you like your parents’ foibles and failed relationships, so that could be why he’s so aloof around Da Ran. My money is on the second half of the drama revolving around Yoon Jae waking up in Kyung Joon’s body and realizing he needs to fight for Da Ran. (And, with the way things are going, my eventual death from sheer delight.)


In the early episodes of the show, we’re shown reflections again and again: during the accident, at the morgue, in the bus stop billboard. In my dream world this would be setting the stage for Da Ran’s realization that the Yoon Jae she loves is one dimensional—she’s in love with the idea of Yoon Jae and what he is, not who he is. The body swapping would be her wake-up call, a reminder that what’s on the surface isn’t always what’s true.

So far, I couldn’t love Big more. Its quality may have suffered a bit since its beautifully composed first episode,  but this is a surprisingly touching, funny, and romantic drama that’s just right for compulsive theorizing. I’m already insanely invested in Big’s plot and characters. Where it goes from here is anybody’s guess, but I can’t wait to find out.


(P.S.: Another difference between watching a show as it airs and waiting for it to be completed? Everyone who has a kdrama blog is writing about the very same things at the very same time, and I’m squirmy-uncomfortable about being part of the crowd on this one. My experience of fannish writing is mostly limited to pop music, which was different: even if forty people wrote about the same concert, they were really writing about forty totally different experiences. With television, we’re given a prepackaged experience that can only be milked for so much insight. I’m avoiding other people’s commentary about Big, but what’s the point? I’m sure untold numbers have already written about the very same things I just wrote about. ::sigh::)

The End: My Take on the Last Scene of Queen In-hyun's Man

Okay. So it turns out that a lot of people aren’t that happy with the deus ex machina used in the Queen In-hyun’s Man finale. After the jump, I dwell briefly on why I couldn’t love it more. Spoilers ahoy!


(Note: This is a rare two-post week; do scroll down if you’d rather read a general review of Queen In-hyun’s Man.)