mjkarlin Reviews

Twinkling Watermelon (2023– )

Time travel comedy-drama that works

[9/10 · 26 January 2024]

This is a charming show, with wonderful leads and a fine supporting cast. Time travel shows are always hard to pull off and while there are some plot holes, they are tolerable. I would have liked the final episodes to tell us more about the return to 2023, especially Eun-yoo's story but this is a minor complaint.

In this show, a boy (Ryeoun) and a girl (Seoul In-ah) travel from 2023 to 1995, the boy to meet his father (Choi Hyun-wook), make sure he meets his future mom (Shin Eun-woo) and save him from a serious accident, the girl to escape her dysfunctional parents with the idea of changing the past so she will not be born. The two romances that ensue are heartfelt, even if many obstacles must be overcome.

Much of the show tells of the band formed by the father, a high-schooler in 1995, which his time traveling son joins, the father's objective being to capture the heart of the girl (or her mother - you'll have to watch) and the son's being to prevent his father's accident. Comedy and drama intertwine. The series delicately and compassionately deals with the challenges faced by deaf people and CODAs (children of deaf adults).

If there are to be some criticisms, perhaps some of the pantomime villainy of Shin's step-mother (Kim Joo-ryoung) could have been omitted. Also, while I find it, er, unpalatable having to watch another series enslaved by the all-powerful Korean catering industry, I also must offer up my respects to the inventor of the fast forward button that allows one to skip over the eating scenes without losing any of the story.

I don't want to give away the plot, but it all works pretty well and the leads will keep you engaged throughout. Light fare that is eminently binge worthy.

Mad for Each Other (2021– )

A Little Thought-Provoking and a Lot of Fun

[9/10 · 1 November 2023]

Mental illness is the stuff of which drama, both serious and comedic, can be fashioned. This charming show, featuring a pair of highly skilled actors with terrific chemistry, makes the most of its stars and of their mental health challenges. At times laugh out loud and at times poignant, we see the intersection of a police officer suspended because of anger management issues and a successful woman brought low by her unability to trust anyone because of a disastrous failed relationship with a married man. Next door neighbors in a standard issue run down Seoul apartment building, they keep bumping into each other in a series of gently hilarious scenes. Ever so slowly, they form a fragile bond that allows them a measure of peace from their demons.

This is not a perfect piece of work, but it is very well written, constantly engaging and acted with subtlety by the two very appealing leads, Jung Woo and Oh Yeon-Seo. Both use a range of expressions to overcome the natural inclination of the audience to be frustrated at their antics.

If there is one criticism, it is the injection of melodrama rather than drama, with Jung Woo obsessed with capturing a pantomime villain of a drug dealer who has been protected by corrupt cops who are also responsible for his suspension and Oh dealing with a pantomime villain of an abusive ex. These characters are loathsome, but they are so over the top as to be somewhat annoying. Reviewers have also criticized the ending as rushed. I think it's not so much rushed as lacking the imagination and wit that suffuses the rest of the show.

Korean dramas about mental health, such as Extraordinary Attorney Woo, It's Okay To Not Be Okay and It's Okay, That's Love, often deal with the subject with more sensitivity than Korean society does. Mad For Each Other does the same - the numerous scenes when the two protagonists have sessions with their psychiatrist, winningly played by Lee Hye-ra, really help us and the characters understand themselves.

The supporting roles are stocked with capable Korean character actors and while their parts are sometimes played for slapstick, they never quite go overboard. Even the typical Korean mothers of the protagonists stay within reasonable bounds. Props especially to one of my favorites, the great Baek Ji-won (remember her as the senior partner of Hanbada, the law firm where Extraordinary Attorney Woo works), playing the nosy head of the apartment complex where Jung and Oh reside as neighbors. Also to Jung Seung-Gil who, like Baek, played a splendid supporting role in a personal favorite, Be Melodramatic, and here plays the exasperated police captain at Jung Woo's station. And a major shoutout to Su-hyun, already a long-established actress at 21 when she made this, a member of the KPop duo AKMU, here playing a student who works part-time at numerous jobs. When she finally opens her mouth to sing, it's a magic moment.

This is a good show, for once not too long (13 40 minute episodes instead of the usual 16 hour-long marathon), a little thought-provoking and a lot of fun.

Destined with You (2023)

Choose Another Destiny

[3/10 · 27 October 2023]

Probably best if viewers choose a different destiny.

This series features a pair of well-known but essentially mediocre actors, Jo Bo Ah and the mono-faced Rowoon, playing characters who spend an incredible amount of time sparring with each other before the inevitable coupling/"happy ending". The basic plot is that Jo finds herself in possession of a book of one-time use only spells, one of which she uses to make her crush, a rather pedestrian co-worker, fall for her.

Unfortunately for her, and all of us, it gets drunk by Rowoon, another co-worker from a rich family, who is engaged to the lovely but not very nice Yura, whom he dumps, in numerous cruel increments, to start an initially unreciprocated pursuit of Jo. Jo's use of the spell book further scrambles matters, to little discernible effect.

What makes the whole thing unbearable is the bullying and stalking that Rowoon inflicts on Jo for episode after episode, no matter how many times she tells him she likes someone else and even after she falls for him. Time after time he goads her, presses her, chases after her, makes demands on her, abuses his position to imperiously summon her, with phone calls and texts and showing up at her home and at her office, long past endurance. Each time she resists, with an admittedly impressive array of repartee, all of which bounces off him as you would expect of an oblivious and crass male chauvinist that one can barely imagine could exist today, but obviously still does, at least in the twisted minds of the writers and directors of this limp mess. Perhaps she's supposed to be some kind of saint, but in the modern era (even a less than progressive South Korea), she would have long since sought a restraining order.

As the series progresses, her resolve weakens but his obnoxiousness remains relentless and charmless in equal measure. Both his and her tragic pasts still haunt them (in what Korean drama do they not) but nothing very inventive here (he suffers from some curable "incurable" disease and she has not got over her father's drowning while saving a couple of children). Inevitably, it turns out that they met earlier in life, actually in a previous Joseon-era life, which assumes a progressively more important role in the wager-thin plot, which also involves a murderous garden store owner whose villainy is facilitated by extraordinarily stupid decision-making by the two leads.

As in most Korean dramas, in scene after scene characters refuse to listen to each other and they tell each other unnecessary lies. For example, in one scene, the heroine's colleagues assume that a photograph of her and a colleague facing each other and maliciously posted at the instance of a jealous rival show that the two are having an affair. When the photograph was taken, the two were just neighbors. There is no reason that she concealed this from them in the first place and they refuse to listen to her when she tries, far too late, to explain. In the same episode, she gets pushed into a pit and dirt gets shoveled onto her. When she is rescued, she pretends to her rescuer that she slipped, when there is every reason for her to tell him what happened and both of them probably know who did it. These idiotic scenes are so unbelievable that they completely fail to add any actual dramatic tension. They just make the audience smirk.

At least we can tell this whole lame story wasn't created by Artificial Intelligence, which would have done a better job, more like Artificial Insult to the Intelligence. I can readily imagine some trope-infected program churning out the tired old characters and plot lines, not to mention the all too real studio cafeteria serving up meal after meal in lieu of action, with egregiously intrusive product placements. Oh yes, Korean directors would rather have their actors eat and get drunk than move the plot forward. There is a relentlessly annoying subplot that has nothing at all to do with the main story involving two of Jo's co-workers. And, as usual, any suggestion of actual sex is reserved for the bad girl and a rather unpleasant side character. Watch a few Korean dramas, and you'll easily comprehend why the Korean birthrate is the lowest in the world.

The Interest of Love (2022– )

Wispy Plot and Unloveable Characters

[5/10 · 19 May 2023]

It's hard not to compare this particular show to the wonderful My Mister. The romance in both shows is heavily understated, but the subtlety of My Mister is never approached or even attempted in The Interest of Love. The story is suffused in emotional falsehood. It takes four physically very attractive protagonists of whom only one, played by the second female lead Keum Sae-rok, shows any joie de vivre. Extracting a smile or a moment of happiness from the other three is apparently beyond the ability of the story tellers.

The wisp of a plot revolves around Yoo Yeon-seok, so great in Hospital Playlist, in love with the beauteous but stone-faced and judgmental Mun Ga-young who rejects him over a single moment of hesitation when he is late for a first date. Following the rejection, he agrees to date Keum (also truly beauteous) and no viewer could understand why he would do this so half-heartedly, given that she is livelier, more outgoing, wealthier, and arguably prettier. Meantime, Mun starts to date a seemingly kind and thoughtful Jung Ga-ram, playing a security guard at the bank where all four work. The kindness and thoughtfulness don't last, giving way to wallowing self-pity at his imaginary shortcomings. The writer has to invent a completely specious and even less interesting reason for Jung to abandon Mun, some nonsense about his failing a civil service exam, all so that the conflicted Yoo can be given the opportunity to try again with Mun and cruelly betray Keum.

Never do any of the feelings of these protagonists ring true. The least false is Keum, but she is also out of place, the well-tended daughter of a wealthy family working a lower rung management job at a low-level bank branch, when she never lacks for material comforts. Mun, on the other hand, is emotionless throughout. She spends the entire show with exactly one expression on her face, a doe-eyed emptiness bereft of the tiniest hint of joy, happiness, fire, anger, anything. For example, in a break-up scene with Jung, she seems passionless - she can only bring herself to offer practical advice (like don't quit your job) but not once does she say "We're in love, let's get through this together, that's what being a true couple means." Nor does it occur to him that he has found someone with whom to share both burdens and joy in life - he gives up at the first not really very high hurdle. As for Yoo, he remains poker-faced for episode after episode - how anyone could fall for such a wet blanket is beyond understanding. As kind and generous as Keum is to him, so he is reserved at best and unwilling to give anything of himself. Nor does he ever give anything real to Mun, only the veneer of inarticulate feeling.

I return to my comparison of the show with My Mister. Also set in what feels like a dead-end work setting, it tells a rollicking tale of deception and intrigue, all the while developing the fascinating platonic relationship between IU (as beautiful as Mun, but a far more interesting and genuinely conflicted character) and the older Lee Sun-kyung. IU and Lee must show extreme restraint to deal with their circumstances, but you believe them and root for them as their story unfolds. The villains and the side characters of My Mister put the tame backbiting office workers and third-rate bosses of The Interest of Love to shame.

I wonder what lies behind the penchant of Korean drama directors for forcing their actors to play it so unrelentingly straight and free of expression. Whatever the explanation, the result here is pitiful. And do speed through the endless scenes of eating and drinking, about which I routinely complain. You won't miss a thing. I didn't. How desperately the KDrama industry needs to escape the thrall of the catering companies. I challenge a Korean scriptwriter to get through a 16-episode drama with no meals (and no snacks or drinking soju either). $1,000 to the first to accomplish this - but my money is safe. The Interest of Love, in any case, should be renamed The Ingestion of Grub.

Do You Like Brahms? (2020)

I would have preferred Schumann

[4/10 · 19 April 2023]

If one were to pose the question "Do you like Brahms?" to any of the characters in this sad limp rag of a drama, you can be sure that the answer, whether yes or no, would be a lie. That's because every single character in this piece practices deception reflexively. It's like the old joke about politicians: "How do you know politicians are lying?" "When they move their lips."

Now as I have observed elsewhere, lies are normal fodder of drama, but what is so obnoxious about this one (and characteristic of Kokowa dramas) is that every one lies, tells half-truths, obfuscates, and misdirects at every possible occasion and often for no reason other than to satisfy the need of the writer, in this case Ryu Bo-ri, to cause her characters to continuously inflict pain and discomfort on themselves and everyone else. (Ryu Bo-ri is a woman but she takes a sadistic delight in torturing her characters, especially, but sad to say not exclusively, the female ones.)

I watched this after I saw Park Eun-bin as Extraordinary Attorney Woo, one of the best shows I have ever seen in any language. And this was such a disappointment. It's one of the most depressing shows ever. Ms. Park plays a late starter as a violinist who attends a music school where the professors and other students, more talented than her, look down on her and do everything they can to reinforce her natural diffidence and lack of self-confidence. Her family too beats up on her at every turn. Her best female friend dumps her, after haranguing her and walking away without listening to her. No one except her kindly boyfriend is nice to her, but he too almost never listens to her play and offers her not one word of encouragement about the music. Every time he asks her how she's doing, she lies to him and pushes away his earnest efforts to get her to open up just once (ironic, since he himself never opens up either and repeatedly lies to her - how could any relationship built on complete lack of candor ever succeed?). So, we have to endure episode after episode when she is humiliated and belittled, made to run errands for a casually beastly teacher who spends her time during lessons filing her nails and texting, getting picked on by her boyfriend's disgusting agent, subjected to cruel gossip by her classmates, thrown over her by her best friend, and constantly made to feel uneasy because her boyfriend keeps meeting his former lover, to all of which she submits meekly until her spirit has been completely crushed. Do we really believe that happiness is giving up your passion for an office job?

In the meantime, our hero, played by Kim Min-jae, is a talented pianist burdened by a worthless father whose wife constantly covers for his financial failures by sponging every cent of her son's earnings. He is plagued by a clingy woman, a more talented violinist from a rich family played unsmilingly by Park Ji-hyun, who dated his best friend for years while he was in love with her and she with him; he is endlessly humiliated because she and her family keep bailing out the revolting (never-seen) father - you just know that none of this ends well until the artificial happy ending. He falls for the heroine, but he never really gives himself to her and he is endlessly less than honest with her. The audience is left with no one to root for, as pretty as the leads may be.

There's a trumped up happy ending, sort of, although it involves Park Eun-bin's character giving up music, but it's really unfair on the audience to have to endure 15 ½ episodes of relentless misery for one not all that uplifting finish. I hope that Ms. Park will never again allow herself to play a character so supine, so willing to bear any amount of abuse, just to satisfy Kokowa's predilection for riling up the audience and giving them long-deferred gratification when some (not all) of the oppressors get what is usually (and is in this case) a quarter-baked comeuppance that does not begin to compensate for the misery they have inflicted. We would like justice to be served and it just isn't, in anything like a sufficient measure to satisfy all the negative feelings that accumulate watching this sad-sack story.

I have one other significant complaint. This is, supposedly, a story set in and around a music university, with many of the characters being classical musicians when they are not lying, bullying, being stepped on, etc. Why then is there so little actual classical music? The OST is a long series of dreary songs, each less memorable than the other, with plodding lyrics. With the whole classical music canon available, why couldn't we have had more of that? And perhaps it would have slowed things down a bit, although not more than the usual endless diet of meals and cups of tea, but how about some actual concert extracts that are longer than a couple of bars? If I am asked, Do You Like Brahms, my answer is, I couldn't tell after watching 16 hours of this show.

Extraordinary Attorney Woo (2022)

A gem anchored by a faultless Park Eun-bin

[10/10 · 18 August 2022]

This is a simply marvelous series with an astonishing performance by Park Eun-bin. The show began with diminutive ratings in Korea on a minor cable channel but reached stratospheric ratings because of word of mouth and was widely popular on Netflix internationally. It's a gem of a 10 and I say this as someone who tries to combat ratings inflation.

Autism has been captured by a number of Korean shows, most notably The Good Doctor (remade in Japan and the United States) and It's Okay to Not Be Okay. In both of these, as in Extraordinary Attorney Woo, the focus is on relatively high-functioning individuals and the writers have to be careful not to minimize the effect of the social awkwardness and lack of awareness that is commonly encountered among autistic individuals. All three shows occasionally stray in this regard, but overall they do extraordinary work in evoking understanding and sympathy without descending into maudlin pity.

In Extraordinary Attorney Woo, Park portrays a young woman whose tremendous memory and strong character helps her to have great success at university and law school and to become the first autistic lawyer to pass the notoriously tough Korean bar examination. Despite finishing at the top of her class, she is unable to get a job at any law firm, due to the routine prejudice she encounters. Nevertheless, through the intervention of her father, who was a classmate of the (female) senior partner of a leading firm, she is hired out of the ordinary hiring cycle and begins work on a series of cases that form the basis for ever episode (one story takes place over two episodes). The show also depicts Park's interactions with her colleagues and clients, with opposing counsel, and with judges, all of whom have to adjust to dealing with the extra-normal behaviors of an autistic individual. Some do better than others.

The cases that Park and her colleagues must deal with are engaging. They repeatedly show how rarely anything in life is black and white. In one episode, a North Korean defector is accused of robbing a woman who owed her money but the woman's injuries turn out to be much more likely to have been caused by her abusive husband; in another, Park must help a community resist the building of a road that will cut a village in half in the service of a housing development, where the alternatives are either impractical or much more expensive. Perhaps the least realistic is the case where Woo defends a somewhat delusional young man, the son of the founder of one of the notorious cram schools to which even quite young Korean children get sent after school to give them an edge in getting into college and where they have to spend innumerable hours after their regular school, deprived of play time and even food and sleep. The defendant hijacks a bus that is supposed to take the children to school. He announces that that he is the leader of the Children's Liberation Army and takes them to a local nature spot where they are told to have fun and be healthy. But while that case is not very realistic, the issues that are raised are very much on point and must have struck a nerve in Korea; it made for one of the most enjoyable episodes of the show.

Generally, while the trials are inevitably compressed as demanded by the format of the show, the writer, Mon Ji-won, has done a pretty good job of showing the kinds of ethical dilemmas so often faced by lawyers where the demands of truth and justice can conflict with their duty to robustly defend and advance their clients' interest. I also liked the often nuanced way the judges in the show ruled on gnarly questions with which they were faced.

Before speaking about Park Eun-bin, a word of praise for an absolutely outstanding supporting cast. Much attention has been paid to Park's romantic interest, Lee Joon-ho, played by the dishy and sympathetic Kang Tae-oh, but the breakout performance here is from Joo Hyun-young as Dong Geu-ra-m, playing Park's best friend with comic and joyful freshness. Shout-outs too to the actors playing the lawyers at Hanbada, the law firm where Park works, Kang Ki-young as Jung Myung-seok, Park's mentor, Baek Ji-won as Han Seon-young, the CEO of Hanbada who was so memorable in Be Melodramatic (2019, the gorgeous Ha Yoon-kyung playing Park's classmate Choi Soo-yeon, and Joo Jong-hyuk as Kwon Min-woo, a straitlaced and less than loveable colleague who approaches his unusual colleague with an uncomfortable combination of envy and arrogance. Others, too numerous to mention, contribute recurring roles and cameos that will stay with you.

Now to Park's performance: It's just wonderful. Her mannerisms, her slightly unfashionable dress and hairstyle, her off-kilter way of thinking about her cases, her (occasionally hilariously) straightforward way of dealing with others, all work perfectly. She conveys her character with enormous charm and she overcomes the challenges of the role with grace and, judging from her public statements, humility. You just can't take your eyes off her. I would guess that the public will not be satisfied with a single season; I certainly will not and there are, thankfully, reports that a second season will come in 2024.

My Liberation Diary (2022)

Another Gem from Park Hae-young

[9/10 · 26 July 2022]

My Liberation Notes is writer Park Hae-young's follow-up to her remarkable My Mister (2018). In a way, it's My Mister with almost (not quite) all the dramatic elements of that story stripped out, so that the show can focus on the lives and characters of three highly depressed siblings, two sisters (played by Lee El and Kim Ji-won) bookending their brother (played by Lee Min-ki). All three are stuck working under-appreciated in dead end office jobs in Seoul to which they commute from far out in the countryside where they still live with their parents (as do so many single Korean adults even into their 40s). Despite their jobs, none seems able to escape and start their own lives. Not one of the children or the parents seems to like any of the others and their own manifest inadequacies never stop them from judging each other in ways that are, or at least are intended to be, as hurtful as possible.

Into their lives comes Gu Ja-gyeong, played by Son Seok-joo and known to them only as the somewhat mysterious Mr. Gu, who goes to work at the father's sink factory but who turns out (many episodes into the show) to be a gangster trying to escape his former life and is continuing to drown his sorrows in a sea of soju.

It may seem unlikely that the relentless portrayal of the characters' grinding depression, hopelessness, and sometimes outright misery could make for an engaging show, especially one that lasts for 16 one-hour long episodes. And yet, Park is such a skilled writer that once you are pulled into the world of these damaged people, you want to see it through to the end, to share in their occasional fleeting moments of happiness, to laugh when you are given permission, and to hope for their eventual redemption. You will not be unrequited.

The parents are played, entirely humorlessly, by Chun Ho-jin and Lee Kyung-seong and their characters are a weak spot, adding nothing at all to the story beyond the usual cliched oppression of their children. Indeed, their unremittingly curmudgeonly behavior, with never a hint of affection or parental wisdom, is quite tiresome and in stark contrast to the nuanced portrayal of the three siblings and Mr. Gu. Even when Lee Min-ki begs them to give him a little credit, a tiny hint of praise, they sit stony faced, unable to offer a hint of affection. Unlike the three siblings, who express a whole range of emotions, the parents display none and it strains credulity.

One element of the story in particular could have used some pruning. I have often complained at how Korean shows are bloated with scenes of meals and this one may claim the top spot, against formidable competition. It doesn't help that, to my Western eyes, the food looked so unappealing but even setting that aside My Liberation Notes needed to go on a radical diet. I ended up speeding through every useless moment of people eating and drinking and I lost nothing of the story or the development of the characters by doing so. Nor will you.

On the other hand, Park does use one usually unlovable trope of Korean drama to extraordinary effect - people talking and expecting responses that never come. The non-answers and evasions pile up one on top of the other in all kinds of ways and are alternatively frustrating and appropriate. They force the audience to fill in the blanks and not have the writer and the characters do everything for you.

This story also repeatedly asks an existential question, not for the first time in the history of drama but nevertheless subtly and sometimes not so subtly, about the meaning of life and the point of our own temporary existence on this planet. In olden times and for many people even today, religion so often sought to provide answers or at least comfort but there is little or none of that in My Liberation Notes. All the characters toil away, sometimes resentfully but always diligently and with bursts of self-awareness. In one scene, the older daughter says she wants to be happy in this life. In another particularly pointed scene, a man says of life, when you're finally done with education, job-hunting, having kids, raising them, you move on to their education, job-hunting and raising children all over again. A man and a woman should meet and fall in love and that should be the end. But, he says, that sounds cold, like you're saying, "I don't love you that much.", so they don't say it and they open the door to a lifetime of hardship. If there is a good answer to why we are here or what we should be doing while we are here, the show does not give it but it clearly implies that we should not just passively accept the boredom and discomfort of everyday life. While we are here, let's make what we can of what we have, and be happy, if only, as Kim says, for five minutes a day. If I have misunderstood, at least I was made to think and you will too.

A word about the actors. The cast is uniformly strong and that includes quite a number of lesser characters. The two sisters, in particular Li El, give remarkable layered performances which will evoke sympathy and even admiration; Lee Min-ki on the other hand, good as he is, cannot entirely escape how insufferable his character is, self-righteous to others and self-pitying to himself - Park consistently makes you want to slap him and shut him up, whereas you never feel that way about Li El or Kim Ji-won, a rising star whose reptation can only be enhanced by her work here. Son Seok-koo, as Gu, seems to be reprising his dour persona in the rather wonderful "Be Melodramatic", aka "Melo Is My Nature" (2019), again stripped down, quite effectively, to its essentials.

However, it all comes back to the writing. After My Mister and the earlier Another Ms. Oh!, Park Hae-young has shown us that she is one of the most original and effective writers in the K-Drama world. I for one intend to follow her wherever she takes us next.

Tokyo Vice (2022– )

Give this a miss

[2/10 · 30 April 2022]

While this series is quite gripping, it simply stops in its tracks before the story ends. We've all seen series and movies with ambiguous endings - think of Limbo, the title of which should have warned us. And it can work. But this one literally resembles a car that ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere. Did they run out of money or ideas or did someone think that yanking the audience's chain in this way was acceptable? Well, it wasn't. I am serious about reviews. I try to write measured, thoughtful assessments of acting, character development, even production values. But the way this concluded simply made me want to warn people off being suckered into a show that mistreats its audience in this way. Read Jake Adelstein's book, perhaps, but don't waste your time on this.

Cheese in the Trap (2016)

Sidestep the Trap

[6/10 · 22 April 2022]

I finally got round to watching this chestnut. I could simply complain about its endless recycling of irritating or in some cases unacceptable KDrama tropes, such as the Korean catering industry's stranglehold on scriptwriters and directors, the overflowing number of stock characters, the epidemic of men grabbing women by the wrist, and the countless instances of eavesdropping as a substitute for adequate plotting. A few plot holes weren't properly filled. There were a lot of complaints about the ending but it didn't bother me. (To be honest, I thought the heroine was well rid of the rather mono-faced and emotionally empty hero and the final ambiguity felt quite appropriate.)

But let's give those annoyances a rest and instead focus on the acting. I recently watched a YouTube video by a vlogger called BBali about actors whose acting, according to "netizens", got worse over time. Actually, all the episode showed was that netizens are mostly ignorant about acting, petty, and prejudiced, and (as well we know from a number of tragic episodes in the Korean entertainment industry) in quite a few cases cowardly anonymous bullies. But the video at least got me to think about acting in Korean shows. And this one really showcased some of the best and some not so great.

At the absolute top of this show is not the heroine, Kim Go Eun, or the hero, Park Hae-jin - more about them below - but rather the wonderful Lee Sung-kyung. She chose, or was directed, to play her character as an over-the-top, selfish, lazy young woman who mooches off everyone and behaves viciously, and ultimately half murderously, toward the heroine. She never for one moment shows any remorse for anything, nor a hint of self-awareness. In this performance, she never holds back and she is compulsively watchable. It's a bravura turn that completely outshines everyone around her. Lee has shown considerable range in her career and in this series her capabilities are on full display. (She's also a wonderful fashion plate and quite stunning to look at, even when she gets roughed up.)

Now to our leads. Kim Go-eun has a high reputation and she delivers a solid performance. She is portrayed as something of a mouse for much of the show, but it's much less annoying than one might think. Perhaps one can identify with the top of the class student from a modest background who has to endure the semi-bullying and jealousy of most of her classmates, who copes by ignoring it where she can and occasionally standing up for herself just enough to pay back the worst of the offenders. (Those offenders are completely shameless and blame her relentlessly when they get their rightful comeuppance.) Kim has the ability to express a range of emotions suitable to the scenes she plays and her admirable restraint, even in the face of serial offenders such as Lee's character, provide many acting highlights.

Much less interesting is Park Hae-jin. He's a good-looking young man but the problem is that he is given a character to play whose principal characteristics are suppressed emotions and a pathological inability to express his feelings, even when given numerous opportunities to do so by an obviously sympathetic and non-judgmental girlfriend. The result is an expressionless face that becomes tiresome long, long before the end of the series. My wife once said to me, "You don't have to be boring to portray boredom." And that's the issue. Park plays a complete lack of emotion with a complete lack of emotion.

The second lead, played by Seo Kang-joon, is a much more interesting character than Park, and so offers a fairer target for critical evaluation. His performance is solid, much better than his absolutely dreadful performance in When the Weather Is Fine, in which he and Park Min-young nearly made my screen go blank in an effort to mirror their characters' expressions. He is by turns witty, irritating, kind, troubled, loyal to his unendurable older sister (Lee). His actions make you want to turn away, but he is very watchable nonetheless.

The supporting cast is good enough. Perhaps one standout performance: No, not the slimy stalker played by Ji Yoon-ho, the only character who gets thoroughly punished for his endless efforts to bully and inflict misery on Kim for reasons not worth explaining. He could have taken lessons from Lee on how to play it full throttle. Rather, kudos to the late Moon Ji-yoon, who sadly passed away in early 2020 (COVID, perhaps?) at age 36. He plays a lazy overweight moocher who has an endless supply of excuses for his alcohol-fueled far niente way of living. Moon plays this role perfectly. The same year, he had a fun supporting role in the Lee Sung-kyung starrer Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok-joo - how different the two of them were just a few months after Cheese in the Trap.

So, a snapshot of some well-known Korean actors and their supporting cast shows that they can take essentially average material and do well with it and, in Lee's case, can create a character that will be hard to forget.

I never review shows that I haven't watched all the way through. The desire to review this one kept me going but it shouldn't be at the top of anyone's list.

It's Okay, That's Love (2014)

Almost perfect, but not quite

[9/10 · 16 April 2022]

To quote the great poet Shel Silverstein, "Almost perfect . . . But not quite." This is a fine show, a very fine show. Centered around the lives of psychiatrists and patients, with some spectacular performances from the main actors and several good or better performances from the supporting cast, the show makes a passionate plea to its Korean audience to be more tolerant and accepting of people with mental illness. Its portrayal of Korean family values, at least as represented in KDramas, will befuddle Western viewers - you really have to accept that there is no limit to how selfish some parents can be at the expense of their children or to how willing the children are to submit to countless indignities at their parents' hands (and mouths). But that aside, there is so much admirable work on display here.

Let's start with our leads, the amazing Queen of Romantic Comedy, Gong Hyo-jin, and Jo In-sung. Their love affair is just wonderfully developed all the way through the 16 episodes, which for once never dragged. Starting out as a successful author who is mostly an arrogant prick, Jo gradually reveals his acute mental illness, schizophrenia induced by tragic events of his childhood which at least in this drama felt (mostly) believable. The effects include the hallucinatory creation of an alter ego who can suffer injuries and humiliations to expiate Jo's childhood misdeed (or perhaps we should say understandable misjudgment) that landed his older brother in prison for over a decade. What is unusual is that in this drama, when those around him realize what's going on and they force him into treatment, the treatment is shown realistically - something that takes months and is never quite done, with recovery taking skilled doctors, not very nice medications, and understanding from his world. While all this is going on, Jo becomes enamored of Gong, a psychiatrist whom he meets when she is a guest on his talk show. She herself has her own baggage, unable to have sex even with men she loves not because of the usual KDrama prudery but because of her inability to understand or forgive her mother's affair with a married man, which her mother engages in because of the overwhelming loneliness caused by her husband's mental illness. Gradually, Jo heals Gong (yes, they have sex, although nothing explicit is on screen) but in the process, his own affliction deepens to the point where it becomes understood that he is on a path of increasing self-harm that may lead to suicide. And then it becomes her turn to help him to heal, even through involuntary confinement.

The rest of the cast is very strong, some sensationally so. A couple of the characters are overwrought, particularly Gong's housemates, Sung Dong-il, so great as the central dad in Reply 1988, playing a psychiatrist at Gong's hospital, and Lee Kwang-Soo, a cafe waiter with Tourette's syndrome, who develops a crush on the adorable but unreliable Lee Sung-kyung. I would have wished those two roles had been toned down a bit. But many others are just right, including Jo's borderline psychopathic brother played unrelentingly by Yang Ik-Jun, and Sung's ex-wife, another psychiatrist, played sympathetically and realistically by Jin Kyung.

While the Korean legal and penal system don't come off too well here, at least the failures were (almost) believable. But what was truly believable and worth the watch was the portrayal of mental health professionals struggling with the extraordinary challenges posed by the mentally ill and their sometimes understanding and sometimes less than understanding families.

What might have been better? The direction was a little self-indulgent, particularly in allowing Sung too much latitude in his temperamental outbursts. And I really can't bear the way the victims of domestic violence so often in KDramas become the victims of the judicial system, however helpful to the plot. The world I thought had moved on, if only a little, from the notion that the killing of a vile domestic abuser in the middle of a disgusting assault is no different from any other murder.

All in all, however, a story you wanted to follow in a setting that was always compelling. I am sorry I came to this so late and glad to tip my hat now to Noh Hee-kyung, the writer, and a fine cast and crew.

Business Proposal (2022)

Relentlessly stupid

[2/10 · 29 March 2022]

It may be too much to expect much originality from most Korean romantic comedies but this one plumbs remarkable depths of stupidity and charmlessness. Third rate characters, lightly scooped from the standard recipe book, tossed carelessly, and then served up without a hint of shame at its ability to waste the viewer's time. The hero's grandfather, the heroine's co-"workers", the idiotic would-be girlfriend of the hero's right hand man, each more annoying than the last. Irritating KDrama tropes, woefully executed, fall over themselves and land flatter than a pancake that has just been run over by a steamroller. Our leads are completely conventional, the hero a typical competent businessman who is heir to a wealthy but typically controlling grandfather who wants him to marry and therefore sends him on blind dates with "suitable" candidates; the heroine, a put upon office worker who attracts his attention, at first as a decoy for his grandfather and then, inevitably as a genuine love interest. Is there anything new, even just a tiny bit, about any of this?

KDramas are full of these rich man-poor girl stories. They rarely break new ground, but this one is just an unpardonable retread. If you are fortunate enough to read this review before giving up precious moments of your life on the series, move on. Literally any other show you pick should be an improvement.

Snowdrop (2021–2022)

Crash Landing Without the Fun

[6/10 · 17 March 2022]

Snowdrop may have been planned well before Crash Landing On You but the underlying theme is the same - the impossible love affair between a North Korean soldier and a high ranking Korean woman. Snowdrop is a lot darker and does not end as well for the protagonists as the ambiguously romantic denouement of CLOY, but it presents the same insuperable dilemma, particularly for the man. He knows that to place his love ahead of his duty, his family will be destroyed by the unforgiving (and completely unromantic) North Korean government and indeed he himself may also be hunted down. So for those who require happy endings for their romances, this is not the show for you. It's CLOY without the charm or the fun.

The backdrop is indeed much darker: The ruling party in South Korea will do anything, including murdering a large number of young women hostages taken by North Korean operatives at a girls' university dorm, to carry out its scheme to get reelected. The plot has more twists than a hungry anaconda and some of them are quite clever, but ultimately the series suffers from the same problem that afflicts so many Korean dramas - 16 super long episodes to fill and not enough material. The same scenes repeat themselves. And the writer had to resort to plot devices that simply beggar credibility, including innumerable times when tied up individuals wriggle free; various hostages are allowed to wander free around the dorm even after they have been caught, multiple times, committing mischievous and in some cases treacherous acts; the villains repeatedly swap places in the competition for power, all amid the usual torrent of eavesdropping, monologuing (see The Incredibles), and big and small reveals. There is also the usual stream of implausible coincidences and flashbacks. (Really, how did several secret agents end up living in the women's dorm long before the hostage crisis?)

Probably the biggest challenge to our ability to go along with the story is the way the villains in the ruling Korean party so completely control the press and everything else that not one tiny leak of their nefarious plot, even when presented on a plate, gets out to the public or the anguished (although mostly invisible) parents of the hostages. On one occasion, cassettes (remember them) get delivered to all the major newspapers and TV stations and everyone of them gets intercepted.

Apparently, no one thought of sending them to a foreign news agency or correspondent beyond the reach of the bad guys. And the huge SWAT team supinely goes along with plans to murder and bomb the students and at one time obeys an order by one villain to shoot his rival (who survives, of course - if you ever get shot or stabbed, let it be on the set of a Korean drama). But it is impossible to sustain the belief that the villains really count on succeeding by murdering 30 students, shutting up their parents, and suppressing numerous other people who know what is happening.

There are so many other more minor but equally credulity defying details that I will stop there and move on to the acting.

The main protagonists do their best but one has to say that they are not all that watchable. Jisoo, a member of the super girl group BlackPink, in her first major dramatic role plays her part well enough and certainly does not deserve the many negative comments bestowed on her by so-called Korean netizens, one of the world's most cowardly and self-righteous groups. These twerps don't seem to be able to tell the difference between poor acting and poor writing. Jisoo is at her best early on in the show when she has something to do. But for many episodes right to the end, she's just a cross between an ornament and a tearful punching bag and that is definitely the fault of the writing. It's a little hard to explain without unreasonable plot spoilers, but there were a dozen opportunities to give her more to do and the writer and director spurned all of them.

Just as in CLOY, our North Korean hero is portrayed by Jung Hae-in as almost irresistible as a love interest and as almost saintly in his devotion to duty, all the while struggling with the wildly different directions in which these pull him. I can see how South Koreans might be offended by the latter although they should have been a little more forgiving as duty gradually gives way to the need for human decency. It's an acceptable performance, but no more than that.

Surrounding the two leads is a huge cast of well-established Korean actors, who generally do not disappoint, with a special mention for the unspeakable conniving trio of wives of the three villains, played by Kim Jung-nan, Jung Hye-young and Baek Ji-won in that overwrought style that seems to be adopted by so many older Korean actors. Their husbands are also overwrought. Also, hats off to a terrific Yoo In-na, one of Korea's most beautiful actresses who, as gorgeous as she was in Queen and I and in Goblin, dresses down, hides behind glasses, and completely conceals her glamour to play another (eventually) conflicted character. I also had a thing for the villainess Rosa Klebb-lookalike in the North Korean government, played relentlessly by a snarling Jeon Ae-ri - I kept expecting her to kick her rival with a poisoned blade in her boot.

If you don't mind the multiple twists and turns and the plot holes piling up like a car wreck on a bad day on the California freeways, and if you like to squeal in frustration at the screen as the good guys keep doing stupid things and the villains keep getting away with it, Snowdrop is for you. It's not the worst way to spend a few, more than a few, hours but it ultimately feels tired and, for all the time the makers had to tell their tale, it ends rather abruptly.

Snowdrop (2021–2022)

Overlong, overwrought Kdrama

[6/10 · 10 March 2022]

Snowdrop may have been planned well before Crash Landing On You but the underlying theme is the same - the impossible love affair between a North Korean soldier and a high ranking Korean woman. Snowdrop is a lot darker and does not end as well for the protagonists as the ambiguously romantic denouement of CLOY, but it presents the same insuperable dilemma, particularly for the man. He knows that to place his love ahead of his duty, his family will be destroyed by the unforgiving (and completely unromantic) North Korean government and indeed he himself may also be hunted down. So for those who require happy endings for their romances, this is not the show for you.

The backdrop is also much darker: The ruling party in South Korea will do anything, including murdering a large number of young women hostages taken by North Korean operatives at a girls' university dorm, to carry out its scheme to get elected. The plot has more twists than a hungry anaconda and some of them are quite clever, but ultimately the series suffers from the same problem that afflicts so many Korean dramas - 16 super long episodes to fill and not enough material. The same scenes repeat themselves. And the writer had to resort to plot devices that simply beggar credibility, including innumerable times when tied up individuals wriggle free; various hostages are allowed to wander free around the dorm even after they have been caught, multiple times, committing mischievous and in some cases treacherous acts; the villains repeatedly swap places in the competition for power, all amid the usual torrent of eavesdropping, monologuing (see The Incredibles), and big and small reveals. There is also the usual stream of implausible coincidences and flashbacks. (Really, how did several secret agents end up at the women's dorm long before the hostage crisis?)

Probably the biggest challenge to our ability to go along with the story is the way the villains in the ruling Korean party so completely control the press and everything else that no leak of their nefarious plot, even when presented on a plate, gets out to the public or the anguished (although mostly invisible) parents of the hostages. On one occasion, cassettes (remember them) get delivered to all the major newspapers and TV stations and everyone of them gets intercepted. Apparently, no one thought of sending them to a foreign news agency or correspondent beyond the reach of the bad guys. And the huge SWAT team supinely goes along with plans to murder and bomb the students and at one time obeys an order by one villain to shoot his rival (who survives, of course - if you ever get shot or stabbed, let it be on the set of a Korean drama). But it is impossible to sustain the belief that the villains really count on succeeding by murdering 30 students, shutting up their parents, and suppressing numerous other people who know what is happening.

There are so many other more minor but equally credulity defying details that I will stop there and move on to the acting.

The main protagonists do their best but one has to say that they are not all that watchable. Jisoo, a member of the super girl group BlackPink, in her first major dramatic role plays her part well enough and certainly does not deserve the many negative comments bestowed on her by so-called Korean netizens, one of the world's most cowardly and self-righteous groups. These twerps don't seem to be able to tell the difference between poor acting and poor writing. Jisoo is at her best early on in the show when she has something to do. But for many episodes right to the end, she's just a cross between an ornament and a tearful punching bag and that is definitely the fault of the writing. It's a little hard to explain without unreasonable plot spoilers, but there were a dozen opportunities to give her more to do and the writer and director spurned all of them.

Just as in CLOY, our North Korean hero is portrayed by Jung Hae-in as almost irresistible as a love interest and as almost saintly in his devotion to duty, all the while struggling with the wildly different directions in which these pull him. I can see how South Koreans might be offended by the latter although they should have been a little more forgiving as duty gradually gives way to the need for human decency. It's an acceptable performance, but no more than that.

Surrounding the two leads is a huge cast of well-established Korean actors, who generally do not disappoint, with a special mention for the unspeakable conniving trio of wives of the three villains, played by Kim Jung-nan, Jung Hye-young and Baek Ji-won in that overwrought style that seems to be adopted by so many older Korean actors. Their husbands are also overwrought. Hats off to a terrific Yoo In-na, one of Korea's most beautiful actresses who, as gorgeous as she was in Queen and I and in Goblin, dresses down, hides behind glasses, and completely conceals her glamour to play another (eventually) conflicted character. I also had a thing for the villainous Rosa Klebb-lookalike in the North Korean government, played relentlessly by a snarling Jeon Ae-ri - I kept expecting her to kick her rival with a poisoned blade in her boot.

If you don't mind the multiple twists and turns and the plot holes piling up like a car wreck on a bad day on the California freeways, and if you like to squeal in frustration at the screen as the good guys keep doing stupid things and the villains keep getting away with it, Snowdrop is for you. It's not the worst way to spend a few, more than a few, hours but it ultimately feels tired and, for all the time the makers had to tell their tale, it ends rather abruptly.

Red Sleeve (2021–2022)

Emotionally truthful historical drama

[9/10 · 3 January 2022]

Playing on Viki, this is a superior Sageuk (Korean historical) drama. I already gave my thoughts about this show in my review of the much inferior The King's Affection (Netflix) but here they are in slightly expanded form.

The basic premise of The Red Sleeve is that Crown Prince Yi San, played by Lee Joon-ho, comes to know a palace maid (one of 700, we are told), Sung Deok-im, played by Lee Se-young, with whom he falls in love. The Crown Prince is the grandson of a domineering elderly King Yeongjo of Joseon, superbly played by Lee Deok-hwa, who is beginning to suffer from dementia. The King had caused the Crown Prince's homicidal father, who had gone mad, to be cruelly executed by being locked in a box for eight days (this is actually a matter of historical record). Nevertheless, the King and the Crown Prince remain close and when the King dies, the Crown Prince succeeds him.

Despite repeated entreaties, Deok-im rejects Yi San both as the Crown Prince and later when he becomes King. She has already experienced the confinement of being a palace lady and she does not wish for the even more confining life of a royal concubine, always at the King's beck and call, and knowing that a King, especially this King, will always put his duties as monarch first, even to the point of being unwilling to give to Deok-im's closest friend among the palace maids a reprieve from being executed for the crime of having a lover. (Adultery was a crime in South Korea, punishable by two years of imprisonment, until its Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in 2015.) Her rejection comes despite having feelings for Yi San, feelings she repeatedly denies to him and occasionally to herself. In one exchange, as he is saying "You will always be mine", she is heard thinking "But you will never be mine." She maintains these thoughts with enormous and largely justifiable fortitude.

Yi San is also admirably portrayed by Lee Joon-ho and by the writing of his character. As much as he loves Deok-im, he is never truly able to put her first, imprisoned by his sense of duty to his family and his obligations to his entire people. The scene where their three-year old son having just died of smallpox, the King reminds Deok-im that he is father to the whole nation is just heart rending, all the more so because of its being faithful to his character.

The two go through many adventures and intrigues before they finally unite for what turns out to be a tragically brief period (again, this is a matter of historical record). The new King eventually becomes known as King Jeongjeo the Great - it is said that Deok-im, later known as Royal Consort Uibin Seong, was the only one of his wives he ever truly loved.

Compared with The King's Affection, this story is in every possible way better told, better written (by Jung Hae-ri), more emotionally truthful, more genuinely exciting in its realization. Although there are a couple of sword fights (far fewer than in The King's Affection), they are never central to the story. Lee Se-young admirably portrays the physical and moral courage of her character and the chemistry between her and Lee Joon-ho smolders like a barely suppressed fire. The love affair takes a long time to resolve but does so with minimal unneeded repetition. In the meantime, the devious maneuverings, particularly by Yi San's Machiavellian best friend Hong Deok-ro (Kang Hoon), the conspiracies, and the outright treacheries of other palace denizens that take place both upstairs and downstairs, so to speak, keep the pot boiling nicely. The ending, sad as it is, feels uplifting. The plot doesn't drag and the 17 episodes never feel stretched.

Record of Youth (2020)

Star Power Can't Save it

[4/10 · 8 December 2021]

The two stars of this show, Park Bo-gum and Park So-dam, have a lot of charisma and decent chemistry but with a hopelessly unoriginal and derivative story and some of the most crass Subway placements ever, the show fails to deliver. (Subway product placements have polluted numerous Korean shows but achieve a new low in this one. For example, Park Bo-gum earns nearly $10,000 from a three day modeling job but is still working part time earning minimum wage serving sandwiches.) Some snappy dialogue, especially from Park So-dam, but otherwise a tedious love triangle with an entirely predictable outcome, the usual parade of parents spouting sophistries as they bully, badmouth and play favorites among their children, the usual bad guys getting away with it for as long as the writers think they can get away with trying the viewers' patience. Really, the whole thing felt like it was created by an unsupervised 3D printer programmed by a monkey on loan from the effort to recreate Shakespeare by random typewriting. Give this a miss unless you feel like making goo goo eyes at the Parks. But don't expect anything very tasty.

Melloga Chejil (2019)

Witty and Engaging with Great Ensemble Cast

[10/10 · 14 November 2021]

This unheralded show deserves a full measure of praise. I am not sure why I started watching it but it's really terrific.

No major name brand actors and an utterly conventional set-up featuring three heroines who are hitting 30 and angsting about their middle class single lives. So far, so what? Well, for one thing, this has a wonderful literate and inventive script, peppered with wit, sly (and sometimes laugh out loud) humor, and wisdom and insight. There are a host of well-acted supporting characters who engage our attention, no out and out villains but rather so many people striving to do well and occasionally to do right, stumbling as they go. The entertainment industry setting has a certain self conscious sense of ironic navel gazing, but it really doesn't matter. You yearn for our heroines' success, in work, in love, in life, and you follow their adventures with a mixture of anxious anticipation, sympathy and a wide smile on your face. A producer once told me that the reason people watch a television series, as opposed to a movie, is that the characters are being invited into the viewers' homes. In this series, please, extend the invitation.

Before acknowledging the actors and writer in more detail, I want to offer particular thanks to the subtitle team at Viki, where I watched the series. Since this show is set around the genesis and pre-production of a drama series, it has many references to other Korean shows, including impish allusions to the very popular Reply 1988 in which the male lead, Ahn Jae-hong (here playing a successful but put upon drama director called Son Beom-Soo) also appeared. The subtitlers added translator notes to these and many other cultural allusions. In addition, despite the complexity and rapidity of some of the dialog, the translations were literate and almost error-free. A superb job.

Now to the actors: The three lead actresses give wonderful, nuanced performances. None of them are Hallyu royalty, although Jeon Yeo-been, her career launched by her standout performance in After My Death and now (2021) starring in the Netflix series Vincenzo, seems on her way. She plays Lee Eun-jeong, a documentary film maker whose career is on the rise but who continues to be traumatized by the early death of her fiancé from cancer. Chun Woo-hee, previously perhaps the most prominent of the three, leads the way as Im Jin-joo, the scriptwriter who is getting her first shot at having her pilot script, "When You're 30, It Will Be OK", turned into a 16-episode drama. Finally, Han Ji-eun delivers a strong turn as Hwang Han-joo, the single mother whose stock in the marketing company she works for is rising. The three (as well as Han-joo's son) live comfortably with Lee Hyo-bong, Eun-jeong's gay younger brother, sympathetically played by Yoon Ji-on. The scenes among the four, as they confide in and comfort each other, are warm and often hilarious. I especially liked the scene where Han-joo, just to see their reactions, teasingly implies, to her roommates' horror, that she is considering going back to live with her good for nothing ex and the father of her son.

Surrounding them are a substantial cast of other actors and actresses who infuse their characters with depth and substance. It seems unfair to single anyone out, but I feel bound to give it up for Baek Ji-won, playing Jeong Hye-jeong, as Jin-joo's former boss and herself a famous screen writer, whose tough exterior gradually collapses in the face of romance.

This drama was underrated. I can't think why. For a refreshing peak inside the world of KDramas, with a stellar cast at every level and a truly witty script, go for it.

Umibe no kingyo (2021)

Lyrical and uplifting

[8/10 · 6 September 2021]

Let's get this out of the way. The makers of this film should have done some homework about goldfish. They cannot live in seawater and releasing one into the ocean is not an act of liberation.

But let's also not get overly upset about this relatively minor aspect of what is otherwise a beautiful and delicately told story. This is a film about people, not fish, despite the foolish title and the disturbing image of the goldfish swimming away in the sea. Rather, it's about 18-year old Hana (the Japanese word means flower), luminously portrayed by Miyu Ogawa (who is not related to the director Sara Ogawa) and a younger child, Harumi, played by a talented young actress Runa Hanada, one about to have to leave her foster home of the past 10 years and the other having just arrived. Hana, perhaps seeing in the withdrawn Harumi a reflection of herself when she first arrived at the home after her mother was imprisoned for a poisoning she allegedly committed, takes her under her wing and gives her the loving attention that Harumi's abusive mother had not.

The film has a lot going for it. Even though it is only 76 minutes long, it never feels rushed. It is beautifully shot, taking full advantage of the coastal scenery around Akune, in southern Kyushu (the westernmost of the four main Japanese islands). The story unfolds somewhat predictably, with touches of sly humor (particularly Harumi's efforts to sneak her favorite candy into Hana's shopping basket), but it is mercifully free of uncaring adults - instead, the foster home is run by a kind and understanding man sympathetically played by veteran character actor Tateto Serizawa. He readily admits to his mistake when he lets Harumi go home for a day to her mother who, though never shown, has apparently learned nothing from losing custody of her daughter. Hana may not know what the future holds, as she wavers about going to university, but she and Harumi find a measure of peace in each other, Hana tentatively becoming the mother she wished her mother had been and Harumi finding the mother she really needed. And when Hana has to make a fateful choice between a chance to visit the prison where she has not seen her mother for many years and saving Harumi from her mother's continuing abuse, she chooses the future over the past.

Critics have noted the Harukazu Kore-eda-like sensibility brought to the film by 25-year old first time director Sara Ogawa, herself a talented actress, reinforced no doubt by her cinematographer and frequent Kore-eda collaborator Yutaka Yamazaki. That's a high compliment, but well-deserved in this case. At times, the film reminded me of Our Little Sister, right down to the scene with children playing with sparklers and the midsummer Tanabata festival with children dressed in yukatas (summer kimonos). If this was a deliberate homage to the great Kore-eda, it did not feel out of place. Can Ogawa rise to greatness? We shall see, but this was a splendid first step. Just go easy on the goldfish.

Come and Go (2020)

Dreary Osaka tale

[4/10 · 29 August 2021]

Reading the critics' reviews of this self-indulgent sprawl, one cannot help but be struck by their half-hearted special pleading. Osaka-based Malaysian director and, regrettably in this case producer and, equally regrettably, editor, Lim Kah Wai rambles on for well over two and a half hours portraying a series of pan-Asian miserable characters ground down by the urban underbelly. Nominally set in Osaka, it features almost no recognizable part of the city apart from a glimpse of the Umeda Ferris wheel and could be set in almost any impoverished slum. Almost none of the characters go anywhere, remaining underdeveloped to the last (one or two get arrested and the third-rate Malaysian businessman played by JC Chee just goes home after half-rescuing a hapless country girl played by Manami Usamaru). The common theme is the intertwining of sex and greed and an uninteresting murder that adds no mystery or unpredictability to the whole dreary affair.

Our critics seem to think that Lim is some kind of auteur with insights to share about the sad state of exploited immigrants and sexual exploitation, but he has here woven together a story whose banality is matched by its lack of visual appeal or emotional force.

Itomichi (2021)

Slow burn

[9/10 · 27 August 2021]

Set in the northern prefecture of Aomori, with its strong local dialect and attenuated connections to modern industrialized Japan, Ito tells the story of a high school girl whose shyness, reinforced by her heavy local accent, belie a fierce desire for independence and the courage to overcome her social shortcomings. Played with great subtlety by Ren Komai, who like her director Satoko Yokohama hails from Aomori, Ito ventures into the world by taking part-time work at a maid cafe, where she must dress in a cute uniform (although not like the short tight little black numbers found in Tokyo's Akihabara district) and project an outgoing jollity to the customers that is completely at odds with her personality.

Gradually, with the help of her kindly manager and co-workers, she opens up, somewhat, in a series of amusing episodes. Ito's personality has been shaped by the loss of her mother at the age of five and her life with her somewhat pedantic university professor father and her shamizen-playing grandmother, portrayed by a real professional player, Yoko Nishikawa. In the shamizen, which Ito has learned by listening and imitation, she is able to express some of her strength and determination in place of the words that do not come so easily.

While the set up of the somewhat isolated teenager finding a way out of her shell is hardly new, this film is distinguished by its calm, steady pacing, the appeal of its various characters in the unfamiliar setting of rural northern Japan, and above all, Ren Komai's finely tuned performance. Quite tall by Japanese standards at 5 foot 7, her gangly awkwardness adds a physical dimension that perfectly corresponds to her character but above all she never misses a note in her scenes with her family, her colleagues, or the customers. The film ends as it should . . . I will say no more but it is satisfying without being cloying. Yokohama has not created a masterpiece but she has shown once again how movies can make you care.

Touch Your Heart (2019)

Touch Your Funny Bone

[8/10 · 9 August 2021]

This is not a great classic, nor does it aspire to be. But it is a showcase for its two leads, especially the lovely Yoo In-na, whose beauty and easy charm would melt anyone's heart. Indeed, playing a formerly top rank actress who takes a job as a secretary for three months to prepare for her comeback role in a legal drama, she doesn't take long to capture the affections of the lawyers and staff at the firm including, eventually, the rather strait-laced lawyer to whom she is assigned. At first, everyone is overwhelmed by being in daily proximity to such a celebrity, even one who has (unjustly, it seems) been tainted by scandal, but they all soon succumb to her beauty, kindness and diligence.

As can be expected, a variety of supporting players do their part, both at the firm and at their antagonists at the prosecutor's office, as well as in Yoo's world of entertainment. It's neither the strongest nor the weakest cast I've seen in a Korean series, but everyone does what they must to keep the story going, with comedy, an assortment of romances, and a touch of drama in the legal world. One story, in particular, about an abused woman and the husband who gets killed while assaulting her, offers some interesting twists and turns. On the other hand, the entitled chaebol heir who stalks Ms. Yoo gets handled all too easily.

The comedy veers perilously close to the silly at times and, as I have frequently noted about Korean shows, there are a number of irritating features that I wish the writers and directors would eliminate: Dozens of scenes of meals and drinks that do not advance the story; intrusive product placements (most noticeably, for Western viewers, by Subway); and the basically idiotic prudery that limits romantic interactions to hugs and not very believable kisses. No one is asking for explicit sex scenes but at least let's not pretend that these characters, at the height of their youth and beauty, never have a physical relationship that goes beyond sixth grade smooches. (I am showing my age here - who knows what sixth graders get up to these days.)

Still, if we look beyond these annoyances, it's a pleasant show, anchored by Ms. Yoo and her beau Lee Dong-wook. I particularly liked the fact that Ms. Yoo's character is never portrayed as silly or flighty. Instead, she comes across as smart, hardworking, and well aware about what it means to be a celebrity in Korea - the constant scrutiny, the appallingly insensitive running commentary from gutless users of social media hiding behind anonymity, the maliciously gossip-mongering press that jumps to unkind and even cruel conclusions faster than a jack rabbit, and the public expectation that a celebrity, particularly a female one, will lose all reputation if found to be having a romantic relationship. Instead, you never cringe when she speaks her lines - which she delivers with sincerity and believability.

Perhaps 16 hours of all this is more than was needed but the time will pass enjoyably enough. If you like romantic comedies with beautiful leads with some genuine charisma, Touch Your Heart will make you laugh and soften your heart.

Sijipeuseu: The Myth (2021)

Muddle, muddle, toil and trouble

[5/10 · 8 April 2021]

This time travel story just doesn't work. Supposedly, it is the story of a genius inventor who comes up with time travel devices known as an uploader and a downloader, which if they had never been invented would have prevented the nuclear destruction of Korea (or is it that because they were invented, destruction could have been or was avoided - I was never quite sure). The lead characters, played with stony faces by Cho Seung-woo and Park Shin-hye, aren't very engaging to begin with, and they are surrounded by a tiresome supporting cast, but even the most adept of performers simply could never have overcome a plot line so muddled, and with nothing interesting to say. The plot meanders around, with all too predictable twists that end up resembling nothing more than a python eating its tail. Not surprisingly, the ratings in Korea started out not too hot and declined with every episode. I'd like to travel back in time and change my decision to watch this bedraggled mess. In fact, I'd travel back even further and talk Netflix out of wasting its money and our time by greenlighting this series.

Crash Landing on You (2019–2020)

Chemistry, comedy, thrilling adventure, and a fresh take on North Korea

[10/10 · 9 March 2021]

Korean television dramas are usually well produced, featuring attractive protagonists, decent acting, and occasionally interesting set-ups. But they rarely scale any great heights and they are often laden with irritating tropes and lazy writing and they rarely have much to say. Crash Landing on You is the exception. It is a show that can hold itself up against anything produced around the world. Two key elements: First, the perfect pairing of Korean megastars Hyun Bin, playing a North Korean army captain undertaking a tour of duty in the DMZ that separates North and South Korea, and Son Hye-jin, playing a chaebol heiress who paraglides into the DMZ because of a freak tornado. Their charisma just explodes off the screen. Second, the nuanced portrait of North Korea, with many realistic aspects, even if some of the worst villainy of the Kim regime (the Kims themselves are never mentioned except in banners praising the leadership) and the extremes of poverty and suppression are toned down. The producers and writers went to a lot of trouble in this regard, including hiring as a co-writer a defector who had attended film school and served in the Kim family protective detail. Supporting all of this is a very well written story that combines drama and comedy, the drama arising out of the efforts of the captain to help his unexpected visitor to return to the south as well as his dealings with a villainous commander in the State Security Department played with snarling aplomb by Oh Man-seok; the comedy from the North Korean villagers, especially the women, the terrifically funny foursome of North Korean soldiers commanded by Hyun Bin, and the various half-witted members of Son's South Korean family and other hangers-on. The script manages to avoid all the idiotic cliches that overpopulate Kdramas and manages to bring itself to a satisfying conclusion without the saccharine overdose that one might have feared. I can't think of a single time the story dragged. The great supporting cast is mostly too numerous to name, but a tip of the hat to the second leads, the ravishing Seo Ji-hye who manages to keep the straightest of faces as Hyun Bin's erstwhile fiancée, and especially Kim Jung-hyun, playing a mischievous half-bad guy, half hero from South Korea who flees to the north to escape the consequences of his various fraudulent business schemes. All in all, a triumphant piece of work, that manages to combine adventure, comedy and romance in a perfect family-friendly blend. The real crash landing is when you've finished watching it.

It's Okay to Not Be Okay (2020)

Constantly watchable, with outstanding cast

[9/10 · 27 September 2020]

It's OK to Not Be OK is a splendidly told tale, beautifully produced, solidly written and featuring outstanding performances from the three leads and super-solid work from a large and talented supporting case.

The story is set largely in and around a psychiatric hospital but where it would seem that the three leading characters are themselves in grave need of being institutionalized. The leading man, Moon Gang-tae, played by Kim Soo-yun, plays a caregiver with infinite patience who must live his entire life in slavery to his autistic brother, Sang-tae, outstandingly portrayed by the veteran actor Oh Jung-se, to a point where he is clinically depressed because of the relentless grind. He needs therapy, support, and, truth be told, a day off and a roll in the hay - none of which he ever allows himself to take (despite the fact that two beautiful women are on his case). Even when he has the opportunity to spend the night with one of them, he is so overcome with guilt and depression that he treats her beyond shabbily and then abases himself to his brother, who as can be expected reinforces his humiliation. Sang-tae is not to be blamed for this - he can't help himself - but, for a long time, all the mental health professionals surrounding Gang-tae ignore his obvious symptoms and needs and do little to help him to find balance. This enables a series of dramatic moments, to be sure, but it occasionally lends an air of unreality to the proceedings.

The leading lady, Ko Mun-yeong, brilliantly acted by the sublimely beautiful Seo Ye-ji, is also a non-inmate, equally if not more in need of therapy. She plays a best-selling author of somewhat twisted children's fairy tales, with a knack for speaking the unfiltered truth about anything and everything in a way that is excruciatingly uncomfortable for her interlocutors. (I will never forget the lecture to the patients in which she reinterprets Beauty and the Beast as an example of Stockholm syndrome.). For all her self-centered personality, she is, nevertheless, the first person who gives non-material help to Gang-tae. (Everyone else just offers food or a place to stay.) At one point, she asks him straight out the crucial question, "Are you going to sacrifice your whole life to atone for your sin towards your brother?", a sin that he had not in fact committed. You have to ask yourself why it is Mun-yeong, and not the health professionals, who first has this insight.

Sang-tae completes the trio. He is a talented illustrator but his gifts are overshadowed by his classically autistic personality, which makes him heavily dependent on his brother. Like Mun-yeong, however, he is a speaker of truth and he catches on in an instant if his brother is lying to him or trying to control him with petty deceits.

The show's conceit is that these three heavily damaged individuals will find in each other the means to overcome their misery and the traumas of their past lives which, this being a KDrama, are deeply and somewhat unnecessarily intertwined. It's a slow burning process. In a flashback to one point in their childhood, Mun-yeong witnesses Sang-tae fall through the thin ice of a frozen lake. At first, Gang-tae, knowing already that he has been condemned by his mother to a life of servitude to his brother, runs away, but he relents goes back and saves him. Gang-tae in turn needs rescuing from the icy waters, and Mun-yeong throws him a float that keeps him from drowning. When they meet again years later, Mun-yeong slowly falls in love with him (as he with her) and, often against her own selfish instincts (or perhaps to gratify them), she tries to rescue him from his all-encompassing misery.

Similarly, Gang-tae tries, at times, to help Mun-yeong overcome her worst self. No one else seems to think that she needs therapy or some other form of intervention. They just complain about her.

And Mun-yeong and Sang-tae form an unlikely bond. It begins unpropitiously, with Mun-yeong trying to get close to Sang-tae as a way to break through Gang-tae's iron reserve but in the end, a genuine working collaboration and mutual friendship transcends their relationship with Gang-tae - in one delightful scene at the end, the two force Gang-tae out of the room while they working together on a book. I suspect that people familiar with autism will find some (not all) of Gang-tae's behavior in the later scenes suspiciously un-autistic, but on the whole the show portrays mental health issues in general and autism in particular with great sympathy and some considerable delicacy.

There is, perhaps, some artificiality to the whole affair and it is not helped by some of the more irritating tropes of Korean dramas - repeated eavesdropping, characters get drunk, toss up and then forget everything, the incessant arm-grabbing (although for once the women do it almost as much as the men), and the frequency of scenes involving meals, including several irritating Subway product placements.

Among the supporting performances, some shout-outs: Kim Chang-wan as the hospital director, Kim-Joo-hun and Park Jin-hoo as the much put upon publishers of Mun-yeong's books, and in a bravura cameo turn, Kwak Dong-yeon as a patient who, with a major assist from Mun-yeong, hilariously disrupts his father's political campaign. There are many others. Perhaps the weakest is the young but very busy TV actress Park Kyu-young, as Nam Ju-ri, a nurse and long-time friend of the brothers, who is appealing but bland, probably because the part is not well-thought out. She descends from a leading role as a true rival for Gang-tae's affections to a distraction who hangs around many episodes after that triangle has been definitively resolved in Mun-yeong's favor.

What makes this show so watchable are all the extraordinary performances, lead and supporting, and the engaging character development and situational comedy and occasional drama that are more important than the relatively thin plot. The production values are strong and the use of Mun-yeong's fairy tales, especially the book she writes at the end with Sang-tae's illustrations, is moving and lovely. And I would be remiss not to mention the beauteous Seo Ye-ji's stunning fashions. They are striking but there is no questioning how much she adds to them. In the language of books, this is a page turner. Sixteen hour long plus episodes never felt excessive.

Personal Taste (2010)

Star power but weak story

[6/10 · 26 July 2020]

16. That's the number. Well, sometimes, it's 20. But that's the standard number of episodes in Korean TV series. It's a challenge to fill and this drama, like many, doesn't quite do it. There was enough material here to make a decent 2-hour romcom movie but 16 hours was far more than could be filled up without recourse to a relentless cycle of rinse and repeat.

What makes this drama bearable, indeed more than bearable, are two tremendous performances from the stars, Lee Min-ho and especially Son Ye-jin. The rest of the cast and the stock characters they play could easily have been recruited out of the chimpanzee enclosure at Seoul Zoo, but Lee and Son are just otherworldly in their performances and chemistry, enough to blow up the labs at MIT. Son has such terrific comedic range just within this show, able to display vulnerability and strength, naivete and common sense, kindness and, when necessary, backbone, and you never fail to believe her. What is asked of Lee is more limited but he delivers without holding back.

The plot line, the single woman who mistakenly believes the guy she ends up living with is gay and therefore "safe", is a little forced and acceptable (just barely) only because the show is 10 years old and predates more widely accepted norms about the place of homosexuality and other non-"straight" orientations in society. But even there, most of the characters are quite tolerant of divergence from the norm of the time and Son at one point offers up a heartfelt declamation that love, straight or gay, is love. There is one interesting secondary character, played with some finesse by Ryu Seung-ryong , whose struggles with being gay and finding a way to express his love to Lee (whom he not unreasonably believes is gay - after all, Lee actually says he is, er, straight out) are depicted with some delicacy.

The problem is that the magic number means that Lee must be made to miss chance after chance to set the record, er, straight about his orientation in ways that are increasingly forced and sometimes lame beyond belief. Similarly, just as the writer finds idiotic excuse after excuse for Lee not to explain things properly, he (or she - not sure which) is forced in scene after scene to portray Son as clueless long past belief. The deception is enabled with the usual tropes of untimely interruptions by phone calls, people barging in, non-emergency emergencies, and an endless series of manufactured lies told by everyone and his mother, all so the moment of discovery can be delayed long past the moment the audience's patience has been exhausted, all so that the magic number of 16 can be reached.

Similarly, the second leads, played by Kim Ji-seok and Wang Ji-hye, must replay their same basic scenes over and over. Kim, in particular, is a creepy character whom both Wang and Son rightly reject and yet he cleaves first to one then the other with essentially the same nauseating sophistries and, unfortunately, the absolutely loathsome arm grabbing that pervades Kdramas.

Tertiary characters are equally repetitious and even less interesting. Lee's right hand guy, played by the forgettable Jung Sung-hwa, is merely insufferable and Son's best friend, played by Jo Eun-ji, manages to detract from every scene she's in.

These dramas need to be shorter or more inventive. Not all of them have the maximum luminescence of stars like Lee Min-ho and Son Ye-jin. I could watch Son forever and I can see why female (and perhaps male) fans could do the same for Lee. But it would be great if the material were a little deeper, a little richer or, to put it more precisely, a lot deeper and a lot richer.

Something in the Rain (2018)

A great actress at the peak of her powers

[8/10 · 22 July 2020]

Something in the Rain (available on Netflix) requires cultural adjustment by Western, especially American, viewers. The adjustment is at two levels, both to real life Korean culture and to the artificial conventions of Korean television drama. For example, young adults confronting their parents, however overbearing and self-centered and incapable of calm discussion the latter may be, seems almost impossible, especially when protagonists way into their 30s continue to live with them. Accept this or none of these dramas will make sense. If you make the adjustments, you will come through a viewing of this series entranced as always by Son Ye-jin, a megastar in Korea whose recent triumph in Crash Landing on You would be reason enough to watch everything she has ever done. But you do have to grit your teeth all too often.

Son plays a 35 year old woman, competent at work in a job dominated by men in urgent need of re-education at a Me Too boot camp, but less competent in her love life. As the series begins, she learns her higher status boyfriend is two-timing her and, after she quite rightly dumps him and sneakily wrecks his fling with a younger woman, falls into a genuine loving relationship with a younger man, played more or less competently by rising star Jung Hae-in, who is both the younger brother of her best friend and the best friend of her younger brother. In any normal Western situation, what could possibly be the problem? A slightly older woman dating and falling in love with a younger man, who reciprocates that love in every way, minus her hangups (just 6 years difference between the leads in real life)? There would be no drama in that.

In Korea, however, this relationship is supposedly shocking (the Wikipedia article actually calls it a taboo) and evokes very strong, over the top hostile reactions from everyone close to the couple, except Son's gentle father. Anticipating this, the couple, especially Son, hide the relationship far past the point when revealing it will cause trouble, and indeed far past the point when everyone except the mamma beast has figured it out. The result, easily foreseeable to all, and surely the characters themselves except for the willful blindness imposed on them by the script, is a series of explosions and overreactions many times worse than if everyone had behaved straightforwardly. The relationship gets a particularly hysterical response from Son's mother, who has already shown herself unfit by blaming her daughter for breaking up with the abusive former boyfriend, even though, as the mother was well aware, he had bullied her, stalked her, circulated intimate pictures of them online, and at one point kidnapped her, all of this to be excused because he comes from a higher status family. While the conventions of Korean drama require such idiotic maternal behavior, it's much harder to understand why the sister/best friend reacts so negatively and selfishly. But without the lovers' nonsensical behavior, where would the drama have been? It would have required more imagination and better plotting.

Indeed, Korean dramas are often built on petty and unnecessary lies, obfuscations, prevarications and needless or false denials. Major deceptions are the grist to dramas around the world. But the rampant overuse of minor fibs as a plot device, in this drama as elsewhere, betokens rather abject laziness on the part of the writers and often deprives stories of emotional credibility. A couple of minor examples in this drama: One of Son's coworkers fancies Jung and, not knowing of their relationship, asks Son for help. There is not the slightest reason for Son not to explain matters to her colleague and her lies and pretenses simply cause her entirely predictable trouble later on. Surely Son's character knows that when her colleague finds out, as surely she must, she will have earned entirely deserved resentment. Can she really be so tone deaf? Another: Browbeaten by her mother into going on a blind date, instead of telling this to the poor guy, or responding truthfully to his straightforward question about her affections lying elsewhere, she behaves evasively and rudely. But why? Why behave so poorly, towards someone who did nothing to deserve it? Dozens of such lies, black, grey and white, by every character, can erode the audience's sympathy.

Why watch this through to the end, a limp one at that? (Spoiler alert: You get a couple of rather sappy moments of Son and Jung together at last, which supposedly justifies all the pain endured by both the leads and their nerve-jangled audience. If we are to get a happy ending, can we not be permitted to enjoy it for a little longer?) I liked the deliberate pace - for once 16 episodes did not feel excessive - and the genuineness of the romance. Shedding Western sensibilities, I really believed the lovers and their story. Most especially, you can't take your eyes off Son. She's a great actress at the peak of her powers and she can rescue almost anything from oblivion. Watching a luminous star shine can take your mind off some of the dross she is illuminating.