• Episode 16. Jung Kyung Ho is great in the role of Doctor’s Son. He’s the epitome of cool, never breaking stride however horrible things around him may be. And the drama’s best supporting cast member isn’t a human being—it’s his tie. The only sign he ever gives that his character is a person with fears and emotions is when he fusses with his collar, and when he undoes his tie you know all hell is about to break loose. Without it, he’s literally off the leash, reverting to brute force instead of logic.  It’s telling that in the big bed scene, he wasn’t the one who removed his tie. Undressing someone may always be incredibly intimate, but when a piece of clothing is so integral to a character’s soul, it’s even more powerful.

• Episode 19. It’s nice to see a Kdrama lead who has skin like a normal person for a change—so many of them look like they must sleep in brine mixture intended to leach away all of their color, leaving them pasty and marble-white. (Yes, Kim Jae Won, I am talking about you.)

Congratulations on your decision to visit the United States of America! Whether you’re here to work, attend school, or just loaf around while exiled from Korea, we think you’ll find our country to be full of interesting people and amazing experiences. But best of all, when you finally return home you will be forever seen as an exceptional individual, blessed with the sparkly glamor of having spent time in one of the world’s few remaining cultural, financial, and political superpowers.

America is a large country. Your homeland—inclusive of North Korea—is approximately as large as Minnesota, one of our mid-sized states. We’ve got 49 more just like it (plus assorted territories around the globe). As you can imagine, life and traditions in the different areas of this enormous country can be extremely varied. But in general, this list of helpful tips should guide you safely through your travels.

• First and most important, don’t panic. However scary America may seem as a nation of gun-toting drug fiends who wear shoes inside, it is quite common for tourists to survive their visits here. As someone smart enough to consult this list, the odds are likely in your favor.

• In light of your demonstrated tendency toward clumsiness, spectacular car accidents, and inexplicable bouts of amnesia, we suggest that you purchase traveler’s health insurance for the duration of your stay. Many American politicians are unwilling to insure their own constituents—as a foreigner, you’re well and truly screwed if you get sick here. Without insurance, you may be responsible for medical bills of up to US$100,000, depending on what kind of tomfoolery you get up to while in the States. We don’t have milk delivery or chestnut peeling jobs here, and doll’s eyes are traditionally applied in factories with staffs of full-time employees. Obviously, your only recourse in the event of a catastrophic health crisis would be paying for your treatment with an organ, which would only incur additional hospital fees.

• Much as you are able to live next door to an evil, megalomaniacal dictator without getting stressed out, we Americans don’t think about guns. Because Kdrama tourists almost never leave the Los Angeles or New York metro areas, any guns you see will likely be on the hip of a law enforcement professional. (Or possibly a criminal. In which case, you should stay low and not make eye contact.) Many American civilians do own guns, but studies show they’re more likely to use them to shoot themselves than they are to shoot you. It is recommended that you do as we do, and simply put this issue out of your mind.

• Most Americans speak only one language. While they may be aware that Korea exists, they are unlikely to be able to find it on a map or identify its language. To avoid confusion caused by their inability to understand your attempts at spoken English, we recommend that you install a translation app on your Samsung smartphone before leaving your homeland. This will not only allow you to communicate with the people you meet in the U.S., it will also ensure that you have a cheerful, laughter-filled visit.

• America’s long history as a center of immigration means that you will see many people who don’t look like you. Do not be distressed; this is actually one of the best things about the United States. It is a nation made up almost exclusively of immigrants from around the world, and has often styled itself as a “melting pot” where various cultures and ethnicities are destroyed and replaced by Wonder Bread and blonde highlights. Whatever the skin color of the people you encounter, rest assured that they are probably too busy going about their lives to kill, maim, or sexually assault you.

• On a related note, fat people are as much an American institution as the Grand Canyon or the Lincoln Monument. Try not to stare, and whatever you do, never, ever refer to weight in conversation with them. They might get mad and sit on you—or worse, eat you.

• Yes, illegal drugs have been an ongoing problem in America. This is unlikely to present a problem for you as a tourist. Simply don’t agree to carry any unknown substance on an airplane, limit your consumption to mushrooms you recognize for their culinary uses, and stay away from needles wielded by anyone other than a health care professional.

• In many parts of America, extremely short skirts are seen as inappropriate. As a nation, we are comfortable with only one variety of visible cleavage. The kind of skirt you wear on a daily basis would be considered a micro-mini in America (or, in some regions, a belt), and thusly reserved primarily for trips to bars, nightclubs, or strip joints. We humbly suggest limiting your travel wardrobe to hemlines no higher than mid thigh, with an inch of additional length for every hundred miles you intend to travel north or south of New York City.

• Don’t get fall-down drunk in public. While being sloppily inebriated doesn’t necessary represent a risk to your health or safety, many Americans think it’s crass. (Of course, there is one noted exception to this rule: denizens of suburban college campuses pride themselves on alcohol consumption and will likely be enormously impressed by your tolerance for liquor.)

• Be prepared for archaic banking practices. In America, there is no “send the money to this account number.” The transfer of money on these shores most often requires actual paper, either in the form of checks or legal-tender bills. Sorry about that.

• Do not be surprised to see public displays of physical affection by members of the opposite sex, including hand-holding, hugging, and even open-mouth kissing. Americans are an extremely demonstrative people, and casual skinship is so widely accepted here that the word “skinship” doesn’t even exist. One thing you will never see, though, is an adult giving a piggyback ride to another adult. America’s obesity epidemic has rendered this convenient method of transportation useless for her unfortunate citizens.

• While in America, you should enjoy our native cuisine. It may seem bland in comparison to the spicy dishes you’re accustomed to, but it will certainly be plentiful and very high in cholesterol. It’s actually possible to eat red meat three meals a day and without breaking the bank. You’re in for a treat—from McDonad’s Dollar Menu to gas-station beef burritos to bakery cupcakes topped with candied bacon, America is a nation flush with meat (and meat by-products). A few tips to increase your enjoyment: Don’t eat hamburgers with a knife and fork. Half the fun is mopping a slick trail of grease from your chin with every bite. Before s’more construction, verify that your marshmallow is extremely well toasted; it must retain enough heat to make its neighbor, a Hershey’s chocolate square, all gooey. When purchasing cake, don’t even bother looking for fruit toppings. This is too healthy for the average American. Obviously, we prefer buttercream roses.

We hope that you will enjoy your travels in our great nation, the land of the free and the home of the brave. (After all, anyone with a healthy sense of self-preservation moved to Canada ages ago.)

Sincerely,

President Barack Obama

When I first discovered the existence of Korean dramas, the most surprising thing about them was probably their length. I had always assumed that there was only one way to make a TV show: build a premise for which you can create an infinite number of story lines, and then prepare to tell those stories in hundreds of episodes that will air over the course of years. This makes for lots of programs about doctors trying to cure an ailment of the week, lawyers bringing a never-ending stream of criminals to trial, and families with a plethora of miniature problems that can be solved in thirty minutes or less. Nobody grows or changes or learns, because the whole point is to preserve the central premise in amber, forever unchanged and incorruptible.

This is one of the reasons why Korea’s miniseries were such a revelation. In the space of sixteen episodes, they create worlds, establish characters and conflicts within those worlds, and then guide their stories to satisfying conclusions. That’s my kind of storytelling—novelistic and self-contained.

It took me a while to realize, though, that there’s more to scripted drama in Korea. The short miniseries I love (which themselves are creeping ever upward from the 16-episode standard of yore) are cousins to both the weekend home drama, typically running in the 50 episode range, and the weekend sageuk, sometimes lasting for more than a hundred episodes. And there are other shows that hit triple digits—both daily dramas and sitcoms sometimes run for more than 170 episodes, airing for around a half hour on every weekday.

The online Kdrama fandom tends to focus on miniseries, with the exception of the occasional youth-oriented sitcom like High Kick. Add this lack of coverage to the fact that many of the longer series aren’t available subbed in English, and it becomes easy to forget they even exist.

The sheer commitment required to slog through 170 episodes of something—even if they’re good episodes—isn’t really something I have. I’ve seen a few longer Korean series, including the home dramas Family’s Honor (54 episodes) and Ojakgyo Brothers (58 episodes), and the classic sageuk Jewel in the Palace (54 episodes).

When a long drama is good, it can be sublime. Jewel in the Palace used every single one of its (many, many) episodes to tell a compelling story that moved through the universe it created, rather than just standing still. It followed its heroine from childhood to the palace kitchen and on to her role as the king’s doctor, never getting stuck in one spot long enough to be boring. Some of its best set pieces even came late in its running time, including an amazing plague subplot. The longer dramas must demand more of their creators in terms of planning and forethought, which means they sometimes avoid the pointless plot loops that can do such damage to a shorter show.

But long dramas can also seem like never-ending torture when they go wrong. (See, for example, the coverage of You’re the Best, Lee Soon Shin at Dramabeans or Goddess of Fire at Koala’s Playground.) The failed titans don’t feel all that different from their shorter brethren—instead of using their extra time to tell different kinds of stories, they just feature a central romance and pad the rest of their screen time with B and C plots revolving around secondary characters. Most of these shows don’t need to be long as they are.

The drama I’m watching now is another a long weekend show: Smile, You, a 45-episode series that aired in 2009. At the halfway point, I have a split personality when it comes to Smile, You. I love the budding romances between the two younger couples, but literally want to throw things with hatred whenever anyone over 30 is on screen. So I’ve been making use of Dramafever’s fastforward button to create the drama I want to watch—a funny romantic comedy with likable leads and zippy chemistry. Pretty much every scene featuring an adult doesn’t exist to me. I think that might be the trick to watching the longer shows: don’t get wedded to sitting through every single minute and instead pick and choose the parts you care enough about to watch.

There are a lot of lengthy Kdramas out there, and some of them are actually quite tempting. Here are a few I’m keeping an eye on.

2013. Sitcom, 120 thirty-minute episodes.

This series from the team behind the High Kick franchise just started airing at the end of September, but it’s already gotten some buzz thanks to a steamy kiss scene. (Thanks, Whimsyful!) It sounds like a pretty standard family sitcom that happens to have an especially interesting gimmick: the titular comet strikes planet Earth, causing mayhem for its characters. The youthful cast is what really makes me want to watch Potato Star. It’s hard to imagine going wrong with its selection of up-and-comers, including Flower Boy Next Door’s hardworking sidekick Go Kyung Po, Monstar’s female lead Ha Yeon Seo, and I Miss You’s babe-in-training Yeo Jin Goo. (In a strange counterpart to Heirs and its cast of adults playing high schoolers, in this show Yeo Jin Goo is a 24-year-old computer programmer—in spite of the fact that in real life he’s just 16.) There isn’t a lot of information in English about Potato Star, but it is available on at least one subbing site. 

2013. Family drama/light melo, 120 thirty-minute episodes

I can only imagine that Im Joo Hwan had torturing me in mind when he chose this daily drama for his comeback after military service. First of all, it’s long. Second of all, it has some sort of fashion-industry component. Third of all, I want to watch it anyway, because What’s Up and Tamra, the Island made me love him so much. Im plays a young man who ends up going to prison after taking the blame for a crime committed by his younger brother, and most of the show seems to revolve around his return to society and the blended family created by his father’s remarriage. It is being subbed in English by one reputable fansite, and the mini-recaps posted on Tumblr by Cooking Dramas sure do make it look good.

2006. Sitcom, 167 thirty-minute episodes

Unlike most daily sitcoms, High Kick is available fully subbed on Dramafever. I never had much interest in watching this show until Dramabeans mentioned it in a recent post about noona romances, but now I’m considering trying it out. It seems to revolve around a central family, just as most K-sitcoms do, but also has a strong focus on the classroom shenanigans of its younger generation. (Which is where the noona romance comes in.) On the bright side, it includes a pre-Boys over Flowers Kim Bum and Jung Il Woo before he discovered white pancake makeup. On the not-so-bright side, it includes low production values and a painfully canned laugh track.

2001. Sageuk, 61 sixty-minute episodes

A number of bloggers I respect adore this widely subtitled show, including Thundie and Mr. X. It’s supposed to be life-changingly wonderful, but I’m hesitant both because it’s incredibly long and because it’s not really geared toward my interests. (Which, candidly speaking, is code for “It appears to be about things other than young, pretty people being in love.”) There are lots of things I like about sageuks, but the political intrigue and ascetic monks this drama seems to specialize in aren’t included on that particular list. Still, I’m curious—can Shin Don be as great as people say?

2011. Sitcom, 170 half-hour episodes

I’ve finally admitted to myself that this show will never be available in English. According to the few Korean-speaking Kdrama bloggers, it’s funny and touching and pretty much perfect in every way, but as far as I know no fansubber or corporate streaming service has translated as much as a single episode. The story revolves around an older woman who moves to Seoul’s tony Cheongdam-dong neighborhood and opens a boarding house-cum-comic book store, which sounds like an a recipe for lots of quirky characters and light social commentary. But I guess I’ll never know for sure.

Here’s my dirty confession of the week: I’m quite enjoying Heirs. Now that the drama has wrapped up its (literally as well as figuratively) rocky opening sequence in California and returned to Seoul, everything is starting to come together. With all its characters in one place, we’re finally able to enjoy the thermonuclear reaction of their worlds colliding—one full of luxury goods and bullying, the other full of hard work and being bullied. It’s a Boys over Flowers-style love story, if Boys over Flowers had been dropped on its head less often as a baby.

The past few episodes have even put to rest my biggest concern about watching another drama written by Kim Eun Sook, screenwriter of Secret Garden and A Gentleman’s Dignity. Those shows were ruined for me by their male leads, who were both physically aggressive and mean to the women they were supposed to be in love with. So of course I was apprehensive about watching Heirs. Would Kim Tan, its male lead, be prone to shaming his female lead for her subpar purses or using his superior strength to force her into skinship?

I’m happy to report that—so far, at least—Heirs is much better than I imagined. Kim Tan is a pretty nice guy. He’s been a little creepy and done some nonthreatening stalking of Eun Sang, his love interest, but he’s mostly on her side. He hasn’t called her stupid or made unwelcome sexual advances. He’s driven her places, fed her, and offered her guidance about how she can survive at their snooty high school. In response, Eun Sang isn’t scared of him in the way Kim Eun Sook’s other recent female leads have been scared of their male counterparts. She’s just frustrated and annoyed, and a tiny little bit intrigued.

But I still don’t like Kim Tan much. 

This is partly because of Lee Min Ho. As far as I’m concerned, he’s too solid and grown-up looking to easily regress to high school on screen. (When I first heard about Heirs, I was sure he would be one of the teachers, not a student.) Lee Min Ho played an adult in his last three dramas. It’s too much to ask for me to forget all that and accept him as a teenager.

And then there’s the issue of acting ability. As Kim Tan, Lee Min Ho wanders through the world with a slack-lipped stare that’s probably meant to evoke James Dean or My So-Called Life’s taciturn Jordan Catalano, but in actuality comes off as something closer to Harry from Dumb and Dumber. There’s no spark of life in his performance, no sense of connection between character, actor, and audience. I’ve never been a Lee Min Ho fangirl, but I appreciated his performances in both Boys over Flowers and Personal Taste. When he’s got a big, broad role to play, he does fine with it. But Kim Tan, with his inward-looking personality, seems to be beyond Lee Min Ho’s limited reach. He doesn’t seem to have the skill to say something with silence.

The rest of the blame for my lukewarm feelings about this character lies with the script. Characterization in Kdramas is often built from little details. Take what we know about Eun Sang: She’s hardworking, loves American horror movies, and is a little ashamed of her mom’s muteness (not to mention very ashamed of her job). Here’s what we know about Kim Tan: he surfs, and he has a history of hanging out with a tough crowd. Six episodes into the show, we haven’t seen him actively engaged in anythingexcept avoidance. We don’t know what he loves about surfing or how he met his dreadful American friends, or even the contents of his journal (beyond some butthurt ramblings, anyway).

The show’s writing is exacerbating Lee Min Ho’s vacantness by making Kim Tan listless and limp. He drifts from scene to scene, following other characters with no compass or quest of his own. He has no identity, no personality, no spirit.

I get that this is intentional. While the trajectory followed by the male leads in most Korean romances begins at “spoiled jerk” and ends at “attentive boyfriend/husband,” Kim Tan’s path is clearly different. He’s starting out as someone who is utterly disengaged from his own life. He’s lazy and unfocused and doesn’t care much about his own future (or anyone else’s). His mean half-brother is taking over the family business? Whatever. Dad let him get shipped off to America without a peep? Fine. Thugs are chasing him because he has yet again hooked up with the wrong girl? Not worth worrying about. And now that he he’s in Korea, Tan is being forced to confront Young Do, a monster we’re told Tan himself created. His immediate response, unsurprisingly, is avoidance. Unlike all those other male leads who are tamed by the women they love in the course of their dramas, Kim Tan’s happy ending will require learning how to take an active role in his own life. I predict that he’ll first stand up for the bullied kids at school, and then realize that he’s a bullied kid at home and find a way to become a real member of his family.

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I think neither Lee Min Ho nor Heirs has given us a character worth caring about.

This might have something to do with why I spend every episode of the show waiting for an appearance by Kim Woo Bin’s Choi Young Do. I’ve read lots of comparisons between Heirs and Gossip Girl, most of which claim that Kim Tan is the Serena and Young Do is the Blair. I guess this is true on some level, but to me Young Do feels more like the Chuck Bass. He’s a violent bully who crackles with hatred for everything he sees, but he’s also unavoidably charismatic. Thanks to an economically but intensely drawn character that has been matched with the right actor for the job, it’s almost impossible to take your eyes off of him whenever he’s on screen.

And that got me to thinking about other actors who might have done Kim Tan justice.

If I had my way, Yoon Si Yoon would star in every Korean drama. Although he’s actually a few months older than Lee Min Ho, he has a youthful energy and puppyish charm that could have done Kim Tan some good. As an added bonus, this spring’s Flower Boy Next Door proved that he and Park Shin Hye have great chemistry. If you’re going to cast someone who’s too old for a role, it might as well be somebody who can live up to the demands of the character.

Willowy and beautiful, Lee Jong Suk is definitely boyish enough to pass for a high schooler. Heck, he practically played Kim Tan in School 2013—His Go Nam Soon was a reformed bad boy who had decided to drift through life, always choosing the path of least resistance. If Lee Jong Suk had been cast in Heirs, this dramawould have been the second installment in the epic, fiery bromance he shared with Kim Woo Bin in School 2013. Their interactions as different characters would have been every bit as compelling as a double-dip love interest, like Park Shin Hye and Jung Yong Hwa in You’re Beautiful and Heartstrings.

At all of twenty years old, Lee Hyun Woo might have been the most age-appropraite Kim Tan. Although I still maintain that it’s hard (or maybe impossible) to judge a performance in a language you don’t understand, Lee Hyun Woo actually has some acting chops: His performance as the young Uhm Tae Woong in Equator Man was nothing short of gripping. He was also the lone bright like in the ludicrous(ly enjoyable) To the Beautiful You. I’m convinced that Lee Hyun Woo could have made Tan’s interior life feel more immediate and real.

Okay. So I know the army might have had a thing or two to say about this casting decision, but let’s pretend that Yoo Seung Ho hadn’t enlisted after his drama I Miss You wrapped last spring. He’s another handsome young pro who might actually have had the skill to make Kim Tan feel like a fully fleshed character, even in spite of the script’s limp writing. He’s especially good at Tan’s primary activity: looking at his female lead with enough passion to make the audience woozy (see above).

Just on the brink of manhood at 16, Yeo Jin Goo could have brought more believability to Kim Tan’s high school angst. I’m not sure he could have held his own against Park Shin Hye and Kim Woo Bin, but I sure would have enjoyed seeing him try.


(Note: After seeing some promo stills from this week’s episodes, I think my guarded optimism about Kim Tan not being a sexual predator is pretty much at an end. In a moment the show seems quite proud of, he’s kissing Eun Sang. Which sounds great, except she’s obviously struggling against him and he has her pressed against a wall, with both of her arms pinned—one at an awkward angle above her head, and the other at her side. That’s unacceptable, Kim Eun Sook.)

Supernatural rom-com

After she begins seeing ghosts, Tae Gong Shil’s promising future self-destructs. She can’t hold down a job, have regular friendships, or even get a good night’s sleep, because the ghosts find her wherever she goes. But then she meets Joo Joong Won, the flamboyant president of one of Seoul’s ritziest shopping malls, who can make her spectral companions disappear with a single touch. Stealing skinship at every opportunity, Tae Gong Shil starts to feel in control of her life for the first time since her inexplicable powers appeared. Desperate to stay by Joong Won’s side, she swears to solve a mystery that has haunted him for more than a decade.

In spite of my enormous backlog of half-watched dramas, I finally broke down and decided to start this currently airing show written by the Hong sisters. I’ve been holding off because it’s already being covered to death on the dramaweb, but I’m being tortured by fabulous Tumblr gif sets of its ghosts every time I visit my dashboard. Two of my greatest loves are horror movies and romantic comedies, so it seems that Master’s Sun and I were made for each other. But after last summer’s debacle with the Hong sisters’ drama Big, I’m a little wary of this show being another flameout. Master’s Sun is starting off as a fun Kdrama take on the American movie Ghost—but then again, Bigstarted off as a fun take on the American movie Big. And look where that got us.

I am incredibly happy to report that Master’s Sun is no Big.

If you were a Kdrama fan during the summer of 2012, you almost certainly know what I mean. That was the year the famous Hong sisters—screenwriters behind fan favorites like You’re Beautiful and Greatest Love—made what was arguably the worst drama of their long careers. Suffice it to say that Bigwas nearly unwatchable and utterly squandered a great cast and a promising storyline.

After the disappointment of that show, I almost swore the Hong sisters off forever. I’m glad I didn’t, though, because they rebounded with what might just be the best drama they’ve ever written. Master’s Sun is funny but not broad, sweet but not treacly, and animated without being over the top. It’s full of endearing, eccentric characters who are interesting, but don’t hijack the show with manic scenery chewing (unlike, say, Dokko Jin in Greatest Love).

And for the first time in recent memory (or maybe ever), the Hong sisters have given these great characters a plot that’s worthy of them. Master’s Sun is propulsive, always moving forward and never getting hung up for too long any particular roadblock. It helps that the narrative works on two levels: there’s the love story and overarching mythology of the two leads, which is supplemented in almost every episode by a free-standing, procedural-style mystery about an individual ghost. They give us something more to care about than the relationship of the lead couple, and allow the show to fill time with things other than frustrating romantic obstacles. A few are even surprisingly moving.

Charming characters, a fast-moving plot, and a satisfying finale made Master’s Sun a joy to watch. It’s not particularly scary in spite of its ghostly premise, but it is worth your time if you’re looking for an engaging love story with a otherworldly twist.

• Episode 1. I never would have guessed that dark under-eye circles would be the big trend in Kdrama makeup this year. But this show’s female lead is the second character to have them (and somehow still manage to look cute).

• Episode 1. This drama seems to be taking an episodic approach—its ghost-seeing heroine is being set up to solve a weekly lineup of mysteries related to her spectral visitors. This might actually be just what the Hong sisters need to produce a decent drama. They have great, fizzy ideas and a knack for manufacturing truly funny moments, but they’re not so good at sustaining conflict that lasts for the whole run of a series. Their past few dramas have been gimmicks that never really developed anything like cohesive narrative arcs, so maybe they’ve finally decided to play to their strengths and write a drama that has lots of discreet stories that are topically explored, rather than trying for a strong central storyline that they can’t manage.

• Episode 1. That Gong Hyo Jin is so cute it’s hard to believe that she’s a human being, not a manwha character. I just want to pinch her cheeks and give her food. (Lots of it, preferably carbohydrate-based.)

• Episode 2. What’s up with raiding my grandmother’s nightie drawer, female lead? Just because you act like a mental patient doesn’t mean you have to dress like one, too.

• Episode 2. This show is shaping up quite nicely—it’s slowly doling out hints about its endgame and the backstories of its lead characters. (Which is exactly what Big did before it went to hell. So I’m still cautiously optimistic at best, even if I’ve really liked both episodes so far.)

• Episode 2. Younger versions of So Ji Sub have been played by some pretty toothsome boys lately—first there was Yoo Seung Ho in his music video last spring, and now L from Infinite. (Who, might I add, has grown up a lot since he played Eye Candy’s hardest worker in the wonderful Shut Up: Flower Boy Band.)

• Episode 2. As an arachnophobe who lives in a spider-infested condo, I understand the female lead’s constant state of fear at being surrounded with ghosts. (Okay. So maybe spiders are a little less scary than ghosts—although some of them are poisonous, while Ms. Tae’s ghosts just want to shoot the breeze and send her on errands.) But no matter how scary something is, you get used to the trauma after a while. If this whole ghost-whisperer thing didn’t start pretty recently, her squealing, over-the-top reactions are going to feel pretty disingenuous.

• Episode 4. This is the first Kdrama I’ve seen where the girl is the one who’s desperate for skinship. I think this is actually an oblique way for the Hong sisters to discuss the double standards about women and desire—they make up this crazy reason for the female lead to want to “sleep with” the male lead, and then play it for laughs that such a thing could ever be possible when all girls are obviously angelic paragons of virtue.

• Episode 4. In spite of its episodic structure, this show is very much a chip off the Hong sisters’ block. Just like Big, Greatest Love, and You’re Beautiful, its story revolves around a rich, cantankerous guy and a slightly daft girl who are surrounded by a mishmash of borrowed genre tropes. I like that So Ji Sub’s performance is pretty dialed back, which allows Gong Hyo Jin to have some fun as the terrorized victim of multiple hauntings. It’s nice to see her be the attention hog for a change—she was very much the straight woman to Cha Seung Won’s insane scenery chewing as Greatest Love’s Dokko Jin.

• Episode 5. This episode was like Coffee Prince x Poltergeist + Insidious + Are You Afraid of the Dark. I loved it—and think Master’s Sun could very well end up being my favorite Hong sisters drama. The single-episode mysteries are doing a great job keeping this show engaging, which has been a huge problem for their past few dramas.

• Episode 5. One of the things that struck me as totally bizarre about My Lovely Sam Soon—the first Kdrama I ever watched—was how characters kept using electric fans to dry their hair. I haven’t seen it done since...at least not until this episode. So is it a thing to use fans like that in Korea, or is this some sort of bizarre coincidence? Also, the skinship price-tag scene was extremely reminiscent of my beloved Coffee Prince—only not quite as wonderful, of course.

• Episode 7. I’ve probably seen thousands of pieces of English-language dialogue in Korean dramas, but this is the first time it ever occurred to me that this foreign speech is rarely translated into Korean on screen. (We do see definitions in medical dramas and sageuks, which makes me think that subs really don’t exist for these one-off scenes.) People in Korea must really be expected to know a lot of English—or to be okay with not understanding what’s being talked about.

• Episode 7. Although this show’s lead couple is standard issue for dramas written by the Hong sisters, the combination of decent writing and great casting is really paying off this time around. So Ji Sub and Gong Hyo Jin are clearly having fun with their roles, but they’re not turning into scenery-munching hams like the male lead in Best Love or blank-eyed automations like the female lead in Big. (In fact, Master’s Sun is making me wonder if Big could have been saved if Lee Min Jung had done a better job in her role.) The story works, too—with Goosebumps-style ghost mysteries to solve in each episode, there’s none of the pointless wank and navel-gazing that so often passes for a plot in latter-day Hong dramas.

• Episode 8. The female lead just used the suffix sshi to address a ghost. Which is fine, except that’s supposed to be used by adults of similar status. The female lead is an adult and the ghost is a teenager...meaning that the female lead automatically figured out how old the ghost would be if it had lived, and addressed it appropriately. It looks as if there’s a lot more than learning Korean to learning learning Korean, doesn’t it?

• Episode 8. Sometimes I think the subbers at DramaFever like playing with us.

• Episode 10. This is usually the stage where dramas start to feel repetitive and pointless, but Master’s Sun continues to be a pleasant surprise. Between the romance, the ghost-of-the-week puzzles, and the overarching mystery about the male lead’s kidnapping, the story is still humming pleasantly along. I’d even like to see more about this episode’s pottery-dwelling ghoul (and maybe buy one from Hmart, if it means I could hang out with a dreamy Joseon scholar type.)

• Episode 9. I just watched this episode on Viki, because Dramafever seems to be down. As always, the Viki subtitles really respect the original Korean phrasings. I noticed, though that Viki carries a language I never would have expected: Latin. Is the pope a big BoF fanboy or what? Why else would Viki carry what’s essentially a dead language?

• Episode 11. I’m dog sitting at my dad’s today, and I just can’t adjust to watching this episode on his huge TV. Who knew that it’s actually harder to read subtitles when they’re spread over 55 inches of flat screen?

• Episode 11. I’ve literally never seen the actor who’s playing Secretary Kim in a good guy role, so I keep waiting for him to do something evil. At this point I think it’s safe to say that’s not going to happen—he’s shipping the lead couples even harder than I am.

• Episode 12. Gee, do you think that was a trick ending? (Ha! Of course it was—this show was written by the Hong sisters, not Satan.)

• Episode 13. This show is uniquely equipped to survive the extension I keep hearing about—add an extra ghost-of-the-week or two, shuffle some OTP scenes, and boomit’s an 18 episode drama.

• Episode 13. So if touching the male lead chases away the ghosts, why doesn’t Gong Sil ask for a lock of his hair or something? Or maybe a vial of blood to wear around her neck, like Billy-Bob Thorton and Angelina Jolie did back in the day?

• Episode 13. A big round of applause to the Hong sisters for taking the cheesiest, most over-used Kdrama plot twist and really making it work in the context of their story. I was initially annoyed when I saw it coming, but the explanation behind it is utterly perfect.

• Episode 16. I really like this show, but it makes me miss what Korean dramas used to be, back before everything was glossy and high budget. Even romantic comedies in the mid-oughts featured characters who were in possession of bodies as well as souls, people who spent a lot of time washing their faces, trimming their toenails, cooking food, and worrying about bills. None of those earth-bound things are featured in dramas today, and I miss them a lot. For the love of God, they built Tae Gong Shil’s rooftop room without a bathroom.

• Episode 17. That finale is exactly why I love Korean dramas so much—how do they cram so much happiness and light into such a short amount of screen time?

Joseon X-files, for its supernatural thrills

Has Korean drama ruined you for real men?

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** You didn’t think he was real did you?

Dear Kim Eun Sook,

Now that Heirs has hit the halfway mark, I wanted to follow up about our recent correspondence.

When I last wrote to you, I wasn’t convinced that you and I would make it this far—I dropped A Gentleman’s Dignity by episode seven, after all, and I would have called it quits with Secret Garden even earlier if I had allowed myself to do so back then. (Instead, I watched it until the very end, even though it was like torture. This is probably one of the reasons why my relationship to your work is so hate-based.)

Unlike those earlier shows, there are things I really like about Heirs. Primary among them is Park Shin Hye, who is wonderful in the role of Eun Sang. She imbues her character with a sense of depth and dignity, something I thought was sorely lacking in the female leads of both Secret Garden and A Gentleman’s Dignity. (It’s possible that a speaker of Korean would say that Park Shin Hye overacts, but to someone who gets by on subtitles, her beautiful, expressive face tells me everything I need to know about what her character is feeling.)

Right here, Park Shin Hye’s face is saying “I regret that I have no option but to karate chop you now.”

You deserve some credit for this performance, too: in Eun Sang, you’ve created a female lead who has moments of true strength and self-possession. She’s pragmatic and realistic, refusing to risk her family’s security for a boy she likes. She works hard to make the best of a bad situation, pitching in to help her mom with her duties as a maid. And when random men make unwanted advances, she handles them with a matter-of-fact threat—“I’ll call the cops if you don’t leave me alone.” We’ve seen her go through with the it, and we’ve seen the strategy work. (Now if only she didn’t loose every shred of confidence the second anyone from Jeguk High came on screen.)

Just because I like Eun Sang, though, doesn’t mean that I’m all that crazy about the show you’ve built around her.

Heirsencompasses an enormous universe populated by lots of characters with their own ongoing stories. I’m definitely all for this—it reminds me of how Taiwanese dramas handle their characters’ extended social networks. But I suspect you’ve bitten off more than you can chew here, and the result is that everything (and everyone) feels underdeveloped and scattershot. I’d like to see you pick a few characters and spend more time developing them, rather than spinning dizzily through your various plotlines with no obvious goal. And speaking of goals, I hope you have one in mind for the show itself: Heirs is starting to feel like the Cliffs Notes version of a better drama. The only way that will change is if you give flesh to the characters and dilemmas that you’ve spent the past ten episodes glossing over.

Speaking of overkill, have you even made a count of the number of love triangles in Heirs? Because I have.

1. Kim Tan’s dad and two moms. Neighbors in Korea must be way less nosy than neighbors in America. Otherwise, how is that nobody has ever noticed that the first mom never spends in the night? Or that the second mom exists in the first place? She clearly does a lot of shopping for luxury brands, so it’s not as if she’s a total shut-in. 

2. Young Do’s dad, Rachel’s mom, and Chan Young’s cute dad. Usually Kdrama moms try to force their kids to marry for money. This one takes things a step further by also doing it herself, even though she’s had a longterm flirtation with a man who actually likes her—unlike her fiancé.

3. Kim Won, Rachel, and Kim Tan. There’s not much to support this triangle yet, but sparks have flown the few times we’ve seen Won and Rachel together. They would actually be a great endgame couple. Everybody would be happy: Her family and the Kims would be linked by marriage, and Rachel and Won would get to fawn over each other all they wanted.

I hope there’s a reason for you to be in this show, Kan Ha Neul. You’re too cute to go to waste.

4. Kim Won, tutor girl, and Lee Hyo Shin. You haven’t spent much time with these couples, but I can see where you’re going: She’s a poor girl who’s dating Won in secret, while Hyo Shin is hoping for a noona romance with her.

5. Kim Won, tutor girl, and Chan Young’s cute dad. This may not actually be a love triangle. Unless I missed something key (which is easier than you might think, thanks to the loss of subtlety when Korean is translated into English), the relationship between tutor girl and Chan Young’s cute dad hasn’t been established yet. Kim Won definitely seems jealous, though, so I think they should count to the show’s triangle tally.

6. Kim Tan, Eun Sang, and Young Do. The only way out of this love triangle for Eun Sang is to to change her name and join the witness protection program, which she should do immediately.

7. Kim Tan, Rachel, and Eun Sang. Arguably the least interesting love triangle of the show. I bet you’re going to make Rachel spend the rest of the series scheming to break up Tan and Eun Sang, and I bet I’ll be tired of it by the end of episode 11.

8. Kim Tan, Rachel, and Young Do. In true Kdrama fashion, of course Young Do’s (almost-)sister is just his type—even though she’s engaged to his former best friend. If I were you, I’d have Rachel and Young Do pretend to get together in hopes of breaking up their parents, only they would actually fall in love in the process. (Not original, I know. But that doesn’t seem to be a requirement for this show.)

9. Kim Tan, Lee Bo Na, and Chan Young. I like that Chang Young and Bo Na have an uncomplicated, high-school-y relationship, even if the ghost of her time with Kim Tan can get in the way.

Yup. That’s nine separate love triangles. If I squint just right, I can also see something brewing between Ye Sol and Young Do, so there’s reason to believe the final total might actually be higher. Even you must agree that this is a touch excessive.

The most important overhaul I’d like to see going forward, however, involves your male lead. Kim Tan and Lee Min Ho’s performance of him are both becoming less bland, which is nice. But as I suspected from the beginning, my real problem with this show is its male lead. Why would you write him as such a jerk? Do you really believe that love can coexist with such cruelty? I guess you must, because Kim Tan is getting more and more like your other male leads. In last week’s episodes, practically everything he did made me seethe with rage.

You know how I feel about forced kisses, so obviously the beginning of episode 9 wasn’t my favorite thing ever. Kim Tan literally silenced his protesting female lead with his mouth, which on a scale of hotness is just below “Arctic.” He then followed the world’s longest-ever nonconsensual lip-press by saying, “Try answering [Young Do’s phone call] again. You will see me go crazy. I will kill the person who calls you. I never go halfway.” On what planet is this something other than a vicious threat? I’ve had the good fortune of living a life totally devoid of domestic violence, but I have read some books on the topic. And guess what the perpetrators sound like when quoted by their terrified victims? Kim Tan, that’s what.

Like your other leads, Kim Tan isn’t only physically aggressive to the point of violence. He’s also prone to belittling his love interest, which I would suggest falls in the realm of emotional abuse. I literally couldn’t believe my ears (eyes?) when he attempted to deflect Eun Sang’s attention from his lousy grade by criticizing her class rank—which was, of course, about 50 places higher than his dead last. He wasn’t joking or teasing her, which would have been fine; he was putting her down so he could save his own face. 

I’ve said all along that I like Young Do better than Kim Tan. They’re both incredible jerks, but here’s where the distinction lies for me: The drama knows Young Do is a douchebag. It treats him as someone who’s dangerously unpredictable and capable of awful things. His classmates fear him and the repercussions of his violence are taken seriously. When he tripped Eun Sang, she cried. But you’ve been downplaying the fact that Tan is just as dangerously unpredictable. In contrast to her response to Young Do, Eun Sang just looks resigned and walks away when Tan does something nasty to her.

The dichotomy between these two boys reminds me of an American saying: “The first step is admitting you have a problem.” In Heirs you admit that Young Do is deeply flawed and that his cruelty is unacceptable. There is then hope for his redemption, because you acknowledge that such a thing is necessary. Tan, on the other hand, is positioned as an adorable scamp. The show condones his actions as simply the doings of a romantic lead. He will continue causing violence and being scarily mean and possessive to Eun Sang, because in your script that’s an acceptable way for a man to show he loves someone.

All this is sickeningly familiar. It’s exactly how the male leads in Secret Gardenand A Gentleman’s Dignity behaved. The first criticized his female lead’s purse until she cried, and the second reluctantly left his one-sided love interest’s house by saying “If I don’t go, I’ll do something I’ll regret.” Like, presumably, raping her.

I know we’re from different cultures, Kim Eun Sook. But the distinction between Korea’s traditional gender hierarchy and my new-fangled American feminist ideals isn’t solely to blame for how repulsive I find your male leads. I’ve seen hundreds of Kdramas, and the vast majority of them never set off my violence-against-women sensors. But I’m sensing a pattern here—yours always do. You seem to be under the misapprehension that physical aggression and blind dominance constitute romance. 

I’m still watching Heirs and intend to continue doing so. Eun Sang is a character I care about and want to see through to the end. I hope you’ll reward me for my perseverance by restraining yourself when it comes to violence against women, and maybe even finding a way to evolve Tan into a man who could be worthy of his female lead.

Here are some other things that I’d love to see, just as food for thought:

—How about Young Do catches Kim Tan kissing Eung Sang against her will and intervenes. He doesn’t do it to be a jerk or to be competitive—he does it because he knows it’s wrong to force girls into skinship. Maybe later he could instruct Eun Sang in the most effective way to knee Kim Tan in the groin to get him to stop.

—Kim Tan should feel remorse for bringing Young Do’s dad into their fight. Lots of remorse. Like, “I’m sorry buddy, I know I was wrong” remorse.

—I’m always pro-noona romance, but you need to give me a little something to hang my hat on with tutor girl and Lee Hyo Shin. Even if you’re going for fragmented storytelling like Love, Actually,you still need to squeeze some story in with all the telling.

—You have two very broken bromances here. By the end of the series, please resolve the issues between Kim Won and Kim Tan, and also the ones between Kim Tan and Young Do. A true bromance developing between Kim Tan and Chan Young would also make me pretty darn happy.

—Please continue to give Eun Sang a backbone. Supposedly she likes Kim Tan, which is an explanation for why she hasn’t struggled when he forces her into skinship. But you’ve given us no reason to believe that she has any feelings but fear and pity for Young Do—and yet at the end of episode 10 she stands almost perfectly still for a full thirty seconds while he hugs her. I know he’s bigger and stronger, but maybe she could try struggling a little in the future?

—Yes, it’s trite and goes against all that is good and holy in the world, but I can’t help shipping Young Do and Eun Sang. Kim Woo Bin is too hot for me to resist, and he’s doing great work in this this role. How about Kim Tan returns to America and you send Young Do off on a buddhist retreat to learn some anger management techniques. A healthy time skip later (5 years?), he can return and woo Eun Sang like a real man. I’d watch the heck out of that particular sequel.

I look forward to your response, Kim Eun Sook. I’m available to discuss any of these points at your convenience.

Sincerely,

Amanda

Romantic comedy, home drama

After her wedding is derailed by the revelation of her dad’s bankruptcy, Seo Jung In is forced to move in with the penny-pinching family of her dead grandfather’s faithful chauffeur. From the beginning she doesn’t fit in: the chauffeur may be kind to her, but his long-suffering daughter-in-law and henpecked son resent her presence. And then there’s Hyun Soo, the chauffeur’s clueless, gawky grandson, who turns out to be nursing an 8-year crush on Jung In’s sister. Just when Jung In thinks things can’t get worse, they do—her spendthrift family looses their home and squeezes into the chauffeur’s tiny house, causing even more drama.

It sure is a difficult transition to go from the movie-quality filming and sets of Love Rain to the chintzy, weekend drama production values of this show. I usually stay away from home dramas because I don’t have the patience for their mammoth running times, but I’m hungry for more Jung Kyung Ho after watching Cruel City. I’ve read good reviews of Smile, You, and have my fingers crossed that it won’t be too broad and silly in spite of its genre.

My feelings about Smile, You are exactly divided between love and hate.

I loved the lead couple, who were incredibly cute and had a great narrative trajectory. I loved the show’s comedic setups, which made me laugh out loud a ridiculous number of times. I loved the everyday, real-world feel of the younger characters and their relationships.

On the other hand, I hated every single older character (and actor) in the show. I hated the super traditional, hierarchical family structure in the Seo household, which turned grandpa into something of a king with everyone else in the family acting as his obedient servants. I hated that episode after episode was devoted to annoyingly repetitive mother-in-law shenanigans, rather than exploring new storylines and emotions.

Part of the problem is that fate was against Smile, You. If it had kept to its originally slated running time of 30 episodes, the amount of story to be told would have fit the amount of time available to tell it. But instead, its early popularity resulted in a 16-episode extension, increasing its length by half. All this extra time exacerbated what had at first seemed like small annoyances, and by its finale caused the drama to turn into a caricature of itself.

Most home dramas that are able to fill 45 episodes focus on a number of couples, essentially becoming three or four separate romantic comedies that are loosely connected by a central family plotline. Smile, You, in contrast,spent most of its time focusing on one central couple after rushing through B-plots devoted to the female lead’s siblings. I can see why the writers chose to do this—played by the ever-lovable Lee Min Jung and Jung Kung Ho, Jung In and Hyun Soo were funny, sweet, and had amazing chemistry. But without other compelling storylines to complement their romance, the drama ran loops around itself and fell back on the easy out: The entire last quarter was dominated by the machinations of a selfish, complaining mother who did everything in her power (and some things that weren’t) to stand between the lead couple.

The first 20 episodes of Smile, You were a pleasure to watch. But by the time I hit episode 40, I couldn’t stand the thought of spending another minute with the show. I skipped to the last episode (which is definitely worth watching), and haven’t looked back since.

•Episode 1. If I were Korean, I would wear a hanbok all the time. They’re super pretty, and look about as comfortable as my favorite pajamas.

• Episode 1. After his turn as a dangerously taciturn gangster in Cruel City, it’s bizarre to see Jung Kyung Ho back in his native territory, acting as a clownish pretty boy. I like him both ways, it turns out.

• Episode 1.Korean casting directors in the mid-2000s really had something against Lee Kyu Han. He was always dumping people in dramatic ways—first in My Lovely Sam Soon, and now in this show.

• Episode 3. It’s a bad sign that I’m already fast-fowarding through the parts that focus on the older generation. There’s a lot of show left, and I already can barely stand the sight of the grandfather, who acts like a mini-Napoleon and treats his family like slaves. Just because he has a soft heart when it comes to his former employer’s granddaughter doesn’t make him any less of a jerk.

• Episode 5.Lee Min Jung is so great as the feisty rich girl in this drama that I might actually be able to forget how terrible she was as the bobble-headed female lead in Big. And that’s saying something.

• Episode 7. The tough-as-nails grandfather just declared that he would turn his former boss, a privileged rich boy, into a man. Which is all well and good, but I’d argue that Grandpa has had no experience whatsoever on that front: making your entire family live in fear of you isn’t the equivalent of man-izing anyone. It’s more like turning people into timid little children who are afraid to make their own decisions. At least in the Western understanding of the word, being a man (or a woman, or a grownup) is about choosing to do the right thing even when you could do the wrong one, not letting some old guy intimidate you into doing whatever he decides is right.

• Episode 10. On a scale of heartless bastardry, this show’s grandfather is rapidly approaching the level of the U.S. Republican party. He’s only interested in making people obey him and is absolutely without flexibility—his word is law, no matter how stupid it may be. The real kicker is that the drama is clearly on his side; as an elder, he has a right to boss everyone in his family around to his heart’s content. If the script doesn’t find a way to teach him a lesson—and soon—I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep watching.

• Episode 15. I haven’t had much to say about this show, but it’s not because I haven’t been enjoying it—I’ve just been too busy lately to watch more than a minute or two at a time. Smile You is a breezy rom-com with a strong family storyline, and it frequently makes me laugh out loud. I could live without the grandfather and the grownup plotlines, but the lead couple are so adorable that they may be headed to my list of all-time favorite Kdrama pairings. The individual actors have great charisma, and together they’re all cozy charm. Their budding romance is the perfect mix of sweet and tart.

• Episode 15. It’s funny how some actors always pop up in these longer shows. The older sister, the third female lead, and the second male lead’s mom were all also in the 52-episode drama Family’s Honor, which aired in a year before Smile You. It might be a scheduling thing—presumably these big shows begin and end on a different cycle from the shorter, weekday dramas—but I wonder if it also has something to do with their demands as an actor. It must be nice (and lucrative) to be busy for such a long time without interruption between jobs, and everyone’s individual shooting schedule must be relaxed to accommodate the many, many characters at play.

• Episode 18.I don’t think any think any other Korean drama has made me laugh as much as this episode did. The lead couple’s romance is really heating up, but they’re trying to keep it a secret from their families. So of course every time they get caught snuggling they pretend to be fighting, which inevitably leads to a genuine battle, complete with headlocks and childish taunts. It’s incredibly funny and a nice twist on all the early-relationship bickering in other shows.

• Episode 18. I’m all for enthusiastic kisses, but I can’t really approve of the one in this episode. Why not? Because it was bloody. I understand that it’s possible to get all worked up in response to a dangerous situation, but you should at least wipe the blood off your face before going in for tonsil hockey.

• Episode 18.The show keeps making a big deal of how the poor family sets their table. Instead of everyone eating out of communal serving bowls, they each have their own plates where they put the food they want at the beginning of the meal. Which is, of course, exactly how we do things in the West. (Well. How you do things in the West. My family is notoriously lazy and we usually skip the serving bowls altogether—we serve ourselves in from the pans in the kitchen and then go sit down to eat.)

• Episode 21.Smile You has a lot in common with 2011’s Ojakygo Brothers. They’re both about people from different classes who are forced to live together and end up becoming a family almost against their own will. Together, they would make the perfect show—Ojakygo’s family relationships were powerfully compelling, while Smile You’s romances are infinitely more interesting. Too bad I hate pretty much all the adult males in their casts, though.

• Episode 21.As if I wasn’t enjoying this show enough already, they had to go and throw in a kimchi-making scene. The mixture of homey food porn and family drama gets me every time. (Even when I actually hate the show, like Kimchi Family.)

• Episode 27. The never-ending midsection is when I find it hardest to sit through long shows. There’s so much show left, but the newness of the characters and their world has worn off. I may still like the younger cast members, but I can’t really imagine a way to fill 18 more episodes with their problems.

• Episode 27. They really dropped the older sister’s plotline like it was a hot potato. Not that I mind. Because it wasn’t. (Hot, that is.) They never really showed anything positive about her relationship, so it was hard to root for it to succeed. Now she just shows up every few episodes, says a couple of lines, and disappears.

• Episode 28. A bit of meta news on the So-cute-it-might-be-fatal front: The older brother and his love interest in this show are actually married in real life and have a baby. 

• Episode 29.Everyone’s acting as if getting the old family home back will magically solve all their problems, which is idiotic. How’s dad going to pay the electricity bill? The property taxes? At best, they’d have to sell the place and put the money into buying a little, energy-efficient house like the one the Kangs live in. For a while there, HGTV gave away these enormous houses, but only one person ever kept it—and his family ended up going bankrupt from the expenses associated with such a big, luxurious house.

• Episode 30.If this were a Taiwanese drama, this episode would include a time skip. And not one of those sissy Kdrama ones—it would fast-forward two or three years and hit the reset button on everyone’s lives. That would make the next 15 episodes feel fresh and new, in spite of being part of the same show. Kdramas never really seem to do that, though. They always cling claustrophobically to the show’s initial setting and story. (Maybe new sets and haircuts aren’t in the budget?)

• Episode 30. I’m clearly hallucinating, because there’s no way I just saw the phrase “birth secret” in the next episode preview. I’m begging you, show—don’t go there. (Although at least it would be a decent explanation for one of Kdrama’s most annoyingly meddlesome mothers-in-law.)

• Episode 36. It’s a good thing this series includes one of the cutest couples in the history of Korean drama, because it’s also got one of Kdrama’s most psychotic mothers-in-law. Instead of being happy that her son wants to get married, she’s jealous of his girlfriend and disappointed he didn’t make a “better” match, all because her identity and self-image are totally reliant on her perfect son. I know they’re playing up her outrage to pad the show’s running time, but it got old about four episodes ago.

• Episode 36.Note to self: before traveling to Korea, learn how to say “Is this loach?” in Korean. When in Korea, say it every time you’re about to eat something. If the answer is “Yes,” just say “No thanks.”

• Episode 39. I’ve never seen a human being look as cold as Lee Min Jung does during the wedding scene. And I live in northern New England, where entire months of below-freezing temperatures are considered normal.

• Episode 45. I have one thing to tell anyone else who’s considering saying an early goodbye to this drama, like I did: make sure you watch the last 10 minutes of the finale. They will kill you with cute, and send you off with a bevy of warm, fuzzy feelings. (They probably won’t make you regret your decision to cut your losses, though.)

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Family’s Honor, my favorite weekend drama to date, for its fast-moving plot

“I don’t know why feminists like you watch Korean drama.”

Although they’ve since deleted it, an anonymous commenter left this note on one of my posts about Kdrama girls. I guess the person who wrote it wasn’t happy about my criticisms of the way women are sometimes treated in Kdramas, which is fine. But the perhaps unintended implication of their words is that the whole of Korean drama is fundamentally anti-feminist, making it a lost cause for people like me (or vice versa). Seen in this light, Kdrama will never fall in line with my ideals, and if my ideals are so important to me I should just stop watching it.

As someone who thinks that all people—whatever their gender, whatever their religion, whatever their color—should have the same freedoms, rights, and responsibilities, I do find troubling things in Korean dramas. I’ve written about a lot of them, from wrist grabs and forced kisses to virtually enslaved daughters-in-law. But there’s more to the story than that. Korean dramas actually allow understanding of the world in ways that are too “feminine” for the West. They build stories from things we overlook here in America, because to our eyes they’re old-fashioned and silly and womanly. But respecting women and telling their stories is one of the most feminist things you can do—and that’s exactly what Korean dramas specialize in.

No matter what their themes may be, almost all Korean dramas are actually about emotions. They glory in things traditionally seen as suitable only for women: relationships, and matters of the heart and the feeling soul. Whole series are devoted to transforming human connections from one thing to another—from strangers to mother and daughter, from rivals to friends, from enemies to lovers. Lots of things may happen in the course of the show, but what ties every event together is this journey and its importance. This is why Eun Chan and Han Gyul’s developing love story is so powerful in Coffee Prince. It’swhy Park Bo Ja’s mothering of the interloper Baek Ja Eun is so moving in Ojakgyo Brothers.And it’s why that final father-son scene in City Hunter will always rip your heart from your chest, no matter how times you watch it. In Korean dramas, narrative almost always exists in service of relationship, instead of the other way around.

All this attention to the ties that bind people makes for a lot of romances. This is one of the things that always keeps me coming back to Korean drama—for reasons both technical and cultural, love stories aren’t something that my own country’s television does well. Our shows last forever, precluding any sort of closure. And in America, romance for the sake of romance is ghettoized; on the rare occasions it actually exists, it’s kept out of sight on channels like the WB and Lifetime that are geared toward women. But why should shouldn’t a love story be just as important as a story about war? To regard romances as something less is a remnant of the male-dominated patriarchy, a mindset that focuses on public life and disregards the home sphere as the less-important realm of women. So in this way, Korean dramas are actually light years ahead of anything we have in “feminist” America: They’re not ashamed to traffic in stories about love, because love isn’t treated as something exclusive to the interests of women.

Their fixation on underdogs is another way that Korean dramas appeal to people who think women deserve the same freedoms as men. Kdramas often tell the kind of rags-to-riches story that hasn’t been popular in America since the turn of the twentieth century. People who start off with nothing end up with everything through their honest hard work—and those people are often women. Think about the archetype of the hardworking Candy girl. She’s not a character who’s limited by her gender (even if her happy ending usually involves a prince on a white stallion). She supports herself and does what it takes to survive, beating seemingly impossible odds along the way. Hwang Tae Hee got the job she always dreamed of in Queen of Reversals, and my beloved Go Eun Chan won a worldwide barista competition in Coffee Prince. Heck, hapless Geum Jan Di even got into medical school in Boys over Flowers.Their own personal agency is what earned these female characters their happy endings. The fact that a dreamy guy happened to be involved in each of them doesn’t necessarily invalidate these stories as girl-centered, feminist-friendly storytelling.

All the on-screen housekeeping in Korean dramas can also be seen as feminist. In Western entertainment homemaking is simply invisible, and I can’t help feeling that this is partially because it is so tainted by its longstanding status as “woman’s work.” Washing the floor, making the bed, and preparing meals are not valueless and devoid of narrative merit; they’re the stuff that real life is made of. Korean dramas respect them as such, rather than ignoring the entire realm of homely arts just because even today—and even in America—they’re so often solely the responsibilities of women.

There are some Korean dramas that I would even consider overtly feminist. The personal and professional freedoms experienced by the characters in the original I Need Romance were accompanied by the ability to feel, express, and control their own physical desire. The 2003 sageuk Jewel in the Palace displays a different kind of feminism. In a world where women are property, it is concerned almost exclusively with their lives and interactions. It focuses on the inner workings of the palace kitchen during Korea’s Joseon dynasty, and it never looks down on its huge cast of female characters or their concerns. Instead, their struggles, friendships, and rivalries become its backbone. This is territory Western filmmaking has yet to explore. Even when mainstream historical dramas revolve around a woman, she’s almost always surrounded by men, like in 2007’s Elizabeth: The Golden Age. With its gaggle of ladies in waiting, the currently airing WB drama Reign is an intriguing exception to this. But it still has nothing on Jewel, which let the King’s women speak in their own voices for more than twenty episodes of girls-only intrigue.

As an American feminist, there’s another reason for me to love Korean drama. By exposing me to other ideas and other ways of life, it encourages me to examine my own. Kdrama alters my perception and allows me to look at my own culture from a new vantage point. For example, I’m always marveling at the fact that women in Korea don’t take their husband’s last names. In America, our culture expects women to erase who we used to be when we get married, becoming a wholly new being with a wholly new name. Wifehood sometimes involves becoming a glorified maid in Kdrama relationships, but it never requires you to be somebody else.

To say that Kdramas are so problematic that they can’t be appreciated by people with feminist sensibilities is both short-sighted and inaccurate. Korean television has produced an almost unimaginable variety of programming—and while some of it has been painfully anti-woman, some of it been every bit as enlightened as anything on the international stage. 

So that, anon, is why feminists like me watch Korean drama.

Also wonderful are its indelible cast of characters—from parents who punish their daughter with time out in a coffin to a work-averse slacker who becomes the best, most respectful mortician you could ever hope to find. Its female lead, in particular, is a revelation. She’s no girlie Kdrama heroine tottering around on high heels and wailing “Oetteke” at every turn. Instead, she starts off as cold and calculating, an alien dispassionately observing the world around her. Nothing fazes Ha Na: as a teenager, she earned pocket money by hunting down dead bodies, and as a woman she stored her lunch-break kimchi in a refrigerator intended for a morgue’s recently deceased. As the show progresses, Ha Na blooms, forming ties to the people around her and realizing that she, too, is capable of love.

Genuine, heartfelt, and featuring nary a product placement, Flowers for My Life is a remnant of that intriguing era before Kdrama got glossy and turned into big business. It’s eccentric and charmingly personal in a way that’s almost unheard of today.

• Episode 1. My relationship with this drama went from Like to Love when I realized that the female lead’s obsession with death was being showcased by her stack of tragic dramas on VHS—including the unremittingly depressing I’m Sorry, I Love You. She even quoted a particularly horrifying scene word for word. That’s my kind of girl.

• Episode 1. Although this show deals with dark themes, it’s every bit a Korean comedy. There are madcap chase scenes featuring nonthreatening gangsters, visual gags about constipation, and a ridiculous lack of communication that sends the plot spiraling off in unexpected directions. It’s just that it also includes random men being crushed to death, cancer diagnoses, and a cold-blooded heroine who couldn’t care less about them.

• Episode 2. And with the arrival of the second male lead, so to comes a crippling case of second lead syndrome. Kim Ji Hoon looking all young and handsome will do that to a girl.

• Episode 3. I like 70s easy-listening from America as much as the next girl, but I don’t get why it makes up this show’s soundtrack. Even weirder, the score seems to be klezmer.

• Episode 3. This drama’s female lead is an odd duck. She’s like a cross between Jane Eyre and the character Suzy played in Dream High. There’s nothing cute or affected about her—she just is what she is in all her robotic candidness. And why is it that no Kdrama girls these days wear clothes like regular people? No matter what their role, they all seem to be in fussy, fashion-forward clothes that I can’t imagine seeing in the real world. In this show it’s all jeans and t-shirts. (And suspenders, inexplicably.)

• Episode 3. You hardly ever see a Kdrama female lead in active pursuit of a guy, but this one sure is. She isn’t much like other girls in any way, really. She investigates wrist grabs, wears boyish clothes, and searches for a mate based solely on fiscal concerns with no interest in romance. Well played, Ha Na.

• Episode 4. So this drama is moving along as a rom-com should—the lead couple is growing closer, love triangles are being established, people are interrupting romantic paddle-boat dates by falling in rivers and drowning. But all this while, somebody who has cancer isn’t getting treated, thanks to a standard-issue melo miscommunication. I know you need to get your love story going, but how about showing a little mercy?

• Episode 4. I don’t get why fiction is riddled with people who bemoan not being able to cry, like this show’s female lead. Take it from me—crying easily isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I can cry at anything, or nothing, in the drop of a hat. (Hey, maybe I should have been an actress! I’ve got the sobbing skills required on Korean television, if nothing else.)

• Episode 6. Here’s another new Korean word to add to my (pathetically small) vocabulary: daebak, or jackpot. As in, “Gong Yoo just asked for my phone number. Daebak!” I knew this word was used for “great,” but I didn’t realize how multi-purpose it could be.

• Episode 6. Only in a Korean drama would a bungee jumping scene immediately follow a young woman suggestively saying to a young man, “Let’s do something you’ve always wanted to do today. Anything at all.“ On American TV, I can’t imagine an offer like that resulting in anything even remotely family friendly.

• Episode 7. If I walked into a room and found my husband canoodling with some strange woman, you know what I wouldn’t do? Freak out at her. Someone’s at fault in this scenario, but it’s not her.

• Episode 8. 2007 was a good year for diverse types of female leads in Korean dramas. There were girlie-girls like Dal Ja from Dal Ja’s Spring, total tomboys like Eun Chan from Coffee Prince, and average girls like this show’s Ha Na. Nowadays it always seems that female leads are insanely polished, a la the women in Cruel City, or fashion victims played for comedy value, like Yoon Eun Hye in Mirae’s Choice.

• Episode 10. So not to be cold or callous or anything, but I’m intrigued by the possibility of Ha Na having a happy ending with both male leads, even if that means one of them dies. The script set up the possibility episodes ago, back during the discussion of the three-person burial.

• Episode 10. I guess I understand that the female lead’s suspenders are a purely fashion-based accessory. She not only wears them with an untucked shirt: in one instance they’re actually fastened to an oversized t-shirt rather than her pants.Vestigial suspenders—2007’s weirdest fashion statement?

• Episode 10. I imagine all the groaning and heavy breathing at the end of this episode was meant to sound like someone falling sick. They should have done some more rehearsing, though, because it mostly sounded like something deeply NSFW was going on.

• Episode 13. I’m not sure whose priorities are out of whack, but I never understand why near-death Kdrama virgins who are madly in love don’t just get on with it. I don’t care if he’s practically your brother, Autumn in My Heart girl. He’s smoking hot, you love him more than I love Korean drama, and the clock is ticking. Like Nike says: just do it!

• Episode 16. I just realized that this show features two actors who would go on to have big roles in tvN’s Flower Boy series: Kim Ji Hoon from Flower Boy Next Door and Lee Jong Hyuk from Cyrano: Dating Agency. I love spying stars in their earlier roles—these two even seem to have avoided the plastic surgery fairy in the intervening years, which is no small feat for a Korean actor.

• Episode 16. I cried more during this episode than the show’s characters did. That seems unfair somehow.

Dream High, which features Hye Mi, one of Kdrama’s most appealingly chilly protagonists

As a denizen of the Internet, you’re probably familiar with the initialism OTP, which is usually translated as “one true pairing.” People use it when referring to the fandom couple they most desperately want to live happily ever after. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about a clever alternative translation that has been making the rounds on Tumblr: “Only Tears and Pain.”

An OTP can give incredible delight if you’re lucky enough to be sucked in by the right one. For me, I Hear Your Voice was a good example: I instantly loved Park Soo Ha and Jang Hye Sung, and every step the show took toward bringing them together left me giddy with fangirl joy. Things could have taken a turn for the worse; unlike most Korean dramas, it wasn’t immediately clear who would actually be the show’s lead couple. (There were even rumors midway through that the writers intended to kill off Soo Ha, which would have also killed me.) But the pairing ultimately worked out, and I was left in a sublimely happy state of OTP realization.

But that’s not always the case. Falling in love with an OTP is like falling in love with a person—it’s unpredictable, and quite often regrettable. Sometimes you’re drawn to a second lead who will absolutely never get the girl, or maybe you even dream of the show’s villain triumphing in the end. And that’s when the tears and pain come into the picture. Thus, a Woe-TP is born.

I knew from the beginning that I was in trouble when it came to the pairing of Young Do and Eun Sang on Heirs. The show clearly has no intention of getting them together, and by rights I probably shouldn’t even want it to.

Young Do is manipulative and cruel, a brutal bully prone to torturing his classmates so horribly that they drop out of school. But I’ve been trained by years of watching Korean dramas to see this as a starting point: There’s lots of precedent out there for evil characters being rehabilitated in the course of a show. After all, Young Do isn’t so different from Joon Pyo in Boys over Flowers. That drama may not have been edgy enough to actually show Joon Pyo doing horrible things on screen, but it showed us the awful events he set into action—including an attempted suicide. In the end, that character got both redemption andthe love of his female lead. So why shouldn’t I root for Young Do to get the same? 

It doesn’t help matters that Young Do is the most nuanced figure in the show’s cast of thousands, or that Kim Woo Bin is doing such a amazing job in the role. He’s dangerous and sexy, full of prickly bravado and sardonic comments. But in spite of Young Do’s wicked charm, neither the actor nor the script ever let us forget that there’s a lot going on behind his scowl.

Young Do is painfully lonely, taking his meals at a convenience store because it doesn’t look weird to eat there alone. This is another similarity between his character and BoF’s Joon Pyo, who was shown eating a solitary breakfast on Christmas morning, abandoned by his family and left with only the staff for company. While Joon Pyo always had his three best friends to keep him human, Young Do is estranged from more than just his family. He only hangs out with one person, the dim pretty-boy Myung Soo, and he mostly seems to do this out of habit, or maybe desperation. He sure doesn’t act as if he likes Myung Soo.

Don’t get me wrong: There’s no excuse for the awful things that Young Do has done to the people around him. But I can see his motivation, buried there in an awful past of parental abuse and abandonment: he’s a broken little boy pushing away the good things in life so they don’t have a chance to push him away first.

So why do I want Young Do and Eun Sang to fall in love? Because the actors who play them have great chemistry, for one thing. Kim Woo Bin manufactures sizzling heat in every scene he shares with Park Shin Hye, which isn’t the easiest task: She approaches her male leads with a brittle, standoffish chill that only a select few are capable of thawing out.

There’s also the fact that both the Drama Overlords and I both love stories of opposites attracting. Eun Sang is about as different from Young Do as it’s possible to be: she doesn’t have the material things he’s accustomed to, but she has a mother who loves her and friends who support her. She works hard; he slacks off. She’s kind and warm when he’s cruel and cold.

Eun Sang’s heart is so big that even Young Do’s worst behavior never quite manages to turn her against him. Young Do, in turn, is continually stunned that someone might actually care about him when he can’t manage to care about himself. As far as I’m concerned, the most heartbreaking scene in this show so far was when Eun Sang asked Young Do if he was okay with his dad’s remarriage during episode 11. Young Do was, for once, shocked into silence, left gaping at Eun Sang as if a unicorn had unexpectedly appeared before him. In her, he sees the possibility of unconditional love, something he’s never given or received.

On some level, Eun Sang and Young Do really do have a lot in common: they share an inner well of snark (see Eun Sang reminding Kim Tan of his lowest-in-class status when he screws up an attempt to barricade her in a room, and Young Do mocking Myung Soo for all his one-sided loves). They’re both clear-eyed and perceptive. They saw through each others’ mask almost immediately—Young Do knew Eun Sang wasn’t the new money she claimed to be, and Eun Sang knew Young Do wasn’t the unfeeling monster he wanted to project. They’ve both always seen the world around them for what it is instead of kidding themselves about its heartlessness. With unflinching honestly, Eun Sang told herself that she and Tan would never work out. And Young Do reminds us again and again how aware he is that the person he’s hurting most with his troublemaking behavior is himself.

I’m also aboard this sinking ship because I find the alternative so unpalatable—Kim Tan is reckless and self-centered, and his desire for Eun Sang never feels like a hunger for connection. Instead, it’s a crusade to dominate and possess her. Young Do would listen to Eun Sang in a way it’s clear Kim Tan never will—he genuinely wants to know what she thinks and how she feels, and is forever trying to find ways to make her talk to him. Kim Tan, on the other hand, only wants Eun Sang to listen. (Remember, if you will, the two liquid dumping scenes from last week’s episodes. Bratty Young Do poured his drink all over the floor Eun Sang was washing to get her to talk to him. In contrast, bratty Kim Tan flipped a table full of drinks to force her to shut up. Both boys spend most of their time making Eun Sang’s life harder, but somehow I always find Young Do’s motivation infinitely more appealing.)

If the show let it, I honestly believe the connection and innate understanding between Eun Sang and Young Do could grow into something beautiful. Eun Sang would bring out the best in Young Do, encouraging him to be brave and honest while finding ways to channel his rage. And Young Do would inspire Eun Sang to look beyond her responsibilities, taking her on breathless motorcycle rides and kissing her until she was dizzy. (See what these two do to me!?!?)

Of course Eun Sang and Young Do will never actually get together. Lee Min Ho is too big of a star to be usurped from his leading man position, and the character of Kim Tan has all the hallmarks of a classic Kim Eun Sook romantic hero (i.e., a small brain and an overdeveloped sense of self-importance). But all the logic in the world can’t stop my reaction to the doomed couple of Eun Sang and Young Do.

Blame it on Kim Woo Bin’s piercing gazes and knowing eyebrow quirks, and how believably Young Do is drawn to Eun Sang. They are my current and greatest Woe-TP, and I love them for it.

***

Woe-TP. Noun. A fandom couple that you want to be together, even though you’re sure it will never happen. Heartache inevitably ensues. Examples include:

—Geum Jan Di and Yoon Ji Hoo, Boys over Flowers. This is the cruelest of all my Woe-TP pairings. BoF was one of the first Korean dramas I ever watched, so I truly believed that Jan Di would eventually realize that kind, supportive Ji Hoo was the right boy for her. Alas, Lee Min Ho won the day, just as he will in Heirs.

—Shin Yoo Bok and Jeong Hyang. Painter of the Wind. These two love and respect each other like few other drama couples. Unfortunately, they were doomed to be subtext—they’re both girls, and Korea isn’t quite ready for that kind of happy ending.

—Lee Soon Yeon and Harry Borrison, I Miss You. This drama’s insane writer squandered cozy intimacy and deep affection in favor of improbable psycho-killer hijinks, doing both characters and actors a tremendous disservice.

In spite of my obsession with Kdrama, I’ve never been very interested in Korean movies. For me, the most satisfying storytelling is done on a grand scale. I’d rather read a fat novel than a collection of short stories, and I’d rather watch a series than a movie.

The sixteen-episode running-time of most older Korean shows is perfect for my taste: there’s plenty of room for character development and expansive plotting, but the limited screen time still allows for the possibility of a satisfying, novelistic ending. But these short and sweet dramas are becoming increasingly rare as trends turn toward series that last for twenty episodes and beyond. To me, most of these super-sized shows just feel too long—they’re War and Peace when I want Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. No matter how good the show is, watching anything that lasts more than about twenty episodes starts to feel more like a pain than a pleasure.

This inspired me to give Korean movies a try. It’s a refreshing change to watch something I can finish in one sitting, to experience the beginning, middle, and end of a single overarching narrative in not much more time than it takes to watch a single episode of a drama.

Being a Chungmuro newbie reminds me of my early days of watching Kdrama: I may know more about Korean culture than I did back then, but the body of Korean film is still a complete mystery to me.

Unfortunately, the Internet hasn’t been as helpful with this as it was when I first started watching dramas. Kdrama has a true, unified fandom online, with lots of encyclopedic sources for information and insight. If you want to know what’s on the air Tuesday night at 10, you can find out on Dramabeans and then go watch it on Dramafever or Viki. This doesn’t seem to be the case for Korean movies, which lack a strong identity as a stand-alone brand. For example, take a look at the website for Asian Crush, a film distributor that has a presence on both Hulu and Netflix. It features movies from Thailand, Japan, and Korea—but there’s no way to search for specifically Korean films. In fact, the only way you can even tell a film’s country of origin is by looking at the language information, which isn’t even included in the Hulu descriptions of their offerings. Most of the movies Asian Crush carries are Korean, but the site certainly doesn’t advertise that fact.

Dramabeans and some of the other blogs I follow sometimes post about Korean movies, and Hancinema provides both reviews and box office updates. Tumblr is also home to some good sources of information—enticing gifs posted there have lured me into watching any number of Korean movies. Every once in a while a big Korean film will even get coverage in mainstream American media, like the 2009 vampire movie Thirst. But beyond that, there’s not that much information out there.

Korean movies are harder to find streaming than dramas are. Lots of movies are available in pirated versions on YouTube, but the video quality and subtitles can be pretty terrible. Netflix, Hulu, and Viki each carry a handful of films, but there don’t seem to be many other legitimate sources for Korean movies. Thee ones that do exist tend to have the same few options and to be pretty slow getting new things. I’d love to watch Covertly Grandly, which was released in Korea in June, but it’s only available streaming on illegal sites that don’t work very well. I guess I could buy it on DVD, but the price isn’t the only thing that’s prohibitive about that: it’s only available for region 3, while my DVD player is region 1.

Like its television programming, Korea’s movies seem to fall into a few key genres: romantic comedy, melodrama, thriller, and sageuk. I’m often surprised, though, by how differently Korean movies and television shows approach what are essentially the same stories.

From what I’ve seen, the movies usually feel more real world and gritty, and generally don’t include the kind of exaggerated acting that dramas do. In little ways, they also seem more Westernized—people in movies are less likely to sit on the floor, and uniquely Korean staples like soju and kimchi play a less central role in foodie scenes.

There’s another distinction between Korean movies and dramas: the movies are a heck of a lot less virginal. This is true everywhere, I guess—even in America, television shows aren’t able to include the same kind of explicitly sexual scenes that movies can. (Although for more on this topic, see thisEntertainment Weekly article about the death of the movie sex scene. In contrast, sex is the exact opposite of an endangered species in Korean movies.) Kdramas may be known for their deer-in-headlights lip presses, but Korean movies are full of steamy, genuine kisses. Their characters not only engage in sex, they even enjoy it.

Take the 2004 movie My Little Bride, which was released just one month after the finale of the similarly themed drama Sweet 18. Both focus on a teenage girl marrying an older man. In the movie, it’s made perfectly clear from the beginning that sex is an aspect of the marriage everyone has considered. The mothers-in-law pull the new bride aside at the wedding and assure her that no funny business by her husband will be tolerated until she graduates from high school. Sex is the elephant in the room throughout the movie, and the male lead teases his new wife about consummating their relationship. In the drama, the possibility that a husband and wife might actually kiss doesn’t even occur to either the impossibly naive bride or groom until well after the wedding. And when the drama finally gets around to acknowledging the existence of bedtime activities, it treats them as a disembodied sacred duty necessary for the birthing of babies.

I can’t say whether this laissez faire attitude toward sex is really representative of Korean movies as a whole or an artifact of where I’m watching them. The online popularity of all things porn means that practically all the Korean films available streaming have names and cover images designed to entice people looking for naughty viewing. I’m all for on-screen sexytime now and again, but it’s actually so bad that I don’t like watching Korean movies on YouTube—as soon I start searching for them, the site populates my suggested video sidebar with naked people. (Maybe it’s because I watched Frozen Flower?)

Here’s a quick rundown of what I’ve seen so far.

All the swoons and tears of a Kdrama melo distilled into a bite-sized movie. A lonely blind girl falls in love with a bad-boy professional boxer who vows to restore her sight, even if it means sacrificing himself to earn the money for her operation. Han Hyo Jo and So Ji Sub make the movie with their smoking chemistry and quiet intimacy. A-

This epic sageuk is lavish and gorgeous in every way. It’s also softcore porn—no way would a comparably big-budget Hollywood movie ever, ever feature so much graphic banging. It has a horrible ending but is worth watching just for the pretty. (As difficult as it may be to believe, Jo In Sung is even better looking out of clothes than he is in them.) Also notable for tiny, early-career appearances by both Song Joong Ki and Im Joo Hwan. B+

Even Jaejoong couldn’t keep me watching past the twenty-minute mark. Damn pretty, but so physically inert it feels like a badly adapted stage play. This movie is a treacly mess, and turns Han Hyo Jo into perhaps the single most annoying manic pixie dream girl in recorded history. Lethargic and Lame. dropped

A sageuk about a performer who finds himself drafted as stand-in for an ailing king. Provides some good laughs, but mostly schmaltzy. C+

This tear-jerker traces the burgeoning romance between a terse, unhappy carpenter and his boss’s forgetful daughter (hint, hint). Like the long-lost Endless Love drama, only shorter. And sexy. A-

A fifteen-year-old girl is manipulated into marrying the much older son of family friends. More adorable than a roomful of puppies if you can get past its icky premise. B+

Less naked and kitcheny than the title might lead you to believe, this light melodrama revolves around a pair of childhood sweethearts whose relationship is tested by infidelity. Shin Min Ah at her most gamine makes it easy to forgive her character’s (amazingly hot) dalliance with a handsome young stranger—even after he turns out to be her husband’s close friend and professional mentor. And did I mention that he moves in with them? B

A cute romantic comedy that revolves around a couple brought together by money: he’s a penniless playboy; she’s a scrappy Candy girl looking for ways to hide the fortune she’s amassed through years of hard work. Note that this will have to tide us over until Song Joong Ki finishes his military service, so don’t waste it. B+

Part lurid exploration of sexual abuse at a school for the deaf, part courtroom thriller, this movie is well-made but painful to watch. Not to be missed by Gong Yoo fangirls—he was instrumental in getting Silenced made and does some of his finest work as the case’s conflicted whistleblower. B+

In this racy rom-com, a wrong number leads to phone sex with a stranger. Which leads to friendship. Which leads to love. Which leads to lots of boobs and butts. (And don’t forget the panties.) C

Are there any must-see movies out there that haven’t hit my radar yet?

Action-flavored fusion sageuk

The struggles and triumphs of a masked vigilante who stands up for the Korean people during Japan’s occupation of Korea in early twentieth century.

As voted by readers of my blog, I’m giving another shot to this 2012 drama about a masked freedom fighter during Japan’s occupation of Korea. The first time I started watching it, I sat through all of ten minutes before moving on. I made a snap judgement back then: Between a cartoonily impossible opening sequence and the impromptu dance party that followed it, I was sure Gaksital wasn’t for me. But this time I’m going to stick with it. I’m in the mood for a show that has more on its mind than goofy comedy and the same old love triangle angst. Will Bridal Mask give me what I want? Only time will tell.

On the not-strength side of the equation is most everything else about this drama. What began as an exploration of nuanced characters with shadings of light and dark in their personalities turned into a cartoony dichotomy between the unimpeachably good and the irredeemably evil. In this process, Lee Kang To’s best friend suffers from serious character assassination. Played with frothing-at-the-mouth abandon by Park Ki Woong, Kimura Shunji is never conflicted—the screenwriter simply flips a switch, and the nice-guy teacher of Korean kids turns into a revenge demon possessed by a delusional belief that the female lead would be happy with him, even in spite of plentiful evidence to the contrary. His scenery-chomping inquest into the identity of Bridal Mask lasts forever, no doubt thanks to a mid-series extension of four episodes.

• Episode 1.Now that’s more like it. Once you wade through some silly spectacle in the first part of this episode, Bridal Mask turns into an exciting, character-driven exploration of the things people are willing to do survive. There are plenty of tantalizing hints about he show’s overreaching narrative and the growth its characters will experience, along with lots of impressive set pieces. The circus is particularly gorgeous (and even goes a long way toward making up for the Epicott-at-high-noon hokeyness of the city streets).

• Episode 2. I get a good laugh practically every time someone in a Korean drama speaks English (well…tries to speak English). But are the actors as bad with other foreign languages? The Japanese they’re speaking in this drama is a lot more similar to Korean than English is. I’ve also seen several of the old guys who are speaking it acting as Japanese sympathizers in other shows (including Capital Scandal, which is like the rom-com version of Bridal Mask). Facility with languages must be on their resumes or something. (Sad that I can now play seven degrees of separation with even the bit players.)

• Episode 2. I was spoiled for one of this show’s big secrets back when it was airing, and I’m now delighted to realize that it was given away in episode 2, instead of being a mystery that lasted all the way to the end of the drama. It would have sucked to know the finale before I even started watching.

• Episode 2. It’s hard to do wire-work action scenes right. When they’re good, they’re weightless and amazing and impossible not to believe. When they’re not so good—like in this show—it takes a lot of energy to get past their goofiness. It’s as if these directors feel like they have no choice in the matter: every action scene must defy gravity. Personally, I prefer when they obey gravity in a spectacular way, like in the Bourne Identity movies.

• Episode 2. More kdrama girls should take a page from this one’s playbook: she’s spat on the male lead not once but twice. And this is just the second episode! (Eun Sang from Heirs, are you listening?)

• Episode 2. So can I just take this moment to point out that Gaksital’s horse is also wearing a mask? It reminds me how little girls like to dress up their American Girls dolls in outfits that match their own.

• Episode 3. This show was obviously filmed in the same locations as Capital Scandal. I bet that’s not annoying if you watched the dramas when they aired, six years apart. But I just saw Capital Scandal this summer, so I keep expecting the inn to be home to city hall. The result is some weird, Terrance Malik-style disorientation.

• Episode 4. How refreshing to see a Kdrama scene with people riding horses that actually features people riding horses. (A novel idea, yes?) Usually they seem to be riding trash barrels covered with discount velour. You clearly spared no expense, Bridal Mask.

• Episode 5. Clearly, “Kimura Shunji” Japanese for “dead meat.” There’s no way this character is making it through the show alive.

• Episode 6. And the Kdrama character voted most likely to require decades of intensive psychiatric help is…Lee Kang To! Korean dramas tend to be full of terrible things, but this constellation of suck is pretty spectacular even by their standards.

• Episode 6. In real life, people who are in lots of pain sometimes faint. (I’ve done it myself, and at the time was quite grateful for whatever evolutionary quirk made it possible.) But in Korean dramas, if someone is seriously injured and looses consciousness, that’s all she wrote. I hope some clever comedy out there has made use of this silliness and had a character black out dramatically and recover five or six times before really expiring.

• Episode 6. A corollary: People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones; people who live in paper houses shouldn’t throw Molotov cocktails.

• Episode 6. Why has it occurred to nobody in the history of Western civilization to put something other than tea in a teapot? I know the name seems pretty definitive, but Koreans obviously do it all the time. People are just as likely to be drinking hooch or water from them in the world of Korean drama.

• Episode 6. Now that they’ve finally given up on all the silly wire work stunts, this show’s fight scenes are getting tighter and more visceral. The finale bout at the police station is probably one of the best-choreographed Kdrama fight scenes I’ve ever watched. Add this to Bridal Mask’s impressive direction and cinematography, and you’ve really got something special here.

• Episode 7, Finding a way to create a true, believable sea change in a character is incredibly difficult. This show is doing it perfectly, though. It brought everything to a head: how Kang To is stuck between being Korean and Japanese, how he has hurt the people he loves, and how everything he’s believed in and worked toward has probably been a lie. It’s almost painful how clearly all that is etched on Joo Won’s face in this bicycle scene.

• Episode 9. You’ve got to hand it to this show: for practically the first time in recorded history, its masked hero actually wears a mask that pretty much hides his identity. (And so does his horse.)

• Episode 9. Here’s a sad statement about how unsophisticated my appreciation is of the acting in Kdrama: The sound is wildly out of sync in this episode, but it’s not even bothering me. When you’re so busy reading subtitles that you rarely look up, it’s possible to overlook the fact that someone’s mouth is twenty seconds off the sound if their voice.

• Episode 11. At any given moment, half of this show’s cast is wearing white pants. The wardrobe supervisor must have had nightmares about someone sneaking in black underwear. VPL isn’t even befitting of the bad guys.

• Episode 12. In the beginning it was nice that this show included at least one Japanese person who wasn’t totally evil. I get that the wounds of occupation are still pretty fresh, but must every single person of Japanese descent be totally bonkers in shows set during this era? It also doesn’t help that while the writers did great job with the lead’s transformation from Japanese lapdog to freedom fighter, they botched Sunji’s change from cuddly nice guy to rage-monster.

• Episode 12. So does bridal horse have like a stable or something? It just appears when it’s needed for a melodramatic chase scene and then disappears afterward. Horses aren’t cars—they need thing like food, water, and attention to survive. Or maybe Bridal Mask is horse-jacking some unsuspecting Korean every time he needs a lift? This is just like City Hunter, which was ruined for me because I spent do much time worrying about the health of the female lead’s poor, neglected dog.

• Episode 13. I hope to someday have the opportunity to play the video game Duck Hunt against these police officers. I would totally win, because they’re incapable of hitting anything even remotely close to their targets. (Bummer about all the random guests that were just killed by stray bullets.)

• Episode 13. But where does he keep his bridal mask costume? He’s always showing up in it when he’s just been wearing his police get-up, which clearly doesn’t have the kind of storage required for the mask and that volume of fabric. Should somebody be doing body cavity searches at these events?

• Episode 13. I now see why most superhero masks are so useless when it comes to disguising their wearer’s identity. As soon as you hide enough of someone’s face to make it hard to tell who they are, you limit their ability to convey emotion so much that they’re no longer a compelling presence on screen. Joo Won is doing a good job in the role of Bridal Mask, but the mask itself is making it impossible for him to do a great one.

• Episode 18. I’ve heard that once upon a time sageuks were known for their attention to detail and the historical accuracy of their sets, props, and costumes. Which is pretty funny when you think of what’s become of the genre today. It doesn’t take a skilled eye to see that pretty much everything about this show is an anachronistic mess, from the cars to the shoes to the Justin-Bieber-circa-2011 hairstyle occasionally worn by the male lead. But far be it from me to let a little thing like history interfere with my enjoyment of a Korean television show.

• Episode 19. It’s so bizarre that the go-to ethnic barb against Koreans is to say they smell like garlic, as one Japanese officer does in this episode. Is Korea’s cuisine the only one in east Asia to use garlic? Who decided that this would be an ugly thing to say about Koreans, and why? I think it must be limited to Asia—before I started watching Korean drama, I’d certainly never heard of such a thing. (But then again, I’m of French descent and only just learned that the word “frog” is a slur against French people. I guess that’s a serious example of white privilege—prejudice against people like me is so alien in my world that I didn’t even know the term existed.)

• Episode 20. As far as Kdrama girls go, this show includes an impressive variety of characterizations. Some of its female characters are good, some of them are bad, many of them kick ass. They each have their own distinct approaches to life and how to live it. They’re also important actors in the development of the plot, not just love interests. (Although, to be frank, I could use a bit more love. [Obviously.] Couldn’t the lead couple have some cute moments as significant others instead of spending all their time rescuing someone from the police station or getting all misty about the Korean nation?)

•Episode 20. Let me get this straight: the girl who almost beat up Bridal Mask several times in the early part of the show was just knocked out by a garden-variety thug after he grabbed her hair and she was unable to free herself? Why is it that the female characters who start out tough are never allowed to stay that way?

• Episode 21.Dramafever didn’t translate it, but I think this episode might have started with a propaganda notice about some islands Korea and Japan have been having a dispute over. I know Kdrama is government-funded and has a nationalistic bent, but that seems to be taking things a little too far. It wasn’t even part of the story—it was just a picture of an island with a Korean flag superimposed on it.

• Episode 22. The last time I went on a diet, I cried whenever I saw a potato, too. Koreans are clearly missing out on the best part of baked potatoes—all the butter and salt and pepper we Americans pile on them.

• Episode 22. They really should save everyone some time by installing a revolving door in this police station. Every episode, it seems that someone is being dragged into the torture chamber only to be rescued within the next 20 minutes. The good guys and bad guys have a very Tom-and-Jerry relationship: They can batter the hell out of each other, but little of substance ever changes.

• Episode 25. Gee, it’s Bridal Mask fighting that same guy again. I wonder what will happen? Maybe it will be a draw so he can fight him again for the FIFTH time in the next episode? I know this is a really popular and well-loved show, but at this point it has pretty much lost me. The plot is repetitive to the point that I’m having a hard time caring about any of the characters. The lead couple never talk or spend any time together, and two-thirds of every episode is devoted to Shunji being insane. He used to be a interesting character back when he was a teacher, but his evolution into a total nutcase was poorly drawn and lacking in sophistication. This show has failed its premise—instead of exploring the evolution of an antihero, it’s all about cartoony good guys versus bad guys in a conflict with no real stakes and no forward motion.

The infinitely superior Cruel City, which will keep you guessing (and occasionally sobbing) from beginning to end

I’m a big fan of order and routine. I sometimes think this is why I like Korean drama so much—once you master the key elements, everything about them is as straightforward as the basic geometry proofs I learned in high school. From their inevitable plot twists to the hierarchical social order tying their characters together, Kdramas give me just the right mix of predictability and imagination.

My love of consistency definitely impacts how I watch dramas. During the first year of my obsession, I patiently waited for shows to finish airing before I started them. This allowed for marathoning at my own pace, and meant I never once suffered through a cliffhanger; the resolution was only as far away as the “Play” button. The next year of my obsession, I started watching one currently airing drama at a time. Much to my surprise, keeping up with a new series was a totally totally different viewing experience. I came to the show without baggage, forming my own opinions as the story revealed itself. This usually isn’t the case when I watch an older show. Even though I try to avoid spoilers, I’m still an avid reader of the dramaweb. This means I’m always aware of other people’s opinions: Koala hated most of Mi Rae’s Choice, and practically everyone I follow on tumblr is in love with Answer Me, 1994. I haven’t seen a minute of either of these shows, but I’ll never be able to escape this knowledge—when I finally start watching them, I’ll be prejudiced against one and in favor of the other.

Keeping up with a new show from episode one, you come to understand it on your own terms. The existence of an unwritten future can make even a mediocre drama feel immediate and compelling. You’re not a passive watcher checking off episode after episode on your Mydramalist profile; you’re an active participant who’s invited to devote brain cells to conjecture and theorizing. And best of all is live-watching a show that has been adopted as a Tumblr favorite—everywhere you look are short, pithy commentaries and glorious gifsets of all your favorite moments.

And here’s another question: Which two dramas should I watch?

This one is a must-watch for a simple reason: The only things I love more than Yoon Si Yoon are other people who love Yoon Si Yoon. I don’t want to miss any juicy commentary or fangirl squeeing...even if the show itself isn’t something I find appealing.

The members of the cast who aren’t Yoon Si Yoon aren’t particularly interesting, and I actually find the subject matter mildly repellant: It’s about a widowed prime minister of Korea (politics—barf) who takes care of his three children (kids—barf) while running the country. The show’s hook is that he ends up in a contract marriage with a much younger tabloid photographer. Hijinks ensue.

This drama has it all: gorgeous actors, an intriguing setup, and some dreamy teaser trailers that feature an angsty shower scene and use the word “fate” a lot.

You from Another Star’s premise sounds like the love child of Queen In Hyun’s Man and Rooftop Prince, with a little bit of Twilight thrown in for good measure: after spending 400 years on planet Earth, a space alien falls in love with a famous actress. I could go for that, especially when said space alien is played by Kim Soo Hyun, who has only gotten hotter since he won my heart as Dream High’s bumpkin Sam Dong. Also promising is that this show’s screenwriter is the woman behind Queen of Reversals, a fun 2011 drama that was more than capably written. Most of her previous series have been longer family shows, though, so it’s unclear how she’ll handle a twenty-episode rom-com.

I suspect You from Another Star will be another entry in the recent series of pseudo–noona romances. Once upon a time, dramas like What’s Up Fox and I Do, I Do featured older women who never really gave up the position of power in their relationships. Nowadays, though, romantic age differences are largely unremarked upon, and younger men like Park Soo Ha of I Can Hear Your Voice end up in the driver’s seat in spite of their older love interests. At twenty-five, Kim Soo Hyun may be seven years younger than the actress who plays this show’s female lead, but this sure can’t be a traditional noona love story—in spite of his boyish good looks, his character is hundreds of years older than she is.

This show has a great pedigree—it’s from the creative team behind the 2010 drama Pasta, which was an extra-large helping of food porn served up with a side of easygoing charm. It also stars Pasta’s male lead—Lee Sun Gyun, better known around these parts as the velvety-voiced second male lead from Coffee Prince.

Its premise sounds like a good time: a group of fairy god-ahjussi mentor a local woman in hopes of making her win the title of Miss Korea, thereby rejuvenating their floundering cosmetics business. (It sounds a little like a safe version of Kinky Boots, doesn’t it?) The girl’s identity is an interesting twist: you’d expect her to be some Candy type, but she’s actually a former classmate of Lee Sun Gyun’s character. Once the most popular and beautiful girl in their school, things have fallen apart for her since graduation and she’s single and stuck in a menial job. Also a bonus is the fact that Miss Korea is set in 1997, my favorite of years, no doubt in hopes of capitalizing on the nostalgic success of Answer Me, 1997.

I worry that this show, like Pasta, will follow a meandering plot trajectory. Pasta’s episodic take on the workaday world made for fun marathoning, but I can imagine that it would be a less involving live watch.

I’ve never live-watched a Taiwanese drama, but I might just have to start with this show. The magic words here are “from the production team behind In Time with You.” That show’s slice-of-life insights and unusually realistic characters made it one of my favorite dramas of all time, and I sure would love to see another series like it.

The plot synopsis is vague but intriguing: in 2005, a girl looks back on the formative year of 1995, when she followed her childhood friend/first love to college. Only four episodes have aired, but it’s already receiving positive buzz on the dramaweb.

***

Light melodrama of the high school persuasion

Thanks to her mother’s position as a live-in maid, hardworking Cha Eun Sang is exposed to a world of privilege she never imaged. But when her mom’s employer gets her a spot at a posh high school intended for Korea’s one percent, Eun Sang quickly comes to realize that life with money isn’t always perfect. At Empire High, you’re either bullied or a bully. And when two of the most dangerous boys at school show an interest in Eun Sang, things really spiral out of control.

This underwhelming, overstuffed pilot episode is not without promise. It’s shaping up to be a twist on the Boys over Flowers–school of mean-boy storytelling, complete with a healthy dose of corporate intrigue and lots of forbidden young love—the rich boy and poor girl, the almost step-siblings, the celebrity offspring and the regular guy. As expected, Park Shin Hye is immediately compelling as the sad, old-before-her time Cha Eun Sung. Lee Min Ho is okay as the laid-back Kim Tan, but I’m not quite sold on him in the role yet. (Also, as predicted, he looks way too old to be in high school.) What I am sold on is that, in spite of his aloofness, he’s thoughtful and introspective and might just have Prince Charming tendencies.

Kim Tan started off feeling like something different. His character seemed to have the soul of a second lead: He was passive and low-key, prone to lazing around in the sunshine and more interested in writing about the world than participating in it. It’s inevitable that any high school show starring Lee Min Ho will be compared with Boys over Flowers, the crack drama that made him a star. Ultimately, Heirs stood on its own feet: its universe was much larger and more varied than BoF’s high school myopia. But it still wasn’t without irony that Lee Min Ho seemed to have switched roles in the early episodes of Heirs—he was a Ji Hoo, not a Jun Pyo. Before long, though, Kim Tan evolved into just what I feared he would be from the beginning: A Kim Eun Sook lead. When Eun Sang came into his life, he got pushy and mean. He stalked her and forced her into physical intimacy, all while demanding that she follow him with blind devotion even when it meant putting at risk both her home and her mom’s job.

I’ve written a lot about how much I loved Young Do. (In fact, I can barely shut up about it.) When he was on screen, the show came to life. He got all the great lines, and Kim Woo Bin imbued him with unexpected feeling and depth. Unlike Kim Tan, who started off okay but immediately descended into a pit of creepy machismo, Young Do was always the right kind of work in progress. He grew and changed as the drama progressed, and his search for human connection was bitterly poignant. From a vicious little punk, he grew into a young man who earnestly wanted to do the right thing and put the needs of others before his own.

• An open letter to Kim Eun Sook

• A guide for Kdrama characters in America

• Casting call: Kim Tan

• Another open letter to Kim Eun Sook

• The Woe-TP Blues: Eun Sang and Young Do

• Episode 2. Dear Kim Eun Sook, Here's a helpful reminder from one writer to another: Hogwarts is actually located in England, not America. The difference may seem subtle, but do you remember hearing about drugs and/or firearms on the Hogwarts campus? No, you do not. Thusly, it must be located outside American borders. (In some ways, your schools probably resemble Hogwarts more closely than American ones do—hardly anybody here has to wear a uniform.) Sincerely, Amanda

• Episode 3. The best thing about Park Shin Hye’s character is her obsession with American horror movies. I’d like her even better if she was a geek connoisseur of Dario Argento-style splatter art, but that's probably just me.

• Episode 3. This show is mildly amusing, but I still think the leads are miscast. Not only are Lee Min Ho and Park Shin Hye too old to be playing high schoolers, they have no zing as a couple. Their pairing is missing the invisible spark that can make even mediocre Kdramas such fun to watch. Instead of steaming up the room when they look at each other, these two just seem blank and unsure. What would Heirs have been like with a blossoming young cast, maybe You’re Beautiful’s Lee Hyun Woo and Ha Yeon Soo from Monstar?

• Episode 3. I don’t care how many zillions of dollars you spent per night, you would never, ever find a hotel room that looked like this one in America. As a nation, we turn our noses up at the fussy furniture and gold leaf that Kdramas always use to indicate extreme wealth. This place looks like Louis Quinze barfed all over it. Super ritzy hotels in America are lush and low key—not Liberace-style baroque.

• Episode 4. Now that the action has moved back to Korea, Heirs is starting to grow on me. For the first time, it’s focusing on storyline over making the most of its stupidly expensive location shoot, and it’s suddenly starting to feel as if it might have something to say. I would be happy seeing less of essentially every non-Park Shin Hye female on the cast, and have started to wonder why they even bothered with Kang Ha Neul’s character. He's had all of two minutes of screen time so far, which seems like a waste. (All will be forgiven, though, if his plot really is a noona romance with his tutor, as the show has been hinting. Heirs really has a way with fanservice, doesn't it?)

• Episode 5. Here’s something rare—the female lead just grabbed her love interest by the wrist and dragged him for about a block before she realized what she was doing. Kim Tan may be following in the stalker footsteps of the leads in Gentleman’s Dignity and Secret Garden, but he’s being much less creepy and physically aggressive about it. All around, the characters in Heirs seem a bit less bound by old-fashioned gender roles. I wonder if this welcome change of pace is mostly intended to reflect/attract younger audiences?

• Episode 5. Korean writers seem to have very specific desires when it comes to Lee Min Ho. They want him to wash their hair (which happened in both Personal Taste and City Hunter) and, strangely, to be his servant (as in Boys over Flowers, and now Heirs). Now that I think about it, I have some pretty specific desires for him, too. They’re somewhat different, though.

• Episode 5. I can’t believe how long it took me to realize who should have played Lee Min Ho’s part in this drama: Lee Jung Suk...duh. He comes across as being much younger than Lee Min Ho (even if he isn’t), and he almost certainly would have had great chemistry with Park Shin Hye. Plus, you couldn’t go wrong reteaming him with Kim Woo Bin. The epic bromance they kindled in School 2013 would make the rivalry between their characters in this show all more intriguing.

• Episode 6. I hate when Kdrama girls start off tough and end up spineless. In the first episode, this show’s female lead didn't bat an eyelash before calling the cops on some guys who were harassing her. But by episode 6, she’s turned just as mute as her mother—she can't even come up with an answer when somebody asks her why she’s transferred. Doesn't “My family moved and I had a long commute to my old school” translate into Korean? Why must a girl who was once feisty lose all her self-confidence just so she can be the star?

• Episode 7. I swear Kim Eun Suk is stalking me. I post on Tuesday how pleasantly surprised I am that this show’s male lead isn’t a raving asshole, and here I am on Thursday eating my words. So far he’s called the female lead a loser, dragged her into a car against her will, and demanded that she obey him without giving any concrete evidence why she should do so. (And guess what? I’m all of five minutes into the episode. Maybe I’ll get lucky and the minotaur from American Horror story will show up and gore him.)

• Episode 8. The hair tie pull is definitely going to be one of the show’s big “romantic”moments, but somebody yanking out our your ponytail holder like that would have to really hurt.

• Episode 8. Kim Tan has a sweater collection rivaled only by Bill Cosby’s. I must say that the fluffy pink mohair cardigan in this episode really takes the cake. I don’t remember turning on RuPaul’s Drag Race, but here we are.

• Episode 8. There are like 50 youthful cast members in this show. Why is the script wasting time on the (boring, obnoxious) grownups when it’s never going to have enough time to flesh out all the kids?

• Episode 8. Finally, Park Shin Hye’s hugging skills (or lack thereof) are being put to good use. Her poor little rich boy stalker just stole her phone, and after some bickering proceeded to grab her. At last, all that practice turning into a statue while being hugged has paid off, because I haven’t seen someone look so awkward and uncomfortable since my parents sat me down to tell me they were getting a divorce.

• Episode 8. Not only are the skirts in this show’s school uniforms outrageously short, they’re somehow deeply unflattering. I think they might be cut a little higher on the sides, which leaves the middle hanging down lower. This makes all the girls look like they have the thighs of Olympic gymnasts.

• Episode 8. I can’t even count high enough to calculate how many dramas I’ve seen that have used the studio as a location. It was in Can We Get Married, The Thousandth Man, and possibly I’m Sorry, I Love You. The owners must rent it by the hour.

• Episode 8. Ah, the patented Lee Min Ho ambush kiss. Go figure, but it works better when the girl involved actually likes him.

• Episode 8. Scenes like this episode’s lunchroom confrontation really show how much promise this drama has. It was tense and both both well acted and well directed. Why the writer felt the need to fill the rest of the hour with random flower boys dancing and the politics of old people, I’ll never know. Your leads are finally coming into their own—use them!

• Episode 9. Unfortunately, I’m still finding Young Do as sexy as Kim Tan is boring. What’s wrong with me?!?

• Episode 19. I think one of the reasons why I’m enjoying this series so much is that it’s blissfully free of broad Kdrama comedy. I always like melodramas more than shows that want to be funny—and Heirs clearly has its heart set on making you cry by abusing body parts other than your funny bone.

• Episode 9. And welcome to the blatant product placement portion of our program…. Do you think there might be a new tablet on the market in Korea these days?

• Episode 9. Kim Tan’s mom looks at a brochure for a school seminar in this episode, and guess who’s pictured as one of the speakers? The (greasy, exsanguinated-looking) male lead from A Gentleman’s Dignity, the last show written by the screenwriter of Heirs. It would be cool if the name given matched up with his AGD character, but quite frankly I don’t care enough too pause and find out.

• Episode 9. We all mock Tan’s clothes, but here’s a somewhat unexpected revelation: Young Do and I have practically the same wardrobe. I’ve got a sweater just like the multicolored one he’s wearing in this scene, and also a dead ringer for the yellow one he wrote in an earlier episode. We have the same orange jacket, too. I’m not sure if this says more about him or me, though.

• Episode 9. Usually closed eyes are a sign that a kdrama kiss is going well. In this scene, though, that’s not true: Park Shin Hye’s eyes are clenched tight with something resembling panic, and her body language is of a type normally reserved for tarantula sightings. Is this supposed to be hot or something? To me it mostly smacks of sexual harassment with a chaser of partner abuse. Love is not this moment, that’s for sure

• Episode 9. How do they get Young Do’s hair to do that? Vaseline? Motor oil? That weird chocolate sauce that hardens the instant you put it on ice cream? All I know for sure is what it should be called: the Modified Donald Trump.

• Episode 10. This show is treating Tan as if he’s the good guy in his battle against Young Do. But here’s the thing: they’re both huge jerks who are terrible to the people around them.Tan might not be beating up underprivileged freshmen anymore, but he doesn’t give a shit about what happens to anyone but himself. (And possibly Eun Sang, whom he wants to control as is she were a child.) He walked into the office of Young Do’s dad knowing full well what he was doing. And yet we’re supposed to be rooting for him to win out? I guess it’s unsophisticated of me to want a male lead with some redeeming qualities, or at least a show that’s smart enough to realize it’s about a bad guy.

• Episode 10. This paintball scene wasn’t very good the last time I saw it, in last summer’s To the Beautiful You, and it certainly hasn’t improved with age. I can’t believe all these spoiled brats are actually camping, either. I was expecting this trip to involve a fancy resort, not tents. This show is truly where opportunity goes to die.

• Episode 10. Although I’ve always hated Kim Eun Suk’s chauvinistic, aggressively sexual male leads, up until now it has been the girls who really drove me away from her shows. Both Secret Garden and Gentleman’s Dignity featured women who were utterly impotent and spineless. They wailed Ottoeke and waited for men they didn’t like to force them into skinship, acting as little more than bait for their eccentric male leads. Because Park Shin Hye is so wonderfully relatable, though, she’s been able to play the same role with a sense of dignity and depth that neither of those older, more experienced actresses were able to manage. Even her character isn’t so bad—she’s scrappy and pragmatic, trying to make her own way in the world without the help of false friends. She’s the one thing that will keep me watching to the end, even in spite the hot mess all around her.

• Episode 11. My hatred for Kim Tan is really getting out of hand. He shows up for 30 seconds, whines about his manpain, and then leaves Eun Sang to her own devices. In the meanwhile, Young Do is being so sweet and cute that I can barely stand it. He’s intrigued by her as a human being, not as a possession the way Tan is. Excuse me while I go pray to Park Shi Hoo, the patron saint of the second male lead triumphant.

• Episode 11.When Kim Tan finally gets the girl (kind of) he’s like a dog that’s caught a car—it’s something he’s always wanted but he has no idea whatsoever what to do with it.

• Episode 11. Is it wrong that I like the leads’ moms together more than I like the leads as a couple? They’re actually this show’s best matched pair—one can’t talk and the other can’t shut up. The sight of Eun Sang’s mom stuffing a wad of paper in her mouth as she runs away from this fight is by far Heirs’ funniest moment.

• Episode 12. If only my television had some sort of Kim Tan-blocking function, I would have thoroughly enjoyed this episode. It was funny and finally spent some time exploring the relationships of the many secondary characters. Also: Kim Woo Bin, who is ripping my heart out with his performance as a sad, lonely little boy. Now if only he and Tan would stop fighting over Eun Sang like dogs over a bone...

• Episode 12. So I try to be all cool and nonchalant about this show, which objectively is mediocre at best. But that doesn’t mean I’m not hitting play on episode twelve every two minutes in hopes that it will miraculously start working. I actually think I may need to invent a new word to describe my relationship with Heirs. What would convey my complicated state of hate mixed with love mixed with frustration mixed with squee? Hovefuquee, perhaps?

• Episode 12. Just when I thought the hanky-sized uniform skits couldn’t look more ridiculous, they had to go and add long winter coats. As the band Cake taught us, short shirts and long jackets are a great combination. Short skirts that are a nanometer longer than short jackets, not so much.

• Episode 12. I wonder if these banks of lockers in the hallway are meant to make the school seem foreign and cosmopolitan. Most Kdrama lockers are inside classrooms, because in Korea it’s usually the teachers who move from classroom to classroom throughout the day, not the students. We Americans have hallway lockers like these, though.

• Episode 12. Forget that Lee Min Ho looks as much like a high schooler as I do. The worst part of him in this role is the kissing. Korea may think that tongue is inappropriate for teenagers, but this man can kiss so well it makes my knees weak even though I’m an entire hemisphere away. But here he is, giving his lead a kiss with about as much sizzle as the ones I shared with my grandmother. (Only my grandmother liked kissing me, unlike Kim Tan’s current victim.)

• Episode 12. This finale benefited enormously from not being set to “Love Is the Moment,” didn’t it? A fine episode, which left me feeling somewhat charitable even toward my archnemesis, Kim Tan. (Well, except for that part about throwing away 18 years of his mother’s suffering on a schoolboy whim without even consulting her. You are a bull in the china shop of emotion, young man.)

• Episode 13. Congratulations, Eun Sang! You’ve finally broken the tragic curse of the Park Shin Hye hug! For the first time ever, she’s not only the hugger rather than the hugee, she also looks as if vomiting isn’t the only thing on her mind. (And you even did it in a Kim Eun Sook drama, where skinship that isn’t creepy and forced is approximately as rare as flying, kpop-singing unicorns are in my neighborhood. And that’s pretty rare.)

• Episode 13. I think Dramafever is trying to protect our delicate sensibilities with the translation of one of Kim Tan’s lines in this episode. Their version is, “How could you ever be as strong as me?” But I’ve seen gifs from Viki floating around that show him saying something more like, “How could a woman like you ever be as strong as me?” A kind, thoughtful prince among men, that one.

• Episode 13. All along, people have been saying this show is like a sageuk transplanted into the modern world. I haven’t seen it, not being a fan of sageuks that don’t star Park Min Young pretending to be a boy. The scene with Young Do’s hand-drawn sketch of Kim Tan is what finally convinced me, though. In the few sageuks I’ve seen, characters are always being identified from ridiculous sketches that look nothing like them, just as happened here.

• Episode 13. Stop the presses! I think during this conversation with his fake mom Tan may have finally realized that he is not, after all, the center of the universe. Could it really be? He continues to be a self-obsessed twerp, but at least the show is torturing me a little less with dreamy Young Do scenes. Did they realize they’d taken things to far and viewers were starting to defect to the second lead’s side?

• Episode 13. The final ten minutes of this episode were jam packed with my very favorite thing about this show: tortured Young Do and his broken heart. He’s such a jerk but you can see that Eun Sang feels just as much pity as fear when he’s around. It’s nice that she’s gotten some of her fight back, and this firm but polite refusal of Young Do’s affections was just the right thing for her to do. (Well, the right thing to do would have been to ditch the whiner Kim Tan and run away Bora Bora with Byronic Young Do. But you know what I mean.)

• Episode 13. It’s like Kim Eun Sook read my mind when she wrote this episode. Kim Tan makes me want to flip tables, too!

• Episode 13. Dear Show: Are you aware that this episode’s big romantic moment seems to have taken place in front of a stripper pole? Sincerely, Amanda

• Episode 13. This drama is hardly a train wreck at all any more. At some point when I wasn’t paying attention it turned into a sweet and funny coming-of-age story set in a fully imagined, immersive world. In a way this is a good thing, but in another way I miss the old days, when mocking Heirswas more fun than watching it. Oh, well. I’m sure things will turn around soon—this is not the kind of show that will survive the extension they’re talking about giving it. [Finale note: While it didn’t get an extension, this show’s mid-run quality bump sure was a temporary thing.]

• Episode 14. So here’s when I become a true Young Do apologist: I keep thinking about the scene in the beginning of episode 14 when Kim Tan breaks the studio’s door to get to Young Do and Eun Sang. Kim Tan’s first thought wasn’t to verify Eun Sang’s safety or protect her—it was to beat the crap out of Young Do. (With a chair, that hooligan.) Young Do was the one who was primarily concerned about Eun Sang: He immediately maneuvered his body between her and the source of danger. (Aka, Kim Tan who’s just the sort of stupid blowhard who would hurt really someone he cared about in a fit of rage.)

• Episode 15. The mom-mance is so the best part of this show. Eun Sang’s mom unleashing her inner MacGyver alone has made it worth my time to watch the past 14 episodes.

• Episode 15. It looks as if Kim Tan’s big line about wearing the crown and bearing the crown is actually Empire High’s logo—it’s printed on Young Do’s gym shirt. (And probably on merchandise flooding Korean stores as I type.) Also, did these girls just bow to their gym teacher at the end of class? I usually prefer to make other gestures toward people who torture me on a professional basis.

• Episode 15. God, I can’t wait for this I-walked-through-a-wind-tunnel-backward hairstyle to go out of fashion. It looks especially awful on Kim Woo Bin, who wears it long enough to obscure part of his right eye. When Justin Beiber was wearing his hair like that I actually read articles about how it could permanently affect his vision and result in a lazy eye. Just say no, my little Woobie!

• Episode 15. This show had given us two nods to the previous roles if its actors: first Kim Tan said he’d hurt someone with a spoon—which is something Lee Min Ho actually did in City Hunter—and now we see Eun Sang making an exaggerated, Flower-Boy-Next-Door-y “I’m watching you” gesture. Well played, Heirs.

• Episode 15. Eun Sang called Young Do her dark knight earlier in this episode, and what do you know but he’s suddenly wearing a jacket with a collar and trim that look like the chain mail a fairytale knight might wear. (I’m going to sail this ship to the bottom of an ocean of tears.)

• Episode 15. So maybe the show is trolling us with Kim Tan’s wardrobe of hideous sweaters. I mean, what do fangirls do by nature if not think about ripping off their beloved’s clothes? How better to intensify this urge than to put him in something incredibly ugly? You have your visceral reaction to the hotness mixing with nausea at the sight of his fuzzy, cornflower-blue sweater. That’s a recipe for passion right there.

• Episode 15. Tan’s dad should have thought that two weeks thing through a little more. Or maybe he’s gunning for a grandson, because the family tree and issues of succession aren’t already complicated enough for him? Doing some basic math, I’d say two weeks would give him about thirty opportunities to hear the pitter-patter of little feet around the house again.

• Episode 16. Kim Eun Sook must have sensed that my hatred of Kim Tan was starting to wane, so she wrote a scene to really showcase what an ass he is and how terribly he treats Eun Sang. I hope someone in the classroom he just dragged her out of calls the police to report a kidnapping. (And then maybe sends cell phone video to the local television network.)

• Episode 16. It’s weird how many little parallels there are in Eun Sang’s relationships with Kim Tan and Young Do. They both poured drinks on the floor because of her, both made cute attempts to warm her hands, and both dumped the contents of her bag and rifled through them without her permission. I think maybe they really are soulmates.

• Episode 16. It seems Kim Tan wants a dog, not a girlfriend. “Stay where I tell you to stay,” he says. “Wait when I tell you to wait.” What a scumbag.

• Episode 16. Well, I was wrong. Lee Min Ho did get to use his slurpier kissing skills even though this is a high school show. The question is: was Eun Sang meant to look terrified through the whole thing, or was that just a side-effect of her being played by Park Shin Hye?

• Episode 16. My drama geometry fails me: If Rachel gets together with Hyo Shin—as is seeming more and more likely—who is my Young Do going to be with? (I’m available, Kim Eun Sook. Just FYI.) This show isn’t a totally traditional romance, but I still find it hard to imagine that most of the main characters won’t have a significant other by the time the finale rolls around.

• Episode 16. What’s up with the editing in this scene with Won and Tan at the restaurant? I think all the flashing is going to give me a seizure.

• Episode 16. This is finally the episode that’s going to make me expire with Young Do feels. He’s so desperately enamored with Eun Sang, and she’s finally realized he’s not such a bad guy, but it’s too late for him to earn her heart. (Unless Dad Vadar takes out a hit on Tan as revenge for his betrayal? That’s a happy ending I could get behind.)

• Episode 16. If this show could have some sort of retroactive episodectimy it would be much easier to love. The episodes set in America were an embarrassment and should have been left on the cutting room floor anyway, and the first few episodes in Korea weren’t much better. I say that we forget anything before episode 6 existed.

• Episode 16. Is it my imagination or did Eun Sang have no real motivation to do what she seems to have done at the end of this episode? I hope they go back and address this, and maybe explain how Dad Vadar figured out who Eun Sang’s mom owed money to. Did he take out an ad in the paper, or maybe consult the International League of People Who Sometimes Lend Money to Housemaids?

• Episode 17. It’s a good thing I’m resigned to never getting to watch Heirs on Dramafever’s premiere date, because it looks as if I’m never going to get to watch Heirs on Dramafever’s premiere date. For the fourth week in a row, I’m totally shut out. I hate to say it, but I hope the next drama I live watch is less popular. I assume a traffic overload is what’s messing up DF, and that’s getting pretty damn old.

• Episode 17. “I summon you.” Who would have thought I could be killed dead by three words? Choi Young Do you’ve got a way with my heart.

• Episode 17. Korea really is a different planet, isn’t it? The concept of cars having built-in surveillance devices in the form of “black boxes” has come up so often in dramas that I’m forced to believe it’s actually true. Maybe such a thing exists in luxury cars in America, but I’ve certainly never heard of it. People here would get all weirded out about privacy issues if they were common knowledge.

• Episode 17. Kim Tan, the girl actually had to leave the city to be safe from you, but you don’t even give her the courtesy of wearing your couples’ shoes on this ill-fated rescue and/or search and destroy mission? That’s extremely uncool.

• Episode 17. I wish this show had approached its story from a different angle: Kim Tan and Eun Sang meeting as grownups, years after the events of this drama took place. Usually kdramas separate young lovers much earlier than this, and it would have been interesting to see the repercussions of this complicated, star-crossed romance ten years down the road. Kim Tan would have gone back to America after this episode and become a famous English-language novelist, earning a mint from Hollywood for screen rights to his coming-of-age horror bestseller. (He’d be known as the John Hughes of slasher fiction, of course.) Eun Sang would be working at the movie’s Korean distributor, and Young Do would be her best friend/stymied lover. It would have been great.

• Episode 18. In a turn to rival the ramyun of tears from I’m Sorry, I Love You, Young Do finally gets his home-cooked meal, complete with a benevolent mother watching over to be sure he gets enough to eat. The fact that mom isn’t eating herself makes it all the more powerful—even though Young Do’s dad has to eat, he almost never makes time to do it with his son. But here’s this complete stranger with nothing to gain who’s dropping everything to just to keep him company. Maybe she should adopt him. (And then there could be a faux-cest sequel!)

• Episode 18. Am I alone in being distracted by Lee Min Ho’s weird ear disfigurement? I swear the upper edge of his right ear looks like Mike Tyson bit it. (Or maybe Eun Sang inflicted the injury during her last escape attempt?)

• Episode 18. “I can’t believe you studied all night,” said Kim Tan to Eun Sang. “Studying? Is that what you kids are calling it these days?” said Amanda to her television.

• Episode 18. Since watching this episode, it occurred to me that Won has done to Hyun Joo just what his dad did to Kim Tan’s mom. He’s barred her from his public life for the sake of his fortune, and expected her to freeze in place indefinitely for his convenience. She can’t tell people she’s in love with him, and has to live as single woman in a society that values marriage above most else. In contrast, Kim Tan’s fiery nature won’t allow him to live that way—everybody has to bend to his will, not the other way around. I bet he’s going to announce his engagement to Eun Sang at his party, and maybe Dad will get stuck. Her Cinderella story could become part of Jageuk lore, and she could become the face of the company in the media. He couldn’t very well send her to Antarctica then.

• Episode 19. Would you grownups please chill the heck out? They’re high schoolers. If you leave them to their own devices, they’ll date a few months and then break up. (Probably because Kim Tan is an obsessive jerk who’s more fun to think about than to be with.) Forbidden fruit is always the most desirable, and if you insist on turning this relationship into a melodrama you’re going to end up with a son working at a convenience store to support the passel of grandchildren he’ll give you before his twentieth birthday. Perspective, people!

• Episode 19. Like every boy ever, Lee Min Ho looks way better with his hair off his face. I’m afraid to say that this white-on-white tuxedo outfit is another story—he looks like a renegade member of Seoul’s ice capades troupe, poised to break into a Stayin’ Alive dance medley at any moment.

• Episode 19. Now I finally understand what Eun Sang sees in Kim Tan. “I don’t like romances,” she says in this episode. “I like horror movies.” Well, obviously she knows that at some point in their relationship Tan is going to chop off her arms and legs and keep her in a box like Sherilyn Fenn in Boxing Helena. That might be just what’s she’s looking for in a man.

• Episode 19. Young Do’s mom works at Secret Garden cafe? At the top of my fic wish list is now a story that involves Young Do and Eun Sang switching bodies after a visit to his mom. Imagine how much fun Young Do would have screwing with Kim Tan’s mind while in Eun Sang’s body? (But I bet he’d still let Tan get to third base.)

• Episode 20. I’m sure this Mango Six place paid a fortune to be featured in this show. What they should have considered, though, is that the female lead is always throwing away full cups of their product. If it was any good, wouldn’t people actually drink it?

• Episode 20. I suppose Young Do putting on the bandaid that Eun Sang have him is meant to show that he’s going to use the kindness he learned from her to heal himself and become a better man. But mostly it just makes me think he’s probably decided to take as his fashion muse Left Eye from TLC.

• Episode 20. Is it me or is Kim Tan’s dream sequence giving off some major Titanicvibes? I keep waiting for Leonardo DiCaprio to come down the stairs.

• Episode 20.Eun Sang is a lousy, cold-fish kisser even in Kim Tan’s dreams. That’s just sad.

• Episode 20. I’m glad Young Do got his own, non-love-triangle plot in the last few episodes, although I wish it had been more fleshed out. Any show that’s this overstuffed with characters has no choice but to be superficial, but they could have made more room for my baby by cutting that boring Kim Tan character altogether. Did Young Do move in with his mom? Did he really forgive her for not trying to see him? Did he ever let Eun Sang back in his life? Did his dad really go to prison? We’ll never know, because Heirs is officially over. And I’m actually kind of sad about that.

I sometimes think originality is overrated.

It’s a pretty standard assumption that the first is always the best, and that everything following afterward is a pale imitation. We think originators are motivated by the pure and noble spirit of creativity, while imitators are motivated by a failure of imagination or—even worse—money. As someone who has watched Jaws, Orca, and Piranha, I can say without reservation that this is sometimes true.

The more I watch Korean drama, though, the more I see an alternate interpretation: things can also start off as rough and unpolished, and repetition can be the thing that smoothes out the sharp edges and actually makes them good.

And now there’s My Love from Another Star. (Or You Who Came from the Stars. Whatever you call it, I’m sure you agree its title is ridiculous.) Its central premise may not be as easily categorized as some Korean dramas, but it draws so heavily on other shows that its script almost qualifies as an act of remixing.

For the sake of appreciation, here are some of the borrowings I’ve noticed in My Love from Another Star.

Korean dramas are stuffed to the gills with near (or actual) death experiences involving cars. If a character is to survive the run-in, it’s always thanks to the intervention of someone else—in this case, a smoking hot alien with superhuman powers. Ring any bells? How about Twilight’s Edward Cullen, a smoking hot vampire who first exposes his superhuman powers to his female lead when he saves her from a runaway truck.

How exactly Do Min Joon saves his female lead isn’t clear. Does he really have the ability to freeze time? Or is he simply so fast that his perspective of the speed of objects around him is different from ours? Like a hummingbird, he could be moving so fast that everything seems stuck in place. I lean toward this being the actual explanation—in episode two, a fellow alien was shown doing an effortless, midair somersault. It was as if he wasn’t used to gravity that was so weak, which might partially account for Do Min Joon’s super speed. His body evolved to work in a different environment, so for him walking around on earth might be as strangely weightless as it would be for a human astronaut to walk on the moon.

If this is the case, MLFAS would be in good company. True Blood and The Vampire Diaries are full of supernatural creatures moving so fast they’re just blurs to regular people, while the movie Clockstoppers revolved around a watch that made its wearer move so quickly everything else seemed still.

Although most Korean dramas are bite-sized compared to American television shows, they still tend to be too long for a true marathon—at more than 16 episodes, it’s actually a punishing experience to watch one from beginning to end in a few days. (Not that I haven’t done it.)

But 2011’s White Christmas is a different story: as part of KBS’s series of drama shorts, it’s only eight hours long. This well-reviewed miniseries is an atmospheric thriller detailing the horrible events that happen when a group of students stay at their demanding boarding school over winter break. Nowadays, White Christmas is especially notable for its casting. Among other familiar faces, it includes early career appearances from both Kim Woo Bin (my beloved Choi Young Do from Heirs) and Sung Joon (star of Shut Up: Flower Boy Band and the upcoming I Need Romance 3.)

As today is the first day of my own winter break that I actually have to myself without family or work responsibilities, I thought I’d use it for a true marathon. I’ll post updates and thoughts here as I go.

Note that the discussion of episodes 1 and 2 are fairly spoiler free, but from here on out I’m going to chart my theories about what’s going on. So if you don’t want to be spoiled, tread carefully!



8 am
With a mug of milky coffee and some toast, I settle down to start watching. I’m in full-on Dok Mi regalia—fleece pajamas, wool socks, and a fluffy sweater. As all marathoners know, comfort is key.



8:04
Why look who shares a screen during the opening credits! For a change, I’m actually pretty unspoiled going into this drama. I had thought that Kim Woo Bin and Sung Joon must play the leads, but it looks as if that’s not the case—other actors had screens to themselves. Also, I’m a little concerned about possible foreshadowing here. Some frames in the opening credits seemed to offer hints about what’s to come. One guy had pills, for example. What might it mean for my boyfriends that they’re shown in front of what looks like blood spatters from bullets to the head? (Or is my concern on this front just evidence that I’ve watched too many zombie movies lately?)



8:19
In spite of its (insanely) rigorous focus on academics, I think this school is a failure. In the opening narration, one of its students mentions that the building is a glass pyramid based on Paris’s Louvre Museum. I snoozed through most of geometry class back in the day, but I see no pyramids here. What I do see is a creepily isolated building that’s like a modernist take on the Overlook Hotel in the Shining.  The looming mountains in the background dwarf this manmade structure, threatening to consume everything before them. Being profoundly alone can be a scary thing, and with its barren landscape this show is already taking advantage of our human unease at the prospect of emptiness.

(P.S.: Any suggestions for Mac-friendly screenshot software? I’m using Grab but it sucks to have to open the file in another program to save it as a jpg.)



8:41
This opening sequence is powerfully atmospheric and foreboding. It uses darkness in the way other shows use light, obscuring the world it’s creating instead of revealing it. Everything in this cavernous, window-walled room is concealed by the black night, with the single exception of this dinner table, lit up as if it were on stage. In the daytime, this room would be conducive to sight—with no real walls or partitions, you could see far into the distance both inside and outside. But now, all that dark is filling in the blank spaces, leaving the characters exposed to a world they can’t see. They’re at the strange crossroads between blind and sighted, and the occasional forays the show makes into handheld footage only increases the feeling. Through the camera lens, you can see only in front of you—there is no periphery, and as its attention swirls from character to character, you’re left painfully aware of the hidden edges of existence.



9:10
I don’t know how this show can sustain 8 hours of this deliberate pacing and eerie vibe—or even if it plans to. I just hope it doesn’t get too scary. One of the Christmas Day traditions in my family involves watching horror movies, and I’m still freaked out from yesterday’s viewing of The Conjuring. Should I go buy a nightlight now?

9:22
So far, this show is almost perfect. I have to say, though, that all the meaningful glances being exchanged with the camera make things feel slightly overwrought. Come on…nothing bad has even happened yet. Why are a bunch of high school kids—a group known for their bravado—getting spooked out and treating each other like suspects in a game of Clue? Another pressing question at this point is whether I’ll actually be able to do a posting marathon of this show in one day. I’ve been watching for an hour and half, but thanks to writing and taking screen caps I’m only twenty minutes into the first episode. I don’t understand how people who post real recaps manage to write them up in less than two million hours.



9:47
It’s easy to see why they wanted Lee Soo Hyuk in the cast of Vampire Idol—with his narrow, sharp face he really does look like an alien being. In fact, he’s so uncanny looking that I don’t even think he’s attractive. (Which, frankly, is probably just as well—I bet I’m old enough to be his mother.) It’s funny that unusual faces seem to be so much more accepted among Korean actors than actresses. Most of the women in the industry seem interchangeable, with their tiny chins, double-lidded eyes, and perfect straight noses. But their male counterparts are allowed to be a bit more different, if you look beyond the requisite chocolate abs. I don’t think the idiosyncratic, nonstandard female equivalent of Lee Soo Hyuk would ever make it on screen.

10:27
Like the drama Nine, this show is obsessed with mirrors and other reflective surfaces. Practically every scene includes someone’s reflection, a decision that I think is meant to make us consider personal identity and the many different facets inherent in every person. In the screen grab above, the character of Yoon Su appears three separate times—once as his true self in a human form, and twice as one-dimensional representations of that self. It’s a little like the dinner table discussion about whether “monsters” are created by nature or nurture. Do people commit atrocities because their body chemistry is different from everyone else’s? Or is it because their mom didn’t read them enough bedtime stories? (The show’s take on this was “because their mother was irresponsible.” Ouch.) Nobody knows how character is forged, so it’s open to multiple interpretations, as represented by all the different versions of each character that exist in so many scenes. Another interesting use of mirrors in this show was the early moment that showed a row of framed portraits of award-winning students, followed by a mirror with the label: “Next is…” Although it’s intended to be inspirational, this mirror is vaguely threatening—“next” to what? To be an academic success? To be a murderer? To be murdered? There are infinite possibilities in that open statement, but unavoidable conclusions are that you can’t hide from the future, or from yourself.


11:08
Even if they’re pretty, the camerawork in most Korean dramas is workmanlike at best. White Christmas is a startling exception to that rule: the cinematography adds enormously to the content and atmosphere of this show. In this scene, we follow a female student down a flight of stairs as an unsettling folk song drones in the background, sung in the disquiting voice of a child. The moment is at once utterly open and utterly claustrophobic—we see the girl from the tiny space between a wall and the stair railing, but above her stretches forever into bright sunshine hardly interrupted by the structure of the building. It’s sort of like life in high school, which is why the setting for this show is so genius: everything is possible and undetermined, but you’re trapped in this narrow little world of school and work. You can see forever, but you’re frozen in place.


11:22
In the West, the color white has connotations of purity and freshness. It’s wedding dresses and picket fences and doctor’s coats. But in Eastern traditions, white has a another connotation: death. Interesting that this show is called White Christmas, and that its characters are so often adrift in a sea of bright snow. Also, how about that obelisk? Freud said that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but it’s pretty hard not to see this as a phallic symbol. The only female character in the entire drama  lies sprawled beneath it like a snow angel, apparently having slit her wrists after being reminded of a boy who once stalked her. It’s all that male aggression and sharp, unyielding force that drove her to this point, perhaps believing that she’ll never be free of his obsession with her.


Sincerely,
Amanda



11:41
Kim Woo Bin’s character is obviously supposed to be badass in this show. They’ve been hinting at his existence throughout this episode, playing AC/DC’s “Back in Black” and flashing snippets of his dorm room. Now he finally appears in the final few minutes, complete with punky magenta hair and rockstar swagger. (Note, also, that we go from the menacing phallic symbol in the snow to a shot of a glistening, practically naked boy who has no head. I see what you’re doing there, show, and I like it.) However, I can’t forget one of those earlier glimpses of his room, where an Abba poster was plainly visible. Is this show’s big bad a fan of “Dancing Queen” or what?

11:52—Episode 1 ends
So far, White Christmas has lived up to the Internet’s glowing praise. It’s an intriguingly crafted mystery with noir touches, slowly revealing its secrets and relentlessly building an ever-heightening sense of dread. As it has taken me all morning to get through this one episode, though, I suspect that this won’t be a one-day marathon after all. (Damn your siren call, you stupid blog.) I’m headed off to get dressed lest the plow arrive while I’m in my pjs—there’s no way I’m going out to move my car in pajamas with tiny dogs printed on them. I’ll be back shortly to start episode 2.


2:04
The kids who attend this huge, gorgeous school sure have to make some big sacrifices. They’re stuck in the middle of nowhere and forced to do nothing but study for four years—and they’re being recorded by Big Brother all the while. The show has made it clear that nobody is ever far from a piece of surveillance equipment, and also that they’re all well aware of this fact. In the first episode, one of the characters mentioned solving the mystery of the letters by rolling back the video footage. But the only one who’s really managed to make the spyware work for him is “Mad” Mi Reu, who has figured out how to tap into it in his dorm room. Guess he really is a genius after all, even if he isn’t willing to work for good grades.

2:14 
White Christmas was an incredible opportunity for these young actors, most of whom had only a few credits to their names before the series aired. It’s not every day a Kdrama is set entirely in the world of young people without making them share screen time with the older generation. While focusing almost exclusively on its younger characters, White Christmas avoids easy stereotypes—there are no spoiled chaebol sons, no hardworking poor girls, no bitchy mean girls. Instead, each role requires the person who’s playing it to be many shades of grey. As the mysterious black letters are always reminding us, nobody on campus is an innocent victim, just as nobody htere is blameless. So far, the cast is doing a great job. There is one dead spot, though: The male lead. This is partly a character issue—Park Mul Yoo is completely bland. He’s walking through the show peering at other people, not examining himself, which almost turns him into another one of the never-ending mirrors. He’s present in every scene without bringing to them anything of his own. On the other hand, I’ve seen enough of Baek Sung Hyun elsewhere to know that he himself isn’t helping matters—blandness comes naturally to him. I’m of course not surprised that Kim Woo Bin is fabulous bringing his dangerous charm and expressive face to bear as Mi Reu, a role that gives him a chance to go big instead of reigning things in as he did as Choi Young Do in Heirs. But the real revelation for me so far is Lee Soo Hyuk, who tempers the cold, distant character he usually plays with Yoon Su’s delicate brokenness. Part drug-adled basket case and part angry young man, he’s just the tortured angel the show needed. (But Sung Joon’s indifferent perfectionist is obviously the bad guy. Right? He was the one who told Mul Yoo that each line in the poem referred to a separate person, after all.)

Random fact: This sign across from the nurse’s office reads “Suffering life makes us rise.” As school mottos go, that's quite the step down from the one in Heirs: “He who wears the crown must endure its weight.” I wonder if it’s significant that Mi Reu’s fingers are all green in this scene...

3:39—Episode 2 ends
Well, I’ve managed to pick up the pace a bit. This episode continues to play with light and dark, both physically and metaphorically. While the school is always either drenched in blinding sunlight or bathed with inky shadows, the characters continue to be ambiguous—they’re all both a little bit threatening and a little bit threatened. Reflections and altered selves are still everywhere, from mirrors and windows to television sets and hallucinations. We’ve just had what seems to be a big, menacing reveal about the teacher, although I bet he’s actually just protecting Mi Reu from the principal. Beyond this, the show has still given us only the slightest insight into some of it’s most intriguing characters—there’s no way the psychologist is there by accident. Is this a BoF-style revenge mission? (And did he hypnotize the girl into slitting her wrists?) We’ll see, as I pick up with episode 3 in a few minutes.



4:20
Somehow my file names for this drama are in another language—Vietnamese, maybe?—and I keep mismatching the video and subtitle versions of each episode. I only realize when some impossible combination appears on screen, sending me back to the beginning. This is just another reason why I prefer to watch shows through legitimate streaming sites like Dramafever whenever I can. But as far as I know, White Christmas is only available illegally. (It was once part of the offerings on Mvibo.com. I’m not sure if it still is, though—I can’t get that site to work at all anymore. Not that this is a great loss. They never bothered much with English subtitles over there.)

5:06
It’s so bizarre and wonderful that Yoon Su is often shown perched in high places. It gives his Angelnickname another meaning—he’s a character who’s always in the clouds. (And as always with this show, that’s true both literally and metaphorically. Here he’s sun-dappled and near the sky, but normally his head is in another cloud: the one provided by drugs.) It also reminds me of the angels in the German movie Wings of Desire. Well played, Mr. Director.



6:31
The one thing White Christmas is lacking at this point is a real sense of urgency. Because nothing really bad has happened—like the girl said in this episode, most of the fracas has been about little, personal things—the show doesn’t have the kind of stakes that would make it fully compelling for me. And yes, getting those stakes would probably require someone to die, or at least be seriously injured. What can I say? Like Cha Eun Sang, I grew up on bloodthirsty 80s movies. I want at least two promiscuous coeds dead by the end of the first act.


6:58
As I’m getting everything I wish for in relation to this show, let me bring up one more concern. It’s a pity that there’s only one girl in this cast of thousands, and this problem is only exacerbated by the fact that she spends most of her time moping or being protected. She’s almost existing in a separate plot outside of the mystery of the letters—she pops up now and again as an object someone wants to possess, makes a crack or two, and then disappears for the next half hour. Upon further reflection, I’ve decided that the psychologist is actually the father of the boy who died, and he’s carefully orchestrated this whole setup for revenge. Because she’s spending a lot of time caring for him, she’ll probably be the first to realize what’s happened. So instead of blowing the whistle next time, how about she saves the day?

7:06—Episode 3 ends
The show is really ratcheting up the tension as it nears the halfway point. I should be able to squeeze in one more episode before bed, but the jury is out about whether I’ll continue to post like this tomorrow. (But I’ll definitely watch the rest of the show!) How is it possible that I’ve been watching TV since 8 am but only made it through 3 episodes?

8:00
After spending far too much time running around pouring white vinegar and baking soda down sink drains (try it—you’ll like it!), I’m back for episode 4. Better not be too creepy, as the sun has long set...

8:06
No image for this comment, as the most appropriate shot would be a serious spoiler. But how is it that none of these privileged high school kids has a cell phone? For a decade, it has been impossible to film a thriller without addressing this issue. Does the school have a no-phone policy? Is it located in a cellular dead zone? I’d be surprised if the latter was true; although there are lots of places in America without cell service, I bet that’s not true in South Korea these days.

8:53
At this point, he seems to be the only Korean who’s definitely innocent of the crime—I know the military bent a lot of rules for him, but I don’t think they gave him leave to go torment some high schoolers during a winter storm. Well, they probably didn’t, anyway.

9:37—Episode four ends
As the day progressed, I clearly lost the will to post. White Christmas continues to be a fantastic puzzle box of a mystery, though, having moved from its thoughtful, atmospheric opening episodes into a thrilling, action-packed midsection. It’s a pity that, like Wife’s Credentials, this drama is so hard to come by. It’s something that newcomers to Kdrama would really enjoy, and if it ever made it onto Netflix would almost certainly build a devoted international following.

I have no idea what this episode’s talk of doppelgängers meant, but it sure was fun to see Sung Joon playing a dispassionate Sherlock type, complete with a self-satisfied smirk whenever he confirmed his suspicions about something. Was his comment about seeing his double an acknowledgment that he had killed the boy, and had recognized the psychiatrist as another killer?

Now that the show has confirmed who the killer was, I’m not sure what the remaining four episodes will hold. I can’t wait to find out, though.

Signing off for the night, this is Amanda.