Lovers, eps 2-7
Jan. 10th, 2008 01:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganbmooreNow, let me get this straight...am I actually watching a kdrama where, not only am I not manipulated into hating the secondary female, but where it's made virtually impossible to not sympathize with, if not like, her? Oh, say it's so. Seriously, if this drama starts trying to make me dislike Yu Min, I may throw something.
Meanwhile, I continue to regularly space out staring atHwangbo Yoon Kang Jae. He is such a masculine manly man that not even kdrama lipstick can bring him down. Unlike Sae Yeon, who, while quite pleasant looking, is very much conquered by the lipstick. Not to mention that Very Unfortunate first introduction, where he was all pasty in the bubble bath. Kang Jae, however, is not remotely pasty, as the drama regularly reminds us by having him in white tank tops(I'm particularly fond of the scene where he goes "you're cold" to Mi Joo and whips off his coat, and we see he's wearing a heavy leather coat with only a white tank top underneath.) (I refuse to call them "wifebeaters" as I seriously dislike that term.) Then there's the part where he gets stabbed and we regularly see him in various stages of undress, the angsting in the shower, and the running in all sorts of clothing. Granted, it's about 1/100th the fanservice in Taiyou no Kisetsu, but as my reaction there is to want to bundle Takizawa Hideaki up before he catches a cold and I have nothing resembling that reaction here, it goes a lot further.
Speaking of which, one of my absolute favorite scenes is when he's recuperating from the stabbing at Mi Joo's father's place, and she brings him one of her father's ridiculously flowered shirts to wear. He forces Underling #2(he has 2 chief underlings...I don't know their names...Underling #1 is a slightly older guy with glasses who is quite bright and micromanaging and recognizes that a doctor is a keep when he sees one, and Underling #2 is a nice, bright young man who's probably a little too nice and serious for his profession, but is quite badass when he needs to be) to trades shirts with him. Underling #2 is buttoning up the flowery shirt and looking like he wants to die and almost sighing and Kang Jae goes "What, you want to trade?" and Underling #2 immediately starts unbuttoning, then realizes it was sarcasm and says he thought it would look better inside out. This scene was almost immediately follow by a gratuitous and manipulative scene of handsome mobsters with sparkling white shirts playing with little kids. Clearly, the shirt emergency didn't last long.
There was also a very fun bit on the island where suddenly, half the episode turned into an action movie with fights and boat chases and garden party invasions and damsels in distress. I THINK it also featured Shek Sau, one of my favorite TVB secondary actors, as an Evil Chinese Triad Boss. Neither his d-wiki bio or the Lovers page there mentions it, but I think it was him.
Incidentally, for a modern drama, the figt scenes are pretty well choreographed, despite the shaky camerawork and the blurred motion, which are clearly meant to convey "LOOK! FRANTIC TENSE ACTION!"
Of course, doramas are rather known for amazingly fake looking fight scenes, so it isn't very hard to top most.
Mi Joo remains an awesome heroine. She is, as I said actually an adult, not a girl. She has a career and a life and plenty of guts, and enough spine to share with the other female characters. She is also given flaws. Not "oh, you love her ever so much for having *insert random quality*" She's actually shown to be someone that probably annoys most people around her at some time, but all in all is more fun to be around than anything else. She also isn't pining after or chasing Kang Jae...he's hot, but he has a girlfriend, end of story. I do have one problem, though, and that's that she lost her job. It's particularly annoying because, not only did they not try to come up with any excuse beyond "well, she was too good at it and her boss was a bitch," but it was clearly to put her in the position of needing to be financially "saved by Kang Jae. Why bother giving me a heroine who, against the norm, was a financially independent, successful woman, and then take that away and insert the cliche of the poor heroine and her family needing to be rescued by the rich hero? So far, though, that and one other thing are all I really have problems with(I'll get to the other in a moment.)
The secondaries, also, escape the usual cliches. Instead of trying to force Kang Jae to stay with her, it's actually Yu Min who wants to end the relationship. He's never, as near as she can tell, going to leave the mob, will never put her first, and will never realize that she'd rather have the man with her full time than than a bunch of shiny things thrown at her feet, and the man only every third weekend. She's doing her best to move on and get over him when she learns she's pregnant, and then has to decide what to do. Which brings us to my second problem: the baby. Now, even without any writeups or spoilers or anything, we know Kang Jae is going to end up with Mi Joo. Now, we can have our romantic hero be a mobster, but we can't have him dumping his pregnant girlfriend unless it's not his, something that I don't see them doing. Therefore, we're left with her leaving him and either disappearing with the baby or hooking up with something else, both of which, I think, would add far more complications than this drama is willing to deal with. The only other option is miscarriage. Which means it essentially boils down to the fact that Yu Min is pregnant for extra excuses at angst.
But lets move on to Sae Yeon(or is it Sae Hyon? Oh well...) Most kdrama secondary males spend all their time pining after the heroine. Not here, though. Sae Yeon does his fair share of wooing, but it's not his whole life. If he ends up with Mi Joo, permanently or for a little while, great. It's what he wants to happen. Meanwhile, he also has a life, and is more concerned with finally getting his father to notice him, and hopefully finally view him as at least and equal to Kang Jae, who he's always been found lacking in comparison to.
Speaking of Mob Papa, the boys seriously need to buy a clue. It could not be any more obvious that he set them up to compete against each other as his heir from the minute they met. Bringing home a random kid and saying he's a member of the family, then blatantly favoring him over your son? Can't be more obvious. Besides which, I figure we'll eventually learn that Kang Jae is the son of Mob Papa's Lost True Love, and probably Mob Papa's kid, too. They're also careful to not really favor either guy in the flashbacks. While we're meant to sympathize with Kang Jae, he also seems to have an instant dislike for Sae Yeon, before the other even opens his mouth, and there's a bit of a punk to him. Meanwhile, though clearly a brat, Sae Yeon has clearly spent his life trying to get any attention at all from his father, only to be ignored, and then suddenly his father brings home this random kid and trying him more like a son than he ever treated his own kid? He may have reacted badly and wrongly, but you can't really blame him.
Really, though, they need to get over being teens who don't like each other, recognize Mob Papa's machinations for what they are, and team up against him and take over.
It is also, for its plot, relatively light on the angst. It's also holding off on the romance. Though the eventual outcome is clear, right now, they're only slowly getting used to each other, while he, rightly, tries to salvage a relationship with a woman he's loved for years, even though he can probably tell it's over. They are, for once, growing and developing as individuals, rather than as future lovers, before the romantic angsting starts.
I also find myself in a rare(for me) quandary: I want to ship Sae Yeon 2 ways. On the one hand, Yu Min is his first love, and he's still carrying a torch. It would be nice if he could "win" against Kang Jae for once, and get the girl he's always adored. Plus, I'll be kinda pissed of Yu Min ends up alone and/or pathetic, just to make the OTP happy. On the other hand, I adore his secretary/business partner/casual sex partner(no idea what her name is.) When she confronts Mi Joo, it's not "Oh I'm seething jealous and I hate hate hate you for stealing my man!" but "Look, I know this guy. You won't last and then he'll come back to me, because I'm the fun no-strings-girl, so why don't you go ahead and dump him so I can start having sex with him again, ok?" She also holds her own against his psychotic mother and trades her insult for insult, despite being dragged by her hair, called a whore, and wearing nothing more than a bath towel. Sadly, while they have the potential to be an OTP that rules the world, I don't think either has any interest in more than the casual. (His father is an idiot for never trusting him or giving him a chance, seriously. If he and Kang Jae get over it and join forces, they'd probably rule Korea in a year.) Ah well.
On a final note: can anyone who's seen this tell me where I may have seen Sae Hyon's mother before? I swear I've seen her somewhere before and liked her, but can't remember where.
Meanwhile, I continue to regularly space out staring at
Speaking of which, one of my absolute favorite scenes is when he's recuperating from the stabbing at Mi Joo's father's place, and she brings him one of her father's ridiculously flowered shirts to wear. He forces Underling #2(he has 2 chief underlings...I don't know their names...Underling #1 is a slightly older guy with glasses who is quite bright and micromanaging and recognizes that a doctor is a keep when he sees one, and Underling #2 is a nice, bright young man who's probably a little too nice and serious for his profession, but is quite badass when he needs to be) to trades shirts with him. Underling #2 is buttoning up the flowery shirt and looking like he wants to die and almost sighing and Kang Jae goes "What, you want to trade?" and Underling #2 immediately starts unbuttoning, then realizes it was sarcasm and says he thought it would look better inside out. This scene was almost immediately follow by a gratuitous and manipulative scene of handsome mobsters with sparkling white shirts playing with little kids. Clearly, the shirt emergency didn't last long.
There was also a very fun bit on the island where suddenly, half the episode turned into an action movie with fights and boat chases and garden party invasions and damsels in distress. I THINK it also featured Shek Sau, one of my favorite TVB secondary actors, as an Evil Chinese Triad Boss. Neither his d-wiki bio or the Lovers page there mentions it, but I think it was him.
Incidentally, for a modern drama, the figt scenes are pretty well choreographed, despite the shaky camerawork and the blurred motion, which are clearly meant to convey "LOOK! FRANTIC TENSE ACTION!"
Of course, doramas are rather known for amazingly fake looking fight scenes, so it isn't very hard to top most.
Mi Joo remains an awesome heroine. She is, as I said actually an adult, not a girl. She has a career and a life and plenty of guts, and enough spine to share with the other female characters. She is also given flaws. Not "oh, you love her ever so much for having *insert random quality*" She's actually shown to be someone that probably annoys most people around her at some time, but all in all is more fun to be around than anything else. She also isn't pining after or chasing Kang Jae...he's hot, but he has a girlfriend, end of story. I do have one problem, though, and that's that she lost her job. It's particularly annoying because, not only did they not try to come up with any excuse beyond "well, she was too good at it and her boss was a bitch," but it was clearly to put her in the position of needing to be financially "saved by Kang Jae. Why bother giving me a heroine who, against the norm, was a financially independent, successful woman, and then take that away and insert the cliche of the poor heroine and her family needing to be rescued by the rich hero? So far, though, that and one other thing are all I really have problems with(I'll get to the other in a moment.)
The secondaries, also, escape the usual cliches. Instead of trying to force Kang Jae to stay with her, it's actually Yu Min who wants to end the relationship. He's never, as near as she can tell, going to leave the mob, will never put her first, and will never realize that she'd rather have the man with her full time than than a bunch of shiny things thrown at her feet, and the man only every third weekend. She's doing her best to move on and get over him when she learns she's pregnant, and then has to decide what to do. Which brings us to my second problem: the baby. Now, even without any writeups or spoilers or anything, we know Kang Jae is going to end up with Mi Joo. Now, we can have our romantic hero be a mobster, but we can't have him dumping his pregnant girlfriend unless it's not his, something that I don't see them doing. Therefore, we're left with her leaving him and either disappearing with the baby or hooking up with something else, both of which, I think, would add far more complications than this drama is willing to deal with. The only other option is miscarriage. Which means it essentially boils down to the fact that Yu Min is pregnant for extra excuses at angst.
But lets move on to Sae Yeon(or is it Sae Hyon? Oh well...) Most kdrama secondary males spend all their time pining after the heroine. Not here, though. Sae Yeon does his fair share of wooing, but it's not his whole life. If he ends up with Mi Joo, permanently or for a little while, great. It's what he wants to happen. Meanwhile, he also has a life, and is more concerned with finally getting his father to notice him, and hopefully finally view him as at least and equal to Kang Jae, who he's always been found lacking in comparison to.
Speaking of Mob Papa, the boys seriously need to buy a clue. It could not be any more obvious that he set them up to compete against each other as his heir from the minute they met. Bringing home a random kid and saying he's a member of the family, then blatantly favoring him over your son? Can't be more obvious. Besides which, I figure we'll eventually learn that Kang Jae is the son of Mob Papa's Lost True Love, and probably Mob Papa's kid, too. They're also careful to not really favor either guy in the flashbacks. While we're meant to sympathize with Kang Jae, he also seems to have an instant dislike for Sae Yeon, before the other even opens his mouth, and there's a bit of a punk to him. Meanwhile, though clearly a brat, Sae Yeon has clearly spent his life trying to get any attention at all from his father, only to be ignored, and then suddenly his father brings home this random kid and trying him more like a son than he ever treated his own kid? He may have reacted badly and wrongly, but you can't really blame him.
Really, though, they need to get over being teens who don't like each other, recognize Mob Papa's machinations for what they are, and team up against him and take over.
It is also, for its plot, relatively light on the angst. It's also holding off on the romance. Though the eventual outcome is clear, right now, they're only slowly getting used to each other, while he, rightly, tries to salvage a relationship with a woman he's loved for years, even though he can probably tell it's over. They are, for once, growing and developing as individuals, rather than as future lovers, before the romantic angsting starts.
I also find myself in a rare(for me) quandary: I want to ship Sae Yeon 2 ways. On the one hand, Yu Min is his first love, and he's still carrying a torch. It would be nice if he could "win" against Kang Jae for once, and get the girl he's always adored. Plus, I'll be kinda pissed of Yu Min ends up alone and/or pathetic, just to make the OTP happy. On the other hand, I adore his secretary/business partner/casual sex partner(no idea what her name is.) When she confronts Mi Joo, it's not "Oh I'm seething jealous and I hate hate hate you for stealing my man!" but "Look, I know this guy. You won't last and then he'll come back to me, because I'm the fun no-strings-girl, so why don't you go ahead and dump him so I can start having sex with him again, ok?" She also holds her own against his psychotic mother and trades her insult for insult, despite being dragged by her hair, called a whore, and wearing nothing more than a bath towel. Sadly, while they have the potential to be an OTP that rules the world, I don't think either has any interest in more than the casual. (His father is an idiot for never trusting him or giving him a chance, seriously. If he and Kang Jae get over it and join forces, they'd probably rule Korea in a year.) Ah well.
On a final note: can anyone who's seen this tell me where I may have seen Sae Hyon's mother before? I swear I've seen her somewhere before and liked her, but can't remember where.
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-10 03:12 pm (UTC)Btw, you are never supposed to start to dislike secondary female. I never did, either, which is a huge thing for me, because you know how I get about OTP interferers.
Re: Mi Joo being financially saved by Kang Jae. Yes, but she remains 'saved' due to her own competence, which is cool.
The floral shirt bit made me LOL like mad.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-10 05:31 pm (UTC)The whole thing about OTP interferers is a huge chunk of my problems with kdramas. I don't like being blatantly manipulated into disliking a person when it's obvious that it's only happening to make me want the OTP more...make me want the OTP on their own merits, not because I dislike a 3rd party. (Then there's the whole double standard, where we're supposed to like the other guy)
I'm just annoyed they manipulated it into the "he saves her financially" cliche, period. It made no sense and was obviously there to insert the cliche.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-10 04:41 pm (UTC)Anyway...the thing i get with Yoo Min is that I don't dislike her, but I want her to love herself more. There is no point in hanging round a man who doesn't love you anymore. And it's later on in the series where she makes a comment about knowing KJ and his lifestyle...but as far as i can tell, it's more a case of knowing that he is a mobster, instead of seeing what he gets up to, like Mi Joo.
I confess to hoping that Sae Yoon's secretary gets together with him. She holds her own against his mother, and actually seems to understand him better than he does himself.
I also can't take my eyes of KJ...i watched DAMO, this and Freeze all after one another...slightly overdosed on Lee Seo Jin and the dimples! hee!!! i always found it amusing that he looks all bundled up in the cold (he has this really nice grey jumper) but MJ just has these little items of knitwear on!
no subject
Date: 2008-01-10 05:22 pm (UTC)The secretary is basically made of awesome, and definately knows him better than he knows himself.
And of course he's more bundled up. It's so he can ransmly strip of pieces of clothing and give them to her.