Top 10 Most Underrated Dramas - Que Sera Sera

[dangermousie]

Candidate N3 in Top 10 Most Underrated Dramas is one of my all-time favorite kdramas, a vastly underrated 2007 gem Que Sera Sera, starring Eric Mun and Jung Yumi.

QSS is that rare beast - a passionate, dark, messy, fully grown up, very physical kdrama. In a kdrama world, where even 40-somethings often act as pure as kids in love and where heroes and heroines are usually unequivocally good, QSS is unusual indeed. The drama QSS reminds me most of is Bali, only if Bali added a lot more physical passion and a lot more hope.

The plot is pretty simple at first glance - QSS follows the interactions of a group of people but at the center of it all are Eun Soo (Jung Yumi) and Tae Jo (Eric Mun), a completely impossible pair of dysfunctional lovers. I don't mean impossible in a traditional kdrama sense - there are no opposing parents or deathly illness. No, they are impossible in the sense that when you watch them destroy everything - themselves, each other, innocent bystanders, you want to take them aside and try to convince them they are better off without each other. Only - you know it's not true - they may be dysfunctional together but they cannot exist apart. Eun Soo is a naive, unworldly girl at the start of the story. She is sheltered and emotionally needy - ripe pickings for the first smooth talker who comes her way. And the first man whom she meets and gloms onto in the big bad Seoul isn't just anyone - it's Tae Jo, a good-looking, charming, emotionally hollow man who supplements his meager middle-class income by sleeping with rich bored women who shower him with gifts - a sort of a dilettante gigolo. Eun Soo is entirely not Tae Jo's type - she is poor, dowdy, and inexperienced. And Tae Jo is definitely not someone Eun Soo should meddle with - she is not familiar with games Tae Jo enjoys as easily as breathing. And yet the two find themselves irreistably drawn to each other - Tae Jo is drawn in by Eun Soo's emotional openness and ability to be hurt (so different from the women he plays with) and Eun Soo is wallowing in her romantic fantasy of the good-looking man paying attention to her.

Of course, nothing is so simple. Tae Jo is terrified of opening emotionally and of commitment. It's a question mark as to whether he can be capable of love at all. And being pushed away and discarded brings out the latent complexity and darkness in Eun Soo and soon she is matching Tae Jo hurt for hurt, lie for lie. Throw in a pair of stepsiblings trying to fight a latent attraction to each other and the most dysfunctional love quadrangle ever is set.

The relationships and feelings are equally messy but, no matter what, the story revolves around Eun Soo and Tae Jo - two people who cannot live together, but who cannot live without each other, either, drawn back together as much by their matching dysfunction as by lust. Ah yes, lust. It is perhaps the most physically passionate drama I have ever seen. Eric Mun and Jung Yumi have insane chemistry. Insane. And the drama takes advantage of it - there is more kissing, make-outs and physical contact in QSS than there is in another 20 dramas put together. This drama is delicious - like very dark, bitter chocolate. As I have said, it pulls no punches. Almost every character does something truly despicable before the drama ends. At one time or another during the running time, I hated each of the main quartet. And yet I ended the drama loving and pitying them all.

The acting knocks it out of the ballpark. I have never liked Eric Mun in any other drama but in QSS he drops his usual goofball drama persona to play someone broken and damaged on a very basic level and it blew me away. He is also sex on legs in this - so very strongly masculine you can see why Eun Soo abandons her common-sense to get involved with him. This is the only drama in which I have seen Jung Yumi but I loved her - her unusual looks fit perfectly but what really got me was the feeling of high-strung fragility, of repressed energy. Lee Kyu Han is more known for playing second-string jerks but he knocks it out of the park as a reserved, controlled man who is, perhaps, the best person in the quadrangle. Yoon Ji-Hye takes what could be seen as a typical secondary girl role and turns it into something else - needy and sad.

My favorite scene? Oh, this is so hard. Probably, the scene of Tae Joo shaking and sobbing dryly, fists to his mouth, literally banging his head on the bar, trying to control his feelings of Eun Soo being lost to him.

Have a MV:

Comments

[fivil.livejournal.com]

Ah the drama I loved but never finished watching. I'll say it's the only drama where I've found that sort of fucked up group dynamic, even with the secondary characters, utterly delicious and watchable. Usually I've got no patience with secondary anythings because they're typically underwritten and just plain nasty. In here, they're almost as shippable and interesting as the main pair.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

If you ever do decide to finish it, it stays consistently good through to the end.

Yes, I usually find secondaries boring but here I wanted a whole separate drama about fake-siblings.

[cranberrysheep.livejournal.com]

I keep meaning to watch this and La Dolce Vita, because they get such good reviews. But angst isn't really my thing :/

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

It's very very good and it does have a happy ending, I promise.

[att123.livejournal.com]

Yay! This is one of my favorites. Its addictive although its deeply deppressing.

What did you think of the ending? I know some people speculate it they actually got back together or if it was a dream. Whats your personal opinion?

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

I believe they got back together. That didn't look either vague enough or happy enough to be a dream, and the drama was always very grounded in reality - it didn't have random dream sequences.

What I really loved about the ending was the hope of it. TJ and ES don't get a traditional happy ending with bows tied on top. No, what they get is a chance to start together afresh. Will they work it out this time? Who knows, but they have good odds this time - they now know each other and themselves much better than when they started, and they left off all the masks. And now they both have more experience (because it's made clear by the end, with that speech to TJ to ES when he thanks her that she was his first - emotionally if not physically, so they both were total babes in the woods when it came to love).

So they have a good prognosis but no certainty, which is the most you could ever ask, after all.

[att123.livejournal.com]

It would just be too cruel for them to go through all of that and not get back together.

I liked that too. We don't need an that packaged ending. I also like the ambiguity of the scene. It would be too trite for everything to be wrapped up. Leaving it open seems more respectful to the realness of their relationship. Its not the typical drama fairytale romance, QSS was dark and twisted but they still could have some hope.

You should keep going with your Top 10 Most Underrated list! You always get me to watch different dramas I normally wouldn't try. Like Giant, that one is gonna go on you! I'm completely addicted now.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

I plan to. I even have my next picked out - kdrama Someday. It's in my top 10 dramas of all time, but since it was a cable drama, basically nobody has seen it. :(

Ahhh, Giant!

Re: QSS ending. The drama itself felt a lot more real an raw than the typical kdrama (not that I don't like the typical stuff) so I thought the more realistic ending felt in keeping. But I am not kidding, I almost cried when I saw her sleeping by his door and his face - I was so glad the two got some hope for the future.

[att123.livejournal.com]

Ohh, I've never seen that one! Can't wait to see your writeup on it!

Its gonna kill me to have to wait until December to see who gets a happy ending! I love the show, but not knowing how MJ/MW is gonna fare makes me nervous.

Oh, I bawled. It was not pretty because by that point I'd marathoned the whole show in two days. I was a zombie! Its really an emotional roller coaster and it wears you out!

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

I really really hope they get a happy ending.

I marathonned it too and was also a mess.

[timescout.livejournal.com]

QSS - the drama I still haven't finished because every damn episode takes a bite out of my soul. It's just too fracking hard.... so I can only take it in instalments.

One of the best dramas out there though.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

I really loved the intensity of it - it's one of the most intense dramas I've seen. But it does get emotionally exhausting.

[ambergold.livejournal.com]

this has been on my list for a while, need to get on it. I know, I'm weird, cause I usually like romcoms, but every once in a while a really dark drama comes along that I'm just drawn to. Like Bad Guy, which I was waiting to marathon before it turned bad, or even I'm Sorry I Love You.

[ambergold.livejournal.com]

weird though - I think I tend to be drawn to more dark jdramas than kdramas - I love Love Shuffle and Aishiteiru, for instance. Maybe it's just because they're shorter so I can handle the angst for that length of time.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's my angst-lover talking, but I wouldn't consider either of those jdramas dark at all. Not the way I find Midnight Sun or Kamisama or Beautiful Life dark/angsty.

[(Anonymous)]

Love your thoughts on QSS, it's exactly how I feel about it. Loved the gradual pacing and the eventual emotional breakdown towards the end. One of the better dramas indeed. Of the dramas I've watched I would compare this to WHIB too, are there other dramas that remind you of QSS also? Great acting from Eric Mun and Jung Yumi!

-chikichibang

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Bad Guy reminded me of QSS' intensity but then it ended up self-destructing and not being anywhere near as good.

I think a drama that really reminds me of QSS both in its intensity and its cast of lost souls is La Dolce Vita.

[mookiehyun.livejournal.com]

I lovelovelovelovelove QSS. It has a very special place in my heart and yes when I was watching it, it's not unlike my exp watching WHIB but I like QSS a bit better on the whole as a drama because I think the PD is better, the cinematography is better and though the characters were brought to dark, despicable places, it's not as extreme/ 'against the law' as in Bali.

I'm totally agreeing with everything you said. Jung Yumi's performance here is on par w/ HJW's SJ on how right on she's embodying this quirky gamine brought down to the nitty gritty reality by love. Eric is not my type, but he's so sex on legs in this one. That fist in mouth scene of him totally totally floored me (Also my fav) and It's ingrained in my brain. And THE scene that follows. WOW! Talk about good old drama.

It's a great essay on how love is this intense human experience that can change us all irrevocably.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

It's funny, QSS was my first Eric drama and I thought he was amazing and hot in it. And then I tried Super Roookie and Chil Woo and realized QSS ws a special case because in those two...well, not my thing is a nice way to put it.

I agree, the characters here were not as broken as in Bali - the biggest difference being the absence of Bali's monstrous family. I like the two in a different way - the cinematography is much better in QSS (but then Bali is 'old') and the writing tighter, but Bali went much darker.

That fist in mouth scene of him totally totally floored me (Also my fav) and It's ingrained in my brain. And THE scene that follows. WOW! Talk about good old drama.

Oh yes, when he breaks into her room and what follows - I am not even sure what to term it except an attempt at sexual assault, even if aborted. Oh God, they are so dysfunctional (and of course, it makes so much sense that TJ tries to express his feelings through sexual actions - after all, before ES this is how he viewed the world, that is what he knows). Another scene that almost rivals the bar scene for my favorite status though is when during dinner ES announces her preganancy with secondary guy and TJ just breaks the glass and tries to gather it not even realizing it's cutting his hands.

[mookiehyun.livejournal.com]

Dang. Now I'm in a mood of rewatching bits of QSS.

That glass scene cuts me, but it's fitting in what we're expecting at that point. The fist in mouth was so haunting in the sense though it's breaking us bit by bit to witness the pain and the repeated pounding alone, I got that's what soothing his even more damaged bleeding heart and hollow soul that moment.
So true on your take on TJ on the subsequent scene. But I did swear many expletives more on an almost rapist is making perfect sense to me, o the blasphemy.

ES got me in the elevator scene in ep4(?), she's an intriguing combo of naivete and balls. How she's fearless in love even knowing she may be completely damaged by TJ.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Yes, I could not believe I was rooting for Tae Jo - seeing the damage he wreaked and his actions (the scene in her room when he almost rapes her - ugly but heart-breaking at the same time. They are so not functional). ES is just so wonderful. She starts as the typical quirky/naive combo but ends up so complex and wonderful.

And yes, I totally didn't expect that banging-on-bar scene - it was just so visceral. When he told ES near the end she was the first woman he was in love with, so much of his behavior made sense - he really had no idea how to react to it all. (And I found it ironic that the biggest stretch of misery was the one that was in part altruistic on his part - he did like being rich but he did also want to help ES with her medical bills).

[bluviolet.livejournal.com]

I've always wanted to watch this--maybe after SKKS ends? Although now I really want to know what the main girl does that made you not like her for a bit. She seemed so... standard kdrama heroine in the first episode. Standard as in super nice/plucky/innocent, not to mention she jumped to conclusions and pushed her way into certain situations. But yes, Eric was hot.

*moves drama up list*

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

She starts out naive and 'normal' but having her heart played with like football makes her much darker and different.

[themadpoker.livejournal.com]

I keep rewatching that MV. I'm totally going to have to watch this drama aren't I? And with my to watch list so ridiculously long already. V_V I guess I'll try it out once I finish Black & White.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Oooooh, yes, do!

Black and White =love.

[jennyhime.livejournal.com]

I loved this drama, I never understod why it wasn't so popular.I was always biting my nails until the ep came so I ended up watching them raw and not undertanding a thing.
It has a good story and excellent actors, Eric suprised me in this part and Jung Yumi is just really adorable. I think she's done more movies then dramas but all her projects seem good. Her latest work was a drama special The Great Gye Choon Bin.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Yes, I never understood why it didn't do better. Too dark? Too complex?