dangermousie | Most anticipated kdrama for 2011 and its runner-up

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Most anticipated kdrama for 2011 and its runner-up

Aaaand - we have a winner! Goodbye Miss Ripley starring Lee Da Hae (a.k.a. Mousie's favorite kdrama actress) and Micky Yoochun (a.k.a. Mousie's true love from SKKS) which airs after The Duo is over. Apparently this is going to be based on a true-crime scandal about a woman who got hired by a prestigious college institution after showing these amazing credentials but then it turned out she barely finished high-school and faked her degrees with the help of her much older boyfriend (presumably not Micky as he's not almost 20-yrs her senior, good Lord). LDH plays the scammer. Not sure who Micky plays except I am sure he will be her OTP.

I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT!!!!

No offense to The Duo, but please be over sooner, k?

The runner-up is Discovery of Affection, an upcoming Hong Sisters drama about a love affair between a successful actor and a washed-out actress. Starring Cha Seung Won and Gong Hyo Jin. I repeat - starring Cha Seung Won and Gong Hyo Jin. If there is a casting heaven which answers my prayers, this is it. The Hong Sisters and I have a somewhat fraught relationship - when I love their dramas, I love them hard (My Girl, Delightful Girl Chunhyang, and Hong Gil Dong, the latter of which is in my top 10 kdramas of all time. I enjoyed Fantasy Couple as well though not as much as the above three). However, every one of their dramas since HGD has been actively annoying to me - both You're Beautiful and Gumiho Girlfriend felt stale, emotionally shallow, and featured characters where to call them immature and weak would be kind. BUT. I have hope! Because the big problem with YAB and GG came from them skewing so young. With actors in their 30s (GHJ) and 40s (CSW) respectively, this is not an issue, especially since neither could play a weak idiot if they tried. More importantly, if Hong Sisters wanted their leads to portray weak idiots, they would not have picked those particular actors. So, despite my past falling out with the Hong Sisters, hooray!

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Goodbye Miss Ripley... YES PLEASE!

Sounds like a very intriguing plot right? What I particularly found interesting is the fact that it's based on a real hoax that happened in Korea. This has all the potential to be great. I really hope they sign a competent writer-director combo. Also, I can't wait for LDH to have an ahjusshi affair with KSW. I want it now.

hagrid here :D

KSW is pretty darn hot so if she has to have an ahjusshi affair, this sounds pretty good to me :) Though I hope she gets together with Yoochun too - the more the merrier, right? :)

Btw, is it just me, or has dramabeans turned into a LDH bash zone lately? Drives me nuts. She's a much better actress than a lot of the ones who get a pass, and she hasn't done anything horrible off-screen either so wtf.

it kinda does. I thought I was the only one who thought it was sort of becoming a free bash zone lately.

I actually think this last article is more objective than the previous one. The news about her dropping the drama was quite unnerving. it felt like it's trying to appear objective when in fact it isn't. I fail to grasp how when other actors drop out of production (even when it's so close to filming), it's all fine and not at all irresponsible. while when it's LDH who drops out of a production which seems to run into budget problems and infinite delays in filming, it's suddenly irresponsible and bad PR? I can't quite equate it. They seriously need to get over that EoE fiasco.

Yes, actors drop projects all the time, especially if delays happen - didn't some actress just drop Poseidon and no fuss was made about that?

I am a huge LDH fan and even I will admit dropping EoE was a rash move but the rest of it is completely fine - one mistake doesn't a horror show make.

Hahaha, I'm sorry Mousie, but I just can't quite see LDH's appeal...but it's really a matter of preference...it's like I much prefer Eun Yoon Hye and Song Hye Gyo, LDH is just too....girly looking? Heh

BUT I am very excited about the upcoming drama, cos I think Yoochun is awesome and a decent actor (Or maybe I just loved his character so much and was so glad that for once, Stuffy gets the gir instead of Scruffy....haha) and wait...is KSW in the drama? OMG! HOW CAN I CHOOSE??? hahaha

for once, Stuffy gets the gir instead of Scruffy....

ROFL. This sums up the appeal to me in few pithy words.

Re: LDH. I do think she's pretty but it's more that I like her dramas and her acting and her presence - even when the drama itself was inferior (Hello Miss), her innate charm (to me, fine if others don't see it) made it much better than it could have otherwise been.

*sigh* yes, Yoochun's Sun Joon was like this intellectual boy scout...WHAT IS NOT TO LIKE?!?!?!

LDH -> It could be her dramas then. I mean, Chuno was many levels of awesome, but I just cannot scrub My Girl out of my head and it was one of those dramas that I absolutely didn't care for..(kinda like you and My Name is Kim Sam Soon I guess)

You're Beautiful and Gumiho Girlfriend felt stale, emotionally shallow, and featured characters where to call them immature and weak would be kind

I understand that it just might be your preferance in not liking Gumiho Girlfriend, but I don't understand how you can call a guy who gives up his life to save the person he loves more than anything in the world weak. To me that's kind of brave and all kinds of awesome.
Yeah, he's kind of pathetic in the beginning. But that's why wathching him transform into someone who proves that humanity is not weak and shallow and that love is not an illusion makes it that much better.

Argh, sorry for editing this like 20 times just trying to get my point across better >.>
Sorry, didn't mean to come off offensive or anything like that, but I love MGIAG with mad mad love exactly because both Won Ah and Miho turn out to be such incredibly awesome and brave people. And I just wanted to point out that making such a harsh judgement about a character that you don't know very well since you haven't watched the drama fully is a bit unfair .

Edited 2011-03-17 04:31 (UTC)

making such a harsh judgement about a character that you don't know very well since you haven't watched the drama fully is a bit unfair

But to me, LSG's character in GG is the crux of my problems with Hong Sisters' latest dramas and pacing. It's not as if I ditched GG after watching twenty minutes of first ep. I watched either four or five episodes. It's a 16 episode drama, judging the drama's overall quality or appeal on 25-30% of it that I have seen is, IMO, fair enough. By that point, in any event, you should provide me with some character development in the desired direction (I am going to give more slack to a 95 ep cdrama - 4 eps is barely prologue - but this is not 95 eps). By the end of ep 1, I was convinced that LSG's character was the most pathetic and off-putting drama hero I have ever seen (no exaggeration, I honestly thought and still think that). I still stuck around for 3-4 more episodes hoping for something to change my mind, nothing happened and I finally bailed. I wasn't going to sit through a 16 ep drama again on the slim chance something might glimmer in character department, especially not after no-character-development-until-last-two-eps YAB.

And, to me, that is a problem. By the end of ep 1, there should be something impelling me to keep watching besides desperate hope and love of past Hong Sisters' dramas. Let alone after ep 4 or 5! There wasn't anything. If you make your hero so off-putting and keep him static for those episodes, I am sorry - I am going to bail. By the end, he may be curing cancer with one hand while saving 20 kids from a burning building with another, and I won't know or care because I won't be watching. If you create a character so unappealing to me, there has to be something else to hook me - a hint he can be more (see Hong Gil Dong with its effective 2 min prologue which established HGD as a badass rebel and not slacker of early eps though there was a ton of development by ep 4 of HGD and HGD never put me off the way LSG's character did in any event), or a taut plot (obviously not something a romcom goes for) or some other characters I can really love (I am currently slogging through Chinese Paladin 3 because of prominent and cool secondary characters I love though the hero of it leaves me completely bored. If not for that, I would have ditched a long time ago and I like Hu Ge, who plays the lead in CP3 a lot more than I do LSG. I just won't persevere if nothing draws me). That wasn't the case for me in GG - I liked Minah's character well-enough but (a) she wasn't so relatable to me for obvious reasons - i.e. being a gumiho spirit - that I'd love her enough to watch for her sake (b) the problem with liking one half of OTP while disliking the other is that it makes you dislike the one you dislike even more because you don't think they are worthy and also makes you wonder if the one you like is nuts.

So, that's a lot of tl;dr but the short version is - GG didn't give me a single bone in the first 4-5 eps to either indicate the hero would ever rise past his abysmalness not provide anything else (admittedly it would have to be hefty) to keep me watching despite that. Hong Sisters have huge problems with character development pacing lately - see both YAB and this. LSG's character may not have remained a cowardly useless thing for the entire duration, but he did so for long enough to make me abandon any hope for him or any desire to sit through more in that hope - it just wasn't worth it for me.

So my point stands. I am glad they don't have LSG (who I liked fine in Brilliant Legacy - a good example of pacing btw - his Hwan was a terrible human being for a while in the beginning but there were enough other cool things going on and other character love for me to keep going, plus he may have been a bastard but he was interesting. His character in GG interested me not in the least) in the newest HS drama because the chances of his character starting out as some sort of immature or weak or cowardly nonenity are much less if his character is played by Cha Seung Won. Because, let's face it - HS could make the DoA hero the most amazing human being ever by the end, but if they start with yet another weakling or coward, I'll bail before I find out.

Edited 2011-03-17 05:02 (UTC)

Btw, I hope I didn't offend you. I don't like GG but I understand everyone has their own preferences and, as I said, I don't dispute hero might have become awesome at the end, it was just taking too long for my tastes. That's it.

Yes, I understand your point completely. If I don't get hooked on the OTP in the first 5 episodes I won't watch the drama but in that case I would just say "well it's just not my taste" or "the story and characters don't appeal to me" but maybe I won't say "This drama is stale and the characters are so weak". Idk, maybe I'm just getting emotional because it's one of my favorite dramas of all time, but I just feel its unfair to label a drama in a way that it definitely is not. Usually if I drop a drama it's because I'm bored or it doesn't appeal to me, but I can't make a final judgement about why it is so bad because well I haven't seen it fully. Sometimes, I understand that you can make a judgement like "well this character is a loser in the first five episodes and I don't like it" but to say he is simply a loser and weak and that it was the problem with the drama? I think it's a bit offensive to the fans of the drama, and it also might give a bad impression to someone who potentionally wants to see it. Because that drama is not about a loser hero, it's actually about an amazing heroine with whom he falls in love to become one of the bravest and most caring heroes of all time. That's why I feel it's important to write reviews and make sweeping generalizations only after you have fully seen the drama.

Again, I do agree with your point that there wasn't much to love about Won Ah's character in the beginning. To be honest I hated him until episode 8 and then magically, just like in Brilliant Legacy, I started falling madly in love with him. His transformation was as incredible and slow and believeable as it was in Brilliant Legacy. Btw, you mentioned there were other things in Brilliant Legacy that kept you going even while you utterly despised the hero - it was exactly the same for me with MGIAG. I knew he would change and I loved Miho's character and that kept me going towards one of the most satisfactory transformations I've seen in a drama. So, I guess my point is technically MGIAG is not a worse drama than Brilliant Legacy, just maybe you perhaps didn't like the main character as much that's why it didn't appeal to you.

Which is totally not your fault, I understand it. But I think from a fan's point of view you would also understand why I want to defend my favorite character, right? :)

Usually if I drop a drama it's because I'm bored or it doesn't appeal to me, but I can't make a final judgement about why it is so bad because well I haven't seen it fully.

Really? I guess it's a different approach. I have no problem making snap judgments. As long as I don't hide the fact that I haven't seen all of it (which I never have) I say fair enough to put it out there.

So, I guess my point is technically MGIAG is not a worse drama than Brilliant Legacy, just maybe you perhaps didn't like the main character as much that's why it didn't appeal to you.

Well, to go all meta, since it's art, there is by no definition objectively good or bad just whatever works for each person and a collective opinion on quality is as close as it comes to determining 'objectivity' but it's still not objective in any way :) One man's best drama ever is another man's horrible nightmare :)

Re: BL v. MGIAG. I still think MGIAG has pacing problems, especially since you tell me LSG was the way he was for the first 8 eps - that's half the drama running time! BL was what - 28 eps? But mmv.

I so hope it's gonna be more like their earlier dramas!
But isn't the washed-out actress suppose to be older than the male lead?

They got rid of the older part :)

aaand - we have a winner! Goodbye Miss Ripley starring Lee Da Hae (a.k.a. Mousie's favorite kdrama actress) and Micky Yoochun (a.k.a. Mousie's true love from SKKS) which airs after The Duo is over.
*jumps*

Okay, I second that, because it sounds awesome. :o))

Heee. Yes!

Both of these sound super fun. Can't wait! :D

I know!

not excited for Goodbye Miss Ripley even a littl ebit but isn't Cha Seung Won/Gong Hyo Jin a DREAM? I could watch GHJ be a housewife for an entire drama and still enjoy her, so THIS..mmm. I expect crackling chemistry also.

I know. Whoever the casting director is, I love him/her!

I am psyched, psyched, psyched for Goodbye Miss Ripley. It's so delicious. OMNOMNOMNOM

So excited! Darling LDH is back and in something that sounds so good!

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Most anticipated kdrama for 2011 and its runner-up

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