dangermousie (
dangermousie) wrote2011-03-16 08:20 pm
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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!
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!
no subject
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.
no subject
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 .
no subject
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.
ETA
Re: ETA
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? :)
Re: ETA
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.