Myung Wol eps 9 and 10 asjfkgjdkdfklfsldjlalsjfrkj

[dangermousie]

I am so grateful to MW for being so good and for compensating for the awful disappointments that were Lie to Me and Best Love for me.



Delicious jealousy...





























He sees her dressed up...








At dinner, telling she should not be modest and feel unworthy because the rich aren't any different...











AHHHHHHHHHHHH! Also, if he looks like that at her after believing she's a gold-digger who manipulated him, he's a goner. Might as well practice saying "Hooray Dear Leader!" Also, they have insane chemistry. Romcoms are made or broken by chemistry (one of my problems with Best Love was that I never felt much chemistry between the leads. Another was the hero, but that's a topic for another day) and they have insane one.



































Poster for their drama. LOLOLOLOL I would watch the hell out of this sucker!





Filming. The drama-within-a-drama is about a NK agent who is sent to seduce a SK agent but falls for him instead. Meta much?























Ashsjskwofjekjjtdk they are so not acting. You know how I know? Because they keep on and on and on even after the director yells 'cut.' (Reminds me of stories of filming 'The Flesh and the Devil' with Greta Garbo and John Gilbert who were lovers at the time. The director would yell cut and they'd just ignore him and the crew would get out and leave them to it...)





















































As I was saying...





Final scene. OMFG when they go off-script. And his yelling he forgives her and will grant her anything she asks and her shooting herself (you can kill yourself with blanks btw), and his hugging her and crying and screaming her name. I am watching ep 13 raw.



























































And my obsession proves, once again, my need of The Switch. I believe I explained it years ago - when I truly fall in love with a drama is only when the switch is involved. What is the switch? It's when the metaphorical switch flips on and I go from enjoyment to true investment - to empathy and obsession, when somehow these characters become real and when I rage at their slightest suffering and glee at slightest bits of good luck - it is when they stop being characters and become people. Sometimes it happens instantly (IRIS) or sometimes it takes a dozen eps (Family Honour). Often it doesn't happen at all - I have watched many a drama I enjoyed where the switch never flipped, good dramas I could appreciate (Warrior Baek Dong Soo comes to mind actually) but for me to truly love a drama, the switch has to flip. And when does, even when a drama is flawed (as Mary was), I will be its foverer. And so yes - MW has great chemistry and a story that hits my kinks (it's surprisingly angsty for a romcom. I am very predictable) but also somewhere in ep 3 or 4, the switch went on and from then on it could do no wrong.

Have a MV:

Comments

[thistleingrey]

I think we look for somewhat different things in kdramas, but I'm curious, if you have a moment--what disappointed you about Best Love? (I haven't been able to watch much but have read several sets of recaps/transcaps, so I'm fairly clear on how things go.)

[dangermousie]

I have a huge problem with Hong Sisters' post Hong Gil Dong dramas and that problem grows progressively bigger with each new drama:

1. Maturity level of a hero. Romcoms are fond of immaturity as a hero character trait but HS take it to new and extreme degrees and DJ was a culmination of this. The guy is close to 40 but his maturity level is close to that of my two-year-old. I find it the opposite of appealing. To bring in Family Honor, even when I loathed Kang Suk, he was always a grown-up. I find little appealing about the apotheosis of manchild, which is what Hong Sisters' dramas are into lately (and while there is some excuse for hero of YAB, hero of BL is twice his age!). It's fine to have an immature hero who will mature slowly and painfully (see Brilliant Legacy), another to keep it static.

2. The reason I love kdramas is that no matter the insane situations (I am in love with my half-sister! There is a bullet in my brain that will kill me in a month! I need to take revenge on the King! etc etc), the characters stuck in those situations come across as real enough people. That is what enables me to care. I found Dokko Jin not a real person but Bugs Bunny on speed but while he was the most egregious example, it is true of HS' latest direction - their stories are beginning to feel more and more 'precious', artificial, divorced from any set of human emotional reality. They remind me of Restoration plays which were very clever and entertaining but without a shred of a soul or a desire for one - utterly given over to clever artificiality. That is fine in a play or a movie, but to sustain me for 16 eps, I need some hint of real, genuine emotion and to me that is absent in HS stuff.

[thistleingrey]

I see. Agreed, Dokko Jin is far more immature than one'd expect unless one expected only the service of plot twists. I did appreciate BL's attempt to show that things are difficult for those who work in the business yet aren't high-powered, but I was focusing more upon Gong Hyo Jin's character, Gu Ae Jeong. (I like Gong much better than Cha Seung Won anyway, though the latter did fairly well in City Hall.)

Quite a few kdramas feature manchildren, sadly, even if not to the extent of BL and YAB.