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dangermousieIt's official, My Girl is my new dorama crack.
I have found my new marathonning-into-the-wee-hours object of obsession.
What is My Girl? It's a delicious, madcap, romantic 16-episode Korean dorama. I am about an ep and a half in and I am in love.
The story of My Girl is like something out of a classic Hollywood screwball comedy.
The cast of characters. l-r: Jung-woo, Gong-Chan's ex, Yu-Rin and Gong-Chan:
Our heroine, Yu-Rin, is plucky and resourceful. She has to be. While Yu-Rin earns her living being a tour-guide on Jeje Island, she is burdened with a father whom she loves but who suffers from an amazingly disruptive gambling problem. How disruptive? Well, the story really kicks off when Yu-Rin is forced to find a place to hide because the Mobsters to whom her father owns money decide to have her as collateral instead.
It's a good thing that Yu-Rin is blessed with a creative mind, a screwball heroine's disregard for conventions, and a bendable view on ownership. Because that leads her to hide in the disused summer house of our hero, Gong-Chan (played by the staggeringly hot Lee Dong-Wook. Now I see what the fuss was about), the manager of the super lux hotel, and the member of the upper crust. Gong-Chan is serious, driven, reserved and a bit of a workaholic. He is nice but also nobody's fool and the highlights of the dorama so far are his interactions with Yu-Rin. Their first meeting, though neither remembers it, is when Yu-Rin was up to her creative tricks holding up a plane so that her tourists could make it and pretended to faint near Gong-Chan's seat, so that the air crew couldn't drag her out and take off. Gong-Chan, realizing she was scamming, peeled her fingers with his pen (I can't explain it very well, but it's one of the funniest things I've ever seen) but since the tourists were already on board, no harm no foul.
Their second meeting is a lot more eventful as she jumps into the path of his car when she is on the run from the Mob. Gong-Chan takes her to the hospital but when she tries to scam him for 'emotional damages' (she is desperate for money as one can imagine) he refuses to pay her anything. But he does hire her to interpret for a group of Chinese businessmen he is entertaining and it's in the course of that Yu-Rin finds out the summer-house is empty. She moves in because she cannot go home and has no money for a hotel, and there are scenes involving tangerines which are too good to ruin.
And then Gong-Chan comes to the house unexpectedly...And it goes from there.
Did I mention that Gong-Chan is also the only grandson of a dying grandfather, whom he loves and whose last days he is trying to make happy by locating the Old Gentleman's long lost granddaughter (Gong-Chan's cousin), daughter of Gong-Chan's aunt whom Grandpa disowned on her hasty marriage. The aunt and her husband died in the Osaka quake but the whereabouts of the granddaughter are unknown. Grandpa is desperate to find her before he dies, and Gong-Chan is feeling hopeless with no leads at all, desperate enough to maybe hire someone for the role...
Did I add that Yu-Rin, due to her bum of a father and his run-ins with criminal elements, lived in Osaka for a while and is fluent in Japanese? Do you see where this is going?
I just love all the interactions between Yu-Rin and Gong-Chan. The actors have great chemistry, but what really kills me is just how he is so quietly amused by her and her crazy antics. And how he has this efficient businessman facade but Yu-Rin is right, inside he's just a softie. When he discovers she is the one living in his house, he tells her if she is afraid of the mob she'll be safe in jail (in a totally funny, tongue in cheek sarcastic comment) and he takes all the $$$ she made for selling his tangerines, but he does let her go. And then he finds out she was telling the truth about only needing plane fare and having nowhere to go, and he discovers jam she left for him in the fridge and you see him drive out of the house and he sees her limping down the road and you see him pause and then he picks her up and drops her off at a clinic for her foot and when she wants to thank him, tells her 'my car just happened to stop there.' ROFL.
And later he hires her as a tour guide again.
Love him.
Oh, and how could I not mention Jung-Woo (played by the scarily pretty Lee Jun-Ki. Seriously. I should not be crushing on a guy who'd make a better looking girl than I am, but I can't help it). Gong-Chan's best friend since childhood, Jung-woo is as wild and carefree as Gong-Chan is serious and driven. Jung-woo seems to go through the world wooing wholly unsuitable women (for short periods of time), getting involved in crazy imbroglios for the heck of it, and looking uber-hot (earrings! white shirts! super hot convertible!) while doing so. Do you think he is going to be the rival for Yu-Rin? Do tangerines fall from the trees?
Even though I am glad he won't get Yu-Rin because Yu-Rin/Gong-Chan=LOVE, I am anticipatorily sad for Jung-woo because much as I adore Gong-Chan (and I do), so far I am madly crushing on Jung-woo too. Think Ling from Mars only upperclass and without the issues. The scene where Yu-Rin has been finally caught by the thugs and Jung-woo sees that and interferes and gets into a fight and beats them all up (ROFL at the look on Yu-Rin's face) without ruffling his uber-hot hair is priceless. And then he grabs Yu-Rin by the arm and runs to his car, and even when they are escaping from mobsters, he opens the car door for her and then puts the top up and gets into a high-speed chase? I am a goner even as I giggle at all the (intentional) funny.
The thing that I love about that is his reasons for saving Yu-Rin aren't because he is some deeply noble guy. I think it a combo of the secondary F4 attitude to women (he genuinely loves them and thinks they should be treated extravagantly well, just not kept for more than a week or so) and clearly because he thinks this would be fun. He really enjoys all this craziness. In some ways, he is a male Yu-Rin.
Yu-Rin and Gong-Chan:
First meeting:
Jung-woo:
A bunch of banners found at soompi:
Love triangle:
Gon-Chan:
Yu-Rin:
I have found my new marathonning-into-the-wee-hours object of obsession.
What is My Girl? It's a delicious, madcap, romantic 16-episode Korean dorama. I am about an ep and a half in and I am in love.
The story of My Girl is like something out of a classic Hollywood screwball comedy.
The cast of characters. l-r: Jung-woo, Gong-Chan's ex, Yu-Rin and Gong-Chan:
Our heroine, Yu-Rin, is plucky and resourceful. She has to be. While Yu-Rin earns her living being a tour-guide on Jeje Island, she is burdened with a father whom she loves but who suffers from an amazingly disruptive gambling problem. How disruptive? Well, the story really kicks off when Yu-Rin is forced to find a place to hide because the Mobsters to whom her father owns money decide to have her as collateral instead.
It's a good thing that Yu-Rin is blessed with a creative mind, a screwball heroine's disregard for conventions, and a bendable view on ownership. Because that leads her to hide in the disused summer house of our hero, Gong-Chan (played by the staggeringly hot Lee Dong-Wook. Now I see what the fuss was about), the manager of the super lux hotel, and the member of the upper crust. Gong-Chan is serious, driven, reserved and a bit of a workaholic. He is nice but also nobody's fool and the highlights of the dorama so far are his interactions with Yu-Rin. Their first meeting, though neither remembers it, is when Yu-Rin was up to her creative tricks holding up a plane so that her tourists could make it and pretended to faint near Gong-Chan's seat, so that the air crew couldn't drag her out and take off. Gong-Chan, realizing she was scamming, peeled her fingers with his pen (I can't explain it very well, but it's one of the funniest things I've ever seen) but since the tourists were already on board, no harm no foul.
Their second meeting is a lot more eventful as she jumps into the path of his car when she is on the run from the Mob. Gong-Chan takes her to the hospital but when she tries to scam him for 'emotional damages' (she is desperate for money as one can imagine) he refuses to pay her anything. But he does hire her to interpret for a group of Chinese businessmen he is entertaining and it's in the course of that Yu-Rin finds out the summer-house is empty. She moves in because she cannot go home and has no money for a hotel, and there are scenes involving tangerines which are too good to ruin.
And then Gong-Chan comes to the house unexpectedly...And it goes from there.
Did I mention that Gong-Chan is also the only grandson of a dying grandfather, whom he loves and whose last days he is trying to make happy by locating the Old Gentleman's long lost granddaughter (Gong-Chan's cousin), daughter of Gong-Chan's aunt whom Grandpa disowned on her hasty marriage. The aunt and her husband died in the Osaka quake but the whereabouts of the granddaughter are unknown. Grandpa is desperate to find her before he dies, and Gong-Chan is feeling hopeless with no leads at all, desperate enough to maybe hire someone for the role...
Did I add that Yu-Rin, due to her bum of a father and his run-ins with criminal elements, lived in Osaka for a while and is fluent in Japanese? Do you see where this is going?
I just love all the interactions between Yu-Rin and Gong-Chan. The actors have great chemistry, but what really kills me is just how he is so quietly amused by her and her crazy antics. And how he has this efficient businessman facade but Yu-Rin is right, inside he's just a softie. When he discovers she is the one living in his house, he tells her if she is afraid of the mob she'll be safe in jail (in a totally funny, tongue in cheek sarcastic comment) and he takes all the $$$ she made for selling his tangerines, but he does let her go. And then he finds out she was telling the truth about only needing plane fare and having nowhere to go, and he discovers jam she left for him in the fridge and you see him drive out of the house and he sees her limping down the road and you see him pause and then he picks her up and drops her off at a clinic for her foot and when she wants to thank him, tells her 'my car just happened to stop there.' ROFL.
And later he hires her as a tour guide again.
Love him.
Oh, and how could I not mention Jung-Woo (played by the scarily pretty Lee Jun-Ki. Seriously. I should not be crushing on a guy who'd make a better looking girl than I am, but I can't help it). Gong-Chan's best friend since childhood, Jung-woo is as wild and carefree as Gong-Chan is serious and driven. Jung-woo seems to go through the world wooing wholly unsuitable women (for short periods of time), getting involved in crazy imbroglios for the heck of it, and looking uber-hot (earrings! white shirts! super hot convertible!) while doing so. Do you think he is going to be the rival for Yu-Rin? Do tangerines fall from the trees?
Even though I am glad he won't get Yu-Rin because Yu-Rin/Gong-Chan=LOVE, I am anticipatorily sad for Jung-woo because much as I adore Gong-Chan (and I do), so far I am madly crushing on Jung-woo too. Think Ling from Mars only upperclass and without the issues. The scene where Yu-Rin has been finally caught by the thugs and Jung-woo sees that and interferes and gets into a fight and beats them all up (ROFL at the look on Yu-Rin's face) without ruffling his uber-hot hair is priceless. And then he grabs Yu-Rin by the arm and runs to his car, and even when they are escaping from mobsters, he opens the car door for her and then puts the top up and gets into a high-speed chase? I am a goner even as I giggle at all the (intentional) funny.
The thing that I love about that is his reasons for saving Yu-Rin aren't because he is some deeply noble guy. I think it a combo of the secondary F4 attitude to women (he genuinely loves them and thinks they should be treated extravagantly well, just not kept for more than a week or so) and clearly because he thinks this would be fun. He really enjoys all this craziness. In some ways, he is a male Yu-Rin.
Yu-Rin and Gong-Chan:
First meeting:
Jung-woo:
A bunch of banners found at soompi:
Love triangle:
Gon-Chan:
Yu-Rin:
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no subject
Date: 2006-11-09 06:02 pm (UTC)(also.. where'd you get your dorama icons?)
no subject
Date: 2006-11-09 06:06 pm (UTC)My Girl: go to comm named jdramas and join and then look through their tags to find the fansubbed eps to be dled from megaupload (you might need to dl hjsplit to join the files but the dl link to that is available on the userinfo page)
Icons? All over the place.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-10 10:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-09 06:54 pm (UTC)...I can't download a lot because my lovely university monitors our bandwidth use and cuts us off from the 'net if it's too much.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-09 07:00 pm (UTC)I think you might like the fashion, btw.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-09 10:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-09 10:17 pm (UTC)This one is so sparkly and excellent and GREAT!
no subject
Date: 2006-11-09 10:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-09 10:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-09 10:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-10 04:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-10 05:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-09 10:35 pm (UTC)And oh yes--it's not just a love triangle. It's a love quadrangle. The writing team for this drama is amazing (they also wrote "Delightful Girl Choon-Hyang"). I think I watched this entire series in one weekend, eight hours a day. And it was so amazing. I had been putting off watching it because it had aired right before "Goong" and all the Goong fans were like, "My Girl is good too, really," but I was like, "Better than Goong? What? BLASPHEMY!" but I got it and put it aside for a day when I was in a drama rut. And then I decided to start watching just the first episode and before I knew it, I was seven episodes in, it was dark outside, and my eyes were all bleary, but I didn't care at all, because oh my god, GONG CHAN! AND GONG CHAN'S GRANDPA! AAAAAH!!
See, I try to be coherent about "My Girl", but I fail. I can't wait till you get in to the rest of the series, because the first couple of episodes are basically set up, and then...oh, it gets so good. Really.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-09 10:42 pm (UTC)they also wrote "Delightful Girl Choon-Hyang"
I think this one just moved WAY up in my queue (and heeee, that explains the ref at the end of the drama, heh).
GONG CHAN! AND GONG CHAN'S GRANDPA! AAAAAH!!
Well, I haven't gotten into grandpa's awesomeness, but even after an ep and a half I can definitely see Gong-Chan's awesomeness. And OMG, at least so far, he is probably one of the most mature and well-adjusted and socially-integrated dorama heroes (though I know, with requisite future angst). And so funny. Like someone out of a Heyer novel.
I can't wait till you get in to the rest of the series, because the first couple of episodes are basically set up, and then...oh, it gets so good. Really.
You are kidding, it gets better? No way.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-09 10:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-09 10:58 pm (UTC)Plus, an annoying ex, if my limited sample of her is any indication. I wonder why most 'spare' guys in doramas are nice and most 'spare' girls aren't. Hmmmmm.
think this drama doesn't get enough love.
Really? The soompi thread is almost 800 pages! :)
Re: Gong Chan. He's just nice and I love that. And not an idiot and OMG, the way he is amused by Yu-Rin kills me.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-09 11:27 pm (UTC)I know it is, but I think this drama really needs someone to pimp it at you before you bring it to the top of your viewing list. The synopsis itself isn't really enough to win you over instantly (because, really, "She pretends to be his cousin! And they fall in love!" might come off a little too cracktastic for most), not like "Goong" where you're like, "A prince? She gets to become a princess? AND LOOK AT THE PRETTY CLOTHES!" I think most folks go for the big time angsty dramas, like "A Love to Kill" first, but this drama is so underrated in terms of awesomeness, I think. And I adore that Gong Chan = NOT STUPID. The stupid drama hero is all together too common and I love that he's not.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-09 11:34 pm (UTC)I think most folks go for the big time angsty dramas, like "A Love to Kill" first,
Heh. I am guilty of that. I am generally more into angsty romances than anything else and didn't think this had gobs of angst (but if I get really attached to characters even a little angst will kill me. See Full House for proof).
I adore that Gong Chan = NOT STUPID. The stupid drama hero is all together too common and I love that he's not.
I know. I love it. I mean, realistically, would you be in your mid-20s, well-educated and in a position of business control without being whip-smart? And hey, they didn't drag out the tangerine thing :P
no subject
Date: 2006-11-10 10:00 am (UTC)I have a sudden keenness to continue with Goong. I kind of stopped because it's a hassle to watch on youtube but I can't dl, either - it'd take up 80% of my hard drive! Also I figured there'd be soapy twists I would groan at (am a melodrama oddball - give me Bollywood any day but still I spit at soap operas). But now looking at the cheery, cutesy heroine of *this* dorama, I remember how delightful CG of Goong was..
no subject
Date: 2006-11-10 10:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-10 10:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-10 03:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-10 01:42 pm (UTC)2. Should I watch "Pride" first??
The beginning looks somehow "Full House"-like, and so does main female lead!!!
no subject
Date: 2006-11-10 03:36 pm (UTC)2. Pride!!!! It's still my second fave dorama ever (and ALtK is still no 3). Though it depends. Pride is a lot more serious and nuanced. My Girl is funny and light...
P.S.
Date: 2006-11-10 03:36 pm (UTC)Re: P.S.
Date: 2006-11-10 03:58 pm (UTC)Re: P.S.
Date: 2006-11-10 04:07 pm (UTC)Yu-Rin is a lot more worldly wise than Ji-Eun :)