Lovers: rock on, Korea!

[dangermousie]

Six episodes in, and Lovers still continues to own me, due to its rather unusual storyline, wonderfully complicated characters (main and secondary), and, most of all, the performances and psycho chemistry between KEH and LSJ.

I have decided that Kang Jae is fast becoming one of my very favorite drama heroes. Dammit, Lee Seo Jin, why must you be so irresistably awesome? What LSJ manages somehow, is to come across as both utterly tough and ruthless (he is a mob guy after all) and yet somehow allow us peeks of hidden vulnerability or gentleness underneath. After this and Damo, I am beginning to think LSJ has cornered the niche of strong men who feel enormously under the very rigid, traditionally-masculine exterior in hierarchies where weakness or any showing of emotion is discouraged.



In fact, I find myself very ambivalent, sort of like the heroine :D Whenever he behaves like a jerk to Mi Joo about the land he holds (land on which her dad raises orphans and which he got because Dad lost it by being guarantor to someone who ran away) I want to smack him or have him be hurt or what not, but whenever someone does treat him not nicely, I get automatically fired up and upset :D Heh.

But the thing is, in some ways, Kang Jae is a bad fit for the mob, however OK he is with strong arming people or fighting or engaging in other nepharious tricks of the trade. He is a little too honest, a little too emotionally vulnerable in his attachment to his two seconds in command (contrast to the other mob boss who is trying to get rid of him, and who treats his underlings as underlings). I think the fact that he cannot drink at all, as he is a severe diabetic, just sort of throws it front and center (and makes the audience feel for someone who automatically has a disability of disease: it makes him vulnerable and therefore more approachable).

Mi Joo continues to be awesome. No nonsense, a little wistful, strong willed. Just great.

While I like the drama throughout, it comes into sharp focus whenever MJ and KJ interact. In some odd way, even if any attraction they feel is quite subconscious, they react to each other on a different level than they do with anyone else. There is an intensity there that is absent when KJ is with his girlfriend (who is nice if a little clingy, and also pregnant, though he doesn’t know yet. I wonder how the drama will get around that hurdle, as ditching a pregnant woman would make him a huge louse). And MJ is a bit more alive around him than she is with anyone else. It’s just a connection, and chemistry, and conversations (joking or screaming matches) and OMG!worthy stares from KJ.

The thing that adds to it all is that Kang Jae somehow realizes he shouldn’t be enjoying it so much, he shouldn’t be vulnerable, and want to repay her for saving his life or what not. He is a mobster, not a good samaritan. And that very feeling too much makes him lash out as if to prove no, he doesn’t care, so he acts like he won’t save her land, or he doesn’t care she lost her job, etc etc. Hah. All it does is get MJ mad, it doesn’t get you out as you sink deeper, boy.

And yet somehow they never stay mad.

I keep thinking of the scene where she found out the land is up for auction and she confronts him and he demands her camera (because a photo of a guy who tried to kill him is in there) and they have a huge fight and she deletes the photo and he stalks out boiling, and parodoxically, it demonstrates her comfort with him, because who in their right mind would dare do it to a mobster unless you are comfortable with him and have a bedrock certainty he won’t harm you (of course, she has the pic saved on her laptop).

And after all that (mind you, he didn’t say he is going to return the land), she prints out the pic and goes to look for him. To find him being carried in unconscious as he went to talk to a construction guy he needed and the man made him drink which he shouldn’t, being diabetic.

And she automatically ends up running to the room and taking care of him and she even stays the night. I love the bit where she is holding his hand (she needs to make an injection) and I am thinking ‘wow, he has gorgeous hands’ (in Russian they would say ‘he has pianist’s hands,’ he has long elegant fingers) and then she blurts out ‘Is it a gangster’s hand? Why must it be so beautiful?’ sounding very put out. Heh.

And in the morning he gets up and she is gone but his two seconds are there and I love the look on his face as he sees them asleep and he asks why a humidifier is by his bed and they say Dr. Yoon had it brought and he is all ‘was she here?’ and they tell him she spent the night and give him an envelope she left and inside there is the picture he wanted.

EEEEEE!

He is still trying to deny she matters to him, of course, and when they look at the very blown up pic and his second comments she looks beautiful (she is in the corner of the pic), he puts a lamp there to block it. Heh.

But of course she matters, and he isn’t indifferent to the land thing at all and in fact went so far as to ask favors of the evil mob boss (who he doesn’t know is trying to rub him out) to track the absconder. And he ditches his gf (symbolic much?) when the guy is finally caught to go get him.

I wonder what his reaction is going to be btw when he finds out gf is preggers. On one hand he is an orphan himself so I can’t see him abandoning the child, but he doesn’t want kids which I think goes with not feeling he belongs, he exists on sufferance. Not only the mob lord’s son (who I like but am sort of ‘blah blah daddy paid less attention to you than you’d like, get over it’ about) but mob lord’s wife treat him like tottl scum/dog/other menial thing (and MJ witnesses it and you can tell she feels bad for him). I bet that’s why he is so good at control: must keep his temper.

And then we get to the end of ep 6 where he got the guy-absconder and he is bringing him to Mi Joo, who has no idea about it and is at some mixing event in order to gind a job. And as he comes in, she is being groped on the dance floor by a classmate who could totally offer her a job and you see KJ go o:o and then MJ (I love her) stomps her heel on the guy’s foot and ‘apologizes’ but the guy pushes her close to him again saying dance isn’t over. And KJ tells his flunkie to stop the music and turn on the lights, and seriously, so much of it must be motivated by his desire to get MJ out of this situation, as otherwise he could totally wait until she is done and normally and quietly talk to her. But he is jealous, and pissed off on her behalf, and wants to save her from the boor and he doesn’t even realize it himself.

And the music stops, and the lights flood the place and everyone stares, and he comes up to Mi Joo on the dance floor and the other guy is flustered and lost (heh) and they stare at each other and I had to leave.

Boooo!

Also, I love the secondary otp of Kang Jae’s bodyguard (sweet and not too bright) and Mi Joo’s friend (ditto).

Comments

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

You realize that you're just hurting Green Rose's chances of being next here, right?

KJ sounds more and more like mobster HBY.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Well, honestly compels me to admit that even though Go Soo is awesome in Green Rose, he does not scale the supreme hights of awesomeness of LSJ in Lovers.

You know, mob HY is a really good way to think of it.

So yeah, you should watch Lovers. I really really like Green Rose. But Lovers I love.