Duds and delights of 2009 [Year in Review, Part 1]

by Dahee_Fanel

(Just to clarify, this is the first of four guest reviews and is written by Dahee Fanel, whose insights you can read regularly on her own blog, Dahee’s Plastic Castle. I hope you’ll enjoy reading the guest reviews and get as much as I do out of their diverse opinions. Thanks all, especially Dahee! —javabeans)

And to think that I headed into 2009 feeling so hopeful, too.

2008 was an awful year for K-dramas. That year ended with me feeling like I’d just swum through an ocean of excrement, and I figured that I’d need to soak myself in some good dramas for at least another year before I’d manage to wash the stink off of me.

Alas, that was not to be the case.

Thinking back on which dramas I saw in 2009, it occurred to me that, goddammit, I’m a lot more resilient than I’d thought. It awed me that I’d managed to watch crap like Cain and Abel and Everybody Cha Cha Cha all the way through, without even any fastforwarding! A year ago, this would not have been possible. A year ago, my stomach would have protested three seconds in, and I’d have had to be rushed to the doctor’s, only to be told (again) by dear old Dr. C that my condition is a complete mystery to him.

But this year, I discovered the secret to watching bad dramas without ending up gagging over a toilet. That secret has been spread so thick over my digestive organs that no amount of stress or disgust can penetrate it. We’ll get to what that secret is later, but the point of all this rambling is, I’ve discovered other reasons for watching dramas besides their innate quality. Call it a survival instinct. Reasons for drama-watching are a lot more complicated than I’d once thought.

So for this year’s write-up, I’m dividing the categories into the various reasons I watched the dramas in the first place. It’s going to be kinda embarrassing, but honest. I’ve found that honesty is always best in the end, whether people like it or not. As my mom likes to say: “If I find out you’re lying to me, I’ll turn your legs black and blue.”

SONG OF THE DAY

Broccoli, You Too? – “2009년의 우리들” (Us in 2009) [ Download ]

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

FAMILY SUCKS

If you have family members or friends who watch K-dramas as well, then you’ll know what I mean. My dad is especially bad when it comes to forcing me to watch certain dramas with him. He can’t do it as often now, since I’ve moved out, but he’ll still pester me over the phone. He has strange taste in dramas – he loves the really good, critically-acclaimed ones, but every once in a while he’ll like something that’s so terrible that it gives me hives. And I’ll look at him and ask, “Why are you, of all people, watching this crap?”. And he’ll reply without batting an eye, “Because [insert actress’s name here] is hot.”

The apple sure doesn’t fall far from the tree…

Boys Before Flowers

It wasn’t my dad, but my mom who was the culprit for this one. My dad wouldn’t go near this drama with a ten-foot pole, but my mom, the Kim Hyun Joong fangirl that she is (damn you, We Got Married!), jumped on it like a wolf on a raw steak. And she forced me, her oldest daughter, to watch (some of) it, too.

Well, okay, it wasn’t all because of my mom. I tuned in to a couple of later episodes because I love Kim Hyun Joo, as well. And I saw the first episode all on my lonesome, without anyone’s prodding, purely out of the goodness of my heart.

Unfortunately, the first episode left me swearing up a storm, cursing my foolishness for wanting to give this drama a chance, despite the astronomical signs that it would be very, very bad. Why didn’t I trust my instincts, I wondered? I mean, I’d seen most of the anime version (Hana Yori Dango, you pain my soul, even all these years later). I knew what I was getting myself into. But still, against all logic, I hoped it would be better. But I was wrong. It wasn’t better. It was actually – wait for it – worse than that cursed anime that should never have even seen the light of day, what with its anti-feminist and classist messages. It boggled my mind that that could have even happened.

I watched this drama intermittently, like I’m sure a lot of viewers back in Korea did. But every glance into this show made my stress levels rise to monstrous heights. Not only was the script so terrible that it would have gone to better use in a compost heap, but the directing, as expected, was a complete and utter mess. And don’t even get me started on the music. If I have to hear “Almost paaaaradiiiiise” one more time, I’m going to bash my head into a wall. (Take note, variety shows.)

The acting, too, was just laughable. My heart broke watching Goo Hye Sun here – those who haven’t seen her in the 2007-2008 sageuk The King and I will probably assume that she’s just a bad actress normally, but she’s really not. She started off rocky in that show, but slowly improved to the point that she became one of the highlights of the drama. She was so luminous, so strong, so mature in The King and I. And then she turned into that overacting petulant child in BBF. I felt like crying, watching her. Also, I like Kim Hyun Joong in variety shows, but he should stay far, far away from acting in future. I cringed every time he appeared. And I know Lee Min Ho is beloved by all BBF fans, and that everyone considers him to be this great actor or something, but I was deeply unimpressed. Then again, could anyone shine, when they’re given that kind of material to work with? If he chooses a good project next time, where one can really see if he has talent or not, I may change my mind. (Then again, there were a couple of acting highlights. Lee Min Jung, as usual, was a breath of fresh air, and Lee Hye Young was deliciously evil.)

Boys Before Flowers may have been a pop culture phenomenon and all that, but for me, it’s one of the very worst dramas of the year, and was a complete waste of my time and energy. I should have listened to Dr. C’s advice, and just stayed away from any stress triggers.

Style

Sometimes I really resent my dad. Especially when he makes me watch a show this idiotic. I saw the first episode of my own volition and hated it, but the next time I saw my dad, he said he was lonely watching it by himself, so we watched a few episodes together. Never has my pity been more misplaced.

Like Boys Before Flowers, I watched this intermittently. But every time I saw it, I swear I gained at least three gray hairs. Talk about an over the top, self-absorbed, arrogant show. It seemed to be under the delirious impression that it was fresh and glamorous, but it really, really wasn’t. If I could, I would have slapped it across the face. Some shows are at least quiet and unassuming in their mediocrity. This one had to broadcast it to the whole world. How much more obnoxious can you get?

What a waste of an actress like Kim Hye Soo. At least most of the rest of the cast was utterly forgettable. Ryu Shi Won is his usual boring self, while Lee Ji Ah is her usual crazy chipmunk on speed. Newbie Lee Yong Woo has about one facial expression, and I had no interest in seeing it.

Final verdict: The faster I forget this drama, the better.

FANGIRLINESS

I know, I know, it sounds silly. I sound silly. But it’s true. Fangirliness is the armour that protects my stomach from terrible, terrible cramps. If there is an actor I love with my heart and soul (and possibly my loins) involved with a terrible project, then I will watch that production, and I won’t stop, because goddammit, I just can’t quit him/her. It’s the great tragedy of my life. And so are the following dramas.

Everybody Cha Cha Cha

Oh Man Seok, why did you have to pick this drama? Why? And why did it have to be a daily drama, one that is set for 150 EPISODES? Do you know what it’s been like, for me to have to trudge through each half hour of this torture? I’ve wasted over fifty hours of my life with this garbage, all because of you. IT WAS ALL BECAUSE OF YOU.

It actually didn’t start out so terribly. I had hope that it would have little moments of family warmth and heartache, and that there would be semblances of human beings present. And the early cute moments between Jin-woo and Na-young were refreshing (mostly, I suspect, because of the good rapport and acting between them). But now it’s all gone to hell, and then some.

I know daily dramas aren’t exactly known for their quality, but this is ridiculous. Park Han Byul and Lee Joong Moon’s so-called “romance” was bad enough, but now the pace has actually slowed to the point that the same scenes are being recycled, over and over. I remember watching one episode and thinking, “Wait a minute, why does this all feel so familiar?”. And then I realized that it was because the characters were all spouting the same tired sentiments, in the exact same places, as they had in the episode immediately previous to it. The only difference was the slight variation in dialogue. THAT’S CALLED LAZY WRITING.

Put on top of that sudden and unexplained changes in affection and motivation, parental disapproval, memory loss and random car accidents, and you have, right there, one of the worst dramas of the year. What an utter waste of talents like Oh Man Seok, Jo Ahn, Shim Hye Jin, Kim Young Ok, and Park Hae Mi.

Cain and Abel

The last time So Ji Sub was in a drama was in 2004, when he acted in what would become the major turning point of his career (so far), I’m Sorry, I Love You. It’s been five years since then, and for a fan, that’s a millenium. I’m not the praying kind, so I can’t say that I prayed that his comeback drama would be a good one, but…I hoped very, very hard.

And the drama he chose to make his comeback was…Cain and Abel. Oy vey.

Perhaps all of that hassle over cancellation and PD/writer switches and whatnot made everyone involved feel confused and rushed. Perhaps they just chose the wrong writer to take charge. Whatever it was, this show was a major, major disappointment.

I’ve talked extensively about this already in my review on this drama over at me wee little blog, but Cain and Abel is one of those dramas that thinks it can handle more than it can. It wants to be several different things at once, but it doesn’t succeed at any of them. When it does anything, it goes big, but only touches on each element in a shallow way. As a consequence, it’s all flash without any substance.

And don’t even get me started on the writing. How anyone can write that kind of script and still have a job is beyond me. Characters suddenly change motivations for no reason, random people die purely for dramatic effect, the hospital setting is a mere afterthought, the romance is saccharine and strained. There’s zero subtlety, and that transfers over even to the acting. At first glance, this is not a bad cast, but no one was really able to shine, despite their best efforts. Oh, a lot of tears were shed, and So Ji Sub’s acting has changed in some subtle way that I can’t yet pinpoint, but without real characters to work with, how could anyone show any truly meaningful acting? The characters in this drama are mere caricatures, nothing more. There’s no heart here, no soul. So why on earth should I care?

The Accidental Couple/That Fool

As I mentioned in my Accidental Couple review here months ago, I love Hwang Jung Min. And, as expected, he’s an absolute marvel here, pulling off what I consider to be the best performance of the year (and, if not the best, at the very least the most heartfelt). His exquisite acting elevated this drama, which should have been utter crap that would have been better off in the bottom of the ocean where no human eyes could see it. Just imagine what this show would have been like without him – terrible acting, caricatures for characters, cliched writing, clueless directing. What a mess!

But with his magic touch, it became a puzzle, a head-scratchingly enjoyable ride (at least for the last eight or so episodes). It’s really rather miraculous that, after its molasses-slow beginning, and its generous usage of cliches, it managed to pick up after so many episodes and find a halfway recipe for success. I like to attribute it all to the power of Hwang Jung Min’s acting. He’s already proven himself, over and over in his films, to be one of the best actors in Korea today. One can only look forward to the kind of performances he will show in future.

Queen Seondeok

Look at the cast list for this drama: Lee Yo Won, Go Hyun Jung, Kim Nam Gil, Uhm Tae Woong, Baek Do Bin, Park Ye Jin, Yoon Yoo Seon, Yoo Seung Ho, Lee Moon Shik, etc, etc, etc. With the exception of Lee Yo Won, that’s quite a fine bunch of actors. So, despite my trepidations about everyone behind the camera, I was really looking forward to this show before it aired.

I really should learn to crush hope before it flutters up to choke me.

It actually didn’t start out so bad. The first few episodes were fun, if somewhat shallow, and the child actors did well. From the very beginning Go Hyun Jung was exquisite as the sultry, evil, irresistible Mishil, and upped the entertainment aspect considerably. I enjoyed myself.

And then, somewhere down the line, it all started to feel…exhausting. I kept waiting for a deeper moment of intelligence or sense to pop up to counter all the fluff, but it never happened. I watched as logic was absolutely crushed repeatedly (running away from a village that’s dying away from drought, only to come across a booming waterfall just ten minutes away?), and as characters showed no signs of real development or depth. And historical accuracy? What historical accuracy? If that even remotely resembles what really happened back in good ol’ Silla, then I’ll eat my grandmother. And I imagine that she wouldn’t be very impressed if I tried that.

This is just such a repetitive, unimaginative, even, yes, stupid show. It’s so incredibly episodic in its format, without any sense of it all actually going somewhere. Okay, so it’s about Queen Seondeok. What about her? What did she accomplish in history? Why is she so important? What are you trying to say, dammit?

Oh, wait, it doesn’t matter what you’re trying to say. You’re too busy trying to gobble up as many ratings as possible through the easiest and laziest means. Sorry, I forgot for a second there. Silly me.

Even the actors, usually so good overall, seemed to realize that there was no point in trying, and churned out rather lackluster performances (my poor Uhm Tae Woong, sob). The only real exception was Go Hyun Jung, but this is no Accidental Couple. It invests too much pretense in grandeur and scale for that. As a result, it’s crippled every time she’s not in a scene. What does that say about a drama’s innate quality?

Monstrously overrated, this is one show that gives other sageuk a bad name. Call me when it’s January 6th, and we get to see what a real sageuk looks like (ChunoChunoChunoChuno).

Smile, You

Despite the PD/writer combo (I wasn’t at all enthralled with The Last Scandal Of My Life), I was looking forward to this show, because the cast was so solid. I mean, Jung Kyung Ho, Lee Min Jung, Lee Chun Hee, Choi Jung Yoon, and Lee Kyu Han, all in ONE drama? Consider me sold.

However, yet again, I was proven to be foolish. This is an incredibly over the top, silly, and childish drama, that wouldn’t know subtlety if it hit it in the forehead with a killer truck. And talk about over-usage of music! Every time I watch this drama, I’m reminded of something my old screenwriting professor once said: “Today’s movies really need to learn the power of absolute silence.” Replace “movies” with “dramas”, and there you’ll see my point. We don’t need music every five seconds to cue us in on what we should be feeling. We ought to know how we should feel from the set-up, dialogue, and acting, and not have it bashed into our skulls with yet another sudden blast of obnoxiously bad K-pop.

There are only 2 reasons I’m still watching this drama:

1) The overall good acting
2) Lee Min Jung and Jung Kyung Ho’s romance

Yeah, that’s right. Me, the girl who’s notoriously picky with romance, is actually enjoying one. The two of them infuse so much energy into their characters, and they just mesh so well together. And I love how forward Jung-in is with her feelings, how she’s not just some mopey damsel in distress. And I love that Hyun-soo isn’t a jerk with machismo problems like most K-drama heroes. They’re the best K-drama couple of the year for me, and are what make the drama bearable. Let’s hope it continues in this vein!

MISPLACED HOPE

These are the dramas that I had some expectations for going in, and that ended up disappointing me deeply. Or, if not deeply, then at least a little bit. A little deeply?

He Who Can’t Marry

As one of those people who saw the classic Japanese dorama Kekkon Dekinai Otoko on which this drama was based, there were a lot of expectations for this show going in. Would it be able to reach or even surpass the brilliance of the original, I wondered? Was that even possible?

Well, as it turns out, it wasn’t possible. At least not this time around.

At first I had hope. Kind of. It was just such a close copy of the original dorama. It duplicated the exact same scenes, sometimes with even the exact same camera angles and whatnot. And because it did that, it managed to capture a kind of shadow of what the original had been. Kind of like buying a knock-off purse instead of the real thing (god, I really want a new purse right now). It may look the same, but there’s something innately different about it. It just ain’t the same, y’know?

Even worse, whenever it did deviate from the original, it ended up showing its massive flaws. Unlike the original, this show was not subtle, and it didn’t appear to have any deep understanding of its very subject matter. It had no spark of life, none of the quirky charm that made the original so appealing.

Part of the problem was the casting of Ji Jin Hee. He’s normally a solid actor, but here, he failed to make the character his own. He was so caught up in chasing a spectre of Abe Hiroshi’s amazing performance in the original that he just ended up looking silly and foolish. Over the top and full of nervous energy, he missed all the right emotional notes. It was unintentionally sad to watch.

The rest of the cast, however, was good. Kim So Eun continues to be one of the most promising young actresses in Korea today, and both Yoo Ah In and Yang Jung Ah pull off solid performances. Uhm Jung Hwa, too, while not at her best, looks lovely and managed to differentiate herself from Natsukawa Yui’s glowing performance in the original. It’s just too bad that none of that could make any real difference.

If anyone wants to provide an example for an argument that all remakes suck, then congratulations. You’ve found it, right here.

You’re Beautiful

I resisted for as long as I could. I vowed to never go near this drama with a ten-foot pole.

I always break self-made promises.

There was just so much open adulation for this drama, you know? I had to know what the hype was about. My curiosity, as always, got the better of me. All of my past pet cats should’ve come back and warned me what would happen.

I approached this drama with as much optimism and open-mindedness as I could muster. I tried to tell myself that no drama is perfect, and that sometimes, entertainment value isn’t about innate quality, but something more elusive. With the end of each episode, I told myself that it would get better, that I should just give it one more chance. And another. And another.

I am such an idiot.

This is not as horrible a drama as, say, Boys Before Flowers or that stain on Korean drama history known as Wife’s Temptation. But it isn’t a good drama, either. Oh, I know all you You’re Beautiful fans all going to come rushing at me with burning pitchforks, yelling “Off with her fat head!”. I don’t care. Honesty is my policy, and I’m being honest when I say that I regret the day I decided to start watching this drama.

Oh, there were moments when I saw glimpses of hope. There were glimmers of cleverness, like every scene where Tae-kyung outwitted He-yi (that scene where he throws her shoes actually made me laugh out loud…for once). And episode eight was the closest this show ever got to showing any real human emotion, where it seemed for a moment that there was actually going to be a semblance of character development and depth. Alas, it was not to be.

You’re Beautiful has a strange sort of quirkiness to it, and I can see why people were so addicted. But it was just inconsequential and unoriginal fluff for me. I never felt for the characters because they were never real. They were just pretty cardboard cut-outs who lipsynched every once in a while. And don’t even get me started on the overwhelming angst (a definite recurring flaw in the Hong sisters’ dramas), the terribly shallow acting (go back to singing, Jung Yong Hwa), the super-cheesy dialogue, the ridiculous plot, or the annoying over-usage of two or three songs (if I have to listen to an A.N. Jell song one more time, I’m going to amputate my ears). And that ending! Talk about being one of the laziest drama endings of the year. (Should I put a semi-spoiler alert here?) I mean, I get that they were just making an allusion to what is probably the most famous trendy drama ending of all time, the ending for the cliched and ridiculous but oh-so-entertaining 1997 drama Star In My Heart. But it wasn’t even a parody, not really. I would have felt much better about their choosing not to come up with their own ending, and ripping off another, better one, if they had taken it and injected some kind of humour or twist. But no. It was done in complete seriousness, straight-faced, as though it was the most romantic moment EVAAAAH. Uh-huh, right honey, we’ve all been there, seen that. Next!

Seriously, can someone invent a time machine for me? I feel like I’ve wasted so many hours of my life with this childish drivel.

Will It Snow For Christmas?

I’m kind of a fan of writer Lee Kyung Hee. That is, I’ve seen 5 1/2 dramas she’s written: The short one episode drama My Older Brother, some of Let’s Go To School, Sang-doo!, I’m Sorry, I Love You, A Love To Kill, her two episodes of Beating Heart, and Thank You. And she’s been an overall hit with me, with the notable exception of A Love To Kill.

This drama in particular…is not her best work. Far from it. After 2007’s Thank You, despite its flaws, I thought that she had noticeably improved. I was hoping that her next work would be even better, and that her tendencies towards cliches and excessive melodrama would tamper down.

However, Will It Snow For Christmas?, while it holds all of the charms of an Lee Kyung Hee drama (nice sense of nostalgia, quiet touching moments, engaging romance), it showcases all of the glaring flaws as well. One of the things about Lee Kyung Hee dramas is, they need really strong actors in order to work. Without that, everything can fall apart in a moment. And unfortunately for Will It Snow For Christmas?, it has a very weak link in its leading lady, Han Ye Seul.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate Han Ye Seul or anything. But she’s always been a weak actress, and although you can tell she’s trying here, she just isn’t making the cut. And it’s hurting the drama as a whole.

That doesn’t mean that all of the faults of the drama rest on Han’s shoulders. Far from it. The directing tends to make things seem more dramatic than they really are; I really wish he’d tone things down a little bit, create a calmer kind of atmosphere. The overwhelming music tends to invade scenes that shouldn’t be invaded. And Lee Kyung Hee’s gone right back to where she’s always been, writing cliches by the handful. Her skill is in making those cliches somehow work and feel a little different by creating living, breathing characters to carry them through, but hasn’t everyone who’s seen an Lee Kyung Hee drama seen these characters before? She’s just recycling the same traits that made her past characters so popular and beloved. It’s disheartening, to say the least. And when you have such a weak leading actress who can’t completely bring your character to life, then you find the drama tripping itself up every so often.

And while I’m on the subject, let me just say that I wish Lee Kyung Hee would go back to writing dirt-poor male characters. At least back then, they weren’t perfect catches. Now that she’s trying to escape that trend, she’s fallen into the Rich Guy With A Secret Heart of Gold cliche, and it’s aggravating. If she writes one more scene showcasing how smart and kind and perfect Go Soo’s character is, I’m going to scream. I’d like to see more flaws in the guy than a quick temper. Pretty please?

TRUE LOVE

The dramas that swept me off my feet and refused to let me down again. The best dramas of 2009, the ones I’ll choose to remember this year for.

Friend, Our Legend

I’ve had the same core group of best friends since the first grade. The four of us have watched each other grow up, suffer, and gain a little bit of wisdom with age. And we’ve gone through it all together. I live thousands of miles away from them now, and we don’t get the chance to see each other often. But every time I do see them, it’s like nothing’s changed at all. It’s like time has stopped. They’re the kind of friends whom I know I’ll love for the rest of my life.

So watching Friend, Our Legend was a somewhat painful yet beautiful experience. It was beautiful because I could sympathize so deeply with its characters, and get swept up in their lives and the events that led them down different paths. And it was painful because watching the break-up of a close friendship is like watching a little part of someone die. I remember watching one scene in a later episode where nothing much is said – Dong-soo simply looks at Jun-seok once and walks away. But my eyes immediately filled with tears watching this tiny little interaction. I could actually feel the gulf widening between them, and thus my heart ached for these two friends who were experiencing such pent-up, unspoken grief.

Friend, Our Legend is full of little moments like that, moments that seem to have been sliced out of time, to be presented to us for our consideration. The early episodes of Friend are particularly strong on the slice of life feel, giving the viewer a light-hearted, warm approach to the memories that surround this group of four friends (seven if you count the ladies). This makes for a not particularly exciting but deeply important first few episodes, where you can actually taste the youth and all the confusion that goes along with it. As the years pass and the characters grow up and drift apart, one can’t help but feel a certain sense of inevitability. The viewer knows what is going to happen – even if you haven’t watched the film version, it’s revealed to us very early on. So what we’re engaging in is not the question of what will happen, but how it got to that point, and why.

After last year’s My Sweet Seoul, this drama is another strong argument for the move for directors from Chungmuro to Yeouido. I can’t say I was ever a fan of Kwak Kyung Taek (I’ve never even seen the movie version of Friend), but I love his work here. Friend, Our Legend is just breathtaking to look at, its visuals so beautiful and gritty and enticing. I remember watching the opening scene of the first episode and thinking, “Damn, that’s gorgeous.” The mood and atmosphere for this drama is just about perfect, soaked in nostalgia for the past, and bathed in a subtle whisper of tragedy. True, the music is average at best, and can be jarring in its appearance in certain scenes, but that’s mostly a minor quibble. And yes, there are times when the stylistic elements come forward too strongly, and it ends up feeling like you’re watching a glossy music video instead of a drama depicting a living, breathing story. But those moments, too, are few and far between, and grow progressively infrequent as the drama goes on. At the end of the day, it’s the strengths of the story and the way it is told that stands out, leaving all of those flaws in the dust.

But what I really want to talk about is the acting. I mean…Holy crap of a seagull, is that really Hyun Bin? What on earth has happened to this guy? Suddenly his eyes are glowing with passion and energy, suddenly it seems like his body is housing a dormant volcano ready to explode at any moment. Watching his character slowly evolve from quiet, hurt, gentle soul desperate for just a hint of love to twisted shell of a human being is just wondrous, as well as heartbreaking. And Hyun Bin pulls it off beautifully. He took my very breath away. He’s had a rough few years after the enormous success of My Name Is Kim Sam Soon, quality-wise, but I think he’s finally back, and a million times better than he ever was before. This is easily the best performance of his career. I can’t wait to see what he has in store for us in future.

Even actors that I previously brushed off as mediocre, like Kim Min Joon, completely changed before my eyes. When did he become this natural, this into his character? It’s just amazing. And then there are folks like Wang Ji Hye, Jung Yoo Mi, Lee Shi Eun, Bae Geu Rin, Seo Do Young. Hell, look at the entire supporting cast, too, with folks like Kim Dong Hyun. There’s not a bad seed to be seen anywhere (although I’d argue that Seo Do Young is the weakest link).

I fully admit that before I started watching this drama in earnest, I assumed that it would be a show drenched in machismo and male posturing, exactly the kind of thing I can’t stand. But by the time I hit the third episode, I realized that I’d been completely wrong. The four main friends are male, yes, but the women – Jin-sook, Eun-ji, Sung-ae – are just as important. They’re not relegated to mere window dressing moved around to give the boys their necessary minute of romance. No, they’re portrayed as tough, strong, resilient, smart and independent, with their own lives separate from men and their own hopes and heartaches. And the actresses portray all of that beautifully, with so much charisma that it could easily overtake other aspects of the drama, if it weren’t controlled carefully.

Friend, Our Legend is not a perfect drama. But it’s a complex, smart, and heartfelt one, and has the ability to dig straight into your heart and potentially tear it apart. As much as I’m loving writing about it right now, it hurts me to do so at the same time. The characters are no longer just characters to me. They’re real people, ones I love and hate and cherish. And, y’know, the more you love, the more opportunity for pain awaits you.

Kyung-sook, Kyung-sook’s Father

Who knew that such a little drama, comprised of only four hours, would sneak up on us in this kind of year and prove itself to be one of the lone gems glowing in a pile of trash?

Kyung-sook, Kyung-sook’s Father was the main reason I entered 2009 feeling hopeful. It aired early this year, and after I finished watching it, my eyes starry-eyed with excitement, I said to myself, “If 2009 is starting out with this kind of quality, imagine what kind of dramas await us in the rest of the year!”.

But instead of being an indicator of how 2009 would turn out, it ended up being one of the very few exceptions in a very dark year – a year full of scandals, tragedy, and political asshattery (asshattery which has now reached even our beloved Korean dramas. Sigh). Looking back, I realize how lucky we were to be given the opportunity to watch this kind of drama this year. I wonder when will be the next time we see something that tackles a sore part of Korean history in such an intelligent and interesting way?

First things first: Kyung-sook is not for everyone. As a black comedy, and as a drama that is set during the Korean war, it deals with some very serious issues: food shortages, parental abandonment, adultery, betrayal, war, death, prejudice. And yet it does so in a light-hearted, humourous way, presenting all the bare facts, raw and painful as they are, and dealing with them perhaps in the only way they knew how: laughter. As someone who grew up in a family that refused to talk candidly about the pain of living through the Korean war, or about the scars they still feel from the events of the Gwangju Massacre, all I know is that I’m glad it’s being talked about at all, and in such a candid way. There is no blindness here, no illusions. The characters are not heroes who freely help others before themselves and stick together as a perfect family. Kyung-sook’s father is a jackass, a coward who thinks of himself before even his own family. Kyung-sook is not exactly being raised by the best of people, and she has to deal with that with all the pain and tears that implies. And yet she endures. It occurs to me that this drama is a testament to the strength of the human spirit, to the ability to find humour and hope even in the darkest of situations. And most of all, it is about the (dysfunctional, fraught, complicated) relationship between a father and his daughter.

The directing and writing is awesome, but it’s the acting that really sticks in the memory here, particularly the acting of little Shim Eun Kyung, who is quickly proving herself to be pretty much the best child actress working in Korea today. And that’s saying something, considering the talent pool of child actors that Korea apparently holds. And then there are veterans like Jung Bo Seok, once again essaying one of the best performances of the year, showing without restraint all of the father’s faults, but also making it impossible to hate him in the end. Hell, the whole cast is wonderful, from the smallest child actor to the oldest veteran. With so many good things going for it, not to mention the legacy of the classic stage play from which this drama is adapted, is it any wonder it turned out to be the best drama of 2009? Friend, Our Legend had bigger moments of raw power, but Kyung-sook, Kyung-sook’s Father is the one that came closest to consistent perfection.

THE FUTURE

I admit, I’m looking forward to January. Jejoongwon looks very promising (if only it weren’t airing on SBS!), and I’m so excited for Chuno that it’s kind of ridiculous. Road Number One, too, can’t air soon enough. With such promising projects looming on the horizon, it’s tempting to say that 2010 looks brighter than 2009 was. But I don’t want to jump ahead of myself just yet. Let’s just say that now that I kind of know the secret to enduring bad dramas, maybe I’ll be okay in future. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll learn to love dramas for reasons that I can’t quite comprehend right now. At the very least, I hope I won’t be paying another drama-induced visit to Dr. C anytime soon…

RELATED POSTS

• How was 2009 for you?
• 2008 Year in Review, Part 4: Finding merit in the mediocre
• 2008 Year in Review, Part 3: Dahee Fanel’s 2008 Review
• 2008 Year in Review, Part 2: A Grump Reviews 2008
• 2008 Year in Review, Part 1: Witterings on 2008 Dramas