Winter ’15

Observations on the Winter 2015 season, about a month too late. Oop!

Punch

I will shout my love for this drama from the rooftoops. Gotdamn, I say, gotdamn! I finished this sometime in February, and it is the most perfect and the tightest legal/political thriller I’ve ever watched. Everyone operated in states of sort-of-bad to straight up evil and I loooooooved that about “Punch”. Park Jung-hwan (Kim Rae-won) was hardly a good guy (remember: he used his cancer to fake a headache so that he could sneak evidence away from his prosecutor ex-wife!), but watching him combat the shitstorm of greater evil and take responsibility/matters into his own hands during last months of his life was incredible.

This guy knows how to scrap and unfortunately his enemies do, too. I mean, Lee Tae-joon? BRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHH he was so emotional, but he bared no bones about being ruthless. Everything he did was out of pure ambition, which was so much scarier than someone (ahem, Minister Yoon) parroting false ideologies about justice. Even the smaller enemies, like Jo Kang-jae, had me feeling some type of way. The rooftop confession was the perfect piece of drama, everything was laid bare and the fallout was so intense. Park Hyuk-kwon has a penchant for playing characters that I don’t like EVER, but he put in a damn good show that episode. It was hard in many ways to watch this series come to a close, but the journey and ending —depsite the cliches— were perfect.

. . .

Heard It Through the Grapevine

I try not to get too excited about new dramas that I start (they’re all good in the beginning, that’s how they suck you in!), but “Heard It Through the Grapevine” got me in the worst way. I love it. I’m a big fan of Jung Sung-joo/An Pan-seok’s work, especially after “White Tower” and last year’s “Secret Love Affair”. I’m actually glad Kim Hee-ae turned down the leading role; rather than focusing on the matriarch, we get to focus on two very opposite families and what happens when they’re faced with an unplanned pregnancy. Let me tell ya, there are hijinks and so many shed tears! And it’s hilarious. While the show overall carries a bit of weight, it’s nothing as dark and deliberate as SLA. Seo Bom (Go Ah-sung) and Han In-sang (Lee Joon) are obviously the rich boy/“poor” girl on paper, but never once does it feel like she’s less than. More often than not, Bom has to be strong for him and their baby, and then he feels like he has to be good/strong for his little family… like when he stood up to his dad and almost got his ass beat, hah. They have such a cute/fresh dynamic, and there’s no moment where In-sang isn’t proud of his wife or lavishing her with hugs and kisses and sneaky peace signs. YOUNG LOVE :’)

While Bom’s family is a lot more supportive (within reason, and they don’t take anything sitting down from the in-laws either), it is so fun to watch how In-sang’s parents try (and fail) to control everything around them. They are delusional! But please, more scenes of Papa Han breaking down in tears! He’s totally toast though, he loves his grandson.

I’m probably going to be talking about HITTG for a while since it’s a whopping 30~32 (!) episodes and is planned to run until June.

. . .

Completed

• Ghostwriter. started it per Emma’s recommendation! Holds the distinction of being the first j-drama I watched this year. The relationship between Yuki (Mizukawa Asami) and Risa (Nakatani Miki) was the beeeeeessssssst.
• Date. I’m in love with the opening theme, 60s j-pop is so dreamy and cute! Date was cute, I enjoyed it and I enjoyed Anne and Hasegawa Hiroki a ton.
• Hogu’s Love. So many question marks here; there are so many parts that I absolutely adore, but the product is just … ??? EHHHH. It’s just that there are great pieces and they’re squandered on emotionally manipulative narratives (I don’t even know if I’m going to like where this Byun Kang-chul thing is going) or just being misleading. I love unpredictability! Punch had that in spades! But if you’re just throwing red herrings out for the sake of it, I don’t think I can hang. I actually have two episodes left, so we’ll see! ETA: Finished, feels are the same.
• Valid Love. Hm. This show was complicated and sobering. It could have been so much better — Ilri deserved so much better! She deserved to love herself and be around others who loved her; instead it just felt like Ilri was surrounded by stifling presences and obligations that she (sadly) took upon herself. On the plus side, I got to see the beautiful, alien-like haughty prince that is Lee Soo-hyuk for 20 episodes.
• Heart to Heart. Hopefully this will be last we see of psychiatrists dating their patients in dramas. Still, it was a really cute, hot-blooded romance!