1
AudienceofOne
For the second time this year, the Phillipines has decided to show the world how BL should be done.
Like in the Movies is a beautiful, intelligent, layered discussion of coming out and having the courage to seize control of your life.
Like Gameboys before it, it has the perfect mix of brains and heart.
A sparse production with few characters and even fewer sets, Like in the Movies is obviously another victim of filming restrictions due to Covid19. And yet the show’s filming limitations don’t detract from it. Nothing feels missing.
There’s a lot to like about Like in the Movies right from the first scene, especially around its gleeful embrace of romcom tropes such as fake relationship, forced cohabitation and Odd Couple conflict. But underneath the surface, the show is finely tuned and intricately written but has enough kilig to satisfy the most shallow romcom fan.
If the Phillipines keeps producing BL like this i may not watch Thai BL ever again.
Was this review helpful to you?
At this stage, Thailand produces BL just to produce BL. It's cheap, it's easy, it makes quick cash. And this environment of cash over content was inevitably going to produce a show like Love By Chance 2.
The fact is, everyone involved with this lucrative and popular franchise simply does not care about their story or their characters. And it shows.
We're all aware - generally if not specifically - about the behind-the-scenes issues that meant Saint would not be returning for this sequel. And since Love By Chance as a vehicle was underpinned by Pete and Ae's relationship, the writers had to decide what to do with Pete's character without the actor. They had two choices: recast or find a reason for Pete to not be around. But whatever you do with a sequel based on a romance you don't kill that character off screen and you definitely don't have them break up off screen. Otherwise - why did people sit through the first season if it had no point?
It's not just that the writers took the cheap route of breaking Pete and Ae up - off screen. They then took the rather bizarre route of not progressing Tin and Can's relationship but instead circling it back to the beginning and simply repeating the plot points from season 1. This not only removes those relationship beats from all their context rendering them mostly meaningless. It creates a confusing situation whereby Pete, Ae, Techno and the other characters are living in a universe where Season 1 happened but TinCan isn't. I'm all for particle physics but I don't need some kind of Schrodinger's season where I'm never sure at any point if it did or did not exist.
If we made a list of everything that you can do wrong with a sequel, then Love By Chance has blithely decided to do all of them. Not because of necessity but because of laziness: because nobody involved actually cares about this story or its characters. And as a consequence I don't care either.
Love By Chance is an utterly pointless addition to the universe, one that exists merely to milk an audience that is genuinely invested in this series of shows and deserves better. It's about time Thailand stop pumping out third-rate BL for the sake of it and began to invest time and energy in development.
PS Perth is a genuinely fine actor who should be doing much much better projects than this. He steals every scene he's in just by walking into it and while Ae's plotline is pretty pointless and used only to help TinCan learn a Very Important Lesson About Love, Perth brings to it genuine gravitas. I really want to see him do something better but for that Thailand is going to have to get out of this current rut.
Was this review helpful to you?
What's so good about being normal?
"Unless it's something bad, it's better to be weird than ordinary"To write a review on the School Nurse files is to imply I have somehow grasped what the School Nurse files is all about. The show's glorious acid trip weirdness defies analysis and yet feels deliberate. After all - as our male lead says as we head into the plot's explosive denouement - "it's better to be weird than ordinary". And the School Nurse Files definitely walks its own talk.
At a Korean highschool where the kids recite cult-like verses on happiness every morning, an emotional whale floats overhead and ducks follow the leader through the school randomly. The children *appear* happy, according to our school nurse, Ahn Eun-young (Jung Yoo-mi). But when it comes to life - and especially to adolescence - it's what's under the surface that matters more.
Since birth Eun-young has seen 'jellies', a kind of supernatural human residue that grows and forms into different shapes. Armed with a toy gun and rainbow toy sword she fights the jellies that have grown so big as to be a threat to the humans around them. In this she is aided by Hong In-pyo (a Nam Joo-hyuk who is finally living up to his potential), the grandson of the school's founder who has a disability following a motorcycle accident when he was young. In-Pyo has a powerful aura that acts as a supernatural shield and Ahn Eun-young is able to recharge by holding his hand.
But this school is no ordinary school, it was built on a pond of emotional residue that a cult hopes to harness for its own advantage.
The School Nurse Files is a crazy ride of symbolism and metaphor and I'm not sure to what extent we're supposed to take it literally. But the show is unconventional and original and flat out weird. A celebration of weird where everyone is encouraged to let their freak flag fly. The show's aesthetic leans deliberately away from kdrama gloss. The kids have acne. The adults look real. Nam Joo-hyuk's model looks and height are transformed into a gawky, clumsy awkwardness that is 1000 times sexier than the usual sanitised gloss..
The only reason it's a 9 - and the only real issue I took with it - is that it's packed into six episodes like a pocket rocket ready to explode and it really needed at least one or two extra episodes to make the whole thing feel less rushed. But in the final estimation that's not a huge problem. I'll happily take another season - hell another three seasons - if I can see Eun-young fight evil while holding her adorable boyfriend's hand.
Was this review helpful to you?
In the near future, a fortune-telling AI called Manxin has been developed that mines big data and uses an algorithm to predict the future. The AI has an accuracy rate of over 96% and its associated app is free. As such, its use has grown until it underpins the majority of actions and interactions in Korea. The impact of the app is not beneficial, however, nor even benign. The economy has slumped, unemployment is high and homelessness is on the rise.
A young woman To Sun-ho (an almost-unrecognisable Lee Yun-hee) is on the search for answers about Manxin after her sister - a Manxin addict - died in a freak accident involve a sinkhole. How could this be possible? Didn't Manxin warn her? Did it send her to her death? Why would it do that? Essentially, Sun-ho is driven by the question that disaffected believers have been asking for eternity: why did God allow this to happen?
To Sun-ho is soon joined on her journey by Manxin cultist Jung Ga-ram (Lee Dong-hwi), who despite his worship of the AI is not a blind ideologue. The two begin their search for the AI, her to question it, him to be in its presence.
On the surface, this episode of SF8 is a simple discussion of free will in an ordered universe. It is a truism that if we knew the position of every molecule in the Universe we could accurately predict the future. An ordered and mechanistic Universe negates the existence of free will. Whether that Universal order comes from a consciousness or not isn't important in this context. Whether it's physics or God we ultimately have no control over the world and we will therefore cling to the idea that we can find a clue to the future. Basically, it's humans who want Gods. That's why we create them.
Whether Manxin has another level to it is up to debate. It's short - a mere 50 minutes - and so maybe it didn't have time to tease out some of its themes. Or maybe that really is all there is to it.
Unlike The Prayer, which was basically perfect, Manxin suffers from a number of flaws. The main one is the vague and almost trite "fortunes" that the AI delivers to people daily. They're designed to be familiar to people in a shamanistic culture but are open to interpretation in ways that undermine the "96.3% accuracy" of the show's premise. Which of course is one of the criticisms of shamanism from those outside the culture (of which I am admittedly one).
The ending opens up a lot of questions, which ultimately is what good scifi is supposed to do. If everything in the Universe is destined, then can we exert free will by our choice not to be informed of that destiny? Can we choose whether we want the illusion of free will? And if so, is that free will?
Overall, Manxin is an enjoyable watch but it left me wanting more.
Was this review helpful to you?
And like the best of science fiction, its job is to make us think and make us feel - even if those feelings are uncomfortable and make us question everything.
In a future where medicine is keeping people alive long after they would normally have passed, caregiver robots have been created that look like the patients' loved ones. As nursing hospitals replace schools and people go into debt to buy the expensive caregivers, the show examines the lives of two families each able to provide only palliative care to an ill member of their family.
Like most robot stories, The Prayer isn't about futuristic palliative care or even about robotics. It is instead about the nature of humanity. Grounded in the story of Cain and Abel and the question, "Am I my brother's keeper?", it asks some big questions about what it means to care for somebody and the limits and boundaries of that responsibility.
Lee Yoo-young is transcendent here playing dual roles as Yeon Jung-in and her robot double Gan Ho-jung. Jung-in is struggling with middle age questions of failure and purpose as her mother lies in a vegetative state with her doppelganger Ho-jung looking over her. But Ho-jung has also been programmed to care forJung-in and after a possible system error she decides that looking after the daughter requires the death of the mother.
Is Ho-jung suffering from a logic failure or an emotional awakening? Is she malfunctioning or gaining sapience? Can she feel and if she can are those feelings something she should act on? Is her desire to care for Jung-in a selfless act of consideration or has she developed the ability to lie even to herself?
Like the best of science fiction, The Prayer never answers these questions. Dark, off-kilter, often out of focus and kaleidoscopic, The Prayer simply asks. It is up to us to decide if we can answer.
Was this review helpful to you?
Another perfect season of Forest of Secrets (Stranger)
Forest of Secrets continues to shows Korea how it should be done. This is what happens when a writer as skillful as Lee Soo-yeon gets teamed up with brilliant actors, a talented director and a PD that understands how to bring all of that talent together.Jo Seung -woo is back as Hwang Shi-mok, the incorruptible prosecutor suffering from brain damage following surgery when he was young. He is joined once again by idealistic police officer Han Yeo-jin (Bae Doo-na). Set several years after the events of the first season, time and an inherently corrupt system has not been kind to either character, both ground down by the machinery of justice and both clearly nearing burnout.
This season starts with fog, Shi-mok's headlights illuminating it faintly and this image underpins everything the writer is trying to tell us about the quest for justice. Which way do we go through the fog? What step do we take? Which direction is the right one and which just gets us more lost? While blood splatter led us through the forest in the first season, there is no clear direction here: just people going through the motions and wondering whether they make any difference in the world.
The tone of season 2 is not just grim, it's leaden. The weight of those years bears heavily on our two protagonists as they attempt to navigate their way out of the fog, their path lit however dimly by a belief that justice is possible even if the pursuit of it is exhausting.
Forest of Secrets has grounded its narrative in this season in the fight between the police and the prosecution over investigative rights. As the infighting accelerates and the two sides seem more intent in slinging dirt than in serving the public, corruption gathers apace as it always does. And with our eternal partners Shi-mok and Yeo-jin on opposite sides, both will begin to question their role, their ethics and their ability to retain their independence and objectivity in an environment where it seems everyone is compromised in some way.
Forest of Secrets 2 may not be as rollicking as its first season but the writing is even more skillful, insightful and mature. We flounder in the dense fog as much as our characters do at first, waiting for that path out. And by putting us there and building that atmosphere, everyone involved shows us that they are truly at the top of their game.
Everything - the writing, direction, music, design - every aspect of this drama is almost perfect as its first year was as well.
This remains the pinnacle of Korean drama and its sophomore season merely cements that rank.
Was this review helpful to you?
So with a title of 'Amensalism' and an intriguing premise involving death dreams, I decided to overlook the terrible acting of Prince and tune in. It started off okay with a kind of dreamy and ambiguous tone. Prince was... actually even worse than usual, which I didn't think was possible... but it was interesting enough to get me through the first few episodes.
Unfortunately, overall, the show is a thematic mess and the plot is even worse. Having watched to the end, I honestly couldn't tell you what it was even about. A huge part of the plot was taken up with a conspiracy completely unrelated to the male lead's dreams or his near death experience. I squinted and cocked my head sideways but still couldn't see how 'Amensalism' factored into any of the relationships depicted.
Worse than that, the show undermined its own mythology more than once for head-scratching "twists" that the show could have done without. It also assassinated one character very badly and then expected both the other characters and the audience to forgive her the next episode. In the end, it came down squarely on the side of a standard predestined romance with a crime thriller complication.
Overall, Amensalism was an unfocused mess and I don't recommend it.
Was this review helpful to you?
The premise is pretty simple and very Korean: a Candy/Chaebol romance that happens to be between two men.
The poor Kang Gook is the best friend and bodyguard of Chaebol heir and wannabe teen playboy Han Tae-joo, for whom he has secret feelings. The two live together, go to school together, do martial arts together. They're basically inseparable in a dynamic that harks back to feudal Joseon bromances. It's a dynamic that didn't entirely work for me at first due to the disturbing power imbalance between the two boys, and I found the first few episodes very rough.
However, once the show settles into itself and stops finding excuses for them to grapple with each other, it begins to deal quite realistically and even movingly with the emotions of the situation. Gook is Tae-joo's servant and nothing - not their feelings or their friendship or anything else - can change that. Instead of using this power dynamic to set up the somewhat uncomfortable and unequal relationship I started to fear, the show instead treats it as a barrier, which in real life it would be.
The show also makes a few more quality decisions, especially around its second female lead who is textually treated in the same way as a traditional kdrama second male lead. It's a refreshing decision, not just from a kdrama perspective but from a BL perspective as well.
As a web drama, Where Your Eyes Linger is far far too short and as such the narrative is rushed. It would have benefited from longer episode lengths.
But despite a rough start and the use of some truly questionable music decisions, this is a classic kdrama romance scenario that happens to have two men in it. And that's the best thing about it. It means that some of its peculiarly Korean narrative decisions worked for me when I would have found them tiresome in a standard drama. I think it's great that they made a drama that treats homosexual romance in exactly the same way as it would have treated heterosexual romance.
That alone puts it heads and shoulders above every other BL released this year.
Was this review helpful to you?
My Engineer is the new SOTUS ripoff we never needed. Senior engineering student Bohn (a much less green Cooper in his first lead since My Bromance) bullies freshman medical student, Duen (Poy) by making him bring him a rose every day. The couple fall for each other and embark on a relationship that is half weirdly sexless, half abusive.
As well as Duen being exceedingly weird about any kind of skinship to the point where it's uncomfortable, Bohn freaks out almost every episode at Duen even talking to another man and then gaslights him into apologising when he's in the wrong. Think Until We Meet Again meets 2 Moons. Yes it's that weird. If Duen isn't freaking out because his boyfriend wants to spend time with him alone, Bohn is freaking out because Duen interacts with other people. Duen responds to all of this with a weird vacant smile that makes you wonder if he's mentally deficient in some way.
Of course all their close group of friends are also secretly gay and we end up with a number of other romances between them. The best of these is RamKing (Perth and Lay), whose relationship is almost worth tuning in for. The worst of these is BossMek, where Ryan's character Mek eventually gets his straight friend, Boss (Inntouch) by aggressively Nice Guying him in a way that feels coercive.
The show is predictable, generic and derivative. It has almost no plot and is written to a standard BL formula. For me at least that formula is tired. If you wanted to fast forward entirely to the RamKing scenes, you wouldn't be missing anything. Or just skip it completely.
Was this review helpful to you?
The Korean highschool Breaking Bad you didn’t think was possible and never knew you needed
When Extracurricular starts, it's hard to work out what you're watching. A highschool kdrama? A gritty American teen soap? Some weird amalgam of both?Weirdly, it works in the same way that Parasite worked. And it's the success of Parasite combined with the distribution power of Netflix that probably sparked the production of a show that is basically Breaking Bad but with highschool student pimps set in Korea. These are words I never thought I'd write.
Anyway, everything about this production is good. The acting, the music, the cinematography. The script is fast-paced and disturbing and violent and full of expletives and if you're like me you won't be able to stop watching. Show is pure crack. And as an indictment of the destructiveness of capitalism, it's brutal in the same way that Parasite was brutal. And brutal in a way that few Korean dramas have had the courage to be until now.
Kim Dong-hee is mesmerising as the quiet, repressed straight-A student, Oh Ji-soo, who runs an online security service for prostitutes from his phone to pay for his tuition. Park Joo-hyun proves that her recent role in A Piece of Your Mind barely scraped the surface of her talent. Her Bae Gyu-ri is a complex but nonetheless entitled bored rich kid itching for some self-destructive behaviour to make herself feel alive. She discovers Ji-soo's secret and the world unravels from there.
Extracurricular never allows the viewer a moment for complacency but it does tease optimism frequently. Despite the borderline-sociopathic nature of our two leads, the actors give them both a perfect air of lost adolescence that makes us want to see them succeed. One is impoverished, neglected, and isolated. The other wealthy, over-parented, and popular. And yet they are somehow the same. And that sameness comes probably from the way that society has failed them.
Extracurricular is an addictive drama born from a marriage between a culture that brought us Makjang and a dramatic heritage that includes Breaking Bad. It's a narrative child that works somehow, even when it shouldn't.
With a lot of swearing, violence, adult themes and references to things like sex trafficking of minors, it won't be for everybody. But for this viewer it worked. Can't wait for the inevitable Season 2.
Was this review helpful to you?
Unfortunately, like an emotion, it has to be felt to be understood. Just like words frequently falter at expressing our feelings so they also falter at describing this beautiful drama.
With dismal ratings in Korea, the show even ended up being cut to 12 episodes. But even though the loss of those four is a tragedy and the show was forced to speed up its storytelling to compensate, it is still an almost-perfect study of grief, loss and how we grapple with the hole people leave in the world when they pass.
Jung Hae-in always gives lovely understated performances and his portrayal of the inventor Moon Ha-won is no exception. Ha-won has loved and lost but always from afar as he observes life but fails to live it. He is an inventor in the world of artificial intelligence working on recreating the personalities of lost loved ones for therapeutic purposes. He is driven by the need to understand both the sudden death of his mother when he was 18 and the loss of his childhood friend, Kim Ji-soo (Park Joo-hyun), whose husband insisted she break ties with him after their marriage.
While working on the project he acquires a recording studio to lay down voices and meets orphaned sound engineer, Han Seo-woo. Chae Soo-bin is wonderful here as the warm but still grief-stricken Seo-woo. These two embark on a healing relationship of mutuality and reciprocity. This couple's ability to understand and accept the other's losses and to each give and take to an equal extent is heartwarming to watch unfold.
At one point in the drama, Ha-won suggests Banbogi: a meeting between two people who love each other at a midway point between the two. Bangobi encapsulates the reciprocity and mutuality between the two. One does not go to the other, whether physically or emotionally. They always meet in the middle.
Our core couple orbit the black hole that is the loss of Ji-soo. But around them swirl a host of other damaged characters. Ha-won's niece , Moon Soon-ho (Lee Ha Na) who has taken nine years to get over a bad breakup. Jis-oo's controlling and almost-abusive husband, Gang In-wook (Kim Sung-gyu). And the found family of guests living in the boarding house that Seo-woo took shelter in after the death of her family.
While the show examines grief in all its iterations - whether through the death of a loved one, a relationship, or even the person you used to be - it's also about the way in which we grapple with the hole a person leaves in the world when they're gone. How we want just a piece of them to hold onto and how we struggle with the realisation that we will never know what they were thinking because we can never speak to them again.
The Ji-soo AI that Ha-won creates becomes that piece. But it's through Ha-won and In-wook's reactions to that piece that we see most clearly what this drama is trying to say. People are not pieces or object to possess, control or dominate. We will never own them, just as we will never know truly what they think and feel. But that isn't necessary to gain comfort and strength from them and to give that comfort and strength in return.
Grief is overcome by connection and community but most of all through true mutuality. And that's the most heartwarming message of all.
I can only hope that now it's over, people can finally realise what a gem this show was. And maybe, just maybe, next time Korea produces something as finely-written and beautiful as this, people will watch it.
Was this review helpful to you?
Reeling from the brutal murder of her childhood friend, Cha Young-jin (Kim Seo-hyung) becomes a detective and devotes her life to tracking down the 'Stigmata' serial killer who hasn't killed for 19 years. She is an obsessed workaholic who lives alone but has a somewhat unconventional friendship with her neighbour's young son, the 15-year-old Go Eun-ho (Ahn Ji-ho).
When Eun-ho has a terrible accident, Young-jin pursues the truth with the same determination with which she has approached her friend's murder. And in doing so, she begins to uncover the truth about what happened 20 years ago and why.
Kim Seo-hyung is transcendent in this role as the tough, ass-kicking cop with a heart full of love and empathy. Whip-smart but not cynical, she has the ability to see through people's facades to the core of who they are and provide support, care, empathy and safety to those who need it: a classical warrior fighting to protect rather than to enslave or dominate. It's through this powerful female character that the show examines what it means to be a community of adults to children who need guidance and care.
Young-jin may be grim and black-clad but her home is full of light and plants and is a safe haven for the neglected Eun-ho, forced too young into adulthood. Nobody Knows is full of abandoned, overlooked ducklings needing a mother duck to follow and its overarching question "What happens if the duck that saves them is leading them into darkness rather than the light?" is something it never loses sight of for 16 episodes.
In fact the show's Duckling scenes - children that need to be tended and cared for to grow properly just like the plants on Young-jin's balcony - are Nobody Knows' emotional core and its greatest strength. We care about these children and we want them to be saved. More importantly we care about Young-jin and the way in which the trauma and pain of her life never causes her to lose sight of the kind of person she wants to be.
Young-jin's three most important ducklings - the beautiful ray of sunshine that is Eun-ho, the brooding Ju Dong Myung (Yoon Chan-young) and the privileged but deeply unhappy Ha Min-sung (Yoon Jae Yong) - are a joy to watch as is their homeroom teacher Lee Sun-woo (Ryu Deok-hwan) who gets drawn in trying to protect his young charges.
Are people parasites or symbiotes? Do they prey on each other or build each other up? What kind of adult do you want to be? Is a question asked not just of Sun-woo but of every other adult on the show and of the audience itself.
Not to say that the show is perfect. It isn't. Stretching it to 16 episodes clearly took effort. The show relies too much on a MacGuffin and the back half gets mired in flashbacks and treasure hunts, and even gets a bit heavy-handed. But with an ending that's almost perfect, a beautiful emotional core, and quality direction that pulls you in and keeps you tethered, Nobody Knows is definitely a drama that's worth watching.
It never forgot what it was about and that's a quality reserved for only the very best of Korean television.
Was this review helpful to you?
Because this show is silly.
And I don't mean that it's trash or that it's lightweight or that it's fluffy (you could argue it's all those things). I mean it's deeply deeply silly, from its basic premise to its unfolding plot to its source of conflict.
A brilliantly-cast Cat plays L, a feline that turns into a man. L tries to act too. This is not pretty. Hopefully the cat can give him some pointers while he's on set. Seriously, this Cat Sunbae is brilliant and actually looks like L. Except of course that Cat Sunbae can act.
The cat is taken in by an aspiring webtoon artist Kim Sol-ah (Shin Ye-eun). Sol-ah behaves like a 12 year old mostly, simpering and floundering and fulfilling every rant I ever made about Korean dramas infantilising their female leads. Shin Ye-eun is good here, I stress. It's the part she's playing that I don't like.
Sol-ah takes in the Cat (she renames it Hong-joo) to help out the man she's been crushing on since highschool who inherited the Cat from his recent breakup (or did he?). At one point we find out why her crush bailed on her in the past and it's very very silly (are you sensing a theme).
Hong-joo found out he could become human as a kitten when he turned into a child in her presence. The show then delights us with scenes of her as a full-grown adult with an adoring child. He then grows up, becoming a large man who follows her around, listens in on her conversations, changes into a human in her bed at night, pervs on her while she's changing, and generally behaves like a huge creepster. The first few episodes are basically a horror film with weirdly upbeat music.
Uncertain as to whether it's about bestiality, paedophilia, or a delightful romcom about a woman and her stalker, the show kind of embraces all three.
Sit back, relax and enjoy new conversational material such as, "Can a cat consent?", "Is it stalking if she let him into the house in his cat form?", and "Is it romantic if he imprinted on her when he was a baby and she was a full-grown woman?".
Or just suspend all your disbelief, turn off that squidgy thing in your head that won't shut up, and embrace the silly. It's up to you.
I couldn't. I'm out.
Was this review helpful to you?
One of the things Seung-ho is known for is choosing projects with sensitive, multi-layered male leads and strong, three-dimensional female leads with their own arcs. No female lead in a recent Yoo Seung-ho drama has been there merely to propel the male arc's lead or serve as an accessory. Strong female leads are almost a part of his brand.
The Memorist continues this trend by having a good mutual partnership between Seung-ho's telepath Dong-baek and the profiler, Han Sun-mi. Capable, intelligent, respected and extremely competent, Se-young's character has her own connection to the plot independent of Dong-baek and serves an equal role in the text to his own. This is extremely rare for this genre (and for kdrama generally). And, if it wasn't for the weaknesses of the plot, direction and editing, it would almost be enough for me to persist with the show.
These are two excellent actors doing their best with the material. It's just the material itself that's the problem.
Unfortunately, The Memorist just isn't that interesting. The show is dark - so dark sometimes that you can barely see what's happening - and badly edited, with things moving from action frame to action frame as though it's still a comic book and not a live action version. The characters remain undeveloped at episode 8, with little time given to them as people. To some extent, this is deliberate as Dong-baek's ambiguity is required for several plot points. But it doesn't add to the show's watchability if we can't connect or feel invested in these people as characters.
By episode 8, the show consists of our protagonists chasing a smirking psychopath around in the dark. And while I would usually persist just for Seung-ho and his badass female lead, I am unfortunately bored. Worse even than that, the show has a voyeuristic violence against women problem - a common issue with this genre. It's unfortunate for it that I am very tired of crime shows torturing women for their viewer's pleasure, or for them perpetuating the myth that it's strange psychopaths in the street we need to be concerned about. The real threat to women is men they know and it's about time dramas started acknowledging that.
Having a single strong female lead is not enough to overcome the victimisation of every other female character and by episode 8 this is becoming a real problem.
And so I am dropping the show and hoping Seung-ho's next endeavour is more to my taste.
Was this review helpful to you?
Unfortunately, Taiwanese dramas have a mould. Sometimes what comes out of that mould can be flavoured differently. But it is, unfortunately, a somewhat superficial change.
So let's talk first about what this drama is trying to be. It's trying to be an intelligent and nuanced conversation about two unhappy people maintaining relationships out of habit and obligation whose mutual attraction shocks them into re-evaluating their lives. And in many aspects, Before We Get Married succeeds admirably. The core story underpinning it is good with strong characterisation, excellent performances and fine writing. Taiwanese dramas are known for having real people having real conversations in realistic ways and this drama is no exception. How it begins and how it ends are good and the ways in which the characters move around each other within the text is generally good too. Some of the emotional beats between Weiwei and her fiancé, for example, are utterly perfect. Painful and frustrating but perfect. Puff Gao and Jasper Liu have extraordinary chemistry and it's not hard to believe they want to tear each other's clothes off throughout.
So, then, it's the execution that becomes a problem. And this is where that Taiwanese drama mould comes in. The show is marketed as a sexy infidelity drama but ultimately the cheating is meant to be a mere impetus to the character's development. As such, the show struggled with how to deal with incorporating cheating while not alienating an audience that was likely to respond negatively to it. Like a lot of infidelity dramas it tried to have its cake and eat it too, metaphorically speaking. Weiwei had to have an affair while not actually having an affair. Weiwei and Kehuan's respective others had to be progressively terrible so we'd feel the infidelity was justified. Both partners were obsessive and controlling but it seems as though this was deemed insufficient to justify the emotional affair to the audience and so greater sins were thrown into the pot, often in random and frustrating ways.
The show's first episode and THAT scene was the perfect example. The conversations between Weiwei and Kehuan in episode 2 show that this incident was supposed to be consensual; the first volley in an affair. Instead it was a disturbing non-consensual incident that framed Kehuan as a potential abuser and possible rapist. I have no idea what it's doing in this show or what we were supposed to think about it. That also goes for the camping incident, which did neither lead any favours.
As the show progressed it began to opt for cliched Taiwanese romcom scenarios to portray our couple as being destined for each other. At the same time it tied itself up in knots to make sure that Weiwei could deny a sexual relationship when the time came. And it's true - Weiwei wasn't leaving her boyfriend for another man, she was leaving him for reasons that were entirely her own. Trying to do this plotline within the context of an active affair probably seemed too complex and too difficult for writers of a 13-episode Taiwanese show. Especially when they were no doubt pressured to imply that this new relationship was in fact Twu Wuv when instead it was about two people who just really wanted to bone each other.
Whether this show falls down by not delivering on the sexy it teased or whether it falls down because it made the leads unlikeable due to their infidelity is a matter of personal preference for the average viewer. Either way, it was a frustrating and sometimes tedious watch as Weiwei prevaricates and dithers and recommits to the wrong man and Kehuan turns from a complicated win-at-all-costs manipulator into the Perfect Male Lead and everyone starts working together for reasons that make no sense except that Taiwanese writers need new scenarios, stat. The last thing this needed to be was a workplace drama.
Overall, what this drama was trying to do was very good, original and interesting. A new flavour if you will. But what it actually needed was a whole new mould.
Was this review helpful to you?
