ibisfeather
Gong Yoo and Namkoong Min in the same frame, but bellowing all over the place
Total soap opera ca 2006. Good character-driven script, broken and blended family theme with an obsessed incestuous stepbrother/half brother tormenting the FL. 2 surviving families, 5 siblings. The ML, adopted, is without a blood tie.
Reasons to watch: Namkoong Min, Gong Yoo, the streets of Seoul still modest and fresh in '06, a great escapist ocean theme -- deep saturated blues and greens, an aquarium workplace, mostly shot on sunny days in Seoul and partly in Sydney. NKM and GY are in their 20s, fluffy-haired, with widelegged pants draped over the arches of their shoes.
Reason not to watch: Korean male-bellowing to obtain control of a conversation is omnipresent, not confined as now to peripheral characters in dramas, but even between the leads(!), and no one seems to notice. The wrist-grabbing and dragging is pretty awful too.
I have read that My Girl in 2005 was a watershed in the depiction of strong independent FLs. I think that in MG the Hong sisters also reduced the amount of corrosive manipulation by the MLs as well, at least that is what I infer when I watch this show in which the MLs are not so restrained.
The so-called post '05 "stronger" FL still struggles, from 2006 through now in 2024, to find a space in which she can actually have agency and where her efforts are recognized and respected.
So often what a script represents is a space in which what the FL wants to say is completely delegitimized, so much so that she subsides in tearful confusion over and over again, silently. Her only freedom is to say no, or to refuse to make choices which are forced upon her.
In this show and in My Girl the FLs actually speak in a reflective manner, and they freeze only in order to have time to think. How did it become ok for so many heroines after this to suffer silently? or to talk incessantly as a form of avoiding having to speak sincerely?
first posted on viki sept 19th 2024
Reasons to watch: Namkoong Min, Gong Yoo, the streets of Seoul still modest and fresh in '06, a great escapist ocean theme -- deep saturated blues and greens, an aquarium workplace, mostly shot on sunny days in Seoul and partly in Sydney. NKM and GY are in their 20s, fluffy-haired, with widelegged pants draped over the arches of their shoes.
Reason not to watch: Korean male-bellowing to obtain control of a conversation is omnipresent, not confined as now to peripheral characters in dramas, but even between the leads(!), and no one seems to notice. The wrist-grabbing and dragging is pretty awful too.
I have read that My Girl in 2005 was a watershed in the depiction of strong independent FLs. I think that in MG the Hong sisters also reduced the amount of corrosive manipulation by the MLs as well, at least that is what I infer when I watch this show in which the MLs are not so restrained.
The so-called post '05 "stronger" FL still struggles, from 2006 through now in 2024, to find a space in which she can actually have agency and where her efforts are recognized and respected.
So often what a script represents is a space in which what the FL wants to say is completely delegitimized, so much so that she subsides in tearful confusion over and over again, silently. Her only freedom is to say no, or to refuse to make choices which are forced upon her.
In this show and in My Girl the FLs actually speak in a reflective manner, and they freeze only in order to have time to think. How did it become ok for so many heroines after this to suffer silently? or to talk incessantly as a form of avoiding having to speak sincerely?
first posted on viki sept 19th 2024
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