Ever watch a drama, realize you hate it, but for some reason you still can't stop watching it? Ever watch episodes and think to yourself "why are you torturing yourself by sitting through this???!!!" Well, That's how I feel about Mary Stayed Out All Night. I watched it because a friend of mine kept recommending it. She is a Geun Suk fan, so I should have known that she is super biased. Still, it took me a long time to finally watch it, because it just seemed like a dumb concept... I should have trusted my instincts. I gave the story an official 1, because it was too ridiculous for me. The reason why the parents wanted her to get married, her plan to get out of it, their 100 day resolution... all of it was dumb to me. The only slightly interesting part was the dramaception (drama within a drama) concept, but that wasn't done well either. Most of the episodes are Mary trying not to get caught, which gets old quick. Instead the show relies heavily on the cast, which is decent, but I still didn't like them enough. First, Moon Geun Young as Mae Ri is super annoying. I honestly didn't get her appeal, nor did I find her cute. I know she represents late blooomer/socially awkward girls, but she was often so selfish that I could not stand her. Her acting was good though, not amazing, but believable. I'm only realizing now that I've not only seen her before in The Village: Achiara's Secret, but she's also in one my of my favorite movies "A Tale of Two Sisters". I guess I didn't recognize her because of her epic hair. Speaking of hair.. Hair is clearly the star of this drama! The hair MVP in this drama is Geun Suk. I could tell he's in his element in this role. He looked good, he was charming, his outfits were killer... he loses some appeal towards the end, but his performance was solid. He's also the main reason why the love story works at all. I assuming many fans of this show are imagining themselves as his "Merry Christmas". His music performances however start to get super annoying. you have to be a true fangirl to tolerate the amount of times "my preeeeeeecious..." is sung. Kim Jae Wook's hair is less impressive, and so is his performance. I still empathized with his character the most. He was just so chillaxed all the time that he was borderline boring. I thought there were many cute moments between Mae Ri & Moo Kyul , and a few between Mae Ri & Jung In, but I will admit that there were many times when I thought Jung In had better chemistry with Moo Kyul. There are definitely some ambiguously gay moments, that could have made the story MUCH more interesting, but I doubt a KDrama is going to go there... especially in 2010. The rest of the cast is pretty cheesy. Kim Hyo Jin was great, and the crew of bffs were great, but they just didn't have enough interesting things to do besides meddle, and sulk, and drink a lot. The Hallyu star and the manager were pretty useless. Then there are the parents... *deep sigh* This show has the most irresponsible, irrational, dysfunctional, abusive, unfit parents ever. Jung In's dad is a psychopath. I wanted to strangle Moo Kyul's mom. I also could not stand Mae Ri's dad, even though he was the only one who's motivation made even the slightest bit of sense. Rewatch value? Never. I still really don't understand why I didn't drop it. The OST? Well, music is a huge theme of this show, so there's a lot of it, it's repeated often, and it's still haunting my nightmares. The smeagol ballad "my precious" is probably the most annoying. The "hello" song was cute the first few times, and then it started driving me slowly insane. If you are a Geun Suk fan girl I could totally see this OSTs appeal. The OST is just a method for you to love him more. Overall, this drama taught me a valuable lesson about needing to drop dramas I don't like. The ending did resolve things, but it didn't bring me any sense of relief. I was so frustrated that I stopped caring anyway, so what's the point? One of the themes the characters keep referring to is loyalty, and maybe that made me feel guilty about dropping it. Who knows. After forcing myself through this process I can only recommend that you not do the same, unless you really REALLY love Jang Geun Suk. Even then, maybe just look at a slide show of stills from the show while playing the OST instead. I would have probably found that much more entertaining.