Fresh, fun and earnest, and backed by a breezy soundtrack that’s easy on the ears, Dream High ranks as one of my all-time favorite music-centric, high school dramas. Heck, it’s one of my favorite dramas, period.
Despite its youth-y premise, Dream High has a pretty universal appeal, with its emphasis on friendship, loyalty and finding & pursuing your dreams.
What the idol-heavy cast lacks in finesse, they more than make up for with earnestness. And then there’s Kim Soo Hyun, Uhm Ki Joon and Lee Yoon Ji in the main cast, lending acting cred and nuance to the overall package.
The drama takes an episode or two to get into its groove but once it does, it’s cracky, delicious goodness.
A drama that’s got a light, frothy and often comedic outer shell, but harbors an inner core that’s poignant, stirring and heart-in-your-throat moving.
To be sure, if one put on a hard logical lens, this show’s flaws may be too glaring for one to overlook.
But for those who can turn that logical lens to a blurry soft-focus, and amp up the emotional lens to a setting high enough to engage with the characters on a more visceral level, that touching inner core is the satisfying, gratifying reward.
Separately, Jeon Ji Hyun and Kim Soo Hyun are both truly excellent in their roles. Even better? Together, they are pure magic.
A light(ish) melodrama that’s high on the cute and low on the logic, Bride of the Century is the kind of show that would crumble under too harsh a lens. Given the right lens, though, it’s a fun watch that even gets pretty cracky in stretches.
The good news is, that lens isn’t a hard one to put on.
Yes, the show is so full of drama cliches that it feels like someone took every drama cliche that ever existed, put ’em all into a box, and the writers of this show then played a game where they took turns drawing out random cliches from the box and had to find a way to work ’em all into the show.
In the order in which they were drawn.
Yep. Sometimes plot logic took a beating; I cannot lie. But think of Cliche City as a game, and that ups the fun by a whole lot.
The shining jewel in this rather haphazard crown, is that this show has enough cute to mitigate almost the entire weight of the excessive drama tropes. Who can say no to this show, when you’ve got this cute of a puppy on your screen, right?
So I was determined that I would post something other than Pure Pretty, after unveiling 2 Pure Pretty posts one after the other. Y’know, so that the blog wouldn’t appear too frivolous and fangirly. *clings to denial*
But after a pretty exhausting work trip, followed by a long and hectic weekend, I just didn’t have the mental bandwidth to continue writing my review of You From Another Star. *contrite*
When my brain’s had enough time to recover its drama-appreciating faculties, I promise that the YFAS review will be the first thing I tackle. *pinky swears*
While resting my brain, I thought I’d do some research for Pure Pretty. And we know how that’s gone before, heh. A little research soon turned into a sizable haul of pretty, which I couldn’t wait to share with you guys.
And so I bring you Daniel Henney, who single-handedly commanded almost all the votes for future Pure Pretty that got floated after the first 2 posts.
While I started this blog mainly to write reviews, every so often, I get inspired to try something new. A fair amount of the time, it’s conversations on the blog itself that serve as the impetus. And that is totally the case today.
Not long ago, I posted my Master’s Sun review, and wrote this throwaway line about consuming the drama together with the fanfic:
“When the drama’s consumed together with the fanfic, though, they go together like strawberries and cream, or peanut butter and jelly, or Kim Woo Bin and Lee Jong Suk, or Song Seung Hun and abs, or.. (you get the idea).
You could have one without the other, but having them together just takes everything to a whole new level. Amiright?”
And then today, I woke up to this comment from blog regular Asotss:
“You are soooooooo right ! Ah Song Seung Hun… Too bad his talent doesn’t measure up [to] his bodyliciousness. Could we still hope for a KLove Confession post, just for the photoshoots that only you can dig up ?”
That’s when inspiration struck.
Besides Asotss, a couple of other readers and blogging friends have also commented appreciatively on my Googling skills. I guess Google and I get along particularly well; Google’s shown me more than a few particularly lovely photos of my k-loves, after all.
Still, because Song Seung Hun doesn’t quite fall into k-love territory for me, I’m creating a whole new series.
Introducing… Pure Pretty! Y’know. Where it’s all about The Pretty. 😉
Not one of the best outings by the Hong sisters, but not one of the worst either, Master’s Sun delivers what it promises: rom-com hijinks of the somewhat ghostly variety.
Driven mostly by sparky OTP chemistry and a lovely OST, which together made up for lapses in the storytelling, this drama is more mood than substance. And it’s a slow burn too, at that.
Essentially, a pretty fun, easy, unchallenging watch if you don’t think about it too hard. And I’ve just found a way to level that up in a serious fashion, which I’ll tell you more about in the review.
One of the early hits that helped to launch the Hallyu wave, All About Eve is the kind of drama that’s so old that it actually feels new.
A fairly light, ultimately warm melo that doesn’t have too many of the classic kdrama tropes coz, well, they hadn’t been established yet, at the time.
There isn’t a jerky male lead, nor a damsel-in-distress female lead; in fact, for a good long stretch, I couldn’t even figure out the dynamics of the love square. That sure kept me on my toes. So refreshing, and mildly cracky in the best way too.
Plus, I totally see the Jang Dong Gun appeal now. Finally. Thank you.
Classy, funny and sexy, That Far Gone is a smartly-written, tenderly-conceived labor of love.
A writer who clearly knows her subject and her audience, mywebfoot paints a convincing, believable fantasy world in which drama fans can indulge their imaginations and even their shipper hearts as they see the unfolding of a ‘real-life’ romance between So Ji Sub and Gong Hyo Jin come to life in the pages of this fanfic.
A tantalizingly addictive ride not only for So Ji Sub and Gong Hyo Jin shippers, but for anyone who took notice of their chemistry in Master’s Sun.
So a funny thing happened. Liebster season snuck up on me when I wasn’t even looking.
When the first signs popped up, hinting that Liebster season was upon us again, I hardly took notice. I was all like, Well, I had a good go at that last year, and it was a heap of fun.
Surely after 9 whole Liebsters, though, no one’s going to want to ask me more questions about myself. Right?
Wrong.
When I wasn’t looking, those Liebsters seemed to multiply in a little room all by their sneaky little selves. Almost like they had a will all their own. And now, I have a serious heap of questions to answer *starts sweating bullets*
I plead hectic Real Life schedules as the reason that I delegated the job of answering the Liebster questions to Future Me (hey, after watching so many time-travel dramas, you gotta learn something, right?)
So here I am, Future Me (er, now Present Me?) to the rescue! Let’s see if you guys can stick with me all the way to the very end, eh? I promise to make this as pain-free as possible 😉
And, thanks to all you sweethearts who nominated me – I feel like I’ve been rained on by showers of lurve ❤
A teen melodrama dressed up to pass off as a posh teen rom-com.
At first glance, this show might look like it wants to do too much, what with its over-bloated, gigantic cast.
In actual fact, though, the show doesn’t really want to do anything except provide a platform for its OTP to go through the requisite angsty steps (angsty coz this is ultimately more melo than rom-com) to get to their happy-ever-after, which was a given from the very beginning (ok, the happy ending’s sorta more rom-com).
On the plus side, Kim Woo Bin is the resident scene-stealer (and he steals those scenes, so well), while several other secondary characters are likable and amusing. Just don’t expect a properly fleshed out story or robust character & relationship development arcs.
Pleasant enough but far from cracky, Heirs is a show that never fired up my emotions one way or the other. I neither hated it nor loved it. And indifference, I realize, is really not a very inspiring place to be.
