When I saw that Oh Jung Se and Kim Seul Gi were headlining this little drama special from 2014, I couldn’t not check it out. I mean, they are both so talented, and I’d love to see more of them on my screen.
Now that I’ve emerged on the other side, I do think that some specific lens adjustments would help to make this one more uniformly enjoyable for the average viewer, which I’ll talk about shortly.
Overall, I think this one’s definitely worth a look, if only for our leads.
I’m grateful that KBS keeps their drama specials up on their YouTube channel for as long as they do. I’ve literally had my eye on this drama special for several years now, and just never got around to checking it out.
I honestly didn’t know what to expect, with this one. I’d just bookmarked it coz I liked the title (so shallow of me, I know!), so it’s pretty great, that I ended up enjoying this watch as much as I did.
I’m hopeful that you guys will enjoy this one too!
I don’t know if you guys know this about me, but I really do enjoy a good family drama. The best ones give me such cozy, heartwarming feels; it’s like getting wrapped in a fuzzy, floofy blanket, as you sink into the feels.
(My all-time favorites are Life Is Beautiful and Ojakgyo Brothers, in case you’re wondering. Father Is Strange and Five Enough are very solid too.)
I just don’t watch them much anymore, because they tend to be upwards of 50 episodes, and that’s a lot of drama hours that I could be using elsewhere. 😅
..Which makes this little drama special quite perfect, in my opinion. I get all the family drama feels, but in a compact little 1 hour and 11 minutes. Win and win, I say.
Expectations count for a lot in drama-watching, I’ve come to find. If a show exceeds your expectations, it’s always a happy thing. But if a show doesn’t live up to your expectations, it can feel like a real disappointment.
The problem is, expectations can be.. a rather tricky thing to manage.
Lots of drama friends – bloggers and readers alike – had recommended this show to me, and all of them had enthusiastically assured me that this one was Stinkin’ Cute, and that I would absolutely love it.
That kind of created a bit of a challenge for Show, since with all that glowing praise, my expectations unconsciously inched higher with each positive pronouncement I heard about it.
That then inadvertently put Show on an instant uphill task in my head. From the first minute I dipped my toes into this watch, Show had to prove itself worthy of all the squee. And that’s an unnecessary challenge that just helps nobody, amiright?
…Which is why I’m here to help. I’ll help manage your expectations so that hopefully you’ll end up enjoying your watch more easily than I did. We drama fans gotta help one another out, after all. 😉
So something pretty surprising happened lately. I – who previously hardly ever (like, seriously, ever) checked out Taiwanese dramas – have been on a Taiwanese drama kick.
I’m not even talking about being mildly-to-moderately interested, and simply adding Taiwanese dramas as one more option to my drama plate. I’m talking about full-on back-to-back episode binge-watching, to the exclusion of everything else. Including kdramas.
Gasp! What in the world..? Right?!? 😛
And this, when the dramas themselves weren’t even all that good. Like this one.
It’s funny how I ended up watching Wonderful Days. After all, I wasn’t in a family drama sort of mood, nor had I heard lots of positive buzz about this show.
Basically, I was still sorta in a fond sort of haze over Lee Seo Jin after enjoying his recent, fabulously grumpy, and inadvertently cute variety appearances. On top of that, I’d happened to catch him being charismatic and smoldery in a romantic context in Love Forecast, in which he’d played a supporting role.
Lee Seo Jin actually acting romantic instead of being his fabulously grumpy self? Yes, please. I lapped up his (limited) screentime in Love Forecast and found myself hungry for more.
It hit me that I really, really wanted to see more of Lee Seo Jin being a romantic leading man, and I figured that Wonderful Days would be just the ticket.
To be honest, I had a false start or two, when it came to watching this show.
Try as I might, I just couldn’t get into it enough to get through the whole of episode 1, which meant that this show was slowly but surely sliding off the mile-long watch list, and into drama oblivion for me.
And then my friend Jo started talking about how she really did like this show, overall. She assured me that it gets better after the initial episodes – in particular, that Shim Eun Kyung’s delivery gets toned down – and that I would very likely enjoy the show.
Well, whaddya know. Jo knows me – and my taste in dramas – pretty well, after all. 😉
So after just 2 episodes, I had shelved this show indefinitely, coz I’d found it really hard to get into. I pretty much planned to drop it, really.
And then School 2015 happened, where Nam Joo Hyuk charmed me all melty in spite of his limited acting range, and I decided to come back to this, to have a lookie at how he did in this show versus School 2015.
Well, ok, I also came back to gaze at him, heh. Still, a fangirl reason is a reason too, right? 😉
All in all, I hafta say that I’m happy I gave this show a second chance, in spite of its seriously WTH ending.
If I had to describe this drama special in just 3 words, they would be: simple; cute; prettyyy.
Unlike most other drama shorts that I check out, this wasn’t something that was recommended to me by friends, and neither was it because I had foreknowledge that an actor I like is in it (Hyun Woo’s in this, but that’s pure coincidence, I swears!)
Mostly, I was just looking for a quick, light and hopefully fun drama fix, and was intrigued by the title. I thought it sounded cute, unique and, well, tasty, which are all good things in my book, heh. So I dived right in.
Long before Joseon Gunman actually aired, I was already chomping at the bit for the show to hurry up and air already, mostly coz of its stylish, gorgeous posters that just reverberated with promises of epic-ness and badassery.
I mean, just look at ’em. The posters are So. Freaking. Gorgeous. I seriously want the folks responsible for those posters to make all the posters for all the dramas in all of dramaland.
On top of the very effective posters, the other thing adding to my interest in the show, is the fact that I also have a big soft spot for Lee Jun Ki, and couldn’t wait to see him be all edgy and kickass as a rebel gunman.