Kdramas, mostly

Sang-hyuk smirks, Yu-jin endures, at reminder wedding is nigh.

Recap for episode 11:

( Spoilers for WS ep. 11 )

Yu-jin on stage being ambushed by that rat-bastard Sang-hyuk

Recap for episode 9:

( Spoilers for WS ep. 9 )

Yu-jin and Min-hyung walk among the woods of Namiseon, where she and Jun-sang first plighted their troth...

Recap for episode 7:
( Spoilers for WS ep. 7 )

Chae-rin feigns being upset as Yu-jin falls into her trap...

Recap for episode 5:

( Spoilers for WS ep. 5 )

Yu-jin's face when she first sees the new director, who looks just like Jun-Sang!

Recap for episode 3:
( Spoilers for WS ep. 3 )

So, I've been kind of idly intending to eventually get around to watching Winter Sonata at some point; holding me back has been that 1) it is definitely a retro classic at this point, even though it only came out in 2002, and drama trends, tastes, and fashions have noticeably evolved in the last two decades, and 2) it just hasn't been easily available; to watch it, you basically had to hunt down semi-bootleg versions on sketchy Chinese streaming video sites, or (recently) pay two bucks and episode on Amazon Prime. But then a couple weeks ago, it popped up as a new offering on ol' reliable Viki.com, and hey, there we go!

Why Winter Sonata? Simply put, it was hugely influential in setting off and fueling the Korean Wave (aka "hallyu") of the late 90s and early 2000s. It is part of a seasonally-themed suite of four dramas that came to be known as the "Endless Love" series; although they didn't  share any characters or events in common, they all had the same director, some of the same writers, and shared certain themes and topics.  The first of the four is Autumn in my Heart ("AimH"), which came out in 2000 and was kind of a forerunner to Winter Sonata, which turned out to be by far the most successful and beloved of the group. (I watched AimH a few months ago, through one of those sketchy websites, alas).   WS became massively popular throughout Asia, particularly (outside of Korea) in Japan; the Japanese prime minister famously said that Bae Yon-joon, the male lead, was more popular then he was. 

Anyway, I've been doing episode recaps over on The Fangirl Verdict's Patreon page, and I thought for the sake of permanence, I would copy them here.  (I am currently up through episode seven (out of twenty), and I have so far successfully avoided spoilers beyond that point, so please no spoilers in comments for later events!) So without further ado, behind the cut is the recap for episode one.

( WS ep. 1 Spoilers )

 

Money Flower.  Not gonna lie, I absolutely loved this show. And the funny thing is, I probably never would have watched it if it hadn’t been an “editor’s pick” for a group watch over at The Fangirl Verdict, following in the footsteps of the inaugural group watch of Chuno. For one thing, at 24 episodes it runs long for anything other than a so-called “family drama” (which last 50-100 episodes or more) or one of the more epic sageuk, and I had never heard of it before. For another, I don’t tend to be drawn to slow-burn cerebral revenge melodramas (which is what this appears to be at first glance—and in some ways actually is). But it took very little time before I was totally sucked into it, and it ended up being a running battle to keep to the two-episode-a-week group watch schedule and not plunge ahead, particularly since this is a show that makes really masterful use of the end-of-episode cliff hanger, over and over again.

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Special Delivery (aka Special Cargo). This is a film that came out around the beginning of the year, and at first glance it looks like it’s going to be some amalgam of the early Fast & Furious films and something like Baby Driver.  It’s about a young woman who goes on special courier runs to get people in fraught or dangerous circumstances from point A to point B…for a hefty fee, of course.

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Vincenzo. A show in twenty episodes, this is in some ways almost sui generis, at least among the kdramas I’ve seen. It’s a particular blending of wildly disparate tonal registers, a mash-up of over-the-top quasi-slapstick comedy and deadly earnest gangster and corruption revenge thriller, that at first glance would seem to have no chance of being anything but a sorry mess, yet somehow wildly exceeds expectations. Its success is reflected in the fact that it quickly settled into pulling high ratings, and currently it’s sitting at tenth place on the all-time cable ratings ranking list.

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Love & Leashes. This is a movie that came out just a few months ago, back when the world at large (or at least SK) was still taking COVID precautions somewhat seriously, so it was one of several films that just cut a direct distribution deal with Netflix and released straight onto the streaming service.

So at first glance, this looks pretty titillating—ooh, an S&M office romance! How outré!—and of course the promo material (probably smartly) kind of plays that angle up. Here’s the Netflix teaser, and here’s the longer trailer, and as you can see, they’re both emphasizing the sub-dom theme heavily. Which is great, as far as it goes!

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