Kdramas, mostly

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 )