Revenge of the Short-Legged (2012)

High Kick! Revenge of the Short-Legged
하이킥! 짧은 다리의 역습 / High Kick 3
(Sept 2011 – Mar 2012)

who’s in it
Yoon KyeSang (Greatest Love, Triple)
Suh JiSuk (Gloria, Manny)
Kim JiWon (What’s Up)
Park Ha Sun (Dong Yi, Ad Genius Lee Tae Bak)
Lee JongSuk (I Can Hear Your Voice, School 2013)
Kang SeungYoon (singer)
Krystal Jung (More Charming by the Day, f(x) member)
Ahn NaeSang (Monstar, Wonderful Mama)
Yoon YooSun (Queen SeonDuk, Giant)
Baek JinHee (Jeon WooChi)
Julien Kang (High Kick Through the Roof)
Lee Jeok (singer)

what’s it about
In a distracting gimmick, this High Kick story comes to us from the perspective of a somewhat dislikable omniscient narrator played by Lee Jeok, who recounts the story of how he met his wife, who remains a mystery until the very end. Thankfully his character presence is small. The occasional wife-searching anecdotes aside, the story really follows the bankrupt Ahn family after they move in with their maternal side in-laws, the Yoon brothers, played by matured handsomes Suh JiSuk and Yoon KyeSang.

When the Yoon/Ahn family discover an underground tunnel connecting their house to their next door neighbors, the family befriends the household next door consisting of three women and one Julien. And from there the sitcom loopdiloops begin in typical High Kick fashion: bathroom jokes, blockhead uncles, drunk buffoonery, some vomiting, tutoring sessions, adult/minor romances, pretty punks, annoying patriarchs, etc.

FYI, this one seems to derive its name from the idea that the taller cast members are in battle with the shorter cast members. Intentionally, the men are mostly the tall ones in this show, so it’s really about the men being spun around and yanked about by their shorties—I use that word in the hip hop vernacular, so I am talkin’ about all the pretty ladies.

Another FYI, if you loved this show, might be best for you to skip this review. You’ve been warned.

(I mean, I have some nice things to say, but if you are a diehard fan, I’m just saying, you might get a little miffed at me.) 

commitment 
123 episodes

network
MBC

director
Kim ByeongWook
Kim YoungKi
Jo ChanSoo

screenwriter
Lee YoungChul
Jo SungHee
Hong BoHee
Jang JinAh
Baek SunWoo

first impressions
Annoying, annoying dad. Wow, can a dad ever be so annoying? What Ahn NaeSang’s character taught me in the first 10, then 123 episodes, was that there is a very definite line between hapless and hateful. After I forcibly told myself to get over it, ignore the man, only then was I able to enjoy this one—a little. But it was a HUGE obstacle for me.

I sorta endured through it, although with a lot of furious snacking for distraction. Oh, he is sooo annoying. Yum, nacho cheese Doritos. Ok, I’ll keep watching and munching. Hateful characters designed with the sole intent of being stingy and petty are really difficult to just put out of mind, especially when they are never out of sight. Junk food was a necessary comfort that helped me through the watching of this show..

wildcard factor
Thankfully, the younger people tended to be likable, and made up a good sizable chunk of the cast.

gave up

snoozer moments
To be honest, I found a lot of this drama snoozy. I had some serious tunnel vision going on, focusing my love on only a few characters.

soju guzzling (angst factor)

Ahn NaeSang spent a lot time hiding from creditors and causing trouble. You could almost say he single-handedly made me miserable.

Kim JiWon spent all of the show majorly crushing on older Yoon KyeSang...and that also made me miserable.

So most of the angst during this show...was by me.

Gentleman’s Dignity (2012)

Gentleman’s Dignity
신사의 품격
(May – Aug 2012)

who’s in it
Jang DongGun (All About Eve, The Warrior’s Way-film)
Kim HaNeul (On Air, Secret, Stained Glass)
Kim SooRo (God of Study)
Kim MinJong (The Return of Iljimae)
Lee JongHyuk (Chuno)
Yoon SeAh (You’re So Pretty)
Kim JungNan (Creating Destiny, Bridal Mask)
Kim WooBin (Vampire Idol, School 2013)
Yoon JinYi
Lee JongHyun (idol group CNBlue - member)
Ahn JaeMin

what’s it about
Okay everybody, so this is the sequel to Boys Over Flowers and it explores the “what if” scenario of F4 all grown up and leading life as semi-responsible career-minded adults. JunPyo grows up to become an architect, JiHoo is his partner at a property development firm, YiJung’s a successful corporate lawyer, and WooBin totally marries rich.

Ha.
Ok, this is not true.

(What? You haven’t seen Boys Over Flowers and don’t get the inside? I’m telling you this as a concerned drama-watching friend, to be in this kdrama world, there are a few shows that are required homework. Unfortunately—yes I do mean unfortunately—BOF is one of them. Sorry, it’s a rite of passage. Go endure it, then come back.)

In all seriousness, this is the tale of four men—Jang DongGun (architect), Kim SooRo (construction tradesman), Kim MinJong (lawyer), and Lee JongHyuk (sexy beast)—who insist on living their lives as if still at a school playground even when they are climbing into their forties. As a collective group of handsome and monied, no one’s told them forcefully enough that “juvenile” is not a synonym for “aegyo” and that this particular type of youthful wear does not fly with real women.

Therefore when they actually encounter a few of these real women, it’s not so easy for them to adjust. This is where Kim HaNeul (highschool teacher), Yoon SeAh (pro golfer), Yoon JinYi (flirty young person), and Kim JungNan (awesome rich bitch) come in. They are the poor ladies that some cruel deity has decided should love these man-children.

Also, Kim WooBin and CN Blue idol Lee JongHyun add some younger pretty to the cast, giving a little something for the pigtailed fangirls, too.

As for a plot, there really isn’t one. This is all about four men clashing with four women and the fun all that should entail. Obviously saying a show has no plot doesn’t really sound like a positive thing, but this may be one of the rare exceptions.
 
commitment 
20 episodes

network
SBS

director
Kwon HyeokChan (Secret Garden)
Shin WooCheol (Secret Garden, On Air)

screenwriter
Kim EunSook (Secret Garden, On Air)
And it really does feel like Secret Garden mated with On Air.

first impressions
Without a doubt, Jang DongGun is a tall glass of handsome. This is a man that looks his part, a seasoned hottie who’s worked in the K-biz a long time, and he oozes confidence and sophistication. You can almost see him doing the Korean version of a Dos Equis commercial—“Well, hello, I am Jang DongGun, and I am the most handsomest man in South Korea.” He has a style that simply teases, “I’ve been there, done that, and that, and that too, and it makes me all kinds of panther sexy.” It’s hard to argue with his body language…when his body looks like Jang DongGun.

Next up, for his female lead, we have Kim HaNeul. Everything I said about Jang, just repeat it for her, but substitute panther with cheetara.

So for these two mega stars to team up on the small screen…let’s just say kfans around the world stopped breathing for a just a wee sec. The only thing that might have surprised more was if suddenly news rained down that Kim SunAh was going to reunite with Hyun Bin (please, please, please let that happen one day, I beg the universe!). That’s the kind of epic this pairing was, in case you weren’t aware.

And then we had this total anomaly of a character played with pure delight by Mr. Lee JongHyuk, and he defied every definition of what a sane woman should find appealing. I have so much hearts-in-eyes for him and so little words to convey it properly. He was the most lovable jerk I’d ever encountered. The last thing I remember seeing Lee in was Chuno, all historical and chasing after Jang Hyuk. I do believe I prefer the contemporary sexy on him. I have a new appreciation for starched white shirts and pants. 

Last but not least, Kim WooBin had a smallish part in here; this was one of his earlier roles. If ever there was the next generation of Jang DongGun, this might be the guy—like quite literally, Kim having recently been picked to play Jang DongGun’s son in the sequel to 2001’s film Friend. My only complaint with the casting...why didn’t he just play Jang’s son in this show, too?

Nice Guy (2012)

Nice Guy
세상 어디에도 없는 착한남자 / 
No Such Thing As Nice Guys / Innocent Man
(Sept – Nov 2012)

who’s in it
Song JoongKi (Tree With Deep Roots, Sungkyunkwan Scandal)
Moon ChaeWon (The Princess’ Man, It’s Ok, Daddy’s Girl)
Park SiYeon (Coffee House, A Man’s Story)
Lee SangYeob (I Live in Cheongdam-dong)
Lee KwangSoo (City Hunter, High Kick Through the Roof)
Lee YooBi (Vampire Idol)

what’s it about
Here’s the crashdown: a brilliant young man with a promising career in medicine voluntarily tosses everything into the life gutter when he takes the fall for a girlfriend who accidentally kills someone. There’s either a really sad country song (‘I loved her but she murdered a man’) or a super angry hip hop track in here somewhere (‘Ho be ruining my life!’), but either way, when Song JoongKi finally gets let out of prison, he realizes he’d been played for a fool. You see, the girl he totally Bruno Mars’d his life over (‘I’d catch a grenade for you!’) had hitched onto a rich sugar daddy and moved on.

This girl of his youthful passions has now become a calculating woman of grand ambitions, and Park SiYeon is a rich bitch who has tasted the good life, has gained it all, but still wants more. The only obstacle in Park SiYeon and her adolescent son’s path to industrial super wealth is Moon ChaeWon, the sulky and furious biological daughter of her new husband, a stepdaughter who sees her new gold-digger slut stepmother as the reason for her own bio-mother being kicked to the curb, then dying in the middle of nowhere by herself, abandoned.

When Song JoongKi and Moon ChaeWon respectively decide that the other person might be the best means to exact some mega-revenge on Park SiYeon, they find themselves on an unexpected side journey that may end up destroying not only their intended target, but more devastatingly, their own hearts in the process. 

commitment 
20 episodes

network
KBS2

directors
Kim JinWon
Lee NaJung 

screenwriter
Lee KyungHee (Will It Snow At Christmas, A Love to Kill)

first impressions

Look at this boy (above). Song JoongKi, pretty boy bunny, in a story about revenge and murder? Hmmm. I dunno. But this one was getting hella impressive good press, doing well in the ratings, and winning international audiences over. I still thought it was likely that I would dislike it very much but all the hullabaloo around it piqued my interest. If you’ve read my 2012 Year in Review, you’ll note that Nice Guy was my favorite drama of the year. Not only that, but it made my all-time drama fave list, which trust me, is a rarely updated roster. Whaaaa-daaa-who-huh? How did that happen? Sorry, I’m jumping ahead and giving away my conclusion.

Even from the very first twenty minutes, I was hooked. I found myself drawn into the immediacy of the crazy. This show didn’t give a girl a chance to think, it immediately went for the “holy crap” factor and grabbed me by the face and smacked me into the tv. Almost instantly, the story snarled around my emotions, I found myself yelling at Song’s main character, “No, don’t do it! No don’t do it! Noooo!” Even after only the first hour, I already cared too much about this poor shmuck! When Song JoongKi’s nice guy unfairly gets sent to jail, the injustice of it kept me in my seat, still yelling at the tv (like a lunatic sitting at home yelling at her tv while her roommate looks on with rolling eyes). I was totally under water, mesmerized, gasping for breath like a goldfish yanked out of the tank by an eight year old.

Hm, I kind of made my own head spin a little. Was the “gasping for breath like a goldfish yanked out of the tank by an eight year old” too much a weird visual? Yeah, yeah, I’m a little bit painting the lie, but the point is, I really liked it. And, it’s no falsehood when I say I have a roommate who often looks at me like I’m crazy when I watch kdramas, because I’m kind of a noisy tv-watcher. You know, I like to inform characters of their options even when I know they don’t care about my opinions: “Kiss her, stupid!” “Don’t do that!” “Why are you crying!?” “Kick him in the nuts!” Well, you get the picture.

Anyway, Nice Guy:
Likable, pitiable hero. Check.
A killer ‘what would you do in his shoes?’ story. Check.
Possible mega villainess in the works. Check.
Strong, kickass female lead. Check.
Brisk, brisk pace. Check.

Operation Proposal (2012)

Operation Proposal
프로포즈 대작전
(Feb – Mar 2012)

who’s in it
Yoo SeungHo (Warrior Baek Dong Soo)
Park EunBin (Queen Seon Deok)
Lee HyunJin (You’ve Fallen For Me)
Go KyungPyo (Standby)
Kim YeWon (Flower Boy Ramyun Shop)

what’s it about
In general, people don’t usually adult themselves into the career they fantasized about when they were kids—astronauts, movie stars, pro-ballers—it’s not necessarily failure, simply the process of growing up. Some probably do get bitter about the loss of their youthful dreams, but for most of us, life goes on, we adapt, we get wiser, and we find contentment in new dreams. After all, in the real world, the story is not often a storybook fairytale—one does not marry their first love, one does not become mega filthy rich, nor does one become Angelina Jolie, and for a certainty, one does not get to do complete re-edit of their life. Is the happiness we have in our ordinary lives less meaningful than the one we had once dreamed up? Are there different measures of happiness? When we don’t get the big dream, are we settling for a lesser living? What does it mean to ‘correct’ a life’s path…isn’t the one we take ultimately the one we should be on?

In present time, Park EunBin is about to marry Lee HyunJin, and they are a young couple happily in love. But here’s the rub, almost everyone, including her own parents, thought she would actually end up marrying her childhood best friend Yoo SeungHo. Actually, even Park EunBin and Yoo SeungHo thought they would be marrying each other. So what happened? If the love is still there between them, which it appears to be, why is he the best man, and not the groom?

What went wrong, and in this case, where in the timeline does Yoo SeungHo need to go back to change it? “I’m glad you never liked her, otherwise I would never have stood a chance,” Lee HyunJin tells Yoo SeungHo on wedding day, and it is a misimpression Yoo SeungHo is determined to correct.

When Yoo SeungHo gets a mysterious visitor who offers him the chance to go back in time to try it different, to find and fix the wrong that separated his path from Park EunBin’s, he goes for it. This is a young man who regrets so many of the decisions he’s made in his younger days so he accepts the supernatural ticket into the past. Except, can he really change it? Yoo SeungHo takes the long way through time to learn that perhaps the key to happiness may not be about changing an event in the past, but changing the person he is in the present. In sometimes dizzying excursions between past and present, we learn the story behind two friends who never had the confidence to pursue their dreams, much less the guts to pursue the one they loved.

Wild Romance (2012)

Wild Romance
난폭한 로맨스
(Jan – Feb 2012)

who’s in it
Lee DongWook (Scent of a Woman)
Lee SiYoung (Poseidon, Playful Kiss)
Kang DongHo (Twinkle, Twinkle)
Im JooEun (What’s Up?)
Oh ManSeok (What’s Up?)
Hwang SunHee (City Hunter)
Jessica (Girls Generation – idol member)
Lee BoHee (I Live in Cheongdam-dong)

what’s it about
Bumbling Lee SiYoung is defined by two things, her job in private security and her rabid love for professional baseball team the Blue Seagulls. She has moppy hair, wears no makeup, dresses like a male elementary school student, and tends to be really meek unless it has to do with judo or the Seagulls. She does not turn mens heads with her outstanding beauty, nor does her awkward personality translate into adorable.

Lee DongWook is the scandal-ridden, temperamental star of the Red Dreamers, the hated rivals of the Seagulls. The man has had some emotional hardships in his life which has made him withdrawn and unfriendly. In fact, he’s Kang DongHo’s biggest headache, the operating manager for the Dreamers. Also significant, Lee DongWook is still nursing a broken heart; his ex-girlfriend is played by Jessica (of premier female idol squad Girls Generation).

One day, when Lee SiYoung gets into an unfortunate altercation with Lee DongWook (she tosses him to the floor at a karaoke bar), it gets recorded and uploaded onto the web. The story grows legs and it becomes a huge publicity nightmare, especially when it becomes known that Lee SiYoung is an enthusiastic member of the anti-Lee DongWook fan club. To avoid further public embarrassment, and a possible legal wrangle, she is pressured by her own boss and the operating manager of the Red Dreamers to agree to an unconventional method of managing the scandal: become Lee DongWook’s bodyguard.

This is how she becomes her biggest enemy’s private security detail. When a very real stalker begins to target Lee DongWook and everyone in his life, Lee SiYoung must put aside her personal feelings and do her job—but can she protect her heart in the process?

KDramaGuk’s Biased & Worst of 2012

Idols, Time Travelers,
& Totally Not So Nice Guys 
A Year in Review

A Superordinary 2012

It was quite the adventuresome year, overflowing in quantity and quality. As more networks sprang up to compete for advert dollars, more were willing to experiment beyond the standard drama formula to lure in viewership. Reflective of the amount of new money and talent being poured into it, dramas have been steadily maturing, the industry positively preening from all the global attention both kdramas and kpop have been receiving of late.

For better or worse (this year, definitely for the better), the communication of creativity ran both ways. Korean culture continued its unstoppable advance into the mainstream psyche of the universe and the universe likewise influenced the content in our shows. The global entertainment industry has been mighty crazed with flights of fantasy (Twilight, Hunger Games, Vampire Diaries, Game of Thrones) and our Korean dramas followed trend, going all out supernatural as well—from imagined kings, to meddlesome gods and angels, to sexy vamps, to a press of time travelers. It came as no surprise that many of my faves this year had some sort of freaky deaky manipulating the story. It made for especially outlandish narratives, but in a totally good way.

Padam Padam (2012)

Padam Padam
빠담빠담... 그와 그녀의 심장박동소리 /
Padam Padam…The Sound of His and Her Heartbeats
(Dec 2011 – Feb 2012)

who’s in it
Jung Woo Sung (The Good, The Bad, The Weird-film, Athena)
Han Ji Min (Rooftop Prince)
Kim Bum (The Woman Who Still Wants to Marry)
Kim Ji Yoo (Mom Has Grown Horns)
Na Moon Hee (I Believe in Love)
Jang Hang Sun (Crime Squad)
Choi Tae Joon
Kim Joon Sung (The Lobbyist)

what’s it about
If the opportunity to hit a “do over” button was offered to you, would you—no, could you—change a singularly life changing moment for the better? Where precisely does destiny end and free will begin?

Jung WooSung plays a guy who has been in prison for 16 years and according to him, unfairly so. He was not a thug when he went in, but by the time he is freed into the real world, he has become a variation of one. He has grown into a socially stunted and frustrated man-child. He is filled with both wonder and anger at the changed world, being estranged from it and wanting to belong. However, he does have a more pressing goal on his mind: clearing his name. Unfortunately, his enemies also have a purpose: keeping him silenced forever.

Kim Bum is a fellow inmate released at the same time, and it is quite possible the young man is a certifiable nutjob, although a harmless one. He believes with all his heart that he is Jung WooSung’s guardian angel—and that’s literally, as in he wants to literally earn his wings so he can finally fly to Heaven where he rightfully belongs. He believes his purpose for existence is to make sure his best friend Jung WooSung is safe and happy.

When our hero returns to his hometown with his nutty angel sidekick tagging along (who is hell bent on kicking up some emotional dust), this ex-con’s past, present, and future collide in dangerous and wonderful new ways, including falling in love with a beautiful local vet played by Han JiMin. Even with his own personal angel fighting by his side, Jung WooSung is faced with an unlikely proposition: is it possible for a mere man to do the impossible and defy the course of his life?

commitment 
20 episodes

network
jTBC
(Lately, just like the trend here in the States, it seems like all the really good shows aren’t on the major networks, but on cable!)

first impressions
Wow.

Visceral, chaotic, gritty, violent—and elegant. Very, very elegant. Padam was both ugly and beautiful at the same time...or rather, more accurately, it found beauty in the ugly? After the first few episodes, I genuinely felt that I had stumbled onto something truly unconventional, a show deftly guided by someone with a very specific vision for the show. This didn’t feel like a kdrama at all, it felt like a film. The basics of the premise had all been done before, you know the drill, a tough guy released from jail stumbles along in violence until he finds true love, which reforms his whole life. To be honest, going into Padam, I felt like I had already seen this one many times over. I did not believe that this one could surprise me or engage me in any new way.

Even after only the second episode, I knew in my gut that I had been so very wrong, this drama was different. The uniqueness wasn’t in the setup, but in the craftmanship, like the difference between products generically produced for mass consumption, and ones designer, stitched together with detail and skill. Padam seemed to understand the rules of this kdrama genre, and it knew the right threads to use, but it also clearly established from the onset that it was going to try its damnest best to be different and daring in its delivery.

My initial thought was that this kdrama was weird, confusing, and far too heartbreaking in its portrayal of life…the protagonist felt like a violent maniac, the second guy was a delusional loony who thought he was a supernatural entity…on top of that, it was littered with an ensemble cast of broken personalities that were thorny country bumpkin folk, and let’s not forget, all of them were involved in some wacky festering crime mystery, too. But, oh what the hell, even though I was afraid the story direction would only end up breaking my heart, and even though the ‘fantasy’ aspect of Padam scared the hell out of me, I could not dismiss this one.