Looking Ahead: What Will You Be Watching?

Confession: I started five different dramas this cycle, and I didn't end up sticking with any of them. For some reason, the only one that stuck was Heart to Heart, and even with that one, I'm still four episodes behind. Do you ever have drama cycles like that?

The upside of suddenly becoming insanely fickle is that skipping out on a full round of dramas almost acts like a palate cleanser, and it makes me even more excited for the upcoming shows. Since it feels like every drama for the rest of the year is in the middle of casting right now, I'm extra excited, and I want to know what dramas have caught your eye.

Let's weigh some of our options, shall we?

1. Angry Mom

Premise: A feisty mom (Kim Hee Sun) discovers that her daughter is being bullied, so she goes undercover as a student to get back at the bullies.

Premiere date: March 18 (Next week!)

Impressions: In no universe would Kim Hee Sun ever pass as a teenager. Also, I'm not sure how I feel about what appears to be a loveline between her and Ji Hyun Woo. So he gets to feel icky for the first half of the series for having a crush on his student, and then he gets to feel icky for the second half of the series when that student turns out to be a married ahjumma? Poor guy.

But then. This trailer.

Ok, so maybe Kim Hee Sun still doesn't look like a teen, but holy moly, she did pretty well. And I have a soft spot in my heart for female leads who love to swear.

Verdict: Probably yes, but only because it premieres two weeks ahead of anything else I want to watch.

2. Falling for Innocence

Premise: A cold corporate headhunter (Jung Kyung Ho) gets a heart transplant and then finds himself falling for his secretary (Kim So Yeon). They're also in a love triangle with her lifelong best friend (Yoon Hyun Min).

Premiere date: April 3

Impressions: I'm in love with the posters and teasers. They're playful and sexy and have Jung Kyung Ho and Yoon Hyun Min on them. What could possibly deter me?

Oh, yeah. The whole "the organ I got from a dead person is still in love with you" thing, which might be my least favorite thing of all the things.

Verdict: Sigh. My heart says yes, but is it only saying that because it came from the dead boyfriend of this drama? This one reeks of "fun romcom turned into a cryfest" from a mile away.

3. Divorce Lawyer in Love

Premise: A cutthroat divorce lawyer (Cho Yeo Jeong) has a prickly relationship with her office manager (Yeon Woo Jin). The tables turn when she loses her job and has to become an office manager for a new lawyer, who happens to be none other than her former employee.

Premiere date: It was going to be March 14, but rumor on the streets has it that it's been pushed back to April?

Impressions: Typical opposites attract romcom, which are always fun.

Verdict: Did I mention that Yeon Woo Jin's last role was in one of my favorite opposites attract romcoms?

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Yep, count me in!

4. Ex-Girlfriend Club

Premise: A webtoon artist (Byun Yo Han) writes a story about his four ex-girlfriends. When the webtoon gets picked up by a movie studio, he has to work with a producer (Song Ji Hyo) who just so happens to be one of those exes. Awk-ward!

Premiere date: May 

Initial impressions: Song Ji Hyo and I are going to be best friends someday. In order to make that happen, I have to watch this. You know—to prove my friendship.

You see that smile? She's totally laughing at a hilarious joke I made.

5. Descendants of the Sun

Premise: A UN peacekeeping officer (almost 100% certainly played by Song Joong Ki) and a doctor from Doctors Without Borders (Song Hye Gyo is considering) initially don't get along, but then the fall in love because of danger or something.

Premiere: Fall-ish

Initial impressions: I know this is really far away, but I already feel so conflicted. On the one hand, remember how I started my Song Joong Ki obsession right around the time he left for military service? Siggggggh I luff him.

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On the other hand, it's written by Kim Eun Sook. The same Kim Eun Sook who wrote Heirs.

I actually find the premise kind of interesting, and who knows? Kim Eun Sook tends to do better with bigger plots (body swapping in Secret Garden) than she does with basic ones (rich kids go to school in Heirs), so maybe having a background of war will force her to do more than end every episode with a wide-eyed love triangle formation.

Surely you all remember this. It was, after all, 40% of what happened in Heirs.

My biggest fear, though, is that this potentially intriguing plot will end up with Song Joong Ki and Song Hye Gyo doing a wrist grab stare-down at each other for five minutes while some poor guy's artery is gushing blood right next to them as I shout "MOVE IT, YOU IDIOTS! THAT MAN DOESN'T HAVE TIME FOR YOUR LOVE" at my laptop.

...not that I have ever shouted that at a show before. 

I guess we'll just have to wait and see, won't we?

Okay, now it's your turn. What shows are all of you anticipating? I know I missed a bunch of upcoming ones, like Sensory Couple aka Girl Who Sees Smells aka Shin Se Kyung's Got a Fetish for Bizarre Superpowers, but the ones I covered are the ones tugging at my heart (for good or for ill) at the moment. What about you? If there's something else I should consider, by all means, convince me so that we can watch together!

K-drama Dream Casting: Who Would You Choose?

A while back, Kathryn, one of our readers, sent me an email asking who our "dream cast" would be. Her ideal was a romcom staring Ha Ji Won, Gong Yoo, SSH (Song Seung Hun?), and Hee Ji Jin with a Yoon Eun Hye cameo where she plays a professional woman for a change of pace.

I have to admit that Kathryn's  selection sounds pretty enticing, and I'm not sure if I can top it. I almost emailed her back right away saying it was too hard and I could never decide with all of my favorites, but now, after spending way, way too much time imagining different pairings, I have come up with the...wait for it...


ULTIMATE K-DRAMA DREAM CAST OF ALL TIME 
(according to the completely biased Vivi)


Are you ready for this?

Here we go...

Since this is my hypothetical dream cast and I can do whatever I want, I'm going to have two main pairings because I can't choose. Think of it as interconnected stories with separate romances instead of a love square with two losers who get dumped and then pick each other as a consolation prize. No consolation prizes here! In fact, there are NO SECOND LEADS ALLOWED in my dream cast scenario. You Are All Surrounded is an example of what we're going for here. Some bromance and friendship between Cha Seung Won and Lee Seung Gi, but ultimately they're involved in their own individual romantic stories.

My two leading men would be Song Joong Ki and Ji Chang Wook. Why those two? Song Joong Ki has been a favorite of mine for a while, and Ji Chang Wook...well, let's just say I've caught a little case of Healer fever these days....

Really, I chose these two because even though they're relatively young, they both have an incredible ability to express volumes with a tiny facial expression or gesture. If you want to see what I mean, watch Nice Guy again. Half of the time, Song Joong Ki is saying one thing, but he'll do the tiniest little things with his face to express how he really feels. I don't necessarily want my dream K-drama to be a super soapy melodrama or anything (NO PEOPLE FALLING IN LOVE WITH SIBLINGS ALLOWED), but I would want to give them roles that allow both actors to stretch a full range of emotions, even if it's under the broader romcom genre umbrella. Oh, and this K-drama might become a musical where Ji Chang Wook belts some songs. I'm just tossing that in there for good measure while we're dreaming big.

So who are the lucky leading ladies? I went back and forth on this a lot, but I thiiiiiink I finally settled on Han Groo with Song Joong Ki and Song Ji Hyo with Ji Chang Wook.

Both of those actresses have an on-screen presence that pushes past the typical wide-eyed Candy girl, and I would love to see more of them. Plus, I secretly want to be best friends with both of them, so casting them in my K-drama is the first step in that secret plan (mwahahahahahahaa).

Now, because I can't just quit at 4 characters and my imaginary K-drama pocketbook is limitless and my script is so amazing that no one would ever say no, I would use Park Seo Joon as Song Joong Ki's wild younger brother (don't they seem perfect as brothers?), and Yoo Ah In and Jung Ryeo Won would be antagonists.

Notice I didn't say "villains" because they would be funny at times, terribly tragic at others, and always magnificently nuanced. You would probably walk away from the show crying buckets of tears over them and still not being sure if they're good or bad.


Add in at least one adorable little child actor who you wish you could kidnap and keep forever in real life.

 Oh, and Lee Min Ho as a murderer. A terrible, irredeemable serial killer who haunts your dreams at night. Just because it's my drama and I can. And I would like to see the fangirls squirm a little.

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But he also doesn't have a very big part because we're too busy focused on the other, more interesting and awesome, characters.

So that's my dream cast. I would absolutely and completely watch the crap out of that show. What's yours?

Mini Reviews: A Werewolf Boy, Boys Before Friends, and Shut Up Flower Boy Band

Sometimes, I just don't have the energy to write a full review of something, but I also don't want to completely ignore it.  Instead of leaving these things on my "to review" shelf indefinitely, here are just a few mini reviews of the things I've been watching lately:

Mini Review 1: A Werewolf Boy (2012)

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AN IMPORTANT PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Song Joong Ki's 2012 film A Werewolf Boy is finally available to stream on Netflix.  Huzzah!  So much rejoicing!

Given my love of Song Joong Ki in both Sungkyunkwan Scandal and Nice Guy, I was just biding my time until I could get my hands on a subtitled version of this film.  Thanks for making all of my dreams come true, Netflix!

General thoughts: I loved it.  Loved it.  LOVED IT.  The premise (a teen girl finds a handsome-but-feral teen boy with secret powers) sounds a lot like Korean Twilight, but aside from superficial plot comparisons (fine, okay, and some runnin' through the woods scenes), they aren't very similar.  Instead, I would call this the summer sibling to Edward Scissorhands.  It's a warm and tender film, and I thought that both Song Joong Ki and Park Bo Young knocked it out of the park as the leads.

If you care about things like convincing special effects or villain motivations or back stories that aren't riddled with plot holes, maybe skip this.  If you care about things like first love, laughter, and friendship, watch it.

Mini Review 2: Boys Before Friends (aka "the American Boys over Flowers," aka "the end of the world as we know it")

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When all the anti-American remake hullabaloo came around, I defended the right to re-adapt Boys over Flowers for an American audience.  I still stand by that assessment, but I never said the outcome was going to be good by any means.  It's currently three episodes into the show, and they're doing it as a live shoot, true Kdrama style, which is kind of cool.  If you want to watch, it's available on Viki and BoysBeforeFriends.com.

General thoughts:  Out of the three available episodes, I have watched exactly one out of sheer curiosity.  I hear that it got less ridiculous after the first episode, but I haven't mustered the will to watch more.

Let's put it this way: I kind of wish that Mystery Science Theater 3000 were still a thing because if any work ever deserved to be mocked by snarky talking robots, it's this one.  It got into "It's so bad, it's good" territory pretty fast.  I was laughing my face off for most of the episode, so that's something, right?  Like when they busted out this Paul Revere hairpiece for a bullying scene:

"No, that's totally my real hair--I promise!"

Or when "Liam" accidentally washed off his ponytail in the shower:

Maybe his shampoo was really strong?

Actually, I feel kind of bad picking on this show.  I think a lot of problems just stemmed from budgetary and time constraints, so it wasn't entirely their fault that it felt kind of like watching someone's school project.  I was rooting for ya, kid!  They also apparently swapped out the lead actress in episode 2, although the original lead kinda grew on me by the end of the only episode I saw.

Oh, and the world didn't end just because a small production company used the general plot to Boys over Flowers in an English-speaking version.  Whew!  What a relief!

Mini Review 3: Shut Up Flower Boy Band/Shut Up & Let's Go!

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This was the only one of the "flower boy" shows that I hadn't seen, and I finally decided to start it one afternoon.  I'm a teeeeeeensy bit embarrassed about how fast I got through the whole thing from start to finish.  Between this and White Christmas, Sung Joon has won me over--which means that I'll probably start I Need Romance 3 pretty soon here (though I'm pretty relieved that he won't be rocking the emo perm this time).

General thoughts: If Dream High had an angry older brother who grew up on the streets (and no, happy-go-lucky street kid Taecyeon doesn't count), it would be this show.  I loved the gritty aesthetic and the realism that they managed to inject into the characters even though it was a pretty typical "sudden rise to fame" band story on the surface.

Even though there was a romance involved here, this show is definitely about friendship more than love.  Frankly, I found the female lead pretty dull (and did anyone else notice how sloooooowly she talked?), but the interactions between the bandmates were a joy to watch.  

I'm a sucker for any show that includes the Babysitters' Club pose of eternal friendship.

I also have to just say that the show's theme song was insanely catchy: