How many times have you said to yourself while watching a drama: “This thing is nothing I was expecting, gosh it’s so much better!” And how many times did you say the contrary with that exasperate-desperate-angry-tired voice? Ever felt let down by a promising drama that ends up being a marvellous disappointment? Here we are. We’ve all been there, felt that once. Here are five of my ten biggest disappointments so far. I was waiting incredible dramas, I got big messes instead. Sometimes life isn’t what it supposed to be, I swear.
(I will try as much not to spoil. Who knows my disappointment might give you the curiosity to actually watch the dramas)
Big
Surely that
drama has a good place on my wall of really wasted cast. I feel like crying just
thinking what this drama could have been. You take the sisters Hong, I love, the sublime Gong Yoo in his first post-army drama
and Lee Min-jung who has already
proven to be perfect in rom-coms, you put everything in a bag and you shake it.
The result? A wonderful mess. Of course nothing will be in place, of course
there won’t be any structure, of course the end could be the beginning and vice
versa. No reason to be surprised here. But still I got surprised on how things
turned out to be that bad. Many times, I tried to understand Big but I quickly realized it was like
drinking water with a fork: too tiresome. So I gave up. When I understood the
drama would be a failure, I almost wept, seriously. As I had to fight my urge
to cry, I screamed instead. A lot. To my laptop. My frustration had to go out
anyway. On one side, the drama was big in many ways: the lack of logic, a crazy
end, an even crazier development and on the other side the same drama forgot to
be impressively big in the story, in the narration, in the romance, in the
suspense.
We started with a strange and quite interesting connection between a
teen Kang Kyung Joon (Shin Won Ho),
a cold doctor Seo Yoon Jae (Gong Yoo) and a woman, Kil Da Ran (Lee Min-Jung),
stuck between the two. And when an out-of-this-world force made the first two
switch their bodies and souls you could expect some laughs (ok we had some),
some funny and absurd situations (we also had some), a good explanation or at
least a pleasant one to the phenomena and the consequences (we hadn’t any of
these).
I feel like
the sisters started the drama without knowing where to go with it. I really
don’t like being seduced and then sent home without even one passionate kiss. Big stays one of my biggest
disappointment and regret. So I’m going to pretend it never happened, maybe it
would hurt a less. Hummmm wait… no matter how much I try, it’s not working at all.
Aissshhh!
(If you curious of you have some time to kill, see a longer review of
Big here.)
49 Days
I loved the premise of 49 Days: a dead girl
(well she’s not dead on the paper, the poor girl is in the coma), Shin Ji-hyun
(Nam Gyu-ri), found herself lying in
a hospital bed after a terrible car accident. She’ll be given 49 days to find
three persons (beside her parents) who can shed REAL tears for her. It’s her chance
to wake up from her coma and to live again. In order to find those three people,
she’ll possess the body of a sluggish and disillusioned woman, played by Lee Yo-won. Shin Ji-hyun’s about to get
married so technically she’s loved and surrounded by people who care for her.
Basically she doesn’t even need the 49 days. Give her 24 hours and the problem
will be solved. The only little problem is that people aren’t always what they
seem to be. Far from that.
I’ve always like
fantasy dramas so there was no concrete reason not to be enthusiastic here. If
the idea was good, the writing was another story. It’s honestly not the worse
drama I’ve seen, but I had so much expectations and the result left me so cold.
49 Days is a melo. I don’t mind melos
as long as they good and strong narratively speaking. It wasn’t always the case
here.
What’s really killing me here is the drama had almost everything to be great: A good cast (Jung Il-woo as the
scheduler was epic. I’m not equally enthusiastic towards Lee Yo-won’s acting. I
felt nothing for her all through the drama. All right her character was supposed to be lethargic but
surely there was something else to do.) ;an original story; an open high way too
many developments and many possible ends. **Spoiler**
Did you have to serve us that crazy makjang end? Really you had to drama? **End**
I can’t even say what went wrong with 49 Days. An exciting start that gradually lost his interest, a lack
of suspense many times, a slow development, a lot of uncontrollable tears, too
many episodes (20 where 16 would have been perfect), villains you could barely
stand and you wanted to slap because their motives were…inexistent?? Maybe it’s
all that at the same time. Maybe I was hoping for less tears and more laughs.
Maybe I shouldn’t have preconceived ideas and high expectations in the first
place. Maybe next time I’ll hope for the worse to be agreeably surprised. Maybe
that idea sucks. Maybe I just need to move on.
Lie To Me
Yes
I had high hopes. Yes I was excited solely because of Yoon Eun-Hye but also because, on the paper, Lie To Me was a cute rom-com with a nice and funny premise. I’ve
never been an aficionado of Kang Ji-hwang but Yoon Eun-hye can have
a good alchemy with all her co-starts so Kang Ji-hwang or anyone else,
everything was fine by me.
All the stories that start with a little lie imply
even more lies along the way. And the result of these lies? Comic scenes,
embarrassing situations and a lot of fun. At least that’s what I thought. Nope
scratch that. It wasn’t only my thought, that was the initial promise of Lie To Me. I knew well the lead couple
would rock and indeed, they rocked in their respective roles but that’s
basically the only thing that rocked in the drama. The writing, the
developments, the scenes’ succession, the fun in general, nothing was correctly
in place. If one thing was going on well on one side, something had to go wrong
one the other. It was like a new mathematical law. You’d think the team behind
gave itself a challenge: let’s make it predictable, funny but not too much,
romantic with long kiss scenes to make up for the lack of story, tragico-tragic
with two brother (Kang Ji-hwang and Sung Joon) fighting over the same girl.
*Sight*
It’s such a waste of talents, potential and possibilities, it’s
frustrating. Oh there were nice moments in the drama. The one everyone
remember: the leads sitting on a bench under a cherry tree, kissing for the
first time or the unforgettable kissing scene in the kitchen with coke all over
the place.
At least they
gave room for romance, even if it was the most foreseeable romance ever. **Spoilers**Talking
about the predictable aspect of the drama, was the usual sacrifice (this time
the heroine made sacrifices to save the hero) mandatory? Don’t think so. Is making
two brothers falling for the same girl healthy? No please it’s not neither for
them nor for us. **End of spoilers**
Having a
predictable drama isn’t as horrible as it sounds. It happened before and will
keep on happening. It’s just the déjà vu
feeling added to that lack of spark and magic increased the disappointment. *Double
sight*
Yes Lie To Me lied to us. Just know drama that what you did isn't cool because that hurts.
Scent Of A Woman
The
probability of being the only person on earth who didn’t like this drama is
super high. I read so many good comments and reviews. I tried to immerse myself
into Scent Of A Woman several times,
saying (=lying) to myself that at some point of the drama, I’ll also be touched
by this heroine condemn to die, I’ll be moved by this uncertain but beautiful
love story. And if I manage to be really really into it, I may even shed a tear
or two in the process. The only problem is I never got touched, never had
feelings of sympathy, never felt much for any of the characters (maybe a mini
crush on Uhm Ki-joon). I was just automatically
pressing play to every episode. I kept saying at loud: “You have to finish this, you have to.” It’s like I was challenging
myself. I’m not the kind to drop dramas. I used to be the kind not to
drop dramas. I finished it, again without much emotions.
I firstly thought I
wasn’t built like the rest of my fellows beings, you know maybe I was born
without any humanity in me. But then I realized that starting the drama knowing
our heroin, Lee Yeon-jae (Kim Sun-ah)
would eventually die, killed all the excitement in me. The only thing is I
didn’t know that at that precise moment. I was illogically and foolishly hoping
for someone to miraculously cure her somehow. That never happened of course. I
was also hoping for more fun and more laugh. We’re dealing with death and it’s
tragic, I know those facts, but would have been indecent to take the opposite
side and make things a bit funnier? Maybe I’m asking too much. But all these
tears almost annihilated my judgment. I can’t hardly stand people, in a drama,
watching through a window and cry, taking a call and cry, writing and cry, eating
and cry all the time. Once or twice I’m fine, more and you lose me.
Lee Yeon-jae has
few months to go. She never experienced love, never travelled (ironic she works
at a travel agency), never had hobbies, never took the time for herself.
There’s really a lot of reasons for her to cry. She’s dying, I got it but please
don’t make us die at the same time with those never-ending tearjerker scenes.
Oh gosh I’m not human. I probably should consult someone ‘cause even now, while
writing this post, I feel no compassion for Lee Yeon-jae. I’m not judging Kim
Sun-ah’s acting because she was completely invested but for inexplicable
reasons the drama left me cold. Even those hot tango scenes didn’t inspire some
warm and humanity in me. I need help. Someone send me some love and empathy,
urgently. It was a melo I was warned but still I wanted to see something else.
That said I liked the fact the
drama spared us a dying scene with even more tears and pain. That would have
been the death of me. The last scene with the Lee Yeon-jae and her loved one,
Kang Ji-wook (Lee Dong-wook),
holding each other was nice. As they were both looking at the horizon to an
uncertain future, they were ready to face it together.
Iris 2
It’s not
like I was expecting something extraordinary but only God knows how much I’d
have loved to see a decent sequel to what remains one of my favourite drama, Iris. My prayers haven’t been heard nor
answered because Iris 2 can mostly be
resumed to this: you take almost the same but you go worse. Simple right?
There’s nothing new here, nothing original (not that with that kind of plot you
have space to be super original. I concede that). There's nothing exciting, nothing
refreshing. You have the charismatic Jang
Hyuk (with an awful haircut), the incredible and talented Kim Yeong-choi and the beautiful Oh Yeon-soo, but you can’t come with a
decent sequel? The acting was there, but with no interesting story to tell,
even the most excellent acting (and/or the prettiest faces) becomes quickly pointless.
The hero, Jung Yoo-gun (Jang Hyuk), works at the NSS agency with the love of
his life, Ji Soo-yeon (Lee Dae-hee).
They know each other from childhood, they fell in love by the age of 12,
they’re are inseparable, made for one another, soulmates and…yes I’m exasperate
right now. The romance almost erased all the rest. I need romance (that also
includes friendship) in any drama, even in action’s one, but do I need to see
our heroin crying for hours in front of pictures? Frankly? No I don’t really
like melo, nothing new here, but I don’t mind seeing (a good) one. The only
thing is I don’t want to see a melo right in the middle of my action drama! I’m
bitter ‘cause I swear Iris 2 was
awesome in my mind. It was a great drama perfectly balanced that would have
left marks on me like does his big brother few years ago. That’s how great it
was in my mind. But I guess I can just keep on dreaming.
The idea
behind Iris 2 was actually good: NSS
agency will capture the escapee Baek San (Kim Yeong-choi). The latter will
demand to talk to Jung Yoo-gun only. Non one knows the link or the connexion
between the NSS agent and the ex-leader of I.R.I.S, the secret organization.
What we know is that the long scenes between the two protagonists will be an
excuse to discover the early days of Baek San (his younger counterpart was
played by Jung Suk-won). As said the
idea behind was nice and coherent, the execution wasn’t just as great. Too
slow, too focus on the unnecessary. Action scenes were interspersed by long
moments of heavy boredom!
Iris 2, at
least, proved me one thing: even with a five stars casting, if nothing else
worth it in the drama, well that’s useless.
OR 