K-Drama Review: Queenmaker

Greysuitcase - K-Drama Review: Queenmaker | Photo Courtesy: Netflix

Synopsis

“After a crisis of conscience, a powerful fixer uses her skills to boost a civil rights lawyer’s mayoral campaign and take down her former employer.” —Netflix

My Take

Starring two strong female leads, the story focused on the partnership formed between Hwang Do-Hee, a former powerful fixer for a chaebol family (the Eunsung group), and Oh Kyung-Sook, a human rights lawyer who often went up against Eunsung Group to fight for the weak.

This was the first Korean drama that I watched that has the plot revolves around a powerful fixer (I think there were other dramas where the scenario of a fixer came in, but the story never really focused on the fixer themselves).

The progression of the first three episodes were a little slow for me. But afterwards, I think the drama hit the right pacing of unfolding of the story. It’s not too intense but it‘s not necessarily slow either.

The characters are interesting, the actors acted well, and there were plenty of interesting sub-plots that made me want to keep watching. They definitely dramatized the incidents that happened, but they all still believable enough to have happened in real life (at least for viewers like me who doesn’t know a lot of or work in Korean politics). Nothing feels overly dramatized, which I appreciate.

There are also some moral issues and dilemma that are being discussed throughout the drama with the main message being the fight between the good and evil and how much sacrifices you have to make for the good to win the war.

I also like the fact that they show how somebody who has done the wrong thing ended up taking up accountability for their actions and not just skate by while still having the message of there’s hope of a better future ahead.

Being a big fan of Olivia Pope (who here also watched “Scandal”?), Hwang Do-Hee’s character certainly reminded me of Olivia Pope. They both are helping somebody to get elected to one of the most powerful office in the country, their fashion and appearances are always put together and their war rooms are definitely reminiscent of each others’,

Overall, I quite enjoy this drama and would definitely recommend it to those who like political drama.

My Rating: 8.5/10

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K-Drama Thirty Nine (서른, 아홉) Ep.02

Episode two continues with more developments and growing conflicts between the characters. The introduction of the additional supporting characters were also done in this episode where Hyeon-Jun’s (the chef) girlfriend, Mi-jo’s parents and Seon-U’s sister (Kim So-Won) made their appearances.

Starting the episode with Mi-jo and Seon-U’s unexpected connection through work that puts the two of them in a slightly awkward position, Chan-young trying to end the relationship she has with Jin-Seok, Joo-hee’s attraction to the chef that’s quickly squashed by the arrival of his girlfriend, Mi-jo’s struggle with panic attack revelation, Seon-u and So-won’s family problems and ending it with Mi-jo finding out that Chan-young has stage four cancer, this episode definitely doesn’t lack in the conflict department. The tone of this episode is also slightly more somber than the previous episode, although there are still comedic reliefs that are peppered throughout the story that help lifting the mood up a little.

A couple of slightly happier parts were probably the opening scene where the three women were discussing about Chan-young’s recent eyeliner purchase (which I certainly can relate to), Chan-young teasing Mi-jo about Seon-U after Mi-jo told her the story, Seon-U’s drunken, whiny (and slightly adorable) confession to Mi-jo and Mi-jo’s close relationship with her family.

There’s also seems to be more to the story behind Jin-seok’s marriage which I’m curious to find out. My current theories are either the wife blackmailed Jin-seok to marry her or she purposefully get herself pregnant so Jin-seok will marry her. But we’ll see if any of my guesses is right.

Looking at the ending of this episode, I have a feeling that things will go south or at least become sadder from this point forward. I’m hoping it' won’t be too sad, but we’ll see.

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K-Drama Thirty Nine (서른, 아홉) Ep.01

After seeing the trailer on Netflix for the first time, the Korean drama Thirty Nine (서른, 아홉) immediately made it to my long list of to-watch series. Not only it’s starring Son Ye-Jin (손예진) but looking at the trailer, it seems like the drama will revolve around the life of a three 39 years-old women and a slice of life series always interests me. A little bit about the drama:

“Thirty-Nine (Korean Title: 서른, 아홉) is a 2022 South Korean television series directed by Kim Sang-ho and starring Son Ye-jin, Jeon Mi-do and Kim Ji-hyun. This series revolves around the life, friendship, romance and love of three friends, who are about to turn 40 years old. It premiered on JTBC on February 16, 2022 and aired every Wednesday and Thursday at 22:30 (KST) for 12 episodes. It is available for streaming on Netflix.”
—Wikipedia

I finally started watching this series after the show has ended. Family and friends have given good review about the show so I was pretty excited to start watching it. The first episode was a nice introduction to all the main characters in the series. I really love the interactions between the three women characters, their somewhat different personalities and their friendship. There’s a good mix of comedy, drama, romance, conflict and a little bit of tragedy in the first episode that’s pretty common in a slice of life drama. Although knowing that somebody will die in this series kind of threw me off a little since I was hoping for a more light-hearted storyline. But let’s see where it goes.

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K-Drama Review: Snowdrop

Disclaimer: The following is just my own personal opinion as a viewer (and a blink) who watched this series for entertainment purpose. Also, may contain spoilers ahead.

After (what felt like years of) long delay of the release of the Korean drama Snowdrop (설강화), the highly anticipated drama starring Blackpink’s Jisoo finally aired its first episode on December 18, 2021. I was probably one of the many blinks who were excited and curious about Jisoo’s acting debut as a main lead on this drama that has been gathering a lot of attention since the beginning of its filming. So, as soon as they released the first two episodes, I started watching and following this series as they unfold new episodes every weekend.

Jisoo’s Acting

First, I’m going to talk about the main reason I even started watching this drama, which is Jisoo because honestly, if I had to decide wether or not to watch this drama by only reading the synopsis and Jisoo isn’t starring in it, I probably skip this one altogether (historical drama is just not my thing personally). And just like any other times where an idol is making a main-lead acting debut on tv series or movies, people has certain expectations as well as preconceived bias (good or bad) towards that idol. Die-hard fans will mostly quick to support their idol wether their acting was good or bad while the general public who’s not necessarily familiar with the idol will either take interest in the debut or already has doubts about their acting skills because they are an idol. I’m not saying that these represent all general public, but these are some common reactions that I’ve read a lot online and I think it’s warranted for since there were cases in the past where idols crossed over to the acting world with subpar acting. And so, as much as I wanted Jisoo to do well, even I as a Blackpink fan was honestly a little nervous about Jisoo’s acting and worried that I will be disappointed.

But disappointed I was not because Jisoo did managed to perform above my expectations and then some. Starting off as a kind, funny, naive, and empathetic Yeong-ro in the first couple of episodes, she set the tone of the drama really well by giving the viewers a look into Yeong-ro’s mind and her world. From Yeong-ro’s friendship with her roommates to the love strucked version of herself after meeting Soo-hoo during the group blind date, every scenes Jisoo did feel natural and fitting to her character. Honestly, I see a little bit of an overlap between Jisoo’s real life character and Yeong-ro’s character that sometimes made me feel that I’m just watching Jisoo on screen (Blackpink members mentioned this too during their OT4 Instagram live a while back and I can totally see why). But when she’s in her Yeong-ro’s persona, she’s a little more restrained and graceful in the way she speaks and acts (albeit her funny scenes).

Photo Courtesy of JTBC

Photo Courtesy of JTBC

Photo Courtesy of JTBC

This version of Yeong-ro is then carried through the second part of the drama where it took a dark, dark turn with the whole hostage situation going on in the dorm. And this is when Yeong-ro’s character evolved to a more sombre, sad, and scared version but still maintaining her empathetic, good-natured self. I don’t think there’s a lot of scenes where Yeong-ro smiles after the hostage situation began and it’s honestly kind of depressing to watch Jisoo constantly in tears, feeling guilty, scared or having guns pointed at her head. But I have to say those scenes also showed a different side of her that I haven’t seen before. It was pretty captivating to see her portraying emotions that I never seen her wear on her face.

Photo Courtesy of JTBC

Photo Courtesy of JTBC

Photo Courtesy of JTBC

Then towards the end of the drama, we see another evolution of Yeong-ro where her braveness, determination, and selflessness shine. She was fighting for love, life and justice for the people around her and it was fascinating to see. I think all in all, for her first main lead role, she performed really well. We can truly see a wide range of Jisoo’s acting through this drama and I’m looking forward to other acting gig she’ll take on in the future (hopefully with a less depressing storyline than this one).

Photo Courtesy of JTBC

Photo Courtesy of JTBC

Plot

Having been heavily promoted as a romance drama, I have certain expectations about the romance storyline between Yeoung-ro and Soo-hoo. I mean if you were me and looked at these promotional posters, you probably have that expectations too right?

Photo Courtesy of JTBC

Photo Courtesy of JTBC

These photos of Yeong-ro and Soo-ho basking in the warm yellow lights staring at each other longingly as if they’re falling in love in the prime of their youth can probably be categorized as strategic marketing or clickbait material, depending on how you look at it I guess. Me, personally, as a viewer, saw this as a clickbait poster because none of these scenes nor expectations of a good romance plot represented by these posters were delivered (imho). They probably should’ve used this poster for the main marketing materials and I would definitely have a different expectations for the romance arc.

Photo Courtesy of JTBC

The series teased about the possibility of a happy ending for these two in the early episodes, where the story was still focusing on Yeong-ro’s dorm life with her friends and the couple’s brief interaction on the day of the group blind date. There were some good moments between the two that clearly showed their attractions to each other. But now looking back, I think those moments were too light and too few to overcome the darker and heavier things that happened afterwards and sustain the chemistry between the two of them for the rest of the series.

Photo Courtesy of JTBC

It also felt like Yeong-ro and Soo-ho’s chance of finding love was doomed the moment Soo-hoo pointed his gun at Yeong-ro’s head and used her as a shield before taking the whole dorm hostage. After that episode aired, I remember discussing this with my sister and we asked each other how Soo-ho’s redeeming arc will be written in order for him to be able to be together with Yeong-ro. That arc needs to be really good because otherwise, there were only two possibilities that we could see going forward after seeing that scene. One scenario is that this is a case of stockholm syndrome romance where Yeong-ro will fall in love with her captor (the classic Beauty and the Beast scenario). And the other scenario is that those two wouldn’t end up together (which in the end was the case). Both weren’t very appealing scenarios to be honest.

Photo Courtesy of JTBC

Photo Courtesy of JTBC

Throughout the series, I honestly was hoping that there will be some kind of plot twist that will give them a happy ending. But it’s clear as the story progressed, no such thing was happening. Even the coffee making scene which led to the couple’s first kiss fell kind of flat and, I don’t know, forced in a sense that it felt like the scene was there just to get them alone in the attic and kiss. There were so many issues that haven’t been resolved between the two of them and drinking coffee and sort of just ‘forget’ about those felt a little bit like a cop-out solution. That’s just me though. Maybe I’m more of a skeptic. Maybe for a young girl in college who just met her first love, a cup of coffee was enough to forgive and forget. Don’t take me wrong though, Jisoo’s and Hae-in’s acting were good. The chemistry was there. It’s just the plot that was kind of disappointing.

Photo Courtesy of JTBC

Romance aside, the spy/political arc kind of took over the majority of the episodes after the hostage situation began and I feel Yeong-ro’s role faded into the background quite a bit. Jisoo’s screen time didn’t feel as prominent as it was in the earlier episodes and even her role as Soo-ho’s love interest also seemed to be slowly put aside, especially after Cheong-ya’s identity has been revealed to the hostages. There were more scenes involving Soo-ho and Cheong-ya after that and to be quite honest, given their history and interaction inside the dorm, a romance arc between the two seemed to be more plausible and made sense at this point.

Photo Courtesy of JTBC

Photo Courtesy of JTBC

Photo Courtesy of JTBC

Memorable Moments

There were some feel-good moments and also I-want-to-strangle-this character moments through out this series. Let’s start with the latter ones. I have to say I can’t stand Nam Tae-il and Ahn Gyeong-hui’s characters in this series. Nam Tae-Il’s constant obnoxious, loud, and sometimes stupid comments and Ahn Gyeong-hui’s yes man, people pleasing but cunning attitude sometimes made me just fast forward their scenes. Also, I would be very concerned if people like them hold high positions in the government.

Second there’s Gye Bun-ok who constantly made me roll my eyes every time she appeared. Her character was actually likable in the early episodes, when she was kind to Yeong-ro and tried to cover for her when she was late back to the dorm for roll call. But then she just turned to the dark side ever since finding out about Yeong-ro and Soo-ho during the open house. The girl seemed incapable of showing loyalty, compassion and accepting forgiveness. I get that she has a rough, traumatic childhood growing up but still. It’s fascinating to see, though, how different she and Ms. Pi responded to the situation despite their mutual traumatic past.

Photo Courtesy of JTBC

For the feel-good scenes, Yeong-ro’s whole ordeal of getting back to her dorm room for roll call through the window was pretty epic. There was tension, drama and comedy all mixed together and we can clearly see the warm comradery between Yeong-ro and her friends. I think that is one of my favorite scenes in this drama. Other than that, I enjoy all of Yeoung-ro’s scenes with her roommates just because despite of Hye-ryeong’s constant protests, in the end they seemed to always band together and help each other out. Kind of reminded me of the good ol’ college days when friends feel like your family and you’d do anything for them.

Photo Courtesy of JTBC

I also quite like Cheong-ya’s character throughout the series. She’s smart, loyal, and sometimes ruthless but without feeling like she loses her humanity in the process. I admire her for staying true to her words and helped out Soo-ho until the end.

Photo Courtesy of JTBC

Anyway, overall, it was still an enjoyable series. I think for me, following it when it was airing also helped me to not get bored and just abandoned the series altogether because of the heavy spy/political arc towards the middle and end. Also, having talked to a couple of other blinks who watched the series as well, I think the general consensus was we're all pretty happy with Jisoo’s acting, a little disappointed with the plot but enjoyed the series overall. And I think this review’s long enough so I’ll just end it here.

(If any of you watched this series as well, let me know your thoughts on the comments section. Would love to read them.)

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