Disappointing Dramas - 2

Warning: As this is about dramas that might end up disappointing, it includes major spoilers. Proceed at your risk.

• Dramas Recapped:
  1. Black Knight – The man who guards me
  2. W – Two worlds
  3. Mary stayed out all night/Mary me, Mary!

1. Dark Knight: Man Who Guards Me

What it is about (from asianwiki): Soo-Ho (Kim Rae-Won) is a successful businessman who lives abroad. Those that oppose Soo-Ho always seem to suffer misfortune. He decides to go to South Korea find Hae-Ra (Shin Se-Kyung), but first he goes to Slovenia.

Meanwhile, in Seoul, Hae-Ra works at a travel agency, but she has never had a chance to travel abroad. She had a happy childhood until her parents died. Her life has been miserable ever since. She thinks back to a purple cashmere coat that her parents ordered for her as a Christmas present, but she could not pick it up because of their demise. She decides to go to Sharon’s Boutique and look for that coat in hopes of changing her fortune. After meeting Sharon (Seo Ji-Hye) at the boutique, she opens her eyes and finds her purple cashmere coat. Afterwards, people who give her a hard time suffer misfortune. She goes to Slovenia and meets Soo-Ho. Their fate has been intertwined since their past lives.

My thoughts: At first I thought this was about an immortal ML, but no he was human until he wasn’t. I didn’t see the point of the title either. I hadn’t checked the synopsis before watching, so the plot was a surprise. But I was already tired by the first half of the drama. The early episodes had a different vibe and certain weirdness to them. In one scene, the ML is crossing the road and there is an oncoming motorcycle (sent to scare him). The FL throws a frying pan she carried around in a purse and also then takes a kid’s cycle and throws it on the motorcycle guy to stop him. Still, for the first quarter of the drama, I was short of enjoying the weirdness and was curious to see where the show was going, only to regret it soon enough.

There isn’t much to the plot. 3/4 of the drama is filler. Sharon and Hae Ra spend more time talking about making clothes or wearing them. Or the main leads spend a lot of time dating, which is cute for a few scenes or episodes, but there’s only so much you can take. Till they remembered they are supposed to have a plot. Which is Sharon who was married to Soo Ho in his past life, while he had already fallen in love with who is currently Hae-Ra. So in anger, she killed them both. As punishment, she along with Baek Hee, another character, became immortal, while the leads reincarnated. Sharon wanted him back but also thought making clothes for Hae Ra to wear was enough to atone for her past sins. So there were many flashbacks.

There was also other stuff like if the FL’s father had killed the ML’s father or not, or whether it’s the person they now have a business rivalry with and used to work for the FL’s father. So it is not only a reincarnation drama, but it also had to have a childhood connection. In the end, Sharon becomes mortal and gets old and disappears, Soo Ho becomes immortal and gets superpowers and Hae Ra dies of old age. The ending just made the entire time spent on the drama useless. But I had accepted it by the point and didn’t feel bothered by the end. Why do these dramas with the most boring storylines also have 20 episodes?

Verdict: The entire drama feels like a filler and is all over the place. Don’t waste 20 hours of your time with this one.

---

2. W – Two Worlds

What it is about (from asianwiki): A romance takes place between Kang Chul (Lee Jong-Suk), who is super rich and exist in the webtoon “W,” and Oh Yeon-Joo (Han Hyo-Joo) who is a surgeon in the real world.

My thoughts: So I actually liked this drama. It wasn’t bad. Sure, there were some things I didn’t like, but it was quite enjoyable. The setup was nice. The characters and story were engaging for the most part. Plenty of twists and turns. That’s not to say it didn’t have flaws. New rules kept on being introduced, and I don’t expect a story like this to have no plot holes. Some things didn’t make much sense to me. Every time something seemed to be resolved, another problem popped up. It was far better than Memories of Alhambra, which was by the same writer. I could see some of the same problems in this that I could see in Alhambra, but things were handled way better here.

The leads were cute together and I enjoyed their scenes. There was a reset to the Manhwa storyline halfway through, and the drama quality did drop in terms of the world-building and rules, but it didn’t bother me as much I expected it to. I kept on thinking that something might happen that makes me declare it a waste of time, but it never happened. I liked the Manhwa world created in the drama. It’s tempting to compare it to Extraordinary You, which was also about characters inside a Manhwa. The artwork of the characters in the Manhwa was excellent and detailed and looked very close to the characters in the real world. I would really love to read something that is so well drawn and beautiful. I could also see the appeal of a fictional character coming to life.

Verdict: Not disappointed by it and managed to enjoy it. It still might frustrate you I assume. But if you don’t overthink it you might enjoy it too.

---

3. Mary Me, Mary!

What it is about (from mydramalist): Wi Mae Ri (Moon Geun Young) is the cheerful, pragmatic daughter of a failed businessman who had grown used to being constantly on the move to escape from debtors. She becomes fast friends with the free-spirited indie singer, Kang Moo Kyul (Jang Geun Suk), when she nearly ran him over in a car. Meanwhile, her father, Wi Dae Han, is saved from his debtors by his old friend, Jung Suk, who had just returned from considerable success in the Japanese entertainment industry. Jung Suk, who had harboured a secret love for Mae Ri’s mother, sets up a deal with Dae Han to have Mae Ri marry his son, Jung In (Kim Jae Wook). In a desperate attempt to escape this predicament, Mae Ri begs Moo Kyul to pose as her husband, and finds herself in even more trouble than before when her father proposes a 100-day period in which she has to divide her time equally between Moo Kyul and Jung In, after which she has to decide who to marry.

My thoughts: Another love triangle, rocker guy, rich guy, and our female lead. Annoying parents and a repetitive storyline. This describes perfectly the drama. I was a bit thrilled cause like other dramas it’s obvious who the female lead ends up with. And it isn’t the rich guy, who also happened to have a childhood connection to the female lead. After Start Up, I prefer such a thing happens often. I am sure many people had a second lead syndrome. But I didn’t like either of the guys, they both could be very annoying. Thankfully the second lead despite being annoying was actually nice. To be fair, the leads had some really cute scenes between them that did make the drama bearable. But there were many misunderstandings between them and that lead to Moo Kyul breaking up and making up with Mi Rae a few times. Mi Rae had no interest in Jung In. At first, he didn’t care either and admitted that the marriage was nothing but business to him. But later, he insisted on trying to make Mary Like him. Like all second leads, he did give up on it in the end.

All the lead’s parents were annoying. Mi Rae’s father had no problem trying to sell his daughter to the rich guy just to pay off his debts. The female lead, of course, didn’t want that, so she pretended she was already married to Moo Kyul, who at first wasn’t thrilled with the idea either. Jung In’s father only wanted his son to marry Mary because she looked exactly like her mother, with who he was secretly in love. Moo Kyul didn’t approve of some of his mother’s decisions, and she annoyed me the most. The fathers were not even worth the effort. They were what led to most of the repetition I mentioned. Mary insisted she preferred not to marry Jung In and tried everything, but it didn’t seem to work. There was also another female character who showed interest in Moo Kyul and didn’t like that he had an interest in someone else after they had broken up.

This drama though did not go well. The ratings kept on dropping. The drama ended up going through three writers. The change in writers was obvious in episode 11. The character’s personalities ended up inconsistent at times. And the last episode was written by the actor playing the main lead. I think that last episode was my most favourite and was the one redeeming factor in the drama. Jung In and Moo Kyul had some scenes together, which made me think maybe it would have been better if these two ended up together and leave Mi Rae alone. All three ended up temporarily living at Moo Kyul’s place. Jung In now losing his inheritance and getting kicked out of his house for telling his father that he wouldn’t marry Mary, knowing about his father’s interest in her mother. The drama didn’t end up with a marriage, but the leads do end up together. Maybe it would have been a better drama if this had happened earlier or if Jang Geun wrote the entire drama.

Verdict: Filled with tropes, might make you either tear your hair out or enjoy the ridiculousness. I did manage to have fun with it. I would suggest not watching for your sanity if you aren’t into that.